Re: Composition & Improvisation (was Re: Terje Rypdal was ECM guitarists)

[Warren Sirota <wsirota@wsdesigns.com>]

On Tue, Sep 1, 2009 at 6:33 AM, Per Boysen<perboysen@gmail.com> wrote:

>
> People talk about The Greatful Dead as "a great jam band" but although
> I have been listening to some live recorded stuff I don't find in
> there much of the communicative sensibility I tend to like in
> improvised music. So maybe "The Dead" is a bad example? I like it when
> you clearly hear how musicians are looking for common ground to unite
> in harmony or even being obstructive and destroying every component
> that could have caused "good music" to form.

I'm not a "deadhead" so I'm not familiar with the vast board archives
or most of the post-1980 recordings, however, I still rate Live Dead
as a stellar example of interaction in music. As the instrumental
sections between the songs start moving towards their "close", you can
definitely hear the dialog - almost conflict, or a debate - in the
guitars as Weir tries to take the music in one direction, Garcia in
another, etc. I haven't heard any other Dead recording that comes
close to this - they started to play much shorter songs immediately
afterwards - but of course, my exposure is limited. But this recording
is an absolute must-hear if you're unfamiliar with it.

-- 
Warren Sirota
Destroyer of Keyboards
http://www.warrensirota.com