RUSH vs. YES vs. THE GRATEFUL DEAD

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

rush. yes is ok in short bursts, which is something they dont do. the greatful dead is fucking horrible

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3v8Wden1LFs

RUSH

Yes. How is this even a question? The other two are revolting!

I love Rush, like Yes, absolutely abhor the Dead

RUSH

dead

but then again I am required by innate biology to love bands who write songs called "By-Tor and the Snow Dog"

rush fans are hippies?

let the fray begin

I want to say I hate them all, but I don't. I like some stuff by each of them. No clear winner, no clear loser. I have the most teenage nostalgia for Rush, so them I guess.

I like The Fray a lot more than I like the Dead

lol the Dead are literally the only one of these three with any decent songs at all

otm

rush fans are hippies?

no, but tripsters are likely to own rush albums, according to that weird poll.

jerry couldn't play the clap even with an *extra* finger, maaaaaan

I would also lay odds that many people who really "hate the Dead,", if they happened upon a party where Help On the Way/Slipknot/Franklin's Tower were playing, would think "this is a good tune, great vibe, really enjoying this" until they realized it was the Dead, at which point they would resume fronting

lol the Dead are literally the only one of these three with any decent songs at all

x1000

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bKCvJ7IONnM

fragile / yes album / yessongs

vs

anthem of sun / live dead / workingman's dead / american beauty

vs

fly by night / 2112 / hemispheres

DJP gets a pass tho because it really is the case that nobody in the Dead can sing

Bob and Jerry can kinda sing! Sometimes!

I wish my voice sounded like Jerry's

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vO-7CV1IUl8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=niI2yEEJtYE

aero i would take your dead challenge but then i would have to go to the sort of parties where people might play dead songs and then well look what my life hath wrought

xpost i think all the ones i posted are pretty decent albums but from there on all three groups get dire (tom sawyer aside)

i think i like yes the best, they bring the fucking power even though grateful dead bring the spiritual and rush bring the laughs

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ZK8UmvTocQ

geddy and jon anderson are . . . acquired tastes

jjj bringin the fire

I feel like the ILX challops answer is Rush and the cool guy answer is the Dead and the right answer is Yes

the scene around the dead and rush can be pretty lame, yes fans iirc growing up were like working class dad type dudes w/ led zeppelin and hendrix albums and maybe a copy of bitches' brew and headhunters

dead fans = boring hippies, rush fans = mad prog composer types who play bass and have hairy cheeks

elephant in room

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ELpmmeT69cE

you forgot george jefferson

other elephant in room

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lu9Ycq64Gy4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V4SqDx1vi4c

elephants are cool.

Buggles joining the Dead would be awesome

one time my friends and i went to a best of the twin cities show at first avenue and one of the bands playing was this awful 12 person jam band fire-twirling and acrobatic nightmare named Wookiefoot and as they played a cover of "Scarlet Begonias" my friend mike started loudly and drunkenly bitching about the horror and a hippie near us retaliated by dumping an entire vial of patchouli on jeff and we all had to share a cab ride home in the winter with all the windows rolled up.

and thats what i think about the Greatful Dead.

i definitely listen to the Dead a lot more, but nothing they've done has even come close to Close To The Edge

don't blame the band for their fans is all i'm saying

there's an off-campus student co-op (not owned by university) at stanford called "box of rain" (helpfully spray painted onto a plywood sign on the lawn)

i heard a rumor there's like four others and they're all named after dead songs and the owner is a rich steve jobs deadhead type but i never found the others

I would also lay odds that many people who really "hate the Dead,", if they happened upon a party where Help On the Way/Slipknot/Franklin's Tower were playing, would think "this is a good tune, great vibe, really enjoying this" until they realized it was the Dead, at which point they would resume fronting

― tallarico dreams (underrated aerosmith bootlegs I have owned), Thursday, July 26, 2012 2:54 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I lived in a house where this party happened every week. It took me a long time to recover from it enough to realize that I at least liked St. Stephen and Til the Morning Comes

xp jjjusten sounds like you made the mistake of sobriety at that show

I can say with certainty that, even though I wasn't there, sobriety was not a mistake jjj made at that show

lol the Dead are literally the only one of these three with any decent songs at all

― tallarico dreams (underrated aerosmith bootlegs I have owned), Thursday, July 26, 2012 2:52 PM (15 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

otm

― tylerw, Thursday, July 26, 2012 2:52 PM (14 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

hahahahahaahaha, looooollllllllllllllll.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xxTu9bVcwU0

oh my god

you guys we may need a Wookiefoot thread

I like the Dead a ton, but come on, that's horseshit.

I actually love all 3, probably sitting this poll out.

my favorite dead song

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_nOpJMQ3-VE

good hangover album imo

kinda the template for every shitty sheryl crow type ever

my brother's hip-hop group built a song off of the 6/8-7/8 section in the intro to "Cygnus X-1 Book One - The Voyage Prologue"

I wish I could find a recording of it online, it's bad-ass

also that is just the best fucking song, so many awesome childhood memories of playing it on repeat and acting out the lyrics

I really wanted a ship so I could call it "The Rocinante"

tend to hate rush fans the most. i haven't actually met a dead fan in years.

answer is yes obv.

True or False: the "CHA CHA CHAA CHA CHA" part in "Sound Chaser" is the most horrible sound known to man

false

Went with the Dead, which I guess means I really am a hippy. Would like to make clear that I think they've done some truly horrible songs though.
Rush & Yes I find to be very unloveable bands. Not awful, just unloveable.

philosophically I think we can all agree that Neil Peart is more odious than all the rest of the members of the other bands combined

YES.

http://youtu.be/9-fJQvVFG4g

damn.

Loved Rush at some point in my adolescence, always loathed The Dead and will be a Yes fan til the end.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Tdu4uKSZ3M

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uJM7TdshUbw

Yes forever.

for most of my life i would guess i loathed all three and then gradually, at different points, have somehow come to love all three. voting yes w/ the suspicion that in a few years i will want to change that vote to dead.

I've gone through phases with Rush and the Dead, but I've listened to Yes consistently since I was a classic rock loving teen and I still get disproportionately excited when the bass comes in in Roundabout.

i voted rush out of loyalty

would be more likely to listen to the dead now though

yes is rad too

"box of rain" is probably the best song of any of the bands in question overall

philosophically I think we can all agree that Neil Peart is more odious than all the rest of the members of the other bands combined

He's been really clear that his youthful interest in Rand (assuming that's what you're referring to) came largely out of naivete and an attraction to the ideas pertaining to creative freedom and freedom of thought, that if he's a libertarian, he's a 'bleeding heart' or 'left-wing libertarian'. (While he rarely talks about it, the atheism is also a core lyrical theme.) Unlike Yes or anything I've heard by the Dead, he actually articulates a coherent philosophy and takes coherent, non-obvious political stances in his lyrics: against the Bush administration, against censorship, about the environment, about gay rights, even about homogenized corporate radio formatting. Not saying that this automatically makes his lyrics better but that I don't find him odious, philosophically.

I used to work with a woman who would take every available opportunity (and she managed to find an alarming number of them) to remind us that the reason Rush is so great is that "Neal Peart won so many drumming awards that they had to make up a new one for him because he already won all the others." I regret that I never asked her who "they" were.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5n26L0qKKT0

it's like dazed and confused in reverse at the beginning

and then it sounds like david axelrod

so basically the first minute of the track slays rush and the dead, sorry

and then a 3 minute excerpt of a john mclaughlin album

rush : tool :: dead : wookiefoot :: yes : upsilon acrux

sorry that should have said deerhunter and ruins

the middle is like gong ft dennis wilson

This poll is really hard for me! Also not that fair since I know Rush and Yes much better than the Dead. I could only really click with the Dead once I got over my young country music-hate. Anthem of the Sun is amazingly great.

Yes's large-scale compositions are much better than Rush's and go to places that no other rock bands really go to for me. Rush do some dazzling things with instrumental interplay within rock songs (and have to be the only band to play in Locrian mode on a radio hit). Rush still make some good music while Yes lose me after Going for the One.

xposts

Not saying that this automatically makes his lyrics better but that I don't find him odious, philosophically.

I'll go further: I find him most interesting philosophically of these lyricists. The stances he takes are part of the appeal of Rush for me.

this version does get pretty tedious around 8 min though compared to the studio version which also pushes it

Fragile version:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oDqG9agd5wc

So much better with Bruford.

