Where's That Sound Coming From Presents: Questions But No Answers with Brian Marchese - Ep. 24 - The Beach Boys and The Grateful Dead Part 1 or Are You Kind? I Know They Must Be Kind

Ep. 24 - The Beach Boys and The Grateful Dead Part 1 or Are You Kind? I Know They Must Be Kind

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11/01/20 • 121 min

Where's That Sound Coming From Presents: Questions But No Answers with Brian Marchese

Initially, this was supposed to be a straight forward episode in which I'd examine what occured on April 27, 1971 at the Fillmore East, and what led up to it. This was the night that Jerry Garcia invited "another famous California band" up onstage and out came...The Beach Boys! A seemingly unlikely combination of bands, their off-the-cuff mini set sounded a lot more listenable than the vast majority of "come on up and jam" type situations I've heard, either live or on tape. Why? Well, that's what I wanted to explore, and, like Brian Wilson adding parts to SMiLE only to find it kept needed redefinition, I kept adding elements to my script until I realized that I needed to make this a two parter and that part 1 wouldn't even get to the Fillmore East. The theme of this episode is like a Beach Boys song in that it seeks to find all the harmonious relationships between elements of the two bands (and, thus, perhaps, fans of one that think they don't like the other). But the structure of this episode is a bit like certain Grateful Dead songs, which start and end with strength and purpose, but a little meandering happens in the middle while trying to figure out which road leads to the destination. This is sort of a love letter to both bands (mostly concentrating on 1966-73, my favorite eras of each), and during this terrible year, they've each been of great comfort. This episode includes lots of musical montages, discussions of music, LSD, Charles Lloyd, Phil Spector, Yo La Tengo and...well, just listen. And short answer as to why The Beach Boys and Grateful Dead would sound ok playing together without any rehearsal is, they're both bands that know how to listen.

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Ep. 23 A Conversation with Michael Nesmith on The Prison

Episode 23 of WTSCF has been a long time coming, basically due to life getting a bit derailed. But I hope you'll agree that it was worth the wait. What we have here is not your average interview with Michael Nesmith. This is sort of grad-level Nez. Spirituality. Metaphysics. Creativity. Psychedelics. Turning away from the darkness of that era. Not a word about The Monkees. No MTV. No Country Rock Pioneer. No Liquid Paper. Have you noticed that most bios and interviews with Nez seem to gloss over The Prison (1974) and his life at the time? As a long time fan of Nez, The Prison for a long time was this mysterious work that I kept trying and failing to get into. Eventually I realized I wasn’t hearing the original work-I was hearing the touched up version Nez released in the 90’s. A few years ago I finally heard the 1974 original, and it all came together. Plus, I sensed a psychedelic infliuence which turned out to be accurate. In this podcast, my long-winded intro is followed by Nez onstage in 1975 telling the plot of The Prison, and finally, the main course: my conversation, recorded in April 2019. Stuff gets very deep, very spiritual, puzzling, funny and always fascinating. Enjoy.

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Ep. 25 - The Beach Boys and the Grateful Dead Pt.2: R(h)onda, 1974 and Pregaming for the FillmoreEast

So it looks like there’s going to be a Part 3 to this madness, since we haven’t arrived at the Fillmore East yet. My apologetic tone is facetious, of course, because this has been nothing but fun for me. I hope my self-indulgence is slightly more entertaining/enlightening than annoying? Anyway, this episode takes a look at the evolution of the song “Help Me, Rhonda” through all its changes between 1965-80, from its spelling to its instrumental and vocal arrangement to the lyrics to who sings lead which year. I use its evolution as a metaphor for the changes in pop music, its artists and its fans during that time period. Then we take a brief look at the bill the two featured bands were on together on June 8, 1974 (didn’t play with each other though). Finally, as a “pregaming” exercise for the Fillmore East show, we take a look at some other versions of the songs the two bands played together. Both bands sure loved The Coasters! An oddly paced, oddly weighted episode, but imagine that we hit traffic on the way to the Fillmore East and took a strange alternate route.