favorite era?

[ScS]

i was going to name the thread something like "best slip year" or "best era of slip" but i thought that naming the "best" is too subjective. besides, the band has evolved and morphed so many times in the past 10 years that it'd be fruitless to try to compare 1997 slip to 2004 slip to 2007 slip. there's a huge difference in all those years.

ive been listening to a bunch of '04 shows at work and ive got to say that the band's explorations with each other are spectacular. brad's voice has definitely grown leaps and bounds since then. you can hear a little rust in it at the evolve 5 show. he may have been getting over some laryngitis or something though because it's real raspy.

when i get a chance, ill try to seed both 8.7.04 and 8.27.04. i wish i had more 04 but it doesn't seem like it gets seeded as much as 06 and 07 have, for good reason of course.

btw, whatever happened to "the aptos project"? im glad that was initiated because it seems like there's always 3 or 4 slip shows on the front page of bt.etree.org, though not under the name "aptos project". that's a wonderful thing.

[MATT]

the best era is now. thats not to say i dont love certain eras, but i tend to feel really happy that more people are getting exposed to my favorite band.

[ScS]

yeah i love the fact that so many more people are enjoying the slip today. there's just something about that old school slip sound that gets me. maybe its because thats where i got my first exposure. something in the tone of brad's guitar makes me smile and feel good no matter what.

[MATT]

i basically feel really good about the older years and the newer years in two totally different ways i guess. so the 12/31/04 was sick for me...and everyone else there.

[tyler]

2003-2004, I think. I don't like the excessively jammy early stuff, and I think the newest stuff is quality but really ought to be expanded upon more. 2003 and 2004 is a nice mix--immense instrumental stuff like Earth Will Dissever and Sorry and Driving Backwards With You, folky-country stuff like Dear Melina and Chasing Rabbits and Predicting the Rain, and debut appearances of the indie stuff like Even Rats. And it all came together so seamlessly. The instrumental ones from these years actually remind me far more of post-rock and experimental music than they do of jam band music (which is a good thing).

If there's one negative thing I'll say about these years though, it's that the early versions of Soft Machine and Poor Boy were really rough. Brad's singing has improved a lot since then, and they've given those songs direction instrumentally, but I think the 2003ish early days of those songs weren't so good.

[ScS]

the aptos and dogs on bikes from the aforementioned 8.27 just absolutely wail.

agreed on brad's voice. when i was trying to get friends to listen to the slip in 2003-4, the one gripe they had was brad's voice. id always tell them, "yeah its kinda rough but he's working on it and it's only going to get better". my prediction came true. its worlds apart from then to now.