“Grey Street”

is a song which was written and recorded and played in concert many times by the Dave Matthews band.  This is a tempo analysis, mostly in simple visual form, of the speed of the groove which was basically a B minor lick created by LeRoi Moore, to whom this page has been dedicated all year.  I realized in trying to recreate a web space that was kinda centralized that I had analyzed several versions of the song at several occasions, and decided to group the WordPress® images in one space.  So there are a few graphs from the studio album, some from New York City, 2 from Fenway Park and my favorite one, the Piedmont Park 2007, all songs legally purchased through iTunes®, as the promotional photograph of the band in the New York City Subway epitomizes what people who are lazy enough to pigeon-hole this most underrated band probably ever as “soft” and “lite” and “not cool” and “acoustic.”  This is nonsense – their is no band playing original pop music at this level or even close to it. John Mayer is at an age where if he was ever going to get to Dave’s level he would have – and he has not come close.  In fairness to John, who Dave would probably admit is a better guitarist, has an equally able voice and is a more [sophisticated] composer lacks what Dave has – a rhythm section that is second to no one, ever.  If anyone would have said that Carter Beauford and Stefan Lessard would still be playing together with Dave in 1994, they would have been thought crazy.  I was saying it on news boards in 1997 and was getting laughed off by more “serious” bands that have since peaked and faded away.  There is still no one who plays close to Carter’s level, though as people have tried to copy him, which they can’t – learned, by accident, left handed, as a six-year old, though he is right handed.  If their is a “Mozart”player in popular music, it is Carter.  He had the same mass exposure to music as a child and the practice and guidance, and unlike the “thinking” type, a Beethoven or Brahms, such as a Bill Bruford or Neil Pert, with very ‘thoughtful’ virtuosity, Carter is a stylist – like Phil Collins.  Already naturally talented- add the element of playing for 10 hours a day from the age of 5.  Stefan began playing band with carter and the band at age 16.

It has the timing, groove, rhythm and speed of a song which predictably emote a comfortable and natural expression. Music in any genre, from industrial to classical, is predictably natural, confident, relaxed and cool with its message in this range of around 98-105 beats per minute. “

Grey Street” has been recorded and sold digitally many times in various performances. Therefore it provides a way to show how the Dave Matthews Band varies its original speed performance, and how you might start to be able to control, as John Lennon and Paul McCartney called “the music playing in your head.”

In September 2002, Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg and the Dave Matthews Band coordinated efforts to bring about: a benefit concert in New York City’s Central Park – by proportion, the largest open space in any major city with such density – by the band, all revenue going to New York City public schools.

The schools benefited, and no one with a heart can American can wonder through Central Park, walking around the Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis Reservoir without feeling something magical – especially at sunrise – most especially on the shortest day of the year.

Happy Solstice!

Meanpeed Summary

song=“Grey Street“

performer=Dave Matthews Band

special event=live from Central Park, September 2002

average tempo (meanspeed)=104.1 beats per minute

beats per second=1.74

mean emotion according to meanspeed music theory=natural

average beat length=576 milliseconds

corresponding pitch=444 Hertz.

The most comfortable speed of all according to the meanspeed music theory is so comfortable that for nineteen years I called it simply “natural.” Natural in the parlance of our times has taken on that one meaning too many, perhaps because the Green revolution has all Good people wanting to do things naturally. So after much thought, I changed the name of the emotion that one is predictably likely to find if a song has an average velocity between approximately 98-105 beats per minute as “comfort.”

One might point out: “[I] see a large number of songs in this territory that are about *un*comfortable things! Surely you over-generalize?” To which I reply that first, of course there are exceptions, I call them tempo ironies, and they make the point of proving the rule by sticking out as unusual. Second, it is an axiom that someone *Else’s* pain is always bearable. We all know this is true.

Take a look again at the songs that do not “fit” as being songs of comfort, being natural, being contented: they are about someone else. Another Day In Paradise is in this range and it is about poverty, homelessness and racism? Not Phil Collins’ homelessness “you are homeless and I never will be” forced empathy.  Nowhere is this better seen in what I have called for years the MARVIN GAYE EFFECT. In his songs Mercy, Mercy Me (The Ecology) and What’s Goin’ On, Marvin signs about the horrors of everything from nuclear waste to moronic and death and mental injury-causing Vietnam [War]. However, these two songs are about his brother’s enlistment, and both were originally recorded as “upbeat” songs for an all female quartet with whom Marvin was working at the time of the war draft. Listen to either of these songs without the words, and they sound like songs of comfort and contentment. Marvin himself compared it the Martin Luther King approach to racism as opposed to Malcolm X’s James Brown-like in-your-face approach. Moral leaders can face the no-win Gandhi end, which is why most are too cowardly to be moral leaders. Both men were killed for simply trying to be the ‘black leaders’ so called ‘whites’ are always ranting about. The song about martin Luther King’s horrible death that is best known is by the Irish singer Bon -

: Pride (In The Name Of Love), of course, not being Bono’s assassination, at the speed range of 98-105, natural or comfortable. In Dave Matthews song of comfort called GREY STREET, there is a girl who has an emptiness inside her.  See what I mean? Hear it? According to German scientists circa 2005, this same tempo is the same tempo of orgasmic spasms which

occur in the genital and rectal areas of both men and women, same spasms being the ONLY element of sex where there is a predictable speed. Heartbeat, blood pressure, breath rate: nothing to do with sex and predictability.

Only 70 million studies had to be made in order for all the scientists to agree: sure, the autonomic nervous system in general speeds up in the force of sexual attraction and action, no speed of the heart, breath, lung or any other organ of the individual of either gender is predictable in regard to sex.

Meanspeed-Mahnning Public Summary

song=”Grey Street”

composer=Dave Matthews

performer=Dave Matthews Band

album=Live Trax, Volume 6

venue=Fenway Park, July, 2006

beats measured=4,131

total time elapsed=2,368.21 seconds

mean slow phase=1.74 cycles per second

average beat=0.573 seconds

beats per trial=459

average time per trial=263.13444 seconds

average tempo (meanspeed)=104.7 beats per minute

mean emotion according to meanspeed music theory=natural

Recording source=iTunes

File

Size=4.3 MB

Kind=Protected AAC audio file

Intellectual property rights=© 2006 Bama Rags

Bit rate=128 kbps

Sample Rate=44.100 kHz

Profile=Low Complexity

Volume=(-10.3) dB

FairPlay version=2this is a compilation of articles I wrote about different versions of the song Grey Street over the last 4 years,