Addendum below*

If you, like me, live and breathe rock and roll, then you know what it's like when you hear a new band (new to you at least) that just blows you away.

Gov't Mule has been around for a long while, but I've never been interested in them because I'd thought of them as just another "jam band." Bands like Phish, the Grateful Dead, etc. Bands that play long, boring, pointless songs and attract crowds full of smelly, dreadlocked, white college kids with more time on their hands than brains in their heads. Hippies. Oh, how I hate hippies.

Nonetheless, a friend recently suggested that I check out Gov't Mule. He said he was convinced that they were my kind of band. He loaned me a couple of albums and I thought they were pretty good, so I picked up one of their albums myself. And, oh dear Lordy is it good. I can't stop listening to it. It's amazing.

I'm trying not to use superlative phrases like "the best band I've ever heard," since that's the kind of phrase that people toss off casually when they first discover a new band, and then a month later when they've moved on to another band they've forgotten about the one they were praising just before.

Having said that, I think that Gov't Mule might just be the best band I've ever heard.

Check out the clip below and then go get yourself some Mule. From what I've heard, the studio albums are stellar and the live stuff is just plain mind-blowing.

*Addendum: You know, when I gripe about hating "hippies," I'm not really saying what I mean. The people I'm complaining about aren't really hippies. What I'm complaining about is the whole subset of irresponsible, financially comfortable, smelly, annoying white kids who follow these "jam bands" around, living off of their daddy's credit cards, buying "Che" shirts and doing drugs. What has that lifestyle got to do with the original meaning of "Hippy?"

Labels: Entertainment, Gov't Mule, Music, You Tube