Many people are saying the Jerry Garcia Band is better than the Grateful Dead. More and more people are saying this, and JGB has been getting attention and has been doing very well.
My question is: How can the Grateful Dead be the Greatest American Rock band if they aren’t even the best American Rock Band with Jerry Garcia?
Nobody makes a similar argument about TAB v. phish.
Therefore, once again, I am correct: Phish is the Greatest American Rock band.
@maxellxlii90 Phish has maybe a dozen great songs, about thirty good ones, and maybe fifty okay ones. The dead have the best song catalog in existence (yes overall I prefer it to Dylan's since it includes many of his best) and one of the greatest interpreters of song as a front man. Plus they invented the world Phish lives in. It's a fun take, but it won't land that way historically.
@mrcompletely I think it will. Absolutely. The Grateful Dead were an entity, an enterprise, an institution. Phish’s magic is uniquely contained within four specific people.
It’s not about the songs for me, at all. If it is about the songs, you may as well throw revenue into the mix, and then we have to talk about Aerosmith or some other bullshit. It’s about the capability of the band behind them. Phish can do anything. The Grateful Dead are like, 9 different bands.
@maxellxlii90 I think that's what makes them greater and more interesting. Don't get me wrong I do think Phish will rise in the critical estimation, maybe starting soon, maybe after they're done, but I do think the reassessment and acceptance of them as one of the great bands is coming.
I don't understand or agree with your logic about songs at all. In the end there's just the song 😁
@maxellxlii90 to me the fact that they can communicate deeply on an energetic level with the crowd is more impressive. Both deep improv and the crowd connection are examples of elements they built on and extended from the GD example. They made those things more overt, surfaced them. Which is very cool and the heart of why I see the two as a continuity
@maxellxlii90 also I have to jet but I really appreciate that we can now have this conversation in a cool and smart way but without heat - I respect where you're coming from - things weren't always that way
@maxellxlii90 to get away from hot takes for a minute I do think there's a more interesting view in which Phish is the synthesis or completion of a lot of the things the Dead started - that is, that they form a continuity between them, a sort of baton handoff, or a torch, if you will
Picking one over the other will always come down to whichever one each person imprinted on most deeply due to personal experience.
@mrcompletely I think in the long run, Jerry and Hunter will be keepers of the Great American Songbook, alongside Dylan. But in terms of a “band” as a specific unit, and what a “band” sets out to do when they form, and what Phish has accomplished… if you are a new American rock band, how could you want anything less than what Phish accomplished?
Unfortunately, the consistent loss of band members hurts the GD here. All four members Phish still being alive after 40 years gives them an advantage.
@maxellxlii90 I just don't agree with that either. I think the transpersonal gestalt nature of the group, the fact that the GD were a family that extended beyond the band members, and one that changed over time but kept the same core, is more interesting and more powerful.
The next actually great rock band will certainly, like GD/Ph, not be thinking of their future or path in terms of any other band but only in their own terms. That's why all jam bands are boring. They'll never be anything.
@maxellxlii90 I really don't mean it that way. I feel like Garcia and the dead left a lot of unfinished business, a lot of cards left unplayed, a lot of paths started but left incomplete. But Phish didn't try to pick up anyone else's thing. They did their own thing, and it led them to some of the areas where there was unfinished business, and they carried some of those things forward. Then, critically, Trey passed the test Garcia couldn't and got himself clean. So they've had this extra time.
@maxellxlii90 I don't feel like I'm expressing it very well, but to me this is an important idea. There is an unbroken chain of similarity between them, an underground stream that runs through both: the idea that music can unify and transform in a much more immediate and real way than weak metaphorical platitudes about "the power of music" convey. I thought that died with Garcia and I found that deeply tragic. But it didn't at all. So I could never downplay the band that's made that happen
@maxellxlii90 Nobody who spends any serious amount of time really listening to the Dead and JGB actually prefers the latter. I’ve never met a serious fan who holds that opinion. Maybe it’s my bubble?
@Rosey@maxellxlii90 there is a large minority of very well seasoned and knowledgeable fans that hold that opinion. If by JGB you mean all Garcia On The Side projects I find the difference less than you might think. Starting in about 88 they're at approximate parity imo and by late 1991 at latest I def strongly prefer jgb (especially if you get the Grisman stuff too)
@Rosey@maxellxlii90 it largely comes down to people who actively dislike Weir and/or don't really get into post Keith dead. Which is a smaller percentage of serious heads than it used to be but still consequential.
I personally view the two as a unified musical whole. My digital library is in chronological order with Garcia shows mixed in with Dead shows. The point is that Jerry was there. This is also why I have almost no interest in post Garcia dead music.
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