RUSH vs. YES vs. THE GRATEFUL DEAD

Let's get some people quoting some Yes lyrics in here, for the LOLs. Anyone?

Like, are "All Good People" and "One NIght in Bangkok" the only two pop songs ever written about chess?

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Shining, flying, purple wolfhound, show me where you are

got this open in a tab right now

feels like Yes is gonna win

My money was on Rush. They've easily sold the most albums and seem popular on ILM.

fingers crossed for yes

ILM is offically yessed out, if anyone else wins it will be a minor upset. by "anyone else" i mean rush, of course. if the dead win it will be a sad fart day.

I hope the Dead win, but they inspire stronger antipathy than the others - I can imagine Yes or Rush votes by people who don't really love Yes or Rush but who dislike the Dead, but I can't imagine any Dead votes by anybody except partisan 'heads

xp qed

This is an exciting poll!

I like all 3
Yes my favorite band when I was 13
I've seen rush twice live
Listen to the dead most now although I indulge in Yes nostalgia quite a bit
Haven't quite made it t

Ugh iPhone
Haven't quite made it to caress of steel nostalgia but give it time

As a huge Rush fan, I can say that Caress of Steel is one of the last albums you need to concern yourself with.

I'd much rather listen to their prog metal years than anything post-Signals

ah caress is pretty good! "Bastille Day" is probably their most rockin' song

so I'm listening to a sampler of the new "Spring 1990" Rhino Handmade Grateful Dead box set....I guess this is supposed to be the last "great Dead" tour....

so...um the biggest question this is giving me is, if this is "great", how fucking terrible usually was this band in the 90s???

lol my listen to that (on the website, right) was like OH FUCK THIS IS GREAT I GOTTA BUY THE WHOLE BOX

really???? damn. like hey man that's cool dogg, but y'all deadheads are like trying to talk sense to Amway ppl....my lord.

They were a complete and total shambles almost every single night. I wouldn't call Spring 1990 the last great dead tour, because the Bruce Hornsby runs later that year after Brent died are highly regarded as well. But Bruce basically left the band because they lacked creative spirit and vision, if I understand correctly.

Like, Bruce would try to live out his Grateful Dead fantasy setlists "how about we try 'China Cat' into 'Althea' tonight, instead" and some band members would be like "no, 'china cat' always goes into "I know you rider', don't you get it?"

really???? damn. like hey man that's cool dogg, but y'all deadheads are like trying to talk sense to Amway ppl....my lord.

I think this is actually pretty true - it's like, once you sort of locate the thing in what they do that you like, you hear it everywhere, and other stuff on/around it either becomes invisible or easy to ignore. Like, I was just listening to a '69 show in the car. The liner notes are nauseating, all this fake-ass mythbuilding spirituality garbage that I just fucking loathe. No, your lyrics aren't actually that deep. No, you weren't actually connecting with the fucking Seminole Indians. Actually you were kind of some unpleasant junkie types who hadn't gotten into the hard stuff yet. But musically it just reaches me instantly, and all the other stuff (being sloppy, being annoying, seeming personally like the last people on earth I want anything to do with) seems unimportant, like profoundly trivial.

xp fuck I love "Althea" to pieces

wait

how did I miss that Bruce Hornsby was in The Grateful Dead for a while

I have no idea. But just wait till you hear the Hornsby/Nightwish demos.

wait

how did I miss that Bruce Hornsby was in The Grateful Dead for a while

― keeping things contextual (DJP), Friday, August 3, 2012 10:03 AM (58 seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

^^yeah i had no idea....that's gotta be a wakeup call if horsby is like fuck this i'm going back to the range do some REAL SHIT again cya

please tell me that the Dead were playing "Mandolin Rain" during this era

Sadly, I don't think the Dead played The Range.

so...um the biggest question this is giving me is, if this is "great", how fucking terrible usually was this band in the 90s???

― Elrond Hubbard (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Friday, August 3, 2012 10:43 AM (21 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Unbelivably bad.

Totally been crunching numbers to try to justify purchasing the Spring 1990 box since I saw the commercial for it at the beginning of The Grateful Dead Movie showing on Wednesday. $200 is a LOT of cash, man. And they make it 'limited' (relatively speaking) so you feel like "Well, if I don't buy it NOW I will live to regret it for all eternity!" etc etc

May have to be content with Dozin' At The Knick and Without A Net (both of which cover highlights from right around this time) for now

Yeah, I don't have 200 for a goddamn box set with actual CDs in it. I wish they'd follow Live Phish's model and release this stuff as $10-$12 digital downloads

Agreed. Maaaaybe if it was vinyl? I mean, if you're crafty, you can find SBDs of most of these shows anyway, or at least you could up til a few days ago.

But yeah, haters gonna hate. Spring 1990, all things considered, was probably their last truly great tour.

My wife, who, on her best days, merely tolerates my Dead obsession, can hang a little bit, but whenever I put on something from, say, 82 onward, she's all 'what the fuck is this'

i got on a big American Beauty kick this year, picked up a nice used copy on vinyl...great country rock record!

but yeah the later stuff just sounds horrific to me.

the thing that really bums me out is how cheesy their instrument sounds are, like American Beauty is just a GORGEOUS recording....this 1990 stuff sounds so crappy, like the actual instrument tones

i've got like 0 use for the Dead after Reckoning and as often as not i pick their studio stuff over the live

but i still have to vote dead in this poll

I think that the Dead voter results will be respectable in this poll.

I didn't like the "cheesy" instrument sounds at first, but grew to love the psychedelic crinkliness of them. Particularly Jer and Brent. They definitely had the cheesiest sounds.

I tried to listen to part of a '94 show on Wednesday (Jerry's b-day) and those sounds got worse. And Vince Welnick's keys aren't even the cheesiest part; Jerry's just noodling away on autopilot with some sort of MIDI effect or something. But I dunno, '90 works for me.

Yeah, Jerry was all like trying to use MIDI to make his guitar sound like a trumpet and everything.

good lord

envelope filter not FTW.

I'd much rather listen to their prog metal years than anything post-Signals

― buzza, Friday, August 3, 2012 12:05 AM

I think Counterparts, Snakes & Arrows, and Clockwork Angels are the three post-Signals albums that stand up to the band's earlier works. If you haven't spent time with those, they all rock CONSIDERABLY harder than any of the synthy late 80s stuff.

Grace Under Pressure and Power Windows are two of their best albums, synths and all.

yeah, i'm a little iffy about those two. not bad, but not among their best, imo.

diversity!

New wave rush rules!

Not quite sure how political views have any basis in quality music. I personally couldnt care less what a band's politics are.

what if they were Red Wings fans

― steven fucking tyler (underrated aerosmith bootlegs I have owned), Thursday, August 2, 2012 6:57 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I would care about that. It would be pure hatred for the band at that point.

and so began my quest to get Bill Ward to wear a DeadThings jersey

Wait, the Dead were using guitar synth and envelope filters in the 90s? Metheny style? That actually makes me want to listen to that stuff. Were they releasing albums with this stuff or do you need to sift through amateur recordings of live shows?

(Didn't know Hornsby played with them either!)

jer used an envelope filter since the 1970s (a mu-tron). He started getting midi-equipped guitars in the late 80s. I think he used them mostly during the improvisational "Space" segements, but someone correct me if I'm wrong.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/1/1d/Gratefuldeadinfraredroses.jpg

This is a good compilation of Space stuff.

+ a marsalis