Creedence Clearwater Revival vs the Grateful Dead vs the Band

Creedence Clearwater Revival every gd time

Creedence Clearwater Revival every gd time

― Gurdas Mane (crüt), Thursday, August 9, 2012 6:24 PM (1 minute ago

the band have meant a lot more to me for a lot longer, but I listen to the dead much more now. not voting tho because why bother voting in a creedence poll in ilm

clearly ilm's fondness for creedence is jingoism

CCR is the only one that i actually enjoy listening to as much in practice as in theory, and never think "I wish I was listening to Little Feat instead"

I listened to Cosmo's Factory and Willy and the Poor Boys today, and you know I love my metal, but no metal band in the history of Earth has ever written a song half as creepy/ominous as "Run Through the Jungle."

listen to/love The Band the most

CCR. Then the Dead. I loathe The Band except when they're backing other people.

goddamn the band vs ccr is near impossible for me.

btw where has tyler been lately?

tylerw?

yeah, just this thread obv is his deal

ccr is "better" but the last waltz has meant a lot more to me than any creedence

tough vote between ccr and the band. the dead would be #3 for me. Voting ccr. but all 3 were pretty great.

CC fuckin R. jesus

Creedence Clearwater Revival without hesitation.

Creedence Clearwater Revival every gd time

― Gurdas Mane (crüt), Thursday, August 9, 2012 6:24 PM (1 minute ago

CCR, since pretty much everything is awesome. The Band gets spotty after the first two albums.

I think CCR holds the record for most number of number two hits (five) with no number ones (seven total went top 10). Also, I mean, five albums between `1969 and 1970!

lol this thread is aero bait

Love all three bands, but, again, the Dead.

CCR is the greatest American rock n roll band

John Fogerty is the greatest American rock n roll singer

astonishing rhythm section too

The Band is the group where I like their sound and I like the individual players best.

love CCR but if this is based on singers the band wins by a large degree

And the singing.

xp

haha

CCR is the best. the band is wonderful. the dead have some epic albums and at their peak they were amazing. i wonder how the dead would be considered if they didn't have that whole image associated with them, which i think overshadows their genuine skills and talent, which is the case with virtually any jammy band with any merit.

basically: CCR >>>> the band >>>>>the dead

TS: Danko vs. Manuel vs. Levon

Omar otm

Love Creedence--not just their music, but also their story, the way they managed to be incredibly smart and of-the-moment while being perceived by many as the "Down on the Corner" band that made feel-good hit singles. I like a number of Grateful Dead songs a lot, although I'm basically a casual fan. The Band are a huge blind spot for me.

CCR - easy

i hate to do the kneejerk thing but i have to vote creedence. i never really got into the band and i don't think last waltz is that great. much respect for the band, but the pop fan in me prefers the punch ccr packs.

i meant to write the dead in that last sentence.

only one of these bands has ramble tamble

and only one has Doug Clifford

Want to vote for The Band. I never got into CCR beyond their singles/best of comps. Where does one start w/them regarding full-lenghts & deep cuts?

"Ramble Tamble" is, for me, their greatest song, which is saying a lot. I wouldn't be surprised if there are a fair number of people who love them from the radio and/or Chronicle who don't know it. I may have heard it on the classic-rock station once or twice in my life.

(Wrote that before Darin posted--wasn't a specific response to him.)

but it is the answer
find cosmo's factory, put that shit on and boogie

Creedence Clearwater Revival every gd time

― Gurdas Mane (crüt), Thursday, August 9, 2012 9:24 PM (Yesterday)

on the real, though, the polls of 3 tenuously connected bands, this shit is terrible, i hope this is the last one.

it's called curating, i thought you were supposed to be a 90s nerd

I can't choogle to The Band or The Dead.

As crut says, Creedence Clearwater Revival every gd time

Yeah, but "Up on Cripple Creek" is like deep funk so it's not like all is lost.

it's called curating, i thought you were supposed to be a 90s nerd

― j., Friday, August 10, 2012 12:44 AM (14 minutes ago) Bookmark

you're just, like, typing words here, they don't actually mean anything, right

the Dead in 72 sound like the Band

"Sugar Magnolia" can choogle

voted CCR of course

CCR. No brainer. Ramble Tamble & Fortunate Son vs most other bands catalogues. CCR vs Neil Young. Now there's a tough call...

most everybody in this thread otm. good work, people.

you're just, like, typing words here, they don't actually mean anything, right

i can't even tell the difference anymore

The Dead. The Band had a few good songs. Creedence is undeniably classic. But classic like the national anthem or the happy birthday song or something. I don't necessarily need to hear it anymore. I tried to get into their albums hoping to be surprised but it was just the hits I've heard on the radio since birth plus some not very good covers and assorted filler.

I never knew Doug Clifford made a solo album in 1972. Just found it online and it's...interesting. Kind of like Tom Fogerty's solo stuff. There's a definite CCR undercurrent to it, but it goes off in wild directions.

I voted Creedence because they were astonishingly consistent - even during the early Golliwogs days - up to (but not really including) their last album. But even that last album - Mardi Gras - suffered only because John Fogerty was persuaded to let the others write. His stuff was still amazing. They also get nods for holding up really well, despite the fact that many considered them only a step above the Monkees (who were also great at the time.)

The Grateful Dead were the most wasteful band in rock and roll - about an album's worth of good material, in my opinion. They don't hold up well.

The Band's first two albums were probably better than any of CCR's albums, but they lose for the steep fall-off in quality after that.

CCR gets bonus points (not that they need any) for being a band pretty much carried entirely by one major figure / songwriter. The Band had several and the Grateful Dead barely had songs, and they still had about 15 "songwriters." That Fogerty could keep up with his peers (songwise) all by his lonesome self is amazing. Few songwriters of any era managed that level of prolificness and quality without a foil of some sort.

I listen to the Grateful dead a lot more than either of the others but they were all great in '68-70 weren't they?
Love Bayou Country & S/t(2nd), actually first 5 CCR come to thinkof things & probably MFBP too.
but overall I do listen to GD much more than the others.

Is there anything in the band's catalog correlates to a bitchin china cat>rider?

well, american beauty/workingman's dead owe a p large (and iirc acknowledged) debt to the band's first two recs

and the band's disco funk version of mystery train totally anticipates the dead's dancing in the street workouts

pretty sure the dead were doing 'dancing' in '71/'72? i feel like they stop doing it for a couple years and then it gets revived in that arrangement that shows up on 'terrapin'. i don't know, though. anyway my suggested three tenuously connected bands were better.

we should always have a grateful dead poll going, anyway

yeah, the dead were doing dancing in the sixties as a looooong psych freak work out (there's an amazing version on Dick's Picks #8 from 1970). They dropped it from the set list for a while, and when they took it up again post-1975 it had become MUCH more disco.

i mean obv plenty of mid-seventies rock bands w/ a fondness for cocaine went disco, but it's always seemed to me that the dead took an awful lot of cues from the band (not that they were alone in that, either)

CCR had such a great run over a short space of time and I've never heard any Band albums past the first two but I recently watched the 'Classic Albums' episode on the s/t and I came around to thinking that it really is one of the 20 or so best records ever, just a towering achievement of songwriting and musical interplay. So I think I'm voting The Band.

As for the Dead, I've tried to get into them, on paper they should be right up my street but nothing I've heard really clicks with me - I don't hate them by any means, I'm just indifferent.

All 3 have a lot going for them, but for me it's The Band >> CCR >>>> The Dead.
And as I've said on other threads, my love for The Band is mainly based on the first 2 albums but y'know, it's a hell of a first 2 albums.

CCR choogled. No other band, ever, choogled. Voted CCR.

i have to admit i've never understood 'choogling', it sounds like something thomas the tank engine would do

Thomas he's the cheeky one
James is vain but lots of fun
Percy pulls the mail on time
Gordon choogles down the line

they're the really useful CCRew

speaking of trains though, Casey Jones kinda choogles.

Nope

Choogleometer says: NO

I think a well chosen 80-minute CDR of each would be enough for me for life, but in frequency of listening to those CDRs it'd be Band/CCR (tie) >>>>>>> Dead. I do love Grayfolded though.

Flipped a coin and voted The Band.

The take of "Big Railroad Blues" on The Grateful Dead aka Skullfuck choogles like a mother.
Don't worry, I still voted CCR.

I think the Dead are attempting to choogle on "Turn On Your Lovelight" on this '68 show I'm listening to. Christ do I ever hate "Turn On Your Lovelight"

Yeah, you know, that's probably one of my least favorite of theirs.

^ *covers ears* La-la-la I'm not listening to you.

i would be safely in the pro-lovelight camp if pigpen's monologues didn't often sound like he was exhorting members of the audience to carry out some sort of sexual assault

DOOT DOOT DOOOOOOOO I'm not listening to you xpost

My equivalent of "Lovelight" for CCR would be their "Grapevine" cover. I know many people love it--to me, it runs counter to everything that's great about CCR.

ditto.

i would be safely in the pro-lovelight camp if pigpen's monologues didn't often sound like he was exhorting members of the audience to carry out some sort of sexual assault

lol, total truth bomb. it's a shame, cos some of the looong lovelights have really great garcia solos on 'em.

xpost Yeah, compare what Creedence does to the Marvin Gaye song with how the Dead murders the Merle Haggard. CCR turns this perfect pop song into an ecstatic jam, the Dead stretch Merle out into a dirge.

See, CCRs Grapevine feels like a dirge to me.

Suzy Q and Spell on You were good, but Grapevine scrapes across my ears and is no fun at all to listen to.

CCR's Grapevine is a stalker's lament.

All of their covers kind of blow. I can't for the life of me figure out why anyone would ever try to cover I Put a Spell on You.

rock bands did covers back then.

Oh come on, Suzy Q is bad ass.
That part where the spooky "oooo" vocals come in rules.

The "Spell" cover is worth it for Fogerty's singing and solo alone.

As a kid, this is what sent me back to CCR deep cuts:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n_u95VjPVyA

"Susie Q" I really like. And, my indifference towards "Grapevine" notwithstanding, Creedence had no trouble pulling off long songs--besides "Ramble Tamble," there was also "Effigy."

rock bands did covers back then.

covers are great, I've got no problem with them. But I Put a Spell on You is one of the greatest records ever made and Fogerty's voice pales in comparison to Hawkins. Their Suzie Q is good but doesn't really add anything to the other Hawkins version imo.

guys i'm back from vacation. i was in portland. answer to this poll is the decembrists.

the decemberists vs literally every other band ever (POLL)

i mean if any band combines the good parts of CCR, the band and the dead it's the decembrists. maybe fleet foxes, i'm not sure.

hey tyler!

i mean really they should win the rush vs yes vs zappa poll too

ha... I was just babbling to a friend that the Decemberists are so popular in the pacific NW since they're sort of a surrogate Grateful Dead for all the people who still need their jugband mountain music

heyyyy!
lol i don't know about that. is there actually deadhead/meloyhead crossover?
anyway i don't know about this poll. band had the best albums (well, the first two) and the best singers, creedence had the best singles, dead had the best live shows.

nah, just my own crackpot theory - both bands sort of project that same old-timey fetishism that Portlanders squirt their pants over

they were playing the decemberists in my hotel elevator in portland.

