So my wife and I braved the weather sunday and caught the Allman Brothers show out at Nissan. It was a pretty good show considering the pouring rain and lightning, although they neglected to play some of their 'standards'. Warren Haynes was great as usual, but I was really impressed by Derek Trucks. He's predominantly a slide guitarist, but throughout the whole show his technical proficiency really shown through even though he is very laid back on stage. Definate jazz influence in his style. I was also really surprised when they broke out a bluesy version of The Band's 'The Weight'.
My only complaint was the sound for the opening band (Derek Trucks own side band). It was way to muddy and distorted. I was really concerned the sound would be that bad for the main act, but fortunately whatever the issue was went away when they started playing.
They started copying the Dead by selling CD recordings of the soundboard, so I took a chance and pre-ordered one as we were going in. The recording was phenomenal, and I forsee a lot of bands starting to offer this in the future.
All in all it was a decent show. If the weather had been nicer...
j :P
Sounds like a good one! I dig Derek Trucks, as hard as it is he seems to have found his own voice on the guitar. I saw a great show on BETJ called Studio Sessions, where they bring together unlikely combinations of players in the studio and show the rehearsal and recording process. This particular episode had Tuck Andress, Derek Trucks on guitars, Joey DeFrancesco on organ, Victor Wooten on bass plus a drummer, sax and flute players whose names I didn't catch. Derek;s slide really functioned like a horn as much as anything. Good stuff!
Bad sound for the opening act?? Does that ever really happen??
Sometimes the openers don't get to use the full compliment of power amps, that lack of headroom could acouint for muddy sound.
Once years ago I saw Larry Coryell open for Return to Forever who at the time were totally on the forefront of everything hitech in music. Coryells set was plauged with ugly distorted sound, I walked over by the sound board, guess who was mixing, Stanley Clarke, RTF's bassplayer. Of course when RTF hit the stage the sound was impecable, best I had ever heard to that point including the Deads wall of sound. Coincedence?
I think I saw Derek Trucks in Dylan's band a few years ago up in Maine. I remember thinking that kid is hot as hell.
Selling shows? What happened to trading them?
(grouse, grumble, gripe...)
You can still record and trade all the audience recordings you want, and you can trade all the soundboards you want, but the days of being able to download the soundboards (not so long ago) are gone, I think. They pulled all the soundboards off of etree and the llama this year at the Dead's request. (I don't know all the details)
j :(
The Dead doesn't need that money. It edges them closer to being just another band shilling for a buck. Frankly, calling themselves the Dead kind of does that too, in my opinion.
But, then again, I've not seen the re-constituted Dead. I hope they're great. I just like to see bands like that hold above the usual jazzing for any coin in sight...especially bands comprising very well-off musicians. Let the new, young, obscure bands to that struggle. The rich ones should be giving it away as much as possible, to other musicians, to the fans, to the communities they care about.
But, then again, again, this thread is about the Allmans, not the Dead, nor about my rants about money and how its lack or excess has a killing effect on Art.
(/imagines JRL nodding his head, having heard this rant many times :twisted:)
Well if everyone gets their music for free, how will the "new, young, obscure bands" survive long enough to get any good at all.
The situation is all fucked up, I'm sure glad I am not a young cat trying to learn the craft now.
And last I heard the Dead were still giving away millions with their various foundations.
If you want to go after greed, go after the big record companies making billions off the swill they call pop music. To me it looks like the Dead survivors still have to work to support the machine that enables us to have such great concert experiences, the dudes look tired still, even after watching Garcia fade away. May the universe bless them for all the gifts they gave us.
I think soundboards are like bootlegs and should not be sold, JRL. I think nicely packaged record store releases are great and should be marketed as always. But the soundboard issue bothers me because they were always free, and shared freely, and there was no issue about it. And, frankly, tickets to any known band these days are so expensive that I do not weep for any of them. They work hard, they do what they love, they get rewarded for it. The soundboards-for-pay is greed. People should be able to plug in and trade as always, online or offline, that's my view. Some bands market many of their live shows in stores, Pearl Jam and String Cheese Incident I believe both do this, and Phish too.
