Revolt of the ILX Brigade: New Post-Fahey Folk For PPL that post in the Takoma & Tompkin's Square Threads

nice post Neal, food for thought and maybe I will have a response at some point

grandavis I just sent you a PM

Got it sleeve! Will be in touch via email.

Got a few things to say about that post as well Neal, will get my thoughts down when I have a little more time. I am, for sure, very into and excited by all of the collaboration happening.

Hey Neal, some beginning thoughts here.

First, I think for a lot of the older dudes (Forsyth is 40, Tom Carter), the Grateful Dead has always been a touchstone. For me personally it has always been there as well, but I am older and just grew up in a place where tons of folks were into the Dead. I got into a lot of weird stuff over the years, and tried to turn folks into the Dead onto it (with very little luck), but most folks I know who like truly weird/out/heavy drone stuff like the Dead on at least some level. But yeah, "primitive guitar" has a lot more in common with the general lyrical quality of the playing in the Dead (and their folk/jazz/blues-leaning tunes) then more avant/experimental music, though I sure tried to sell Dead folks on the expansive side of Sonic Youth by saying it was like the good feedback/space interludes or at times the really out Dark Stars or something, but this rarely worked.

I do think a lot of it is timing, i.e., the timing is right now for a lot of this stuff to coalesce and bloom around what these folks are up to. I mean, Chasny, Tom Carter, Rick Bishop, the No-Neck folks, and even Forsyth, have been around for a good while collaborating and playing with other folks all the time (obviously Carter, with Charalambides, and Chasny, with Comets on Fire/Badgerlore/Rangda etc., have high-profile projects) but the current, slightly younger crop of heavy hitters, Gunn/Bowles/Cian Nugent etc., are just now getting more publicity for their efforts in that area, and seem to universally be turning to classic group-sound jamming as an outlet as opposed to drone/noise-a-thons and free-er improv stuff, though most of these folks dip their toes in that water as well (they just don't get as much run for it right now).

As far as who else is paying attention, and the respectability a dude like Gunn has universally achieved, I don't know, I think it is just the moment we are in. A lot of it is a taste level maybe, in that a lot of these folks have ingested a ton of music and are generally avoiding some of the cornier, least appealing sides of the historical touchstones, but it is also just natural "ideas bubbling to the surface" kind of stuff. I know I got sick of somewhat anti-technique noise shows and straight drone, just because that was a huge part of what was coming through my town/I went to see live for a while, and a lot of the bands who jumped into that scene weren't doing much with it after a while. To see someone incorporate more musicality into the equation was pretty welcome, but even still, there were bands touring throughout the early to late '00s that worked similar weins (Jackie O Motherfucker, MV & EE, Chasny's various efforts), so why is it being more widely recognised now? Not sure. I mean, I don't remember a time when I didn't know someone who wasn't a big Bardo Pond fan, and my friends all dug Sonic Youth's Murray Street, but certainly most of them were not asking me about my Dead bootlegs, though most didn't toe the "I hate the Dead" line that fully either.

Feel like Solar Motel owes way more to Television than the Dead.... And Forsythe studied guitar with Richard Lloyd iirc...

Neil def agree w the idea that the audience is easier to label than the music, which is increasingly varied

xp oh for sure, but forsyth is a huge deadhead, though.
good posts from neal and grandavis! i think i floated the totally gross term "post-classic-rock" here or somewhere, but that's the vibe I get from these full-band records (gunn, nugent, forsyth etc). expansive w/o being bloated, fully embracing the rock band dynamic without having to stick to rock band structures. in some weird way I feel like it's almost similar to the hard bop era, when jazz was sort of freed from the pop song format and could stretch out. maybe that doesn't make sense, not sure.

I think having a strong and inventive drummer has a lot to do with it! at least that's in part why i like these bands. i also like shreddy instrumentals and anything that sounds remotely like Crazy Horse, preferably if there is no singing.

One thing I really like about Forsyth's band is that they ride the line of structure, soloing/improvising, and getting slightly unhinged here and there really well. Very seldomly did I feel like they weren't going "somewhere" or were just soloing to take a guitar solo, it all felt pretty organic whilst retaining the thrills of hearing folks go for it on their instruments a bit and try to push the music energy- and structure-wise.

I agree though, generally more TV than GD in the overall sound.

Basically what you said way more succinclty Tyler: expansive without being bloated.

By the way, the other guitarist in Forsyth's band, Paul Sukeena, kept teasing "Disconnection Notice" by SY in their soundcheck at the show. My secret dream of Murray Street influencing a slew of rock bands/players maybe coming true!