^^opening line of my forthcoming travel guide to the great state of Oregon.

wonder if this poll comes down to robertson vs. fogerty vs. garcia
if it was just THE BAND we were talking about, they might be easy to discount, but the Dylan association pushes them pretty close to the top. the Live 1966 stuff is basically the best. and so are the basement tapes.

heyyyy!
lol i don't know about that. is there actually deadhead/meloyhead crossover?
anyway i don't know about this poll. band had the best albums (well, the first two) and the best singers, creedence had the best singles, dead had the best live shows.

― tylerw, Friday, August 10, 2012 10:59 AM (6 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

wasn't meloy in an obscure alt-country/jammish band prior to decemberists?

i love all three of these bands but i am voting creedence because i have probably listened to ccr more than almost any band on earth. except maybe fleetwood mac.

xp think it was like a uncle tupelo kinda band -- don't know if it was jammy. why are we talking about the decemberists? oh right, i brought them up.

yes re: Meloy's previous band. I work next to their former manager.

decemberists vs. the perth county conspiracy vs. the grateful dead vs. rush

vs. ccr vs. fleetwood mac

vs. the flying burrito brothers

http://faintlyblowing.blogspot.com/2008/08/perth-county-conspiracy-does-not-exist.html

^^ the decemberists of 1970 imo, except the record rules

Does Not Exist album (Columbia ELS-375) came in a beautiful gatefold sleeve and is full of hippie folk/psych with appealing melodies and harmonies, which reach their zenith on the exquisite final cut, Crucifixation Cartoon. There's not a bad track on this album and lots of other pretty good ones (Midnight Hour, Easy Rider (a song about the film), You Have The Power and the gentle Lady Of The County). All are originals and some are preceded by narratives. The opening cut features an extract from one of Dylan Thomas' poems, Truth And Fantasy begins with a narration and later on side two an excerpt from William Shakespeare's As You Like It is put to music.

that is intriguing... will have to check it out. Crucifixation Cartoon!
in portland i saw not one not two but three street busking bands who wore suspenders and played accordions and banjos and sang about the sea.

there is a crustpunk jug band who play a few blocks from where i work. they're better than yer average subway/street performer, but they ain't no canon's jug stompers.

object to all the "The Band had the best singerS plural" talk, most of the time the non-Helm guys are sub-Wier imo

no way duder

http://webpages.scu.edu/ftp/ARingler/images/jsp0134-18-fp%5B1%5D.jpg

voted the Dead because I've been listening to them nonstop lately.

that's yr opinion some dude, but i would def. rather listen to danko and manuel than weir. not a slight on weir, i just think danko and manuel are amazing. but i like bob -- funny, when i saw him this summer, he was super-gruff, but it kind of suited the songs a little better. "my uncle" was kind of scary/intense coming from this old grizzled dude.

yeah i already got into this and took my lumps for it on a Band thread earlier this year but Danko's voice is nails on chalkboard to me

object to all the "The Band had the best singerS plural" talk, most of the time the non-Helm guys are sub-Wier imo
.......
I believe the expression is 'I can't even'.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a0WMBYQL14U
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZqbTPVvZ5pA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bL5hO48-pYM
I don't really have the ability to hardman these kind of discussions, but basically Richard Manuel knocks Bob Weir into a cocked hat.

"my uncle" was kind of scary/intense coming from this old grizzled dude.

I like the idea of this better than coming from a young hippie dipshit.

haha exactly.

i like how john phillips couldn't even remember writing "my uncle". he would get royalty checks in the mail and be like "are you sure i wrote that?" and then cash the checks i presume.

How about This Wheel's On Fire: Dylan vs. The Band vs. The Byrds? I would love to hear the Band's arrangment of it with Dylan singing and Clarence White on guitar and the harmony vox from the Byrds version.

(I like Rick Danko a lot too but can accept that his voice isn't everyone's cup of tea and that maybe he's the least technically proficient of the three. Anyone has a go at Manuel and it's fisticuffs though).
xp to myself

I Love Manuel's voice, think he is probably my favorite thing about the Band.

Shit, I first read that as Danko's bass playing somehow being not technically proficient, and I was all, um, no.

Dead and the Band both have this cool guys just playing vibe (as transcendant as both could be) to them. But I thinkForgerty is the only one with a real force of nature quality/intensity to him, as a singer and as a guitarist.

Is it in Levon's book that he likens Manuel's singing to Ray Charles?

probably? i know Manuel idolized Charles.

oh man, some dude describing richard manuel as sub-weir is all-time challops and craziness! such a beautiful, heartbreaking singer, up there w/ gene clark imho.

haha yeah, the more i think about this the more sure i am about voting for the dead, but weir might be my least favorite singer of all the bands even if rush, ween, and primus were included.

oh man, some dude describing richard manuel as sub-weir is all-time challops and craziness! such a beautiful, heartbreaking singer, up there w/ gene clark imho.

― Ward Fowler, Friday, August 10, 2012 12:37 PM (18 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah it's just ridiculous...the aching, impossible melancholy of "Sleeping" vs. a dickhead in shop teacher glasses, daisy dukes and a safari shirt hamming his way through a terrible version of "Good Lovin'"

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_WXs-f_b3ZM0/ShiFdle6FNI/AAAAAAAAAcE/u3e-Ggd6LzY/s400/richard2.jpeg
vs.
http://www.urbanimage.tv/small_watermarked_images/rock-and-pop-grateful-dead-bob-weir.fl_0108.jpg

danko is so weird, like just the way he moves....in the last waltz when he's playing drums on those studio setup things he looks like a crazed beardo drug muppet

richard looks so feral on the cover of the brown album

http://www2.kenyon.edu/Depts/Religion/Fac/Adler/Misc/Band1-Manuel.jpg

he looks like someone who would shoot the president

band had the best albums (well, the first two) and the best singers, creedence had the best singles, dead had the best live shows.

this would seem like the hugest truthbomb to me but I haven't listened to a full creedence album ever so I can't say for sure. the reason I haven't listened is I can groove to a creedence single but the idea of listening to fogerty bellow at me for a whole album is a little too much. IT'S FINE IF YOU LIKE THAT, OK CCR STANS, IT'S JUST NOT FOR ME. "don't you listen to death metal" yes. david vincent is easier to take for 40 minutes than john fogerty. love & respect to his tone & his turnarounds but that singing really does feel like "thank you dad I'll be sure to run through the jungle as soon as I get a chance, yes v good, ok dad thank u." jerry garcia can't sing so good either but he's...~mellow~

lol i'm basically set on ruining every 3 band showdown thread now

a Creedence single nobody who loves soul music even a little should groove to is "I Heard It Through the Grapevine," though. just wretched

which band had the best facial hair?
http://rockhall.com/media/assets/inductees/default/the-grateful-dead.jpg
http://www.jmeshel.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/landy4.jpg
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/ee/Creedence_Clearwater_Revival_1968.jpg/275px-Creedence_Clearwater_Revival_1968.jpg

thank you for assisting me in my mission, aero (xpost)

a Creedence single nobody who loves soul music even a little should groove to is "I Heard It Through the Grapevine," though. just wretched

it's not soul when CCR does it it's choogle brah

think the band had the best look overall

"choogle" is the sound of a man trying to keep his thoughts to himself when ccr's "grapevine" fouls the air

i have to say i prefer american beauty and workingman's dead to the first two band albums (i am the rare dead fan who doesn't give a shit about live shows, though).

2 of those pics are from the late 60s/early 70s and one is clearly late 70s early 80s

I like Grapevine

aero has never listened to a CCR album lol

think the band had the best look overall

― mizzell, Friday, August 10, 2012 2:12 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark

i dunno man, fogerty invented flannel swag

i dig grapevine by CCR, I wish they had stretched out more elsewhere. endless choogle.

^^^^

"choogle" is the sound of a man trying to keep his thoughts to himself when ccr's "grapevine" fouls the air

― steven fucking tyler (underrated aerosmith bootlegs I have owned), Friday, August 10, 2012 6:13 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

dude if you've never listened to an entire CCR album I question your ability to determine what does and what does not constitute a choogle.

Just watch this whole thing:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pAVhKjsImeI

didn't want to bring up aero's day job, but a whole lotta choogle going on here
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8CMKDc8wcCo

Isn't is "Born on the Bayou" that's used in Born on the Fourth of July, the scene where Cruise goes a little nuts in the bar? Great choice.

think the band had the best look overall

― mizzell, Friday, August 10, 2012 2:12 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark

i dunno man, fogerty invented flannel swag

― Pollopolicía (some dude), Friday, August 10, 2012 2:16 PM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

that's def true, john had a great look, but tom and stu were pretty goofy looing most of the time. doug clifford had the best beard overall.

Band had the best look although CCR get bonus points for having a drummer who looked like a sheepdog.

man. incredible tremolo and what an insanely powerful drummer. those guitar passes after the chorus, awesome little jazz discrodance....that born on the bayou live would be so powerful if they'd been able to get their grampa away from the microphone but I guess he bought the amps or something

john going for some long feedback before the last verse on that version is pretty great too, it's a stomper.

agree that CCR had the best singles, hands down, but their album run from bayou country through cosmo's factory is pretty tough to beat. think i prefer green river to either of the band's first two.

damnnn that born on the bayou is good. fogerty is such a great guitarist, everything he plays there is so dead on.

I voted CCR, but I kind of agree with aero that Fogerty's voice is a bit much. The best part of Creedence is when they just choogle like motherfuckers.

i love Fogerty's voice!

it's like a cat being squeezed

exactly.

i dunno, i grew up with CCR. they belonged to my parents, so it's appropriate to me that fogerty sounds daddish. sometimes, "dad" is a p cool thing to be. also, even in their era they were nostalgic and a bit goofy. fogerty's hamminess suits that.

one of my very earliest musical memories was being in my dad's truck, driving to my childhood home in the Blue Ridge Mountains and hearing CCR on the radio and thinking both that a) all music sounds like this and b) that the band was at the radio station playing live at that moment

that is awesome

Fogerty's authentic frontier gibberish is one of the great innovations in rock frontman-ism, period. The guy inhabited a role like no one this side of Tom Waits.

WOULD SOMEONE PLEASE DEFINE CHOOGLE

Maybe you don’t understand it.
But if you’re a natural man,
You got to ball and have a good time
And that’s what I call chooglin’.

