The Dead
Posted by Twangothan on 3 April 2008 - 2:05pm.
Where do you start with the Grateful Dead? The first time I heard them I was shocked - I thought they'd be a sort of American version of Hawkwind, psychedelic etc - hur hur hur - all I hear a sort of weedy country rock band that the Allman Brothers would have blown off the stage by any measure (length of jam, number of notes, whinyness of singer, number of guitarists, number of drummers, length of songs etc - we're talking the 60s here, one-note-solo fans). I've got "American Beauty" which is OK I s'pose - can't help thinking I must be missing something....am I? Or did you have to be there?
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My advice is...
...don't try. If you are one of those people who are destined to love the Grateful Dead then they will find you in good time.
Don't be like me. I'm somebody who has never got beyond quite liking them but has somehow bought about a dozen of their albums in the process. And I've seen them live a few times as well.
It's like true love. If you go looking for it you only scare it away.
My first Dead album was...
...Blues For Allah. Melodic and jazzy; the opening songs - Help On The Way/Slipknot! and Franklin's Tower - are both excellent.
The title track is a somewhat absurd, 12 minute excursion into Eastern psychedelia - imagine an Arabian-themed take on Spinal Tap's - Stonehenge and you won't be far off.
I agree
You don't have to feel that it's your fault if you just don't get someone. You either click with a particular artist or you don't, and if you don't now, you may do at some point in the future. I've always been like that with Springsteen, I just don't see what all the fuss is about. Each time a new album is delivered, I hear a few tracks, thinking I might change my mind about him. I never do.
Rather than try to break in to the country Dead
why not equip yourself with a copy of "Terrapin Station", "Mars Hotel" or "Wake Of The Flood"? Given your recent exploratory travels in Jazz Rock land, I think you may be pleasantly surprised...
If you must explore the Dead mainstream, start with "Live Dead".
Terrapin Station.....
I picked up Terrapin station on vinyl when I was about 20 or so, as I thought I should really make the effort and check them out... I don't think I got further than the awful cover of "Dancing In the Streets".
Maybe I'll try "Live Dead" and see how that goes....
Platform 2
Big mistake, the good stuff is all on the second side.
Be more grateful......
Yes, as a whole they often come across as rather less than a sum of their parts. A record is probably not the best way to approach them; indeed, they were professed to feel that way themselves. However having never seen them nor had the time to sit thru' a triple live LP, let me point you in the right direction. As with other fringe varieties of music, the basic idea of the Dead always appealed, probably because of the mythology and all the album sleeves rifled thru in a record shop, day after day, between 1970 and 1975. A friend of mine actually went as far as to purchase, I think, "From the Mars Hotel" and I remember being distinctly disappointed as to the quality thereon. I, many years later, found "Deadicated", a tribute LP of the sort I enjoy, with a number of their songs performed by Suzanne Vega, Elvis Costello, Indigo Girls and Lyle Lovett, amongst others. Even Dr John and Black Uhuru, my entry into each of them. And, do you know, these were good songs. Morer cross referncing and I came to the conclusion that there is least 2 or 3 albums of good stuff, the trouble being it is spread across all their LPs, often with nary more than 2 or 3 good 'uns per disc.
My starter for 10:
Dark Star/ Live Dead : loong jam, I guess typical of what people expect the Grateful Dead to be. However still has a good enough melody and variation to appeal. Which is, sorry to say, more than the rest of it offers.
Uncle Johns Band and
Casey Jones/ Workingmans Dead : possibly the best all round LP.
Box of Rain
Friend of the Devil
Sugar Magnolia and
Truckin'/ American Beauty : my favourite, and probably the most accessible, so you are on the right track, Twangers.
Scarlet Begonias and
Pride of Cucamonga/ From the Mars Hotel. Pride is fabulous, but seldom gets a shout. Rare Phil Lesh writing credit.
Touch of Grey and
Black Muddy River/ In the Dark. The former being their fab hit single, and video, as featured on the dying days of Whistle test. God, I love that song. And it's sentiment. The latter as covered, much later than Deadicated, by Norma Waterson!
So that 11, actually, to be getting on with.
I start and finish with American Beauty
I quite like it. No more. I don't like Workingman's Dead, and I can't be bothered to go any further.
Not a big Dead fan...
...save for 'Live/Dead' and 'Blues For Allah'- I believe you have prog/jazz rock leanings as I do, Twangothan, so the latter would probably appeal the most.
