In seeking out some tracks and an entire album by Jefferson Airplane last night, I came across an album by another SF band I’d always heard about but never heard, Sons of Champlin. The album I stumbled across is called Follow Your Heart. After checking it out last night, I’m tempted to say that I’ve finally found a SF band I can sink my teeth into: really soulful singing, nice ensemble playing, little of the melodrama that has always bogged me down with Jefferson Airplane. Along with the title track, I was impressed by “Children Know,” “Before You Right Now,” “Hey Children,” and “Child Continued.”
UPDATE #5: The Back Office thinks the transfer to the dedicated server may have taken! You’ll already notice that some of your snazzy comments from the past 48 hours are not appearing. This is exactly as The Back Office told us would be the case! So, kiss those snazzy comments and embarrassing confessions goodbye. As the veteran Townspeople among us poke around, let us know is anything is out of whack. Thanks for hanging in there!
Lately, I’ve been coming across a lot of articles online that attempt to show neophytes and the hippie-averse how to learn to love, or at least approach, The Grateful Dead.
For some reason, I love to read these articles, even as I remain apprehensive about listening to The Dead. But that’s neither here nor there.
I’m wondering what other artists that could serve as the subject of these kinds of articles. I surmise: Not that many. This is because The Grateful Dead are the Perfect Storm of bands.
The Reasons:
1) They jam. And even beyond that, there is something in the organization of their sound, something about the laid-back-ness perhaps, that easily turns a lot of people off.
2) They have a voluminous catalog, especially with all the bootlegs and whatnot. Steely Dan turn a lot of people off with their jazz chords and tasty licks, but they do not have a legendary live career and tapers’ community.
2) Their fans are hippies. Zappa doesn’t get as much hatred as the Dead, I think partially because people respect his lifelong disdain for hippies.
But I’d love to be proven wrong. Is any other band such a Perfect Storm of love and hate as The Grateful Dead? Did I miss any other aspects of The Dead’s Perfect Storm? Do let me know.
Townsperson jeangray, in a recent thread, raised a point that’s worth bringing to The Main Stage:
Perhaps we need to do a thread about artists we were really excited to see that turned out to be terrible live.
Perhaps we do. Thanks, jeangray!
The first artist who came to mind for me was James Blood Ulmer, about 10 years ago. Rather than the charging, repetitive stuff I’d come to love of his, his live show at some Saturnismine-approved alternative rec hall was nothing more than the shambling, out-of-tune noise that our tone-savvy friend Hrrundivbakshi probably hears when he hears the music of James Blood Ulmer. To make matters worse he had the last hippie, flute-playing woman on earth blowing along with this racket. As much as I wanted to like the show, it really sucked. Even more than the one and only time I got to see The Clash, on their Combat Rock tour. That show was merely “humbling.”
I once asked a French cafe owner why French pop music was so bad.
“Bof!”, he replied, “because we did not invent it!”
Great answer.
Yesterday a was given a mixed disc of French music. About the only name I recognised was Charles Trenet. Who was going before Charles de Gaulle stormed the Champs Elysses. But my interest was awaked by this tune by a band called Quidam, a trio who hit me like The Go-Betweens on Gauloises.
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So what else is worth a listen from the land of 1,000 cheeses?
