| Subject: Re: HEY JOHN AND ROB kings of DSO |
Author:
John Kadlecik
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Date Posted: 14:51:51 09/01/05 Thu
In reply to:
Bootsy
's message, "Re: HEY JOHN AND ROB kings of DSO" on 07:55:31 09/01/05 Thu
Oh, shall I surrender to the temptation....
Did OAITW add drums? flutes? horns? electric instruments? No. Did they play any of Jerry's originals? No (granted they did play a number of Peter's originals, but he was the only actual "Bluegrass Boy" of the band.) Did David throw in any Carribean, Bebop, or Klezmer riffs as he would in his Dawg music style? No. Did the band drop into blues shuffle for kicks? No. What OAITW did was faithfully, lovingly, and expertly perform in the classic Bill Monroe bluegrass quintet style for the sheer joy of it.
Now, for the record, some bio info for clarification:
Kevin Rosen- began playing music in the 60's, saw his first Dead show in '71, played blues, country, and rock in a number of modestly successful band around Chicago, joined Chicago-based Uncle Jon's Band aound '89, released a full length CD of original music with UJB in '92, co-founded DSO in '97.
Rob Eaton- began playin guitar in the early 70's, saw his first Dead show in '74, co-founded Border Legion (a band that played original music in its early years) in the mid-later 70's, became a major player in the Dead's taping scene (also in the mid-late 70's), went on to become a Grammy winning studio engineer in the 80's and 90's working with the likes of Bob Dylan, SRV, George Harrison, and Pat Metheny, kept playing with Border Legion until joining DSO in '99.
Rob Koritz and Dino English- both started playing in the '70s, played in numerous bands in the 80's & 90's, including bands that played both intepretive (Vitamen A, Blue Dixie) and traditional (The Schwag) versions of Dead songs, performed in Asia (the continent, not the band) as part of a USO program, Koritz started the Percussion discussion (a program to bring drums a percussion to inner city and underpriveledged kids), English has produced his own original CD release called Shimmy Shack
myself- began playing classical violin in '78, at which I excelled if the solo contest grades meant anything, auditioned into 3rd chair of a 5-high school honors orchestra a HS freshman in '84, started teaching myself guitar to learn about improvisation in '85, joined my first garage band in '85 playing mostly original songs, taught myself 4-track cassette production and recorded various original demos throughout the mid-late 80's, started listening to and playing GD music in '87, saw my first Dead show in '89, started playing regularly in clubs in '90, joined Chicago-based Haiball Willie in '91 (a band that played "interpretive" versions of Dead songs, as well as releasing 3 albums of original music between '91-'95,) independently came up with the setlist idea for a Dead cover band in '92, worked for 5 years to make that idea a reality, during which I played 150 shows in one year with Kevin in UJB and launched my own band Wingnut to play jazz fusion(Mahavishnu,Jean-Luc Ponty,) co-founded DSO in '97, co-founded the Dime Store String Band in '98, launched an original side project called JK Band in '99, recorded a solo release in '02, co-founded The Mix with Kevin, Melvin Seals, and Greg Anton in '02 (a band that got signed to a recording contract, releasing a CD featuring 8 original songs, including two previously unrecorded Robert Hunter songs), and just last week I started Bug Juice, a band deadicated to playing Beatles songs in GD styles (kind of like OAITW playing Wild Horses, eh?)
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Also, for what its worth, sometimes DSO's jams are longer than the Dead's, sometimes shorter. Usually, our drums/space section is longer than the original show's version. Part of my motivation in doing the setlist thing is to do drums and space regularly (my favorite part, personally) as well a the ballads. If I had a dime for everytime a club owner (or fellow bandmate) said "that's too slow" or "that's too weird".....but basically we do setlist because its still FUN!
