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JKL2000
11-09-2012, 12:22 PM
Do those of you who like The Grateful Dead get this a lot? Very often if someone who's not familiar with the Dead hears that I like them, they'll say something like "I didn't know YOU liked The Grateful Dead," and if they should HEAR some Grateful Dead music, they'll say something like "THIS is The Grateful Dead?" They seem to expect, for some reason, that the band's music is going to sound like Black Metal or something. They're really surprised that the band is more of a folk/jazz/Americana type band. Even if they heard one of the trippy-er or more proggy albums, they're still suprised to find it's far more musical and accessible than they expected. I guess it comes from getting, overall, very little radio play and not being used in movies or anything like that. And also from the band not needing to market itself much.

Sean
11-09-2012, 12:28 PM
Yes, but I get the same thing about prog. I mentioned it to a girl at work and she is like "that's the stuff people in Colorado listen to, isn't it?" as if you need to be stoned to like this stuff. I explained if anything you might wanna have your wits about you when you listen, that this music is stuff you actively listen to, not wallpaper while you work out or whatever. She looked perplexed. Then I went into a rant about stereotypes. She is a country fan so I told her I just figured all country was for inbred rednecks that live in trailers. I am not sure she got my point but I enjoyed making it.

As for the Dead. Yeah, many assume they were just a bunch of stoned hippes that could barely play. Then you play them Blues for Allah tracks and they kinda shit, all while eating crow.

tom unbound
11-09-2012, 02:10 PM
The only Dead album I have is Terrapin Station. Love it, it's amazing, I play it quite often actually. But I can't stand any of their other albums, only good for shingling an outhouse I say.
Why is that ??
They're great musicians,a great party band,really popular, but .... I just don't like them.Sorry.
I think most people have a sort of prejudicial impression against them because they only see the burned-out-stoned-out-drugged-out-dead heads. Superficial stereotyping at its worst. They need to hear the music, and don't tell them who it is before playing it !

Bands on the edge always create the 'wrong' imperssion.
Tangerine Dream
Black Sabbath
Rolling Stones
Alice Cooper
Hawkwind

rapidfirerob
11-09-2012, 02:16 PM
I liked them until Pigpen died. Fairly boring for the most part after that, with some exceptions. I saw them once when Pigpen was too ill to play. They played for 4.5 hours. I enjoyed about a half hour of it. I went with a Dead Head friend of mine who fell asleep. I understand their performances were inconsistent. I do love Jazz Is Dead though.

spellbound
11-09-2012, 07:10 PM
Lyricist Robert Hunter's famous quote regarding the Dead song "Cumberland Blues:"

"The best compliment I ever had on a lyric was from an old guy who'd worked at the Cumberland mine. He said: "I wonder what the guy who wrote this song would've thought if he'd ever known something like the Grateful Dead was gonna do it.""

Rarely has a band been more unjustly stereotyped because of its name.

Trane
11-10-2012, 03:42 PM
Yes, but I get the same thing about prog. I mentioned it to a girl at work and she is like "that's the stuff people in Colorado listen to, isn't it?" as if you need to be stoned to like this stuff. I explained if anything you might wanna have your wits about you when you listen, that this music is stuff you actively listen to, not wallpaper while you work out or whatever. She looked perplexed. Then I went into a rant about stereotypes. She is a country fan so I told her I just figured all country was for inbred rednecks that live in trailers. I am not sure she got my point but I enjoyed making it.
:lol

You didn't mean to denigrate those who like country music....

Oh yeah!! For the record: denigrate means "to put down"





As for the Dead. Yeah, many assume they were just a bunch of stoned hippes that could barely play. Then you play them Blues for Allah tracks and they kinda shit, all while eating crow.

Yeah, the stoned-out San Fran aura keep sticking to them... But having seen them 7 times, I always came out wasted from their concerts... no energy left after 4 hours of dancing to RnR....

Jerjo
11-10-2012, 07:54 PM
I tried and tried to get into the Dead. I've got a few friends that were Dead Heads and have had so many cassettes pressed into my hands with the fevered promise "this one's gonna do it for you man." And every time I heard the same thing - a band locked into that mid-tempo swaying hippie rhythm with plenty of noodling but not nearly enough dynamics to merit the song length. I like my rock with either some raw edge, power, and dynamics. A 15 minute song at the same drugged tempo was just a waste of time for me.

Now some of the singles (not that this was a singles band) work for me: Casey Jones, Touch of Grey, Friend of the Devil but the heart of the band, the live stuff, does not work for me in the slightest. When you cut your teeth on the big British bands it's really hard to listen to a live show where the band never gets the songs going about a slow steady trot.

Baribrotzer
11-10-2012, 09:00 PM
They showed frustrating glimpses of greatness, among all that sloppy noodling the Deadheads just go berzerk for:


- The borderline prog of Terrapin Station and Blues for Allah had their moments, as did a number of Bob Weir's songs.

- Live, there'd be the occasional flash of improvisational brilliance, when they were actually all on the same page
rather than stumbling in half-a-dozen directions.

- And on record, they could be a good, solid, eclectic, and interestingly non-purist blues/country/folk/rock hybrid, whose best songs
genuinely managed to add to the canon of Americana instead of just copying the greats. Not my favorite style, but they did it well. Workingman's Dead is a classic of that sort.

AcousticWalden
11-10-2012, 10:36 PM
They covered a lot of ground over the years, some great music, when they were on they were excellent. But when they were on an off night, they sucked big time. Dark Star, Terrapin and acoustic 70s are some favorites

scags
11-11-2012, 10:41 AM
I couldn't imagine anyone thinking they were metal- they're too well known. I can imagine most people thinking they were a bunch of boring hippies that couldn't sing or play in tune.

JKL2000
11-11-2012, 02:19 PM
Scags, I agree that they are very well known by name, but as Spellbound implies, there are a lot of people who are expecting some kind of menacing music rather than bluesy Americana. I'm talking about misperceptions because of the band's name.

trurl
11-11-2012, 03:07 PM
I can imagine most people thinking they were a bunch of boring hippies that couldn't sing or play in tune.

That's certainly what I think :D Terrapin Station excepted.

Reid
11-11-2012, 11:33 PM
There's some good stuff on the massive 1990 tour box. Unfortunately they didn't include it on the more affordable 2 CD sampler.

Facelift
11-12-2012, 12:17 AM
They seem to expect, for some reason, that the band's music is going to sound like Black Metal or something.

I can't say that I've never had this happen, but it never involved anybody over the age of 18.

Rael
11-12-2012, 05:34 AM
For me, The Grateful Dead are probably the greatest American rock and roll band. Many of their songs are quite accessible and when they were "on" as many of their live releases show, they were simply magical. The Dead's music encompassed so many influences and was so eclectic, I'm surprised more proggers don't like them. It's too bad they will always be the band that everyone associates with hippies and LSD.

Baribrotzer
11-12-2012, 06:48 AM
The Dead's music encompassed so many influences and was so eclectic, I'm surprised more proggers don't like them.I can only speak for myself, but -

- The idea of the Dead always seemed far better than the reality, at least to me.

- Too much hokey C&W, too much watered-down blues.

- They tended to be unbelievably sloppy live.

- Rhythmically, they constantly fell into that characteristic Dead schlip-schlop-shuffle, which sounded like
everybody in the band was trying to play further behind the beat than anybody else.

Rixx
11-12-2012, 09:36 AM
I keep coming back to this show (Cornell 77), the sound qual is great, as are the performances..if it's meant to be..then this should do it for you...it just has an 'IT' factor.

I'll point you to Jerry's solo in 'Loser'...I've heard many many versions of this song, and something about the 'pinch harmonics' of this version does it for me...this song drips with emotion..and if you like bass..Phil Lesh is killing it all night here..

http://archive.org/details/gd77-05-08.sbd.hicks.4982.sbeok.shnf

If you dont know the dead archives site..it's incredible..over 8000 shows on here!...what a gift...all free..

Trane
11-12-2012, 09:44 AM
Scags, I agree that they are very well known by name, but as Spellbound implies, there are a lot of people who are expecting some kind of menacing music rather than bluesy Americana. I'm talking about misperceptions because of the band's name.

that's exactly it... Some people would link it to Cannibal Corpse or sometjhing of that lk

MudShark22
11-12-2012, 09:49 AM
I keep coming back to this show (Cornell 77), the sound qual is great, as are the performances..if it's meant to be..then this should do it for you...it just has an 'IT' factor.


For me, back in 1991; it was Cornell '77 that finally made me a Dead fan instead of a critic.
I will go on to say that it is now 'not' my fave show; but it was the catalyst to collecting shows and attending the final few tours.

Rixx
11-12-2012, 10:09 AM
For me, back in 1991; it was Cornell '77 that finally made me a Dead fan instead of a critic.
I will go on to say that it is now 'not' my fave show; but it was the catalyst to collecting shows and attending the final few tours.

What are some of your other fave's MudShark? I'm really into soundboard from the 10/10/82 show from the Archive Site..TONS of energy this night.
I'm also really digging the stuff the 'Europe '72' record.

Vic2012
11-12-2012, 10:28 AM
Never been into this band. I've never really tried either but maybe I'll get into them someday. My only exposure to them was growing up (in San Francisco no less). My older brother was the first Dead Head I ever met. He was fanatical about them so I'm sure I heard all their early albums as a kid. I always loved those album covers too. My brother was into the whole psychelic scene at the time but then they went "Country." I think the first one that was a complete departure from the psychedelic era was "American Beauty" or "Working Man's Dead" (I forget wich one, I could look it up). I figure my brother would jump ship after that. Nope. He loved 'em even more.

jupiter0rjapan
11-12-2012, 10:42 AM
I am a fan, but not a fanatic. I think many people associate them with loose jamming and sloppy playing, but that is hardly the band I fell in love with. It was however the band they became later in life. There were certain eras of the band that really appeal to me, a lot of them earlier in their time. Pigpen era is great. I think the first peak was the "Live Dead" album and other shows from those years. Unlike other times this was a well oiled machine of a band, able to pull off twists and turns, tight vocal harmonies and still rumble some great blues tunes.

Then you have the Workingman's Dead era, stripped down, folksy and focused on great songs. BTW, Great songs is the main thing that sets GD from the jam band children they spawned. In order to jam a tune for a while, it better have a great tune to hang that jam on or it is pointless.

I'm cool with the live stuff (though Donna could be annoying after she joined) later on. Some albums were very weak. Blues For Allah and Terrapin Station are pretty awesome. Shakedown Street and Go To Heaven sounded very stiff, though live many of those tracks kicked ass.

Brent was a great addition to the band, but the band in general got looser and looser live, and some shows were so pathetic and sloppy they were hard to take for me. When they were on, they still could kick ass. I wish Brent would have lived and went to join Gov't Mule or a band like that. He would have kicked ass in a situation like that. After Brent's death, The band was broken, and Jerry struggled so much I couldn't bear to watch them anymore.

CybrKhatru
11-12-2012, 11:19 AM
Sure, there's lots of examples of sloppy playing and loose noodly jams in their repertoire, especially for a band that is so well-documented. But when they're on, there's no one like them.

The thing I love about the Dead are the songs. (Yes, Virginia, there are bonafide songs under all that collective schtuff!) ;)

Planechant
11-12-2012, 11:27 AM
I can't say that I've never had this happen, but it never involved anybody over the age of 18.
My ex-mother-in-law, around 1990, I'm playing the CD, she picks it up and enunciates in a sort caricatured way: "The Grateful DEAD. The GRATEful Dead. The GrateFUL Dead."

Planechant
11-12-2012, 11:29 AM
I can only speak for myself, but -

everybody in the band was trying to play further behind the beat than anybody else.
Brilliant.

yogibear
11-12-2012, 01:29 PM
never liked them much. "truckin" was an ok song. about the only thing I found cool/interesting was when they did the "weather report suite" on one of deys albums. I never had a misconception of their music or the wrong impression i just didn't like much of what they did is all.

Bake 1
11-13-2012, 01:45 PM
Garcia said a few times that Rick Griffin delivered a better trip than the band (eg.AOXOMOA)... so far the psychedelic buzz factor for me has been way higher w/ bands like Can, Quicksilver, Hendrix, Guru Guru, John McLaughlin (Devotion) and Amon Duul II.

GuitarGeek
11-13-2012, 08:28 PM
The other side of it is, if you have someone who only knows the stuff that gets played on the radio (ie studio versions of Truckin', Uncle John's Band, Sugar Magnolia, and Casey Jones) are often surprised when they hear some of the live stuff or when you play records like Anthem Of The Sun for them. I had someone tell me the Slipknot jam in one show sounded very like Brian Auger's Oblivion Express.

Dan Marsh
11-14-2012, 10:27 AM
I used to get asked "Why do you go to all of the shows, aren't they all the same/"

Clueless.

Sturgeon's Lawyer
11-14-2012, 11:49 AM
Saw them live twice.

The first time was with the Who, and I was there to see the Who and didn't really "get" the Dead.

The second time, it clicked. Love live stuff, have a few shows, but their studio records really don't do much for me.

Rixx
11-14-2012, 12:07 PM
Saw them live twice.

The first time was with the Who, and I was there to see the Who and didn't really "get" the Dead.

The second time, it clicked. Love live stuff, have a few shows, but their studio records really don't do much for me.

Cool, was that at Monterey Fest by chance?

Sturgeon's Lawyer
11-14-2012, 04:14 PM
No, it was at a "Day on the Green" concert featuring the Dead and the Who in 1976.

The Silent Man
11-14-2012, 07:20 PM
- The idea of the Dead always seemed far better than the reality, at least to me.



That's precisely how I feel. I like some of their stuff fine, have about 8 or 9 albums, but I'd love to be really into them, as the whole mystique is just so cool. The reality doesn't fit with the image for me though.

rcarlberg
11-14-2012, 07:37 PM
Never got into the Dead. When I was a kid I assumed they would be a hippy-trippy stoner band like Pink Floyd was at the time. Boy was I surprised when they were just a bluegrass band that couldn't write song endings.

I got into Indian music for virtuosic trance-inducing repetition. Couldn't stomache -- and still can't -- non-virtuosic hillbilly repetition.

GuitarGeek
11-14-2012, 07:55 PM
Never got into the Dead. When I was a kid I assumed they would be a hippy-trippy stoner band like Pink Floyd was at the time. Boy was I surprised when they were just a bluegrass band that couldn't write song endings.
.

In the late 60's, they WERE a hippy dippy band. Listen to Anthem Of The Sun or Aoxomoxoa. There's no sign of the "Americana" type stuff most people associate with them.

And I'd hardly call the Dead's 72-74 era improvisations to be "hillbilly repitition", whatever that's supposed to mean. I can't imagine too many "hillbillies" getting into what the Dead were doing at that time.

Rael
11-15-2012, 05:07 AM
No, it was at a "Day on the Green" concert featuring the Dead and the Who in 1976.

This is an excellent show. Part of the Dick's Picks series too. Well worth picking up if it's still in print.

Zeuhlmate
11-15-2012, 07:56 AM
Not a band for me. Terrapin station is quite interesting, e.g. the title tune - but this tunes is so different from how they usually sound & compose.
I recall some wilder moments on their first albums though...especially an early livealbum?

3LockBox
11-15-2012, 10:51 AM
- The idea of the Dead always seemed far better than the reality, at least to me.

- Too much hokey C&W, too much watered-down blues.

- They tended to be unbelievably sloppy live.

- Rhythmically, they constantly fell into that characteristic Dead schlip-schlop-shuffle, which sounded like everybody in the band was trying to play further behind the beat than anybody else.

Pretty spot on. Yeah, I ran into a few people who had a misconception of what the Dead were all about, including me. I was in my early 20's before I ever really heard an album of theirs. I like them well enough, but never really enough of a fan to count for much. I culled together a comp of live performances from Dick's Picks that I enjoyed, but it took perusing 10 or 12 discs to get a CD-R's worth of lucid performances.