Here comes mary lookin’ for harry,
She gonna choogle tonight.
Here comes louie, works in the sewer,
He gonna choogle tonight.

you'll know it when you're in one

A rhythm guitar style that employs a deliberately hard up and down stroke against the strings to simulate the motions of pistons or trains. A style made popular in the late 1960s and early 1970s by Creedence Clearwater Revival.
That song meanders along until that mid-break, where, MAN! it starts to choogle!

Wish I was back on the Bayou
Rollin' with some Cajun Queen
Wishin' I were a fast freight train
Just a chooglin' on down to New Orleans

and umm.

When a someone licks your balls with your dick in their mouth.
That chick choogled me last night.

all from http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=choogle btw

how the hell is that even possible?

Maybe you don’t understand it.
But if you’re a natural man,
You got to have someone lick your balls with your dick in their mouth
And that’s what I call chooglin’.

That's deep.

how about this
"The energy implied by coinages like 'choogle' and 'ramble tamble' has more to do with vigor than with potency, more to do with simple activity than with sexuality. That distinction has its parallel in Fogerty’s politics, which are less apocalyptic (and revolutionary) than activist (and liberal) - the politics of agape rather than the politics of Eros."

whoever wrote that choogled John Fogerty.

That's deep.

― EZ Snappin, Friday, August 10, 2012 2:40 PM (2 minutes ago)

I lol'd

we need a new board--I Love Chooglin'

xxp how dare you say that about bob xgau
key essay
http://blog.wfmu.org/freeform/2009/01/keep-on-chooglin-.html

xgau also seemed to have a very specific idea of what 'truckin'' entailed

his problem re: 'truckin'' was that it didn't truck enough iirc

Like the doo-dah man

i thought chooglin' was when you put your ramble tamble in an oobie doobie

hey watch your mouth man, there's women on this board

pleased to see the warehouse decree still stands

rip stence u were cranky

i think all of fogerty's lyrics were heavy on the sexual innuendo -- you don't even want to know what he was talking about when he sang "oh lord stuck in lodi again"

nice to see that the warehouse decree still stands

rip stence u were cranky

nice to see that the warehouse decree still stands

rip stence u were cranky

i think all of fogerty's lyrics were heavy on the sexual innuendo -- you don't even want to know what he was talking about when he sang "oh lord stuck in lodi again"

nice to see that the warehouse decree still stands

rip stence u were cranky

i think all of fogerty's lyrics were heavy on the sexual innuendo -- you don't even want to know what he was talking about when he sang "oh lord stuck in lodi again"

I get chooglin' and noodlin' mixed up. But you DO NOT want to use your pecker for noodlin'.

double posts! WHAT

i think all of fogerty's lyrics were heavy on the sexual innuendo -- you don't even want to know what he was talking about when he sang "oh lord stuck in lodi again"

triple! it's ok, my joke was just that hilarious.

nice to see that the warehouse decree still stands

rip stence u were cranky

what the horse?

wtfogarty

those posts were chooglin'.

rip fogerty u were choogly

heaven needed to choogle

feelin' blue, blue, blue, blue (balls)

I know as a kid and up to a few years ago, it would always be CCR. It's kind of hard to argue with those singles and that sound they had. How screwed up Fantasy and "the band" situation got with John Fogarty is one of the odd and completely sad stories in rock. I think Fogarty kind of just gave it up for a long time and really I don't think ever got over it until really a few years back, once he could play his own tunes again. Brother against brother to the deathbed, I can't really blame JF for flipping them the bird at the whole rock and roll hall of fame. Could you imagine Reprise turning Crazy Horse or Buffalo Springfield against Neil Young? Talk about killing the goose that laid golden eggs. CCR is pretty much the majordomo bar band and those golden singles will probably be sung in bands with guitars for a good long time.

The Bands' story is just sad, as it seems that Robbie Robertson is/was a pretty big egomaniac that tried to take credit for inventing the wheel. Those first two records and the stuff they did with Dylan is pretty sharp. They could definitely sing better harmonies than any of those three bands. I think some of the two keyboard arrangements are a bit ornate. When it's on like say Chest Fever its cool, but some of the songs it's not my favorite. They were unique, but I appreciate them more than really like them.

I've kind of skirted around liking and not liking the Dead for years. Their music just seemed to be around and I think over time I began to like it more and in the last few years, far removed from having to deal with 'the fans' or anything else it really clicked with me. All three of these bands are kind of out of the roots of rock and roll and liked to stretch it out live, but the Dead is really a very different beast. There is overlap, but really they were a different thing.

i dig grapevine by CCR, I wish they had stretched out more elsewhere. endless choogle.

― tylerw, Friday, August 10, 2012 2:17 PM (4 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I don't have it handy, but Dave Marsh's writeup of CCR in The New Rolling Stone Record Guide characterized "Grapevine" as (I'm paraphrasing) "Fogerty burning to prove he was as much of an artist as anyone in the Grateful Dead -- he didn't know he was much, much more."

Also, worlds colliding etc. :
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V98p-qrbK1c

Tom Fogerty played with a bunch of Dead dudes iirc - all those guys knew each other

Poor Jer stepping in front of a train:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tj0WBO6VQJQ&feature=related

That Marsh quote was buried in the recesses of my mind somewhere--when this poll went up, I had a vague memory of someone specifically contrasting CCR favorably against the Grateful Dead. I thought maybe it was Ellen Willis in her Illustrated History piece, but Marsh makes a lot more sense.

Poor Jer stepping in front of a train:

drummer is terrible. jesus christ lay off the ride cymbal dude

i lasted 95 seconds on the first vid... the dead were so hopelessly tone deaf, out of tune and rhythmically challenged for a jam band... and then there's the fans.

sorry, you have to love 'em, they beat both rush and yes in the last poll!

lol garcia looks so helpless in that fortunate son clip

It always seemed like CCR didn't really get fawned on at the time in the 60s by the rock press like the bands on the other side of the bay, mostly as they were dudes dressed to work at the lumberyard instead of all you need is love, but that is kind of why their studio records sound a bit more timeless compared to say Anthem of the Sun. CCR were really the rock band going back to the roots as they had never really left them in the first place.

That looks like Steve Jordan on drums with Fogarty in the clip.

drummer is terrible. jesus christ lay off the ride cymbal dude

Ha, I totally love Steve Jordan. Killed with Keef's band, and made sure Neil Young's SNL performance was one for the ages.

man that dead/forgery born on the bayou...man....all these clips of the dead in the late 80s early 90s in these big outdoor shows are so profoundly depressing to me....just like the worst vibe ever....like there's always like a 100 ft between them and the audience and they are so feeble and jerry looks lost and confused and everything just degrades into this sort of bored lope....and the crowd clearly has no idea how terrible it all is because the are seeing The Grateful Dead (TM) and getting a Genuine Grateful Dead Concert

which i'm not even against arena or stadium rock but at least U2 does it right and gives you a 200 foot tall robot spider that shoots lightning and shit, that's the only way to do it, it's gotta be marvel comics

also guys it's FOGERTY

or all that shit marsh wrote about queen being "fascist"! freddie had to be! you gotta make those fuckers rock.

i dunno, the crowd there seems pretty confused and lost too

Queen aesthetic is pretty fascist tbrr

For everyone who ever wondered what "Bayou" would sound like with Daltrey singing it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rZbdN2dWJxw

It always seemed like CCR didn't really get fawned on at the time in the 60s by the rock press like the bands on the other side of the bay

I've always taken this to be true--said as much upthread--but the truth is, I don't really know; I was too young at the time. I just checked Jon Landau's review of Mardi Gras that I have in a collection of RS reviews, and, at the very end, he calls it "the worst album I have ever heard by a major rock band." Double-edged sword--that's at the end of a paragraph where extols their singles, and he does call them major.

"he extols"

Queen aesthetic is pretty fascist tbrr

― the choogler and the chosen one (Shakey Mo Collier)

That's what they also said about Devo.

All 3 of these are bands I would never have listened to had I not read ILM. As it is I've still never heard the Band and don't really like much by the Grateful Dead that I've listened to, but I basically love CCR. Favourite CCR album track is Effigy off Willy & The Poor Boys.

Queen aesthetic is pretty fascist tbrr

― the choogler and the chosen one (Shakey Mo Collier), Friday, August 10, 2012 3:55 PM (42 minutes ago)

imperious, imperial even. they are called "queen", after all...

equating devo w/ fascism is lunacy

I don't know who leveled that charge at Devo, but I don't think it was Marsh. He did call them "Meat Loaf for college kids," though, which is otm.

It always seemed like CCR didn't really get fawned on at the time in the 60s by the rock press like the bands on the other side of the bay

This surprised me too, but I've done heaps of research on it, and it's amazing how true it was. They're weren't exactly derided per se, but they were scoffed at as a second-rate combo who were opportunistic posers at best. Funny now, because Fogerty's been more consistent in his approach to music than most of the "other side of the bay" crowd turned out to be.

Here's a description from "Chronicles" that spells it out a bit:

Guided, perhaps, by musical snobbery or roots-rock phobia, some people inexplicably don't like Creedence Clearwater Revival. As the kings of earnest country-inflected rock in an age when radical stances were de rigueur, CCR sported straight-ahead tunes, and may have seemed a bit unhip. But their music stands the test of time with a vengeance. For the doubtful listener, this outstanding, 20-track hits collection has evidence of their greatness in staggering abundance.

Are those Marcus's liner notes for Chronicles, though? That's why I'm wondering if I internalized this view from a small group of critics who loved them. Marcus did, Christgau did, Marsh did, Willis did...I'm trying to figure out who didn't love them at the time.

Meltzer did not.

dead/forgery

lol, thanking u

They're weren't exactly derided per se, but they were scoffed at as a second-rate combo who were opportunistic posers at best. Funny now, because Fogerty's been more consistent in his approach to music than most of the "other side of the bay" crowd turned out to be.

Wasn't that consistency part of the problem though compared to what the other bands of the time were doing? It's part of why I can't really get into them as an album band because everything gets so samey. I think it's also why I didn't realize how great they really were for a long time, because I knew I liked their songs when they came on the radio or whatever, but I never realized the sheer volume of totally classic, recognizable hits they made. Kind of like Hall and Oates in a way.

I can easily see how music fans at the time would have underrated them. They almost released too much too fast but never had the kind of major "ALBUM" album that had become the in thing at that time.

I don't know who leveled that charge at Devo, but I don't think it was Marsh. He did call them "Meat Loaf for college kids," though, which is otm.

― Sun? Sun? It's your cousin, Marvin Ra (Tarfumes The Escape Goat), Friday, August 10, 2012 4:52 PM (48 seconds ago)

i'm trying to parse that. "meat loaf" = ironic joke rock? makes sense if that's the read.

also guys it's FOGERTY

― the choogler and the chosen one (Shakey Mo Collier), Friday, August 10, 2012 3:54 PM (1 hour ago)
http://i274.photobucket.com/albums/jj242/donaldparsley/fogarty.png

I don't know exactly how I'd describe CCR, but "earnest country-inflected rock" is not it. I think "rock" is the only part of that that comes close.

