RUSH vs. YES vs. THE GRATEFUL DEAD

other elephant in room

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lu9Ycq64Gy4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V4SqDx1vi4c

elephants are cool.

Buggles joining the Dead would be awesome

one time my friends and i went to a best of the twin cities show at first avenue and one of the bands playing was this awful 12 person jam band fire-twirling and acrobatic nightmare named Wookiefoot and as they played a cover of "Scarlet Begonias" my friend mike started loudly and drunkenly bitching about the horror and a hippie near us retaliated by dumping an entire vial of patchouli on jeff and we all had to share a cab ride home in the winter with all the windows rolled up.

and thats what i think about the Greatful Dead.

i definitely listen to the Dead a lot more, but nothing they've done has even come close to Close To The Edge

don't blame the band for their fans is all i'm saying

there's an off-campus student co-op (not owned by university) at stanford called "box of rain" (helpfully spray painted onto a plywood sign on the lawn)

i heard a rumor there's like four others and they're all named after dead songs and the owner is a rich steve jobs deadhead type but i never found the others

I would also lay odds that many people who really "hate the Dead,", if they happened upon a party where Help On the Way/Slipknot/Franklin's Tower were playing, would think "this is a good tune, great vibe, really enjoying this" until they realized it was the Dead, at which point they would resume fronting

― tallarico dreams (underrated aerosmith bootlegs I have owned), Thursday, July 26, 2012 2:54 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I lived in a house where this party happened every week. It took me a long time to recover from it enough to realize that I at least liked St. Stephen and Til the Morning Comes

xp jjjusten sounds like you made the mistake of sobriety at that show

I can say with certainty that, even though I wasn't there, sobriety was not a mistake jjj made at that show

lol the Dead are literally the only one of these three with any decent songs at all

― tallarico dreams (underrated aerosmith bootlegs I have owned), Thursday, July 26, 2012 2:52 PM (15 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

otm

― tylerw, Thursday, July 26, 2012 2:52 PM (14 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

hahahahahaahaha, looooollllllllllllllll.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xxTu9bVcwU0

oh my god

you guys we may need a Wookiefoot thread

I like the Dead a ton, but come on, that's horseshit.

I actually love all 3, probably sitting this poll out.

my favorite dead song

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_nOpJMQ3-VE

good hangover album imo

kinda the template for every shitty sheryl crow type ever

my brother's hip-hop group built a song off of the 6/8-7/8 section in the intro to "Cygnus X-1 Book One - The Voyage Prologue"

I wish I could find a recording of it online, it's bad-ass

also that is just the best fucking song, so many awesome childhood memories of playing it on repeat and acting out the lyrics

I really wanted a ship so I could call it "The Rocinante"

tend to hate rush fans the most. i haven't actually met a dead fan in years.

answer is yes obv.

True or False: the "CHA CHA CHAA CHA CHA" part in "Sound Chaser" is the most horrible sound known to man

false

Went with the Dead, which I guess means I really am a hippy. Would like to make clear that I think they've done some truly horrible songs though.
Rush & Yes I find to be very unloveable bands. Not awful, just unloveable.

philosophically I think we can all agree that Neil Peart is more odious than all the rest of the members of the other bands combined

YES.

http://youtu.be/9-fJQvVFG4g

damn.

Loved Rush at some point in my adolescence, always loathed The Dead and will be a Yes fan til the end.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Tdu4uKSZ3M

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uJM7TdshUbw

Yes forever.

for most of my life i would guess i loathed all three and then gradually, at different points, have somehow come to love all three. voting yes w/ the suspicion that in a few years i will want to change that vote to dead.

I've gone through phases with Rush and the Dead, but I've listened to Yes consistently since I was a classic rock loving teen and I still get disproportionately excited when the bass comes in in Roundabout.

i voted rush out of loyalty

would be more likely to listen to the dead now though

yes is rad too

"box of rain" is probably the best song of any of the bands in question overall

philosophically I think we can all agree that Neil Peart is more odious than all the rest of the members of the other bands combined

He's been really clear that his youthful interest in Rand (assuming that's what you're referring to) came largely out of naivete and an attraction to the ideas pertaining to creative freedom and freedom of thought, that if he's a libertarian, he's a 'bleeding heart' or 'left-wing libertarian'. (While he rarely talks about it, the atheism is also a core lyrical theme.) Unlike Yes or anything I've heard by the Dead, he actually articulates a coherent philosophy and takes coherent, non-obvious political stances in his lyrics: against the Bush administration, against censorship, about the environment, about gay rights, even about homogenized corporate radio formatting. Not saying that this automatically makes his lyrics better but that I don't find him odious, philosophically.

