did we read this already??!?!?

[Dan]

http://phx.com/article_ektid28304.aspx


what Brett and who is andy pratt?

[tyler]

and they weren't in Guitar Hero 2. and i don't see anything acoustic in The Original Blue Air.

i think the writer may have been dropped on his head as a child.

[diesel]

lets find out where he lives and kick his ass!

or email him, whichever you like.

[headnugg]

“We’d be playing the Newport Jazz Festival and Scullers,” recalls Marc Friedman. “There was a time when we just wanted people to sit down and shut up. Then we realized that wasn’t the right place for the band, but we always felt like we were outsiders everywhere we went.”.

Nice.


Great story.

[harrymcq]

Other than the Bret Barr thing it is actually a decent article.

[headnugg]

It seems to me the Slip have really been dissing the "jamband" scene in a few recent articles.......


I don't like the scene too much either anymore, but the scene is what made them who they are.....

[tyler]

Yeah but you can't help but wonder how much of that jam-band-dissing is less what The Slip is actually about and more what the writer (probably an indie hipster) wants to write about...

[Phrazz]

...when he wrote this, obviously. Who the fark is Bret? That's the name of Ken's assistant who was taking notes. *lol*

The article has some "interesting" comment, but is largely a pedestrian work by a less-than-gifted write (trying to be nice). He does expose some curious paradoxes, like how The Slip is hard to "put a finger on", and Andrew supports this point.

I'm including the content here, in the somewhat likely event that the Phoenix sacks this writer and deletes his article. He seems more than a little out of the loop and obviously is very new to this Slip thing, but how much slack can we cut a writer of the Phoenix?

BTW, I'm not as sure of The Slip 'dissing' the jamband scene as much as the label. I for one have followed various "jam bands" around and I wouldn't call The Slip one (for fear of lynching), but there's definitely some spill-over there and the scene itself is not all bad (perhaps got out of control with Phish, but the same could be said of The Dead, and their scene got out of control as well, and it wasn't strictly jam band or jam grass or even straight up rock and acid rock may only describe a few songs). I don't think the scene itself made The Slip what they are, but some try to argue this in various ways. It's hard to do from a musical perspective, but maybe easier from a social perspective (or fashion perspective ).

Fame is a double-edge sword, indeed. Incidentally, it's hard to sit down when you are shaking your ass, but I've been on both sides of the "shusshing fence" when it comes to blabbering at shows. I am curious if Marc realizes if they really *wanted* to be seen as outsiders. I feel like an outsider at times, but I don't let it get to me. That's part of being a professional -- you have to learn how to blend in with your surroundings (or risk detection!).

I love interviews anyways, even if they're not pieced together so well. This Ken M. will learn -- he'll take his knocks if he's serious and get better. Unless he's already looking for another job, of course. ;-}

-Phrazz

Guitar heroes too

Guitar heroes too

The Slip fall into the rock
By: KEN MICALLEF
11/28/2006 2:06:46 PM

061201_slip_main
OUTSIDERS: On Eisenhower, these Berklee College dropouts have toned down the jams in favor of classic ’70s rock.

“People simply can’t describe our music,” says drummer Andrew Barr of the Boston-based trio the Slip as he looks back over the band’s past decade together. “ ‘Nice’ is not the best adjective to use, but my friends who listen to death metal and classical just can’t put a finger on what we do.”

Not that dodging the fickle finger of classification hasn’t prevented the Slip — Barr, his brother Bret Barr on guitar/vocals, and bassist Marc Friedman — from racking up a club following in Boston and beyond. (Yep, they’re very big in Japan.) Fortified by the release of their eighth album, Eisenhower (Bar/None), and what’s fast becoming a hit track (“Even Rats”) on Sony PlayStation 2’s Guitar Hero II, this band of Berklee College dropouts have accomplished quite a bit with very little outside help, mainly on the live circuit. Now, for the first time, people outside the jam-band scene are paying attention to a Slip studio recording.