Not to go off topic, but "Meat Loaf for college kids" was Christgau:

http://www.robertchristgau.com/get_artist.php?name=devo

Ah, indeed. I'll have to re-read the Marsh Devo writeup, but he did credit Christgau with that line, iirc.

Huh another completely terrible take by xgau expressed through a nonsensical one liner, whaddya know

CCR is to classic rock what Ramones are to punk rock.

Well, not really "classic rock" as a genre, as I see it. I'm not even sure that the local classic rock station where I live plays that much CCR. (Seems to me that I've heard them on oldies stations more over the years.) CCR might be to something what the Ramones are to punk rock but I'm not sure what that is. I get the idea that they're sort of archetypal, but it's not really to some identifiable, actual roots rock thing that you can put your finger on.

They're an archetypal 1970 pop band, basically.

"roots rock" comes pretty close to naming it. i suppose you could call it rock americana or rock-as-folk music. whatever unites bob seeger, X, green on red, etc. reminds me of that 80s beer ad with the long ryders, where one of them says, "i think rock & roll is folk music, cuz it's music for folks."

anyway, did CCR invent nostalgia for olde america in rock?

The Charlatans were doing that to a degree (and very differently than CCR) in 1966 with something like Robert Johnson's "32-20," or the saloon-type music they'd play.

These guys, too.

http://www.jmeshel.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/basementTapes.jpg

The Lovin' Spoonful had a distinctly American nostalgic aspect.

Well the entire folk revival did, really.

"Summer in the City" predates Fogerty's vocal style, I think.

duh, yeah, of course CCR wasn't there first. sorry. occurred to my on my evening walk that dylan is probably the single person who most deserves credit for bringing that folk- & country-derived sensibility into rock music. but more than any of the others i know of, CCR made it "rock" in the algerian goalkeeper sense. like attached it to the chuck berry --> jerry lee lewis --> early beatles --> sonics/wailers lineage.

never really enjoyed ccr. fogerty's voice grates. plus not a fan of that rootsy rock thing,or at least their way of doing it. go choogle somewhere else. tho fogerty is really impressive in that footage of him doing fortunate son with the dead, gotta say...

the band, eh whatever. kind of annoying

i do like a lot of grateful dead stuff

the band minus dylan, i should emphasize

were CCR critically neglected because they were pop, in a certain way? the way their albums are set up--cover versions, not much "concept", singles-dominated.....they seem just a little old-fashioned: they're making pre-Sgt-Pepper LPs in the post-Pepper era.

I don't think any of the roots/rock comparisons for CCR quite work, Pop Americana mythos/bullshit purveyed by Californians--the most revealing comparison, for me, would be the Beach Boys.

lol i had no idea they were from california! i honestly thought they were from louisiana. or wherever you would be from that would make one pronounce "burning" in the odd way he does in proud mary

i dunno. the beach boys at least sung about the culture in the region of the country they were from.

possibly what ruined ccr for me was seeing a tv commercial for a greatest hits of theirs which ran constantly for a year or so when i was a kid. i don't know if i had even heard them on the radio before that point, but being exposed to several seconds snippets of their most famous songs ad nauseam kinda ruined them for me. again, it's fogerty's voice. plus that centerfield song he did. yuck

put me in coach

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oyDT828gmFc

I remember those CCR commercials. I thought they were hilarious at the time. At some later point, I checked Chronicle out of the library and my life-long infatuation was birthed.

The only other person I've ever heard say "boinin'" like Fogerty is David Lee Roth. I assume DLR lifted it wholesale from John because it sounds oddly cool.

foetus too

dark gods boint my evil soul

haha

oddly felt would cover the old man down the road in live settings. just seems odd to me, like learning that vini reilly is covering bad company or something

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fZaU3VtMfoM

totally forgot Foetus! The tense threw me off.

I suppose because of Fogerty not owning his songs I had the plesaure of hearing "Down on the Corner," "Lookin' Out My Back Door," etc licensed in the eighties for grocery store commercials.

I remember the day I discovered the subtle nod to Up Around the Bend in Wish You Were Here, though. See if you can find it!

staleprince otm

possibly what ruined ccr for me was seeing a tv commercial for a greatest hits of theirs which ran constantly for a year or so when i was a kid.

haha this commercial is one of my earliest musical memories + is the reason why CCR was my first favorite band

"i dunno. the beach boys at least sung about the culture in the region of the country they were from." yeah, but--the culture of California IS fantasy, right? It's not like the Beach Boys presented themselves as realist chroniclers of quotidian California....

(btw I like both varieties of bullshit mythos in question!)

FINAL OFFER !!!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AgD9rg0EdcA

I think despite my dad owning the first several Creedence albums, I wouldn't have been nearly as familiar with CCR if it hadn't been for those commercials.

I was familiar with them before the ads started, so they struck me as utterly bizarre. Imagine, say, Led Zeppelin or Neil Young being marketed like that -- that's what it felt like.

Wow, I remembered the song sequence in that commercial almost perfectly. It really left quite an impression.

I was familiar with them before the ads started, so they struck me as utterly bizarre. Imagine, say, Led Zeppelin or Neil Young being marketed like that -- that's what it felt like.

yeah, but that's to CCR's credit. they're not just some rock band. they actually made music people like, people who might conceivably order an album from the televison. they're operating on a zamfir-type level.

Pretty sure CCR had nothing to do with those commercials, right? All the recordings were owned by Fantasy and Fantasy dealt them out to the highest bidder (or basically anyone who offered them a buck).

i dunno. the beach boys at least sung about the culture in the region of the country they were from.

^yep a chubby, depressed introvert living with an abusive father/manager singing songs about surfing and hot rods

sure but i'm guessing no one in the fogerty family were noodling on the weekends or whatever. at least dennis surfed, etc

i guess that makes it authentic then

Who cares either way?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sIPlXU65NTI

Haha, that commercial. I still have that 3xLP that I bought ON THE TELEPHONE!!!

LOLLIN'
Peter G.

Who cares either way?

as a rockist, i care a lot

the band

i guess that makes it authentic then

surely it's more authentic if you are singing about stuff that you are first-hand observing and that your brother and cousin (who is also writing lyrics) then ccr-approach which was just more from

but i mean, "who cares?" is i guess otm. if you're complaining about mythos of place then you might as well throw in time and then all retro-leaning bands can be indicted

John Fogerty wrote most of the big hits when he was toiling in shitty minor league baseball shithole towns in the central valley and midwest, god bless him.

occurred to my on my evening walk that dylan is probably the single person who most deserves credit for bringing that folk- & country-derived sensibility into rock music

Um, I think that sensibility has pretty much been there since the beginning - like Elvis Presley, for instance?

I think he meant aside from Elvis, Roy Orbison, Buddy Holly, and several thousand other singers...

folk/country music has always dealt w/ that kinda thing -- pretty sure the carter family was marketed as "back to that ol' good time mountain music"

John Fogerty wrote most of the big hits when he was toiling in shitty minor league baseball shithole towns in the central valley and midwest, god bless him.

the central valley back then (and huge swathes of the east bay as well, which btw feature(d) plenty of backwoods mountains and marshes/wetlands too) was rural as fuck. Fogerty really did drink Green River etc

Um, I think that sensibility has pretty much been there since the beginning - like Elvis Presley, for instance?

― o. nate, Saturday, August 11, 2012 5:32 PM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

folk/country music has always dealt w/ that kinda thing -- pretty sure the carter family was marketed as "back to that ol' good time mountain music"

― tylerw, Saturday, August 11, 2012 6:02 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

tylerw otm that the sensibility in question has always been a pig part of folk & country music.

lol "pig part"

big part

lol rockist criticisms of ccr

so wait, had fogerty actually experienced true authentic choogle or was theirs a false choogle?

there is only one choogle

One does not simply choogle out of Lodi...

no you manufacture your counterfeit choogle from the safety of El Cerrito

was theirs a false choogle

thanking u

I suppose Fogerty's faux bayou-isms do look pretty silly next to the genuine down home americana of Robertson/Danko/Hudson/Manuel.

Who were all a bunch of Canadians.

Except Levon of course...

I'm astonished that you don't consider Canadians to be genuine Americans. Canada's part of North America, GET IT?

the only genuine americans are from arkansas

do they have a bayou there?

Let's see, El Cerrito CA to Bayou St. John Louisiana = 2270 miles

Toronto to the bayou = 1310 miles

So Robbie Robertson has a legitimate claim to being "born somewhat closer to the bayou".

On the other hand, San Francisco to the mountains of the moon = 238,857 miles. Posers.

Don't forget that Robbie's mother was a Mohawk so he is the most American of all.

no one in the band was named virgil, nor did they go hungry in '65

poseurs

Levon was the most authentic person in any of these bands & garth hudson had the most authentic beard, so everyone vote for the band

One funny thing about Creedence that I just remembered is that I used to always see Cosmos Factory in the used bins and think it was some kind of dodgy compilation or weird italian pressing or something because of the goofy cover. Like my brain couldn't compute that that was the actual cover of their biggest album. I like it now though.

yeah, they should have gone with the original concept

http://i274.photobucket.com/albums/jj242/donaldparsley/cosmo2.jpg

check out the sex face on this fogerty

Electric Creedenceland

Someone's chooglin' John in that picture.

Someone needs to do a CCR compilation leaving out all the ubiquitous hits everyone knows and all the lousy cover tunes.

Here's a list with no hits, no covers (including bonus tracks, but no live stuff)

Creedence Clearwater Revival
The Working Man
Get Down Woman
Porterville
Gloomy
Walking on the Water
Call it Pretending

Bayou Country
Bootleg
Graveyard Train
Penthouse Pauper
Keep On Chooglin'

Green River
Commotion
Tombstone Shadow
Wrote a Song for Everyone
Cross-Tie Walker
Sinister Purpose
Broken Spoke Shuffle
Glory Be

Willy and the Poor Boys
It Came Out of the Sky
Poorboy Shuffle
Feelin' Blue
Don't Look Now
Side O' The Road
Effigy

Cosmo's Factory
Ramble Tamble

Pendulum
Pagan Baby
Sailor's Lament
Chameleon
(Wish I Could) Hideaway
Born to Move
Hey Tonight
It's Just a Thought
Molina
Rude Awakening #2

Mardi Gras
Lookin' For A Reason
Take It Like a Friend
Need Someone to Hold
Tearin' Up the Country
Someday Never Comes
What Are You Gonna Do
Sail Away
Door to Door
Sweet Hitch-Hiker

The contrast between Cosmo's (all hits & covers) vs Pendulum (no covers and only one hit) is pretty funny.

I really dig Porterville / Call it Pretending. Is the rest of the pre-creedence stuff worth hearing?

Hey Tonight wasn't a hit? Shoulda been. That's one of my favorite short CCR singles.

Oh maybe. It sounds familiar.

