The Grateful Dead : good or bad band?

[beowulf]

YOu know you have a large cult following if your fans have their own name as a group "Dead Heads" and some follow you around the world for shows. I don't seem them as the best technical group of musicians but they have some good songs for sure.

 

[Drivesaitl]

That's just not true. Sheet music is an obvious counter-example. Folk music is another.

Music existed for thousands of years without recordings even being a concept, yet clearly many songs gained a mass audience during that time period.



Again, there are obvious counter-examples to this point. Have you never been to a play? A poetry reading? Who in their right mind would sit around reading the script to a Broadway show?

For that matter, Shakespeare in written form is famously, painfully boring on first exposure. Very few people can honestly say they've read all five acts of a Shakespeare play, fully understood what they were reading, and enjoyed it. But put it on stage, properly performed, and even a child can see the appeal. The magic of the performance is in the tones, the gestures, the little improvisational moments.



Again, I completely disagree with this, and especially as it applies to folk music. Folk artists are often self-trained musicans/singers and translate very poorly to the recorded medium. But listening to them in that medium misses the point. They aren't making music for driving down the highway or listening on the stereo in your bedroom. They're making music for the 5 people around a campfire one particular night in late August, or that one time when you were little on your grandparents' back porch. The very nature of the music is in the performance; and the performance is personal, rooted in a time and place. I see no reason to judge them by the same set of criteria that I would judge a Taylor Swift single on iTunes.

Interesting point on sheet music. I'll cede that one. TBH I'm not predisposed to thinking of it that way because I can't hear music off sheet music like some people can. I do have crystal clear memory of music, as if its recorded in my memory but no hearing from sheet notes. So I really do appreciate that point. You bent my ear on that one.

Disagree with you on plays. Give you an example. Many movies that are very like plays are based on novels. The Dinner by Herman Koch is a good example of this. Essentially its a play but written as novel. Most that develop into plays now were originally novels, short stories etc. But I don't share your apparent dislike of plays in written form. I can appreciate either read, or performed. Increasingly today I appreciate the plays less as they stray so far from the original written works and take imo too much licence departing from original.

One thing that it does bring up however is that I detest improv theater albeit in music I don't mind good jams and Led Zep for instance could do that for hours and still be very compelling.

The one point that I will continue to make, and others are making is that the mere act of exclusive identification, of deadheads stating their blanket affiliation, that has all the earmark of cult. Its branding, and stated allegiance to the brand. Only deadheads would, and do argue that their chosen band is the best on the planet and Garcia guitar god. Nobody else thinks this. Just the limited amount that love Grateful Dead and very little else. Indeed that latter part is odd at best. How much Deadheads turn off of other music, bands, and insularly praise the one to god status. Its all cult. Odd you can't see that..

 

[Drivesaitl]

American Beauty is their best album. It was recommended by a co-worker who is a fan of all popular music, I listened this album 20 years ago, expecting something better. It's not like when I discovered the group Spirit and mostly their album the twelve dreams of Dr Sardonicus. Oh wow, that was something to discover.

I was listening to a lot of music at my work a month ago. I like to listen to Steve Winwood songs from Blindfaith and Traffic. Then because of smart cellular phone the next song was a cover of Dear Mr Fantasy or The Low Spark of High Heeled Boys. I listen and said hey what's happening, this is not Winwood singing and the singer destroys the song, he's so out of tune. I went to the cellular and it was Grateful Dead cover of the song. If it wasn't of that, this thread would not exist, lol.

My oh my. Amazing synchronicity.

Throughout this conversation I was tempted to mention Spirit, 12 Dreams, or their body of work in whole. I LOVE that band. Quite frankly listening to a band like Spirit precluded me from being able to listen to something like Grateful Dead as Spirit are just so much more interesting in composition and style and musical form and background.

Nobody calls themselves Spiritheads and yet that band was unlike anything else. Wouldn't mind continuing the sidebar on Spirit if you are interested. Through my life they've been one of my favorites. I found them at age 12 so when I was still impressionable, and 12 dreams at that age was quite mindblowing. I love their whole catalog.

