The Manufacturing of Goose

This is meant to be a hit piece on the band Goose.

And.

Well.

It very well may be. I haven’t decided yet.

I mean…I want it to be. And The Machine tells me I should.

Part of me knows I shouldn’t. That maybe I haven’t tried hard enough. That maybe I’m resistant to change. That I don’t get it — yet. That I’m unwilling. Uncomfortable.

That it’s not for me to decide — and I don’t need to yuck someone else’s yum.

But, sorry, Goose is jam caricature, a manufactured derivative, color without the soul.

And every time my skin crawls, there’s a tiny finger in the dyke that’s holding in metric tons of vitriol just behind it.

I’m torn. I’m ready.

I’m so ready (no, not “Slow Ready,” stop it).

But of course, I shouldn’t.

So, let’s just see what happens, alright?

First, it’s Goose, not Geese. Let’s get that straight.

Geese: ultra-cool, current, 2026’s poster-child of indie, hailing as hipsters from Brooklyn, NY, you should see Cameron Winter’s Carnegie Hall thing, oh, and he’s probably the next Dylan.

Goose: a jam band, music nerds, arriving (probably by train) from Wilton, Connecticut, why does the multi-instrumentalist with the 1970s porn star mustache grin like a gumball machine?

Goose’s logo is in cursive, sometimes with the whitest goose you ever done seen, honky.

Geese’s logo is just an understated-to-a-fault, all caps typeface stating, simply, “GEESE”, may I have the Ethiopian drip pour-over through a hemp filter, please?

This settled?

Ok, so if we’re going to reflect on how Goose and why Goose, then one must indeed begin at the beginning.

And that beginning is indeed the Grateful Dead.

We know this matters because Goose loves to cover the Grateful Dead, yeah yeah like their Billy Ray Cyrus Achy Breaky-style cover of “Mississippi Half-Step,” or their take on “Franklin’s Tower,” unfolding at Goose’s horrifically-named annual throwdown Goosemas (clearly less Jews in Goose, or else we’d have Hanukoose).

Now to you and to me (and definitely to Goose), they would be The Good Ol’ Grateful Dead or Jerry’s Kids or just The Boys.

So I’m pretty sure backstage you might find one Goose member (maybe the sleeveless one with the uncomfortable hair gel) say to another, “Hey, wanna cover The Boys tonight?” only to break out “Lovelight,” which is really a cover song of a song the Grateful Dead covered.

But no matter and hell yeah, hippie, you can find most of Goose’s Grateful Dead covers on nugs.net — where, by the way, Geese definitely is not found, because they cover Television and Leonard Cohen and Green Day, but never the tie-dyed-frappuccino, look-you-dropped-your-hackey-sack type of shiznit.

Anyway, let’s have a looksee, oh hello what have we here?

A jamband blueprint of sorts: mostly two sets and an encore, rarities and bustouts, covers expected and not; there are segues and type I and type II jams, each with hours upon hours of guitar noodling. Can we have some odd time signatures? Some goofy banter?

Oh, and let’s spin up the light show, of course, because we’re in paint-by-numbers territory here.

I may be going on a limb here, but I bet you know the Spice Girls?

They were created in 1994 from an advertisement in a newspaper.

Before that we had The Monkees, a television show built around a fictional band — who then somehow actually charted. You’re thinking made-for-a-mime Milli Vanilli, but did you know the Backstreet Boys were groomed (as a band, c’mon, we’re not on Epstein’s Island here, yeesh. Except well, now that you mention it, Goose does seem to attract sexual drama like patchouli attracts a drum circle.).

Which is all to say: if it smells like a formula, and waddles like a formula, and quacks like a stimming goose, then I suppose you shouldn't be surprised when it flies overhead and delivers a goober onto your shoulder.

And so, maybe we should accept that while the Grateful Dead had to hoe their own row, music today is a different animal. Hell, Geese (the savvy hipsters) used AI bots to “trend simulate” success via some sort of musical psyop.

And thus, one must ask if Jam has found its own such conspiracy, a Shapiro-bred form of slapstick, in neon colors so bright that all the kiddos who missed actually seeing Jerry can bop their pop-noggins to something they can call their own.

Yes, Goose has found a mainstream formula, bringing them to MSG and their first European tour — so why are so many distraught over their arrival?

Because it all feels manufactured to the hilt. Jam is supposed to only work when it’s authentic, when the music is the only thing that matters.

Because the format should serve the musical master, not the other way around.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s clear Goose worked their tail feathers off to get to where they are. Mad props. And they seem like hella good guys, brah (attempts a high five but misses).

But Goose often feels like an IKEA version of the bands that paved the way, complete with an instruction manual that tells you exactly how you should feel and when you should feel it.

Which leaves one guessing as to whether Goose’s tepid-as-stank-water-jamming-to-nowhere should be scuffed off the back of your shoe like so much Goose shit, or jam’s current kids of the hour should be hugged close, embraced and accepted, as if your childhood stuffie. Not because it was the best toy you ever owned, but because it’s close enough to the one you’d wished you’d had all along.

Part II to follow