Who is left to doubt the cold insistence of Americas trek

binge and purge
binge and purge
binge and purge

until your bones are spit out and left to dry in a moon
that is red as the sun they’ll bury you under?
No longer thirsty for the dragons blood that forms puddles in the purple sky
above San Francisco, that drips like a forgotten melody. Or a new song.

And if the psalm refused to sing would you raise your voice in triumph?
Or would the sound only ring hollow? No truth in the pictures that tell the tale.
Or would you simply laugh

lying face up on a green rock that is surrounded by a confederacy of imitators?
Blurted in repentance or to concur the deafening silence
for a time, like an ocean for the shore.

Is there anywhere you can go
that you’d truly be unknown, rising ragged and tired to dance
across the graves of our fathers and children,
in a joyous defiance? Was it a right

or left we made outside the Haight, trying to recapture
the cryptic visions you found at the Acid Test?
Before they rolled that wagon in to take you back to Neal + Jack.

Bob Weir is dead, at least that’s what the Internet said,
in a rush and a flash he was off to the cool and dark
with only his song left to explain what it really means
to be an American. As much the child as the old man.

https://linktr.ee/GreatWendt

CCR’s resume speaks for itself. 5 years, 7 albums, 4 of which came out in an 18 month period, 9 Top 10 Hits, Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee 1993, and a truer representation of the Americana bands like The Grateful Dead were chasing.

The list of songs John Fogerty and company recorded is mind boggling, what it took Hunter and Garcia, Becker and Fagen, Tom Petty or Bruce Springsteen 10 years or more to create, CCR did in a quick 5 years.

Down On The Corner, Fortunate Son, Proud Mary, Bad Moon Rising, Lookin’ Out My Back Door, Long As I Can See The Light, Green River, Up Around The Bend, Run Through The Jungle, Travelin’ Band, Who’ll Stop The Rain, Have You Ever Seen The Rain, Hey Tonight, Sweet Hitch-Hiker were all on a single that charted in the top 10, and that doesn’t even scratch the surface< of some of their best work. From the greatest songs ever written about life in a band, Lodi and Traveling Band to Down on The Corner and Hey Tonight, the guys in CCR knocked it out of the park repeatedly and consistently

Beyond the resume, they were also very defiant, almost proto punk in their insistence, even though they were from San Fran at the height of Psychedelic music, to keep the songs tight. Even longer pieces like Graveyard, Heard It Through The Grapevine and Bootleg had a sense of purpose that was in direct contrast to the prevailing winds of just play what you feel.

They were roots rock before anyone knew the term, bringing together a greater amalgamation of American music then even the Dead did. Blues, country, bluegrass, rock n’ roll, gospel, soul, spiritual, Cajun, garage rock all were bubbling below the catchy rhythms and smart lyrics laid down by John Fogerty and company. They also paid homage to those who came before and wrote the playbook they executed to perfection, Little Richard, Screaming Jay Hawkins, Hank Williams, Roy Orbison, Chuck Berry, Muscle Shoals and Motown are just a few of the myriad of influences.

Now people may say that it was all John, but that is so far from the truth. With out the 3 other members behind him, this body of work would not exist. His brother Tom on 2nd Guitar with a rhythm dripping in the blues provided the pallet for John to sing and play lead. Then there is Stu Cook who laid down a bass line that was as thick as a Louisiana swamp and, with Doug Clifford on drums to anchor him to that relentless beat, you have the greatest American Rock Band

By any acid test you use to measure greatness, CCR exceed it. Take a few hours and go from the raw sound of Bayou Country and follow as the sound becomes refined on Green River and then becomes pure pop perfection on Willy and The Poor Boys before maturing on their last master work Cosmo’s Factory. 4 albums, 18 months, a body of work to rival anyone.