He's been really clear that his youthful interest in Rand (assuming that's what you're referring to) came largely out of naivete and an attraction to the ideas pertaining to creative freedom and freedom of thought, that if he's a libertarian, he's a 'bleeding heart' or 'left-wing libertarian'. (While he rarely talks about it, the atheism is also a core lyrical theme.) Unlike Yes or anything I've heard by the Dead, he actually articulates a coherent philosophy and takes coherent, non-obvious political stances in his lyrics: against the Bush administration, against censorship, about the environment, about gay rights, even about homogenized corporate radio formatting. Not saying that this automatically makes his lyrics better but that I don't find him odious, philosophically.

well to be honest the whole of my deeper engagement with/close readings of Peart's lyrics is 1) "The Trees" and 2) "The Spirit of Radio," both of which are so terrible that I just feel a need to clown him when the opportunity arises

Hunter isn't as great as his partisans would have you believe, but there are many songs in the Dead's catalog that any lyricist would be happy to call his own. Jon Anderson's lyrics are some of the funniest bad poetry anywhere imo

Is the mountains come out of the sky part about rug munchin?

what about starship trooper

lonely guy just thinking baout thing

lone li NESSSSS
is a part that WEEEE
posSESSSS
to give or take away
FOREEVEEEEEEEEERR

then he does the consciousness poll thread for three verses

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Jhk5MEugJY

that's at around 3 mins in

Yes's large-scale compositions are much better than Rush's

I was thinking here of tracks that are over 15 min long. Rush does pretty well with 7-11 min tracks.

xposts

early beardo disco at 6 mins in

channelling the entirety of rock and roll at 8 mins

this is like arguing about who's better than wagner guys

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=taB3U0b9zdA

well to be honest the whole of my deeper engagement with/close readings of Peart's lyrics is 1) "The Trees" and 2) "The Spirit of Radio," both of which are so terrible that I just feel a need to clown him when the opportunity arises

Hunter isn't as great as his partisans would have you believe, but there are many songs in the Dead's catalog that any lyricist would be happy to call his own. Jon Anderson's lyrics are some of the funniest bad poetry anywhere imo

I can see "The Trees" being odious but I like "The Spirit of Radio" well enough.

I never really think of Anderson's lyrics as poetry, and I'm not sure that was his intention. Most of the time, he just seems to be using English words as phonemes, as far as I can tell.

I don't know Dead lyrics much at all, really.

aw <3

that movie clip is the appeal of this music in a nutshell

Balls OTM
xpost

also rush vs yes

which would rufus pick

also who would be better in a potential supergroup with peter frampton

(Brahms over Wagner btw)

also who would be better in a potential supergroup with peter frampton

Oh, well, this is Rush, no contest.

listening to the yes album

at around 4:50 they invent Shellac

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lFOOQ8e5J3A

needs more grandeur sund4r less elegance

or at least grandiosity

Fair point.

referring to brahms btw

Yeah

I really wanted a ship so I could call it "The Rocinante"

― keeping things contextual (DJP), Thursday, July 26, 2012 8:32 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yes's large-scale compositions are much better than Rush's

I was thinking here of tracks that are over 15 min long. Rush does pretty well with 7-11 min tracks.

btw this thread has resulted in me downloading "Close to the Edge"—STAY TUNED for some raw unfiltered first impressions -)

Rush only has what, 3 songs over 15 minutes? It's not their thing, but "2112" and the first side of Hemispheres are solid. "The Fountain Of Lamneth", not so much.

xpost yes album and the fragile are worth a listen too

yeah the first side of hemispheres is the big cygnus x-ii suite right?

i brought up frampton because if you add frampton and zeppelin to the list on this thread it's like everyone's older brothers "go down to the canyon by the beach" music

yes, Cygnus is the first side.

peak material

i brought up frampton because if you add frampton and zeppelin to the list on this thread it's like everyone's older brothers "go down to the canyon by the beach" music

brb making this movie

The day the Circus of Heaven came to town
Local folks lined the streets in a Midwestern town
Waiting anxiously for the parade to begin all round
On the very last day

A Unicorn headed the Mystical way
Surrounded by what seemed a thousand golden angels at play
Behind were Centaurs, elves, bright fairies all in colours of Jade
On the very final day

For what seemed only just a moment in time
Seven solemn flying silvered regal horses rode by
Seven golden chariots in tow, a wonder to behold
The Seven Lords of the Mountains of time
There then arose where nothing really stood there before
A giant tent rising one thousand feet high from the floor
Towns people flocked inside with their eyes all amazed
To greet the Seventh Lord of the Seventh age
A fanfare rang out in an incredible sound
Bringing out the strangest visions perfect harmony round
Any dreams he asked would they like to have seen
From historical or mythical scenes

Then there above their heads just as vivid as life
Each vision transported in multitudes inventing light
Grecian galleons, The Sack of Troy, to the Gardens of Babylon
A play of millions roared along
The gigantic dreams of Alexander the Great
Civil wars where brothers fought and killed their friendship in hate
All seen by Zeus performing scenes of the magical way
The day the circus came to town

Outside great animals as tame as the trees
Angels high in starlight dancing streets
Tuning their colours with indigo and gold
Dropping violet, red and emerald snow
As the circus finally changed its invisible course
A new world to be found

On the dreamy ground we walked upon
I turned to my son and said
"Was that something beautiful, amazing, wonderful, extraordinary beautiful?"
"Oh! it was OK!! But there were no clowns, no tigers, lions or bears,
candy-floss, toffee apples, no clowns."

VS

Like a shipwrecked mariner adrift on an unknown sea
Clinging to the wreckage of the lost ship Fantasy
I'm a castaway, stranded in a desolate land
I can see the footprints in the virtual sand

Net boy, net girl
Send your signal 'round the world
Let your fingers walk and talk
And set you free

Net boy, net girl
Send your impulse 'round the world
Put your message in a modem
And throw it in the Cyber Sea

Astronauts in the weightlessness of pixellated space
Exchange graffiti with a disembodied race
I can save the universe in a grain of sand
I can hold the future in my virtual hand

Let's dance tonight
To a virtual song
Press this key
And you can play along

Let's fly tonight
On our virtual wings
Press this key
To see amazing things

Like a pair of vagabonds who wave between two passing trains
Or the glimpse of a woman's smile through a window in the rain
I can smell her perfume, I can taste her lips
I can feel the voltage from her fingertips

Net boy, net girl
Send your heartbeat round the world

VS

couldn't tell you the Dead's worst lyric, surely can't be worse than either of those

to seek the sacred river alph
and drink the milk of paradise?

contender for worst dead lyric:

Still got to work that eight hour day
Whether you like that job or not
You'd better keep it on ice while you're lining up your long shot

Which is to say, hey hey, keep your day job
Don't give it away, keep your day job, whatever they say
Keep your day job 'till your night job pays.

Steady boys starting that eight day hour
Never underrate that paycheck power
By now you know that the face on your dollar
Got a thumb on its nose and a hand on your collar
With a chance to say, hey hey, keep your day job....

Daddy may drive a V-8 'Vette
Mama may bathe in champagne yet
God bless the child that's got his own stash
Nine to five and a place to crash
which is to say...
Sunday comes forget about work, Ring that bell for whatever it's worth.
If you ask me like I know you won't
I'll tell you what to do what I know that you won't.

Rush only has what, 3 songs over 15 minutes? It's not their thing, but "2112" and the first side of Hemispheres are solid. "The Fountain Of Lamneth", not so much.

Yeah, I just don't think those are as good as "Close to the Edge" or "Awaken".

(esp "Close to the Edge", really)

I'd take "2112" over "Close To The Edge", but not by much.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GX9YhX8acvc

Yes has many great tracks from their classic years but have been very uneven since. Rush has continually made great songs for a very long time.

Here's a great lost classic from 1984:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NVAKnGMc6WY&list=AL94UKMTqg-9CocLGbd6tpbuQRxyF4FGNr&index=10&feature=plcp

uh, that wasn't what I was expecting to show up...

Let's try that again

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NVAKnGMc6WY

finally finished downloading—good lord, that took a long time! (possible foreshadowing of listening experience???)

initially worried I had gotten a corrupted file. then realized that no, there are only 3 tracks.

better go 'head and use the restroom now, boys—you won't get another chance for a while

first 'AAAAAA!' in "Close to the Edge" got a lol from me—second made my heart flutter a little bit

I can see what would drive someone to write and play this kind of music, but find the lack of dynamic and textural range kind of monotonous

the groove they settle into is nice tho. tres smooth. reminds me of Steely Dan in a weird way (maybe just "lol the 70s"). but I think the Dan made better and lasting-er music by focusing on studio technology instead of chops.

the instrumental (synth strings + sitary guitar) ~halfway thru is pretty. now they're singing and I'm like, whatever, I'm over it. is he saying "I get up to get down"? lol

only 2 1/2 minutes left now—truly, I am 'close to the edge'. vocals are back and I am as happy about that as I'm ever gonna be. pretty much the only memorable snatch of melody&lyrics I can recall = "close to the edge, down by the river". now, on to side B!

this is pretty chill, I'm glad they're not playing annoying jazz-fusion anymore

oh wow... you could call this a lil bit cheesy

caught something about 'sailing a sea of light', which sounds about right. the bass and jangly guitar sound good, the slide-whistle synth and meditation chime not so much. also like the title "And You and I".

he sings like Sting, or Sting sings like him, or something. I like the vocal on this one a lot more.

both Yes and Rush went new wave pretty well

lifeson weirdly turned himself into one of the best post-punk guitarists

Dan made better and lasting-er music by focusing on studio technology instead of chops.

