Dave Matthews Gets in a Crowd-Pleasing Jam

The Dave Matthews Band’s rise to stardom remains one of the most perplexing questions in pop. Despite massive album sales, huge concert grosses and singer-guitarist Matthews’ inexplicable sex symbol status, the most remarkable thing about the quintet is how unremarkable it is.

The musicians have established themselves as a “jam band” in the tradition of the Grateful Dead, but they lack the spontaneous energy of others in the genre, including Blues Traveler. Unlike jamsters Phish, they also don’t offer any stage shtick, annoying or otherwise.

And Matthews’ songs are engaging, but hardly as catchy as kindred spirits like Hootie & the Blowfish. Still, the group’s fervent, faithful following filled the Irvine Meadows Amphitheatre on Friday.

The point of jamming is to generate dramatic tension between song structure and improvised playing. Most of the band’s protracted jams lacked dynamics altogether. They were simply barrages of repetitious rhythms (few true grooves) with sporadic solos thrown in--primarily from violinist Boyd Tinsley and saxophonist-flautist LeRoi Moore with occasional guitar interjections from Matthews.

The songs, mostly innocuous midtempo numbers that plodded on relentlessly, lacked the exotic flourishes that spice up the group’s albums. To his credit, Tinsley set off most of the musical sparks, initiating some zesty exchanges with drummer Carter Beauford.

Astonishingly, after three rambling hours of Matthews and company the crowd was still roaring its approval, apparently pleased to have gotten its money’s worth.

Jimmy Cliff’s opening set, however, was the real bargain. Though the reggae hero has never been as popular in the U.S. as Bob Marley, he led his lively seven-piece group through a breezy 45-minute set as if he were headlining, interspersing his own hits (including “You Can Get It If You Really Want” and “The Harder They Come”) with lovely, soulful renditions of Johnny Nash’s “I Can See Clearly Now” and the Melodians’ “Rivers of Babylon.”

Occasionally, Cliff veered into New Agey sermons about the environment and politics, but his heart and his music were in the right place.