garcia peoples

Sure, the names are direct Dead references, but I don’t hear a whole lot in their songs themselves that can be directly attributed to Dead songs. I don’t doubt the Dead are a formative influence, but I know folks that can’t stand the Dead but like Dire Wolves.

heh I'll have to check Dire Wolves, just don't know why these bands have to choose names that sound like Dead tribute bands that play bars in a middling state university college town

i haven't quite fallen under the spell of GP, though I agree that their last record (or just the epic that makes up most of it) is my fave thing I've heard them do thus far. so i think they probably have good stuff ahead of them.

sunwatchers are so good, like a free jazz meat puppets.

Wow otm!!^^

Yeah, Sunwatchers are killer.

not like sunwatchers but i think folks in this thread might appreciate this band

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P6B3KbePQAI

Another great band/album! I'll second Tonstartssbandht for sure.

yeah, they rule ^ not so much this convo, but Edwin from Tonstartssbandht has a project called EOLA where he does weird-ass psychedelic vocal-loop spiritual "future hymns" ... i fuckin' love it: https://eola.bandcamp.com/album/dang

i really think there's an interesting piece to be written about jammy bands breaking through the indie/press glass ceiling to where they're now considered "cool" ... the quality and growing number of bands are part of it, of course, but so is Conklin and Beyond Beyond is Beyond and one or two hip publicity firms, and now it's moved up into the Vampire Weekend / Steven Hyden world. this stuff could never have gotten the kind of love they're getting even 5 years ago, i don't think. and Garcia Peoples was the canary in the coal mine, imo.

It's a fuckn drag to me that there's a whole scene of white dudes who wanting to play/listen to longform jamz that could be jamming to the intricate and groove-centric arrangements of Funkadelic, Fela Kuti, Electric Miles, Ornette Coleman, Can, Isaac Hayes, Neu!, Herbie Hancock, Flash and Bambaataa tapes, Zulu Beat Radio, whatever, but instead they're like "What if jam bands but Union Pool"

Bedford Cheese Shop Incident

Whiney you should check out this band called Phish

where is your past

you should actually listen to Sunwatchers and 75 Dollar Bill before doing your usual parachute in to call people stupid routine

or the best part of the new Garcia Peoples is closer to Neu than the Dead really

but anyway thanks for those cool obscure references no one on ILX ever heard of and congrats on your Wire subscription

https://i.pinimg.com/474x/ca/38/80/ca38803c1a8042507ed129f18c80a625--man-hats-lsd.jpg

sad

you should actually listen to Sunwatchers and 75 Dollar Bill before doing your usual parachute in to call people stupid routine

you should actually listen to Richard Pictures before doing your usual parachute in to call people stupid routine

Yeah, it was a really rough day when I bought that 75 Dollar Bill record and they told me I had to immediately burn my copy of Jack Johnson.

Funkadelic, Fela Kuti, Electric Miles, Ornette Coleman, Can, Isaac Hayes, Neu!, Herbie Hancock, Flash and Bambaataa tapes, Zulu Beat Radio

This Heat, Pere Ubu, Outsiders, Nation of Ulysses, Mars, The Trojans, The Black Dice, Todd Terry, the Germs, Section 25, Althea and Donna, Sexual Harrassment, a-ha, Pere Ubu, Dorothy Ashby, PIL, the Fania All-Stars, the Bar-Kays, the Human League, the Normal, Lou Reed, Scott Walker, Monks, Niagra, Joy Division, Lower 48, the Association, Sun Ra, Scientists, Royal Trux, 10cc, Eric B. and Rakim, Index, Basic Channel, Soulsonic Force ("just hit me"!), Juan Atkins, David Axelrod, Electric Prunes, Gil! Scott! Heron!, the Slits, Faust, Mantronix, Pharaoh Sanders and the Fire Engines, the Swans, the Soft Cell, the Sonics, the Sonics, the Sonics, the Sonics

kool herc peoples

Typically uninterested in neo-psych guitar-jam bands but inspired by this thread I checked out One Step Beyond by Garcia Peoples and I liked it. I get as much Feelies (and at one point, The Band) from them as I do the Dead but I definitely hear the Dead thing too. Don't know what 75 Dollar Bill has to do with any of these other bands, though. They're leagues apart imo, at least based on some cursory listens to some of the other jammy bands named in this thread