This sounds odd to me: Steely Dan were big on chops and Yes were big on studio technology.

was Nietzsche the inspiration for Yes's name? I am going to pretend this is true even if y'all tell me it's not

yeah watch the Aja behind the music and hear all about steely dan torturing the world's best session musicans

I love 90% of Rush's discography, scattered eras of the Dead's career, but only about 20% of Yes' oeuvre.

Dead. but i LOVE Yes (esp Yes Album through Close to the Edge), and really like some Rush.

multi-xp sund4r ya that didn't totally make sense—I am having a hard time getting at what I mean... "studio technology" was me thinking about the environment of the state-of-the-art multitrack studio, outsourcing the chops to session musicians, obsessing over every layer of recording that goes into the overall ~sonic canvas~ etc etc

i should prob listen to more Rush

okay I didn't even notice the break between tracks 2 & 3 obviously I am a bad listener. now the record has ended and Yo La Tengo is playing at my house

the dead x1m not even gonna read what all horrible people have said itt

tbh bernard i'd more recommend The Yes Album as an intro to Yes than Close to the Edge

^^this is otm

YES is a joyce reference iirc

"studio technology" was me thinking about the environment of the state-of-the-art multitrack studio, obsessing over every layer of recording that goes into the overall ~sonic canvas~ etc etc

I think this was very important to Yes, though! They were infamous for the truckloads of gear they'd have to bring on tour to try to reproduce the recorded sound. I actually think of them as a precursor to IDM in a weird way. Their aesthetic just wasn't naturalistic like Steely Dan's.

Sting sings like him

Agree with this.

"box of rain" is probably the best song of any of the bands in question overall

― wack nerd zinging in the dead of night (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Thursday, July 26, 2012 7:14 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I'd vote either "South Side of the Sky" or "Awaken". Plus there are much better Dead songs you could have picked as a candidate. And Lesh's singing on that song is abominable.

I voted Yes, but it was close between them and Rush. Docked Rush for post-Moving Pictures discography, which I know is popular on ILM for some reason.

Lesh's singing on "Box of Rain" suits the lyric beautifully - Xgau's take on that era of the Dead is otm, "pretty" singing would do a disservice to the songs: "Of course they don't sing as pretty as CSNY--prettiness would trivialize these songs." Tho then that was his Workingman's review, by the time of Beauty he thinks they're singing sweeter

I love 90% of Rush's discography, scattered eras of the Dead's career, but only about 20% of Yes' oeuvre.

This sounds about right for me, too, except that my tolerance for even the Dead I enjoy is oddly low. I just can't listen to the band for more than 30 minutes, max, which is a bit of an impasse. Which maybe pushes me closer to the 90/20/20%. Though come to think of it, there is no Dead that I outright love. To me they're like ... fiber. Sometimes you just need it.

(Note: I don't do drugs, and never went through a drugs n Dead phase: anyone out there actively listen to the Dead from a more or less exclusively sober perspective?)

Drugs don't factor into it for me. There are so many bands that are better to listen to high.

I mean, I need to qualify that and say that I used to listen to the Dead high a lot back when I was doing that, and they were often great to listen to in altered states. On their best days at least, they made a real effort to being attuned to their audience.

Lesh's singing on "Box of Rain" suits the lyric beautifully

^we'll agree to disagree. Plus i am not a big fan of the song, it's pretty corny.

Drugs don't factor into it for me. There are so many bands that are better to listen to high.

― how's life, Friday, July 27, 2012 9:49 AM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I think all these bands are pretty good to listen to high. Then again, what isnt.

hookers screaming

I often disliked media consumption of any sort (music, movies, tv, books) when on acid.

hookers screaming

― Mr. Que, Friday, July 27, 2012 9:57 AM (6 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Nahh, you're mother was pretty tuneful, actually.

I would totally watch a sitcom with you guys as stars

there would only be one hooker joke a week, but it would be a good one

the one time i tried to put the dead on while high i got shouted down. i have listened them for stretches of 2-3 days while sober, though.

this is sort of herman's hermits vs manfred mann vs the beatles

i'm sure scott seward or someone would go 'but that first earth band record just blows the beatles out of the water' but that still kind of works

'box of rain' is interesting - there's all kinds of cheap inversions, omissions to pad the meter ("thoughts unclear", "look into any eyes", seriously "look into any eyes") and on one level it seems kind of boilerplate hippy almost-philosophy, and on another somehow it manages to achieve actual beauty. it feels oddly vindicated by context, history, these worn-out singers who would spend much of the rest of their lives attempting to prolong the 60s. -- the folk couplet quoted at the end is a stroke of total genius, in this or whatever context.

Yes, because The Yes Album, Close To The Edge, and Fragile are 3 of my all-time favorites.

I have mad respect for RUSH, and love 2112, plus a bunch of their other songs.

I think I only know about 10 Dead tunes.

okay I am listening to "Box of Rain" right now and it's mostly inoffensive in its component parts, but for some reason all of them working together are making me want to claw my ears off

I think at this point I am just irrevocably prejudiced against The Grateful Dead

did Yes ever write a lyric as rad as "cool and remote like dancing girls"?

No.

But I mean, I kind of weirdly admire stuff like "Sharp! Distance! How can the wind with its arms all around me?" Stick it to semantics, man.

I like all 3 but the Dead by several million light years

I may have never heard the studio "Box Of Rain" before this moment, or at least never paid close attention on headphones, but the poor vocals (lead and harmony) really suck the enjoyment out of that song for me. There's still probably more Dead songs I like than Yes, though, and more Yes than Rush.

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_-nrolqmXOts/TT4W6hpf95I/AAAAAAAABU0/oKR5cCUhmF8/s1600/pepsi07.jpg

It occurs to me that Rush vs Yes vs Zappa might be a better comparison, if you wanted to pit an American artist who started in the 60s against Rush and Yes.

I'm not really feeling the "Box of Rain" love either btw. I really like "Ripple" and "Uncle John's Band" though.

Here's a great lost classic from 1984:

― Moodles, Friday, 27 July 2012 01:26

http://www.ian-brown.co.uk/forum/images/smilies/suicide.gif

That would be a really tough one for me. I have no problem dismissing the Dead and Yes just doesn't have enough top shelf material to stand up against Rush, but Zappa is a whole different story.

"Terrapin Station Medley" should figure into this comparison!

Yeah, Terrapin is the proggiest the Dead ever got.

"cool and remote like dancing girls" sounds like a sprockets lyric to me

It's like 1968 prog, though, like Music from a Doll's House, or like the second Klaatu album!

(Note: I don't do drugs, and never went through a drugs n Dead phase: anyone out there actively listen to the Dead from a more or less exclusively sober perspective?)

when I was doing drugs I hated the Dead and all hippie shit. I didn't get into the Dead until about six years ago - on those too-rare occasions when I get lifted & listen to music I always mean to listen to the Dead but I usually end up listening to metal or Devin the Dude. I don't doubt that if I dropped acid and listened to Dark Star, it'd be a fucking revelation, though.

you know, i don't think i've listened to the dead too much while stoned. and i definitely saw them sober (but i was a clean cut kid at the time).

the dead is about as good to do drugs to as bob marley or sublime

this is really a case of "one of these things is not the same" though

it would be like polling flying burrito bros vs poco vs blue cheer

I don't doubt that if I dropped acid and listened to Dark Star, it'd be a fucking revelation, though.

^there is no revelation when high like the "shake hands with Jesus moment" on Mountain Jam after the drum solos where you can faintly hear Duane count the band back in. You gotta really be listening for it sober, but when high it's like the man is right in front of you.

bill magill, you should only post about things you notice when listening to music while high

(...after the drum solos, then the bass solo...)

eh i dunno about that, fripp and eno's "no pussyfooting" at 33 rpm captures the feeling of the comedown probably better than any music i've ever heard

"grayfolded" >> "dark star" although it's surprisingly not as obviously tape manipulated as "no pussyfooting"

but i mean re: acid music revelations yeah it was revelatory hearing a bootleg recording of live phish, doing improvisatory call-and-response group wankery to an except of "beavis and butthead", but the feeling only lasted about 10 mins before it was like ok ok turn it off turn it off there's a lot more interesting stuff happening than a cassette tape right now

probably why people's i-was-on-acid-at-this-concert stories are about 5% what they were playing and 95% random shit like rolling in the grass and a stranger you kept seeing who was reading your mind

bill magill, you should only post about things you notice when listening to music while high

― thomp, Friday, July 27, 2012 3:44 PM (15 seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Sure, another one: the bass drum pedal on Tony Williams' Emergency album is really squeaky.

xp listening to "no pussyfooting" w/o drugs is a more druggy trip than listening to "no pussyfooting" on drugs imo

i had to stop listening to new stuff like anthony braxton and matthew shipp cause i'd always be noticing shit like squeaky stands

bill you probably like sextant and mwandishi and live evil right?

