**Big Whiskey and The GrooGrux King**

[Coldchillin]

Fucking WEAK.

[gravesRR7]

Who's ordering the $60 bundle?

you can get the CD, DVD and Alpine Valley for $20. But it's FOURTY! dollars more to get the lithographys, cd case and bonus disc?

I just want to make sure the get those bonus tracks (however let down we feel at the moment) I'm sure they'll be available (wink) online though

[baseballjon9]

die in a fire dave matthews you piece of shit.

ummmmm

[Evan]

die in a fire dave matthews you piece of shit.

ummmmm

just ignore bense. It's his father that he's really angry with.

[Klondog]

HEYO!!

[bense27]

You guys are all equally as retarded as this band.

[DJR]

hey guys - good job, we're not retarded.

[Nitro1515]

Album review by Bob Lefsetz, a guy in the music industry. He hated Stand Up.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

U2 put out a single no one liked. Radio rejected it, and so did casual listeners. Only a small coterie of fans thought it was good. What was the point?

U2 had an impression that we still live in a monoculture, that everybody's paying attention to the game. I GET IT! You want to do something left field, so you can't be pigeonholed. You want to be known for risk-taking. But who's paying attention?

Very few. I know you hate to admit this. But EVERYBODY'S a niche today. There are no mass cultural events other than the Super Bowl. Citizens might like to go to Coachella or Bonnaroo, but most people are just fine missing them. No one's lying about attending the first Coachella, most people don't even know what year it took place.

As for radio and the conventional "Billboard" chart... You saw that nonexistent lineup for the Rick Ross signing. Hysteria exists at most in the hearts of your fans, just play to your fans!

I played the new Dave Matthews Band album, "Big Whiskey and the GrooGrux King". I won't say I hated it, but I found it torture to listen to. It sounded like Dave Matthews, it had all the elements except memorable material.

Then I hit track 7, "Spaceman", and every cut thereafter was really good.

Huh?

Who did the sequencing? Who picked the single?

A non-fan who hears "Funny The Way", the track they're promoting, is going to laugh. Because it's everything they hate about the DMB, there's no risk. But there's risk in "Squirm", cut 8, and unlike "Get On Your Boots", it's not bad. Someone not enamored of the DMB could hear it and be drawn in.

In other words, what's the purpose of the single? To deliver something radio will play that won't move the public? Top Forty is for tracks, not credible, career artists. So, you deliver something "in-your-face", obvious, radio doesn't play it anyway and everybody but the hard core ignores it.

And if it's truly about the hard core, how about the cut that's going to reach them most, the one that will penetrate them and cement their belief?

"Alligator Pie (Cockadile)", cut 8, starts off like the soundtrack of "Deliverance", it's got no place on terrestrial radio, but it gets your toe tapping more than "Funny The Way".

"Seven", ironically cut 10, has got a lick straight off of "Exile On Main Street". It twists in between repetition of this riff, but the cut's got a creativity closer to the Stones opus, something from side 3, than what's conventionally aired on the radio. "Seven" is what you play when you're tanked up and raging, whether in the frat house in the early morning hours or at the gig.

"Time Bomb" has got that magical "Dreaming Tree" quality, like it was cut by a folkie living in a hut deep in the northern territories of Canada. This is the kind of music that made me a DMB fan.

The quiet feel is replicated in the following, incredibly intimate, "Baby Blue".

In other words, the tracks hitting the conventional DMB notes rubbed me the wrong way. I know that sound, when the band fires on all cylinders and the crowd erupts. But that's about party, fandom comes from the cuts that you play alone, in the middle of the night.

I realize DMB still has a major label contract.

But I think this album should have been an EP. Four, maybe five tracks at most. It would have been more digestible. And I would have focused on the music that REACHES people. The classic albums oftentimes weren't successful out of the box, it was only when the collective universe all found out they were listening and united that the anointment took place.

I advocate releasing YOUR BEST track in advance. Not the one that's most workable in the media. Are DMB fans paying attention to mainstream media?

Bono is playing to the grandstand, he needs worldly acclaim.

Dave Matthews is more humble, more understated, and it's when he makes music befitting his identity that he's most successful.

[jsgksu]

Sounds promising, kinda.

So does this mean there's copies of the album floating around to critics and we can expect a leak soon?

[Nitro1515]

Sounds promising, kinda.

So does this mean there's copies of the album floating around to critics and we can expect a leak soon?

I hope.

As for his review, it sounds like its a decent album, some forgettable tracks. His writing is kinda all over the place though, tough to really grasp what he was saying.

[Nitro1515]

Track times:

1 Grux 1:11
2 Shake Me Like a Monkey 4:00
3 Funny the Way It Is 4:28
4 Lying in the Hands of God 5:40
5 Why I Am 3:53
6 Dive in 4:26
7 Spaceman 4:08
8 Squirm 5:32
9 Alligator Pie 3:59
10 Seven 4:17
11 Time Bomb 3:59
12 Baby Blue 3:41
13 You & Me 4:52

[GSR]

54:06, I think?

I'm gonna have to read that review 7 more times in order to understand it, but if, according to this guy, the first six songs are the weaker ones, then that sounds ok to me because I've liked everything I've heard from that half of the album.

[Evan]

Yeah the guy tries a bit too hard to wow you with his "philosophies" on music, but his writing toward Dave makes sense and sounds like he has a good understanding of what people will identify with.

[bense27]

All of them are approaching 4 minutes. That in itself is a thing to celebrate.

[d.m.b41]

what do the warehouse guys say, will there be a 'Warehouse Bonus CD' (with extra tracks)?