As to Whiney's point, my hunch is that a lot of these bands actually do aspire to the heights of the artists he names but most can't pull it off, which is not really a criticism because, come on, who the fuck can pull off Fela or Can or Ornette better than Fela, Can, or Ornette? This is also, by the way, why I resist listening to neo-psych guitar-jam bands: life is short and I'd almost always rather go to the source. I mean, there are a lot of electric Miles bootlegs out there

It's a fuckn drag to me that there's a whole scene of white dudes who wanting to play/listen to longform jamz that could be jamming to the intricate and groove-centric arrangements of Funkadelic, Fela Kuti, Electric Miles, Ornette Coleman, Can, Isaac Hayes, Neu!, Herbie Hancock, Flash and Bambaataa tapes, Zulu Beat Radio, whatever, but instead they're like "What if jam bands but Union Pool"

― The Mandymoorian (Whiney G. Weingarten), Monday, May 18, 2020 7:55 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

There could be an interesting discussion about the differences/similarities between strands of jam and current bands tapping into them (or not) but, as usual per latter-day ILX, it's couched in box-canyon zings where no discussion is required or wanted.

Though Bedford Cheese Shop Incident is B+. Good job.

Tangentially related and somewhat tying these ideas together, someone put together a 20+ minute live jams playlist on Spotify that does indeed have Dead, Phish, electric Miles, Velvet Underground and Can on it. Starts out promising, but then of course it devolves into some of the worst jam imaginable - Twiddle, Goose (both of which I'd successfully avoided until now), Disco Biscuits, Aqueous, String Cheese Incident and Umphrey's McGee.

Twiddle is the worst of the worst though, imagine someone strangling Dave Matthews over some of the laziest, least imaginative "jamming" possible.

flopson v cool bands 😎

Peter Kerlin from Sunwatchers is also (or was for a long time) in Solar Motel too

he is a secret weapon in both imo -- always holding things together when they spiral out. i esp like his playing on the long track of the Forsyth/Solar Motel/Garcia Peoples live album. i love the second track on that album too -- afaict a uniting factor of these bands is that they are aiming at some sort of transcendence, which i think we all have the musical right to do, and they occasionally reach it. GP covering Popol Vuh was enjoyable to a certain degree (if very by-the-numbers) but the vocals left something to be desired imo.

my only gripe about this general type of band is there are too many men in these bands. the women only came in to sing. my long-awaited (by me) plan to record a women-only instrumental Can-jam was squashed by the rona :( maybe someday

i don't expect anyone else to care about this but as a woman i wouldn't mind some more femme musical energy in the mix.

oh no that would help it's a dude scene for sure

like bring some meg baird, elisa ambrogio, ava mendoza in the mix and i think i could stay interested instead of getting a tiny bit bored. just sayin

looking forward to the upcoming marisa anderson + jim white album but that is a very special combo

yeah that's like the most anticipated album in ilx brigade history! was so glad I got to meet her and tell her how much I loved her music even if I was probably a dork

For sure, there are way too many dudes in these bands. I was surprised by the ratio of women at the Garcia Peoples show I saw at Schuba's, but it would be great to see that reflected in the band line-ups. It's interesting that a lot of the women that do overlap with this scene (Kendra Amalie, Sarah Louise), primarily pursue their own solo projects.

Also, La Lechera otm with Garcia People's vocals, def a weak link.

in general vocals ain't exactly the best feature of any bands in this zone

Baird is great, she sounds should be the lead singer of all these bands

That would not be bad, she's great.

What happened to Heron Oblivion? She was singing and drumming in that band. When I saw them, I was not disappointed or bored and her presence and energy really did change the dynamics of this particular type of rock music.

don't know actually!

on the latest Forsyth he has a vocal by Rosali (her album Trouble Anyway is great but but really this scene) anyway, it sounded so good over his stuff

love the guy but his singing is not great

Last I heard of Heron Oblivion was a set NYC Taper shared from December of 2018, that was pretty heavily loaded with "new" material. I've been hoping that means a second official album, but I haven't heard anything lately. That self-titled record was fantastic.

think there's a new heron oblivion in the works, new meg baird solo album as well ... she kinda goes at her own pace, haha.

