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HollisBrown posted:Can we also talk about how great a lyricist Robert Hunter was? I am of the opinion that he was every bit as good as either Bob Dylan or Paul Simon. Just reading the lyrics to "Ripple" can send chills up my spine. Yeah, I'm not really a fan of most the Dead's music other than for sentimental reasons (my first girlfriend in high school was a Deadhead, and I grew up basically in their homeland, waited for the bus after school every day at Kepler's Books etc) but Robert Hunter is an incredibly powerful lyricist. I love reading the lyrics to Dead songs, the guy is just amazingly poetic and made such great use of his extensive literary knowledge, I hope he gets real recognition someday outside of the Dead's world.
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Aug 18, 2013 23:10
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h_double posted:I was clicking links on youtube and came across this, it's 15 minutes of Bob & Jerry on David Letterman, from 1982. They play "Deep Elum Blues" and "Monkey & The Engineer", and the conversation with Dave is a lot of fun. Man I watched this and listened to their Deep Ellum Blues and I was all "man this is so great, I forgot how good these guys could be, I should listen to the Dead more" and then they started the Monkey song and Bob starting singing and something about his voice and tone and the way his eyes were kinda bugging out, just ugh
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Sep 11, 2013 03:09
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Roark posted:They could do a 5 minute long "Me and My Uncle" or a 35 minute long Dark Star. Phish has a lot of short songs that don't turn into extended jams, especially their country and bluegrass style songs. I'll certainly grant that their lyrics are never worthwhile compared to the Dead, but your other comments about them seem just as ignorant as the idea of lumping them and the Dead together. A lot of Phish's longer songs are actually complex progressive rock songs, not random droney jams, and there is definitely a high level of musicianship in what they do as well. While their guitarist is certainly guilty of some awful live moments, he's actually a great musician when he's not completely hosed up, and while I don't listen to them much anymore I still consider Page McConnell one of my favorite rock keyboardists, its hard to deny the level of serious musicianship in his work. Earwicker fucked around with this message at 16:01 on Oct 22, 2013 |
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Oct 22, 2013 15:57
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Yeah I was lucky enough to have gotten to see them a couple times before he got really bad. Anyway I agree they have put on a lot of terrible shows largely thanks to Trey's drug use, and they'd have been a far better band if they'd made him go to rehab or even fired him- I'm just saying that they weren't all about droney jams, they are all actually very seriously good musicians who could be very tight and who could also write good shorter songs in a wide variety of styles as well - they all them have great rock, country, and jazz chops. A lot of wasted potential in a way.
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Oct 22, 2013 16:43
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huh I guess you're right, I hadn't really paid attention to them in years. I heard about his arrest but didn't realize he'd been clean since then. Good for him. And yeah they definitely sound more derivative of 70's prog rock than derivative of the Dead. However they used to cover Dead songs in their early days which I think is where that association started.
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Oct 22, 2013 17:22
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