Even the much vaunted country rock albums 'Workingman's Dead' and 'American Beauty' I don't really enjoy that much compared to albums from the same period by The Flying Burrito Brothers and The Band. I tend to find them to be in that 'worthy but dull' category...
Got me sussed
You've obviously got me sussed JJ - quite right about the Burritos / Band vis a vis the Dead country albums. Writing this it occurs to me I have the DVD "Grateful Dawg" which is Jerry Garcia's bluegrass venture with Dave Grisman which is also worthy but dull - they are clearly nice blokes and probably great to spend an evening with but the music just doesn't have the energy of good bluegrass.
Streaming & torrents
The Dead's live performance is supposed to be their forte. Why not have a look on the internet for some torrents to download or streams to listen to? It won't cost you more than the price of the electricity you consume while it all loads onto your machine.
08/05/77
Barton Hall, Cornell University, Ithaca, New York. Some say it's their finest hour(s). Just stick the date in Google and you're sure to find a torrent. It's a great place to start. If you really can't face listening to both sets, go straight to 'Scarlet Begonias' > 'Fire On The Mountain' from the second.
Just like Star Trek - The Original Series, the many concert recordings of the Grateful Dead will be forever available on the Internet. When a few of the band members attempted to remove all of the Dead's live music from the Internet Archive a couple of years ago, their actions were described, by their own lyricist John Perry Barlow, as akin to trying to get a tea-spoonful of red dye back out of a swimming-pool. You can still stream Dead concerts from archive.org today.
If you just want to buy an album, I'd recommend 'Reckoning' as one of their best 'official' live sets. It's not at all representative but it is very accessible if you're dipping your toe in the water for the first time. If you like that, splash out on 'American Beauty' 'Workingman's Dead' 'Live Dead' 'Europe '72' and so on and so on..
If you can't be doing with torrents, or spending money, new mp3s from The Vault are uploaded to www.dead.net every week, on a Monday.
Comments in this thread are spot on. Like so many artists, you either get it or you don't. If you do fall in love with the Dead, and I really hope you do, a word of warning: you're going to need the hide of a rhino once people find out about it.
Post Script: somewhere out there on the internet, you might be lucky enough to find a recording of Suzanne Vega, backed by the Grateful Dead, covering Robyn Hitchcock's 'Chinese Bones'. Deeply flawed, painfully unrehearsed, but very good.
I've got that Suzanne Vega gig on an import CD
No idea where or when I acquired it, but it's the oddest thing in my Dead collection. If you're interested I can look up the label/catalogue number if you like.
Thank you
I have a low bitrate mp3 of this, anything better would be much appreciated if you could point me in the direction.
This gig was a benefit event at Madison Square Gardens.
This curio
is credited to "Grateful Dead with Mike Taylor featuring Suzanne Vega", and bears the imaginative moniker: "Live USA".
The recording is dated September 24th 1988, and the location is given as "New York USA".
It's a German CD on a label named "Imtrat", and has been blessed with the catalogue number "imt 900.015".
The tracks are:
Iko Iko
West La Fadeaway
Little Red Rooster
Feel Like A Stranger
Chines Bones (credited to GD, not Robin H!)
Neighborhood Girls
Crazy Fingers
Oddest of all, along the bottom edge of the rear label, in print so small it must in a font size well below zero, is the legend: "We apologize for the non excellent quality of the recording, which has been realized with amateur equipment".
In other words, it's a boot!
American date format
You might want to use the US date format though - 05/08/1977
Too late I fear...
..to fall in love with the Dead. Can't be done with the records. Workingman's and American Beauty contain some wonderful songs and are cornerstones of country-rock or what became alt. country or, wince, Americana. But the live show would have changed you forever. And I don't mean a waterlogged Bickershaw, Ally Pally or Wembley Arena show. If you'd seen them on a beautiful summer's day in the great outdoors, almost anywhere in the U.S., with Jerry Garcia in good health, you would have become a believer. There was a quite magical meeting of all the senses, admittedly heightened for many by the occasional toke, that transported you into a world of peace, love and understanding. I'm not good enough to describe it without cliche but to hear them play in, say, the Sam Boyd Silver Bowl outside Las Vegas with a backdrop of desert and lightning storms on distant mountains was a unique pleasure that doesn't translate in the recordings.