Love live evil, not familiar with the other two.

in terms of ways this thread could have gone this is so much better than people trying to seriously argue that jon anderson or neil peart were ever more interesting than anyone in the grateful dead

well, maybe bruce hornsby

here's one for you

yes : rush : grateful dead :: early 70s miles and herbie : return to forever : swiss movement

bill you should check out "raindance" off sextant and "quasar" off crossings, it's not the same high-energy style of play, it's more slow drifting bitches' brew type of stuff and sometimes just sparse rumbling and blooping but if you like noticing little sound details in the stereo space it's a good one

Yeah, i like that. That sounds good, i'll check it out!

the bass drum pedal on Tony Williams' Emergency album is really squeaky.
i've noticed this too! i don't think i was high on anything. except life.

you would be squeaking too if tony williams was kicking your ass all day like that

I love picking up shit like that. Plus that album is so good.

xpost-hahahahahaha

Re. "Terrapin Station" being like '68 prog - was produced by Keith Olsen, who had produced the Millennium (Curt Boettcher group) album.

Olsen produced Fleetwood Mac too; I imagine there was a huge difference in those two work environments.

He was also the bass player in the Music Machine!

bill magill, you should only post about things you notice when listening to music while high

― thomp, Friday, July 27, 2012 3:44 PM (15 seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this should be its own thread

the bass drum pedal on Tony Williams' Emergency album is really squeaky.
i've noticed this too! i don't think i was high on anything. except life.

― tylerw, Friday, July 27, 2012 3:54 PM (37 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Ditto. I find it endearing, though. (the squeak, not the fact that you were high on life) (ok, that's endearing too)

Terrapin Station the album is 35 years old today fwiw.

Dead, no contest. Like Yes a lot. Rush kinda creeps me out for some reason, in the same way Marillion does.

It is interesting to me the three very different approaches these bands have to making music. Rush is hyper-arranged, then immutable. Yes changes and shifts a little based on who is in the band at any given time, but even the long songs are very thought out; Yes doesn't jam (afaik). The Dead, on the other hand, is the opposite of immutable and highly reflective of who is in the band at any given time.

The Dead, on the other hand, is the opposite of immutable and highly reflective of who is in the band at any given time

Think this applies to Yes just as much.

This isn't even a contest.

RUSH.

rush. tons of great songs & albums. yes a close second. their best moments arguably eclipse rush's, but i'm less often in the mood, and they're sometimes unforgivably schmaltzy. dead in third, but i don't hate them. like their more concise and folky stuff quite a bit.

their best moments arguably eclipse rush's

thats my basic criterria tho

yeah, yes's POX wipes the floor with rush

rush. tons of great songs & albums. yes a close second. their best moments arguably eclipse rush's

This is why it's hard for me to choose.

Have you heard "Terrapin Station," Sund4r? It has the Martyn Ford Orchestra and a choir.

I haven't.

Sounds pretty good.

Dead easy. But I am on the lookout for awesome Yes t-shirts always.

Dead for me too, no question, though I don't really care for them live. I've never cared at all for Yes or Rush.

I like Yes. They're a good band and I listen to them time to time. Never got into Rush. The Dead are seriously alltime greatest top 10 material for me. I will go through periods where all I want to listen to is the dead. I am a big fan of their studio work & their live work up thru the late seventies. I actually haven't heard much eighties dead. What is the best stuff?

dick's picks obv

yes, because the yes album is brushing top 10 all time for me.

I actually haven't heard much eighties dead. What is the best stuff?

Reckoning from 81 is great.

I have a real soft spot for Without a net from 1990 as well.

i do have and enjoy reckoning! don't think i know without a net. will keep my eyes peeled.

yes > rush > who even listens to the grateful dead?

Ian, one of my favorite official releases of 80s dead is Dozin' at the Knick. It comes from the spring 1990 run, which is seen by a lot of people as a high water mark of consistency and renewed passion for the band. I like this release best because it features 4 great renditions of Brent Mydland tunes. Brent died that summer, after which everything really went to shit, not counting the brief period with Bruce Hornsby.

There were a lot of good 80s shows though, even though it wasn't a consistent decade. 1983 Merriweather Post Pavillion is real hot and toasty.

was just thinking about Dozin' at the Knick earlier. yeah, it's a good place to start for late Brent

I still say the anal-retentive perfection (or at least precision) of Yes and Rush is the polar opposite of the devil may care Dead. The former two don't jam at all, even when they stretch out. Like, every second of "Heart of the Sunrise" is mapped out, you know? Even the spacey breakdown.

Anyway, Rush excels at distilling its sound and ideas down to four minutes. Yes excels at stretching its sound and ideas to, I dunno, eight (but frequently goes too far for said ideas to support, imo). The Dead excels at stretching slight ideas out to, like, a career. Which is sort of cool, I guess - languid country-rock/bluegrass tropes transmuted from taut genre exercises to shambling whatever it is the Dead does, exactly. I suppose I prefer to more concrete virtuosity of, say, Fairport Convention.

I still say the anal-retentive perfection (or at least precision) of Yes and Rush is the polar opposite of the devil may care Dead.

OTM. Why I thought Zappa was a better comparison.

Anyway, I'm voting for Yes in the end.

Side 1 of Moving Pictures made it really tough though:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FAvQSkK8Z8U

The former two don't jam at all, even when they stretch out.

Alex Lifeson has said that, when playing live, he tries to re-create his recorded solos as faithfully as possible. This stems from how disappointed he was when he saw Cream as a teenager and the solos were different from those on the records.

I've gone through phases with Rush and the Dead, but I've listened to Yes consistently since I was a classic rock loving teen and I still get disproportionately excited when the bass comes in in Roundabout.

― ms. cookie (carl agatha), Thursday, 26 July 2012 23:00 (2 days ago)
OK fair enough, I'd forgotten that I do kind of love this song. Me plus the rest of the worlds and its dog obvs, but hey I now have something nice to say about Yes.

Maybe I should give the Fragile album another try, but I remember the rest of it being a real let-down after Roundabout.

Long Distance Runaround! Heart of the Sunrise!

I only really wholeheartedly love two Yes albums, but if Squire was not in the mix even those I probably couldn't stand.

Had a listen via the wonders of youtube, and yeah parts of Heart of the Sunrise are kind of a jam. The rest in between Roundabout and Sunrise didn't do much for me though.
Prog is just one of my last big blindspots I guess, and god knows I've tried with it. But then again up until a few years ago I felt the same about 60s psych and now I love it, so you never know, it may click some time in the future.

"South Side of the Sun" (the loud parts, anyway) totally swings.

Sun Sky

These three bands have three of the most talented bassists ever

yeah nowadays i feel like its all about the drummer

a lot of bassists nowadays might as well be playing bongos

:(

Meltzer on "Terrapin Station" - "Whole thing may seem a little excruciatingly over-melodious at first but once again the Dead (famous as hell in the past for their official acts of musical courage) have done it, journeyed into a genre that was there to be stripmined all along only nobody had the balls to tackle the project: kiddie swashbuckler soundtrack music!"

lol

that's like my standard judo-dis of tom waits

"Over-melodious"!

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/7/74/Richard_Meltzer.jpg

dude looks like he knows from swashbucklers.

Looking forward to seeing Yes tomorrow night, i've never seen them in concert.

Rush and it's not even close, though I do like Yes.

Yes's new album had at least one dece song on it: Into the Storm

Looking forward to seeing Yes tomorrow night, i've never seen them in concert.

No Jon Anderson, no Rick Wakeman, no cred. You're going to see something awfully close to Yes, but Squire and Howe alone do not bridge the gap, especially, when there are a couple of key members sitting it out by choice.

I like a ton of non-Wakeman Yes stuff (Yes album, Relayer). Plus didnt pay for the tix, so its no skin off my back, still looking forward to it

Yeah, I love Geoff Downes. The album last year was excellent.

Plus didnt pay for the tix

Key.

anyone in nyc going to see the grateful dead movie @ kips bay on wednesday?

That sounds fun. They're showing it here in Kentucky too. I'll be there with bells on...my shoes? Whatever. I also think that movie - problematic as it is - could potentially convert most Dead haters. I just wish it were all concert footage - the fan clips sorta bum me out. Although that one guy they keep showing right at the edge of the stage singing along and going bananas is classic all the way.

HOLY SHIT TALES FROM TOPOGRAPHIC OCEANS IS DIRE

i feel like i've been in a time warp, this is endless

man this could make ppl rethink their votes

even better, the new remaster/expanded edition adds two more 20 minute-ish tracks haha, i don't know if i can make it

I also think that movie - problematic as it is - could potentially convert most Dead haters.

It nearly had the opposite effect on me. I got into the Dead a year ago (after a solid two decades of completely despising everything they represented), and found my DCD (Dead Cutoff Date) via that film. The drop from Europe '72 (or anything from '72) was steep and rapid. I haven't been able to listen to anything post-'73.

especially, when there are a couple of key members sitting it out by choice.

iirc, Anderson had to pull out a few years ago due to illness. When he recovered, Yes basically said, "Oh, we got someone else. Thanks anyway, though." He's been trying to reach out to Squire and Howe ever since, only to be rebuffed.

They fucked him over, for sure, but that was because they were unwilling to postpone a tour until his health returned. I find it hard to believe that as the sole member other than Squire in every incarnation of Yes - and the singer, at that - that they couldn't find a way to make it work with him. I can only imagine at this point he won't agree to whatever onerous requirements they'd impose on him.

