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| Real human art or AI? Dreadful either way |
I wanted to like this album. I've always wanted to like Tedeschi Trucks. What harm do they do? None. They bring wholesome rock n' roll entertainment to many, many good people - media and IT consultants, mostly, wellness mentors, realtors, barristas, craft beer entrepreneurs, bitcoin traders. A Prius with oat milk lattés in the cooler. The TTB's festival gigs have extended families literally standing up with excitement across the USA, and getting home in time for bed. What am I, the Grinch at Christmas?
Not being able to join in the fun at their gigs, I've dutifully listened to their albums hoping to hear something, like songwriting, to convince me they're worth my time. They perform a lot of covers, which is not only a respectful nod to those great musicians who went before them but also an admission they have trouble coming up with material. Sooner or later - preferably sooner - they had to come up with their own Layla or Dark Star or Ramblin' Man. They just can't. I'm sure their fans can tell the songs apart, but to anyone outside that blessed circle they've made no impact at all.
It's not a question of competence. They have competence out the ass. Trucks is a fine guitarist, if *cough* a little lacking in charisma and on-stage dynamism. To the point that it's hard to see if he's even up there - you're thinking that the potato in Target duds is a guitar tech, tuning up. Tedeschi has a winning voice, and she's sexy in a kind of Walton's Mountain way. Amish schoolmarm sexy. Not too much of a threat to Mom out there keeping an eye on hubby! Neither of them could write a hit at gunpoint. There are, at last count, thirty-seven musicians in the band. Some of them have to stay in the tour bus because there's no room on stage. Excuse me, but Jimi Hendrix was three guys, and one of those couldn't play. The Who? Four, and one of those just swung a mic. They set everything on fire, made the sound of planets colliding ...
Oh dear.
When this album was touted as their song album - heavy on hooks, light on noodling - I pulled on a pair of freshly-laundered pre-aged Levi's (made in China) and my original collector's item Official Revelator Tour Shirt (made in China), swung my TTB ball cap (made in China) backward and settled in for some good old-fashioned rock n' roll. Spoiler - not.
Take a hinge at that cover. It's either AI or a real human artist painting exactly like AI. Whatever. But there's some significance here - the TTB are real humans who sound exactly like AI. The songs have that generic, flat, sterile, faultlessly competent, no-surprises-here sound. They slide on by in an agreeable and entirely unmemorable mid-tempo snooze, never breaking out into the excitement zone. Never making your neck hairs bristle or your palms sweat. Susan Tedeschi and Derek Trucks, a fine, responsible married couple who are also the two most joyless fucks in showbiz.
Let's worry less about machines doing human stuff and worry more about humans doing human stuff. Taking risks, having a laugh, getting angry.
This post written somewhere between resignation and annoyance.
Talk among yerselves. I is disgustipated.
ReplyDeleteWell thanks FT3, that saves me the effort of listening myself - the sleeve designed by a ten year old doesn’t help either - I saw a few tracks on yewtube a while back and was unimpressed.
DeleteI have months of music in my ‘to be listened to’ folder so I’ll dip into that instead. Btw the Bim Sherman you shared a few weeks ago has been playing in Bambi Mansions this week, thanks.
There's something weirdly unsettling about the TTB. The blank expressions (captured perfectly on the cover) and Trucks' zombie-like stance. They're like the Stepford Wives performing for pod person audiences. A virtual world, a near-life experience.
Delete(Thank you - the Bimster is the real thing.)
Not the biggest fan of the TTB, but I don't see or hear anything out of them that separates them from the other yawn inducing jam bands, including Widespread, the Dead (yeah, I said it) or Rush. In all fairness to TTB (and like most of their noodling brethern), they are far better live (still a no from me). Also, a few years ago they released a set of 4 eps of all original music that was based on an old Arabic poem about star crossed lovers. So, they do get an A for originality on that one.
ReplyDeleteWere the Dead ever a "jam band" except retrospectively? I don't remember the term being used in the 60s and 70s. And they had an extensive repertoire of great songs around which to noodle. Which is kind of my point here - there are no instant classic songs on this album, not one that's so good it sticks in your head after one play, and that's what the album is being touted as. They've been going for sixteen years without coming up with anything close to a hit song. None of today's "jam bands" has established a core repertoire of great songs - they all have impressive musical ability, but there's a vacuum at the center.