And about improvisation: it always required context. What would you have done if the Grateful Dead one day showed up and played drums and space for 3 1/2 hours? Can you find a version of Big River where Jerry takes more (or less) than 2 choruses on his first solo break? In classical music, listeners hear entire universes of interpretation in the subtleties of tempo, dynamics, and vibrato. Most jazz improvisation is about one ego at a time blowing over chord changes while other soloists sit out. The do-re-mi scale and all the associated modes are built into the universe in the mathematics of vibrational relationships and overtones. White noise is built into the universe in th physics of collision and entropy. Music is EVERYTHING in between (not just the stuff that YOU or I think is fit for human consuption.)
Another point I'd like to address is merchandising. In general, I hate it too. Selling souvenirs in church. However, for all bands it is a necessary evil, and the reality is, our merchandising makes just about enough money to pay our merch guy a basic living wage to be our "ambassador" of sorts to the folks that come to our show. We are not, I repeat NOT, raking it in on this stuff.
One thing i'd like to reiterate here: we in DSO do the setlist thing for FUN, because we enjoy it, and there are times that we are as baffled as anyone else that other folks want to hear us do it.
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Now on to the subject of your behavior, Bootsey. You have made a few good points, but you have been rude and insulting to us in DSO, our fans, GD fans in general, and members of the Grateful Dead. You are not posting in rec.music.gdead (where I supect enough people have put you in their kill files to render you meaningless) or even on a DNC forum. You posted in DSO specific forums deadicated to posting show reviews and making reqests for specific shows and songs. To post in ALL CAPS makes you look childish, and your content is mostly off topic, provoking the shout down that you call censorship. Censorship is when 50,000 people show up to legalize marijuana in Chicago, and not a single newspaper or tv station covers the story. Censorship is when our president is revealed to be lying about reasons for war and cooking the intelligence to back it, and no major media covers the story for 4 weeks. Fascism (a term coined by Musolini to describe rule by big business and corporations) is taking root in America right now, and I feel by helping to create as many TAZ's (temporary autonamous zones,) I am doing the best I can to prevent the destruction of American freedom. But your, sir, are now wasting my time. I close with a quote from an interview with my favorite author, Robert Anton Wilson:
Can you explain to our readers what (maybelogic, the Snafu Law and the Cosmic Schmuck Law) are?
"Maybelogic is a label that got stuck on my ideas by filmmaker Lance Bauscher. I decided it fits. I certainly recognize the central importance in my thinking -- or in my stumbling and fumbling efforts to think -- of non-Aristotelian systems. That includes von Neumann's three-valued logic [true, false, maybe], Rappoport's four-valued logic [true, false, indeterminate, meaningless], Korzybski's multi-valued logic [degrees of probability.] and also Mahayana Buddhist paradoxical logic [it "is" A. it "is" not A, it "is" both A and not A, it "is" neither A nor not A]. But, as an extraordinarily stupid fellow, I can't use such systems until I reduce them to terms a simple mind like mine can handle, so I just preach that we'd all think and act more sanely if we had to use "maybe" a lot more often. Can you imagine a world with Jerry Falwell hollering "Maybe Jesus 'was' the son of God and maybe he hates Gay people as much as I do" -- or every tower in Islam resounding with "There 'is' no God except maybe Allah and maybe Mohammed is his prophet"?
The Snafu law holds that, the greater your power to punish, the less factual feedback you will receive. If you can fire people for telling you what you don't want to hear, you will only hear what you want. This law seems to apply to all authoritarian contraptions, especially governments and corporations. Concretely, I suspect Bozo knows factually less about the world than any dogcatcher in Biloxi.
The Cosmic Shmuck law holds that [1] the more often you suspect you may be thinking or acting like a Cosmic Shmuck, the less of a Cosmic Shmuck you will become, year by year, and [2] if you never suspect you might think or act like a Cosmic Shmuck, you will remain a Cosmic Shmuck for life."
Peace,
John Kadlecik, H.M. & S.H.
>Damn! Right on! One thing I forgot to
>mention...Vassar Clemmens was already more or less a
>Bluegrass legend, Dawg and Rowan legitimate bluegrass
>contemporaries. So your comparison is even less
>legitimate and your knowledge of GD and musical
>history even less than I gave you credit for first
>time around.
>
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