I have a neighbor who is a major Deadhead: he still wears tie-died t-shirts; he has a huge stash of bootlegs; he has every album they ever released on vinyl and CD including most of the tangential projects as well as most all the Dick's Picks; his car's license plate reads, "Further". (I've been begging the guy to archive his massive vinyl collection and store them in a safer place - he has some rare stuff)

rcarlberg
11-15-2012, 11:56 AM
I culled together a comp of live performances from Dick's Picks that I enjoyed, but it took perusing 10 or 12 discs to get a CD-R's worth of lucid performances.
That reminds me of John Oswald's "Greyfolded" album where he took over 100 versions of "Dark Star" from various Dead concerts and spliced them together into one loooong performance.

Talk about the epitome of boredom!

meimjustalawnmower
11-15-2012, 04:25 PM
I remember once when my dad took notice of my copy of "Steal Your Face" and asked something like "Are these guys like that Alice Cooper stuff?" I said "No, no. They're way more dangerous than that."

GuitarGeek
11-15-2012, 05:08 PM
I remember once when my dad took notice of my copy of "Steal Your Face" and asked something like "Are these guys like that Alice Cooper stuff?" I said "No, no. They're way more dangerous than that."

:lol Steal Your Face is the only originally released Grateful Dead album (not counting some of the archival releases) I've never owned. I've always heard it's a terrible album. I've always heard it was poorly mixed, and Phil Lesh (who I guess was more or less the producer of that record) picked all the wrong material, because "I wanted to make an album of songs, not jams". :roll

Mind you, I've got nearly every note from all five nights from the October 74 Winterland run, the shows that Steal Your Face was recorded from. I also have three different copies of The Grateful Dead Movie (VHS taped off Night Flight back in 1987, the officially released VHS edition, and the DVD edition) as well as the five CD Grateful Dead Movie Soundtrack release. So I've surely got every song that's on Steal Your Face somewhere in my collection. The Grateful Dead Movie (and the soundtrack release) is a much better representation of 1974 vintage Grateful Dead than Steal Your Face. But I'm still bummed that they've never released any of the stuff Phil did with Ned Lagin from those shows, (and in particular the Phil & Ned sets from 10/16 and 10/18, both of which segued into full band improvs).

I think if there's any shortcoming with The Grateful Dead during the 72-74 era, it's that they didn't explore the new technology much. Apart from Phil Lesh's custom built Alembic basses and Jerry Garcia's wah wah pedals (he went through a few different models, including a Morley fuzz/wah, which is apparently the source of the fuzztone heard in a few of the summer 74 shows), there wasn't much hi tech stuff going on with the band. Pigpen (when he was still around) mostly only played organ (a Vox in the early days, a Hammond B-3 from 69 onwards) and Keith Godchaux mostly just played grand piano and Fender Rhodes (with a wah wah on the Rhodes sometimes).

There's a few recordings from 73 and 74 where somebody on that stage is playing a synth, which may or may not be Keith. He did occasionally have a synth in his set up, and there's photos from one show from the summer of 74 where it looks like he's got two keyboards besides the Fender Rhodes and the grand piano (looks like a small synth sitting on the Rhodes, something similar to an ARP Pro-Soloist or perhaps one of the early Roland SH models, and maybe some type of combo organ), and later in 76 he had an ARP String Ensemble and in 77 the Rhodes was replaced with a Polymoog (but it looks like by 78, he started playing a Yamaha CP-70 and nothing else onstage). And then there were those shows in the summer and autumn of 74 where they had Ned Lagin and his keyboards (which judging from what one sees in the Grateful Dead Movie, looks to be a Fender Rhodes, a white face ARP Odyssey, and some type of modular synth, perhaps an Emu model), but he's typically only heard during the Phil & Ned bits (apparently, he actually stayed onstage during a few shows for the second set and played with the band, as seen during the Morning Dew in The Grateful Dead Movie, but he seems to be muted in the mix).

I always wish there had been more synth in the band's music, and Jerry had experimented more with effects pedals during that era. Maybe it was just they thought that stuff was unreliable (along with Keith's apparent reluctance to play anything but piano), and Jerry didn't want to deal with the technical problems of using more than one pedal onstage.

Much later on, Jerry, Phil, and Bob Weir all experimented with guitar synths from the late 80's onwards, and sometimes they got interesting results, but I don't think they got into that "zone", as it were, as frequently as they did during the 72-74 era.

GuitarGeek
11-15-2012, 05:46 PM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WtFmci9Radw

This sure doesn't sound like any "hillbilly" music I've ever heard!

GuitarGeek
11-15-2012, 05:57 PM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cNk3DP-Lxow

GuitarGeek
11-15-2012, 05:59 PM
Here's the big second set jam from 6/18/74, one of my favorite Grateful Dead performances:


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n_NwLfFvZ5U

notallwhowander
11-15-2012, 07:17 PM
I love them. However, there are a different trip than what Yes, Genesis, or King Crimson offers. So I can understand folks who go for prog might not see the attraction. They're laid back, only really aggressive in their early years with Pig Pen. However, they conjure up worlds of gamblers, broken hearts, criminals, and psychedelic vistas, with a calm intensity. Narnia my be for children, but the Grateful Dead is for Deadheads. IMO most criticism it isn't much different than the people who say Neil Young can't sing.

notallwhowander
11-15-2012, 10:57 PM
Talk about the epitome of boredom!And your favorite band sucks. :p

Joe F.
11-15-2012, 11:05 PM
they conjure up worlds of gamblers, broken hearts, criminals, and psychedelic vistas, with a calm intensity.

Exactly. "Loser" & Deal" being prime examples.

rcarlberg
11-15-2012, 11:10 PM
This sure doesn't sound like any "hillbilly" music I've ever heard!You're right. It sounds like an extended tuning up session.
Here's the big second set jam from 6/18/74, one of my favorite Grateful Dead performances: To be fair, this ain't bad. The band actually seem to be listening to each other and playing the same song.

Reid
05-30-2016, 12:03 PM
I can only speak for myself, but -

- The idea of the Dead always seemed far better than the reality, at least to me.

- Too much hokey C&W, too much watered-down blues.

- They tended to be unbelievably sloppy live.


Decided to bump this old thread since I'm becoming a Dead fan of late. I don't know how long my love affair will last? And this is all highly subjective, but here's my two cents.

AFAIC, these are some of the wrong impressions. The Dead didn't do an awful lot of blues covers, and I enjoy the few they did. And their two 1970 folky/country studio albums are not filled with hokey material. I've been listening to a lot of their live shows, and they do not tend to be "unbelievably sloppy" most of the time. Their 1971 self titled live release is the album I'm enjoying the most out of the ones I bought recently. I much prefer this upbeat rock n roll material to the LSD tripped out Live/Dead. If I find anything hokey about the Dead, it's the vocal section of Dark Star. And I can't stomach Turn On Your Love Light. The rest is pretty good.

I'm not surprised some folks here love Terrapin Station, but I don't care for some of it. Production is slick and lifeless, and other than Estimated Prophet, and parts of the title suite, some of the other tunes are forgettable. The last studio album that had any life and zing to it is From Mars Hotel. Allah has some great material, but the studio recordings sound too clean and reserved, so I bought a copy of the 1975 live release, One From The Vault, which includes Blue For Allah material.

Anyways, I'm loving the Rhino digi-pack re-issues. They're all filled with loads of extra material. All CDs are 79 minutes. Anthem Of The Sun is quite a ride if you're into the jam/experimental thing.

rcarlberg
05-30-2016, 12:12 PM
Way to resurrect The Dead.

JKL2000
05-30-2016, 12:13 PM
Decided to bump this old thread since I'm becoming a Dead fan of late. I don't know how long my love affair will last? And this is all highly subjective, but here's my two cents.

AFAIC, these are some of the wrong impressions. The Dead didn't do an awful lot of blues covers, and I enjoy the few they did. And their two 1970 folky/country studio albums are not filled with hokey material. I've been listening to a lot of their live shows, and they do not tend to be "unbelievably sloppy" most of the time. Their 1971 self titled live release is the album I'm enjoying the most out of the ones I bought recently. I much prefer this upbeat rock n roll material to the LSD tripped out Live/Dead. If I find anything hokey about the Dead, it's the vocal section of Dark Star. And I can't stomach Turn On Your Love Light. The rest is pretty good.

I'm not surprised some folks here love Terrapin Station, but I don't care for some of it. Production is slick and lifeless, and other than Estimated Prophet, and parts of the title suite, some of the other tunes are forgettable. The last studio album that had any life and zing to it is From Mars Hotel. Allah has some great material, but the studio recordings sound too clean and reserved, so I bought a copy of the 1975 live release, One From The Vault, which includes Blue For Allah material.

Anyways, I'm loving the Rhino digi-pack re-issues. They're all filled with loads of extra material. All CDs are 79 minutes. Anthem Of The Sun is quite a ride if you're into the jam/experimental thing.

Agree about Turn on Your Love Light. Feel the same about Good Lovin'.

JJ88
05-30-2016, 12:15 PM
I very much prefer the exploratory, psychedelic side of the band to the 'roots rock' one...especially their covers, which are more miss than hit IMHO. I often play Live/Dead.

wideopenears
05-30-2016, 12:21 PM
I'm a huge fan, and there are bits I find dull. But when they were on, which was quite often, they were astonishing.

They are an improvisational unit. Sometimes it didn't work. For me, the highlights on record can't hold a candle to the live experience. But Blues For Allah is a beauty, and I love Anthem, Aoxomoxoa, Live Dead (though I tire of Lovelight, as well.....actually, the long blues jams were always the weakest bits--Trucking, too, is overplayed. However, Pigpen's energy was missed after he passed.) Mars Hotel and Wake of the Flood are also great. American Beauty and Workingman's Dead were the attempts, early on, to be AOR, but I like most of the stuff on those, although it's clear they were reverting to the Americana/Jugband roots of Jerry's pre-Dead music. Terrapin had some cool stuff, but was too slick and went in too many directions, from the proggy suite to the flat-out attempts at disco, LOL.

Digital_Man
05-30-2016, 12:28 PM
Weird. I was just going to start a thread on the GD then I saw this thread. Lol. Strange.

Anyway, I've probably said it before but I totally don't get why this band is regarded so highly by their fans. It's not normal. What I mean is they worship them like they are gods and not even human and consider being a GD fan a lifestyle more than anything. What lifestyle? Drugs, drinking and non stop partying in tents? I don't get it. Is it a hippie thing or is it a wanting to be cool and wanting to belong thing or something else? I enjoy their music but I guess I just don't understand the "scene." Even Yes and Rush fans don't have some little subculture(for lack of a better term).

Jerjo
05-30-2016, 12:28 PM
What would be the next step for someone like me that prefers the studio stuff and loves American Beauty/Workingman's Dead?

Digital_Man
05-30-2016, 12:31 PM
Their album from 1987 was good. I don't remember the name of it but it's the one with "touch of grey" on it.

Svetonio
05-30-2016, 12:42 PM
(...) not being used in movies or anything like that. (...)
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/a/a8/1ZabriskiePoint.jpg/220px-1ZabriskiePoint.jpg



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=awYm_pDO4WI


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ht9QilZMvuk


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KybChZlV1Zk

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zabriskie_Point_%28film%29









https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/5/53/Great_expectations_poster.jpg/215px-Great_expectations_poster.jpg


Soundtrack

The song "Siren" was written for this film by Tori Amos. The soundtrack also includes songs by popular artists such as Pulp, Scott Weiland, Iggy Pop, Chris Cornell and The Verve Pipe. Duncan Sheik's contribution, the song "Wishful Thinking", was released as a single from the soundtrack and Poe's "Today" was released as a promo. The film's score was written by Scottish composer Patrick Doyle, a veteran of many literary adaptations and frequent collaborator of Kenneth Branagh.

Several variations of the song Bésame Mucho are heard throughout the film. The primary recording however and the version released on the soundtrack in performed by Cesaria Evora.

The soundtrack also featured the breakthrough single "Life in Mono", which became a major hit, charting on the Billboard Hot 100.

The score track "Kissing in the Rain" was sampled in the song "RoboCop" on Kanye West's 2008 album, 808s & Heartbreak.

Finn (Intro) - Instrumental Vocalization by Tori Amos
Siren - Performed by Tori Amos
Life in Mono - Performed by Mono
Sunshower - Performed by Chris Cornell
Resignation - Performed by Reef
Like a Friend - Performed by Pulp
Wishful Thinking - Performed by Duncan Sheik
Today - Performed by Poe
Lady, Your Roof Brings Me Down - Performed by Scott Weiland
Her Ornament - Performed by the Verve Pipe
Walk This Earth Alone - Performed by Lauren Christy
Breakable - Performed by Fisher
Success - Performed by Iggy Pop
Slave - Performed by David Garza
Uncle John's Band - Performed by the Grateful Dead
Besame Mucho - Performed by Cesária Évora


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Expectations_%281998_film%29

Two great movies from two different eras.

Digital_Man
05-30-2016, 12:44 PM
Their album from 1987 was good. I don't remember the name of it but it's the one with "touch of grey" on it.

In the dark.

Svetonio
05-30-2016, 12:45 PM
My fav studio album by them is From The Mars Hotel (1974)


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lLRwFkipvns

Favourite track: Unbroken Chain


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6WycvYhKW08

Really amazing.

Reid
05-30-2016, 01:37 PM
What would be the next step for someone like me that prefers the studio stuff and loves American Beauty/Workingman's Dead?

I also love 1974's Mars Hotel. I took a chance on it, since I wasn't familiar with any of the material, and I wasn't disappointed. The material is strong and more urban/rock n roll sounding than the 1970 albums, and the production is just right for a live band like the Dead. It's not overly slick and heavy handed. And there's a great live version of Scarlet Begonias included among the bonus tracks. Check Barnes & Noble. I picked up several Dead titles very cheap there.

Reid
05-30-2016, 01:46 PM
Agree about Turn on Your Love Light. Feel the same about Good Lovin'.

And Werewolves Of London. Why they decided to cover that tune is beyond me? I turn off the Red Rocks encore before they launch into that one.

mogrooves
05-30-2016, 02:05 PM
...and "Little Red Rooster." Just awful

notallwhowander
05-30-2016, 03:08 PM
Weird. I was just going to start a thread on the GD then I saw this thread. Lol. Strange.

Anyway, I've probably said it before but I totally don't get why this band is regarded so highly by their fans. It's not normal. What I mean is they worship them like they are gods and not even human and consider being a GD fan a lifestyle more than anything. What lifestyle? Drugs, drinking and non stop partying in tents? I don't get it. Is it a hippie thing or is it a wanting to be cool and wanting to belong thing or something else? I enjoy their music but I guess I just don't understand the "scene." Even Yes and Rush fans don't have some little subculture(for lack of a better term).

No it isn't/wasn't normal and that's part of the point. Unlike most bands, who evolved beyond the scene that birthed them, the Grateful Dead managed to keep the scene that birthed them with them, evolving together. It wasn't all the band, it couldn't have been, but the band took efforts to keep the scene going. There was a community, a culture, a whole economy surrounding the live shows. A genuine counter-culture and alternative lifestyle was available by touring with the Dead. You could step out of the mainstream and live differently if you wanted. Values like peace and love, social and environmental consciousness, individual creativity and the profundity of the psychedelic experience were all celebrated and revered. The band never took credit for, or put themselves above, the scene either. They just had a hand in creating space for it to continue to be. It's little wonder that they were so adored by their fans.

GuitarGeek
05-30-2016, 06:22 PM
Their album from 1987 was good. I don't remember the name of it but it's the one with "touch of grey" on it.

In The Dark, their first album to go platinum "right out of the chute", as Weir told David Letterman. It's an alright album. The thing I like on it is it has a couple songs that I don't think were played live very often, namely Black Muddy River and Tons Of Steel. And I like some of the production tricks on the record, like the vocoder on West LA Fadeaway, or the panning vocals during the breakdown section of Throwing Stones.

Watanabe
05-30-2016, 06:51 PM
i dig Anthems, Aoxomoxoa and Live\Dead, but never got into hardly any of the '70s stuff.