DeleteWait, what? RUSH?
DeleteWhite Denim are not miles away in style (just a lot better IMO), when I saw them live about ten years ago, despite looking like trainee accountants at the time, I thought that if they just grew a few beards and maybe one of them wore a tasseled suede jacket they could be hugely popular in America. They were excellent live, and not much noodling.
ReplyDeleteThey probably were trainee accountants at the time, I’ve just checked White Denim seem to now have a few beards in the band, maybe I should have been a band manager.
A few of their albums have passed through my EyeChewns. Good stuff, but not quite keepers.
DeleteI want to like "Jam bands", and in principle, given my tastes, should "dig" them. But I find Americana dull, and bluegrass even more so - the redneck associations, perhaps? I realise the jamband scene derives ultimately from the Grateful Dead, and despite many efforts (medicated and not) over the past 45 years, could never get them. There's plenty of good blues bands, and the jazz in jam bands is negligible. I like jazzy jams, so listen to jazz. Umphrey's McGee used to be OK, but don't really go anywhere. I saw the String Cheese Incident live (not many jam bands get to the UK) and lasted 20 minutes, as it was, er, boring. (Not a word I use very often, either.) I like Gong, Cardiacs, Zappa, and fancy-schmancy jazz-fusion bands, so my ears can handle plenty of widdle. Is there a "jam band" I WOULD enjoy?
ReplyDeleteNo.
Delete"...the redneck associations, perhaps?"
DeleteStereotyping is a slippery slope.
I was traumatised by thuggish British youth who liked "The Dukes of Hazzard", and their local hippie ringers known as "Eagles Fans". I would be nice to get over this, but it hasn't happened yet.
DeleteI have a piece about the great ZZ Top coming up (Babs is their Numero Uno fan!), and it's hard to imagine redder necks than theirs.
DeleteZZ Top has too much soul, funk wit, irony and economy to be part of the cocaine cowboy / jamband dullard scenes. Charlie Daniels, fer sure.
DeleteI saw The Tedeschi Trucks Band in May 2025. The crowd looked decidedly “Jam Band” and were “Deadhead nice”. Derek Trucks is as fine as a Blues Rock guitarist you’ll hear in this decade. Susan Tedeschi soulful voice was pitch perfect, and she's more than capable guitarist. The backing band was made up of uniformly excellent musicians. And yet the entire show was about as exciting as doing laundry.
ReplyDeleteIf they don't get excited by the music, I won't either. I've never seen anyone less engaged with the audience than Trucks, and Tedeschi has less passion than a soccer mom. There's no fire there, and the worrying thing is their audience likes them that way. It's more important to relate to them as "good people", to have a "nice time", than to get out of their fucking heads on the music, which everybody seems to have forgotten is what rock n' roll (a "cringe" term in itself) does so well. Having seen the Allmans live, I know how a band can build dynamics and create surges of excitement through improvisation built on great songs. The one needs the other. The TTB are so far from the Allmans (in spite of the obvious debts) they might as well be playing down a mine. Maybe their audience doesn't have the real thing to compare it to. It's the new normal.
Deletesaw susie when she was a solo she was great
ReplyDeletesaw tedeschi trucks band also their mad dog show just didnt cut it for me i never care for trucks no matter who he played with
don't listen to them...she should leave him home
woody
He certainly took the fire out of the Allmans, without even trying. "Instrumental Illness" was right.
DeleteI've seen snippets of their Mad Dogs shows, and it is sterile. It appears they are too worried about being note perfect replicas of the Mad Dogs' lp. Every Thanksgiving Eve in NO for the past 25 years, there has been a Mad Dogs show consisting of just rotating groups of NO based musicians. Its full of life and energy. Undoubtedly, the musicians who perform there are not up to the standrads of those in the TTB, but they get that music only touches you if it has a soul.
DeleteGregg and Cher's kid is in the news. Unrelated, but I'll tend to avoid albums titled "Future Soul" whatever their provenance. Is the Grateful Dead the only jam band who made song albums stronger than their jams? Depends on terminology, I suppose. I'm not into jam bands more than intermittently, really. Songcraft and melody and purpose are difficult enough, but add in instrumental virtuosity and improvisational flash, mix and render, put it thru an autotune just because, take out the bits that require genius or inspiration, and Bob's yer uncle. Publish.
