Rob Bleetstein joins Larry to talk NRPS and their new live album, Hempsteader. The DEA approves rescheduling Marijuana to Schedule III: The good and the bad.

"Neil Young's 2024 Tour with Crazy Horse: A Legendary Performance"

Larry Mishkin discusses the creation of the song "The Music Never Stopped" by Bob Weir and John Perry Barlow. Weir explains his collaborative process with Barlow, where they developed lyrics together over the phone, inspired by Barlow's description of a scene from Wyoming. Weir also reflects on the importance of lyrical and musical cohesion, and the song's debut and history of performances, including at venues like the Great American Music Hall and the Palladium. The discussion transitions to Neil Young's recent tour with Crazy Horse, highlighting the band's performance and Young's energy despite his age. He also mentions upcoming events and concludes with a focus on the Grateful Dead's performance of "St. Stephen" and other songs from 47 years ago.

Grateful Dead

April 30, 1977 (47 years ago, tomorrow)

Palladium

NYC

Grateful Dead Live at The Palladium on 1977-04-30 : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

Audience Tape

This is another good show from 1977, but the recording quality is actually not bad considering this is an audience recording. Since then the show has been commercially released as the first volume of the Grateful Dead Download Series if you want to hear the crisper soundboard recording.

Highlights from this show are the first set Mississippi Half Step and even Looks Like Rain is played with a passion that is moving even if the song always is not. In the second set, the Dead start off with a Scarlet Begonias>Fire on the Mountain (pretty good), swing into a fun mid-set Good Lovin (common for that time, but for the last 15 years, it was almost always a set closer as an alternative to Sugar Mag) or an encore tune (send everyone home with a smile), Friend of the Devil , Estimated Prophet. And then they blow the doors off the place with a St. Stephen>Not Fade Away>Stella Blue>St. Stephen sandwich that must be heard in full to be truly appreciated. It’s pretty awesome to hear Stella Blue transition back into the St. Stephen, an unusual pairing to say the least. Close with a Saturday Night and then yet another 1977 Terrapin Stationencore.

INTRO: Music Never Stopped

Track #2

0:00 – 1:26

Hunter Weir tune, released on Blues For Allah (Sept. 1,1975).

Bob: As a lyricist I’m glacially slow. I can generally get the job done, but it takes too damned long. So I like to work with people who have a little more facility with that—you know, John Barlow, Garrett Grant, Robert Hunter.

Or I may have a general notion of the color of the rhythm and the harmonic or melodic development, and I’ll sit with a guy and we just fire blank verse at each other until we start to corner that color—and then often the song will fall right out of the sky. Other times, I may have no notion of where the song wants to go, in which case I’ll let whoever I’m working with surprise me. . . .

“The Music Never Stopped” is a song that we wrote over the telephone. I had this business going [plays opening guitar riff, Example 13 below]. So I played this over the phone to John, and he just started spitting stuff at me. The first line came out, “There’s mosquitoes on the river / Fish are rising up like birds.” He was living in Wyoming at the time on a ranch, and he started describing a situation that I’d seen with him, where it was late summer on a dry year and things were hot and kind of dull and dead.

So where are we going to take this? Well, first I figured the verse is going to have to be twice as long as I originally figured, because if you’re starting with an image that thick, you have to get into some detail about it. “It’s been hot for seven weeks now / Too hot to even speak now / Did you hear what I just heard?” That last line came after some deliberation. It’s a pregnant line, sort of like a leading tone in a harmonic development.

The success of the endeavor, if you’re working with a lyricist, depends on how closely the lyric marries the music. With Barlow or Gerrit Graham or whoever, there’s a lot of back and forth. I guess I get to be the decider, because the words are going to have to come from my lips. And so I have to be able to tell the story.

I have to be that character, because my job is to get the hell out of the way and let the character tell the story, musically and lyrically. When I’m standing in front of the microphone, I may look like me, but I’m not.

If the character arrives with a really defined face and features, then it’s easy for me to do my job.

Fun version because almost always a first set closer and here it is o...