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

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"

Oh, I think labels are a huge part of it, from having a "Takoma" sound to the current nexus revolving around Tompkins Square (the most trad) and then Three Lobed/Paradise of Bachelors/MIE, which tend to snatch up most of the highest-profile of these releases coming out these days. I know so many people that basically latched onto Drag City and connected dots related from their releases over the years. Case in point is that a bunch of my friends love "Corky's Debt To His Father" by Mayo Thompson, and this is directly from the Chicago/Drag City tie-in to Red Krayola etc.

gamera is a classic w/ that vintage pajo playing. may have mentioned them upthread by the doub mccombs records w/ david daniell are some moody, smoky stuff worth yr time. it's definitely true how much drummers affects yr playing tho. this thread is making my miss my drummer friend who has moved away, it was so much fun to play together, the energy is incredible.

those labels have all been little hubs (strange attractors & bo'weavil too). I think grubbs was the big link w/ mayo thompson too, he definitely stanned for the records he did w/ art&language. also going back to plugged-in faheyisms, idk if you've all heard the red crayola concert where fahey comes on w/ an electric he can barely play & is accompanied by a 'drummer' which is a melting block of ice whose drips are picked up by contact mics, but it is probably the strangest fahey cameo of all time.

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

― sXe & the banshees (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Wednesday, February 26, 2014 10:35 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Grandavis is otm about Bob as a rhythm player--put him in any other band and tell me he's not 'out.' Listen to what's happening during a Jerry solo (for the sake of this argument, try to just listen to Weir - I realize this is hard to do while Jerry is in the other channel). He somehow manages to completely stay out of the way (this has a lot to do with playing inversions and triads and stuff, but also the tonal quality of his guitar vs Jerry's, which was v much by design) but is also kinda going bananas up the neck. Not a lot of stock 'comping' or first position campfire bullshit going on. The closest rock player I could compare him to in this way is Dickey Betts (totally different style obv). Guy is a brilliant player, Daisy Dukes notwithstanding. But you're certainly not alone in your hatred of him - I've had this same argument with Deadhead friends (and even some of the players we're discussed in this thread) and Bobby does indeed seem to present the biggest impediment to Deadhead enlightenment (which is strange because we're talking about a band that also included Brent "Kenny Loggins" Mydland).

Shifting gears, how do you guys rate that Three Day Band thing Fahey did with Ayal Senior? It's one of the only holes in my Fahey collection. I get that it's nonessential (no one ever talks about it!) but, if I'm one of those guys who views Red Cross as some pinnacle of human achievement, should I track it down?

I was maybe a little hard on the Dead there, I love American Beauty! What a great/great sounding country rock record - the general public got it right once again.... Also I dig Anthem of the Sun, partially because, at least the vinyl copy I have, is one of the Missy bizarrely mixed rock records ever

not got the ayal senior thing. I'm kind of trying to pace myself w/ the remaining fahey stuff now bc the thought of never having that first listen again is so sad, but the clips >here< are quite tempting

There was also this Renaissance Fairgrounds gig I liked.... What's the Dicks Picks to convince a skeptic?

Jimmywine seems to have the Grateful Dead game on lockdown, going to let him steer you on this one (I haven't spent serious time with the Dead for a long time), but the trick of listening to Bob is a good one. He is just a great player, especially when he mostly shuts up and goes at it.

I think Tyler went on a listening spree recently as well, maybe he has an especially fresh take on The Dead as well.

anyone let me know (also spottie don't add 250 volumes of Dick's Picks to the spotify playlist :) )

this thread is getting way too hip, i gotta bring it back to the roots w/some ponytail NPR shit...i'm pretty in love with this record...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZnbYG2xiSE8

http://soundcloud.com/matthew-lee-helgeson/gabriel-ii

fucking around w/a drum machine & fingerpicking, feel like there's something there

decided on Dick's Picks Vol 4 - 2/13/70

figured early 70s was best...this had a long Dark Star which piqued my interest...they hadn't gotten really crappy sounding corny instrument tones yet. Casey Jones is p peppy so far, first tune.

lmao oh lord pac they are covering "Dancing in the Street" by Martha & the Vandellas...come home Jagger/Bowie all is forgiven

actually once they dispense with the formality of actually having to cover the song, this jam that goes on for another 6 minutes is p good

I'd recommend Dick's Picks 22 if you're up for another one after that one; that's my personal favorite so far of the 10 or so that I've heard. It's from 1968.

ha yeah, i feel like "dancing in the street" is the ultimate "omg just get to the jam section" dead song.
& yeah, I have listened to tons of live dead in the last 2-3 years after staying away from them for a long time. don't know if i have any major insight other than that the Dead rule. For the most part. but you could easily live your life w/o really going past 1974ish.

74 sounds like a good cutoff, i use a similar rule on zappa mostly, i don't get too far past the breakup of the original mothers