Why does everyone love the Slip so much?!

[guigsy]

a) if you're going to take my points out of context, i am going to have to put them back in context for you. thats not called being defensive, thats called further explanation.

i never said anything about how you felt about what you saw. im glad you liked it back then. but the fact remains, they have a different sound and are in a different direction now, so, like i said, your idea of what they sound like and what they are is likely wrong, in terms of the band now, today, if all you have to base your opinion on is something you saw 4 years ago, no matter how great it probably was.

[bouche]

All is correct, but maybe not the weed part. A lot of jamband players don't smoke weed.

i shoulda winked. the weed part was a joke at the end of my descriptive words. Mind you, any 'jamband' show I go to, there is a strange smell of weed at smelled somewhere along the way.

[Lazlo]

there is a strange smell of weed at smelled somewhere along the way.

I farted

[p.p.]

I stand corrected. Jakis is right. Just Grateful Dead, Phish & BNB.

I gotta play hooky from work more often... this message board stuff is fun.

[c-towns]

east vs. west

bring it!

[Booche]

I Hate Love

[Cully]

P.P. you know that Burt is a jamband, slammin' Jack is a pop band, and I can't believe it's not butter is better than real butter....

[zero]

Took me a while to chime in here, wasn't sure what to add. I have been very fortunate to see the Slip almost every time they have played in Canada short of three or four shows and in turn have developed a nice rapport with them, I think we're actually friends, well I know we are to be honest. Not that that really matters but I mention it because it speaks to one point being made which is that they really are very genuine, accessible despite being often standoffish or reclusive, spiritual and humble beings. What everyone is dancing around is that their music seems to be a crystalline reflection of this spiritual austerity which they seem to possess or perhaps are possessed of would be a better way of putting it. The music seems to speak through them, they are vessels and in turn encourage others to kick over their own cauldrons and empty themselves so that they can be filled up anew. There is a line in one of their most popular songs Honey Melon 'riding the hardcom wave' which expresses a similar idea. When I met Brad for the very first time we talked about the Hardcom Wave and all he could say rather cryptically is it's like the Stones song Moonlight Mile which I didn't know at the time (it's on Beggars Banquet). That song has since become one of my favourites ever (it was covered at the last Hamilton show a truly momentous experience for me) and moreso a sort of lodestone. I think what Brad meant is that riding the hardcom wave is like driving down the road like the character in Moonlight Mile on that last stretch of road and tuning in your AM dial and all of a sudden like a lightning bolt that song that you needed to hear, to sooth your aching heart, anoint your wounds, push you over the next crest of hill, comes on. I got silence on my radio/ Let the air waves flow.

Opening yourself to the Moonlight Mile or the Hardcom Wave is in many ways an eastern sort of tenet, like the throwing of bones, coins or yarrow stalks associated with divination and the I Ching but it is also a western idea expressed in the Surrealist Manifesto by Andre Breton. Breton believed that their are fils conducteurs (conducting threads) or champs magnetiques (magnetic forces) that draw us to one another, to objects, songs and places thus in Surrealist art often situations or objects ask a question of us that has been hitherto unasked (Nadja the character Breton is obsessed with in his novel of the same name is just such a Sphinx like figure). I know that the Slip would not and do not theorize along these lines but certainly not for lack of intellectual capacity. It is just that there is a sort of continuity, a manifesto, best described as an intent or approach to the stage, a priori (from before) the stage which everyone intuitively recognizes but struggle to give words to.

The Slip has been a great gift to my life. Their music has gotten me through some very devastating times and they have heartened me with the will to carry on. Their acceptance of me personally as a peer has almost been more of a boon then their entire repertoire.

I thought of a far simpler way of putting all this. The Slip express through their music the taking of one great and singular stride. With one foot in the past, remorse, experience, world weariness, and another surging forward into an as yet unkwnown future, expectancy, birthing, hope.

[Esau]

I thought of a far simpler way of putting all this. The Slip express through their music the taking of one great and singular stride. With one foot in the past, remorse, experience, world weariness, and another surging forward into an as yet unkwnown future, expectancy, birthing, hope.

Very nice & in my opinion,you hit the nail right on the head.

ps."Beggar's Banquet" being my favourite and the best Stones album (again,only my opinion),I feel I must chime in and say that 'Moonlight Mile' is actually on "Sticky Fingers".

[Guest Low Roller]

The Slip rock.

[zero]

Penn and Teller reminded me of another reason for the Slip's melifluous ambiguity. Magic. They have mastered the seven steps of up close magic: palm, simulate, ditch, misdirect, steal, load and push.