RUSH vs. YES vs. THE GRATEFUL DEAD

otoh, if you don't like this, I'm not sure what your problem is

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r0HnIr6jYWU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yhSaDMocYnY&feature=fvst

listening now. this is nice.

I guess my problem with this band is that they've never been as weird or 'out' as I was hoping for. and they never really rock too hard. they never really freak you out too much. not very funky. just kinda pleasant, I suppose. bringing some baggage to the table, I know...

the touchstones for "Close to the Edge"

"Tarkus?" I don't know if we're just talking about its complexity as a super-long suite, but The Incredible String Band did them going back to "A Very Cellular Song" in '68 (even longer ones like "White Bird" and "Creation" a year later).

poll results otm imo

so I'm stoked, just came up on a box of about 400 live Dead tapes today in Oakland. so excited to check these out. I already had a decent collection from my trader days but damn. a sizable chuck of shows from every year too

I predicted a Rush win but I'm not too startled by this. Clearly, people who don't like prog rock would vote for the Dead by default. Rush and Yes both have singers that turn off many people.

xposts

*sizeable xp

"Tarkus?" I don't know if we're just talking about its complexity as a super-long suite, but The Incredible String Band did them going back to "A Very Cellular Song" in '68 (even longer ones like "White Bird" and "Creation" a year later).

Not just complexity and length per se. The form has been analysed by Covach as a kind of hugely expanded AABA, by others as a sort of sonata form - the way they're able to build this large unified form using rock materials (there are still verses and refrains, for example), but also even using a quasi-ritornello in that pseudo-Baroque organ figure. I'm also thinking of the way the studio processing is integrated into the form and the forces used (four different keyboards, three singers, electric sitar).

I have Tarkus but I'm not sure I've ever made it all the way through, to be honest.:P

the real story is that the dead got spanked 2-1 by the power and majesty of prog, it just looks differently because the vote got split

if string cheese incident or wookiefoot had been in the poll yes would have won

I guess my problem with this band is that they've never been as weird or 'out' as I was hoping for. and they never really rock too hard.

I thought the same thing, for about 20 years. Then I heard "Feedback" from Live/Dead...then I heard other "Feedback"s from other live Dead releases (all from 1968-1969, tbf)...

ok not quite 2:1

i'm more surprised rush has 40 votes than yes and dead virtually tying

yeah anthem of sun and live/dead are sort of a different beast tho

(I also don't know the ISB as well as I should but I'll look into it. I think I usually want prettier singing with that sort of thing tbh, which may be a barrier for me with the Dead as well?)

xpost to self

also i don't agree w contenderizer but i bet the dead pulled the troll vote

Bet Rush would smoke this if you put it to a general classic rock radio audience.

"A Very Cellular Song" is really the great one as far as the ISB goes. "White Bird" is longer but actually not as complex.

Oh, and Robin and Mike were very pretty singers!

they were!

...

It has been at least 10 years since I've heard any ISB. We had one of their albums in my undergrad lounge. I remember liking it. I'm quite fond of Fairport and (especially) Pentangle so this probably won't be a hard sell.

I'll look for those.

xpost to tim

yeah, if you're into fairport and pentangle, you're good to go

yeah i was going to post that isb is not like dead and bring up fairport but i didn't want to run ot

also i don't agree w contenderizer but i bet the dead pulled the troll vote

― the late great, Friday, August 3, 2012 10:01 PM (Yesterday)

oh, i don't suspect shenanigans for real. was just playing dr. fever, tbh.

also when was the noise board not four guys with 10 socks each

to celebrate the dead winning i am listening to ccr who are in every way superior

^ lock thread

so I'm stoked, just came up on a box of about 400 live Dead tapes today in Oakland. so excited to check these out. I already had a decent collection from my trader days but damn. a sizable chuck of shows from every year too

― Chris S, Saturday, August 4, 2012 4:44 AM (5 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

!

yep. couldn't believe my luck

http://i.imgur.com/25eBb.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/uyUV9.jpg

That's so awesome Chris. I loved my collection of tapes (mostly Phish, not Dead, unfortunately). Having all these different homemade labels and handwriting from people you'd probably never know or even meet from all kinds of circumstances, all across America, just exchanging important information the best way they could. Putting out feelers: "hey, do you know anyone with the Atlanta shows yet?" Olden days.

Victory parade

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1PU-Fuu6T4A

Yeah, xp, I have a box of Phish tapes somewhere, much more than I'd care to admit!

Man these tapes are really bringing a lot of memories back, all the little scribblings are so fascinating. Lots of hand-drawn psychedelic artand Dead iconography, and yeah, little notes sometimes slipped into the cases. Hoping to maybe find an old blotter sheet with one of the 90s designs or something hidden in one of 'em eventually. And what trader could forget Maxell XL II's?

