Woebot
Well-known member
Just read Charles Perry's "The Haight Ashbury" part of my ongoing research. And found this classic old skool West Coast diss:
"But this was all taking place in San Francisco. Once in a while people wondered what could be happening along the same lines elsewhere; certainly there were good out-of-town bands such as the Spoonful and the Byrds. So when Andy Warhol's highly publicized Plastic Exploding Inevitable show came to the Fillmore Auditorium at the end of May, a number of hippies went in hopes of finding out what New York, the capitol of the avant-garde, was doing. After all, here was Warhol, an official Artist and the very father of pop art, with rock and roll and what the news magazines said was a far-out light be nothing but a self-consciously decadent rock group playing mannered paraphrase of amateurish high school rock. They sang about perversion and heroin addiction; there was a “whip dancer on the bill. The light show was nothing but ordinary stage lighting spotlights (though when the spots were flashed on the revolving mirror ball hanging from the Fillmore's ceiling, it was like being in show. What they found was the Velvet Underground, which seemed to room full of galaxies), supplemented by static Warhol movies like Sleep and Empire State Building. There were raised platforms on the dance floor so you could stand up above the crowd to see and be seen.
So this was what was happening in New York. Heroin, perversion, vanity, stasis. No breakthroughs here, and maybe San Francisco wasn't so provincial after all. The psychedelic crowd went away relieved of the burden of keeping track of what might be going on elsewhere."
Although I'm familiar with a few of their recordings I've never been a fan of The Grateful Dead.
But on reflection:
a) The audience was 100% more committed. There was something at stake.
b) The sound system under Bob Owsley was better (this DOES mean something).
c) The light shows were better.
Here's some background viewing:
especially this (contentious point but interesting point) that rap is not music (he doesn't say it's not valid! i don't think...)
"But this was all taking place in San Francisco. Once in a while people wondered what could be happening along the same lines elsewhere; certainly there were good out-of-town bands such as the Spoonful and the Byrds. So when Andy Warhol's highly publicized Plastic Exploding Inevitable show came to the Fillmore Auditorium at the end of May, a number of hippies went in hopes of finding out what New York, the capitol of the avant-garde, was doing. After all, here was Warhol, an official Artist and the very father of pop art, with rock and roll and what the news magazines said was a far-out light be nothing but a self-consciously decadent rock group playing mannered paraphrase of amateurish high school rock. They sang about perversion and heroin addiction; there was a “whip dancer on the bill. The light show was nothing but ordinary stage lighting spotlights (though when the spots were flashed on the revolving mirror ball hanging from the Fillmore's ceiling, it was like being in show. What they found was the Velvet Underground, which seemed to room full of galaxies), supplemented by static Warhol movies like Sleep and Empire State Building. There were raised platforms on the dance floor so you could stand up above the crowd to see and be seen.
So this was what was happening in New York. Heroin, perversion, vanity, stasis. No breakthroughs here, and maybe San Francisco wasn't so provincial after all. The psychedelic crowd went away relieved of the burden of keeping track of what might be going on elsewhere."
Although I'm familiar with a few of their recordings I've never been a fan of The Grateful Dead.
But on reflection:
a) The audience was 100% more committed. There was something at stake.
b) The sound system under Bob Owsley was better (this DOES mean something).
c) The light shows were better.
Here's some background viewing:
especially this (contentious point but interesting point) that rap is not music (he doesn't say it's not valid! i don't think...)