Sweet Hitch-Hiker too. (It was a hit, but it's not one of my favorites)

I guess it was included on TV's biggest selling album so who am I to argue?

Regarding the authenticity of Americana between these bands reminds me of the story of Robert Hunter's proudest moment as a lyricist: in the audience at a dead show during cumberland blues, he overheard someone loudly complaining about these rock bands making money off of old Appilacian folk songs.

I had heard that story as Hunter actually taking a trip to Western MD and playing the song for some old men there, one of whom said something to the effect of “that’s a great song, but I can’t imagine what the guy who wrote it must think of a band like the Grateful Dead playing it.”

I'm not a big Deadhead, but I voted Dead vs. Yes and Rush, and my kneejerk reaction was do so here too, simply based on the breadth of their career output, and thinking of CCR mainly in terms of their great run of singles. But wk's list of CCR deep cuts is mindboggling. I love so many of those songs! It got me wondering what sort of similar list-paring could be done for the Dead, as they played so many of their best-known songs to death in concert over the years.

If you went into Deadbase or similar, and tossed out all the covers, plus every song that was played more than x amount of times, you'd be left with a CD-R of "Cream Puff War," "Pride Of Cucamonga," "My Brother Esau" and the like; maybe worth a cursory listen, but no comparison to the CCR one.

Pagan Baby

^^^choogles like a motherfucker

If you went into Deadbase or similar, and tossed out all the covers, plus every song that was played more than x amount of times, you'd be left with a CD-R of "Cream Puff War," "Pride Of Cucamonga," "My Brother Esau" and the like; maybe worth a cursory listen, but no comparison to the CCR one.

That doesn't make any sense though because none of those songs are ubiquitous and inescapable like CCR's hits. The only songs you would maybe have to delete are Truckin', Casey Jones, and Touch of Grey. A similar list of Dead songs minus hits and covers would be ridiculously long. Even if you just did their first seven albums I think it would be a much bigger, better, and more diverse list.

And the Dead's covers are mostly of old traditional songs that aren't necessarily as well known. When I first listened to the Dead albums I didn't think "oh great a lame cover of New New Minglewood Blues-- SKIP" the same way that I did with CCR's covers of really well known pop songs.

I dunno when I hear the Dead butchering Buck Owens I definitely think SKIP

where does that happen?

q for indie nerds, be honest: how many of you knew "walking on the water" from the richard hell & the voidoids cover?

Would like to hear that.

xp

sorry was thinking of Merle Haggard

xp

sorry was thinking of Merle Haggard

where'd they do that?

Walking on the Water makes me thing "hey they sampled London Calling"

altho this claims they did do "Tiger by the Tail", "Sawmill" and "Slewfoot" don't think I ever actually heard those tho. I was thinking of "Mama Tried"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MUgYOGX8XOM

so some live shit right? I skip all of that as a matter of course. They had enough trouble singing in the studio, I don't need to hear their live wailing. And live albums in general suck outside of jazz.

for me this is GD/Anthem/Aoxo/Workinman/AmBeaut vs. the 7 CCR albums

xp

"trouble singing" is putting it generously

Actually Jerry doesn't sound half bad in that video. They're no Everly Bros of course.

wk, for sure the Dead's "hits" aren't as ubiquitous as CCR's, but there are way more warhorse Dead songs than the three you mention. "Me And My Uncle," "Sugar Magnolia" and "Playing In The Band" were evidently their three most played songs. They're no "Bad Moon Rising" in terms of every bar and VFW band covering them, or every radio listener knowing them, but in the Dead canon they're huge. Add "Uncle John's Band," "Friend Of The Devil," even "The Other One" they played over 500 times. I was just trying to get past the songs they played the most to try to find a seldom-played cut that hit me as hard as the first time I heard "Tombstone Shadow." Maybe "It Must Have Been The Roses," as I just came to that one rather recently.

yeah, I see what you mean I just think it's a totally different thing. The only people who know which songs they played 500 times (cause they've seen them live or listened to boots) are already fans. I'm coming to CCR from the point of view that I know all their hits, and I've skimmed their albums a few times but never been able to get into them because apart from the hits nothing really stands out to me.

So you're talking about a list for a Dead fan to make it feel like the first time again, but the CCR list is more to convert a CCR skeptic (which I still am).

If I had to trim their non-hits/non-covers to a set of A-list classic material it would be this

Walking on the Water
Penthouse Pauper ("If I was ballplayer/wouldn't play no second string" line has a special bitterness to it)
Keep On Chooglin'
Tombstone Shadow
Wrote a Song for Everyone
Cross-Tie Walker
Sinister Purpose
Don't Look Now
Effigy
Ramble Tamble
Pagan Baby
(Wish I Could) Hideaway
Hey Tonight
Rude Awakening #2 (the most psychedelic thing they ever did)
Someday Never Comes
Sweet Hitch-Hiker

And maybe CCR played "Tombstone Shadow" at every gig, I have no idea. I honestly discovered it via Southern Culture on the Skids' cover.

be honest: how many of you knew "walking on the water" from the richard hell & the voidoids cover?
*raises hand*

wk, there are at least three songs left on your list that were hits - Hey Tonight, Sweet Hitch-Hiker and Someday Never Comes among them, plus several tracks that weren't released as singles but received heavy airplay - Ramble Tamble, for instance. And even some of what's left stands out - Walking On The Water (memorably covered by Richard Hell & the Voidoids) and the perennial favorite (Wish I Could) Hideaway. And even though the much-derided, end-of-the-road Mardi Gras features only three songs written / sung by John Fogerty, they're as good as anything he did before or since.

An amazing 51% of the 47 songs that John Fogerty wrote (or in one case, co-wrote) and sang for Creedence Clearwater Revival were either Top 40 hits somewhere in the world (20 of them!) or highly played FM radio hits (4 of them, which is probably an undercount on my part). In some cases, planned singles *weren't* released since the previous single was still riding high in the charts, theoretically robbing Fogerty of even more hits. And this doesn't include several more hits I'm not counting because they were covers! Something like 75% - 80% of these 47 songs are still well-remembered / played / covered today, which is pretty unusual since most big artists from that time period have a high proportion of "forgotten" hits.

Who matches this record? I don't think even the Beatles do (and their were *two* primary songwriters there, plus a few from George.) Maybe Dylan or the Velvet Underground, if one stretches the definition of hit to include songs frequently covered today. Fogerty's stuff still sounds great, fresh and exciting. Pretty freaking incredible, if you ask me. The sad thing is that among songwriters of his league almost no one was as tremendously robbed by their label as him.

Mo, these . . .

Long As I Can See The Light (double a-side single with Lookin' Out My Back Door - #2)
Hey Tonight (double a-side single with Have You Ever Seen The Rain? - #8)
Someday Never Comes (#25)
Sweet Hitch-Hiker (#6)

. . . were all hits. Those are the US chart positions. All of them except "Someday Never Comes" still get radio play here on Austin's oldies station.

Mind-boggling, the greatness of even the "filler," isn't it?

q for indie nerds, be honest: how many of you knew "walking on the water" from the richard hell & the voidoids cover?

for years i only knew "run through the jungle" as sung by lydia lunch

HAHA listening to that Lydia cover as I type!

occurs to me that the dead were the ICP of their era

Listening through shakey's list now and I think... this band is not for me. I just hear a huge gap in quality between their undeniable classics and the rest of the album tracks. He wrote these songs that have become massive standards, which the Grateful Dead obviously never did, and the Band has one or maybe two. But there's not a single album that I can sit all the way through. I'm not sure what it is.

As a pop songwriter, Fogerty is definitely up there with Lennon/McCartney, Dylan, Goffin/King, Smokey Robinson, Holland/Dozier/Holland, Bacharach/David etc. But as a rock band putting out albums at the peak of the album as a form, they don't really cut it for me.

Mo, these . . . were all hits.

Yeah I know and I debated quibbling, but they were just in the original list posted and I was just c+ping

yeah, sorry. I know my list probably wasn't accurate. I just threw it together quickly based on the songs I've already heard a million times to try to see what I was missing. Hey Tonight is the only other one I recognize though.

As a pop songwriter, Fogerty is definitely up there with Lennon/McCartney, Dylan, Goffin/King, Smokey Robinson, Holland/Dozier/Holland, Bacharach/David etc. But as a rock band putting out albums at the peak of the album as a form, they don't really cut it for me.

Yeah, it's interesting that - aside maybe from Cosmo's Factory - no one really ever talks about CCR albums. And to be honest, a weak point for me is their tendency to stretch it out on a song or two past the 5- or 6-minute mark. But considering that they released tons of material in a short time, and didn't sink to the level of doing "novelty" tunes, and Fogerty wrote 80% of their material by himself, I can sort of forgive him. I think in Springsteen's speech inducting them into the RRHOF, he talked about how Fogerty just got in there, said what he had to say, and split. The sort of economy in CCR's singles doesn't make for compelling album listening, especially when "deep" album cuts were often 7 minutes long - it makes the albums feel disjointed somehow, despite the fact that the songs all have a similar basic feel. I don't think the gap in quality is as big as you do - plenty of non-hits could have been hits - but yeah, they weren't really an album band.

The opposite is true of the Band, who never had a big hit as such, but whose first couple of albums are pretty perfect. I always got the feeling that later albums by them were searching for a hit, which lowered their power.

wk, I'd be curious how, if you listened to "Hey Tonight," you would compare it to their hits. To me, it's as a piece with them (and it was a hit), but clearly it's not one of the commonly played ones today. I ask because I'd love to get a sense of whether it's potentially familiarity with their hits that makes the other stuff seem lesser. Not just to you, but to other people. Give it a spin and let us know.

xposts
Also I didn't mean to make it sound like I care about "the album as a statement" or anything like that. I just care about hearing good songs I've never heard before and the more of them the better. When I started getting into the Dead, I just started buying their records from the beginning and the only songs I knew already were Casey Jones, Truckin, and Cream Puff War. And I basically like all of the material on those first 5 studio albums minus maybe a couple I skip on the first one.

I think the 16 tracks on WD/AB besides casey and truckin absolutely slay shakey's ccr list.

Hey Tonight is great. Someday Never Comes and Sweet Hitchhiker are pretty lackluster. Basically I think the charts are OTM re: CCR.

actually I take that back re: the charts now that I'm looking at the actual chart positions of their singles.

someday never comes always makes me sad

^^^ me too. Love this song so much.

the sequel to Chronicles is as essential as the first album imo

Definitely Creedence.

yeah Someday Never Comes is the most emotionally affecting song in their catalog - other songs are fun or angry or creepy but heartstring-tugging wasn't a thing Fogerty went for a lot (never wrote a love song etc) and he really nails it

man is "Tombstone Shadow" good or what

"Long As I Can See The Light" tugs my strings like "Someday..." too, but not to the same degree.

for years i only knew "run through the jungle" as sung by lydia lunch

^^^

I think I might even have heard the Gun Club cover it as well before I heard the CCR version!

yeah, Long As I Can See the Light, Who'll Stop the Rain, Have You Ever Seen the Rain?, and Lodi are all downers (in a great way though)

the problems with Sweet Hitch-hiker and Someday Never Comes = no killer hook on the intro, no great harmony vox on the chorus, no catchy lyrical hook on the level of "do do do lookin out my back door" or "rollin rollin rollin on the river".

