I just don't get it (slip related you geeks)

[Spudly]

Wow, what civilized reparte!

I have been trying to solicit this dialog for years in different circles as I have tried to understand the appeal, which is undeniably there. This is the most "meat" I have seen on the subject (where it hasn't degraded into name calling)

Their fanbase is intelligent, thoughtful, and rabid...as is evident here...Guigsy and crew have presented a very compelling view of the band, but I am unfortunately in the same boat as Choix in that it just eludes me.

I say "unfortunately" because I honestly wish I did "get it"...Slip fans are more emotional about the Slip than almost any other fan is about their fav band. Given how passionate we all are about our music, this really says something about what this band has to offer.

My 2 *favorite* Slip experiences are not fair representations of the band, but I will share regardless. Both occured at the High Sierra Music Fest years ago.

* "The Slipping Daylights".....which was the Slip and the Living Daylights sharing the stage (holy dueling bass players - Livingston and Friedman!). the show started at 2am on day 4 of the festival. 'nuff said.

* "Double Rythym" workshop...Marc and Andrew jamming with Kai and Alan from Garaj Mahal. 2 drum kits, 2 basses. Yikes!

What is that Surprise me Mr. Davis stuff like anyhow? I know Nathan Moore is a heavy picker on mandolin type instruments....? (Has anyone heard Thamusemeant or Taarka?)

love,

xo

[Mango]

It is hard to put into words why i love the band so. At first i to found there music disjointed ,however each show i see brings me to a new level of appreciation.

I get completely lost in their music, they make me feel safe and alive and beautiful and that's a great feeling. Each member of the band is a talented musicans who plays exactly what i want to hear.

And best of all they allow me to groove

and boy do I!

[Mango]

and since ben Harper is know engaged to be marry(to that slut Laura Dern).

I need someone new to marry.

[guigsy]

you can tell by the leaves

if the tree is diseased

and the fruit

will poison who picks them

and only god makes

such pretty mistakes

and only

a fool

tries to fix them

(spudly, i think that surprise me mr davis stuff is like singer/songwriter style with more rock n roll, but this is basing it off of only one show i heard... i really like nathan's lyrics a lot, you know he's kinda broken and he's got some sh!t to say, and he's gonna be straight forward, but he's also gonna make you think a little bit about it... i really like the mr davis stuff and would love to see it live.)

[Ms.Huxtable]

and since ben Harper is know engaged to be marry(to that slut Laura Dern).

I need someone new to marry.

HAhaha Mango, that killed me! I hope you're well. Take care.

[Spudly]

Hey Quigsy, I've seen Nathan play with Thamusemeant and really dig his stuff as well. He's a very solid songwriter, his pieces have such crisp instrumentation...it's no wonder he gel'd with the Slip so well.

Didn't they all get holed up somewhere because of a storm and came up with the bulk of the Surprise me, Mr Davis vibe and material over the course of a week-end? The "buzz phrase of the week-end" was "Surprise me"......Mr. Davis was the landlord of the house the jam space was in....or something like that....

Heh. Rachael (my partner) always pokes fun at me for my "obsessive need to know these silly little details". If she read this post, she would smile with her eyes and shake her head coyly...

[guigsy]

yeah man, i think thats the gist of the story... snowstorm kept them indoors where brad and andrew were living while nathan was visiting, and they were messing around writing and recording some stuff, and there you have it.

i'd love to find some more of Nathan's other stuff he's done, i really dont know much about him except for this Mr. Davis stuff he did with the slip guys... anything you can recommend i seek out?

"G"uigsy - haha, sorry, i did it to schwa, too... its only fair. ::

[Spudly]

Ha! noted....

Sometimes friends purposely mis-spell "Spud" as "Crud", "Stud", "Scud", "Pud". I have nicknames off of nicknames...it never ends.

[guigsy]

actually, i used to work with a kid at a job a few years ago who one of the managers nicknamed spudly... i cant think for the life of me who that kid was, though...

[Spudly]

Another Spudly? It is a popular nickname, I have found...it is almost always taken when I sign up for an e-mail service or message board...as is "Spudly Dudley". I was however successful in securing "spudly420" in hotmail....yeah, I know, fascinating stuff, yipty fuggin dee....

....as far as Nathan...."Thamusemeant" is his "regular" band....they play solid acoustic groove and have recently reformed after a hiatus of sorts....features Aimee Curl & Enion Pelta (sexy hippie chicks kickin grass) and David Tiller (quirky yet solid mandolin picker). They have lots of stuff on the archives....it's all good.

[zero]

Seriously I am going to try and approach this from a perspective other than what Deke affectionately called insanity ranting. Overcoming massive amounts of contempt directed largely at Choix and Hux is part and parcel of that. Okay I can’t fu©king resist what kind of a fu©king ingrate doesn’t understand that these guys are absolute MONSTERS of their respective instruments, that they can both play a heart wrenching ballad and kick out a killer groove, turn and stop on a dime, telepathically communicate, virtuosically leap, take chances over and over again and succeed, precariously cross a narrow rope bridge over an enormous gorge on their hands. Bob fu©king Weir are you kidding me? I mean I like Looks Like Rain too and even get misty but fu©king give it up man- whoever said Ratdog is like a bar band playing theatres had that one dead to rights. Those guys aren’t even all that good as regional players in the San Fran scene for christ’s sake and I’m sure ample documentation could be provided. Fuckity fu©k fu©k fu©k.

Serenity now, serenity now.

