The Reverend Will the Thrill Presents the Album of the Week!

When I first moved from southern Indiana to northern Indiana fifteen years ago (Good Lord!  Has it been that long?), I was still working in the music department for Barnes & Noble.  Because of the transfer, I no longer managed the department, but I found, much to my delight, that the music staff was populated by people who were bigger music geeks and snobs than I was which, frankly, is saying something.  We frequently had discussions about why this artist was overrated or why that album sucked.  If you've ever seen the John Cusack movie High Fidelity (or even--God forbid--read the book upon which it was based), you have a rough idea of what we were like, in spite of the overly corporate atmosphere in which we found ourselves working.  Like a lot of music geeks/snobs, we even had a tendency to speak in our own shorthand.  I remember one day, my friend Alex looked at me and just asked, "Hunky, Ziggy, Low, or Heroes?"  And while I did answer with Hunky [Dory], I still can't help but wonder why Aladdin [Sane] wasn't one of the choices? (If you didn't follow that, we were discussing David Bowie albums.)

One day, an interesting idea was brought up regarding artists we thought were overrated.  It wasn't that we didn't enjoy the music or thought that the artist really was overrated--we just tended to be put off by the fans who tended to idolize them to an annoying degree.  And I realize that I shouldn't judge here.  After all, I tend to be a bit effusive in my love of certain artists (specifically The Stones, Springsteen, and Florence + The Machine).  But in spite of that--at the risk of sounding hypocritical--I do find myself recoiling over the more rabid fan bases of artists like Justin Bieber, Taylor Swift, and Beyoncé.  I'll be honest, even Parrotheads seem to bug me sometimes, and I consider myself to be a pretty big fan of Jimmy Buffett.

(SIDE NOTE:  How are Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce not collectively known as "Traylor"?  Think of the possibilities!  Their fans could be called the Traylor Park.  Haters would be Traylor Trash.  If they got married, it would be a Traylor Hitch.  If they break up, they can just say a tornado hit them.  These things practically write themselves.  All I ask for is a 5% cut of the merchandise profits.)

No fan base has been quite as revered (or reviled, depending on your perspective) as the fan base for the Grateful Dead, known as Deadheads.  Even just writing the word conjured up images in my head of a bunch of stoned hippies in a Volkswagen bus travelling across the country to catch the Dead's next concert.  Or some wannabe hippie who's younger than I am describing in pedantic detail the subtle nuances in Jerry Garcia's guitar solo on one live recording from 1972 versus another performance from 1987.  Those stereotypes are the kinds of things that make me not want to listen to the music.  But I find that by doing that, I tend to miss out on what can be some good stuff along the way.  (I'm sure I'll be addressing my aversion to Justin Bieber and his "Beliebers" in the near future.)

I'm a casual fan of the Dead.  I've only listened to a handful of their albums but, by and large, I like what I hear.  While they're considered a rock band who definitely have their roots in San Francisco during the Summer of Love (please refer to my "sermon" a couple of weeks ago regarding psychedelia and Jefferson Airplane), they were clearly influenced by folk, blues, country, bluegrass, and even jazz and world music as well.  If they were just starting out today, they would probably--and rightfully, in my opinion--be labeled with that catch-all term "Americana."

So, in honour of bassist Phil Lesh who passed away this week at the age of 84, please enjoy my favourite Dead album (of the few I've heard), 1970s Workingman's Dead.

Until next week, stay safe, be good to your neighbours, and please remember that if at first you don't succeed, then skydiving definitely isn't for you.

Yours in peace, love, and rock and roll!

The Reverend Will the Thrill