Defend the Indefensible: Widespread Panic

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Because I kinda liked the little I heard. I must be getting old. Connotations be damned!

― Roger Fidelity (Roger Fidelity), Thursday, 3 February 2005 00:52 (twenty years ago)

I've never heard them! My dad's new next door neighbor is in God Street Wine though. What do I win????

― scott seward (scott seward), Thursday, 3 February 2005 00:59 (twenty years ago)

from what I've heard, they wail all over Phish (yep) and Rusted Root (not hard, given RR are the worst band in the world)

― Matos-Webster Dictionary (M Matos), Thursday, 3 February 2005 01:00 (twenty years ago)

Roger, do you like the Derek Trucks Band & Government Mule? You would probably like them.

― scott seward (scott seward), Thursday, 3 February 2005 01:00 (twenty years ago)

the 5 year old live little feat album that my dad (neighbor to god street wine) played for me last summer was better than any jam band i have ever heard. by far. with a quickness. it was great! and i don't even know who is in little feat nowadays.

― scott seward (scott seward), Thursday, 3 February 2005 01:02 (twenty years ago)

i do like govt mule ok - but not enough to actually, you know, buy any of their stuff. warrne haynes is to jam bands what james murphy was to death metal bands in the 80s and 90s. Kind of a freelancer, yes?

never heard derek trucks band - the only allman solo stuff i get into is dickey's.

― Roger Fidelity (Roger Fidelity), Thursday, 3 February 2005 01:03 (twenty years ago)

Beats the hell out of Phish. I've actually seen them, in concert, strangely...only because this cute acid-fried girl from New Hampshire (that I met at the tailgate party that they were holding in the parking lot at the arena I work at) wanted to dance with me there.

― Ian Riese-Moraine (Eastern Mantra), Thursday, 3 February 2005 01:07 (twenty years ago)

They've made two albums with Vic Chesnutt
The bassist is talented and played with J. Mascis a bunch this year
They don't sound much at all like Phish or the Dead or northern jambands and don't sound much like the Allmans or Skynyrd either.

― Justin Arnold, Thursday, 3 February 2005 03:52 (twenty years ago)

they're really nice guys!

― j blount (papa la bas), Thursday, 3 February 2005 04:18 (twenty years ago)

I think the Vic Chestnutt thing is good enough to defend them.

Also, "Everyday" had OK cover art, certainly better than their peers at the time.

"Space Wrangler" is not that bad of an album title.

"Ain't Life Grand" had a cute Moulding-like pop song on it about an airplane or something.

Their spiritual leader was Col. Bruce Hampton of the Hampton Grease Band.

that's all I've got.

― caspar (caspar), Thursday, 3 February 2005 04:52 (twenty years ago)

Oh, I guess the main thing to defend is that of all that crap I used to listen to, I can still remember most of Widespread Panic's songs. I certainly can't remember a single note of God Street Wine, Samples, Winebottles, the Hatters, or even the names of the countless crappy bands I'd seen at the Wetlands et al.

― caspar (caspar), Thursday, 3 February 2005 04:55 (twenty years ago)

Oh man, I just found their discography. Their album covers are now in fact reprehensible. It's all over, folks. They now have an album called "Jackassolatern" (I Swear.) And the art looks like this:

http://widespreadpanic.com/widespreadrecords/discography/jao.asp

― caspar (caspar), Thursday, 3 February 2005 04:58 (twenty years ago)

http://widespreadpanic.com/images/widespreadrecords/discography/jao.jpg

― caspar (caspar), Thursday, 3 February 2005 04:59 (twenty years ago)

Of all the jamband stuff I was subjected to when I lived with my hippie friend, they were probably the best. Maybe it's the Southern rock influence.

― Jeff Sumner (Jeff Sumner), Thursday, 3 February 2005 17:20 (twenty years ago)

they're the only jam band (unless you consider the samples, or the spin doctors, "real" jam bands) with real songs. that are good.

the 'jams' however are pretty much just slow, sound-oriented Southern-gothic murk (i.e. don't compare them to Phish because they don't have the same objective (tho ok phish sort of started going down a funky offshoot of that road circa 97). not that there's anything wrong with that.

My dad's new next door neighbor is in God Street Wine though.

who he?

― gabbneb (gabbneb), Friday, 4 February 2005 01:04 (twenty years ago)

or, Phish is all about the tension and release game - build and build and build then let it all out. Widespread never reaches those great heights because it never makes the effort to build up to them. But there's a consistent, steady undercurrent that's always there to ride.

― gabbneb (gabbneb), Friday, 4 February 2005 01:10 (twenty years ago)

i dunno his name. he just told my dad that he was or used to be in the band. are they still a band? i thought they broke up or something. my dad is also pals with a folk singer up there near saratoga who has had phish guys play on his homespun discs. he's another neighbor. and his OTHER neighbor down the street who he hangs with sometimes is that duplex planet guy.david greenberger. it's just a hotbed up there near the vermont border.