 

[Drivesaitl]

I'm not disagreeing with your assessment of these bands, but your conclusion that they were "better" is like saying beef Wellington is "better" than a slice of pizza from that joint down the street. There's the technical side to your claim, and then there's the experiential side. There is no law of nature stating that the technical side has to prevail.

Personally I don't care for the Dead, but a lot of people like the Dead a lot more than they like Eric Clapton. You can kick and wail about technical musicianship, but if the Dead moves their soul and Clapton leaves them cold, that's the end of the actual discussion. No amount of musical gatekeeping is going to convince people that their soul is wrong.

Ironically Deadheads are most prone to musical gatekeeping and stating defacto that Garcia is god. Indeed its a lot of the reason critique of Grateful Dead occurs in response to the Deadhead hyperbole and hype. So that the gatekeeping aspect is an odd point for you to bring up.

The only musical following I've felt similar about is IronMaiden fans. Albeit with that one theres a lot of them. Few band or acts have this kind of following where the listeners so much identify with the one band. Forever telling you they are the best band ever. Most people don't singularly identify so much with just one artist. I will comment that I'm not prone to being a consumer and if anything I pushback against such brand idolatry. Really what I see it as is putting up false idols.

 

[tarheelhockey]

The one point that I will continue to make, and others are making is that the mere act of exclusive identication, of deadheads stating their blanket affiliation, that has all the earmark of cult. Its branding, and stated allegiance to the brand. Only deadheads would, and do argue that their chosen band is the best on the planet and Garcia guitar god. Nobody else thinks this. Just the limited amount that love Grateful Dead and very little else. Indeed that latter part is odd at best. How much Deadheads turn off of other music, bands, and insularly praise the one to god status. Its all cult. Odd you can't see that..

I can't see it because I literally have not seen it before. The very few Deadheads that I've known have just been ordinary music fans with a passion for a particular band. I've never known any of them to be hostile at all, or try to recruit anyone into being a cult member, or talk down on other bands.

What I definitely have seen is people who get extremely obsessed with any given band, and talk about them like they're the greatest band of all time, even if other people (especially music critics) don't necessarily see it. We've all heard "Clapton is God" despite people in this very thread saying they don't care for him. I have heard someone say, verbatim, that Taylor Swift is the greatest songwriter of her generation. People dedicate their actual lives to K-Pop bands. Jam bands like DMB and "live experience" bands like Buffett and Barenaked Ladies are prone to having people follow them around the country as a lifestyle. This stuff happens all the time with all sorts of bands, and I can point to any of the names I just mentioned and say 'meh, I don't get the hype, there are much better bands out there'. I don't see how that's different with Deadheads. They really like a band that some people really don't like, that's all.

Ironically Deadheads are most prone to musical gatekeeping and stating defacto that Garcia is god. Indeed its a lot of the reason critique of Grateful Dead occurs in response to the Deadhead hyperbole and hype. So that the gatekeeping aspect is an odd point for you to bring up.

Again I have never seen a Deadhead being an aggressive gatekeeper. I have of course heard them talk passionately about how much they like the band, but I have seen much much more off-putting gatekeeping behavior from otherfanbases (lowhanging example: Radiohead fans).

 

[Drivesaitl]

Enjoying GD and saying they wer the best band to ever existed is like saying Steve Ott and Joel Armia are the best hockey players you could enjoy watching. Like if McKinnon, McDavid, Crosby and Kucherov never existed. Or like saying a Plymouth Volare 1976 is the best car to ever existed, ignoring the Mercedes, Cadillac, Porsche, Ferrari, Jaguar and Maserati. That can be an opinion and everyone is free to have his opinion and the conversation stops there.

Yep. The whole who is anybody to judge equivalency argument is patently false. At best its obfuscation of there being obvious difference in skill and talents. Its so simple to debunk that nature of argument and yet somehow its so commonplace.

Should anybody really argue that the Sex Pistols or rappers were the musical Equivalent of Emerson Lake and Palmer? The 3 chord junkies themselves wouldn't make that claim.

 

[Drivesaitl]

I can't see it because I literally have not seen it before. The very few Deadheads that I've known have just been ordinary music fans with a passion for a particular band. I've never known any of them to be hostile at all, or try to recruit anyone into being a cult member, or talk down on other bands.