Does anybody else feel like "Proud Mary" is the weakest of CCR's big hits? I've never liked that song - it's always bugged the hell out of me, in fact.

My least favorite of the hits is "Travelin' Band."

It's hard for me to remember what "Proud Mary" felt like to me before overexposure. It's not among my favorites, then or now. I actually still have a pretty vivid memory of hearing "Sweet Hitchhiker" for the first time on top 40 radio, heat of the summer, 1971. Love "Travelin' Band" although it seems like a pretty obvious Little Richard borrowing.

Proud Mary is their most classic, so it's the most overplayed, and therefore the most annoying.

I still remember this horribly annoying commercial "Penske, Penske, Penske Toyota" http://www.bobray.com/Piercey_Toyota.html (link to audio at the bottom of the page)

I agree that Travellin Band is one of the weakest. Feels like it just benefitted from the momentum of the other singles.

It's weird that they had so many top 10 hits but never made it to #1. It would be interesting to see a list of all of their #2 hits and what #1s they were up against.

The best version of "Proud Mary" is the one by Garrett Morris

Five consecutive #2 singles, I never realized that. Proud Mary was up against "Everyday People" by Sly and "Dizzy" by Tommy Roe.

yeah, here they all are

Proud Mary: "Everyday People" - S&tFS, "Dizzy" - Tommy Roe
Bad Moon Rising - Love Theme From Romeo and Juliet - Henry Mancini
Green River - Sugar Sugar
Lookin Out/Long as I can see - Ain't No Mountain High Enough
Travellin Band / Who'll Stop - Bridge Over Troubled Water

apparently at the time billboard counted those "double a side" singles as one

I have no recollection of Henry Mancini ever being played on my Top 40 station!

apparently at the time billboard counted those "double a side" singles as one

Only when both sides were played and when each received a certain percentage of the combined airplay. Each side had to have something like a minimum of at least one-third of combined plays. So I'm told.

yeah Someday Never Comes is the most emotionally affecting song in their catalog - other songs are fun or angry or creepy but heartstring-tugging wasn't a thing Fogerty went for a lot (never wrote a love song etc) and he really nails it

Totally. It's a heartbreaking song, and my favorite of everything Fogerty ever did. I think it's underplayed today because it's a little too affecting for casual, oldies-style listening. I don't really get the idea that it doesn't have a vocal hook, and harmonies on the chorus would only have ruined the presentation of the song as one man's private existential angst. Pretty stellar choice as the last real CCR single before they called it quits, too.

I don't really get the idea that it doesn't have a vocal hook

Lyrical hook, not vocal hook. "Someday Never Comes" is a pretty weak line compared to their biggest hits. It doesn't have the sing along quality of "down on the corner", "rollin rollin rollin on the river", or "doo doo doo lookin out my back door", and it doesn't have the visual quality of "bad moon rising" or "have you ever seen the rain". And even though there's some assonance going on with "Someday" and "Comes" it doesn't quite have the poetic ring of lines like "run through the jungle", "susie q baby I love you" or "come on the risin wind, we're goin up around the bend".

But apart from all of that, I just don't think it's that great of a melody either. And it doesn't have any killer riffs like Up Around the Bend.

agree that it lacks a strong lyrical hook. doesn't have much pop bite, musically. it's a moving song, though. that's the hook.

I like the song but yes it's a facile trope.

facile trope wouldn't be a bad lyric actually. I can hear fogerty singing that and rhyming it with rope.

fogerty didn't write suzy q tho right?

Odd timing, but, even though I would have known most of the earlier hits, "Someday Never Comes" was the first CCR song I experienced on the radio in the here and now. On that basis, it still holds great nostalgic appeal for me (listening to it as I type, and it sounds really good), but if I step back, it doesn't rate with the '68-'70 stuff, and I like "Hey Tonight" and "Sweet Hitchhiker" better too.

Suzie Q is a Dale Hawkins song

"Someday Never Comes" is simply a song about my parents undergoing a divorce when I was a child and me not knowing many things. When my dad left me, he told me to be a man and someday I would understand everything. Now, I'm here basically repeating the same thing really. I had a son in 1966 and I went away when he was five years old or so and again told him "someday" he would understand everything. Really, all kids ask questions like "Daddy, when are we going fishing?" and parents always answer with "someday", but in reality someday never comes and kids never learn what they're supposed to learn.
-John Fogerty, 1973

Nice quote. Someone was paying attention:

"My son turned ten just the other day
He said, 'Thanks for the ball, Dad, come on let's play
Can you teach me to throw,' I said 'Not today
I got a lot to do,' he said, 'That's okay'"
--Harry Chapin, 1974

fogerty didn't write suzy q tho right?

I wasn't trying to make any point about Fogerty as a songwriter, just why to me a song like Someday Never Comes is clearly not as good as their other, bigger hits. Which was all just an attempt at figuring out crustaceanrebel's question of "whether it's potentially familiarity with their hits that makes the other stuff seem lesser."

wiki says that "cat's in the cradle" was based on a poem written by chapin's wife, sandy. their source for that says she wrote the poem a year or so before HC began working with it, and that she based it on an unidentified country song:

"It was about a man and a woman sitting at their kitchen table and looking out to the backyard. They had a swing set and a sandbox and bicycle in the corner," she said. "They were talking about how it all went by so fast and how they could have spent more time, and now the kids are gone. That song put me in the mood for writing a lyric."

The Dead does have a heck of a deep catalog of original songs.

Their 'greatest hits'.

Truckin'
Touch of Grey
Sugar Magnolia
Casey Jones
Uncle John's Band
Friend of the Devil
Franklin's Tower
Estimated Prophet
Eyes of the World
Box of Rain
U.S. Blues
The Golden Road (To Unlimited Devotion)
One More Saturday Night
Fire on the Mountain
The Music Never Stopped
Hell in a Bucket
Ripple

Ok, for original songs of note…not including covers for which they were known.

Deal
Loser
Wharf Rat
Sugaree
Brown Eyed Women
Dire Wolf
New Speedway Boogie
Brokedown Palace
Black Peter
Bertha
Cumberland Blues
China Cat Sunflower
Ship of Fools
Jack Straw
Ramble On Rose
He's Gone
Mississippi Half-Step Uptown Toodeloo
Alabama Getaway

These tunes are original ones that they would use to often go outward on with improvisation.

Dark Star
Playing in the Band
The Other One
Bird Song
Help On the Way/Slipknot
Feel Like a Stranger

As for the lack of 'hits', I think part of it was they never really played the game and then oddly left so many of their classic tunes to be done on solo records by Weir and Garcia, some with the band backing on some in stripped down company. Part of this as they were leaving Warner's in the early 70s to start their own label.

They got down to deeper songwriting a bit later and I would imagine their rep probably kept them from ever getting on much AM radio where CCR flourished. Even in the studio most of these tunes are more like 4 minutes plus too and I'd say the compact genius berevity of some of the Creedence tunes definitely helped them getting on the radio.

I'd say more than a few of the Deads songs have had a good life afterwards being played by other artists.

Yeah, I don't think the Dead ever wrote any songs that were top 10 material (apart from Touch of Grey obv). Casey Jones was the closest but I'm guessing the cocaine reference held it back. LIke for that reason it's not something my mom would listen to.

album tracks on Willy as strong as the singles imo: Effigy, Don't Look Now are of a piece with Fortunate Son

New (Old) Warehouse Decree: EVERY FRIDAY is CREEDENCE FRIDAY

hate that Chapin song so much

you are dead to me

it was inevitable

i love CCR but it has to be The Band.

guys the point of this poll is so the CCR fans can get a W on the board. please do not vote in this poll unless you are voting for CCR I will be sad if they don't win, everybody deserves a win now & then.

love all these dudes, but at this point in my life it's the Band

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SjBBDJ5OiT0

Adam I don't know what your display name means but it is cracking me up somehow, ty

dick's picks 28. it's a winner.

Dick's Picks 3 + 10 are pretty good, although I'm not really well-versed on the late-70s. Dick's Picks 22 is just MASSIVE and really shouldn't be passed up on.

Yeah, 22 is the Dead record I'd play for Velvets fans who think they hate the Dead. This thing could go toe-to-toe with The Quine Tapes (and I think it even has more feedback).

22 is the great loud 60s one right? maybe the earliest live thing out?

this isn't that loud...it borders on actual rocking

it's like the Grateful Dead work up a little half-chub and Deadhead act like it's a raging boner

i feel like i should change my display name to some laboured wordplay on your display name and the song 'mississippi half-step uptown toodeloo' rather than engaging with your point

they have a word in common and are both p polysyllabic

haha do it!

22 is the great loud 60s one right? maybe the earliest live thing out?

The former, yes. The latter, I dunno...but everything pre-'68 I've heard has been decidedly more folkie than skronky. This is skronky.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

what the fuck? I thought it was closing tomorrow yesterday? Finish this shit!

it's like the Grateful Dead work up a little half-chub and Deadhead act like it's a raging boner

― Jandek at the Disco (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Tuesday, August 14, 2012 6:27 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

lmao

Having a hard time deciding between the Dead and CCR. CCR have more classic songs, though lately I've been listening more to the Dead (mainly WD & AB). The Dead's sound on those albums seems a bit richer & more rewarding of late, though of course they're not as tight & effective as CCR. Very tough one.

nate you gotta vote CCR. if the CCR dudes don't win it's sad times. plus I don't know if this helps but in case you didn't read through the thread CCR is like a giant boner. everybody loves a big boner so vote CCR.

lol

CCR Boner Jamz 2012

Boner the Bayou

Porterville-Gloomy-Walking on the Water is a great album-closing trio.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0zniQKofm-c

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i1PpTXtlnb0

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

nate you gotta vote CCR. if the CCR dudes don't win it's sad times. plus I don't know if this helps but in case you didn't read through the thread CCR is like a giant boner. everybody loves a big boner so vote CCR.