― scott seward (scott seward), Friday, 4 February 2005 01:14 (twenty years ago)

(xp: yes, they broke up.)

the key Phish moment is when the tension resolves in the glorious return to the tonic. the key Widespread moment is when overtones start washing into the tonic bath.

― gabbneb (gabbneb), Friday, 4 February 2005 01:15 (twenty years ago)

the key albums are Space Wrangler and my undersung favorite Everyday

― gabbneb (gabbneb), Friday, 4 February 2005 01:22 (twenty years ago)

Wait, is Widespread Panic drone-rock? Like a (more) classic-rocky Oneida? That sounds good.

― sundar subramanian (sundar), Friday, 4 February 2005 02:54 (twenty years ago)

I like the Panic, which might be saying a lot because I have an aversion to all the other khaki-pants jam bands. It might be the proximity factor (what Blount said is OTM) but Gabbneb very OTM in his sonic description. Space Wrangler is probably best but I also like Til the Medicine Takes quite a bit. The Brute albums are okay.

― don weiner, Friday, 4 February 2005 03:05 (twenty years ago)

not drone rock at all, but the drone might be the organizing principle for some of the jams

i also realized - the southern rock thing obscures the fact that they're easily the most rock 'n roll-oriented of the jam bands

― gabbneb (gabbneb), Saturday, 5 February 2005 21:49 (twenty years ago)

With George McConnell joining after Hauser's (sp?) death, Beanland is slowly getting back together under the guise of WSP.

― Curious George Rides a Republican (Rock Hardy), Saturday, 5 February 2005 21:56 (twenty years ago)

Houser

also, while it's not like they have much to say, i'll take their mild amusement over, say, Tom Petty's put-upon-ness (but maybe this is a class thing?)

― gabbneb (gabbneb), Saturday, 5 February 2005 22:03 (twenty years ago)

also, i unfairly left out the self-titled album, which is as good as, and perhaps even better than, the two i mentioned upthread. perhaps the one i'd want to present to album-grading skeptics. Ain't Life Grand is a little more hit and miss, but as Caspar noted, Airplane is a happy tune and there are a few others. it was about that album, though, that something annoying i can't quite identify started affecting their production.

― gabbneb (gabbneb), Saturday, 5 February 2005 22:11 (twenty years ago)

Dud if only for being terrorized with their music in every dorm room, vehicle and party I went to for four years by ball-capped douchebags who whined anytime somebody tried to slip in a Steely Dan or Pavement record. Of course, that's hardly WSP's fault (or is it?). They do have some great musicians (JoJo Herman and George McConnell from Beanland as Curious George noted) but I always preferred McConnell's interim stint with the drunken, raunchy honky-tonk Kudzu Kings. (live, anyway). It's just that so much of WSP is just so... unremarkable.

― Will(iam), Saturday, 5 February 2005 23:22 (twenty years ago)

that said, I do remember Space Wrangler being pretty decent.

― Will(iam), Saturday, 5 February 2005 23:26 (twenty years ago)

Jeff Colburn, the Kudzu Kings' most recent drummer, is my wife's cousin. We see each other two or three times a year — last time I saw Jeff, he tried to sell me one of his drum kits.

― Curious George Rides a Republican (Rock Hardy), Sunday, 6 February 2005 00:01 (twenty years ago)

a drummer friend of mine goes on and on about how good that guy is-- almost like he's slumming by playing the KK's unique brand of boozy rawk. That's not meant to slight the others by any means, all of those guys are excellent players.

― Will(iam), Sunday, 6 February 2005 01:14 (twenty years ago)

Part of me wants to buy the kit and see if he'd give me lessons, but another part says that starting to play an instrument at 41 would just be a stupid waste.

― Curious George Rides a Republican (Rock Hardy), Sunday, 6 February 2005 03:19 (twenty years ago)

Light Fuse Get Away.

"havin' a good time..."

― miss chievous grin (miss chevious grin), Sunday, 6 February 2005 03:57 (twenty years ago)

I'm having a frat-boy flashback- "PAAAAAAAAAAAAAAANIC, dude!"

― Morley Timmons (Donna Brown), Sunday, 6 February 2005 08:17 (twenty years ago)

WOOOOOOOOOO!

― j blount (papa la bas), Sunday, 6 February 2005 08:18 (twenty years ago)

three weeks pass...

OK, so I bought the s/t album from Amazon and, basically because i've been too busy / lazy to load the cd changer, it's been on something of a loop for the past three days. At first, I had it on in the background and felt kinda 'meh' about it - and I hate 'groovy / busy / snaky' basslines in rock music. But it was fine to have on while I worked. Then I started picking out a few songs I liked, and now, three days in, I'm really digging most of it. There are some really good songs on this record, and I'm kinda into John Bell's voice right now. Should I proceed or chalk it up to fluke and leave well enough alone? Am I on a one way train to Bonnaroo now?

― O'erbite Gentry of Brown Town (roger adultery), Sunday, 27 February 2005 09:15 (twenty years ago)

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