But I simply think that some aspect of the Dead's music should be shared like always. Someone had to wake up one day and say let's charge for sound boards, and the Dead members had to say, alright, knowing that it had never been done this way, knowing they don't need the money, knowing there are kids who go to shows who don't have much in their pocket, or miss shows and just want to share the groove.
It is the duty of working artists not to get so hung up in the making of money that they don't purposefully share some of it for free, as a gift to the Universe that skill, gift, hard work, and luck have landed them playing music, not shoveling shit or making Big Macs. The ones that do this, that share the groove when and how they can, will prosper in soul and reputation. The ones who jack the costs, like say the Stones and their 100 bucks a ticket romps, may make a mint but won't have the true love that artists have to earn, not simply expect.
There's no compromise in this. Make some, give some away, don't live a life that is beholden to accountants and t-shirt sales and venues selling bottles of water for ten bucks a pop. Do it for Art, not for fucking money, and don't forget it ever.
I think the Dead have done their share of contributing, and I am pretty sure they don't own much of their music anymore. But who was first at letting people tape?
They have never struck me as particularly greedy people, nor materialistic. And I do know that they have worked unbelievably hard to get and stay where they are.
I think there is a much larger 'business' behind the band than anyone really comprehends. Roadies, sound engineers, office people etc. All of these people need income and insurance and... you get the idea. The fact that they want to take care of their own isn't greed, its practicality. I have no problem paying for music I want to hear, packaged or not. I enjoyed being able to get all of the free music I was able to score, but that was a privilege, not a right, and that privilege was theirs to take away. So be it. I still have tons of music to listen to, and I thank them for it!
j :P
Well said, J. Precisely the point I was trying to make. For years the Dead were famous for paying way over the industry average, and having a large number of people on the payroll. They never were accused of being good businessmen. They ended up haveing to choose between staying on the road or having their people lose their houses and stuff. They kept on truckin in spite of the docs saying Garcia was in no shape for the road.
I don't fault anyone making a living with whatever talent or skill or gift they possess. Seems the way of things, and a good one, given that people are compelled to work for their bread and roof, and there are many who don't do what they love, or even know what that would be.
For me, however, the gift of Art is different. It brings with it responsibility. I'll repeat: it's a *gift*. There's no rational reason Garcia could play like a music god and most can't. He was lucky to get the life he did, and gifted enough to deserve his acclaim.
Gift. Whatever one believes about God or the Universe or the origins of life, it comes down to one person being born with an innate sense of rhythm and melody, and pursuing it through varied circumstance to a life of fame and plenty. Millions love Garcia, Clapton, Townshend, and musicians of their like.
To say one is privileged to hear them play is, in my opinion, to miss part of the point. They are privileged to be up there on stage, playing. They say it all the time. I rarely hear a great musician not say thank you, and seem to mean it. This may sound naive, idealistic, simplistic, whatever, but I truly feel that an artist of any kind--a Picasso, a Nathaniel Hawthorne--does not in the end believe he achieved his greatness purely by his own hand or sweat. Something else is involved, and that means the rewards should not be wholly kept.
The best live shows I've been at were events that everyone present generated. The band rocked to heavens, the crowd kept pushing them higher with their shouts and dancing, the light show made it all visually nuttier, the night or the venue seemed alive itself with the mystery and the miracle of the event. The joy.
The rewards should be shared, given away. A man has to eat, likes to sleep in a safe, clean bed, have some books, maybe a house with trees or a view of the ocean.
But multimillionaire musicians while the world starves and suffers? Concert prices that keep away many who want to come and enjoy? Deciding to make even more money by keeping some hippy kid from downloading a show on his computer? No. Sorry. Art by itself could save this world, and most times it just feeds itself.
Art is a miracle, inexplicable by any rational or scientific basis, and it should be treated thusly. Pulling it down to simply commerce, to a matter of how much can be made from every little crevice of dissemination, turns it into a whore's game. Art turned into a whore's game shades sooner or later into something lesser.
Cenacle: You are wrong on levels you (apparently) don't even know exist. As far as we can tell, the only one here viewing the dead scene as a commercial whorefest is you. And that's your interpretation of a situation you obviously do not understand very well.