― steven fucking tyler (underrated aerosmith bootlegs I have owned), Wednesday, August 15, 2012 3:47 PM (20 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

haha i voted for the band!

i'm boner agnostic!

my point about boners is that the dead are only ever like "crazy" or "rocking" FOR THE DEAD.....the Dead are the Lawrence, Kansas of rock bands...like everyone in Lawrence is always like "Oh we have a really great local music scene.....for Kansas"...."Oh we have a lot of arts and culture....(for Kansas)"....."We're a really progressive city....(for Kansas)"

haha i was kind of starting to like the dead more too, like i dig american beauty and i was listening to the renaissance fairgrounds gig sometimes but now i'm back in h8r mode

it's an easy place to get to

haha, M@tt, have you ever actually been to Lawrence? It's really pretty nice, and much of the rest of Kansas is truly cornfields and Obama-is-a-Marxist billboards.

yeah I actually hear you & you're right - the Dead in rocking mode isn't anybody else's proper rocking mode, it's not an adrenalized thing. the only stuff that's really burn-it-down like CCR live is, like, the big snare-crack in St Stephen when they're doing it live in the late 60s. but it's like...its own vibe, which actually was why I hated the Dead back when ('you like this?') and is why once I came around it seemed so special

haha, M@tt, have you ever actually been to Lawrence? It's really pretty nice, and much of the rest of Kansas is truly cornfields and Obama-is-a-Marxist billboards.

― Ermahgerd Thomas (Dan Peterson), Wednesday, August 15, 2012 4:17 PM (16 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah, my sister and brother in law go there, at least once a year...and they are right. it's a great town....for kansas!

is it too late to do a write-in vote for kansas?
http://www.amiright.com/album-covers/images/album-Kansas-The-Best-of-Kansas.jpg

this thread has reached....the point of no return

I don't even have the words for how happy that joke makes me

lolllz

has anyone posted the complete royal albert hall CCR show yet? apologies if i missed it. it is so sick!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8D6vas5iLvY

Love Fogerty's look, flannel shirt & leather pants. Authentic working man on top, cock rocker on the bottom

is it true Fogerty only used solid state amps?

Guys, CCR, great as they were, should really come in dead last here. They only did one thing, and they only did it well, like, a third of the time. The rest of the time was spent playing shitty covers.

Dead >>> Band >>>>>> CCR

Yeah, Robbie Krieger used SS amps too.

is it true Fogerty only used solid state amps?

if this is true some of you guys need to hang your heads in shame, what the hell. I mean yes a lot of the metal bands I love use all solid state, but that's because they are all deaf anyway.

internet says:
After some research, I found out that John Fogerty played a Rickenbacker 325 into a solid state Kustom K200-4

kustoms are p cool

I think Krieger used Fender tube amps.

the padded ones are so dope:

http://www.broadwaymusicco.com/kust11.jpg

Acoustic 260 I think
xp

I was actually listening to the Creedence Live in Europe album recently and struck by the tone. Makes sense.

i've been playing this reissue acoustic bass head for a couple years, pretty great head

or maybe the acoustic thing was an endorsement deal only and he didn't use them in the studio. seems unclear now that I read about it more.

OK, I found a quote from Krieger:

My rigs have changed quite a bit over the years. The first amp I used with the Doors was a Magnatone with two 12" speakers. Then we got a deal with Acoustic, and I used their 260 model for a while. Ray was using one of their amps, too, but we both grew disenchanted with them after awhile. Then I started using a couple of Twin Reverbs that were rebuilt with JBL speakers in them by my friend, Vince Traenor, a crazy genius who also works on pipe organs. He likes to sneak into cathedrals and play the pipe organs. My current rig is two Fender Hot Rod DeVilles, with either 2x12 or 4x10 speaker cabs.

thread is going some bitchin places imo

i'm looking for the "half chub" option

Mississippi Half-Chub Uptown Toodeloo

haw!

http://s15.postimage.org/brees24hn/ampboner.jpg

that royal festival hall concert is indeed sick, and they got my vote. i've tried a thousand times to appreciate the dead, but the trustafarians at my high school made it impossible.

^^^ Har, A+ knob! (xpost)

CCR, great as they were, should really come in dead last here. They only did one thing, and they only did it well, like, a third of the time. The rest of the time was spent playing shitty covers.

Like the Dead never played covers, and some of them (cough*Chuck Berry* cough) horrendously. I actually really like all CCR covers, even the ones dissed upthread.

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

That's a smackdown.

creedence vs. band vs. allmans anyone?

okay, phew, i was worried i'd have to adjust the model

oh yeah, that feels good

VINDICATION

http://thefabulous80s.files.wordpress.com/2012/06/reagan-mondale-1984-electoral-college-map.jpg

Creedence - Reagan
Dead - Mondale
Band - Ferraro

guys...

"It's Just a Thought"

lol, so wrong

Moby Grape - Gary Hart

must be time for ccr vs. aerosmith

ccr vs. Husker Du

(Minnesota, obvs)

(and maybe Fugazi from DC)

CCR steely dan hall & oates

but maybe that's too obviously the marital aid

idk man that's seriously tough

I knew CCR would win, but I'm surprised it was so lopsidedly in their favor. Now that I think about it, the Band didn't enter the conversation as much as I'd have imagined. Could it be that a lot of us just aren't familiar with them?

http://www.gotomycodes.com/userpics/myspacegraphics/Nascar-Numbers/Nascar-Number-77.gif

Yeah ive never listened to The Band. I have that live movie though, one of these days i'll watch it...

that live movie's maybe the worst way to experience 'em - check out their second LP, the self-titled one. it's sublime.

I didn't vote - couldn't choose between CCR & the Dead. The Band have a handful of nice songs (and I love the Basement Tapes), but I don't know... I have "Music from Big Pink", but I've only listened to it a couple of times and it hasn't really clicked with me yet. Maybe I need to give it another try.

Results are ridic

Results are awesome. CCR heads above these other pretenders

creedence vs. band vs. allmans anyone?

― how's life, Wednesday, August 15, 2012 8:02 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this would be interesting

or simply allmans v. dead

CCR vs Jesus Christ, the Son of Man

CCR vs. Thor, God of Thunder

surprised by how CCR destroyed in this poll. voted for the band fwiw.

didn't vote, but wrote letter to Obama telling him to listen to Pembroke Pines 77

guys let's take all the "random band vs. vaguely contemporaneous band" poll ideas, write them down on pieces of paper, put them in a big bowl, and then set the bowl on fire

Maybe I'm wrong, but I think CCR would beat anybody in a poll except Mount Rushmore-type people--Beatles, Dylan, Velvet Underground, etc. Draw that line wherever you want to, and they're at the lower end. I think they'd beat the Allman Brothers handily.

well this poll came into existence because CCR finished 3rd in Dead vs. Yes vs. CCR and CCR fans were like "you can't treat my grampa like that, grampa is the best"

grampa v. CCR

that was Rush that lost the poll w/ the Dead and Yes

guys let's take all the "random band vs. vaguely contemporaneous band" poll ideas, write them down on pieces of paper, put them in a big bowl, and then set the bowl on fire

I wonder if there's some way you could just not click on the polls that offend you?

there's really not!

that was Rush that lost the poll w/ the Dead and Yes

Rush is the Canadian CCR though

You're both tiresome.

Maybe I'm wrong, but I think CCR would beat anybody in a poll except Mount Rushmore-type people--Beatles, Dylan, Velvet Underground, etc.

Well, they did lose to the combined forces of The Velvet Underground + The Stooges + Big Star, though they still finished respectably:

CCR vs. The Velvet Underground + The Stooges + Big Star Poll

im surprised that Algerian Goalkeeper hasnt started a CCR v. Ulver v. Sleepytime Gorilla Museum v. the top 100 bands of the 80s (not hair metal, not punk, not country) poll

these threads are some of the best talk on canonical rock band stuff on ilx in years imo

some dude's antipathy to these threads is weird to me - I think the worst of these three bands won by a landslide in this poll but it's still a good time, chill out some dude

Don't remember that one, but 25 votes is pretty good in that context. (Confusing calculation on the one side...)

somehow, some dude and thomp are both otm

did I mention that Creedence was playing at the u-mail-it place when I went in yesterday? several songs, too, not just the radio. it reminded me that if I ever get access to the master tapes of these records I must wipe all Fogerty's vocals without pausing to consider the historical effects of my actions

So what should a Deadhead-averse person listen to in order to not hate the Dead?

American Beauty

Dick's Picks 3 + 10 are pretty good, although I'm not really well-versed on the late-70s. Dick's Picks 22 is just MASSIVE and really shouldn't be passed up on.

― spanky hotel frogstrot (how's life), Tuesday, August 14, 2012 10:08 PM (2 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yeah, 22 is the Dead record I'd play for Velvets fans who think they hate the Dead. This thing could go toe-to-toe with The Quine Tapes (and I think it even has more feedback).

― Choogle Image Search (Tarfumes The Escape Goat), Tuesday, August 14, 2012 10:10 PM (2 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Perhaps a suggestion.

some dude's antipathy to these threads is weird to me - I think the worst of these three bands won by a landslide in this poll but it's still a good time, chill out some dude

― steven fucking tyler (underrated aerosmith bootlegs I have owned), Thursday, August 16, 2012 11:20 AM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark

eh BAND VS BAND SMACKDOWN is just kind of a dumb type of thread to me, but even if they're gonna go down tbh they'd just be more fun w/ more bands in the mix or a more carefully considered trio with stronger parallels and/or less predictable winners.

Start here!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pa1v0JquteQ

you don't think these three bands have strongly considered parallels...?

xp

"Feedback" from Live/Dead on a continuous loop.

naw man this was a good throwdown w/quality zings and some exposition, I got a window into why people like ccr so much a little & even enjoyed one of the ccr live clips. Then again I am a poll-option fascist, I dislike polls that have too many options - prefer limited ones. I thought the Band had a shot here!

these are 3 bands that definitely share a certain late '60s/early '70s americana rock zeitgeist but i don't see why you couldn't include like 10 other bands in that (xpost)

Hey this thread reminded me I was supposed to listen to the Band at some point, so it's not all a waste of time.

because polls with a whole bunch of options are stupid xp

Disagree those things aren't really what the dead does, and sorry they don't stand up to VU or lots of other skronky stuff, the american beauty is the dead at their best, a good country rock band with sine jazzy, out there tendencies, its well made and well produced

i don't see why you couldn't include like 10 other bands in that (xpost)

probably because those 10 other bands don't have loyal partisans here

Anyone remember when iatee did those march madness-style bracket polls? Those were so fun.

like you could include the Burritos in here, but why the fuck would you? and the New Riders, and America for that matter, but contrast is best when there's just a few flavors.

xp what's "out there" about AB? p straight country rock album imo

unless you wanted to throw Neil Young in here (he would've won btw)

xp

Stay out of the damn threads if you don't like them

Polls are just arbitrary conversation starters anyway, the results are meaningless

Neil Young vs. New Order vs. Public Enemy

No one gives a FUCK about the results.

I call that poll "NYNOP"

Steely Dan vs. tacos

Neil was the kind of Mount-Rushmore type I had in mind; positive he would beat CCR, though not resoundingly (65/35?).

Neil Young vs. Biggie

poll the potential polls

not sure i could trust a man who would vote CCR over Neil Young. and I love CCR.

American Beauty is not real representative of the Dead qua Dead. It has no guitar solos, for one thing.