Rangda, Bishop, & Sun City Girls figure into this somehow too I think

yeah I view this whole scene as an evolution on from the whole New Weird America thing, which the SCG folks were like the grandfathers of

is this the only thread that works?

lol

Haha I think so...
The prophecy has been fulfilled

omg how did you do this?

Seems to be.

Ok, carry on discussing the Alex Turner speech here.

the transfiguration of ILX

aw, don't ruin this great thread :(

yes i don't want anyone to come here to talk about zombies and bacon, keep it strictly to the ILX brigade

Hah no idea what just happened here, but brief interlude to announce that Dying For Bad Music has just announced via Twitter that they are going to release a full-length this year from our own Global Tetrahedron. Very cool!

Link?

using this thread to talk about the subject of this thread while the rest of ilx is broken seems in pretty bad taste imo

xp - oooh! that's cool!

You have to be "jumped in" to the gang before you can post. Basically we beat you with Leo Kottke records (but only the early stuff)

cockroach acoustic guitar thread of cockroach ilx

Ah! Maintenance just made my long-ish post disappear. OK, from the top---

Some great posts here. As a pretty rabid Deadhead and someone who definitely came of age in the scene grandavis describes upthread (Bardo / MV / Charalambides etc), I think a lot of these signifiers are somewhat misleading; the percentage of Dead material that actually crosses over into, say, the Three Lobed or Important fanbase still seems frustratingly small to me. If the Dead had made a career doing the sort of stuff that sounds like Grayfolded, with the addition of some of the "Viola Lee" type rave-ups, then yes, absolutely, a touchstone. But the Weir factor is one not easily navigated by people reared on free jazz or something (to say nothing of the Brent factor!) and I think, with very few exceptions, when fans of Bardo, Comets, et al abide the Dead, they're talking about stuff like the 2nd and third discs of Rockin' The Rhein (which, incidentally, is my go-to gateway album for heads who dig Sonic Youth but think they hate jam bands). But the Estimated / Weather Report / Lost Sailor etc side of the Dead, to me, is just as liberated and just as interesting, musically speaking, as the noisier and more 'out' bits.

I think a better - and just as exciting - comparison for all the recent collabs / supergroups etc is that period in jazz when everyone seemed to be playing with everyone else; when it was hard to find a bebop record that didn't feature some rhythm section combination of Scott LaFaro, Philly Joe Jones, Paul Chambers, Red Garland, Oscar Pettiford, Corea, Hancock, Ron Carter, etc. I love the idea of contrasting a Gunn performance with, say, Cian Nugent, with a performance with Pete Nolan. This is one of the trainspotter-y things I adore about that era bebop / hard bop--that idea of getting into a player, getting to know his style, and following him from record to record. Aesthetically, much of this stuff may be more Television / Dead / Crazy Horse / Fahey etc, but I think this social angle I describe is one of the elements that makes these recent developments so compelling (to me, anyway).

UMS, it was just a twitter post (fine, I'll call it a tweet) mentioning that it is coming out in 2014, with a link to Global's Facebook page for his music, no link to the record itself.

Great post Jimmywine, I agree with a lot of that and yeah, I love following players through scenes/records, and it is definitely something I am trying to actively encourage when I can. Just recently I have seen Nathan Bowles talk about Tom Carter playing on his next record, and Nathan was just jamming with Steve for his next record (and drummed for him on the last tour), etc. etc. Looks like the collabs are just exponentially piling up.

"Rangda, Bishop, & Sun City Girls figure into this somehow too I think"—yeah I agree, which I kind of touched upon above. There are a lot of threads to the sound that we could point to, from pre-"New Weird America" and through it until now. Those Jimmywine pointed out, the Twisted Village crew, basically most of the folks who played Terrastock. Most bands who have tried to nail the wider Dead sound have failed, it is a really hard thing to do.

