Grateful Dead Music Forum

strumminsix wrote:Say what you will about Day Job but Jerry played the living shit out of that song. It inspired him something fierce and for that I'll have an appreciation greater than the song deserves.

I think we can all agree that it was the lyrics......hitting a little too close to home for many.....that people had issue with.

ebick wrote:

strumminsix wrote:Say what you will about Day Job but Jerry played the living shit out of that song. It inspired him something fierce and for that I'll have an appreciation greater than the song deserves.

I think we can all agree that it was the lyrics......hitting a little too close to home for many.....that people had issue with.

Maybe. I was never on tour and by the 90s it was done so never heard it live. But I can see it being off-putting to some who thought they were "living the dream" by being on tour.

Also--and this may have just been my bad luck--but it seemed like they played Day Job ALL THE TIME. It was like, Oh, God, not Day Job again. Just a total throwaway compared to all the more interesting "rockin' set closers" they could have chosen. I think they even destroyed encores by playing it there. Once in a while, fine, but man they played that tune a ton (or so it seemed).

Funny...I can't remember even one Day Job. But I was down to 1-2 shows per year in the 90's. But by then I had a pretty keen sense of when to tune out. I called in my Vince-O-Matic brain filter. Also there was the Bobby Prophet vs Pariah model.

I have to say (again) that I was way too critical of Bob in those days. I'm all healed from that now. I was watching that Sunshine Daydream video, and he plays some killer stuff.

I just looked it up for kicks and it was mostly '84 and '85 when it was in heavy rotation. At one point they played four times in the space of a week, including--get this--back-to-back shows in Hartford. It made only sparse appearances before those years and disappeared completely after '86, I think. I saw a lot of shows in '85 and so I'm guessing that's why it sticks in my head, despite the fact that it was a short-lived phenomenon by Dead standards.

I saw a lot of shows that year as well. That's funny.
All these years, and there are still numbers I don't know...or cant really hum in my head. But I'll admit, there are songs from the lexicon which are Eternal for me. Others ...meh ...they come & go. I find goodies in them every year or so, but as a rule I hit the next button.

I few years ago my wife introduced me to a little number called "Mission in the Rain." She saw more JGB shows than I did.
That was embarassing

Hello all,

I think the original poster's intention was "Which song(s) really, really get to you," and causes you to jump and think: "Oh, not again!

The concept is not, for example, well, when a song wasn't played especially well, or you just weren't so interested, or perhaps you aren't in the mood for Space or Drums just then, or that Donna's rendition of You Ain't Woman Enough is just not your cup of tea.

No, this is to state a song that makes you leap forward and nip it in the bud, and then look ahead on archive.org to restore your peace of mind with a nice rendition of Mission in the Rain or Deal or something similar.

So I can understand that "Keep your day job" rankles heavily with some. Most of us would like very much to shove our day jobs. But does Day Job really, really drive you crazy? Maybe for some.

But picking just one, and one only tune, that makes me skip ahead, time and again, for me it's the very, very uninteresting and simplistic shuttling back and forth between the keys of D and A, over and over (although I do realize that there is a Bridge) known to all as Playin in the Band. It's one of the few tunes that, IMHO, in its 42 years on this earthly orb, doesn't seem to improve with repetition.

(I would have picked the equally tiresome One More Saturday Night, but I think what wins for Playin' is that the band seemed to draw it out unnecessarily for what seemed like but probably wasn't, about a half hour, and often it seemed to rise again in the same gig with a reprise, whereas they could have kept it to, say, the 4 scant minutes it deserves!)

There. That's off my chest! As they say, your mileage may vary.

Walkin' Blues. Especially when it followed a rousing Jerry opener. Aw c'mon Bob, really?

I must be the weird one, because I like the stuff nobody else digs. Easy Answers (RatDog does it better, but it's a cool tune), Way to Go Home, Victim, Day Job. Except Wave to the Wind. That one can die in a fire.

But picking just one, and one only tune, that makes me skip ahead, time and again, for me it's the very, very uninteresting and simplistic shuttling back and forth between the keys of D and A, over and over (although I do realize that there is a Bridge) known to all as Playin in the Band. It's one of the few tunes that, IMHO, in its 42 years on this earthly orb, doesn't seem to improve with repetition.

I was always ecstatic when they started playing Playing in the Band because I knew things would surely move out of music mode into transportation mode.
I like(d) transportation mode. A whole lot!

Stellar Blues wrote:
But picking just one, and one only tune, that makes me skip ahead, time and again, for me it's the very, very uninteresting and simplistic shuttling back and forth between the keys of D and A, over and over (although I do realize that there is a Bridge) known to all as Playin in the Band. It's one of the few tunes that, IMHO, in its 42 years on this earthly orb, doesn't seem to improve with repetition.
There. That's off my chest! As they say, your mileage may vary.

Yeah, my mileage varies greatly. You are obviously entitled to your opinion, and I respect that, but to me PITB epitomizes the crux of what the Dead is all about, a vehicle for musical exploration. And that's just my opinion.

But, that's also the beauty of this band...there's something for everyone, and that's what I'm seeing with this thread. One person may skip Playin' to get to Corrina and another will skip El Paso to get to Dark Star...and each person will think the other is fuckin nuts.

There are/were so many one dimensional bands out there....thankfully the Dead were not one of them

Maybe this thread should be called "I missed the point" or "Tunes that went right over my head". I don't think any of us knows better than the band what order tunes should have been played in. The band were experts in designing effective and functional setlists and no one could have done what they did for thirty years without repeating themselves. Sometimes I skip a random song just to get to the one after it. Doesn't mean I can't stand it. If there truly are tunes that you can't tolerate maybe this music really isn't for you.

foolofships wrote:I must be the weird one, because I like the stuff nobody else digs. Easy Answers (RatDog does it better, but it's a cool tune), Way to Go Home, Victim, Day Job. Except Wave to the Wind. That one can die in a fire.

I dig those too! Add in Eternity and Lazy River Road and Samba in the Rain!

RiseandFall wrote:

But picking just one, and one only tune, that makes me skip ahead, time and again, for me it's the very, very uninteresting and simplistic shuttling back and forth between the keys of D and A, over and over (although I do realize that there is a Bridge) known to all as Playin in the Band. It's one of the few tunes that, IMHO, in its 42 years on this earthly orb, doesn't seem to improve with repetition.

I was always ecstatic when they started playing Playing in the Band because I knew things would surely move out of music mode into transportation mode.
I like(d) transportation mode. A whole lot!

+1

Mickey Hart said, "we're not in the entertainment business, we're in the transportation business - we move minds".

I can understand almost all of them...wouldn't say "I Can't Stand"...any of them...but Playin' in the Band...really? That one threw me for a loop!