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Good stuff: 1996 Branford Interview


John A

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That's about as much a compliment that a true jazz guy could give the dead.  If anyone calls the dead a jazz band, it seems like the pure jazz guys may take offense because the dead is how they look at jazz.  The dead's style would be an abomination to a purist, but if the dead played traditional jazz, then we wouldn't be talking on this forum today.  After re-reading that, it may make no sense.  But describing the dead is maybe the most herculean task on the planet.  A scientist can describe the theory of relativity better than a deadhead can descibe in words the music of the dead.  Maybe music in itself isn't easily describable, period.

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That's about as much a compliment that a true jazz guy could give the dead.  If anyone calls the dead a jazz band, it seems like the pure jazz guys may take offense because the dead is how they look at jazz.  The dead's style would be an abomination to a purist, but if the dead played traditional jazz, then we wouldn't be talking on this forum today.  After re-reading that, it may make no sense.  But describing the dead is maybe the most herculean task on the planet.  A scientist can describe the theory of relativity better than a deadhead can descibe in words the music of the dead.  Maybe music in itself isn't easily describable, period.

As the man in the vid said..."There is no single idiom that can describe the Dead"

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  • 3 months later...

The primary greatness of the Dead is how they were inspired to transmogrify the ethos of jazz improv into a psychelelic rock format.  That was a very big deal.

Jazz improv is fine, but it ain't rock.  Rock is fine, but it ain't jazz.  The Dead brilliantly created a new genre: rock jam band. which was a world-changing phenomenon.

To be able to truly improvise yet stay coherent at the same time, is an extremely rare talent.  No rock musicians, ever, could atomize and rebuild a song, or flow from one song to another, the way the Dead could 1968-1974.  Truly remarkable.  Unequalled. 

 

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