I think the best CCR poll would be one where somebody like Sabbath was up against them so the CCR people could be like "I like Sabbath fine but come on, they don't have classic tunes like" etc and the Sabbath people could be like "have you EVEN HEARD Volume IV"

poll should have no end-date

there's a guitar solo on box of rain but it's not played by garcia!

13th Floor Elevators vs Little Feat vs Crosby, Stills & Nash

bitching about polls vs. bitching about hipsters

The Supremes vs CCR

it might be "fun" to design a poll whose results on ILM are guaranteed to disgust

like the Supremes vs the Pixies

earnest CCR vs. Beatles poll

Something I've been meaning to ask everyone: do you say "Creedence Clearwater Revival" or "Creedence Clearwater Revivals"?

Hollies vs CCR

you just say "CCR"

poll should have no end-date

this is a great idea tbrr

poll should have no end-date

lol, YES. Make them last five years at least. xpost!

Credeence Clearwater Revival in the morning, Credeence Clearwater Revival in the evening? What's the worst part of Credeence Clearwater Revival? How has Credeence Clearwater Revival changed over time?

another interesting thing would be polling bands whose aesthetics are clearly different - like, this poll is an attempt to frame three visions of what are seen as the same impulse. I don't see it that way (I don't think the Dead are really trying to do anything like what either CCR and the Band are doing, and I think the Band only in the same turf as CCR about half the time), but I think (say) CCR vs. Sabbath would be a "two different approaches to cathartic release" poll. Also it'd be fun to know just who is a big enough chump to vote CCR over Black Sabbath

I would probably have to go with Sabbath in that contest, seeing as how they basically invented a genre

Sabbath have really had next to no impact on my life. Liked "Iron Man" as a kid, that's about it. If you factor in inventing a genre, they're obviously heavyweights, but I don't like their music.

well they invented a good genre, i would still vote for CCR over the douche that invented 'moombahton' or whatever (xpost)

pitting anyone against sabbath is pretty unfair imo.

lol remember this

CCR vs. The Velvet Underground + The Stooges + Big Star Poll

Sabbath

did I mention that Creedence was playing at the u-mail-it place when I went in yesterday?

Man, those guys need a new manager.

creedence clearwater revisited vs. robertson-less band vs. furthur

Man, those guys need a new manager

it's two guys, neither of whom are named Fogerty. so they're probably about where they deserve to be imho

good ol shakey, never fails to let the joke fly over his head

skipped joke, moved on to tyler's post

But I lolled at both Tarfumes' joke AND Shakey's rejoinder!

The Dead had so much more range than the other two. To me it would have made more sense to do Dead vs. Byrds. And CCR vs. I dunno, Three Dog Night or somebody. The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band.

i.e. shit that my truck driving uncle listened to in livermore in the '70s

The Dead did more things badly, I'll give you that

and none of them well imho

you listen to music badly

This thread is chooglin

American Beauty is not real representative of the Dead qua Dead. It has no guitar solos, for one thing.

― One Way Ticket on the 1277 Express (Bill Magill), Thursday, August 16, 2012 10:37 AM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

the question was the best dead album for a NON dead fan, american beauty is their best conventional album, so i think that's a better starting point that OMG dude def start with the 15 minutes of dicking around with feedback on dark star at the cleveland speedway april 16 72

OTM. Although I would break it out more. If you like nuggets style garage rock you should like Cream Puff War, the early Warlocks stuff, Birth of the Dead, Mindbender, Can't Come Down, etc. If you like SF style psych like the Airplane, Fish, Quicksilver, Charlatans, etc. then I can't see why you wouldn't be into Anthem of the Sun and Aoxomoxoa. And if you like country rock go to American Beauty and Workingman's Dead. If you don't like any of those things then what are you doing trying to get into the Grateful Dead?

the question was the best dead album for a NON dead fan, american beauty is their best conventional album

This album that sounds like nothing else they ever did is the perfect gateway!

but if you do like those things and still claim that the Dead did them badly then you're either trolling, haven't actually listened to those records, or you can't get past some stupid idea of gross '80s-'90s deadheads.
xp

how does AB sound like nothing else they ever did!? it sounds like a logical continuation of other stuff they were doing around that same time.

Golliwogs > Warlocks

"Fight Fire" kinda sucks. I skip it every time.

I was speaking relatively

stupid idea of gross '80s-'90s deadheads.

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_WcTN-EKpH1c/S1YQogEhrNI/AAAAAAAAB_I/fVx6Zv_7yYw/s400/Grateful-Dead-Biography.jpg

^^^
"the dregs"

levon and the hawks (or the canadian squires) better than both the warlocks and golliwogs. tho fight fire rules, what are you talking about.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w1SJZGhg2QI

that's kinda lame

you listen to music badly too!

we all listen to music badly ;_;

oh well

for me a garage rock song with organ always beats a garage rock song without organ. piano is an immediate disqualification.

I'll agree that Fight Fire is hardly a standour cut on the Nuggets box. The Dead's entries on the SF Nuggets box don't even deserve to be called nuggets imho.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QqDjA3DqbcM&list=ALNb4maWNoT6TiTrC9-MF6z2Jt-FU9qNJL&index=33&feature=plpp_video

^^^has no hook

Diggin' the Canadian Squires, thx! I not listen music badly!

quickly scanning brain for great garage rock songs with piano, knowing that's going to bite me in the ass...

electric piano gets a pass

wtf that was supposed to be "The Golden Road (to Unlimited Devotion)"

xp

The Dead's entries on the SF Nuggets box don't even deserve to be called nuggets imho.

almost nothing on that set does though tbh

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QqDjA3DqbcM

almost nothing on that set does though tbh

we're in agreement here! there's a few exceptions (Psychotic Reaction, Chocolate Watchband etc) but ugh such a blight on the otherwise impeccable Nuggets name

I'm not saying the Dead made the greatest garage rock ever, but it's a potential way in for some people. It's how I got into them and then I just went in chronological order.

"leave me alone" is great, so's garage piano

Best way in to the Dead I think is Europe '72. Live songs (and the Dead are a live band above all else), and some of their best, but not necessarily laden with endless jams. I think its fantastic.

I've been slowly getting into the Dead over the past couple of years. American Beauty was the first one I heard, on the recommendation of a friend. Since then, I've tracked down everything up to Wake of the Flood and I have to agree that Europe '72 is the best place to start. Bill's description is spot-on: it's the Dead LIVE, but with minimal jamming and maximum emphasis on good songs played extremely well.

Bill is OTM - there aren't many better places to start than Europe '72, the version of "He's Gone" is really good and the long "Truckin'" is sort of a demo reel of how they take something really crude and make it stretch

starting with a triple lp kind of a big ask, but europe 72 is great. i like it cause there are no studio versions of some of those originals. think i posted this elsewhere, but the studio follow up to american beauty could have been:

Bertha
He's Gone
Jack Straw
Brown Eyed Women

Wharf Rat
Ramble on Rose
Tennesse Jed

could've included some of the Garcia numbers too -- sugaree or bird song.
the vol. 2 europe thing that came out last year is pretty awesome too. come on everybody, get into the DEAD.

vol 2 is great!

"Jack Straw" on Europe '72 is great; everybody singing and playing well, plus the live hall vibe is nice. Actually that whole LP side: Jack Straw/You Win Again/China Cat/I Know You Rider.

europe 72 is pretty heavily overdubbed tho, isn't it? at least the vocals?

That's what I've often heard. Makes no difference to me, long as the end result is pleasant.

first Garcia record not a bad place to start

xp oh yeah, i don't really care. did the dead ever do that again -- take live performances and sweeten them in the studio? seems like they got good results with that mix.

Without A Net has overdubs too I think.

Wouldn't overdubs be considered a net, though?

Bastards!

haha!

first Garcia record not a bad place to start

― Euler, Thursday, August 16, 2012 4:52 PM (6 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

love this record

is there some reason the first Garcia record is so hard to come by on CD? Seems to be out of print.

"Jack Straw" on Europe '72 is great; everybody singing and playing well, plus the live hall vibe is nice. Actually that whole LP side: Jack Straw/You Win Again/China Cat/I Know You Rider.

― Ermahgerd Thomas (Dan Peterson), Thursday, August 16, 2012 4:45 PM (26 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Amen. This is just an all time side right here.

Damn, I found Europe '72 to be impossibly tedious. I like everything that came before it better (never heard "Skullfuck" tho)

tyler, most of Jerry's stuff is impossible to come by these days, i presumed just due to the vagaries of the Garcia estate. there were a bunch of live garcia band recordings that came out in the early 2000s but I hadn't gotten around to buying. can't find them anywhere.

irritating! maybe the fact that they're putting out that saunders/garcia keystone box this fall bodes well for reissues?

according to garcia.com, you can now "preview" the garcia store. thanks, guys.

gonna go preview a 4 fingered travel mug, brb.

maybe i missed it, but has anyone noted that garcia played on this record? i haven't heard it... ccr meets dead?
http://www.shugarecords.com/images/products/large/5833a31e-a2d8-4059-8c62-502a7258e02c-0.JPG

kinda plodding and meh iirc

yes, youtube samples suggest you rc

as I said upthread Tom played with all those Dead dudes post-CCR

sorry, missed that! cool album cover though right? king arthur ... IN SPACE. WITH A KNIFE.

haha yeah. i saw that at a goodwill for $.49 and thought, boy, i gotta hear that. and i got the record home, and maann it wasn't all that necessary.

I think if im ever going to get into the Dead it'll be on its own terms. I realize it's good to provide a frame of reference but yeah if i want garage rock i'll just listen to garage rock and if i want whatever the Dead does best i'll listen to that!

I feel the same way about the live stuff. I guess I'm alone in thinking that Aoxomoxoa is what the Dead did best and if I want to hear long jams and improvisation I'll just listen to jazz, or Can or something.

I mean to me, what they did best was that transition period from organ-led garagey rock and roll into spacey hippie stuff and "weird old america" style folk and blues influences. I think they explored the intersection between those different areas better than anyone besides maybe the Byrds.

The Dead's entries on the SF Nuggets box don't even deserve to be called nuggets imho.

"Golden Road" is two minutes and nine seconds long! Good energy. Antiphonal singing on the chorus. Organ!

Shouldn't be excluded for sociological rather than musical reasons. If you want to argue musical reasons, I'd point out that Amboy Dukes and Vagrants and Blues Project were on the original Lenny Kaye Nuggets set.

Anyway, I like the idea of genres as expansive things and records like "Golden Road" and the early Big Brother singles are a big nexus point of garage and hippie rock music to me.

I guess I'm alone in thinking that Aoxomoxoa is what the Dead did best and if I want to hear long jams and improvisation I'll just listen to jazz, or Can or something.

oh man but live "St Stephen"s are so much better than the studio version when they get goin

alright, which live St Stephen should I check out? preferably with the vocals at least somewhere in the ballpark of being in tune.