Pigpen was a hack and one of the absolute worst of the white blues guys of that time imo.

GuitarGeek
05-30-2016, 06:52 PM
What would be the next step for someone like me that prefers the studio stuff and loves American Beauty/Workingman's Dead?

Well, if you want to hear more "songs" (and I mean conventional songs, not weird psychedelic compositions that Jerry got tired of having to rehearse), Europe '72 is a good one to go to. It's got a lot of stuff that's not on any of the studio records (in fact, I'm not sure if studio versions exist for Jack Straw, Ramble On Rose, Tennessee Jed, etc). There's a little bit of the extended improvisation (notably on Truckin'/Epilogue, and Prologue/Morning Dew), but it's very much a "songs" record.

For me, the one drawback of Europe '72 (apart from the fact that they used, in my opinion, the wrong extended improvs) is the absence of Chinatown Shuffle and Two Souls In Communion, a pair of excellent songs sung by Pigpen that were played regularly throughout that tour, yet never appeared on any official release until the 90's (or perhaps not even until after the turn of the century). Even more vexing is the inclusion of a weak Hank Williams cover, You Win Again. What! The! FRELL?! But other than that, it sort of serves to continue the legacy of the Workingman's Dead and American Beauty.

Skullfuck has a few good songs on it too, including Bertha and Wharf Rat, but it's also weighed down by a bunch of crummy cover tunes. You do get a great sidelong version of The Other One (actually excerpted from a longer rendition of the full That's It For The Other One suite, probably one of the last times they did it), but you said you weren't that interested in the improvisation side of things.

After that, there's some good songs here and there scattered throughout the rest of the catalog, though I don't think there's anything quite in the same vein as the two 1970 albums.

Oh, and if we're thinking that Terrapin Station is a bit "slick" sounding, that's got a lot to do with who produced it. One of Clive Davis' conditions for signing the band to Arista was that he got to pick their producer. Remember awhile back when I was kvetching about Davis making the band work with producers associated with Fleetwood Mac, Aerosmith and Foreigner? Well, this was one of the records I was talking about. Keith Olsen had been Fleetwood Mac's producer on those two albums from the late 70's everybody thinks is so hot (he's also the guy responsible for Lindsay Buckingham and his girlfriend joining the Fleetwood Mac...just think, if Keith had used a different record to demonstrate the monitors to Mick, some other guitarist would have been hired to replace Bob Welch, and we'd have been spared the agony of Stop Dragging My Heart Around, Rhiannon, and Edge Of Seventeen).

Olsen was given the task of making the band more "radio friendly", which was quite a task, considering the general disinterest the band had with making "singles" or whatever. He had to work to get Mickey Hart and Bill Kreutzmann to play in a fashion that worked for "the top 40 market". I think he said he eventually had it down to where Kreutzmann was playing the basic beat, and Mickey was doing the "colour" or whatever. (shrug)

After the band went back on tour after recording the album, he famously took the tapes did a lot of overdubs on them without the band's knowledge. That's where all the "sweetener" comes into play. Mickey Hart said that Olsen erased a timbale solo he had played during Terrapin Flyer and overdubbed a string section, saying it was the most disrespectful thing anyone had ever done to him. So he went back in and re-overdubbed the timbale solo (on the finished product you hear both).

To tell you the truth, I think the orchestra works on Terrapin Station itself. I think it adds a nice cinematic quality to the music. The choir during Terrapin Reprise, however, was going too far. So was the horns on Dancing In The Streets (actually, that entire damn arrangement was going too far, but I think the band had that idiotic idea in place already before Olsen got involved). The lyricon and sax on Estimated Prophet I could take or leave. I seem to recall there were strings on Sunrise, too, which also worked rather well, but it's been awhile since I've listened to the record.

But yeah, I think Olsen's production is part of what made that record sound the way it does, and is also one of the reasons why the Dead became stereotyped as being "not very good in the studio" (I think Jerry himself once sarcastically that their records were "not very good anyway").

GuitarGeek
05-30-2016, 07:00 PM
o the flat-out attempts at disco, LOL.

The weird thing about the Dead doign disco is, you'd think that was some another edict from Clive Davis, ie you can imagine Clive handing them a KC And The Sunshine Band record and say "OK, I know you guys don't have a horn section, but could you at least try to do something like this?! I mean, this record sold 10 million copies last year, so they must be doing something right!"

But the thing was, I have the impression there was contingency within the band that actually liked, and apparently wanted to try their hand, at that stuff.

Legend has that when Saturday Night Fever came out, the Dead were on a brief break in their touring schedule. So Jerry and Mickey hijacked a car and drove across state lines to find a movie theater to view the film.

The story goes, when they rejoined the band's entourage, they convened a meeting in a hotel room, where they proceeded to attempt to demonstrate some of John Travolta's dance moves to everyone else.

Remember what Frank Zappa said about LSD turning hippies into yuppies? Well, apparently it turned some of them into...whatever the hell you describe the above scenario (assuming that said scenario is, in fact, not apocrypha).

JKL2000
05-30-2016, 07:08 PM
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/a/a8/1ZabriskiePoint.jpg/220px-1ZabriskiePoint.jpg



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=awYm_pDO4WI


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ht9QilZMvuk


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KybChZlV1Zk

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zabriskie_Point_%28film%29

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/5/53/Great_expectations_poster.jpg/215px-Great_expectations_poster.jpg



https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Expectations_%281998_film%29

Two great movies from two different eras.

I'm certainly aware of their music in the Zabriskie Point album (don't know if it made into the movie or not - some of the album didn't), as I used to listen to that album a lot. I should have mentioned it in that post!

GuitarGeek
05-30-2016, 07:16 PM
And Werewolves Of London. Why they decided to cover that tune is beyond me? I turn off the Red Rocks encore before they launch into that one.

They did a lot of stupid cover tunes. ).

At various times, they also tackled (and possibly injured):

Mama Tried
Big River
You Win Again
El Paso (though it did give me the opportunity to give my mom a really great Xmas present one year)
Louie Louie
Big Railroad Blues
Me And Bobby McGee (I'm not sure if I like this version better than Janis' or not)
Me And My Uncle (with Weir inserting the line "I left his dead ass there by the side of the road" at the end of the song)
Revolution (yes, the John Lennon composition)
Baba O'Riley (no, I'm not joking)
Tomorrow Never Knows
I Fought The Law
(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction
All Along The Watchtower (Jimi Hendrix, this ain't)
Queen Jane Approximately
The Mighty Quinn (Manfred Mann, this ain't)
Desolation Row (dammit, Weir, why don't you just go form a Dylan tribute band if that's what you want to do)
and too many others to remember


In some ways, they were the most highly paid, and successful covers band of all time. Sure, they always did original music. But any given Dead show after about 1969 has as many covers as it does original compositions.

Having said that, some of their covers actually were pretty awesome. Morning Dew was typically delivered a moving rendition, with Jerry's heartfelt vocals and nimble guitar work. Viola Lee Blues was an early jamming number (one version I have from 1969 is around 20 minutes long). And they did beautiful versions of Sing Me Back Home and Tomorrow Never Knows in the early 70's. Also the Not Fade Away/Going Down The Road pairings were often a lot of fun too.

GuitarGeek
05-30-2016, 07:19 PM
SPOILER ALERT


Talking about The Dead's music in movies, one of the best (I can't imagine anything being better) has to be the movie Mask. Ripple plays as Cher walks into her son's room and finds that he's passed away in the night. Simply one of the most moving movie scenes I've ever seen, and I think the use of that song really underscored it very well.

Cher might not be much of a singer, but she's a great actress, and she proved it in Mask.

Calabasas_Trafalgar
05-30-2016, 08:51 PM
As a Dead hater, I resent your insinuation that there is a "correct impression" of the GD.

Reid
05-30-2016, 09:23 PM
They did a lot of stupid cover tunes. ).

At various times, they also tackled (and possibly injured):


Me And Bobby McGee (I'm not sure if I like this version better than Janis' or not)


That's a great rendition, imo. As is Going Down The Road Feeling Bad, from the same album. Makes me want to pick up the 4 disc set Ladies & Gentleman, recorded during the same era.

Yodelgoat
05-31-2016, 03:43 PM
My wife gave me such crap about buying "what a long strange trip its been" back when vinyl was still happening. She took one look at the cover and just lost it - that I would listen to such satanic garbage. - So I played her Truckin' and she was surprised that the image did not - in her opinion match the music.

I think she expected pictures of mutilated corpses on the inside cover. She was much more supportive, once she found out it was just a bunch of Peace loving, San-Francisco Hippies.

It does seem a bit out of place, but it predated any kind of death metal

Digital_Man
05-31-2016, 04:13 PM
No it isn't/wasn't normal and that's part of the point. Unlike most bands, who evolved beyond the scene that birthed them, the Grateful Dead managed to keep the scene that birthed them with them, evolving together. It wasn't all the band, it couldn't have been, but the band took efforts to keep the scene going. There was a community, a culture, a whole economy surrounding the live shows. A genuine counter-culture and alternative lifestyle was available by touring with the Dead. You could step out of the mainstream and live differently if you wanted. Values like peace and love, social and environmental consciousness, individual creativity and the profundity of the psychedelic experience were all celebrated and revered. The band never took credit for, or put themselves above, the scene either. They just had a hand in creating space for it to continue to be. It's little wonder that they were so adored by their fans.

Thanks for helping me to understand it better. It is one thing that makes them unique in a sense. I can't think of really any other bands who have a whole counter culture behind them. What I resent though is people who call themselves "deadheads" or consider themselves fans when they aren't really into the music. They are just doing it to fit in and be a part of something. How else would you explain all the bootlegging and concert sales that rival Pink Floyd and the Rolling Stones yet their studio album sales don't reflect that? The fans go to the shows and listen to bootlegs maybe but they don't buy their albums. I guess they feel it is feeding the corporate machine or something. Sorry but I call bs on that. If you are really a hardcore fan you want to support the band. It's not like none of the money from album sales goes to the band for crying out loud.

notallwhowander
05-31-2016, 09:46 PM
The Dead basically said that people were allowed to record and distribute their shows as long as people weren't making any money off it. So people selling bootlegs wasn't kosher, but people trading bootlegs were. Of course, there were plenty of hucksters trying to make a buck in the scene. So it wasn't all good trips and daydreams.

Trane
06-01-2016, 08:44 AM
Weird. I was just going to start a thread on the GD then I saw this thread. Lol. Strange.

Anyway, I've probably said it before but I totally don't get why this band is regarded so highly by their fans. It's not normal. What I mean is they worship them like they are gods and not even human and consider being a GD fan a lifestyle more than anything. What lifestyle? Drugs, drinking and non stop partying in tents? I don't get it. Is it a hippie thing or is it a wanting to be cool and wanting to belong thing or something else? I enjoy their music but I guess I just don't understand the "scene." Even Yes and Rush fans don't have some little subculture(for lack of a better term).

Well, certainly more than their albums, The Dead was about their concerts that lasted between three or four hours and you danced until you dropped (yes, despite their wasted-hippie image, these guys made you move,, no matter how wasted you got before during and after a gig of theirs. They did 20-minutes covers of BH's Not Fade Away and stuff.


No it isn't/wasn't normal and that's part of the point. Unlike most bands, who evolved beyond the scene that birthed them, the Grateful Dead managed to keep the scene that birthed them with them, evolving together. It wasn't all the band, it couldn't have been, but the band took efforts to keep the scene going. There was a community, a culture, a whole economy surrounding the live shows. A genuine counter-culture and alternative lifestyle was available by touring with the Dead. You could step out of the mainstream and live differently if you wanted. Values like peace and love, social and environmental consciousness, individual creativity and the profundity of the psychedelic experience were all celebrated and revered. The band never took credit for, or put themselves above, the scene either. They just had a hand in creating space for it to continue to be. It's little wonder that they were so adored by their fans.

Yup, actually GD being fairly rare in Canada for border reasons (the 350 GD Kling-ons following the Dead were not exactly welcome, I didn't get to see them until the early 80's (7 or 8 times in all), and indeed, it was still the 70's at the concert venue... They did keep things alive, but they were more a catalyst than anything else.... All a sudden you had flower children crawling out of the woodwork


My wife gave me such crap about buying "what a long strange trip its been" back when vinyl was still happening. She took one look at the cover and just lost it - that I would listen to such satanic garbage. - So I played her Truckin' and she was surprised that the image did not - in her opinion match the music.

I think she expected pictures of mutilated corpses on the inside cover. She was much more supportive, once she found out it was just a bunch of Peace loving, San-Francisco Hippies.

It does seem a bit out of place, but it predated any kind of death metal

Indeed the name is misleading (so are some of their artworks for the music they created... But then again QMS, BB&THC, etc...

TBH, the Eagles of Death Metal's music does not equate their name, but their political opinions.... (read the Bataclan thread's later posts)

Svetonio
06-01-2016, 08:52 AM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hMAKJfuP4II


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oJZhxVLizzQ

Gizah Sound & Light Theater - Gizah, Egypt - September 14-16th 1978





https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=csIrxoLUXKA


These are pictures of the deadheads at Jerry Garcia's spontaneous outdoor memorial in Piedmont Park, after he died in 1995. Three of the daylight pics towards the beginning are from another event a few years previous. The soundtrack is The Who's "Baba O'Riley", as covered by The Picketts, one of the great lost Seattle bands of the 90s.

Ground and Sky's Ghost
06-01-2016, 02:58 PM
What would be the next step for someone like me that prefers the studio stuff and loves American Beauty/Workingman's Dead?

You might not be interested since you prefer studio stuff, but the live album "Reckoning" from the early 80s is in a similar vein to American Beauty/Workingman's Dead. All unplugged/acoustic/folky music.

The very first post in this thread amused me because back in the late mid-80s I worked with a guy who was always telling me what a great party band the Dead were and recommending that I listen to them. I told him I wasn't interested because I wasn't into death metal.

Finally another dead-head co-worker loaned me a CD of Terrapin Station and I was hooked.

In return I loaned her Brain Salad Surgery - she thought it was..."interesting".

Gruno
06-01-2016, 03:15 PM
Thanks for helping me to understand it better. It is one thing that makes them unique in a sense. I can't think of really any other bands who have a whole counter culture behind them.

While possibly not as intense as the Grateful Dead's fan base, Phish, Dave Mathews, and Jimmy Buffett have fan bases that are pretty hardcore in regards to attending multiple shows and living the party lifestyle at concerts.

wideopenears
06-01-2016, 03:40 PM
The weird thing about the Dead doign disco is, you'd think that was some another edict from Clive Davis, ie you can imagine Clive handing them a KC And The Sunshine Band record and say "OK, I know you guys don't have a horn section, but could you at least try to do something like this?! I mean, this record sold 10 million copies last year, so they must be doing something right!"

But the thing was, I have the impression there was contingency within the band that actually liked, and apparently wanted to try their hand, at that stuff.

Legend has that when Saturday Night Fever came out, the Dead were on a brief break in their touring schedule. So Jerry and Mickey hijacked a car and drove across state lines to find a movie theater to view the film.

The story goes, when they rejoined the band's entourage, they convened a meeting in a hotel room, where they proceeded to attempt to demonstrate some of John Travolta's dance moves to everyone else.

Remember what Frank Zappa said about LSD turning hippies into yuppies? Well, apparently it turned some of them into...whatever the hell you describe the above scenario (assuming that said scenario is, in fact, not apocrypha).

This is one of the funniest things I've read here on PE. Thanks! That image in my head just won't go away...maybe it explains the white suits on the cover of "Go to Heaven." LOL.

StevegSr
06-01-2016, 04:32 PM
I love all types of music and could listen to a jug band if they moved me. The Dead never moved me. Their name always seemed more impressive than they were.

PeterG
06-01-2016, 07:05 PM
The only impression I've ever had of them is as a roots-rock jam band. Never heard anything by them that I liked. For the types of music GD were playing I always preferred The Byrds, America, Neil Young, Poco, Moby Grape, JA, among others.