ReplyDeleteI agree with most of the above comments. I haven't heard the latest, but based on their earlier stuff, I can take it or leave it. I choose to leave it.
ReplyDeleteWell-played elevator/grocery store rock. Clean-up on aisle 13...
ALL so-called "Classic Rock" is the current elevator/supermarket/waiting room music. It supplanted Mantovani, 101 Strings, inauthentic Bossa Nova, et al., for a good 15 years now.
DeleteThe above comment was by me.
DeleteLet's hear it for 101 Strings! A big band that sold their LPs for 99 cents & it was worth every penny.
DeleteI digitized a Susan Teseschi live at the Plant KFOG-FM show from 1999 years ago, have not played it in more than 15 years so I can't say whether it's better or worse than the current crop of tunes but in the spirit of let's through it against the internet wall and see what sticks, here it is: https://mega.nz/file/DQhEmRoT#3DcMoHaGDn2dCg6_DjBc8gefWbLyhh5Q7PA-O9lqD4g
ReplyDeleteListening to their Crazy Cryin' now, yawn...
ReplyDeleteSame, same. I have tried. And listened to the new record and the new live stuff floating around. Just not there. Which is a shame, because I want to like it.
ReplyDeleteThat said, their turn on here was fun: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FMNuWu4w18c
Also, per the below, some days crayon scrawls is the best I can do; gimme a break here.
ReplyDeleteBetween 1969 and 1977 there was a Welsh band called Man, by the time of their third album, they had tuned into what today we might call a jam band, and in my opinion they’re music is very listenable. They changed line-up a lot. There are loads of great official live concerts available in the blogosphere.
ReplyDeleteThey reformed in 1983 and are still going today with just one original member I believe.
Here’s a live track on BBC TV from 1975, note future Dire Straits drummer Terry Williams at the back, and some Gibson SG action.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PGL2vjbsHrI&list=RDPGL2vjbsHrI&start_radio=1
Man had a following here in the Bay Area. I bought several albums in '75-'79, plus that first Deke Leonard solo LP. I like 'em. As for Terry Williams...I did see him in '77, drumming for Rockpile at Winterland.
DeleteThe drummer in The Worst Band In All The World (for whom I had the honor of "playing" bass) liked Man, so they can't be any good. He liked the Broughtons, too.
DeleteI forgot about his association with Rockpile and Nick Lowe.
DeleteWhose association?
Deletewaitaminnit - you're telling me that's the real album cover and not a Farq work of art? woof
ReplyDeleteI ain't never bin so insultipated in all my life! Why, fer two cents I'd ... I'd ...
DeleteSo, is the Tedeschi Trucks Band the new Dave Matthews Band?
ReplyDelete(...just asking for a friend...)
Looks like. Or Hootie And His Blowfishes. Rock n' roll! Aw-RIIIIIIGHT!!!!
DeleteThe word that seems to come up the most from fans is "respect". They respect him (and, to a lesser degree, her} as a brilliant guitarists, and as good, even humble, people unaffected by success. All true. But their human qualities aren't anything exceptional, just ordinary. Nothing to honor with a statue or a place in history. I don't recall thinking of the artists I liked in this context, it was always the music. Pretty sure I saw them as just human beings, with their ordinary failures magnified by fame. Sometimes a bit thick, sometimes arrogant, sometimes sharp and funny (the Beatles were a revelation), it didn't matter. I wasn't assessing their human qualities when I listened to the music, and "respect" didn't enter the equation. Excitement should be the whole experience of pop and rock. The intense connection when the artist forms a bond with me through their performance. I didn't have to think about it, weigh them up, judge them on their human qualities. The music came from the radio and I was hooked (or not).
ReplyDeleteTTB don't excite me, they don't even interest me much, which is my low bar for contemporary music. So why have I spent so much time on them here? Why pick on them out of all the interchangeable jam bands out there? Because I wanted this album to be their American Beauty, the beautiful flower of their sixteen years growth where at last they came up with a handful of truly great songs. Pfft.
Jeez, a lot of my favorite artists are people I wouldn't want anywhere near me on a regular basis. The drugs, womanizing, fights, drinking...pick a rock star and ask yourself if you'd like him (or her...) as your downstairs neighbor. I want to go see Iggy, not live next door to him.
DeleteExactly. And you wouldn't want that nice young couple next door headlining at the Cow Palace.
Delete