Going the Way of the Dodos
I’m probably going to be the outlier on this blog.
Sure, I saw plenty of Grateful Dead and Phish shows in my day, but I’ve fallen away from jam bands of late. I respect what they do, but what they do hasn’t been what I’ve been craving for a very long time.
As I get older, and maybe I just have less time to listen, I want things that are a bit more concise and structured. The buffet of noodling and trippy meanderings is nice sometimes, but what I yearn for day-in and day-out is nice plate of succinct rock. On point, to the point, and clever.
I’m throwing out a song today from The Dodos called Black Night. There’s a lot of random music that flows through my car and headphones on a weekly basis, but The Dodos’ No Color disc has been anchored in place for several months. These guys are catchy, melodic and fun.
And The Dodos is a very drum-centric band, which is unusual nowadays. For some reason I feel more comfortable playing the air drums than I do the air guitar. Maybe because I played guitar, very badly, in my youth and I kinda feel like an asshole in making those fake motions. Whereas I know nothing about the drums, and I’m quite sure I’d be terrible at playing them. So, you know, no pressure.
And, as icing on the cake, Neko Case did the backing vocals for half of the tracks on the CD, too. Are you freaking kidding me? Neko is a whole other post that needs to be written when I can calm down my schoolboy crush.
Will hearing about great music from these guys bring me back into the jam band fold? Maybe. In the meantime, I’m going the way of the Dodos.