When he recovered, Yes basically said, "Oh, we got someone else. Thanks anyway, though."

Was he interested in rejoining the band at some point in 2009 or 2010 (i.e., pre-Fly from Here conception/recording/etc.)?

they were unwilling to postpone a tour until his health returned

He was out for quite some time if I am not mistaken.

And Yes was in just that much of a hurry to hack it out in theaters supporting new material, once Howe was done dicking around with shitty-ass Asia?

That should be supporting no new material.

I haven't been able to listen to anything post-'73.

agh man the 77 shows, come on

Asia is great. New single is outstanding.

Asia is ok, but SQUACKETT is where it's really

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

Rush is gonna murder on this one.

voted dead

It nearly had the opposite effect on me. I got into the Dead a year ago (after a solid two decades of completely despising everything they represented), and found my DCD (Dead Cutoff Date) via that film. The drop from Europe '72 (or anything from '72) was steep and rapid. I haven't been able to listen to anything post-'73.

― Sun? Sun? It's your cousin, Marvin Ra (Tarfumes The Escape Goat), Monday, July 30, 2012 4:34 PM (53 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Not to be THAT GUY, and maybe this is for another thread, but you are seriously missing out. 74 to 77 is way better than everything before and at least a little better than everything after. But shave off the first five and last five years of this band's existence and they're the greatest rock band of all time.

I love 72 - who doesn't? - but I think people overrate that entire European tour, tbh. Then again, I like jazzy / funky / heroin Dead a lot more than blues rave-up / LSD and good vibes Dead.

I got a friend who's always trying to sell me on '74 but I can never fully lock in. "Me & Bobby McGee" was in the set sometimes then & "Mexicali Blues" and they smoke those ones but 74 isn't as good as 72, 77 or really 68/9 imo

I think everyone on the fence should hear '75 - all FOUR shows - because all four are ridiculous, and 3/23 at Kezar is unlike any other Dead show you will ever hear. Also, One From the motherfuckin' Vault, yall. If the first twenty minutes of that shit - complete with Bill Graham intro - doesn't convert you, well then, shit, maybe you really don't like this band. My wife sure doesn't. She's immune to the Dead's, err, charms. I've tried everything.

yeah, reallllly enjoyed this 75 show http://doomandgloomfromthetomb.tumblr.com/post/26150888636/grateful-dead-winterland-arena-sf-ca-june-17

I've tried everything.

Have you tried telling her it is Rush, or maybe even playing her Rush first?

i'm listening to terrapin station right now

this is awful

Well, yeah, the studio version of that is terrible.

Absolutely not.

iirc, Anderson had to pull out a few years ago due to illness. When he recovered, Yes basically said, "Oh, we got someone else. Thanks anyway, though." He's been trying to reach out to Squire and Howe ever since, only to be rebuffed.

From everything I've ever heard Anderson is a dictatorial little twerp and everyone hated him, so the illness was a probably a good excuse for them to get rid of him.

In his defence,he did make this video once :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k2G1trha8Eg

By the way, you can hear the last note of "Terrapin" if you crank it up at the end of the fadeout.

But shave off the first five and last five years of this band's existence and they're the greatest rock band of all time.

haha, '68 is my favorite year. It's the year with the most feedback.

And aero, I'm sure I'll get to more '77 sooner or later; what I've heard I definitely prefer to '74 and some '73, but I can't grok Hart's stiffness.

I work for Rush's label and I voted Yes.

is there any indication that a member of yes has ever been in a fight? i know a few of those dead boys could scrap. and despite his peaceful demeanor, I'm sure that geddy lee has held his own in a fracas. but i just can't imagine what yes could bring to the table if they needed to defend themselves. feel free to prove me wrong. i don't see it, is all.

to be fair, I'm sure that mickey hart still gets "swirlied".

xp I remember a reference in The New Rolling Stone Record Guide to tensions between "uptight vegetarian Anderson" and "the relaxed, meat-eating Wakeman." Dunno if it ever came to fisticuffs.

I think I got to Rush at the wrong age, they're not in the running for me here. I listen to the first seven or eight Yes albums fairly often, partly because my wife is a fan, but also because I like those records. Occasionally I listen to the Dead, whom tiresome hippies have been playing for me since I was a tiny child. Voted for the Dead.

Nice twist there at the end.

Procol Harum is opening up for Yes tonight. I am wondering if they will need oxygen masks to get on stage. Anybody ever seen them?

is there any indication that a member of yes has ever been in a fight?

In Bruford's book he discussed his hatred of Chris Squire. Not sure if it ever came to blows. I think pro musicians like to stay away from anything where they might hurt their hands cuz that's what puts bread on the table. I cant think of many who would be very intimidating in hand to hand combat.

I can imagine Rick Wakeman throwing some drunken punches.

I think there was a concert back in the 70s where a fan grabbed Rick Wakeman's glittering cape and it made him very sad, don't know if came to blows though...

Procol Harum is opening up for Yes tonight.

Who the heck is in PH these days? (Goes to check their incredibly ugly website: http://www.procolharum.com/ ) Ahh, Brooker and a bunch of people I haven't heard of.) Still, if he can still sing, I think I would rather spend an evening with them than any of the three bands being polled.

One point that hasn't really been taken into consideration here is that Rush's run of albums from Permanent Waves through Power Windows is pretty much untouchable. There isn't really a single dud song on any of those 5 albums.

Geddy makes reference to having to deal with anti-semetism as a kid, I'm sure he had to learn to scrap

Chris Squire always looked like a pretty big, strong dude in pix, unless the others are just midgets

Wasn't Lifeson arrested for public drunken brawling a few years ago?

OK, then, it's settled. In a fight, I wouldn't mind having Pigpen, Keith Godhchaux, Lifeson, Peart, and Chris Squire on my side. The rest wouldn't be much good.

I dont think that Pigpen or Godchaux would do you much good at the moment.

I was thinking Pigpen and Kreutzman, mostly.

One point that hasn't really been taken into consideration here is that Rush's run of albums from Permanent Waves through Power Windows is pretty much untouchable. There isn't really a single dud song on any of those 5 albums.

― Moodles, Tuesday, July 31, 2012 7:34 AM (36 minutes ago)

otm, especially the first three of those: permanent waves, moving pictures and signals. that's what swung this to rush for me, along with the unbeatable first half of 2112. deep down, i'm a pop and hard rock fan, and as much as do like both yes and the dead, that's not what they're about.

i really should listen to more Rush. i really only know all the big and semi-big singles from classic rock radio. i've always had a hard time getting into the stuff from their peak(?) years. LOVE the "fly by night" and "working man" earlier stuff though

(i guess some of the stuff i've heard on classic rock radio might not necessarily be singles)

As much as I love several Yes records, Rush wins this by a mile.

The Grateful Dead never made music worth listening to. They made music worth turning off.

btw can I just say that I LOVE LOVE LOVE how crisp the drums on "Tom Sawyer" are

I've found myself lately wanting to get into Rush's 1980s stuff for some reason. Haven't taken the plunge though.

Bruford punched Squire backstage after a gig according to Wakeman

Rush by about a million miles. Yes never did much for me one way or the other & the Dead are like one of the last bands I still actively hate.

this thread is a great reference work of bad opinions and wrong people

can someone tell me again why "The Trees" is so terrible?

it's another of peart's rand metaphors, mighty oaks brought low by the petty union organizing of lesser trees

The lyrics lends themselves pretty readily to a right-wing/anti-union interpretation. I really like parts of the music, though. (If I remember, there's a nice bit in 5?)

xpost!

ha when I was a kid, I basically interpreted that as the trees being so busy arguing with each other that they didn't notice all the ppl showing up to cut them all down

plus goofy as hell:

So the maples formed a union
And demanded equal rights
"These oaks are just too greedy
We will make them give us light"
Now there's no more oak oppression
For they passed a noble law
And the trees are all kept equal
By hatchet, axe and saw

i kind of like it though

Rush being goofy as hell, likable, and super-rocking is really quite a trick. Really, all of these bands are at the very least great some of the time.

my god, I'd forgotten how fantastic "La Villa Stangiato" is

okay lol:

Despite claims that the song addresses political and socioeconomic issues, lyricist Neil Peart has remarked that there is no hidden meaning to the song, and that the inspiration for penning it simply came from a humorous comic strip he read which depicted trees arguing like people.[1]

xp hell yeah, main theme showing up a couple minutes in always puts a smile on my face

and while we're at it, "cygnus x-1"

books I and II, lol

Both Strangiato and the Trees are incredible songs. Lyrics in the Trees are kind of goofy, but it still rules.

i seconded moodles' endorsement of the "untouchable" 5-album streak from permanent waves through power windows, but tbrr, i cut it off at signals and start the run at 2112. a farewell to kings and hemispheres may not quite reach "temples of syrinx" heights, but that's an unfair standard to hold anything to.

alex in nyc!

rush has stuff i can't even defend but somehow i love it still

I start the run at 2112 and end it at Moving Pictures. I can't do it after that.