Reid
06-01-2016, 07:11 PM
I found this talk to be quite fascinating. Garcia talks about growing up in a musical household, woodshedding on banjo, acid test parties, Neal Cassady, and how the Dead's lack of musical focus and consensus spawned their legendary jams.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NVkkbJ_KI2Y

Spiral
06-02-2016, 08:53 AM
Phish, Dave Mathews, and Jimmy Buffett have fan bases that are pretty hardcore in regards to attending multiple shows and living the party lifestyle at concerts.
Agreed about the party lifestyle, but I'd argue that the Buffett fanbase is the only one of those to comprise a particular community. With the others you're talking about a general vibe that could apply equally well to any jam band or psychedelic or funk outfit to some extent. Parrotheads or Juggalos (apologies for even bringing them up, but the example fits) are a step beyond in having their own distinct character.


The only impression I've ever had of them is as a roots-rock jam band.
Wow. That's sort of like considering Genesis to be nothing but AOR radio pop.

They were rootsy, sure, but that was where one of their biggest strengths lay. As Bruce Hornsby put it in some interview once, a lot of Dead songs felt like they could have been trad. classics from a hundred years ago. They could find the heart of that folky Americana vein and make something equally classic, fresh and timeless.

Spiral
06-02-2016, 09:08 AM
What would be the next step for someone like me that prefers the studio stuff and loves American Beauty/Workingman's Dead?

I'll second Europe '72. American Beauty had several of their best songs, but it suffered from some too-concise studio arrangements and slightly off-key harmonies. E72 is rooted in the same mode & feeling, has some more great non-studio songs and lets them stretch out more without (for the most part) going too far overboard into noodly jams.

I'd also suggest the complementary pair of Reckoning and Dead Set--taken from a tour where they'd play one acoustic and one electric set, respectively. It's a handy helping of their Americana side and the psychedelic side without the worse excesses of either. There are any number of stellar live shows, but arguably that kind of compiled live album (the ones that cherry-pick an excellent set without a ton of extended jams) is better for general purposes, at least for those of us who don't have such an expansive listening schedule these days.

Facelift
06-02-2016, 09:13 AM
What would be the next step for someone like me that prefers the studio stuff and loves American Beauty/Workingman's Dead?

Bob Weir's 'Ace.' (it's a Grateful Dead album in all but name).

GuitarGeek
06-02-2016, 10:06 AM
Bob Weir's 'Ace.' (it's a Grateful Dead album in all but name).

Yeah, I forgot about that one. And for that matter, don't forget Jerry's first solo album. Nearly all the songs ended up being played by the Dead onstage, and again, the songwriting and arrangements have that same vibe. I always loved Jerry's pedal steel playing on The Wheel.

GuitarGeek
06-02-2016, 10:18 AM
I'd also suggest the complementary pair of Reckoning and Dead Set--taken from a tour where they'd play one acoustic and one electric set, respectively.

Just for the record, it wasn't a tour, as such. They did extended runs at the Warfield Theater in San Francisco and Radio City Music Hall, in September and October of 1980 (with a short trip to New Orleans in between). Each night they played three sets: one acoustic and two electric. I suppose if your goal is to hear "songs, not jams" then maybe Dead Set is a good one.

I, for one, was always disappointed about all the great stuff that should have been on it, but got left off (specifically Terrapin Station, Estimated Prophet, Eyes Of The World, and Scarlet Begonias, off the top of my head). And I always thought the ballad arrangement of Friend Of The Devil was sluggish, sounding like the song was perpetually on the verge of falling apart. And the Space bit is too short, too.

But I've heard it suggested that Clive probably leaned on them to focus on the shorter songs, stuff that would be at least sort of radio friendly.

As for Reckoning, I was always disappointed that it had so many cover tunes, while a lot of interesting material that probably would have worked as acoustic songs was left off (or not even played, for that matter). I eventually found out they played both Heaven Help The Fool and Sage & Spirit, but both were left off (though they appear as bonus tracks on the deluxe version). I wonder if they even considered doing stuff like Rosemary or Mountains Of The Moon, since they were pretty much acoustic songs to begin with.

Reid
06-02-2016, 10:27 AM
The more I listen to their live recordings, the harder time I have with Weir's vocals. He sounds extremely forced and strained trying to sing a lot of the classic material the Dead liked to cover. I don't mind him singing his own songs. But on the other material he is incapable of any kind of range of expression. Jerry does a much better job, and he has that longing quality and lonesome sound in his voice that I find appealing.

Spiral
06-02-2016, 10:53 AM
Just for the record, it wasn't a tour, as such. They did extended runs at the Warfield Theater in San Francisco and Radio City Music Hall, in September and October of 1980 (with a short trip to New Orleans in between). Each night they played three sets: one acoustic and two electric. I suppose if your goal is to hear "songs, not jams" then maybe Dead Set is a good one.

I, for one, was always disappointed about all the great stuff that should have been on it, but got left off (specifically Terrapin Station, Estimated Prophet, Eyes Of The World, and Scarlet Begonias, off the top of my head). And I always thought the ballad arrangement of Friend Of The Devil was sluggish, sounding like the song was perpetually on the verge of falling apart. And the Space bit is too short, too.
Fair enough, and thanks for the clarification--I wasn't aware of those details about the dates (or just forgot), but I suppose that gives Dead Set's front & back covers a nice bit of context.

I basically meant that pairing gives a pretty good overview. They do miss some key stuff, but I'd say all the band's live albums have some flaw or another. It was a good idea to try a different treatment for "Friend of the Devil" even if the slower pace isn't successful here... some tempo in between would have worked much better (and the slower treatments do work quite well for "Candyman" and especially "Brokedown Palace"). I'd also say "Space" is generally ok for a longish spacey improv at that point in most shows, but in this case doesn't suffer from being shortened either. "Eyes" or "Terrapin" would have been great. They probably should have used those to replace the blues tunes. Speaking of which....


The more I listen to their live recordings, the harder time I have with Weir's vocals. He sounds extremely forced and strained trying to sing a lot of the classic material the Dead liked to cover. I don't mind him singing his own songs. But on the other material he is incapable of any kind of range of expression. Jerry does a much better job, and he has that longing quality and lonesome sound in his voice that I find appealing.
Yes. Jerry was definitely a better singer to my ears too. I guess they were both fairly limited in range, but the things they were suited for made them a good pair to complement each other. Bob does struggle with some things, but I can usually go with it. In my book, the dirty blues songs like "Little Red Rooster" are the only ones where his singing really fails hard enough to sink the whole song.

Gruno
06-02-2016, 11:25 AM
Parrotheads or Juggalos (apologies for even bringing them up, but the example fits)

I would guess that only about 8 people here would know of the Juggalos reference. :lol

Trane
06-02-2016, 11:40 AM
What would be the next step for someone like me that prefers the studio stuff and loves American Beauty/Workingman's Dead?

actually this is their country phase, so I'd avoid live albums from that era...

I'm much more in the Allah/Flood/Terrapin era... I'd look for a live album that era, if anyone can give me a hint.

Facelift
06-02-2016, 11:52 AM
actually this is their country phase, so I'd avoid live albums from that era...

I'm much more in the Allah/Flood/Terrapin era... I'd look for a live album that era, if anyone can give me a hint.

The 1977 tor is considered by many to be their best. There are numerous releases from this for you to check out.

They didn't do a proper tour in 1975, but the 08/13/1975 show was given official release (the first time a full dead show was officially released) as One From the Vault, and I highly recommend it. In addition to sounding great and having Blues for Allah on it, they made a ton of them and they are very cheap to buy used (like $2 or $3) if buying one is something you were interested in.

Trane
06-02-2016, 12:08 PM
The 1977 tor is considered by many to be their best. There are numerous releases from this for you to check out.

They didn't do a proper tour in 1975, but the 08/13/1975 show was given official release (the first time a full dead show was officially released) as One From the Vault, and I highly recommend it. In addition to sounding great and having Blues for Allah on it, they made a ton of them and they are very cheap to buy used (like $2 or $3) if buying one is something you were interested in.

I'll check those out, but I was thinking of historical live releases.

Reid
06-02-2016, 12:31 PM
There is also a 7 CD box set that includes all of the From The Vault releases. It's touted as including a bonus disc of live '68 material recorded at the Shrine, but you can get this live material for 5 bucks if you buy the CD re-issue of Anthem Of The Sun. It's included as the bonus tracks. The 5 dollar re-issue of Aoxomoxoa also includes several instrumental jams as bonus material, but these were recorded in the studio. And they sound good to me!

Facelift
06-02-2016, 01:13 PM
I'll check those out, but I was thinking of historical live releases.

What do you mean by "historical live releases?"

GuitarGeek
06-02-2016, 07:14 PM
actually this is their country phase, so I'd avoid live albums from that era...

I'm much more in the Allah/Flood/Terrapin era... I'd look for a live album that era, if anyone can give me a hint.

Well, you've kind of blurred together a few different things there. Wake Of The Flood was 73, Blues For Allah is 75, and Terrapin Station is 77.

As far as the Wake Of The Flood/From The Mars Hotel era goes, pretty much anything that's not Steal Your Face tends to be awesome. I've never heard a weak show from the 72-74 era. As far as officially released stuff goes, pretty much show from that time frame kills. You can look them all up on Wikipedia.

As for the Blues For Allah era, the band was in the midst of their self imposed hiatus from touring at that time, and hence only played a few shows in the Bay Area. The one I would go for is 3/23/75, their performance during a benefit concert at Kezar Stadium. They play a long instrumental (which would eventually become Blues For Allah itself and King Solomon's Marbles), then encore with Johnny B. Goode.

1977 is considered by a lot of people as one of the Dead's strongest years. If you say so. There's one show in May of 77, which is widely regarded by many as the best show they ever did. I disagree. I think it's a good performance, but no way does it even come close to the 72-74 era shows (or even the late 67-early 69 era). There's a lot of "jamming" but not so much "improvisation" (if you understand the difference I'm meaning), and virtually none of the spacey stuff which I happen to like a lot. There was a Road Trips release from the autumn 77 tour, which I think is about as good as it gets for this era.

Note: if you're looking for a live version of Terrapin Station, they never actually played the full piece in concert. I gather more recently, a few lesser groups, as well as one of the combos featuring the surviving original members of The Dead, have done it, but the Dead themselves never did the full piece (and certainly never with an orchestra). The closest they came was 3/18/77, where they play most of it, but At A Siding is played as an instrumental, and instead of seguing into Terrapin Flyer (the sort of samba section with the timbale, guitar and strings chasing each other around) it instead segues into a short Rhythm Devils bit, which in turn segues into what David Gans once claimed on The Grateful Dead Hour to be the best version of Not Fade Away ever (something like 20 minutes long).

GuitarGeek
06-02-2016, 07:15 PM
This should have been side three of Dead Set:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oJiGCNCP6DA

Reid
06-02-2016, 08:00 PM
Estimated Prophet and Terrapin Station are on the newly released Red Rocks '78 in very good sound. And has been mentioned, Blues For Allah album was performed live in '75, and is available on One From The Vault.

Skeptrick
06-02-2016, 09:51 PM
Bob Weir-Ace is quite possibly my favorite Dead related album. I saw a pretty interesting documentary about Bob Weir on Netflix recently, sorry the title escapes me. I like quite a bit of their studio stuff, my favorite overall probably is Wake Of The Flood or American Beauty, but almost all their albums has something decent on it. Only got to see them live once, I think in 1988. At one point in time I would say I was a fanatic, but these days I don't listen to them much.

GuitarGeek
06-02-2016, 11:01 PM
Estimated Prophet and Terrapin Station are on the newly released Red Rocks '78 in very good sound. And has been mentioned, Blues For Allah album was performed live in '75, and is available on One From The Vault.

Estimated Prophet and Terrapin Station appear on a lot of their archival releases. Both of those songs were played very regularly from 2/26/77 onward.

Joe F.
06-03-2016, 12:10 AM
I saw a pretty interesting documentary about Bob Weir on Netflix recently, sorry the title escapes me.

The Other One

Trane
06-03-2016, 08:02 AM
Thanks GG, I'll check in on your answer when I get a few minutes free. ;)


What do you mean by "historical live releases?"

Live albums released in the 70's.

PeterG
06-03-2016, 09:48 AM
Agreed about the party lifestyle, but I'd argue that the Buffett fanbase is the only one of those to comprise a particular community. With the others you're talking about a general vibe that could apply equally well to any jam band or psychedelic or funk outfit to some extent. Parrotheads or Juggalos (apologies for even bringing them up, but the example fits) are a step beyond in having their own distinct character.


Wow. That's sort of like considering Genesis to be nothing but AOR radio pop.

They were rootsy, sure, but that was where one of their biggest strengths lay.

Well, if that was one of their strengths, I wasn't wrong then ;)

But seriously, I don't know the GD discography well enough, so can't really comment on their music as a whole.

I've never owned a GD album. But I have tried to understand all the hype, so in the last few years have listened to a goodly bit of GD on Spotify and on YT, and to be honest, all I hear and all I have heard is a rootsy jam band, nothing more advanced than that IMO. Sorry if that isn't what they are, but that's what I hear.

As for Genesis, you mean they WEREN'T an AOR pop band? Wow! Who knew? ;)

Spiral
06-03-2016, 10:11 AM
Well, if that was one of their strengths, I wasn't wrong then ;)
Ha. I wasn't saying you were wrong, anyway, just that the description is pretty reductive. There was always quite a variety to what they did, though not all (or some, or none) will necessarily be to any person's taste.

Facelift
06-03-2016, 10:17 AM
Thanks GG, I'll check in on your answer when I get a few minutes free. ;)



Live albums released in the 70's.

The Dead didn't release any entire shows in the 1970s. In fact, they didn't release much live material at all, prior to the 1990s.

Reid
06-03-2016, 10:21 AM
Estimated Prophet and Terrapin Station appear on a lot of their archival releases. Both of those songs were played very regularly from 2/26/77 onward.

Yeah, so people can do their own investigating. There are hundreds of shows on YouTube. I just mentioned one CD that is easily available for a reasonable price. Many others are sold out and going for higher prices.

Spiral
06-03-2016, 10:28 AM
Live albums released in the 70's.
Then there'll be slim pickings. That reduces it to the live self-titled, History Of, Europe '72 and Steal Your Face... three of which are really not top-notch material.

Trane
06-03-2016, 11:03 AM
Then there'll be slim pickings. That reduces it to the live self-titled, History Of, Europe '72 and Steal Your Face... three of which are really not top-notch material.

the only live album I ever owned from them was Live Dead, but that's really for their first three albums.

wideopenears
06-03-2016, 03:23 PM
Large swaths of Anthem of the Sun are from live tapes.
Bears Choice has live material.
Europe '72 is live, of course. It has overdubs.
Live Dead is, well...Live. No dubs that I know of....
Steal Your Face was "crafted" to be not really a true reflection of their live show.
Skull and Roses was live. There are overdubs though....

GuitarGeek
06-03-2016, 04:05 PM
The Dead didn't release any entire shows in the 1970s. In fact, they didn't release much live material at all, prior to the 1990s.

Like most bands, the Dead put out a live album every few years, for whichever purposes one might do so. Of course, the Dead's music being what it was led to a lot of limitations. For instance, it seems once they put something on a live album, it was no longer considered for subsequent releases. I've only seen such logic being acknowledged by anyone in the band with regards to Steal Your Face, but it seems obvious it must have been there at some point even with Skullfuck or Europe '72, ie "Oh, we put Dark Star on Live/Dead, so we can't use it this time, even though the way we do it now is very different from the way we were doing it in February 1969".

The other issue at hand, was quite clearly once the band went onstage, they weren't thinking about conforming to the limitations of vinyl or magnetic tape. Some versions of Dark Star and The Other One exceed 30 minutes. There was one version of Dark Star that lasted just over 45 minutes. There's a 45 minute version of Playin' In The Band. And even besides that, the use of segues in concert meant that even when the songs were all comparatively brief. They could play a string of songs that would last an hour or more without the music stopping. Sure, they could have just put out a double LP at any given time, with such a sequence of songs sprawling out all four sides of vinyl, but you'd have to exclude any of the shorter material that was played outside the context of those extended suites.