First, when did it become your business to tell anyone else what to do with their money? (I don't care how it was earned.) The judgement rendered above sounds like something we'd expect to hear from an idealistic sixteen year old kid lacking real world experience.
The grateful dead freed the music. And there are tons of loyal dead fans who love the idea of being able to purchase soundboards of shows on current tours. Its a wonderful thing the band does. Heck, they still let us record shows and even allow us to post and download concerts recorded with our own equipment.
Ingrateful is an adjective which comes to mind........
Also, the band changed its name after Jerry died. Apparently that act wasn't enough for you?
Btw, I'm guessing that wet stain running down your leg isn't really piss, but rather the contents of the proverbial glass you had to dump to maintain the impression it was half-empty.
guild reps in training #s' .33 and 1/3
I never called the Dead scene a whorefest, it would take someone really not reading my comments to come to that conclusion. As for talking about piss running down my pants, that's completely nasty talk not really worth commenting on. I'm not attacking the Dead as a whole, or singling them out, though the soundboard issue did bother me.
As for me being idealistic, the fact that I have any ideals left in this often-crushing world amazes me. I believe in art more than your flaming foolishness could ever know. I have devoted my life, and it's a lot longer than 16 years, to Art. People at this forum who have been here a lot longer than you can vouch for me and my integrity without having to agree with me.
I not only stand by my ideals, I live by them. Further, I have loved rock and roll in times when it was popular and times when it wasn't. The bands I've named I've seen, some of them over and over. I see their shows, I buy their records, I think about them a lot, I play them on my radio show week after week.
I did not like the soundboard selling issue, and made that clear, but that does not mean I damn the Dead as a whole. I have questions, and some issues with them, but the respect and love I have for them runs deep as anything.
Discussing Art and commerce can be a sticky thing, people have a lot of different views. I have mine, and pathetic flames aren't going to convince me to alter them.
You want free Art, some of it from the years and sweat of my soul and life? Go to this link in this post. There's lots of it, and it's free. I don't sell my Art. That's my choice. And from that choice I look at others and see what they do, how they deal with the commercial aspects that gut this society of its hope.
Do I damn every commercial artist? Not on your life. Claude Monet was a genius and he amassed a fortune. Many artists have made it big, but many more, unbelievably many more, never do. Some choose not to. Some go for something other than commercial success. Some go for commercial success and artistic integrity both. Sometimes it works sometimes it doesn't.
This isn't a topic I take lightly, and personally insulting flames won't illuminate anyone.
Btw, the Dead didn't 'free' the music. The fact that anyone has to pay for it is a societal choice. Music is free, music is gift, music is miracle. For some music, and Art as a whole, is what they have in place of God. Music always will be free no matter what someone does in a concert venue or on a record.
Your posts in this thread are full of (unrealistic) idealistic poppycock, Mr Cenacle.
The grateful dead started the practice of allowing fans to record their live shows and to trade those recordings. That, essentially, freed the music.
As for their philanthropical efforts, I'm guessing they have managed to give away more money than most bands ever earn. And back in the day, free shows by this band were common.
PS: I went snooping and found an old thread with you bitching and moaning about Burning Man's "snub" of your proposed "copy and collate" artwork last year. Obviously, if you failed to see the difference between your clerical endeavors and the original work proposed by the accepted artists, you will never recognize the irony of your condemnations above.
guild chairman
I'm not much of an Allman bros fan myself. Some friends have always tried to get me to listen, though I just never really have. You think I should give it another try?
Simply put, yes.
j :P
Yes, indeed! Hittin the Note is a GREAT record.
One person's poppycock is another person's way of life. That's up to the individual.
As for my Burning Man project, people can view the online version here and decide for themselves what value it has:
http://www.geocities.com/scriptorpress/ ... store.html (http://www.geocities.com/scriptorpress/nobordersbookstore.html)
I'm proud of my project, now my wife's and my project, and people down in Black Rock City come back year after year to say hi and find out what the newest books are.
My favorite Allmans album is Idlewild South. Anyone else fond of that one?