Despite claims that the song addresses political and socioeconomic issues, lyricist Neil Peart has remarked that there is no hidden meaning to the song, and that the inspiration for penning it simply came from a humorous comic strip he read which depicted trees arguing like people.[1]

Ha, Peart's original quote is here: http://www.nimitz.net/rush/faq2ans.html#70

This completely makes sense to me, actually. Even otherwise, I would have put the lyrical statement down to naivete. I never thought that Peart was actually advocating for Thatcherite union-busting to come to 70s Canada or anything.

Bill, you really need to check out Counterparts if you haven't. That album rules.

i love everything from Fly By Night thru Hold Your Fire, after that it starts to get patchy

i almost wish there were more records of the pre-synthesizer fantasy jams like on fly by night and caress of steel. i suspect there are other good 70s bands to turn to for crisp d&d-rock (uriah heep comes to mind?) but i haven't found much

Starcastle

Are Starcastle any good? I never heard them but got the impression from reviews that they were second-string Kansas/Styx (which makes them, what third-string Zeppelin/Yes?)? I'm curious though.

I am listening to Signals for maybe the first time ever? I don't know why I avoided this album, first two songs are great

I think "2112" and "Hemispheres" rely too heavily on their narratives to work. This would be OK if the narratives weren't so dopey: as such, they got old for me whereas Yes's 15:00+ epics work entirely on a sonic level for me. Weirdly, I kind of like "Fountain of Lamneth" as a series of tableaux.

xpost "Losing It" is classic imo.

Starcastle were super Yes-influenced. There's a lot to like about them - very light overall feeling, cool band sound, super chops.

The last bunch of albums Rush has released have all been pretty solid, especially Counterparts, Vapor Trails, and Clockwork Angels.

Also, their tours since the late 90s have all been incredible.

i love everything from Fly By Night thru Hold Your Fire, after that it starts to get patchy

Me too. I'd probably even go so far as "Presto" or "Roll the Bones" (each of which features one of my fave Rush album openers, and plenty more I like, including Rush's most credible power ballads "The Pass" and "Ghost of a Chance"). But "Snakes & Arrows" is the only of the recent batch of renewed Rush I love unabashedly, though each has their moments.

i need to listen to "Roll the Bones" again...the title track is so dorky (even for rush) i think it kind of tainted the memory of the album for me

The Time Machine tour was what converted me from being a just-know-the-radio-hits guy to a need-everything-now fan. Can't wait to see them again in October.

I thought their 30th anniversary tour did a good job giving a little taste of every era, including "Between the Wheels," possibly the darkest song they've done. "You know how that rabbit feels, going under your spinning wheels..."

yeah i saw them about 4 years ago and they did between the wheels because i love that song so much, grace under pressure is one of my favorites

Thanks for the Counterparts recommendation above (insert Chinese symbols here(I believe its Phil)). I'll check that out.

I have tix for Rush in both Atl and Dallas (where I'll be on business in Dallas). Pumped.

did anybody see the Rush documentary that came out a year or two back? fucking incredible stuff, they have film of, like, early band meetings at their parents' dinner table.

That documentary is THE #1 starting point for any new fan.

Yeah, it's great. Wild that both that and the Anvil doc delve into the fact that two of these linchpins of Canadian hard rock acts are children of Holocaust survivors (Geddy is the nickname he earned from his mom calling him to come home - Gary! - in her thick accent). The story of the Anvil guy and his parents is so beautiful, like the most supportive dad ever.

That footage of Lifeson as a teenager arguing with his parents is from this documentary (although I'd imagined a scenario along the lines of, "Dude, Alex is totally fighting with his folks! Bring your Super-8!")

xp

Dashed this off in honor of Jerry's birthday tomorrow. Hoping it affects voting. :)

http://www.deadjournalist.com/DJdc/2012/07/31/boots-in-transit-an-appreciation-of-the-dead-on-cassette/

That footage of Lifeson as a teenager arguing with his parents is from this documentary (although I'd imagined a scenario along the lines of, "Dude, Alex is totally fighting with his folks! Bring your Super-8!")

xp

― Sun? Sun? It's your cousin, Marvin Ra (Tarfumes The Escape Goat), Tuesday, July 31, 2012 5:40 PM (1 hour ago)

Wow, I bet Alex Lifeson is one of the only people who's been on Trailer Park Boys AND a Criterion Collection documentary.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eh_9NY56Sxw&feature=related

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KHPD7DfXIcM

Boring answer:

1967-70 - Dead
1970-74 - Yes
1974-84 - Rush

Airports, that is a nice piece. I was never a Deadhead nor a tape trader, but I have a few bequeathed to me by an east coast buddy, replete with hand drawn cover art. I hang onto them as artifacts.

On another note, I think I have found the first Rush song I enjoy: "Bastille Day."

Played "Moving Pictures" last night for the first time in I don't know how many years. Every little part of each song came back to me like a long lost friend - except for Geddy Lee's voice. Shriiilll - and the way he enunciates irritates me now. I couldn't deal with it. Sad.

try the Time Machine live album version of those Moving Pictures tracks. Geddy's voice has changed enough that I think many who found him too shrill will find him more palatable these days.

Oh! Good to know. I will.

I love shrill Geddy. Middle-register Geddy, though, is one of the main reasons I haven't been able to get into any post-mid-80s Rush.

Yes was pretty good last night. Heavy the longer cuts (Awaken, Heart of the Sunrise, one suite from their new album I'm not sure the name of). This might not have been so popular with the crowd looking for some of the bigger "hits". The new singer looks and sounds just like Jon Anderson, and his name is in fact "John Davidson".

Nothing from CTTE or Relayer. Star of the show is definitely Steve Howe, the guy is spectacular, even though he looks like an old English professor.

Steve Howe kind of reminds me of Elrond

http://npknet.com/images/Jackvynil/1011albums051.jpg

They really couldn't have gotten a better replacement than John Davidson. In fact if you're not much of a Yeshead you probably wouldn't even remember that the singer's name is supposed to be Jon Anderson. And Howe, I dunno why we have to keep commenting on his looks, I mean is it really necessahttp://www.splotchy.com/images/blog/howe01.jpg

Where's the rest of him?

sucked into the same wormhole as the rest of his guitar

Looks just like fucking Elrond

i kinda want to start a Steinberger Swag Thread.

I have a theory that the LotR films based their characters on Yes. Frodo looks suspiciously like 70s Jon Anderson.

Howe used about 8 different guitars last night. Sometimes wearing two with a pedal steel in front of him.

Looks just like fucking Elrond

Looks like what would have been born had Elron been fucking Gollum,

Howe used about 8 different guitars last night.

Always a deceptive gauge, since so many guitarists have guitars in certain tunings. In fact, that's kind of modest! I mean, the Edge tours with something like 43 guitars, and he's the anti-Howe.

I'm happy to say ive never had the pleasure of seeing any of those 43 guitars!

Howe may look funny, but he is so fucking good.

Oh yeah, I mean Relayer is a 2 and a half star record without Howe and like 4 and a half stars with him

Oh I like Howe. I like Tomorrow! My White Bicycle is a freakbeat fave.

new Rush album is 99 cents on Amazon MP3 today

I would say Yes > Rush > a lot of bands I don't listen to at all including the Grateful Dead

Yes imo just writes better melodies, has better singing. Yes could sound like the Beatles at points, and Henry Cow at others, and Rush never had that kind of range, even in their mid-70s, early 80s glory years. Rush probably does maintain a more consistent level of quality from album to album, but also can be a lot blander.

I suppose I can agree with that. Consistency vs. range. I guess one larger problem I have with Yes is that they can be both pretentious and dopey, whereas Rush is usually at worst just the former. I get some unintentional "silly" vibes from Yes that I don't get from Rush.

This is as good as a time to recall one of the best one-line put downs I've ever heard, when my friend described a band as "kind of like Yes, but no."

Yes at its best is better than Rush or Grateful Dead at their best. Go buy another copy of Fragile... (seeds tend to bust up the spine)

did you Deadheads see this?

Spring 1990

Yeah, got the email about that from dead.net. As usual with this stuff, looks awesome, but so expensive.

the only version of the full "Hey Jude" the band attempted in the modern era
heard this and it is a treat. a terrible treat.

agree that yes's range is/was extremely broad, but they're only occasionally using that range in service of music i genuinely love. their best material is gorgeous, but i find a lot of their not-quite-best stuff far too cheezy and florid for my tastes, and i wish they were a bit more oriented towards singles and tunes. plus, they rarely kick as much ass as rush do on tracks like the 2112 suite and "YYZ".

i know it's heresy, but for me, yes's peak boils down to two solid albums: the yes album and fragile. close to the edge is fascinating, but i'm only occasionally up for it.

rush, when they're not at the top of their game, fall back on being a reliably solid hard rock band. yes, faltering, get lost in 20 minute orgies of rainbow-spangled new age carnival glop. i'll take the former.

you should hear the version of "Rainbow-Spangled New Age Carnival Glop" from 6/4/72 though mannn

rush hasn't done anything as bad as terrapin station or tales from topographic oceans, which i listened to for the first time this week and they are horrifying.