“This record was highly improvisational,” Bret says, speaking from New York’s Housing Works bookstore in SoHo. “We had an improv approach in the studio, like, ‘Let’s just try these sounds out. Let’s grab that thing or shake that thing.’ And though there is a place for jazz solos and we always do that as a band, now we keep it at home. On the record we found a way to convey something that feels more complete and direct.”

Indeed, their previous albums have offered playful doses of improv mixed with potent pop melodies, but Eisenhower is their most cohesive and satisfying. By toning down the jams, the Slip, who play Avalon this Saturday with My Morning Jacket, come closer to classic ’70s rock than they ever have before. Soaring melodies, flashes of overheated instrumental excursions, and a warm, retro feel in the production all combine to create a much more accessible Slip.

Bret agrees. “This time we paid a lot more attention to what it is we love about records: the way that they sound. Before we would just go along with any engineer who wanted to put mics on every drum. Here, we paid attention to getting room sounds, some space and depth and dimension.”

Fans of the Slip’s expansive live performances may be surprised by the sophistication of the nostalgic stylizing on Eisenhower, from the sun-streaked pop opener, “Children of December,” to the grandiose piano ballad “If One of Us Should Fall.” Elsewhere, Andy Pratt indulges in a little acoustic weirdness on “Suffocation Keep,” George Harrison-style slide guitar embellishes “The Soft Machine,” and there’s a Bowie-esque sheen to “Life in Disguise.” In fact, there’s so much in the way of power pop and hints of a thousand forgotten riffs that it’s tempting to wonder what happened to the jam band who once were the Slip.

“Sure, some people lumped us in with that,” Andrew Barr says of the jam-band thing. “When we were coming up in the mid ’90s, the jam-band scene was just getting started. We also played Wetlands in New York with the Sun Ra Arkestra and Soulive. But we always felt that we were not in the heart of that world. We didn’t relate.”

As former Berklee students who understood Coltrane and Charlie Parker better than they did the intricacies of “Dark Star,” the Slip found themselves perpetually on the outside looking in. “We’d be playing the Newport Jazz Festival and Scullers,” recalls Marc Friedman. “There was a time when we just wanted people to sit down and shut up. Then we realized that wasn’t the right place for the band, but we always felt like we were outsiders everywhere we went.”

“I would see lists of thousands of Boston bands and we wouldn’t even be in there,” adds Bret. “It is analogous to our whole career. Even in the late ’90s jam scene we were the outsiders. We were the weirdest of the jam bands. We played actual songs and we weren’t blatantly derivative of Phish.”

The Slip haven’t done away with their jazz chops altogether on Eisenhower, which they recorded at two local studios, Q-Division and Bubble and Squeak. But they put their instrumental talents to work where they can do the most good — in the drum solo flurry of “Children of December,” for example, and the acoustic fusion blowout of “The Original Blue Air.”

“Most jazz players don’t go on to make pop records,” Friedman says, “and maybe some pop guys go into jazz, but it was all part of our distillation process to bring it to this point. We are writing good songs that we can perform in an open way every night, and we can add creative things that keep the songs fresh. Other bands might get tired of playing their six-minute songs, but we can find these pockets of freedom.”

Although the Slip have found an entirely new audience in Guitar Hero II, they’ve rarely gotten much love from mainstream press or radio. But true to Eisenhower’s feel-good vibes, they don’t hold a grudge. Well, not for long, anyway.

“To hell with them!” Andrew laughs. “If you are in the Boston rock scene and you have leather boots and a crazy haircut, you are accepted. But it was uncool to like the Slip because we weren’t writing aggressive music.”

Bret professes no bitterness at being ignored by the critics, but he also suggests that perhaps the Slip weren’t quite ready for accolades either. “So now we have a great record, something that can win over writers who have slagged us off in the past because they know we played jazz? Those guys are looking for the next heroin addict who’s sacrificing his soul. And we never listened to punk. But I have to admit, it has taken a long time for us to figure things out. We had to go through some hard shit to write songs that meant something.”

THE SLIP + MY MORNING JACKET | Avalon, 15 Lansdowne St, Boston | December 2 | 617.228.6000