So, Steve Miller was at an ASCAP event to receive a lifetime achievement award. I’ve been to a few of these kinds of things and I’ve noticed that when a person reaches the point that they are being recognized for a “lifetime of achievement” they sometimes don’t feel the need to pull punches anymore.
From Reuters.
Rocker Steve Miller may have honed his craft in San Francisco during the late 1960s, but don’t lump him in with local bands from that time, especially the Grateful Dead.
“I couldn’t stand that band,” Miller said on Thursday, during a panel at a music industry symposium, recalling the Dead’s interminable jams and lengthy tuning breaks between songs.
In fact, Miller said it was much more interesting to listen to frontman Jerry Garcia’s stage banter than to listen to the band play its psychedelic improvisations.
The San Francisco music scene was more of a “social phenomenon,” Miller said, and his eponymous band was more musical and more professional than the pack.
Ouch! Gary isn’t going to like that.
Actually, I’ve heard Miller say similar things about the San Fransisco scene before but, he used a little more tact. He’s always been more into tight and concise than free form jamming.
He also took a swing at the U.S. Postal Service.
He recalled that he allowed the United States Postal Service to license his tune “Fly Like an Eagle” in the 1990s under an $11 million deal that gave him final approval of every aspect. But the first few television ads aired before he received the submissions in the mail, and were “awful.”
Increasingly frustrated, he called the USPS and its ad agency, and told them, “You have to stop sending this stuff by Priority Mail … Use FedEx.”
That seems a little harsh as well. You know you want stuff to be right but for $11 Mil, you could probably leave out the FedEx jab. Me, for $11 Mil, I’d take the money and run.
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