Ha, I like both. The stretch from The Yes Album through Going for the One is classic for me. Tales is easily my least favourite of those but I still like it. I just think of it as nice ambient fusion.

Yes could sound like the Beatles at points, and Henry Cow at others, and Rush never had that kind of range, even in their mid-70s, early 80s glory years. Rush probably does maintain a more consistent level of quality from album to album, but also can be a lot blander.

OTM. I've been listening to Relayer a lot recently, which gets into Henry Cow or Zappa territory, sort of like the evil twin of Close to the Edge.

the sad truth is that every day spent not listening to henry cow and frank zappa is a day in which i get to LIVE

i've never really considered Rush a prog band.

Yeah, I mean, there's nothing at all wrong with being a solid arty hard rock band that goes on forever. In fact, it's probably more admirable, as far as an overall career path is concerned. I just had to choose between Yes and Rush on some grounds and those were the factors that swayed me.

never?

Rush actually has all of its crucial members intact and a killer new album. Dead are dead and Yes is indeed no.

Pretty sure all the members of Yes are still alive and occasionally tour together...

Has any other band had the same members for as long as Rush? ZZ Top maybe?

man the Scarlet Begonias streaming at dead.net from that '90 box is awesome

"Scarlet Begonias" is so funky

I kinda love Terrapin Station. I even like Donna's song a lot.

Where do I find streaming music on dead.net?

you go and click on that spring 90 box set they're promoting. it looks like a dead indian guy. that takes you to a page w a 40-some minute sample that presumably includes a song called "scarlet begonias". i tried but couldn't hang, so i listened to the sublime version instead. they also seem to think it's pretty funky.

Ah, thanks.

oh no sublime!!

I even like Donna's song a lot.

^lol

Has any other band had the same members for as long as Rush? ZZ Top maybe?

I think a lot of people claim Golden Earring? ZZ Top has been together a while with no break. U2, of course. Aerosmith, I guess, but they took some time off that alas did not turn out to be the permanent vacation as promised.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-UcVt6or6I&feature=fvwrel

xp: I used to hate this song, but now it feels to me like a better Jeff Airplane tune. Or a hippie James Bond.

ooh I do not care for that'n

Yes at its best is better than Rush or Grateful Dead at their best.

Bingo. I mean there's only one Close to the Edge, y'know?

Pretty sure all the members of Yes are still alive and occasionally tour together...

Yes to the former, not really the second point. Buford, who was key to their two untouchable records, hasn't toured with them since "Union" eons ago, and of course there have been line-ups sans Howe, sans Wakeman, sans everyone until, most recently, Anderson, with Squire the only original member in every line-up. And god knows the classic line-up hasn't recorded together in ages.

"he hums/there are drums" is a pretty terrible line though.

U2, of course.

U2's first album was 1983 or so, right? Rush has been together with Peart since what, 1975?

Oh, sure. It's just that the number of bands even as relatively young as U2 with their membership intact is pretty low. Just wanted to throw them in the mix. I mean, Rush, U2, ZZ Top and Golden Earring is a pretty short list!

(Regardless, U2 was together in the late '70s, first album well before 83. First release 79?)

Boy was fall of '80, unless it came out in UK earlier?

Formed in 1976

!

Maybe I was confusing U2 with REM??

REM is almost that old, too! Formed 1980.

REM has broken up and also changed line-ups at one point.

did you Deadheads see this?

Spring 1990

― EZ Snappin, Wednesday, August 1, 2012 5:24 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I'm listening to 3/24/90 this morning (some of which is on Dozin' at the Knick, but the "Help/Slip/Frank" and "Loser" are not, and they are excellent this night. Brent helps this band in myriad ways. Between this and the first JGB (also recorded spring of '90) I've come to think this might be my favorite Dead-related era, probably some kind of hippie heresy.

REM has broken up and also changed line-ups at one point.

Really? When did this happen? You sure?

Sarcasm aside, I was responding to this:

Maybe I was confusing U2 with REM??

That is, even confusing U2 (which was mistakenly cited as starting in 1983) with REM, both formed a surprisingly long time ago, regardless of subsequent break-ups or line-up changes.

Yeah, I just read back in the thread. I missed a couple posts of context.

berry left in 97, and wiki says they called it quits last year

xxp

Their first album was released in 1983, which is what I was thinking of.

berry left in 97, and wiki says they called it quits last year

No, pretty sure the band has not broken up. Wiki is wrong. REM has definitely not broken up.

I mean, if they had broken up, we all would have heard about it.

Months ago.

huh. i have no way to know, and you're speaking as though you do, so i defer. but NPR carried the breakup story (source for the wiki page), and the announcement is still hosted on REM's site. curious as to why you're so certain...

Because I'm taking the piss?

that'd explain it, yeah

"sarcasm aside"

^ igin

ZZ Top is really the only one, because Rush isn't the original lineup.

UK peeps: Does Status Quo have original members? They are one of those bands that's around forever right? Or are they like a Kansas thing where it's like 2 dudes left?

i love the hell out of rush but the dead take this

curiously unaffected by yes

The Quo have 2 original members but are actually touring later this year with the original rhythm section, just a one-off though I think.

ooh do ppl say The Quo over there? that's dope i'm adding that to my repertoire

ZZ Top may have had the same dudes longer, but they also performed at a Republican National Convention, while Rush demanded that their music not be played by those sorts of folks.

And nobody misses the late John Rutsey on drums.

i find it hard to believe three pervy hot rod driving weirdos from texas have less than progressive politics

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 nazis

Theyre not

but yr cool w/liking nazi skin music, like r3sist@anc3 records shit?

Never heard it to tell you the truth. I dont need to apply a political litmus test to entertainment I enjoy, be it music, sports, movies, etc.

but if you liked nazi music you would listen to it?

what if there were a band that all the proceeds of their record went to nambla?

hahahahahaha, yeah, sure

id say those examples are a little more extreme than "playing at a Republican convention". I like Ted Nugent's music, but i think he's a total idiot when he opens his mouth politically.

reallllly nervous about the outcome of this poll guys

You have already voted in this poll and cannot vote again.

>:-(

feel like it might be a three way tie and then we'll all have to fight in some sort of classic rock thunderdome

and i will kill you if i have to

yes.

not even close for me. close to the edge is amazing ("siberian khatru"!!) and the other albums from that era ain't too shabby. could never really get with rush but the dead are aiight I suppose.

expect yes to annihilate this, tbh

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

If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice

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

The Grateful Dead has an iPhone/iPad app:

http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/grateful-dead-europe-72-rock/id511897353?mt=8

Winners by default.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

wow

laugh my socks off

http://www.boingboing.net/filesroot/ghost%20fart.jpg

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

Well, at least the one in the middle is correct }:|

i agree w this

Wah?

This poll got an impressive number of votes.

Sad that rush didn't do better; I actually thought they might win.

bunch of hippies around here iirc

Really thought Yes was gonna take this. Really thought the Dead were gonna come in third. I confess total bafflement (and quite a bit of disgust) at this result.

Reverse order

say wtf

lurkers imo

not on this thread

i did not think there would be 40 rush fans on ilm

In retrospect I guess we shouldn't be surprised the band with the most rabid cult following in history brought out the lurkers

Also possible factor: the Dead are the only band in this poll with any female fans

http://tralfaz-archives.com/coverart/G/Grateful_Dead/gdead_workf.jpg

hater vote split the opposition

divide and conquer, it's the hippie way

Fuck this shit.

PS - actually Rush does have female fans as of the last five years or so. It's a new and exciting development. I Dj Rush and girls dance. Hell has indeed frozen over--further proof is this poll result.

"Justice has been deserved" as Space Ghost said

dj rush is about 10^6 times realer than the dead or rush tho

lol Nate between your love of Agalloch and your hatred of the Dead I'm ready to totally write SUCKS next to band names on your notebook when you're not looking in class & then blame it on the other dude next to you when you call me out

haha! well, I'll play going for the one in solidarity

burn ilm to the ground

Silly human race.

Actually finding the *indignation* about this slightly distasteful.

For all the stock put in their compositional skills and progressivism, did Yes or Rush ever create music that was as big a redefinition of genre as "St. Stephen?"

Problem is, there are whole decades of sub-par Dead, which puts their legacy in a bad light, while there are only albums-worth of sub-par Rush or Yes.

(fwiw, I didn't vote, but probably would've voted for the Dead: more feedback than Yes and Rush combined)

http://thisevilempire.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2012/06/fonziejumpsshark3sl.gif

For all the stock put in their compositional skills and progressivism, did Yes or Rush ever create music that was as big a redefinition of genre as "St. Stephen?"

I would attempt to answer the question but I don't understand it. What does it mean to redefine a genre, how does it relate to compositional skills, and how does "St Stephen" do this?

no fuggin way. this is four noise board dudes with 10 socks each.

and fuck, i dunno, 20 lurkers

INDIGNATION

"St. Stephen" is clearly rock music. (I mean, someone even hollers during it. It sounds like rock and roll.) But what are the touchstones for such a song? Maybe the two guitars in the Rolling Stones had that kind of rhythm-plus-riffs-in-between counterpoint going on before, but it didn't sound like this. And the bass player is playing these funky, muddy chords. And there are two drummers. And it just sounds like nothing other than themselves - structurally and sonically.