What I definitely have seen is people who get extremely obsessed with any given band, and talk about them like they're the greatest band of all time, even if other people (especially music critics) don't necessarily see it. We've all heard "Clapton is God" despite people in this very thread saying they don't care for him. I have heard someone say, verbatim, that Taylor Swift is the greatest songwriter of her generation. People dedicate their actual lives to K-Pop bands. Jam bands like DMB and "live experience" bands like Buffett and Barenaked Ladies are prone to having people follow them around the country as a lifestyle. This stuff happens all the time with all sorts of bands, and I can point to any of the names I just mentioned and say 'meh, I don't get the hype, there are much better bands out there'. I don't see how that's different with Deadheads. They really like a band that some people really don't like, that's all.



Again I have never seen a Deadhead being an aggressive gatekeeper. I have of course heard them talk passionately about how much they like the band, but I have seen much much more off-putting gatekeeping behavior from otherfanbases (lowhanging example: Radiohead fans).

Nobody calls themselves Radioheads. I like them btw. heh But I don't try to convert, don't see the point of it.

I'm apparently older than you are. Garcia and company were no angels. Deadheads and the hippies that followed them were very connected to the turn on tune out ethos of the time and irreparably damaged a lot of lives. What they furthered in LSD damage alone is reprehensible. To glorify it and model it and produce and distribute it worse.

Jerry Garcia was another typical "counterculture" guy of the time glorifying and furthering drug abuse. Look what it brought?

I think it was you that stated Des Moines would experience nothing like a Grateful Dead party dropping acid into town. As if thats some kind of net benefit. For most parents that would be a nightmare wondering how your kid is going to be harmed by it. You seem to glorify it as somehow interesting and expansive.

Some people don't like the Grateful dead? lol Most people that aren't in the cult have a general meh take on their music and even their "best" albums. Your attempts at equivalency is a false argument. Connor McDavid is a better player than Kailer Yamamoto. this isn't an opinion. Everything is equivalent arguments are foolish. You think Garcia could cover all of Claptons work? Hendrix could play Garcias work behind his back. Garcia could not play what Clapton or Hendrix played. Period.

 

[tarheelhockey]

Nobody calls themselves Radioheads. I like them btw. heh But I don't try to convert, don't see the point of it.

I'm apparently older than you are. Garcia and company were no angels. Deadheads and the hippies that followed them were very connected to the turn on tune out ethos of the time and irreparably damaged a lot of lives. What they furthered in LSD damage alone is reprehensible. To glorify it and model it and produce and distribute it worse.

Jerry Garcia was another typical "counterculture" guy of the time glorifying and furthering drug abuse. Look what it brought?

I think it was you that stated Des Moines would experience nothing like a Grateful Dead party dropping acid into town. As if thats some kind of net benefit. For most parents that would be a nightmare wondering how your kid is going to be harmed by it. You seem to glorify it as somehow interesting and expansive.

Some people don't like the Grateful dead? lol Most people that aren't in the cult have a general meh take on their music and even their "best" albums. Your attempts at equivalency is a false argument. Connor McDavid is a better player than Kailer Yamamoto. this isn't an opinion. Everything is equivalent arguments are foolish. You think Garcia could cover all of Claptons work? Hendrix could play Garcias work behind his back. Garcia could not play what Clapton or Hendrix played. Period.

So like I’ve been saying throughout the thread. This seems rather more a personal issue than a musical one.

All you needed to say was “I hate this band and I won’t hear any argument in their defense”. Could have saved us some time.

 

[Drivesaitl]

So like I’ve been saying throughout the thread. This seems rather more a personal issue than a musical one.

All you needed to say was “I hate this band and I won’t hear any argument in their defense”. Could have saved us some time.

Not at all. I understand the derivation of folk music, where it came from. The musical form was limited. I can appreciate Seeger, Guthrie etc for their time. But that form was limited. With the availability of many more instruments it just made for artists adept at much more complicated composition playing varied instruments. I mean could you even argue Jimmy Page, John Paul Jones, fervently sought after session musicians were equaled by Jerry Garcia and the ilk.