I used to work with a woman who would take every available opportunity (and she managed to find an alarming number of them) to remind us that the reason Rush is so great is that "Neal Peart won so many drumming awards that they had to make up a new one for him because he already won all the others." I regret that I never asked her who "they" were.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5n26L0qKKT0

it's like dazed and confused in reverse at the beginning

and then it sounds like david axelrod

so basically the first minute of the track slays rush and the dead, sorry

and then a 3 minute excerpt of a john mclaughlin album

rush : tool :: dead : wookiefoot :: yes : upsilon acrux

sorry that should have said deerhunter and ruins

the middle is like gong ft dennis wilson

This poll is really hard for me! Also not that fair since I know Rush and Yes much better than the Dead. I could only really click with the Dead once I got over my young country music-hate. Anthem of the Sun is amazingly great.

Yes's large-scale compositions are much better than Rush's and go to places that no other rock bands really go to for me. Rush do some dazzling things with instrumental interplay within rock songs (and have to be the only band to play in Locrian mode on a radio hit). Rush still make some good music while Yes lose me after Going for the One.

xposts

Not saying that this automatically makes his lyrics better but that I don't find him odious, philosophically.

I'll go further: I find him most interesting philosophically of these lyricists. The stances he takes are part of the appeal of Rush for me.

this version does get pretty tedious around 8 min though compared to the studio version which also pushes it

Fragile version:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oDqG9agd5wc

So much better with Bruford.

He's been really clear that his youthful interest in Rand (assuming that's what you're referring to) came largely out of naivete and an attraction to the ideas pertaining to creative freedom and freedom of thought, that if he's a libertarian, he's a 'bleeding heart' or 'left-wing libertarian'. (While he rarely talks about it, the atheism is also a core lyrical theme.) Unlike Yes or anything I've heard by the Dead, he actually articulates a coherent philosophy and takes coherent, non-obvious political stances in his lyrics: against the Bush administration, against censorship, about the environment, about gay rights, even about homogenized corporate radio formatting. Not saying that this automatically makes his lyrics better but that I don't find him odious, philosophically.

well to be honest the whole of my deeper engagement with/close readings of Peart's lyrics is 1) "The Trees" and 2) "The Spirit of Radio," both of which are so terrible that I just feel a need to clown him when the opportunity arises

Hunter isn't as great as his partisans would have you believe, but there are many songs in the Dead's catalog that any lyricist would be happy to call his own. Jon Anderson's lyrics are some of the funniest bad poetry anywhere imo

Is the mountains come out of the sky part about rug munchin?

what about starship trooper

lonely guy just thinking baout thing

lone li NESSSSS
is a part that WEEEE
posSESSSS
to give or take away
FOREEVEEEEEEEEERR

then he does the consciousness poll thread for three verses

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Jhk5MEugJY

that's at around 3 mins in

Man, I saw Merle Haggard play a week ago, and the sound was so bad people were walking out. Merle himself pulled a reverse hip-hop and yelled at the soundman to "turn my goddamn mic down!" Not long after that I went back to the board to see if it sounded better, and there there was a guy angrily chastising the sound guy. "Merle Haggard is a motherfucking living legend, and you're making him sound like shit!" Etc.

Notorious venue for bad sound. Merle at one point mentioned attempting a soundcheck earlier, but it was no use. Still, I've heard sound OK there before, so it's possible. Tragic, really.

I would just like to thank all the Deadheads in this thread for introducing me to stuff I never would have checked out on my own cause I had long written off the GD. Pretty into this live '72 stuff TBH -- but I still would have voted for Yes anyway...

let's rent the thread out and pay the server costs

xp Merle Haggard doesn't have his own sound guy?!

You know, I think a lot of these old school guys often work with what they've got. They don't travel with their own board, or huge PA or whatever.

http://listentothedead.com/1974/6/20/brown-eyed-women

this is.. the most amazing website.. i have ever seen. hello springtime!

Whooooaaaa. That is kind of amazing. I just plugged some shit in to test it out, and this just may get me back on the Dead train for quite a while. Stepping away for now though, too much to do to get sucked in.

http://listentothedead.com/1967/6/18-2/cold-rain-and-snow

^^ dope early gig

"early"

Hah, I jumped right to 1967 myself! 10-22-1967 to be exact. Specifically for the Morning Dew, which I have always loved for some reason despite how fast it is.

Now digging into that set you posted Ian, as I love Alligator. Definitely had that on tape at some point in my life, but I haven't dug into any of these in a long long time. I guess by stepping away I meant just playing the shit that I know I love by the Dead already and not searching for random songs. Dangerous site.

"Looks Like Rain" is such a gorgeous tune but enjoyment of it decreases depending on how audible the lyrics are

Did you ever waken to the sound of street cats making love
And guess from their cries you were listening to a fight
Well you know, hate's just the last thing they're thinking of
They're only trying to make it through the night

no dude. It's that the male cat has barbs on his penis. their cries are not cries of pleasure you hippie fuck

Weir's singing is almost always a tough sell for me, the later the period the moreso, regardless of whether I pay attention to the lyrics themselves or not. Music for "Looks Like Rain" is pretty for sure though.

lol the Dead are literally the only one of these three with any decent songs at all

― tallarico dreams (underrated aerosmith bootlegs I have owned), Thursday, July 26, 2012 2:52 PM (15 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this is a very songist comment

not even really sure what it means