Tuesday, July 27, 2010

Joyful Sound

I had a lot of different ways I was thinking about going with this piece. While jotting ideas down it came to me. Why bother explaining how great this weekend was? I was already told that I can’t say, “You had to be there,” any longer. I can try to describe the guys parachuting over the crowd while having sparklers fly off of them, the huge led board behind the band, the red rocks exploding toward the sky but I know I would never do it complete justice.

It was while listening to their set from Rothbury where Billy says how the crowd was making them want to play, how it had been a couple years since they played last, and what a great time they were all having together again. This made me start to think is it such a bad thing that the group only gets together for special events? This keeps all of their classics fresh because as much as I love String Cheese they just don’t have the depth of songs Phish or Widespread Panic have. If they were touring non-stop at this point hearing classics such as Black Clouds, MLT, and Restless Wind would seem uninspired and like they’re going through the motions to give the crowd what it wants. Through their three nights the band managed to cover all of their classics, covers, and a never before seen cover of MGMT’s Time to Pretend. They were sharp start to finish and genuinely seemed happy to be back home in Colorado playing their joyful sounds.

I already know that by writing about the String Cheese Incident general consensus is that I’m talking about hippy jam band music. Sure maybe I am, but what happened to the days when rock’n’roll was “jam band” music instead of this 3 minute American Idol produced garbage? Is America’s attention span no longer capable of a 7-minute song? Good music doesn’t believe so but the radio does so in my next post I’m going to showcase a band you won’t hear on the radio but will bring some deep jams your way. I know that sounds really heady but just wait for the next post and it’ll make sense. Stay tuned.

No comments:

Post a Comment