The Brit explosion of music world over occurred due to what a hotbed of artists were growing up in the London and Brit scene.

Not sure how my dislike of entities peddling deleterious chemicals on the population is a "personal issue" Anybody being honest should have this issue of people like Timothy Leary, Garcia, Owlsley etc. They were drug merchants, worst possible drugs of the time harming people. The version that this was some kind of innocence was absolute nonsense. I'm old enough to remember the drug casualties, the lost minds, the people that died from OD. These people furthering the usage of really harmful substances were a menace of the era.

 

[tarheelhockey]

Not sure how my dislike of entities peddling deleterious chemicals on the population is a "personal issue" Anybody being honest should have this issue of people like Timothy Leary, Garcia, Owlsley etc. They were drug merchants, worst possible drugs of the time harming people. The version that this was some kind of innocence was absolute nonsense. I'm old enough to remember the drug casualties, the lost minds, the people that died from OD. These people furthering the usage of really harmful substances were a menace of the era.

I'm not arguing with your take on drugs, I'm saying it's irrelevant to the question of whether the Grateful Dead were a good or bad band.

As far as their being a scourge on society, that's a pretty easy case to make for any number of musical acts. Yes, a lot of musicians are shitty people who play the "all the cool kids are doing it" card to promote shitty antisocial behavior for profit. That summarizes the music industry over the past 75 years.

 

[Drivesaitl]

I'm not arguing with your take on drugs, I'm saying it's irrelevant to the question of whether the Grateful Dead were a good or bad band.

As far as their being a scourge on society, that's a pretty easy case to make for any number of musical acts. Yes, a lot of musicians are shitty people who play the "all the cool kids are doing it" card to promote shitty antisocial behavior for profit. That summarizes the music industry over the past 75 years.

It isn't because Grateful Dead was about the drugs. I mean manufacturing them and bringing them to town and selling them. Dead concerts were essentially Walmart for drugs. Most people know this, people coming out know this. it was diabolical for the band to be involved and furthering any of that.

The DEA were even targeting Deadheads and the concerts and band for decades for more than ample reason. Grateful Dead and drug pedaling were synonymous.

The Grateful Dead wouldn't even be known were it not for Owlsley. you've heard of him right?

The Trippy Life of the LSD Manufacturer Who ‘Helped Create the 60s’

Augustus Owsley Stanley III was the LSD chemist and audio maestro who not only created the Grateful Dead's "Wall of Sound" and inspired the band's dancing bear iconography, but also created the drugs that sparked the "spirit of that era."

www.vice.com

You made another false equivalency. if I go to a Radiohead concert they weren't the ones selling or peddling the drugs. Kind of an important distinction.

Owlsleys comments that he knew the "Grateful Dead were bigger than the Beatles" also typifies the ridiculous hyperbole. Apparently it takes a head full of acid to think something like that. But its just the same sort of thing that results in pushback to the ridiculous claims of deadheads.

 

[Catanddogguitarrr]

Yep. The whole who is anybody to judge equivalency argument is patently false. At best its obfuscation of there being obvious difference in skill and talents. Its so simple to debunk that nature of argument and yet somehow its so commonplace.

Should anybody really argue that the Sex Pistols or rappers were the musical Equivalent of Emerson Lake and Palmer? The 3 chord junkies themselves wouldn't make that claim.

Lol, if someone says that, he's an idiot !
Used to be a fan of this band, At age 12.

 

[tarheelhockey]

It isn't because Grateful Dead was about the drugs. I mean manufacturing them and bringing them to town and selling them. Dead concerts were essentially Walmart for drugs. Most people know this, people coming out know this. it was diabolical for the band to be involved and furthering any of that.

The DEA were even targeting Deadheads and the concerts and band for decades for more than ample reason. Grateful Dead and drug pedaling were synonymous.

The Grateful Dead wouldn't even be known were it not for Owlsley. you've heard of him right?

