One of the more puzzling cultural anomalies of the past decade has to be the staggering commercial success met by Phish, Blues Traveler and Dave Matthews Band, acts that have forged stadium-sized followings out of fervently loyal fanbases and relentless touring.

The sizable void left by the demise of the Grateful Dead only partially explains this phenomenon. While even the staunchest of detractors will begrudgingly admit that the Dead had a rich legacy and historical cachet that had as much or more to do with the cult of personality surrounding the band than its music, Dave Matthews boasts no such history or infamy or even charisma. Yet with each passing year, his crowds grow in number and a legacy is built, almost despite his best efforts to remain bland and centrist.

While Phish and Blues Traveler have inherited the grimy hippies and penchant for musical, let's say "experimentation," from the Grateful Dead's traveling flea circus, Dave Matthews seems to have attracted the sort of Dead fans that came aboard circa "Touch of Grey." He's a clean-cut white guy making clean-cut white music for clean-cut white fans — the Pat Boone of the jam-band circuit. DMB's new double live album, Listener Supported, opens with Matthews' cheekily welcoming the audience saying, "You all smell good this evening," and unlike the crowd at a Dead show, they actually might.

Recorded in September at East Rutherford, N.J.'s eloquently named Continental Airlines Arena, the new live album showcases the Dave Matthews Band's vaguely jazzy inclinations. That's jazzy in the Sting Dream of the Blue Turtles sense of the word, not in the Duke Ellington or Miles Davis sense of the word. Which is to say, not that jazzy at all. They're putting clarinet back in rock — where it belongs — to punctuate the jangly guitars and hiccuppy rhythms. But it's not the mere presence of strings and woodwinds that makes this all sound so wimpy; Mercury Rev and Flaming Lips, to name two, are able to utilize symphonic elements to make themselves sound dramatically large and grandiose, while DMB somehow sounds like the world's grooviest Bar Mitzvah band.

The fact that Matthews and his contemporaries regularly sell out football

arenas without the benefit of hit records is a testament to their reputations

as live powerhouses, so an album like this should be a chance to prove

their wares. "Crash Into Me" (RealAudio

excerpt), the band's biggest chart hit, is represented here, but

the twenty songs collected over the two discs seem selected to please the

fans rather than create a Frampton Comes Alive groundswell of new

converts. With a good number of songs clocking in at well over eight

minutes, the violin solos really get a chance to breathe. "The Stone"

(RealAudio

excerpt) actually manages to build to a point of drama and release

over its relatively trim seven-minute span, but too much of the music

holds back, as easy on the ears and hard on the constitution as Muzak.

"Two Step" has a few spirited moments, but in a fourteen-and-a-half-minute

song, a few spirited moments do not an enjoyable listening experience

make.

The second disc features three previously unreleased songs as well as two

covers, "Long Black Veil" (RealAudio

excerpt) and "All Along the Watchtower." "Long Black Veil" would

have worked a lot better without those meddling backup singers and without

a running length of eight interminable minutes, but I would have paid

double the face value of the ticket price to see Johnny Cash bum rush the

stage and kick Matthews' scrawny ass.

The underlying philosophy here seems to be: Why do something in three

minutes when you can do it in fifteen? There's no denying the band's

virtuoso musical capabilities, but I don't need to listen to the same

song for half the time it takes to watch a sitcom to figure out that the

drummer knows how to play. Maybe I had to be there. But I'm pretty glad

I wasn't.