SATURDAY 11/16/1991

Trey Anastasio has been involved in no less then 10 different side projects. Including Jazz Mandolin Project, 1993; Bad Hat, 1994; Surrender to the Air, 1996; 8 Foot Fluorescent Tubes, 1998; Phil Lesh and Friends, April 99; Vermont Youth Orchestra, 2001; Oysterhead, Fall 2001; Dave Matthews and Friends, winter ’03-’04; Trey Anastasio solo acoustic; Trey Anastasio Band, and Ghosts Of The Forest.

Trey played on Ernie Stires’ 1997 LP, Samson Riffs. As Ruth Horowitz reported in Seven Days back in Sept 97 “Half way through “Geulah Papyrus,” a straight-ahead Phish song about a spider and a fly, the music breaks into a short theme and variation in which counterpoint melodies weave in and out like silk strands in a web. The piece, “The Asse Festival”, was written by lead guitarist Trey Anastasio and dedicated to his friend and mentor, Cornwall composer Ernie Stires”

Jon Fishman is the man with 100 names. Here are a few notable ones. Fish, Henrietta, Tubbs, Jon the Fishman, Moses Brown, Moses Heaps, and Moses Dewitt, Moses Yastrzemski, J. Edgar Hoover, Vinnie Barbarino, Phil Collins, Zero man, Johnny B. Fishman, Hankrietta, Tommy Dorsey, The Piper, Sans Bag the Piper, Tubbs the Beast Boy, Eye Ball Man, Little Jon and Friar Tubbs, Jon, Friar Tubbs, Henrietta Fieldberg, Henrietta Tubman, Chuck Norris, Greasy Fizeek, Ron Jaworski, Marco Esquandolas, Luke Skywalker, Sneezeblood Eyeball, Forrest Gump, and Morton Charlton Heston. Of course this just scratches the surface.

Bassist Mike Gordon is also a filmmaker, directing the “Down with Disease” video and Tracking that showed the creative process behind Hoist.

Page McConnel’s Dad, Dr Jack helped develop Tylenol when he worked for McNeil.

Jerry Garcia’s solo project, Dave Mathews Band and Phish shared a manager – founder of Red Light Management Coran Capshaw.

They sat at the bar, as old and etched
with a thousand stories, of the Hotel
Fandangos Millionaires Room (where all the stars come
to shine in Weezenhawk) last Tuesday,
Frederick had brought the I-Ching
and in a late night toss
they saw it was time to head back
to the pyramids. They paid their tab
then hopped in a cab to JFK:

Henry asks “What goes on in the temples
at night?”, ”Ancient Egyptian burials,
prehaps a sacrifice or two”
replied Frederick, “You see
Hathor was the cow goddess
and she gave birth to Osiris the King
who was deemed as having the most desirable phallus
in the palace.  It was”, “diamond blue”
Gerorge interupted “a high erect prick
for Isis’s thighs, like a monster
bass swimming up the Nile in a hot eclipse evening
with clear eyes.  That’s the key.”
“To what” asks Henry,  Frederick says “Everything.”

Henry understood much less now
then when they were at the bar and as they entered
the airport he began to cry, wailing
something like “There’s not yet a word created
to do you guys justice and lets go home.”
They calmed him down and he continued
“There’s going to be a double suicide,
George is going to die
In a plane crash and I’m going to do the same
so I can be with him,

don’t look at me that way,
this is a tragedy.”  George said “You’re crazy man,
we’ve got a plane to catch in twenty minutes”
and went off to the bathroom.Henry continued
to cry and Frederick was silent for a second, thinking
the whole thing as relivant as the fact that water spins
clockwise south of the equator, something
so arbirary being so consistent,

he took a last pull off his cigarette
and turned to Henry “Things ain’t what they used to be,
moving in a kind of off-hand dexterity
toward the millenium.  We were in DC the first time
you started with this shit and it still makes me think
of the same two things;
the sculpture you made out of ashtrays
in Ferdonia that blocked Miss Whittlemeyers window
and got the priest and rabbi after us.” He was silent again,
getting lost in the image. “What’s the other thing
Fred”?”, “That somewhere, Henry, a Sphinx is laughing.”