The Trippy Life of the LSD Manufacturer Who ‘Helped Create the 60s’

Augustus Owsley Stanley III was the LSD chemist and audio maestro who not only created the Grateful Dead's "Wall of Sound" and inspired the band's dancing bear iconography, but also created the drugs that sparked the "spirit of that era."

www.vice.com

You made another false equivalency. if I go to a Radiohead concert they weren't the ones selling or peddling the drugs. Kind of an important distinction.

Owlsleys comments that he knew the "Grateful Dead were bigger than the Beatles" also typifies the ridiculous hyperbole. Apparently it takes a head full of acid to think something like that. But its just the same sort of thing that results in pushback to the ridiculous claims of deadheads.

Again this is all irrelevant to “good or bad band”.

Miles Davis was mentioned upthread. Awful, awful human being. Terrorized the women in his life, and the psychotic violence was something that he personally did, not something “his people” did.

If someone made a thread titled “Miles Davis: good musician or bad musician?” and I kept turning the conversation to the personal tumult that drove his artistic expression, and how it’s inseparable from the music, and therefore the answer to the question is “Miles Davis was a bad musician and his fans were complicit in making an awful person into a music god”… you’d rightly respond that I’m talking gibberish and that the man was a good musician whether he was a good guy or not.

 

[Drivesaitl]

Again this is all irrelevant to “good or bad band”.

Miles Davis was mentioned upthread. Awful, awful human being. Terrorized the women in his life, and the psychotic violence was something that he personally did, not something “his people” did.

If someone made a thread titled “Miles Davis: good musician or bad musician?” and I kept turning the conversation to the personal tumult that drove his artistic expression, and how it’s inseparable from the music, and therefore the answer to the question is “Miles Davis was a bad musician and his fans were complicit in making an awful person into a music god”… you’d rightly respond that I’m talking gibberish and that the man was a good musician whether he was a good guy or not.

You'd made another false equivalency in your last reply saying that all bands are like this and for the last 75yrs. i rebutted that. Why wouldn't I?

So that the rundown on Owlsley, Garcia, and the band itself being involved, wantonly, in the distribution of illicit drugs further to their concerts was expected reply. Again I was rebutting your specific point.

Posts later and you still don't follow that part of what Grateful Dead will rightfully be remembered for is despicable furthering of LSD and other drug abuse. How can people NOT look at that in relation to the band? Your Miles Davis point still misses the mark. The Grateful Dead were harming their own unwitting audience. Even several instances of spiking peoples drinks existed. Owlsley was infamous for this.

You also missed the point that people needing to be flying high on psychedelics to enjoy the band doesn't exactly support that the band is any good.

 

[PANARIN BREAD FAN]

dead heads have a very low bar if they think garcia is a guitar god.

read somewhere that garcia was influenced by al dimeola, who was the yngwie malsteen of the 70's. the guitar players i listen to that were influenced by dimeola you can hear it in their playing. garcia not so much. awful dribs and drabs here and there.

i saw some mentions of spirit.... the band i believe are well known for forming the template of stairway to heaven. got a line on you is a cool tune. i will further check them out. thanx

 

[PANARIN BREAD FAN]

You'd made another false equivalency in your last reply saying that all bands are like this and for the last 75yrs. i rebutted that. Why wouldn't I?

So that the rundown on Owlsley, Garcia, and the band itself being involved, wantonly, in the distribution of illicit drugs further to their concerts was expected reply. Again I was rebutting your specific point.

Posts later and you still don't follow that part of what Grateful Dead will rightfully be remembered for is despicable furthering of LSD and other drug abuse. How can people NOT look at that in relation to the band? Your Miles Davis point still misses the mark. The Grateful Dead were harming their own unwitting audience. Even several instances of spiking peoples drinks existed. Owlsley was infamous for this.

You also missed the point that people needing to be flying high on psychedelics to enjoy the band doesn't exactly support that the band is any good.

just an outside the box question i pose to you::

this lsd stuff-the fans that use this stuff regularly-what are your thoughts? is it mind control of sorts that contributes to the band popularity through the use of lsd?

 

[Drivesaitl]

just an outside the box question i pose to you::

this lsd stuff-the fans that use this stuff regularly-what are your thoughts? is it mind control of sorts that contributes to the band popularity through the use of lsd?