Come to think of it, it might have been an interesting exercise, if say Europe '72 had been one LP of short songs (say Jack Straw, Chinatown Shuffle, Two Souls In Communion, Tennessee Jed, Brown Eyed Women, Ramblin' Rose, etc), and then the other two LP's could have been one continuous suite. Sorry, when it comes to the Dead, it's difficult for me to not play "armchair record producer".

The closest they came to putting out a live album at the time that actually that more or less sounded like one set was Live/Dead, and even then they pieced it together from two several shows. Sides 1, 2, and 3 sound like one continuous suite of music, but it's actually cut together from two shows that happened several weeks apart (and it also omits the mostly acoustic version of Mountains Of The Moon, which Dark Star segued out of).

Reid
06-03-2016, 04:11 PM
Dick's Picks Vol 4 has an awesome 30 minute rendition of The Other One. Concerts are from 1970. I was wondering about Skull and Roses? Some of those tracks sound so pristine for pure live recordings. Anyway, Playing In The Band has a great performance, overdubs or not. That tune really gets me going! And Anthem of The Sun features 79 minutes of trippy musical explorations. I've been playing it a lot!

Mister Triscuits
06-03-2016, 04:17 PM
Note: if you're looking for a live version of Terrapin Station, they never actually played the full piece in concert. I gather more recently, a few lesser groups, as well as one of the combos featuring the surviving original members of The Dead, have done it, but the Dead themselves never did the full piece (and certainly never with an orchestra).

Just a point of info: the Dead never recorded the complete "Terrapin" at all, live or studio. The studio version was titled "Terrapin Part 1" on the LP. The Dead never got around to a part 2. (I had been expecting a continuation on their next album; no such luck, of course.) A few years later, however, Robert Hunter released a 16-minute solo acoustic version of "Terrapin" on his album Jack o' Roses, combining a condensed version of Part 1 with two segments ("Ivory Wheels/Rosewood Track" and "Jack o' Roses") not included on the Dead version. Since each version contains material not on the other, there just is no complete "Terrapin" out there.

And why in the flaming hell is there no CD release of Jack o' Roses?

GuitarGeek
06-03-2016, 04:50 PM
Large swaths of Anthem of the Sun are from live tapes.

But they're pieced together in a fashion that doesn't really reflect the sound of a live performance.



Bears Choice has live material.

Good if you like Pigpen. I think that album was basically done as a contractual obligation, as they owed Warners one more album. At the time, Pigpen had just passed away, so Owsley chose tracks that featured him as sort of a tribute. Several songs came from the same two shows in February 1970 that were used for Dick's Picks Volume 4, though there's no overlap between the two releases.



Steal Your Face was "crafted" to be not really a true reflection of their live show.


Steal Your Face is an exercise how to choose all the wrong material for a live album. Even if you discount the songs that had been on earlier live albums, there was still plenty of good music that could have been used that would have been better than what was on the album. I mean, how the frell do you leave off China Doll, Eyes Of The World, Scarlet Begonias, and Weather Report Suite?!

Owsley once claimed he standing in front of the fireplace at his house, with the master tape for Steal Your Face in his hand, thinking about chucking it in, when Ron Rakow (who more or less ran Grateful Dead Records) called and started screaming at him about where the live album was.

GuitarGeek
06-03-2016, 04:56 PM
Just a point of info: the Dead never recorded the complete "Terrapin" at all, live or studio. The studio version was titled "Terrapin Part 1" on the LP. The Dead never got around to a part 2. (I had been expecting a continuation on their next album; no such luck, of course.) A few years later, however, Robert Hunter released a 16-minute solo acoustic version of "Terrapin" on his album Jack o' Roses, combining a condensed version of Part 1 with two segments ("Ivory Wheels/Rosewood Track" and "Jack o' Roses") not included on the Dead version. Since each version contains material not on the other, there just is no complete "Terrapin" out there.

Well, my point was, the piece as it appears on the Terrapin Station album was never played live. I'm not still not sure what the deal was there with the two different versions. I believe I read once that Hunter wrote the entire piece as one single epic poem, if you will, and Jerry chose the bits he wanted to use for the piece the band recorded. Supposedly, they didn't use all the lyrics Hunter had written because "it was too long" or some such, though of course, there's plenty of LP sides that are longer than Terrapin Station Part One. I don't know if the band ever intended for there to be a part two or what. Too bad they didn't do something with the rest of the piece. It could have been like their version of Cygnus X-1 or something.




And why in the flaming hell is there no CD release of Jack o' Roses?

Probably legal reasons. What label was it released on?

wideopenears
06-03-2016, 05:12 PM
Yea, my point was that the Dead released quite a lot of "live" material in the 70's....but quality or "authenticity" are different issues.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

GuitarGeek
06-03-2016, 06:04 PM
Dick's Picks Vol 4 has an awesome 30 minute rendition of The Other One. Concerts are from 1970.

It also has a great version of Dark Star. A lot of people insist it's the best Dark Star ever (there was even at some point a fan poll indicating as such), though to me, it's just a very good top shelf one (best Dark Star, as far as I'm concerned has to be one of the ones from 72-74). On the night, those two pieces were played together, with Dark Star seguing into That's It For The Other One.

I remember reading in one of the Deadhead Taper's Compendium books that apparently a lot of people were upset that the two pieces were placed on separate CD's, as I guess everyone expected they'd get the two tracks on a single CD, as played. I think it was Dick Latvala himself who explained that they did that because they wanted to include the Turn On Your Lovelight that followed That's It For The Other One, but at the same time they didn't want to give up any of the music that ended up on disc three. What they should have done was put Dark Star and That's It For The Other One on disc one, Turn On Your Lovelight as the first track of disc two, then all the material that was on the first half of disc one should have filled out disc two (see it's all from the following night anyway, as is all the material on disc three, so they should have put it together chronologically).



I was wondering about Skull and Roses? Some of those tracks sound so pristine for pure live recordings. Anyway, Playing In The Band has a great performance, overdubs or not. That tune really gets me going! And Anthem of The Sun features 79 minutes of trippy musical explorations. I've been playing it a lot!

I'm not sure how Skull & Roses (or Skullfuck, as I like to call it, since that's the title the band wanted to use) or Europe '72 were recorded, but they have that very clean recorded sound that you describe. There's long been talk of overdubs on both records, but I've never been sure exactly what got fixed. I guess people have compared the live tapes on Europe '72 to the originally released album, and it's been determined that a lot of the vocals got replaced (sometimes sounding very different from the way they sounded on the night). I know that Merl Saunders didn't play any of the shows that Skullfuck is derived from (despite him being credited on the album) and he apparently had a gold album for Europe '72, even though he didn't travel with the Dead on that tour either. Not sure if they replaced any of Jerry's solos or anything like that, though.

Reid
06-03-2016, 06:39 PM
I don't doubt the vocals were re-done in the studio. I've since purchased the Fillmore East April 1971 4 disc set, and their live vocals are nowhere near as consistent.

Mister Triscuits
06-04-2016, 10:39 AM
I believe I read once that Hunter wrote the entire piece as one single epic poem, if you will, and Jerry chose the bits he wanted to use for the piece the band recorded. Supposedly, they didn't use all the lyrics Hunter had written because "it was too long" or some such

I think that's the story I read too, but the thing is that Jerry did write music for the parts that the Dead didn't record, at least according to the credits on the Hunter record where the whole thing is listed as Lyrics: Hunter/Music: Garcia.


Probably legal reasons. What label was it released on?

My copy is on Relix Records, as in the magazine. Discogs says there was also a UK pressing on the Dark Star label; presumably this was connected to the British zine of that name.

GuitarGeek
06-04-2016, 03:44 PM
I think that's the story I read too, but the thing is that Jerry did write music for the parts that the Dead didn't record, at least according to the credits on the Hunter record where the whole thing is listed as Lyrics: Hunter/Music: Garcia.

There's a couple different variations on the Terrapin Station story I've heard over the years.

Hunter has often said that he wrote the lyrics while watching a big lightning storm from his living room. Supposedly, Jerry was driving across the Golden Gate Bridge when a musical idea popped into his head, and he had to turn around and go home, so he could work on it before he forgot it. Then the next day, the two of them up and the two things fit together perfectly from the start.

On the other hand, Susan Crutcher, who was one of the editors who worked on the Grateful Dead Movie says she remembers Jerry working on Terrapin Station while they were taking breaks during work on the picture.

So that makes one wonder exactly what was written when and exactly how much of the original story is true. Perhaps Hunter and Jerry came up with some of Terrapin Station during that lightning storm and then put the two things together the next day, but possibly one or the other added to it as time went on. Or maybe Jerry continued tinkering with the song, as I find it hard to believe that one could take a set of words and put them to pre-written music without having to mess with the melody and/or wording to make the two fit together. I know Geddy Lee, for instance, has said he's had to edit Neil Peart's lyrics to make them more singable. On the other hand, I remember Hunter saying the reason he stopped working with Weir was because Weir tended to tamper with his lyrics too much.

Note that if you check the bylines on the original album, Mickey Hart is credited with writing music for the At A Siding section, so that's presumably one bit that Jerry didn't write the music for. Perhaps Jerry wrote music for the bits that Hunter recorded on his version that are missing from the Dead's. Or maybe Hunter did it himself, but didn't feel inclined to nitpick over who wrote what when it came time to drawing up the byline. I know Jerry said that sometimes Hunter hands him fully written songs, and then Jerry would write new melodies for them (specifically, I know he said that was the case with Touch Of Grey).



My copy is on Relix Records, as in the magazine. Discogs says there was also a UK pressing on the Dark Star label; presumably this was connected to the British zine of that name.

Hmm, yes, I knew some of Hunter's solo records were released through Relix Records, I just wasn't sure just which ones. I would think that there wouldn't be the same kind of hangups one would have with reissuing something associated with say, Columbia or Warner Brothers, but who knows?

I know there was a point where Rykodisc reissued some of the music associated with the Dead (eg Jerry's first solo album, Weir's Ace, the Seastones record, the Diga Rhythm Band record, etc), but those were all from either the Warners era or the Grateful Dead/Round Records period. Not sure why nothing from the Relix has ever been reissued.

As I recall, there were quite a few other acts who released music on Relix Records, too, I imagine none of them have ever been reissued either. There was one band who recorded a version of Mason's Children, a song the Dead circa late 69/early 70 before being discarded, and supposedly this circa 1988 recording was one of the first times it had actually appeared on an officially release (around the same, Henry Kaiser put out his album Those Who Know History Are Doomed To Repeat, which also had a version of Mason's Children on it, along with a 30 minute version of Dark Star/The Other One with Glenn Phillips and I believe the rhythm section from Bill Frissel's band at the time).

zumacraig
06-04-2016, 06:54 PM
The Terrapin stories are interesting. I read somewhere that Garcia didn't have time to use all the lyrics given time constraints to record. Very interesting that he was working on the tune several years before the album. Hunter's is really different as are most of the tunes he wrote for lyrics Garcia used. Another long one that never came to be was Eagle Mall. Words were written and I think Garcia messed with it, but nothing came to pass. I find creative process of artists so interesting.

GuitarGeek
06-04-2016, 08:06 PM
The Terrapin stories are interesting. I read somewhere that Garcia didn't have time to use all the lyrics given time constraints to record. Very interesting that he was working on the tune several years before the album.

As far as I know, the song came into being sometime in 1976. I've never heard of any suggestion Jerry was fiddling with the song for several years beforehand.

There are a few things that crop up in live performance years before they'd be used on an album. Bits of Playin' In The Band and Uncle John's Band crop up as instrumentals in at least one show in 1969. The first bit of Stronger Than Dirt was played as a coda to Eyes Of The World during every show the song was played at from it's premiere in February of 73 all the way up through October of 74. Sage & Spirit, one of the instrumentals on Blues For Allah, actually was a guitar "exercise" that Weir played in his warm up routine (you can hear him playing it in the Grateful Dead Movie, during the soundcheck montage). There's also supposedly a show from 68 or 69, where you can distinctly hear Weir playing a few bars of what's now known as the Weather Report Suite Prelude.

jkelman
06-06-2016, 11:36 AM
Do those of you who like The Grateful Dead get this a lot? Very often if someone who's not familiar with the Dead hears that I like them, they'll say something like "I didn't know YOU liked The Grateful Dead," and if they should HEAR some Grateful Dead music, they'll say something like "THIS is The Grateful Dead?" They seem to expect, for some reason, that the band's music is going to sound like Black Metal or something. They're really surprised that the band is more of a folk/jazz/Americana type band. Even if they heard one of the trippy-er or more proggy albums, they're still suprised to find it's far more musical and accessible than they expected. I guess it comes from getting, overall, very little radio play and not being used in movies or anything like that. And also from the band not needing to market itself much.
Yup, I get it all the time...especially because I came to the band so late (just a few years ago) and have leapt into the deep end with both feet. And I don't regret it for a moment.

The Dead was far more than any one of the attributes you mentioned....they were country. They were folk/americana. They were bluegrass. They were jamband/rock. They were also progressive rock (Blues for Allah's "Help On the Way" > "Slipknot" > "Franklin's Tower" and Terrapin Station's 15-minute title suite (though it was almost always far, far better live than on the studio record), to name just two.

The only thing that kinda makes the Dead like Keith Jarrett's grunting is: they can be having a GREAT nice in terms of instrumental performances, improvisation, etc...but vocally - especially during the Donna Godchaux years - they could be downright cringe inducing (ditto final keyboardist Vince Welnick - who was a great backup vocalist, but on his own sounded like an overly zealous Michael McDonald...tunes like "Dear Mr Fantasy," "Hey Jude" and "Hey Poky Way" all being examples where he could sing great but, even in the same song, he could be absolutely cringe-inducing.

So getting past Dead vocals can be a challenge. Especially because there's much to recommend as well. Garcia may be better known as a guitarist, but few singers - even as "pitchy" as he was - could bring such raw, fragile vulnerability to many of the songs he co-wrote with Robert Hunter. He's become one of my favourite vocalists....but almost always better solo, as when the band is trying to harmonize with his shaky voice, it can often mean trouble....

But all this said, I'm a committed and certifiable Dead Head...and the recent July 1978 box is just one more reason why. Five shows of which only one was super well known, but all the others, including a shorter opening set at Willie Nelson's summer picnic, are positively stunning...some of the best live instrumental performances by this lineup of the band, period.

Spiral
06-06-2016, 11:44 AM
if they should HEAR some Grateful Dead music, they'll say something like "THIS is The Grateful Dead?" They seem to expect, for some reason, that the band's music is going to sound like Black Metal or something. They're really surprised that the band is more of a folk/jazz/Americana type band. Even if they heard one of the trippy-er or more proggy albums, they're still suprised to find it's far more musical and accessible than they expected.
Missed this part somehow. Yes, I had the same experience with my now-wife when she was first getting to know about some of my weird obsessions. She had an impression of the band all based on the drugged-out psychedelic stuff and was surprised to hear me say "no, there's a lot you'd probably like." We actually had your abovementioned exchange on two separate occasions. It turned out she already knew and liked "Casey Jones" and "Touch of Grey," but had no idea they were both by the Dead (or both done by the same band for that matter).

GuitarGeek
06-06-2016, 06:50 PM
The only thing that kinda makes the Dead like Keith Jarrett's grunting is: they can be having a GREAT nice in terms of instrumental performances, improvisation, etc...but vocally - especially during the Donna Godchaux years - they could be downright cringe inducing (ditto final keyboardist Vince Welnick - who was a great backup vocalist, but on his own sounded like an overly zealous Michael McDonald...tunes like "Dear Mr Fantasy," "Hey Jude" and "Hey Poky Way" all being examples where he could sing great but, even in the same song, he could be absolutely cringe-inducing.


Did they do those songs with Vince? I've only ever heard them sung by Brent Mydland. I remember one scribe saying that Brent's singing and songwriting were "just on this side of the Doobie Brothers" (presumably meaning the Michael McDonald Doobies).