I'm not saying Yes and Rush were not innovative, but this is a substantial piece of music that seems to me to stand way out there on its own.

no fuggin way. this is four noise board dudes with 10 socks each.

dying

I see. It would seem that it would be harder for a rock band to 'redefine the genre' that way in 1975 or even 1972, after everything that had already been done in the 60s, when the genre was still young.

That said, I'm interested in knowing what you see as the touchstones for "Close to the Edge". Obviously, Thick as a Brick is an even larger-scale composition but it doesn't quite do what CttE does formally. There are some ideas, esp the opening solo, that suggest McLaughlin/Mahavishnu but the overall composition is not like something he'd do.

xpost to tim

you ppl are nutso, the dead are a great band, i don't understand why these poll results surprise you? especially considering how stigma-laden the entire genre of prog rock is? and this is ilx? where we have lots of threads abt the dead? idk. pretending like this is some great disappointment and a sign of society heading to the gutter... don't be dumb.

many xposts to aero but...

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.

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!

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.

are the dead ever, like, contemporary? how do they relate to their contemporaries?

i always get the impression of them (maybe because of their fans and the tape/concert culture) that they're sort of absorbed into the universe they've made for themselves. i know that can't be quite right, because of e.g. 'touch of grey', but it seems like once they got this deal set up, it just kind of runs on noodly autopilot for 40 years like a big cloud.

whereas rush give you a pretty strong sense of their being part of the changing world, up through the 80s (and probably after but they get kind of out-of-touch after that with age, maybe?), and yes fit into their time in relation to their peers in a lot of interesting ways and then have that 80s comeback / personnel shift / sound shift.

They changed a lot over the years. Sometimes they engaged with contemporary music, sometimes they didn't. In the early 70s, they obviously did the cocaine cowboy thing that the Stones and the Burritos had been into a year or two before. They messed around with disco and funk in the late 70s. The 80s they dealt in a lot of pop country and yacht rock. A lot of the stuff they were just following their own paths, or more obscure paths, songwriting-wise.

What are your objections to Here Comes Sunshine again?

it's just a terrible song

But there are better means of judging a song than by how good it is, maaaaaaaan.

that's actually true - I have live versions where they play that song really well and I can hear that they're together - plenty of songs I don't care for can be good live, this is true w/pretty much any band. that song seems p irredeemable though

I think the Band is a pretty good touchpoint for the Dead circa 72 but I don't see why it's an either/or thing

can't find enough places to post this tune; if you have any taste for country rock at all, this is a supreme jam. they go Merle one further in bringing to light the darkness at the heart of the song, & the Dead were so good at that, at playing amoral rock; all those outlaw songs from the early 70s are expressing something that their playing did from the start

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8YegGdZIPDM

they go Merle one further

Oh come on.

totally serious, Merle is #5 for me as an artist, & part of that is writing songs that leaves spaces to be brought forward more than you can do in one 2 minute take

god, i will just never get the dead. cuz i have a taste for country rock (and for country and folk, etc), but that "sing me back home" is just fucking horrible. like, i can hear the song in it, and the musicianship is accomplished, but the nasal vocals, dirge pacing and slack interplay are punishing. it's long, slow torture. do like the guitar solo, but not enough to put up with the rest.

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

― thomp, Saturday, August 4, 2012 6:38 AM (4 hours ago)

with DJP on this one. it doesn't bother me that rush lost. i figured they'd lose, but was happy to find enthusiastic fans itt. and i'm not even mad that the dead won. i'm just baffled.

Okay, well I've been spinning it a lot since last time you attacked it out of the blue and this song is such classic dead it isn't even funny. It hits all these perfect dead markers. It's got the historical references:

*badass flood from Robert Hunter's childhood#
*but also '49! San Francisco! Gold!
*plus hard to disassociate the dead from orange sunshine and the flood of psychedelics of the late 60s that they were at least somewhere in the wake or backwash of circa 74, looking back on the 60s from what must have seemed like a gulf of time

Plus this song just opens up so well. Look! Here's an amazing jam:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8gz_OTXy430

#

"(Remembering the great Vanport, Washington
flood of 1949, living in other people's homes, a family abandoned by
father; second grade)".

I used to not like it, because I thought there was too much similarities between the chorus and Beatles's Sun King, but eh, fuck it.

By the way, there are some crazy deals on Dick's Picks albums from Amazon MP3 right now. Like, $3.99-$7.99 for some of these albums?

dick's picks vol. 26 is great & so is vol. 8, harpur college (one of the legendary if-you-have-no-other-dead-shows ones) though harpur I think circulates in various forms

God I tried that "Here Comes Sunshine" again and when I hit the chorus I just go "lol that is terrible, I hear that you were out of ideas for a chorus but you could have just put the song aside until you came up with one instead of...that"

I can get putting those CCR tunes at a different plateau, as they just connected with people in the US in a bigger way and ar ubiquitous in ways that rare few Dead tunes ever got. That said, I think Bill Graham really nailed the Dead with his oft referenced quote "They're not the best at what they do, they're the only ones that do what they do." The Dead were a weird unique amalgamation of a band: bluegrass banjo player/folk singer, teenage jug band guitarist, college modern composition trained musician learning bass on the job, juicehead r&b/blues enthusiast, marching band drummer and rock and roll drummer.

Some of those 60s bands sounded the way they did as rock wasn't so codified out yet and many of the musicians while some were fans of the 50s rock, that really wasn't the music that often got them into playing.

Yes was a bit younger than the Dead, but they got some of that in their sound too, as Bruford was really a jazz drummer who went where the paycheck was, Wakeman was a classical music school dropout, Steve Howe was a totally odd amalgam of Cliff Gallop/Wes Montgomery playing rock and roll.

Bruford was really a jazz drummer who went where the paycheck was

Which perhaps explains why Yes is one of the least swinging-est bands ever. Of these three, only the Dead swing, in its one inimitable, sloppy, loping way.

I take it back, Rush swings plenty, when it needs to, when it suits the composition.

Why would being a jazz drummer explain the accusation that they were one of the least swinging-est bands ever?

I'm not sure how much "swing" is relevant to rock and roll aside from like '50s R&B anyway.

Ha, well, it generally is relevant to jazz!

xpost I just mentioned it as someone who has heard Buford's jazz stuff.

Rush definitely once they had an arrangement down, they tend to pretty much try to re-create it live. A rare few might open up in an arranged way live for their show or be edited down - but they don't improv. AT one point, even Peart thought his playing had gotten too uptight at one point and worked on reinventing his playing by working with jazz drummer Freddie Gruber.

Yes was kind of the same way which is why Bill Bruford bailed out at their popular height to go to King Crimson. That Yes Union/history video that Atlantic did back in the 90s is hilarous in that Bruford and Wakeman kind of both infer - yeah this whole 'Union' Yes band thing is pretty much crap, we could have done something good but we are just following through in a very scripted way.

that's a v. strange criticism of early yes.

re: lack of swing

I was a pretty big fan of Union when it came out, especially the tracks that featured the classic line up. Feel like I need to get reacquainted with it to see if it still holds up.

Not a criticism of Yes, just of Buford, who someone posted came from a "jazz" background. Because as I noted, lack of swing is I think a legit jazz criticism.

Bruford.

dick's picks vol. 26 is great & so is vol. 8, harpur college (one of the legendary if-you-have-no-other-dead-shows ones) though harpur I think circulates in various forms

harpur college is my sentimental favorite because it eventually became the humanities college of suny-binghamton, where i went to undergrad.

i'm surprised the dead rated as highly as they did, but i'm happy for yes (my pick, warts and all) for only being behind by four votes.

This is all just so wrong...

re the dead and west coast psych in general: i think i fundamentally dislike music that sounds as though it were played on a lawn, in the swelterning mid-afternoon of a really hot day. a lot of dead stuff sounds as though it were recorded during a bbq, when everybody was feeling all turgid from the food, booze, weed and heat, and the instruments had become these molten, floppy dali blobs suitable only for slow oozing. it's a quality hear in a lot of trancey, jammy psychedelic rock, but also in reggae and mariachi music. i don't like it. it makes me tired and irritable. if it's that fucking hot, just put your shit away for a while. pick up later, in the evening, when it's nice.

I love you contenderizer. Have you ever tripped dicks?

ccr vs allman brothers vs dead (pigpen years)
― thomp, Saturday, August 4, 2012 9:40 AM (9 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I honestly can't remember if I voted in this or not (if I did, it would have been for the Grateful Dead). The thing is--and I don't mean this as a criticism of whoever started it--putting the Grateful Dead with these other two bands just doesn't make sense to me. CCR/Allmans/Grateful Dead, yes; plug in the Band or Gram Parsons-era Byrds or any number of other bands, yes. But this is apple, orange, orange.