Bedford Cheese Shop Incident it A+, thank you Whiney. Park Slope Toodle-oo?

Probably of interest to some of the folks in this thread, Aquarium Drunkard has put together a 44-track digital comp to raise money for Australian brushfire relief. Includes MV & EE, Dire Wolves, Hans Chew, Nathan Salsburg, Elkhorn, Starbirthed, Sarah Louise and many, many others.

https://dropbearbenefit.bandcamp.com/album/the-drop-bears-song-an-australian-bushfire-relief-album

& our very own global tetrehedron!

Oh man! I totally didn't grok that when I scanned the tracklist, thanks! Track number 15, no?

Indie jam pioneer Steve Palmer

steve hyden deserves the blame, not steve palmer

Oh shit, sorry.

ha no, that's me, i just disavow 'indie jam', nomenclature of steven hyden

I didn't really dig that article felt very weird leaving out, say, Built to Spill...I dunno just felt he had this handful of bands he wanted to write about and bent the narrative around that

ppl in this thread should check out spencer radcliffe

LL if you're cooling yr heels waiting for a new Heron Oblivion album you might enjoy this Major Stars album from last year that's got similar vibes (though I think Wayne Roger's p easily outclasses the Comets guys, which is fine though bcz as cool as much as I like Noell Dorsey she's no Meg)

Anyways ahem
http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_kRqnadeeODjA4nu5Ort8I3ZRDTW_yvBvA

(Also I'm pretty sure one of the guitarists is one Kate Biggar)

Ryley Walker is putting out Danny Arakaki's solo album, Tumble in Shade, in January on his Husky Pants label.

Pretty heady lineup for this one:

Danny Arakaki - Guitar/Vocals
Ryan Jewell - Drums/Percussion
Mike Bones - Guitar
Chad Laird - Bass
Samara Lubelski - Violin (on "All Thanks")
Andi Magenheimer - Vocals (on tracks 1, 2, 4, 7)
Helen Rush - Vocals (on tracks 3&4)
Winston Cook-Wilson - Piano/Organ/Rhodes
Jef Brown - Saxophone
Rachel Herman - Violin
Dan Iead - Pedal Steel/Guitar

^^

This is out Friday, but my copy came yesterday. It's really good.

Great sound and a blistering live performance of a good chunk of "Dodging Dues":

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qtG5e7JKYx8

love these dudes. danny's new record is really good too.

finally checking these guys out. just wow.

The Arakaki solo record is fantastic — just a really great rock record.

Missed this revive, but yeah that's a great performance. Loving the new Arakaki album and still bummed I had to miss the GP/Forsyth tour due to life stuff.

Also been really getting into Taper's Choice lately, on that "indie-jam" tip.

They really were not good live when I saw them recently which was a bummer because I was expecting great things. Part of it was the sound at the venue (bad) and part of it could have been my general mood that day (not great) but they didn’t really seem all that into it either and the vocals can be a little rough.

i saw them about a month ago and didn't come away super impressed tbh. they are a band i should like on paper.

'vocals are rough' comes with the dead/any dead adjacent act, something i'm willing to overlook if the jams are good, which,

if they weren't called 'garcia peoples' i might like them. maybe

I also saw them a few months ago & wasn't particularly impressed after having previously dug a couple sets of theirs on the archive. Just figured that my expectations were too high, but maybe they've fallen off a bit as of late.

I haven't caught them on the recent tour, bummed to hear they haven't been great. The two times I saw them pre-pandemic were absolutely killer. I've caught a couple tapes of other shows from 2021 and 2022 that were good, but not much has been circulating yet from the most recent tour.

Can’t decide whether I love or hate this band name. I go back and forth.

they did suffer a bit from following Chris Forsyth, his band has Doug McCombs from Tortoise and Ryan Jewell as the rhythm section and they give him a really strong almost krauty vibe, Forsyth can verge on guitar mag stuff at times for me, but he's a much better soloist than anyone in Garcia Peoples (at least that night)

Not surprised to hear that, makes sense.