For me the big downer about the later vocals is Jerry. To think about what happened to Jerry's voice, whether it was because of the cigarettes, heroin, cocaine, whatever. If you listen to any Dead show from the late 60's or early 70's, than compare it to his singing in the late 80's, the difference is...disturbing. On the late 80's/90's stuff, he sounds fine if he's singing an uptempo song like Bertha or singing softly, like at the beginning of Morning Dew or Stella Blue, when it actually needs to rise in power, like happens in the latter parts of those ballads, it tended to fall flat.

The thing that bugs me about vocals in the 73-74 era, has to do with the damn mics, actually. If you watch the Grateful Dead Movie, you'll see each vocalist has two mics. The idea was that by placing two mics close together, wired out of phase, anything that got picked up by both of them would be cancelled out. The singer would sing into one mic, and it would, in theory not cancelled out. This was done to get around the issues with the Wall Of Sound PA, where a conventional mic setup would have everything coming out of the PA being picked up by the mics, since the PA was more or less behind the band. And this setup also blocked out unwanted feedback.

There was one catch: the two mics had to be placed so close to each other for the set up to work, that the second mic ended getting a bit of the vocalist's voice. Hence, there was a partial cancellation going on, kinda like when you use the out of phase switch on a guitar. The vocals come out real thin sounding as a result. On a multi-track tape, you can probably EQ it so it more or less sounds normal, boost the bottom and mids, add a little reverb and it sounds fine. But on a two track tape, you're stuck. That's why every damn show from the 73-74 era, the vocals sound like that, except when they were running multi-track.

As for Donna, I dunno, she doesn't seem to bother me as much as she does a lot of other people. I had an easier time accepting her vocals (she admits her intonation tended to be a bit off because though they had the greatest PA system ever, they still had lousy monitors and she couldn't hear herself most of the time) than, say the "wordless" vocals Pat Metheny insisted on having on most of his records, or any of the cookie monster stuff (or other lame attempts at sounding "demonic" or "impassioned" or whatever) that you hear on a lot of post-80's metal.

zumacraig
06-06-2016, 07:46 PM
As far as I know, the song came into being sometime in 1976. I've never heard of any suggestion Jerry was fiddling with the song for several years beforehand.

There are a few things that crop up in live performance years before they'd be used on an album. Bits of Playin' In The Band and Uncle John's Band crop up as instrumentals in at least one show in 1969. The first bit of Stronger Than Dirt was played as a coda to Eyes Of The World during every show the song was played at from it's premiere in February of 73 all the way up through October of 74. Sage & Spirit, one of the instrumentals on Blues For Allah, actually was a guitar "exercise" that Weir played in his warm up routine (you can hear him playing it in the Grateful Dead Movie, during the soundcheck montage). There's also supposedly a show from 68 or 69, where you can distinctly hear Weir playing a few bars of what's now known as the Weather Report Suite Prelude.

Right! I forgot about that Stronger than Dirt. I think they also play Slipknot in 74 or sometime before Blues For Allah. Didn't know about the late 60s stuff. Bob is shown playing Sage in the GD movie.

I'm forever looking for that show where Garcia's voice starts to go. It has to be 82 because he sounds great on Reckoning. It's amazing that within 18 months the dude became a zombie. Playing was still great, but man he went down hill right at 40. I remember hearing a late 80s show and being taken aback by how gruff Garcia's voice was.

jkelman
06-06-2016, 11:06 PM
actually this is their country phase, so I'd avoid live albums from that era...

I'm much more in the Allah/Flood/Terrapin era... I'd look for a live album that era, if anyone can give me a hint.
The thing is, you don't really need to do that as the Dead continually played a lot of material - some would drop off for a few years, only to then return (like "Dark Star"). If you're a fan of BfA, the Warlocks box from 1989 has my favourite triptych - "Help on the Way," "Slipknot" and "Franklin's Tower," which they'd go on to play every few nights in the Spring 1990 tour.

Really, what you want to look for, is just setlist that have the material you like, because the other thing is the group continued to evolve, organically, so their performance of that triptych in 1989/90 far surpasses (IMO) the version from the 1975 show that was referred to a few posts below (good as it is). Garcia's playing, in particular, really evolved and became so much more sophisticated as the years went on, that the Dead is a strange case where looking for the period where a studio record you liked was documented live doesn't really apply.

Also, has anyone heard Day of the Dead? Five-disc, 59-song tribute to the Dead, initiated by the guys in The National, but with a huge cast of people (some i know, others are new to me) that is quite possibly the best tribute album I've ever heard. Some versions are very literal, others will totally surprise you....but every one of them is wonderful. I cannot recommend it highly enough. And it's available in 24/96 at HDTracks...I'd received the box set but when I saw it, I had to have it...and I'm glad I did.

jkelman
06-06-2016, 11:10 PM
Did they do those songs with Vince? I've only ever heard them sung by Brent Mydland. I remember one scribe saying that Brent's singing and songwriting were "just on this side of the Doobie Brothers" (presumably meaning the Michael McDonald Doobies).
Argh. You are absolutely correct. Chalk it up to a brain cramp:)


For me the big downer about the later vocals is Jerry. To think about what happened to Jerry's voice, whether it was because of the cigarettes, heroin, cocaine, whatever. If you listen to any Dead show from the late 60's or early 70's, than compare it to his singing in the late 80's, the difference is...disturbing. On the late 80's/90's stuff, he sounds fine if he's singing an uptempo song like Bertha or singing softly, like at the beginning of Morning Dew or Stella Blue, when it actually needs to rise in power, like happens in the latter parts of those ballads, it tended to fall flat.
true,. to some extent, but his fragility remained. And when I hear him sing "Black Muddy River" live - one of his last GREAT songs, IMO - it sends shivers up and down my spine. His voice was absolutely affected by his lifestyle...and his life. But in some ways, I'm ok with it, and don't find it disturbing at all. What he lacked in vocal acuity he made up for in sheer subtle emotiveness. At least imo.


As for Donna, I dunno, she doesn't seem to bother me as much as she does a lot of other people. I had an easier time accepting her vocals (she admits her intonation tended to be a bit off because though they had the greatest PA system ever, they still had lousy monitors and she couldn't hear herself most of the time) than, say the "wordless" vocals Pat Metheny insisted on having on most of his records, or any of the cookie monster stuff (or other lame attempts at sounding "demonic" or "impassioned" or whatever) that you hear on a lot of post-80's metal.
Wel, I am truly happy that you can handle her...seriously. Because for me, every time she opens her mouth to caterwaul ("yeaaaaaaaah....!!! yeaaaaeaaaaeaaa!!!") on "Playing in the Band" i cannot help but wonder if anyone in the band, other than Keith, was wondering "My God!...What have I done?":)

GuitarGeek
06-07-2016, 12:36 AM
Right! I forgot about that Stronger than Dirt. I think they also play Slipknot in 74 or sometime before Blues For Allah. Didn't know about the late 60s stuff. Bob is shown playing Sage in the GD movie.

Yeah, I did mention Bob playing Sage & Spirit in the movie. He said that was part of his pre concert warm up routine, when he was interviewed in Guitar Player in the early 80's. Slipknot turns up briefly in the 10/18/74 Dark Star, you can hear Jerry play that lick a couple times, and I think there's one or two shows from the summer 74 tour where it also crops up.

The weird thing is, Stronger Than Dirt appears in, as far as I can tell, every version of Eyes Of The World from 73-74, I would love to know how they came to be so closely connected, so much so they kept using the Stronger Than Dirt thing, even after it was apparently decided that it wasn't part of Eyes Of The World, and then of course, it gets dropped from 75 afterwards, with King Solomon's Marbles only being played a few times in 75. I imagine it probably got dropped because Jerry got tired of having to rehearse it (I think that happened with a lot of Dead things that Jerry decided was "uncomfortable", many of which cropped up in the 21st century ensembles that Weir, Phil, and the drummers have had).



I'm forever looking for that show where Garcia's voice starts to go. It has to be 82 because he sounds great on Reckoning. It's amazing that within 18 months the dude became a zombie. Playing was still great, but man he went down hill right at 40. I remember hearing a late 80s show and being taken aback by how gruff Garcia's voice was.

Reckoning and Dead Set were Sept/Oct 80, so it could have been 81 where Jerry's voice started go. And if you think Jerry's voice sounded bad during the 80's, something I find immensely depressing is watching the View From The Vault DVD's. It looks as if when he's singing, he's using the mic and his nose to prop his head up. When he's not singing, he's mostly got his lowered completely. He almost looks like he's nodded off while standing, except he's still playing guitar and sometimes swaying back and forth. There's also moments where you see him play a run down the fingerboard, say ending on an open string which sounds for a couple seconds, and his left arm falls down to his side. It doesn't look like a "rocker" pose at all, more like "I'm tired to keep my hand on the neck even for the two seconds it doesn't need to be there". It's really weird watching that, and then comparing it to his appearance in Sunshine Daydream, The Grateful Dead Movie, or any of the other 70's concert footage that exists of the Dead.

GuitarGeek
06-07-2016, 12:52 AM
true,. to some extent, but his fragility remained. And when I hear him sing "Black Muddy River" live - one of his last GREAT songs, IMO - it sends shivers up and down my spine. His voice was absolutely affected by his lifestyle...and his life. But in some ways, I'm ok with it, and don't find it disturbing at all. What he lacked in vocal acuity he made up for in sheer subtle emotiveness. At least imo.

Yeah, I suppose that's true. I think Black Muddy River works well with the limitations that Jerry had on his voice at the time, likewise for Standing On The Moon, because they were written during after his voice started to change. But the older ballads, I dunno, they don't work as well for me, but I do admit that they do retain some of their emotional impact, partially because Jerry could still play a spellbinding solo on those songs when he needed to (usually). Come to think of it, I think China Doll was one song where he was still able to deliver vocally the way he used to, mainly because it didn't really require him to shout the way parts of Stella Blue or Morning Dew did.





Wel, I am truly happy that you can handle her...seriously. Because for me, every time she opens her mouth to caterwaul ("yeaaaaaaaah....!!! yeaaaaeaaaaeaaa!!!") on "Playing in the Band" i cannot help but wonder if anyone in the band, other than Keith, was wondering "My God!...What have I done?":)

I have the impression that the band spent a large amount of time in the months (or longer?) leading up Keith and Donna's departure, considering whether they should sack them or not. I get the impression that Jerry, Weir, Phil and the drummers were feeling that Keith and Donna were starting to be...a bad fit. I've heard it said Keith was a heavy drinker, maybe not as bad as Pigpen was, but enough so that it affected his playing after awhile, and they really wanted someone who was willing to play something besides piano. And as you say maybe they felt Donna was superfluous. Supposedly, though, they didn't want to fire anybody, even if they really should. So they just things go until first Donna, then later Keith, both quit. The line I heard was that the rest of the band "dodged a bullet" by not having to have "a talk" with Keith and Donna viz-a-viz getting rid of the Godchauxes.

And yeah, I never did understand the screams on Playing In The Band, but it's not like Yoko Ono bad, not to my ears. And I like her performances on Sunrise and From The Heart Of Me. I've heard a few live versions of both that sound quite nice (though again, Sunrise seems to be one of those songs that never sounded as good onstage as it did on Terrapin Station, largely because it's another song where the "sweetener" actually worked better than it should have).

zumacraig
06-07-2016, 11:57 PM
@GuitarGeek,

You're quite knowledgeable! Great to converse with you. I'm definitely a head, but only 'know' about specific shows. I know lots of history as well, but others know a lot more...like you! I saw the band about 50 times between 1989 and '95. Even though Jerry's voice was shot, 89-90 was pretty good. Things were up and down after that. The playing really went to shit, but there were a few gems at each show. It was downright embarrassing sometimes though. I can't believe the other band members didn't just leave the stage. Money to be made though. I was ready to really cut back on shows when Garcia died. The post-Jerry years have been interesting, but nothing like the Grateful Dead. They boys have been lost without their musical and spiritual leader. IMHO :-)

As far as Eyes goes, are you referring to the jam after Phil's solo where they go to Gm then back to Emaj7 etc....the riff too....is that Stronger than Dirt? I've heard that. We always called it the 9 jam, but I can see a bit of a similarity between it and what became King Solomon's. My hunch is that whole section was written as part of the song proper and maybe even recorded for Wake. Who knows. I love the Eyes on the Dead movie and on Vault 1. It is cool that Furthur did King Solomons and Blues For Allah. Would've loved to see them resurrect that Eyes jam :-)

I miss the curated live releases which had a bit of editing a la Without A Net. I'd love to have one from each tour in the 90s. There's got to be at least 2 sets worth of gems from those years. Just bring Vince down in the mix! Regarding the ballads y'all were discussing above, even with his shitty voice, Garcia had some impassioned performances. The last Visions of Johanna (7/8/95) is great as is the Stella Blue from 3/21/94.

https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~./gdead/dead-sets/94/3-21-94.txt
https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~./gdead/dead-sets/95/7-8-95.txt

Anyway, thoughts on Fare Thee Well and Dead & Co.?

JKL2000
06-08-2016, 09:49 AM
But all this said, I'm a committed and certifiable Dead Head...and the recent July 1978 box is just one more reason why. Five shows of which only one was super well known, but all the others, including a shorter opening set at Willie Nelson's summer picnic, are positively stunning...some of the best live instrumental performances by this lineup of the band, period.

Holy cow, I somehow completely missed this set! I think I vaguely recall seeing the email announcing it, but dropped the ball. Whew, it's still in stock, so - Ordered!

Thanks for mentioning it, John! I'd have been kicking myself if I missed out. :)

GuitarGeek
06-08-2016, 07:21 PM
@GuitarGeek,

You're quite knowledgeable! Great to converse with you.

Thank you, I spent too much of my youth reading books and guitar magazines. I have about five different books about the Dead, and I used to read Relix magazine back in the late 80's and early 90's.


I'm definitely a head, but only 'know' about specific shows. I know lots of history as well, but others know a lot more...like you! I saw the band about 50 times between 1989 and '95. Even though Jerry's voice was shot, 89-90 was pretty good. Things were up and down after that. The playing really went to shit, but there were a few gems at each show. It was downright embarrassing sometimes though.

I only saw them twice, in 90 and 91, and they were both great shows. In fact, they used a bit of my first show on the So Many Roads box, and I eventually tracked down a really good recording of that show, and the second set was just awesome as I remembered it being.

I think 87-91 is generally regarded as their last peak era. After 91, things started to get inconsistent again, as you say. There's been a lot of excuses or theories tossed forth. Around 92 or 93, the band started wearing in the ear monitors, instead of having the wedges on the floor. Incidentally, around the same time, they stopped using conventional guitar amp speakers onstage, instead having Jerry, Phil, and Bob all using speaker emulators, which I think is one reason why Jerry's tone stinks that last few years. Anyway, there's people who believe the "selfish" mixes each band member (ie with everyone but the musician in question turned down low) caused them to lose their ability to stay in synch with each other. I reckon they probably had those kind of mixes all along, we only found out about it because during the "in the ear" era, people started recording the radio signals that were used for the wireless feeds. I think it was more about Jerry falling off the wagon and going to pieces, plus probably other issues too.

I always felt the band kinda sounded like they had stopped listening to each sometime during the 80's. There's lots of shows, say when they're playing Estimated Prophet or Dark Star, where they started jamming out and at first it sounds good, but after awhile it kinda sounds like being in a room with six people, all of them talking at the same time, no one wanting to shut up, and you can't quite make sense of what's going on. They're sort of stepping on each other, as it were.

By contrast, if you go back to the early 70's stuff, up through 74 certainly, there's more of a conversational approach to the jamming and improv. You'd have different instruments dropping and out, and being heard in different combinations, it wasn't just five or six guys going full stop non stop. There's versions of things like Dark Star or Eyes Of The World where they'd bring it down to almost a whisper during the improvisations, then bring it back up to full volume.