The jazz thing makes sense...I actually thought of that when I first heard Rangda, there's one song where they take off from the famous "devil's third" riff that kicks off the first Sabbath record. Reminded me of how jazz dudes could take a "standard" and take it to undiscovered territory

also, rangda has an awesome drummer

believe you are referring to the awe-inspiring "Bull Lore" there xp

I like the direction this thread is going!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rt1zcOuRLO4

the woolly jam band/free folk/terrastock/brattleboro/drone scene was always v accommodating of both the music & actual woozy presence of john fahey but shouldn't be defined him. the extent to which this crowd are/were Dead-friendly has been pondered upthread but there has def been some background sense of rock heritage a lot of the time esp when ppl are plugged-in. the other, related but somewhat distinct scene that played a big part of the takoma/fingerstyle revival was the somewhat dryer, avant/compositional grubbs/o'rourke/post-rock/chicago scene which has p much fallen apart. there have also been maverick weirdos operating on the periphery like basho-junghans who can claim takomite heritage.

anyway, a lot of this recent jam band stuff highlights the other branches of this scene & bears little if any trace of takoma. conflating the whole scene w/ the faheyist elements is v misleading & seems to have been hidden under the fog of the much-abused american primitive badge. remember guys: jerry garcia is a psychic vampire & the SCGs are kitsch. the best examples of faheyisms in a band context are prob still cul de sac & then mb something like that posthumously issued record of d. charles speer & the helix playing w/ jack rose. and fahey's own various ensemble recordings, which ppl don't speak too much about besides the dixieland stuff.

that aside i def think it's interesting how the classic rock side has resurfaced. i was slightly bemused by the rangda album until i saw them play live & had an "oooh they're a rock band" epiphany. obv the v first track was atonal dick dale riffing but somehow the full-extent of their rockness surprised me compared to other stuff i'd seen corsano be part of.

This sort of amorphous Dead vibe that seeps into some of this stuff is cool with me because I like the Dead in my head, or the way I imagine the Dead sound, way more than a actually hearing the Dead. Like people sell me on them, make it sound so great... Then I listen to some "classic" live show & it's so tacky and earthbound and god in heaven Bob Weir is the biggest choochbag that ever lived & I don't know how you ppl cab ever be transported anywhere with that dipshit mugging in dazy dukes and a safari shirt and 1980s shop teacher glasses

Also great post ogomor

O'Rourke solo albums were def the first thing this Shellac/Fugazi fan ever bought that even approached Fahey

yeah for me it was sonic youth > gastr del sol/cul de sac > fahey and then w/in a year i'm buying boxsets of blind blake & uncle dave macon & i have become an old man in my teens

Also Tortoise maybe seems dated in ways or not as impressive once you found out more, bit they prepared me for a whole lot of arty instrumental stuff all across the board. I saw William Tyler played w Doug McCombs in Chicago & wasn't surprised to read that Tortoise was a big deal to him

tortoise also had a great drummer

Just throwing in that I, too, had a gateway via Chicago scene/Sonic Youth referencing. Loved Gastr del Sol, and followed along with the O'Rourke albums (played Cul de Sac on my radio show a bunch too, back in the day).

UMS, Bob Weir is my biggest barrier to listening to the Dead, and I pretty much tune out a lot(most) of his tunes, though Jimmywine listed some of his good ones above. That being said, if you skip the "Bob-ness" of Bobby (the jean shorts, pink polos, insane vocalizing in later-period Dead) and focus on some of his playing, you hear a dude who was one of the great improvising rhythm guitar players. Just some insanely good stuff from him, but whatever, there are so many reasons not to dig the Dead I get why it doesn't work for large chunks of the population.

Also, I gotta read that Fahey piece from How Bluegrass Music Destroyed My Life about working on the soundtrack for Antonioni's film, it's been too long.

Sorry, final one: La Lechera, Tortoise had two great drummers. I definitely dug Tortoise at the time, haven't listened to them in ages, but I love this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OLCgcp83Tfg&feature=kp

Yikes, wish I could edit the embed, sorry folks.

The more the merrier when it comes to not-boring drummers! I do think that rhythmic variety is part of what separates the bands that make interesting instrumental rock from yr avg jammers.

drummer idea is interesting, maybe it's that music like this that veers into "out" territory can really benefit from a professional pulse, and in fact that may be the thing that can make all the difference, regardless of the chops of the axe players.

hard to trace my own path into this stuff since my mom listened to Fahey and I grew up w/him and Flat & Scruggs, etc. it went kinda like high school art rock to high school punk to hardcore to Sonic Youth to The Ex & Fugazi to GBV/Sebadoh/Unrest/Pavement with a Current 93/NWW/Coil detour and then maybe I came back around to the Fahey stuff sometime in the 90's, definitely remember starting to pick the LPs up cheap around 1996 or so. but it was always part of my musical worldview.

one thing I wanted to throw into the conversation about band/audience commonality is the factor of labels, which giving some of this pretty varied stuff an aesthetic continuity it might not otherwise have, Drag City is a great example as it ties into the older stuff like O'Rourke and then the new like Rangda.

"give", not "giving"