Not in this context that I would think. but the usage for LSD for mind control usage and experiments has certainly been well documented.

As far as Grateful Dead its just a stoner audience looking to score to get high to see a show. My comments were more to the effect that people needed the LSD for it to be a happening. I mean there were "be in's all over in the 60's where the entertainment was basically watching everybody fry. Maybe a pickup band playing somewhere but nobody even knows who. Point is during a communal acid trip theres um, no entertainment even required..

It just doesn't take much when high on LST to be tripping out on something. It could be anything.

 

[tarheelhockey]

You'd made another false equivalency in your last reply saying that all bands are like this and for the last 75yrs. i rebutted that. Why wouldn't I?

I didn’t say that, but it’s not a relevant distraction from the topic anyway.

Posts later and you still don't follow that part of what Grateful Dead will rightfully be remembered for is despicable furthering of LSD and other drug abuse. How can people NOT look at that in relation to the band? Your Miles Davis point still misses the mark. The Grateful Dead were harming their own unwitting audience. Even several instances of spiking peoples drinks existed. Owlsley was infamous for this.

You also missed the point that people needing to be flying high on psychedelics to enjoy the band doesn't exactly support that the band is any good.

I’m not missing the point, I get what you’re saying. It’s just not ****ing relevant. There are all sorts of bands that people listen to while on drugs, who do bad things and push bad messages. Half the music on the radio was performed by awful people, produced by awful people, and carries some sort of socially harmful or (at best) useless message. So what? This is news?

For whatever reason you’ve got a thing out for this specific band. I don’t really get that, but again — it’s not relevant anyway. Unless the thread is really just here to soapbox and condescend to people’s tastes that you disagree with. Which actually does seem to be the large majority of the posts here, to be fair.

I generally don’t wander into music threads on this forum and when I do, I’m often reminded why I don’t. It’s not enough for people to just like a band, they have to be reminded why they shouldn’t like them and it’s actually morally wrong to like them. And somehow they are the gatekeepers in all this.

 

[VMBM]

Should anybody really argue that the Sex Pistols or rappers were the musical Equivalent of Emerson Lake and Palmer? The 3 chord junkies themselves wouldn't make that claim.

Are you talking just about playing ability here, or are you claiming that ELP objectively made better music than the Sex Pistols and it's not even debatable?! If the latter, well, the Pistols aren't my favourite band by any means, but I'd certainly rather listen to Never Mind the Bollocks than any ELP record... Genesis (=my fav prog band) would be a different matter.

Some of the best songs ever written have three chords (or less!), and the "more complex = better" thinking is silly IMO.

 

[Catanddogguitarrr]

You'd made another false equivalency in your last reply saying that all bands are like this and for the last 75yrs. i rebutted that. Why wouldn't I?

So that the rundown on Owlsley, Garcia, and the band itself being involved, wantonly, in the distribution of illicit drugs further to their concerts was expected reply. Again I was rebutting your specific point.

Posts later and you still don't follow that part of what Grateful Dead will rightfully be remembered for is despicable furthering of LSD and other drug abuse. How can people NOT look at that in relation to the band? Your Miles Davis point still misses the mark. The Grateful Dead were harming their own unwitting audience. Even several instances of spiking peoples drinks existed. Owlsley was infamous for this.

You also missed the point that people needing to be flying high on psychedelics to enjoy the band doesn't exactly support that the band is any good.

Yes, the drug factor helped to raise the band in music sphere. Musically, I find they sucked and I'm not the only one saying it. Maybe it's not a coincidence among all my friends who listened music in the era they were popular, we shared the new stuff we discovered, we listened fusion jazz (Corea, Weather Report, Metheny) when rock was getting corporate prefabric commnercial stuff. We went to psychedelic german electronic music of Klauss Shulze and Jean-Michel Jarre. We listened to Allen Parsson Project, well not that good, lol. Oh I remember when Phil Collins played on that progressive rock experimental record called Marscape, omg, such memories. One of my friend and other pals were big fans of Zappa. So many records, his company was releasing a lot of studio practice stuff but fans like me enjoyed it anyway. And then came the 80's with so many good stuff.