Gonna have a blast exploring new/old shows on tape again, just realizing this evening how much I love '70 Dead.

Really enjoy suddenly having a ton of new shows to explore all together actually. I mean, it's nice to really get to know one show/tape, get familiar with every nuance of a certain jam, but it's way more of a headtrip, I think, to constantly move from new show to new show, because you while get to really know the essence of every song, more crucially, you experience just how differently the songs are realized every time. There's such a different energy to every concert. And they really go so deep. People who claim the Dead don't really get that psychedelic need to become familiar with their language first, it's really startling just how differently they throw themselves into it every time.

These results, like the Dead: quantity does not equal quality.

Whoever said CCR wins is OTM.

rush fans: an eternally self-selecting group of people who will never grow not to be butthurt about the fact that other people are not rush fans

though it would be interesting to run this poll again as dead vs ccr

ccr vs allman brothers vs dead (pigpen years)

rush fans: an eternally self-selecting group of people who will never grow not to be butthurt about the fact that other people are not rush fans

I don't object to Rush losing, I object to the Dead winning

I vote for a dead Rush.

I don't object to Rush losing, I object to the Dead winning

Exactly. Totally get people not digging Rush, totally don't get so many people digging the Dead.

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-F5lO2fFr6T4/T4Y_vgGW87I/AAAAAAAABGA/EddleYRWFhc/s1600/janis%2Bpigpen.jpg

http://images4.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb57524/peanuts/images/a/a2/Pig-pen_peanuts.png

I'm genuinely interested in what this thing that you've located is. because, sure, some of the country rock is pleasant. and some of the dead's jams are pleasant too. but man, so much of their stuff is so bland to me. their albums are so spotty. their live sets are so spotty. I seriously can't hear what makes people become so obsessed with this band and I am really trying to hear it, man!

well I mean - it's a groove, a vibe, a bunch of not-very-useful terms describe it. a feeling, a zone. which I think is why deadheads often say "well if you heard the 'dark star' from Cleveland Free Trade '72* you'd understand" - you catch a song you dig when they're in this zone where competing sloppinesses just lock into a thing that expresses not just country-rock cool-vibes (else why aren't the Burritos giant, or the New Riders? the New Riders play a lot better, the Burritos too) but this distinct character that's really complex and human and real. But also p. cosmic. The anchor imo is Garcia's tone, which imo is fantastic though I know there's also players/tone freaks on this thread who don't care for it at all. But if you do get a moment - in "Help on the Way/Slipknot/Franklin's Tower," maybe, that I think was the first tune where the groove really locked in for me - it's like a door into why people go nuts. Which you don't have to do it's perfectly ok not to dig the Dead, one weird thing about people hating on them is really nobody gives a shit if you don't like the Dead - it's not like Creedence stans who're certain you're wrong if you don't love 'em

*this is actually the best dark star afaik

Thing is, I love the Band, and always felt like the Band totally got what the Dead could only get a little at a time.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oP0KMZ__eh4

isn't it more like the other way round -- that the band are getting a lot of their shared Matter of America out via highly composed studio stuff, whereas the dead get at it by spending twenty minutes on one chord before they go back to they 'he had to diiiiiiiiiiie' bit

i think the dead's 'vibe' / 'what they are about' is hard to nail down because it's the intersection of two v different things, viz.

i. garcia/lesh/weir extended improvisational interplay -- lesh and weir never exactly just comping -- which is the manifestation of something that didn't exist much or at all in rock before the dead and certain peers of theirs. and which they were able to do on a whole range of stuff which (to me, at least, etc) makes them more interesting than jefferson airplane or quicksilver messenger service (n.b. quicksilver messenger service were way better on a bo diddley beat tho)

ii. the queer place of their songbook (by which i don't mean the songs they wrote qua songs, which were sometimes v awful) as summation of 'where popular music, narrowly considered, is at, at the end of the 60s' and too 'where popular music, more broadly considered, ended up in order to get us here'

those are good thoughts thomp

also interesting to me the way they could sometimes write really, really good songs that any songwriter would hear and say "yeah - that's the stuff" (ridiculous hit-to-miss ratio on Workingman's Dead and American Beauty for these) and then turn around and write "Here Comes Sunshine" (quiet you Wake of the Flood defenders that song is garbage) - it's weird. everybody has hits and misses but the distance between their best numbers and their worst ones is incredibly vast

What are your objections to Here Comes Sunshine again?

Another data point providing me a frame of reference is the Byrds, a band with similarly traditional roots but whose improvisation to my ears is far more sophisticated, exciting and rich than anything I've heard from the Dead.

I do find several Dead songs absolutely lovely, and wish they had more than an album or so's worth of them, spread over 30 years.