My first experience seeing the Slip was at Evolve 2. I had been trying to help their friend Graham get them up here for a while although I didn’t know their music. I remember turning to an American fan jaw dropped at one point going ‘what’s this one called?’ and he gave me the hairy eyeball and said ‘Wolof’. They played Stand By Me in a natural amphitheatre valley and the world stood listless.

I guess the next year (am I getting this right?) they played the two nights and the Planet all of which blew my mind. The Planet was a really special show in particular. I also first really ‘met’ Brad that night and respectfully asked for some of his time to discuss their music. He told me what the hardcom wave was. He told me Sometimes True To Nothing was a song about a couple where one is trying to help the other through depression. He told me a couple of other things. They confused me. I was throwing all these adjectives at them and they were giving me like yes and no answers. Then Nelly’s Batter Up came on the muted TV in the back room at the Planet and Brad cranked it and they were all into it. That confused me more. Then Andrew threw me a bone as they were leaving and we were out front late at night, he said ‘it’s not like we go up there and try and exhibit grace’. Exhibit Grace. I said the words in my head. I told Andrew this years later and he said ‘that’s funny cause I would probably say we do go up there and try and exhibit grace’. I was confused again.

I saw them many more times and our rapport grew. They looked at me kind of sidelong for a while like ‘who is this crazy canuck?’. Then I got my wings. After Come Together I was really blown away by the whole experience (I gave Brad You Forgot It In People at that show) and got home called my friend and started gushing and he had to interrupt me at the end to say that his roommate and my friend, a beautiful punk girl with the alphabet tattooed around her forearm (she couldn’t decide) and ‘COMMITMENT’ in gothic script across her abdomen, had killed herself. I was devastated. That night they played one of their worst shows incidentally at the El Mo in Toronto. I had dinner with the band beforehand which was nice of course and as we left I asked Brad ‘so how are you doing?’ and he said ‘not so good’. He was having lady troubles and it had come to a head or he hadn’t heard from her in a while. As soon as he told me that I knew we were no longer talking like fan and band member, or artist and journalist. Someone walked up and asked him to play Eube. I told him that Kyle had passed away and I didn’t know if I even wanted to be there and wasn’t sure about going to the rest of the shows. To answer his heartache I paraphrased a poem by Thich Nhat Han, a Vietnamese Buddhist teacher, about a man who goes to a monastery because he has lost his wife. They send the man to a hut at the edge of the woods so that he can cry and cry for weeks. Then one day one of the monks came and burned his last shelter. Later Brad reinterpreted this by saying ‘if you see someone who looks like a walnut- crack it’. We were friends.

I had a nice chat with Marc on the phone yesterday. He is not as big of a dick as you all might think (he is). I kept trying to get off the phone as I just wanted to know what the Do Make Say Think show was like. Marc said it was ‘really entertaining’ which is about as much superlative as you will ever hear him use. He is by far one of the most intelligent, amusing, complex and sophisticated people I have ever tried to decode. I love that fu©ker. And Andrew well I had that one figured out to, you see my younger brother Sam learned from all of the troubles my brother Ben and I had growing up. He is a solid kid. I look up to Sam the way Brad looks up to Andrew, his younger brother. He is a proud and noble lion.

I am trying to say that for all of the gifts (the many splendoured gifts) the Slip has given me on stage- The gift of true honesty- The gift of clarity- The gift of self-acceptance- The persistence of mystery- they have given me far far more off stage. Maybe that is what you are not getting. What makes the Slip so unique is their approach to the stage, their intention. I have never encountered a more productive and focused group of players ever. Their entire day is focused around composing themselves, conserving their energy and preparing to be what Marc called once ‘emotional heavyweights’. If they seem removed it is because this takes a great deal of energy for them to accomplish and they do not get their energy in a capsule form. But the music doesn’t start when they hit the stage, the Music is there all along. Albert Ayers the saxophonist said ‘we are the music that we play’, which was to say that he needed men of spiritual character to make his music, this statement is extremely true of the Slip. It’s funny that someone said the beginning of their set was like a pulse building because amongst themselves they call those intros ‘The Pulse’. They have tried many ways to start concerts and sometimes go straight into a song but often they build a bridge if you like between their intention prior to taking the stage and the performance itself. Brad has even told me he will on occasion envision something like a ballerina in a pure white light.

Because I admire them so much it is pretty special that we have become actual friends. This has never happened to me before. It told me that if these people that I really admire actually like spending time with me I must not be such a bad person after all. They let me at least try not to hate myself so much. They encouraged me to make music of my own something I had never thought of. They made me laugh and they made me cry. They are my buddies.

[meggo]

good! ::

[Cosmic ChrisC]

The vocals may not be for everyone...

I tried to get Cosmic ChrisC into The Slip but she was immediately turned off by the vocals. But I kind of like them. Hopefully I can drag her to the show in Montreal and convince her.

Yeah, well, looks like you won Buddy. (We bought tickets on the weekend and reserved our hotel room today).

I can't really say yet that I don't like The Slip. I haven't heard much of them. The vocals aren't great, but hey, a lot of people said that about Jerry and I love him! I'll listen to them a lot in the next few weeks. Man, I wish we were allowed to stream music at work. Bouche, are you allowed to stream music where you work? Ollie wants to know.

I heard some jazzy Slip that I really liked. But then I heard them do U2's With or Without You and that I didn't like. I'm sure I'll enjoy the show though.

[bouche]

yes Zero... THE PULSE!

Man, that's the thing that people are feeling without being aware of it. Oscillations everywhere!

[AdamH]

That pulse is part of the reason that every show feels spectacular to me. It's a buildup of that anticpatory twitch in your stomach...