All my friends had a certain taste in music and some played in bands that were pretty good. I couldn't because I never learned an instrument at the time. But I was an illustrator. I made the comics involving students and teachers in high school.

All those years, all those musicians and music fans I met, never someone told me I should listen to Grateful Dead, except later age 42 a co-worker told me if I like folk rock the GD did one or 2 good albums and I got American Beauty in mp3 files. He said the music is good on this album, this is their very best, the main problem in that group is nobody is a good singer. It get worse when they do harmonies. But on American Beauty they had help from Crosby Stills and Nash.

 

[Catanddogguitarrr]

dead heads have a very low bar if they think garcia is a guitar god.

read somewhere that garcia was influenced by al dimeola, who was the yngwie malsteen of the 70's. the guitar players i listen to that were influenced by dimeola you can hear it in their playing. garcia not so much. awful dribs and drabs here and there.

i saw some mentions of spirit.... the band i believe are well known for forming the template of stairway to heaven. got a line on you is a cool tune. i will further check them out. thanx

Garcia is like the flower who grows on a pile of turds. GD was a lazy band. A lot of innovative stuff was happening in any style of music and GD was waterproof to that, they were stucked in year 1968 of their own stuff.

As for Spirit, they were one of the first group to make psychedelic progressive rock at a good level. All the expectations of a psychedelic group like Deads claim and don't deliver, Spirit does it all. They are innovative, they have sound effets intro, they use electonic keyboards, they have jazz, rock, folk, funk, they were way more than just the story of the plagiarism of Stairway on the tune Taurus. Randy California (Wolf) was part of the Hendrix band before 1967 but couldn't be included in the Hendrix new band because Randy was 17 and couldn't tour with them offshore. So Randy formed his own band including his father in law, a 40 yrs jazz drummer who inspired their song Mr. Skin (he was bald).

 

[Gordon Lightfoot]

To enjoy their live stuff, I need to accept that some of it will miss while some will hit. Safe to assume being at a show during their golden days would have been fun and made the music better.

 

[Roo Returns]

I don't get the hate for them. I'm not a Grateful Dead "fan" by any means of the imagination but to call them a "bad" band or "worst band ever" is a little much.

Here's a fact:

-They didn't always write 30 minute jam tunes: go listen to Shakedown Street and much later Touch of Grey, the later was a hit in the late 80s.

Here's some opinions:

-As contemporaries, The Allman Brothers Band was much more interesting.

-Dave Matthews Band (one of the prodigies of The Grateful Dead) from 1998-2005 had a much worse fan base.

-Some of the members still play live to this day in The Dead with John Mayer and comp so that talks of their influence.

-Compared to today the Dead would be amazing because 75% of modern popular (emphasis on the word popular or you can sub in radio) is a bunch of models and influencers with autotune cosplaying as musicians.


Bottom line: they were a band that had a style, sold a lot of records, and was part of a counterculture that is still going to this day (in a much smaller capacity).

 

[Drivesaitl]

Are you talking just about playing ability here, or are you claiming that ELP objectively made better music than the Sex Pistols and it's not even debatable?! If the latter, well, the Pistols aren't my favourite band by any means, but I'd certainly rather listen to Never Mind the Bollocks than any ELP record... Genesis (=my fav prog band) would be a different matter.

Some of the best songs ever written have three chords (or less!), and the "more complex = better" thinking is silly IMO.

Is this really complicated? All the members of ELP were musical virtuosos. They could all play numerous instruments, sing, compose, and play a wide range of material. With any musician there exists a fluency and competency of greater or lesser skill.

Sid vicious couldn't even play a Bass. he couldn't play it.

Fwiw I like both. Matlock was a good Bass guitarist and the drumming was tight enough. The lead guitar had its signature sound.

So that its possible to like both, and which is more challenging to play, which, are different things. I like both, but musically speaking no question ELP is much more complex.

I'm trying to fathom how somebody could like Genesis and not like ELP. heh. Why not like both? Maybe you haven't given ELP a chance.

 

[Gordon Lightfoot]

I like Jerry Garcia’s voice a lot. It’s soothing and pleasant. But man Bob Weir and Phil Lesh have annoying voices.