The Wilbury's put out some great stuff. I hope they keep doing it.

I hope so too, but its been a long time. Each living member has got wrapped up in their own solo projects, so I'm doubtful.

I've got to dig out that old Wilbury's tape. Thanks for bring this up. What is your favorite Wibury's song?

METALLICA, best live band there ever was!

Traffic and the Beatles.

Let me go home and work on this--Van Morrison and Leonardy Cohena have to share songwriting for me, but there are so many vocalists I adore, as well as a few smashing guitarists (SRV probably)(but would he mesh with VM and LC?), but I know almost no drummers, bassists, keyboardists, and definitely have no pref for producer! Great topic, tho (if only your readers grasped the concept...).

ooo, speaking of not grasping the concept: none of your guys are dead. ?

And SRV is. Do I need to pick again from the land of the living?

Roy Orbison joined the choir invisible, didn't he? Anyhooo--I had plenty of time to mull this over last night as I was the victim of that most lethal combination of a noisy neighbor and rampant insomnia (actually it was my usually quiet downstairs neighbor's unusually noisy new beau who chose 2AM as the time to don hobnail boots and singelhandedly stamp out birth defects by effecting his own little March of Dimes around her apt for hours on end....); unfortunately, even a lot of time to think won't help f you don't know anything to begin with! So if I have to pick a living guitarist I'll go with Robert Fripp. The only bassist I know is Pete Entwhistle but he's ok so let's put him in. The only keyboardist I know (other than Shirley Jones and Susan Dey) is Ray Manzerek, and he's not so bad. Vocalists are a tougher choice--I like so many different voices for different reasons. We'll go with Tracey Thorne. The producer will have to remain a big question mark, but he or she had better be pretty damned f ne to be able to pull together some coherent sound from such disparate influences!

The idea of Bruce (quite possibly my favorite musical artist- well, tied with Van Morrison, to whom he, and many, many others owe homage) jamming with Orbison, and being produced by Spector is very compelling. Of course, Roy has indeed expired, and Phil Spector, so far as I know, still thinks he's being followed by Richard Nixon, or something. And really, Bruce took the ideas expounded by both of them (with the Born to Run LP), and pushed them to heights I don't believe either ever imagined (no offense o the dead, or the paranoid, intended). My conception of ultimate group was fulfilled by the Beatles- I think they simply dwelt on a different plateau from other mortals. In the absence of John, plug in Eric Clapton, and/or Pete Townshend, Stevie Winwood, or maybe Elvis Costello, and let 'em rip. And let Brian Wilson produce... Van Morrison, I think, dwells on his own plateau, as well- a place beyond rock and roll, and beyond even the blues. Dave Marsh wrote that Van had achieved his own "personal equivalent" of the blues, which is accurate, I think, but understates his achievement. Astral Weeks, I think, contains quite possibly the most sublime sounds I've ever heard...

I'll have to agree with you on Astral Weeks, one of the finest albums ever and one that I spent many hours listening to over the years.