Dead Songs in Depth

    
Uncle John's Band
w: Hunter m: Garcia
AGDL: http://arts.ucsc.edu/gdead/agdl/uncle.html
LASF: http://www.whitegum.com/songfile/UNCLEJB.HTM
  

    
Uncle John's Band 
Lyrics: Robert Hunter
Music: Jerry Garcia

Copyright Ice Nine Publishing; used by permission.

Well the first days are the hardest days, don't you worry any more
'Cause when life looks like easy street, there is danger at your door
Think this through with me, let me know your mind
Wo-oh, what I want to know is, are you kind?

It's a buck dancer's choice my friend, better take my advice
You know all the rules by now, and the fire from the ice
Will you come with me, won't you come with me?
Wo-oh, what I want to know, will you come with me?

God damn, well I declare, have you seen the like?
Their walls are built of cannon balls
Their motto is "don't" tread on me"

Chorus 1:
Come hear Uncle John's Band, playing to the tide
Come with me or go alone
He's come to take his children home

It's the same story the crow told me, it's the only one he knows
Like the morning sun you come and like the wind you go
Ain't no time to hate, barely time to wait
Wo-oh, what I want to know, where does the time go?

I live in a silver mine and I call it beggar's tomb
I got me a violin and I beg you call the tune
Anybody's choice, I can hear your voice
Wo-oh, what I want to know, how does the song go?

Chorus 2:
Come hear Uncle John's Band, by the river side
Got some things to talk about
Here beside the rising tide

[chorus 1]

Wo-oh what I want to know, how does the song go?

[chorus 2]
  

    
Folks,

Woah... recorded in a small room by a single mic in the audience, date
and location unknown, but presumably in the days between Keith and
Donna and Brent (listen to the vocals and keys and tell me if you've
got a clue). Might be just post "Blues for Allah".

Jazz-grass blown up into smithereens.

http://easyweb.easynet.co.uk/~billpannifer/ujb.mp3

Enjoy!
  

    
Well, it's a very fun listen, especially with that Miles Davis jam,
but it ain't the Dead.

Following the link backwards, it's a cover band called the Cosmic
Charlies.  Here's the home page:

http://easyweb.easynet.co.uk/~billpannifer/cosmic.htm

And here's a page with lots more mp3 files:

http://easyweb.easynet.co.uk/~billpannifer/csounds.html
  

    
Aw'right... that's a mighty fine fix in the mix. The music flows even
over thse tin ears!
  

    
Heh... back-trackin' thru the web, it appears that I was at that show,
not long after dumb ol' Garcia's demise. I remember thinking, this is
the best Dead cover band I'd ever heard.

Brame damage ;-)
  

    

From a reader in England:



I noticed the comments in UJB about the Cosmic Charlies.  I thought
people might be interested to hear that the Charlies did a gig after a Ratdog
show in London in July 2002 at which Kenny Brooks kindly sat in on China
Cat> I Know You Rider.  Go to
http://easyweb.easynet.co.uk/~billpannifer/sets2001.html

and scroll down to Wed 6 July, 12-Bar Club, Denmark Place, WC2 for photos
and the MP3 of Kenny with the Cosmic Charlies.
  

    



Susan Wiseman-Gibeaut writes:


I just read the Uncle John's Band is a tribute song to Rolling Thunder, whose
white name is/was John Pope.  That would explain the Appalachian, and indian
allusions you  have listed in the song.  It also mentions that the Billy Jack
movies were based on Rolling Thunder, and that the Bob Dylan led the Rolling
Thunder Review.  "RT" also gives an invocation in Micky Heart's Rolling
Thunder album.  You can read this for yourself in the forward of Rolling
Thunder Speaks, A Message for Turtle Island, edited by Carmen Sun Rising
Pope.  Peace.
  

    
I've come to be convinced over the year's that Uncle John is largely
John Cohen of the New Lost City Ramblers and to a lesser extent Jerome
John Garcia.
  

    
That's what I've always thought/heard.
  

    
Dang! I thought it was about you <unklejohn> !
  

    
It's about everyone!
  

    
Aye!
  

    
Billy Jack?  What are the parallels between Rolling Thunder and Billy Jack?
  

    
It's about my famous uncle, John Phillips, an heroic NYC fireman who
fought fires in the Empire State Building and on the famous French
ocean liner Le Normandie, which was mothballed in Brooklyn and caught
fire from a welder's torch when it was in the final stages of being
converted into a troop carrier (WWII); Uncle John was photographed
doing a sailor dive from the deck of the listing Normandie, some 60'
into Brooklyn harbor.  He later retired and became a collector and
master repairer of
  

    
Don't leave us in suspense.........
  

    
(Copied from another thread). This quote from a Bob Weir interview in
Uncut magazine from May 2007 gives a new perspective on the "Are you
kind?" line:

"Robert Hunter wrote lyrics for Workingman’s Dead. He could use fewer
words, and say more, than anyone. 'Are you kind?', was, I assumed, a
sci-fi allusion. 'Kind' meaning 'my kind', 'humankind.' In the context
of Workingman’s Dead, it meant: 'Are you simpatico … In solidarity with
other working men?'"
  

    
I always took it to mean "(our) kind". The working people have no
country.

Now, of course, it has been heavily draped with kindness.