A lot of times it just seemed like when they'd get to the places where Mickey and Billy didn't work things out ahead of time (and if you listen carefully, you can tell during the conventional song arrangements, they had to worked out all those fills and everything for them to play the same stuff). For all the talk of his knowledge of ethnic music, the time he spent hanging out with people like Hamza El-Din, Airto, and Zakir Hussein, I felt he was under utilized in the Dead, except during the Rhythm Devils part of the show. I always thought it would have been more interesting for him to be a percussionist, instead of a drummer in this band. Would have been interesting to hear a little talking drum, tar, or even the Beam during Dark Star or The Other One or whatever.

But I eventually figured out, after hearing a few shows from 76 that, no, it's not quite Mickey's fault, because even during those shows, there's places where there's more space and dynamics during the jamming. Something happened after 76, or maybe 77, that just messed up their ability to jam like they used to.

BUt even saying that, there's some good improvisations and jams during the 80's and 90's. I like the shows I've heard form the Madison Square Garden run in September 1990 (just after my first show), where they sort of arranged for certain combinations of musicians to jam each night, before the Rhythm Devils thing. I've heard two or three of them, where there's like a different combination of three or so musicians sort of jamming around after the last pre-drums song ends. I gather they did that each night of the run, with a different combination of people each night.


I can't believe the other band members didn't just leave the stage. Money to be made though. I was ready to really cut back on shows when Garcia died.

Some of the books that have been written since Jerry died (most of which I haven't read, I'm kinda ashamed that I haven't even read Phil's book) where it's suggested that a large part of why the Dead stayed on the road in the 80's and 90's was to pay for Jerry's drug habit. Supposedly, the Jerry Garcia Band continued touring during that same time frame, to fuel not only Jerry's habit, but also his bassist John Kahn's habit too.

I recall reading in either Relix or Dupree's Diamond News where someone suggested in 94 or so, that the band needed to sit Jerry down and have a talk with him, perhaps take more than a couple months off the road and for him to get himself in shape. I recall recounting this to someone, who told me the band spent the last 15 years of Jerry's life continuously giving him "the talk". But again, this is a band that "doesn't fire people" (I think the Dead might be one of the only bands that can legitimately say they never sacked anyone).



As far as Eyes goes, are you referring to the jam after Phil's solo where they go to Gm then back to Emaj7 etc....the riff too....is that Stronger than Dirt?

Well, I've never sussed out the chords, but I do know it changes to a minor chord, so it sounds like we're talking about the same bit, yes.



I miss the curated live releases which had a bit of editing a la Without A Net. I'd love to have one from each tour in the 90s. There's got to be at least 2 sets worth of gems from those years.

Well, they've put out a few of those. I know several of the Dick's Picks combine tracks from multiple shows from a single run, and they've done that also with the Road Trips releases (there's one from the autumn 77 tour which is really nice), much to the annoyance of some fans. I reckon I don't need every single frelling version of Deal, Loose Lucy, The Race Is On, Big River, etc on an official release, so if they cut those songs out, I'm fine with it. The problem is, sometimes they didn't always pick what I reckon to be the best material from the selected shows.



Just bring Vince down in the mix!

They may not have the ability to do so. A lot of the stuff recorded in the 70's, the tapes we have came off separate audio feeds coming off the stage. Instead of recording the front of house board mix, they would take a second feed to a separate soundboard, usually hidden backstage somewhere, manned by either Betty Cantor or Kidd Candelario, which in turn fed the tape machine. Apparently even when they were running multi-track (say on the Europe '72 tour), they'd run the two track rig so that if someone wanted to hear something, say after the show or the next day or whatever, all they had to do was set the Nagra up and a cuople speakers up in a hotel room or whatever, and roll tape, versus the major elaborate arrangements they'd need to make to listen to the multi-tracks.

But it seems at some point in the 80's, they might have stopped doing that, maybe once Betty and Kidd were no longer involved with the band, they just never had anyone who could do that, so it fell upon Healy and whoever was with him at the soundboard to record shows.

Anyway, I remember it being pointed out in one of the Deadhead Taper's Compendium books that whichever show it was that they put out from the Vince era, one of the first Dick's Picks that Vince was on, it was noted how loud the keyboards were in the mix. And I think it was Dick Latvala himself, or Dick or David Lemieux (who was originally Dick's assistant, but after Dick passed away, Dave kinda assumed that mantle as the "gatekeeper", if you will). Anyhow, whoever was being interviewed said that's the way it is on the tape and there's nothing they could about it because it was a two track.

I also remember someone, I forget who, but it might have been John Cutler, again in one of the Compendiums, who said that they were recording ADAT, I think it was, which at that time was brand new technology, which didn't always work right, apparently. He said that they never listened to the tapes, they just had a FedEx guy show up every few days on tour, and they'd overnight them back to the Vault. So there's a slight possibility that any given recording, could have nothing at all on it.




Anyway, thoughts on Fare Thee Well and Dead & Co.?

Haven't heard any of it, nor have I heard Furthur. The last Dead related thing I heard was a few of The Other Ones shows from 2003, one of which I was at (third row, for $43 bucks at the box office!). It was an awesome show with a lot of cool surprises, including Hunter doing a great acoustic set during the intermission ending with a delightful Ripples (we made eye contact as he sang the first verse!).

zumacraig
06-09-2016, 12:21 AM
@GuitarGeek,

I read Relix and Duprees too. Those were the days. Loved it when they'd publish the setlists. Good points about the band's jamming transformation. Yeah, the 70s were nuts. You'd have just Phil on stage with drums etc. The advent of drums/space was a way for them to just compartmentalize that stuff. I too would've loved to have heard some Beam stuff or Bralove's stuff during Dark Star especially. The jamming did change over the years, as you say. I think Kieth fit in best as a keyboardist. Brent found his sound around 86 when he quit playing that toy electric piano thing. Poor Vince, why they put him on some cheese ball keyboard I'll never know. He had no analogue instruments at all. He was too damn loud. I liked Bruce Hornsby sitting in during late 90-91. He was instrumental in those combination jams at MSG you mention.

As far as the curated discs, I'm thinking more along the lines of Europe 72 or Without A Net. Going through the tapes of an entire tour and pulling together a 'show' from those. Maybe a bit of editing here and there as well as mastering. All the live release series have been shows or chunks of shows. Definitely curated though. There's so much out there, I can't keep up. I have some favorite shows I listen to when I want to hear live Dead.

As far as Garcia goes, Blair Jackson's Garcia book seems to be a pretty objective piece on the entire history. Of course Garcia was an addict which made him age so fast and finally took his playing. The band had to keep going in order to pay all their employees. It was a monster. If he'd been able to really take time off and play with David Grisman for 2 years, my hunch is that he may have lived a few years longer. Sad story. Same with John Kahn. Loved Jerry Band.

I've kept up with all the post-Jerry stuff. Definitely not the same. I loved the 98 Other Ones and have seen most of the incarnations. The Fare Thee Well shows last summer were fun, if not a train wreck. Furthur was great too...even though they played everything so slow!

Anyway, I have to question your deadication if you have no need to hear EVERY version of Big River. Anathema! :cool

GuitarGeek
06-09-2016, 12:58 AM
I think Kieth fit in best as a keyboardist. Brent found his sound around 86 when he quit playing that toy electric piano thing. Poor Vince, why they put him on some cheese ball keyboard I'll never know. He had no analogue instruments at all. He was too damn loud. I liked Bruce Hornsby sitting in during late 90-91. He was instrumental in those combination jams at MSG you mention.


The keyboards in the Grateful Dead have always been frustrating to me. Pigpen really wasn't much of a keyboadist, he played a little bit, but his playing was very rudimentary. That's why they brought Tom Constaten in. But I remember an interview where TC complained about how little space he got in the Dead's sound. He said that the band was effectively Jerry's back up band, and that any time there was a space for a solo, Jerry would pounce on it. He said the only times he got to solo was when Jerry broke a string, and even then, Jerry would restring and get tuned up as quickly as possible so he could get back into the action. He also Jerry was so loud with the four Fender Twin Reverbs he used onstage that "his pianissimo was louder than my fortissimo". So that was a big part of why TC left the band finally.

Keith was a weird guy. He apparently really only liked playing piano, so after Pigpen became too sick to tour, the organ kinda disappeared from the band's sound for the rest of the decade. Keith occasionally played a Fender Rhodes and even once awhile a synth or two, but I don't think he was really into that. I kinda wish they could have gotten Ned Lagin (who had been associating with the band since 1970) in as keyboardist, because he apparently had the ability to play more traditional keyboard parts (that's him playing piano on the studio version of Candyman) and of course he was into synths and all the rest of it.

I always thought it would have been interesting to hear a little synth on some of those early 70's improvisations. Like the kind of stuff Del Dettmar did with Hawkwind or Tim Blake did with Gong, I thought that would have been interesting to hear in the context of the Dead. But except for a handful of examples in 74, that never really happened.

Brent was a really weird deal. When he first joined, he was playing Hammond organ (the one instrument that really sounded good during his time in the band), and an Fender Rhodes (which inexplicably always sounded terrible), a Minimoog and a Prophet-5. In fact, I believe I read the band bought the Prophet-5, specifically because they wanted to bring those sounds into the group's sound.

But here's the thing: for the most part, Brent didn't like playing synths in the Dead, because he'd hear a sound in his head that would go with where the band was at, but by the time he had the patch setup on the synth, the band would have moved to onto something else, and "This isn't a band where you can just go to program 20 or whatever". So occasionally you'd hear synth, but not often. One of the best things was the sort of pseudo pedal steel thing he'd do on Alabama Getaway.

Then in the mid 80's, he started using MIDI gear. I know at one point he had an Emulator II onstage, and I think a Yamaha GS-1, which is what he used, for instance, to get the harpsichord sound when they'd do China Doll.

At some point, he got his onstage rig down to just a B-3 and a Kurzweil MIDI keyboard, which was linked up to whichever synth and sampler modules they'd have hidden offstage. In some of the footage I've seen, it looks like he has some kind of synth taped onto the top of the B-3, but I've never seen him actually playing it (but then I've only seen a few concerts on video from when he was in the band). One thing I always liked was the synth sounds he'd get during The Other One. And one of the things I liked when they'd do When I Paint My Masterpiece was these sort of pseudo fiddle lines.

Vince had the same deal, he had a MIDI keyboard that was linked to several synths offstage. I think at some point he added a keyboard that Hammond was making in the 90's that was sort of a virtual Hammond organ. I recall reading that he had a set up where he had pedals on the floor that allowed him to select from a handful of sounds that Bob Bralove would feed to him. If he was the only keyboardist, he could have a piano sound, an organ sound and one or two synth sounds. When Hornsby was playing with them, one of the things they'd do to accommodate his presence was to pull the piano sounds out of Vince's rig, so any piano you heard during a show with Bruce was coming from Bruce alone.

And yeah, I see your point about the payroll. They had a lot of people working for them, not just the road crew, but people who worked at "the office" or whatever. So yeah, I can see the point that they were probably concerned about taking care of those folks too. I remember reading that when they took the hiatus f in 75-76, one of the objectives was to not only slim down the PA so that it'd be easier to manage, but also to find jobs for the guys who were being laid off, I guess you would say, by said belt tightening.

GuitarGeek
06-09-2016, 01:07 AM
Another thing about the synths was when Jerry, Bob, and Phil all started using guitar synths. At first I thought it was really cool, all those trippy sounds they'd get during Space. But then there was a certain point where I developed an aversion to stock digital synth sounds, and I started getting annoyed that Jerry sometimes used the DX-7 electric piano and slap bass sounds for his Space solos.

Yeah, he wasn't actually using a DX-7, but it was the same type of sounds, regardless of which synth it came from. I always wish he could have had an Oberheim Xpander or Matrix 12 or a Roland Super Jupiter or Jupiter-6 or even a JX-3P (same synth engine as the GR-700). I thought he'd have had more interesting synth sounds.

On the other hand, there were times were he got some cool sounds, like the sort of flute or voice patches he used occasionally. And I love the mariachi horns he'd use on Mexicali Blues (another song I don't need to hear too often, but at least it was a band original, not a cover).

And while I'm talking about this kinda stuff, is just me or did Weir's guitar tone started to stink sometime in the 80's? If you check out the earlier stuff, again going back to 74 and before, he had a nice guitar tone, very full bodied, which really fit the job he was doing. But after he switched to those Modulus Graphite guitars (and then later the Modulus Graphite/Casio hybrids), he got these really thin guitar tones. I think it was a combination of the EMG pickups he was using, plus whatever kind of amplification he was using. I know I read at one point he was actually using a PA horn driver, which drove Cutler and Healy crazy, because it was so loud that it was actually painful for them, particularly when Weir would play slide. They could pull him completely out of the board mix, so there was no Weir in the PA (and thus not on the tapes) but he was still too loud (similarly Robert Fripp says John Wetton was usually absent from the board mix on King Crimson's 73-74 era tours, but he still over powered the rest of the band).

And what happened to Phil. He played a lot of cool solos in the 68-74 era, then that just kind of stopped. He stopped doing unaccompanied cadenzas, the bass solo feature in Eyes disappeared, it was like he suddenly changed his approach to bass playing, like he went from being John Entwistle or Chris Squire to being Bill Wyman overnight or something. I always thought that was weird.

Scrotum Scissor
06-09-2016, 04:40 AM
Sage & Spirit

This is one of the finest 'acoustic guitar interludes' ever by a major band, IMHO. It captures incredible amounts of atmosphere, association and vision all in a mere 2-3 minutes.

GuitarGeek
06-09-2016, 10:13 AM
This is one of the finest 'acoustic guitar interludes' ever by a major band, IMHO. It captures incredible amounts of atmosphere, association and vision all in a mere 2-3 minutes.

And like Dust In The Wind and (I suspect) Fracture, it started off as a practice exercise.

Sturgeon's Lawyer
06-09-2016, 11:09 AM
And like Dust In The Wind and (I suspect) Fracture, it started off as a practice exercise.

You're close on "Fracture." What happened was that Fripp deliberately composed a piece that would force him to practice it every day. I'm not sure what the reasoning was there, but there it is.

Scrotum Scissor
06-09-2016, 01:47 PM
You're close on "Fracture." What happened was that Fripp deliberately composed a piece that would force him to practice it every day.

And thus he created what many folks find to be his single greatest accomplishment as composer.

jkelman
06-09-2016, 07:14 PM
Holy cow, I somehow completely missed this set! I think I vaguely recall seeing the email announcing it, but dropped the ball. Whew, it's still in stock, so - Ordered!

Thanks for mentioning it, John! I'd have been kicking myself if I missed out. :)
I'd hate to be the only guy going broke buying Dead archival live sets :)

GuitarGeek
06-09-2016, 07:19 PM
And thus he created what many folks find to be his single greatest accomplishment as composer.

I'd put Happy Family, Lizard, Larks Tongues I & II, Islands, Red, Starless and The Sailor's Tale in front of Fracture.

GuitarGeek
06-09-2016, 07:20 PM
I'd hate to be the only guy going broke buying Dead archival live sets :)

I was until I lost my job. I'm working now, but having missed quite a few of the non out of print things, I feel much less of an urge to own all of the official releases, since I'll probably never own things like 30 Trips Around The Sun (I've already got at least two of those shows on bootlegs), or the complete Europe '72 set (Yeah, I know there's the music only set, but without the book...).

zumacraig
06-09-2016, 07:49 PM
I was until I lost my job. I'm working now, but having missed quite a few of the non out of print things, I feel much less of an urge to own all of the official releases, since I'll probably never own things like 30 Trips Around The Sun (I've already got at least two of those shows on bootlegs), or the complete Europe '72 set (Yeah, I know there's the music only set, but without the book...).

