My Favorite Bands

Just a short snippet as I tried to describe my feelings about the bands.

Of all the bands my favorite bill was The Grateful Dead, Big Brother and Quicksilver.  The Airplane seemed aloof, although Grace’s voice was very powerful and Jorma’s guitar work simply phenomenal.  The Dead were an evening unto themselves, never quite comprehensible unless you were on acid.  They were the ultimate acid band, explained only in the most arcane metaphors, never verbal, never predictable and yet always a comfort on the long journey out and the perilous one back.  Competent is the word that comes to mind.  Of all the bands, the Dead were the ones who connected most closely with the audience.   They never translated to recordings and never lent themselves to pigeonholing.  They were the unspeakable epitome of what was going on.

And then there was Big Brother.  Big Brother had Sam Andrews, Dave Getz, the sleek and skeletal James Gurley and, of course, Janis.  In the twisting and winding of those psychedelic melodies, maudlin meanderings and stringed journeys into the night, Janis was rock solid, gutsy blues, heavy hearted, heavy handed, spilling her guts out over the audience and into the ether world, galaxies away, light-years gone.  Her music reached right down inside your bowels and wrenched something in you as she gripped the mike stand in one hand and turned herself inside out, contorting and writhing, sweating and crying, for you, reaching out, thrashing, hair flying with every fiber of her being.  She didn't just sing a song or belt one out, she was the song, she got right down inside of it and became it, vibrato, whining and wailing, balls to the wall.  Her voice was like no other I have ever heard, before or since and when someone sings her songs today, no matter how sincere, I have to turn away and I cannot watch, I cannot listen because I saw her do this and do it the best, not once, but time and time again.  It wasn't a happenstance of the odd good night, a rare good performance, nor was it the Acid Trick, it was consistently what it was, raw meat to the lions, raw flesh, voice flayed, soul flayed wave after wave slapping you in the face with the vibrations of her heart, again and again and again.  That's rock 'n' roll, that's sex and drugs, that's soul, that's art.