I've attempted to keep up with the official archive releases. I never get around to listening though. There's been so many over the last few years...big sets. 30 trips? That was overkill. They all just end up being sold on eBay for a huge profit. I do enjoy the widely available sets they used to do like Dozin at the Knick and Nightfall of Diamonds. I followed Dick's, but only got a few and only actually liked 2 of them. A show has to just grab me. I just get vibes as to whether it's going to hold my attention or not. I do prefer 74-81 then 88-91, but I don't even need to hear all of those shows. Luckily we still have Archive.org if you don't mind audience tapes...and I don't. These official archive releases are basically raw tracks anyway. No tasteful editing of any kind, much less remixing. That newest Spring 78 set sounds pretty bad to me as the vocals are so far back in the mix on much of it. As I've said above, I'd love to see a series of curated releases. Best Scarlet/Fire, Dew from a tour or run etc. Take these tracks and make a mach up show. And also have the complete shows for the completists. Kind of what was done with the Fare Thee Well release. Although most of that was dreck. I have a feeling we'll get into some more of that when the vault folks have to start digging in the 91-95 era for shows to release. Slim pickings.

GuitarGeek
06-10-2016, 12:00 AM
I've attempted to keep up with the official archive releases. I never get around to listening though. There's been so many over the last few years...big sets. 30 trips?

Funny thing about it is, I didn't know 30 Trips existed until last night. I was looking up something else, and saw mention of it, and looked it up on Wiki...and found that the show from 1974, Dijon, France, was the very show I was listening to! Weird! But I've tried to collect as many of the shows from 72-74 as I can, so I guess it would have been more weird if they had picked a show for that I don't have.



I do enjoy the widely available sets they used to do like Dozin at the Knick and Nightfall of Diamonds.

Those two I never got around to getting. I remember when Dozin' At The Knick came out, I read a review, I think in Guitar World, which suggested that most fans already had all the shows represented in their collection, and probably had better examples of the band's performances, as well. I seem to recall someone making a sarcastic comment about how the title was appropriate, though I think that particular critic was perhaps not a fan. There were actually bunch I never got around to getting, though I remember buying Two From The Vault and Hundred Year Hall almost as soon as they came out.



I followed Dick's, but only got a few and only actually liked 2 of them.

When the Dick's releases I came out, I couldn't get them because they weren't available in stores. I didn't have a credit card, and I'm not sure check cards or pre-paid cash cards existed at the time. Eventually, they started to show up in the chain stores. I remember buying a bunch of them, because though they were more expensive than what I was seeing on the website, it was the only way I could really get them, short of talking my mom into letting me borrow her credit card and pay her back in cash. I know I bought numbers 7 through 12, and maybe some of the others that way. I remember being excited about number 12 because I was already a huge fan of the 6/28/74 Boston Gardens show, and I was thrilled to finally be able to hear the big second set suite without the tape flip in the middle.

Eventually, I got a credit card, and ended up buying all of the first 24 Dick's Pick's releases, plus all the ones after that from 72-74 and I think there was one from 69 that I got as well. I never got to around to filling in the rest of the gaps because at least for awhile anyway, they were out of print. They still might be, I haven't visited Dead.com in ages. But again, I was happy to have whichever one it was that had the Philly and Jersey City shows from August 74, because at long last one got to hear the end of the Truckin'/He's Gone/Improv/Stella Blue sequence from the one Philly show (the version that circulated on cassette for years had just the first verse of Stella Blue).

And naturally, I preordered the Grateful Dead Movie and the soundtrack together as soon as they became available. I forget what the deal was, but if you ordered the DVD, the soundtrack set, and I think a t-shirt at the same time, they sent you a couple frames from one of the "orphaned" prints (ie ones where some of the reels were missing). I think mine showed a full stage shot from the camera crane.

And I got some of the Road Trips. Once again the Wall Of Sound one commemorated two shows I was already a fan of, and again one finally got to hear the big jam from the Louisville show that got cut on my old cassette copy (actually, I had found a version of the jam on Napster, but that was also before i had a CD burner, so I couldn't put the entire thing together so I could hear it as played). And the one from the autumn 77 tour was pretty cool, because it gave me a chance to hear some cool stuff from that era that I had kinda skimmed over in the past.

And then there's the Egypt thing, which I've got. Again I preordered, so I got the bonus disc with stuff that didn't make it onto the regular release, though I think honestly, I've only ever watched the DVD. It's not bad, it's weird that they ended up releasing something they supposedly thought at the time wasn't good enough to release (side note: I remember Jerry and Weir on Letterman back in 87, chuckling over how "awful" they were in Egypt, as well as both Monterey Pop and Woodstock).

And I also got the New Year's Eve '76 show from the Cow Palace, with the great liner notes telling of how the Merry Pranksters went to see the Beatles at the Cow Palace back in whichever year it was, but Kesey flipped and ordered everyone to retreat before The Beatles even came on. That must have been a bummer for Mountain Girl and the others. Kinda renewed my interest in hearing more shows from '76.

<< Luckily we still have Archive.org if you don't mind audience tapes...and I don't.>>

You can also find a lot of stuff on various torrent sites. For awhile, I was downloading stuff from one site that bundled all the known recordings together, so you call the different audience tapes and all the different soundboards, plus whatever versions there were that were pieced together, either audience tapes patching gaps in the soundboards, or so called "matrix" tapes that mixed the two together, though the one or two matrix tapes I've heard were somewhat underwhelming. And each torrent is typically like half dozen or shows. Unfortunately, though I ran out of hard drive space, and some of them seem to be hard to catch people who are seeding online. (shrug)




These official archive releases are basically raw tracks anyway. No tasteful editing of any kind, much less remixing.

Well, as I said, most of the time, there's not much remixing they can do. You can add a little EQ or maybe a little reverb to the overall mix, but you can do stuff like pot up or pot down individual instruments, and if a given instrument doesn't quite sound right, ie it's too thin sounding or too dry, you can't do anything without affecting the entire mix.



I remember on the Grateful Dead Movie DVD, there was a featurette where they explained how they isolated Jerry's guitar track on the multi-track, and re-amped it, meaning they fed the existing guitar performance back through one of Jerry's Fender Twin Reverb amps (which apparently the band still has in their possession), and the mic'd that up and recorded it and used that to beef up the guitar tone. I imagine they could have theoretically done that with any of the instruments, because as I said, you're dealing with multi-track, so they may have done with Bob's guitar, Phil's bass, etc. Though I recall Owsley claiming that the mic on Weir's guitar amp "got knocked over on the first night, and stayed knocked over through the whole run", which I guess was his way of saying there was no rhythm guitar on the multi-tracks for the entire October '74 Winterland run (that has to be what he meant, because Weir's very audible on the soundboard tapes). I lost a lot of faith in Owsley's ability to judge things after reading his commentary on the Grateful Dead Movie/Steal Your Face shows. Made me wonder if Mr. Alice D. Millionaire hadn't been sampling too much of his own product.


I have a feeling we'll get into some more of that when the vault folks have to start digging in the 91-95 era for shows to release. Slim pickings.

I remember right after Jerry died, maybe a year or two afterwards, Dick Latvala was interviewed in one of the music magazines. I have a feeling it was Guitar World, but I'm not sure. I think that was one of those magazines where I sat on the floor at whichever store it was and sort of read the article instead of actually buying the magazine. I did that a few times during that era, I remember that. :lol Anyway, Dick said he had listened to every show from the last two or three years. As I recall, he said 93, there were a few good things that might be someday released. He then said there were a couple good things from 94, though he sounded less optimistic about releasing those. And then he said, from '95, there was virtually nothing worth releasing.

Keep in mind, though, Dick was a fan, and I think he had a high level of quality control, as it were, about what he thought should or shouldn't be released (notice that there's very little in the Dick's Picks series from circa 78-86, and I think the most recent shows ended up being from 91, I think). I'm not sure about David Lemieux, I think he probably is mostly concerned about putting out only stuff that properly represents the band in it the best light.

But, I now have come to believe that there are other people involved in the Dead organization, not so much the band themselves, but people in the "front office" (paging, Dennis McNally) who are effectively vultures. After reading about some of the stuff Betty Cantor told of how she came to stop working for the Dead, and also David Gans talking about the hoops he had to jump through to keep The Grateful Dead Hour on the air, I think there's some very "business" type of people running things.

And you have to have those sort of people, because when you're dealing with a band like the Dead, someone has to say "But we're spending too much money, without enough money coming to recoup the funds" or whatever. There had to be someone saying "OK, we have to rethink this whole Wall Of Sound business" or "maybe we need to let someone else run the record company", etc. But I wouldn't be surprised to find out some of them would continue putting stuff out, even after they've exhausted all of the "good stuff", just to keep making money of the band's carcass.

zumacraig
06-10-2016, 02:43 AM
@Guitar,

Yes, I think Rhino has a bit to do with the current business aspects of the Grateful Dead. They are essentially a corporation a this point. A brand for anything from the music to coffee cups. Oh well. I was pretty set up with tapes with near the end and a friend of mine digitized a ton of first gen DATS for me. I haven't even gotten through all of that yet. I really do love Dozin At the Knick. Great Playin'. Also love the GD move soundtrack.

I don't know shit about the band's equipment. I've looked into Garcia's set up as I'm a lead player, but can't really get into it. I just play clean through a strat and hope for the best! I didn't mind Keith on piano. He just fit in, but wasn't a huge presence. This worked for that era. I liked Brent's sound in the early 80s, but then his Rhodes started to sound like a toy piano. His last few years sounded good to these ears. As far as Bob goes, I agree, his sound did change. I really had no problem with it, but there were times when he was too damn loud and it was awful. These days he really doesn't even play rhythm. He just kind of comps and plays deconstructed chords. I think he's a genius rhythm player. His voicings are nuts!

I saw lots of shows in 93, 94. Definitely some good moments there.

jkelman
06-10-2016, 07:13 PM
I've attempted to keep up with the official archive releases. I never get around to listening though. There's been so many over the last few years...big sets. 30 trips? That was overkill. They all just end up being sold on eBay for a huge profit.
Boy do I ever disagree. First, my set ain't up on eBay and won't be unless I'm ever so broke that I need to sell it. Second, to have a set that picks one show a year and then, if you listen to it chronologically, gives you a pretty good window into the history of the band in one place? I've no regrets having bought it...or anything else. The new July 1978 box is amazing and after missing the first year, I became a regular subscriber to the Dave's picks series and, overall, am happy I did.

But don't dismiss tHe 30 trips box. It had a specific purpose that no other box has ever made an objective...and managed to do it really, really well.

It's getting hard to keep up with it all, tHat I will say. But often I just grab something from my iTunes library and play it without thinking about it. Once I've been though a box set 3-5 times, that's generally how I decide what to listen to with the Dead...or I pick a year and grab what I have and make a couple choices.

But I must say, as a latecomer to th Dead, I've managed to spend a crazy amount of money. More, I think, than on any other band. Even the Allmans, for whom I've either full Bewcon or full Tour boxes from 2009 forward, I dot have as much. Otoh, as great as Haynes/Trucks Allmans was, when it came to improvisational panache they still couldn't touch the Dead, good as they were. Th Magic in the Dead has everything to do with collective chemistry, something that th Allmans had, but not to the same extent as they never had a consistent core....at least, never for as long as the Dead's core quintet at managed to remain together. Only other band I can think of that comes close is Oregon, three of whose founding four me,here remained together for 45 years until Glen Moore decided to pack it in last year.

zumacraig
06-10-2016, 07:28 PM
Boy do I ever disagree. First, my set ain't up on eBay and won't be unless I'm ever so broke that I need to sell it. Second, to have a set that picks one show a year and then, if you listen to it chronologically, gives you a pretty good window into the history of the band in one place? I've no regrets having bought it...or anything else. The new July 1978 box is amazing and after missing the first year, I became a regular subscriber to the Dave's picks series and, overall, am happy I did.

But don't dismiss tHe 30 trips box. It had a specific purpose that no other box has ever made an objective...and managed to do it really, really well.

It's getting hard to keep up with it all, tHat I will say. But often I just grab something from my iTunes library and play it without thinking about it. Once I've been though a box set 3-5 times, that's generally how I decide what to listen to with the Dead...or I pick a year and grab what I have and make a couple choices.

But I must say, as a latecomer to th Dead, I've managed to spend a crazy amount of money. More, I think, than on any other band. Even the Allmans, for whom I've either full Bewcon or full Tour boxes from 2009 forward, I dot have as much. Otoh, as great as Haynes/Trucks Allmans was, when it came to improvisational panache they still couldn't touch the Dead, good as they were. Th Magic in the Dead has everything to do with collective chemistry, something that th Allmans had, but not to the same extent as they never had a consistent core....at least, never for as long as the Dead's core quintet at managed to remain together. Only other band I can think of that comes close is Oregon, three of whose founding four me,here remained together for 45 years until Glen Moore decided to pack it in last year.

Yeah, ABB were a well oiled machine. Almost too good. The fact that the Dead took risks and could possibly screw up was part of that magic. Most of the time it paid off, hence our need to listen to every show! I'm glad the 30 Trips came out, don't get me wrong. If it had come out in 1989 I would've drained my savings for it. I just don't need it at this point. My point about eBay is that it's sad that folks are selling at such a high mark up when there are heads out there who would really enjoy such an item.

I'm curious what your thoughts are on Dead and Co. and last summer's Fare Thee Well.

GuitarGeek
06-10-2016, 07:48 PM
Listened to the second set suite from 10/19/74 today. I love how they play the intro to Truckin', but instead of going into the song proper, they almost immediately veer of into an extended improvisation for about 15 minutes, then we get Truckin' (same version that's in the movie, I believe, btw).

I really would have liked to have seen those five nights at the Winterland in October 74. Either that or the three Alexandra Palace shows the month before.

JKL2000
06-10-2016, 08:23 PM
I'd hate to be the only guy going broke buying Dead archival live sets :)

Is this the Big Set for the year?

Joe F.
06-10-2016, 08:31 PM
Is this the Big Set for the year?

God. I hope so. ;)

My wallet needs a break.

Mister Triscuits
06-10-2016, 09:15 PM
I dunno...the big walletbuster always comes out in the fall. Maybe this year it's going to be two not-quite-so-massive sets, like in 2013 when they put out May 1977 in the spring and followed with Sunshine Daydream in the fall.

Joe F.
06-10-2016, 09:27 PM
I dunno...the big walletbuster always comes out in the fall. Maybe this year it's going to be two not-quite-so-massive sets, like in 2013 when they put out May 1977 in the spring and followed with Sunshine Daydream in the fall.

That's what I was thinking.

JKL2000
06-11-2016, 01:37 PM
^^ My set arrived today, and it's damned nice looking! High fondleability.

#2,316 of only 15,000!

I have to read up on the set, but it's a little suprising that out of, what is it, 5 or 6 shows, two are three disks each, and the rest are only two disks each.

GuitarGeek
06-11-2016, 02:03 PM
Listening to 1/26/69 Avalon Ballroom. This is an interesting show because it's one of the few instances of them performing Clementine, an unreleased song that nobody even knew about or remembered (or at least it was never talked about) until Dick Latvala found a couple shows with them playing in his Vault excavations. It also has a great That's It For The Other One (though something goes weird with Jerry's vocal mic early on in the song). The Dark Star/St. Stephen/The Eleven suite is pretty good here too.

GuitarGeek
06-19-2016, 09:43 PM
Listening to Can's Soon Over Babaluma, and the track Splash seems to have a similar groove to the first part of King Solomon's Marbles:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1bNPIqhWj3g

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nGqSwDG2OsQ

I can't make up my mind if it's just incidental or not. According to Wikipedia, Soon Over Babaluma was recorded in August of 74, and released in Europe that November, with the US release happening sometime in 75. The Dead had been playing the King Solomon's Marbles riff at the end of Eyes Of The World on a regular basis since February 73, though the initial arrangement is a good deal different from what's heard in the version on Blues For Allah (as heard above).

So the question is who (if anybody) influenced who, and how? We know Phil Lesh spent sometime hanging out with Magma during the Europe '72 tour, so maybe he also spent time with Can? Perhaps he made arrangements for the band to hear some live tapes at some point in 73 or 74, and they adapted that riff into Splash. Then, perhaps, Phil heard Splash and said "Ooh, I like what they did with that, we should adapt that back into our version". Who knows? (shrug) But it is an interesting note.

Reid
06-20-2016, 12:54 AM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H6Uu57h7H18