How you'd describe The Dead to an ignorant in 3 vids of 60s, 70s & 80s?

[Svetonio]

My choice is

[rapidfirerob]

Once Pigpen died, I'd advise skipping the band entirely.


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[Socrates]

Describe the dead? Surely that has never been done better than in the Python Parrot Sketch

[klothos]

[walt]

59776143.jpg

[Svetonio]

59776143.jpg

[JKL2000]

I would never converse with an ignorant.

[ronmac]

Hey, good news, Svet. Your very own web domain is available.

https://www.godaddy.com/domains/sear...Check=Svetonio

[GuitarGeek]

Once Pigpen died, I'd advise skipping the band entirely.

Very foolish talk to there. You'd then miss all the great improvisations they played in concert circa 72-75, as well as things like Unbroken Chain and Blues For Allah

[rapidfirerob]

Very foolish talk to there. You'd then miss all the great improvisations they played in concert circa 72-75, as well as things like Unbroken Chain and Blues For Allah

Unbroken Chain is a lovely song. I saw The Dead in that period. They played for four and a half hours. One half hour was quite good. My Deadhead friend fell asleep. Of course, that is just one concert. Just not my cup of tea. Enjoy!

[Dana5140]

(That's It for) The Other One or Dark Star should be on any list.

[JKL2000]

Once Pigpen died, I'd advise skipping the band entirely.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

What about the time between when Pigpen left the band and when he died?

[Scrotum Scissor]

And I completely agree that when they were really far out and good after Pigpen, they were still very good. Blues for Allah in particular is a fabulous record.

[GuitarGeek]

Unbroken Chain is a lovely song. I saw The Dead in that period. They played for four and a half hours. One half hour was quite good. My Deadhead friend fell asleep. Of course, that is just one concert. Just not my cup of tea. Enjoy!

The problem with the Dead is, after about 1969, they were far too often quite content to be the world's highest paid bar band. I think they were about the only arena or stadium band who could get away with playing as many cover tunes as they did (check the setlists, from the early 70's onwards, the first set was often times half cover tunes).

The cover tunes worked when it was Pigpen singing It Hurts Me Too, Turn On Your Lovelight, or other blues tunes. But often times, the country tunes fell flat. I still can't comprehend why they included You Win Again (a Hank Williams song) on Europe '72 when the two Pigpen originals they were doing on that tour, Chinatown Shuffle and Two Souls In Communion, were left off. About the only thing that was really good about hearing the Dead perform something like The Race Is On or Big River was hearing Jerry do those Bakersfield style guitar solos.

And certainly when they were doing blues songs later on, during the 80's and 90's, was a mistake. Bob Weir didn't share Pigpen's ability to sing those songs with the authenticity they demanded. Renditions of Walkin' Blues, Little Red Rooster, Wang Dang Doodle, Turn On Your Lovelight, etc from that era only serve to perpetuate racial stereotypes about white people and blues music. And while some people arguably sang Bob Dylan songs better than Dylan than himself, Bob Weir wasn't one of them.

I think most of those cover tunes were only done because Weir wasn't writing very much (each album would typically have only one or two Bob Weir sung songs), and I think Jerry liked taking turns with Weir and others on lead vocals so he wouldn't have to sing all night long. Hence, you had things like Donna Godchaux leading the band through You Ain't Woman Enough and the handful of songs that either Phil Lesh or Brent Mydland would sing in concert (which often times included cover tunes).

On the other hand, there were certain cover tunes that tended to sound great, typically the ones they'd do toward the end of the show. Their versions of Morning Dew, Going Down The Road Feeling Bad, and sometimes Not Fade Away were usually pretty happening. In those instances, it was far preferable to hear a cover tune than, let's say one of those endless renditions of Casey Jones they liked to encore with during the 73-74 era.

Supposedly, there was a contingency within the Dead's circle, circa 74-75, that was concerned that Phil and Jerry were taking the "weird music" side of things too far, vis-a-vis their involvement with Ned Lagin's Seastones project and bringing that weirdness into the Dead's performances. But Jerry's first love I think was always traditional American music forms, ie rock n roll, bluegrass, folk, country, and blues, as evidenced by his own songwriting and things like Old And In The Way and the recordings he did with David Grisman during the last few years of his life. And given some of the songs Lesh sang onstage with the Dead (including the brilliant Box Of Rain, the song he wrote with Robert Hunter for the American Beauty album), I get the impression he enjoyed playing "traditional" stuff too.

[GuitarGeek]

(That's It for) The Other One or Dark Star should be on any list.

I'm not sure there's any footage of them playing the full That's It For The Other One suite. I'm pretty sure there's nothing from the late 60's or early 70's, but there might be some audience shot footage from the handful of times in the summer of 85 that they played Cryptical Envelopment.

As for Dark STar, the best footage of that is probably the version in Sunshine Daydream. Given the aversion some people around here have to the non-performance footage that was used in Genesis In Concert, some might not like the Terry Gilliam style cut out animation that's used during the improvisation, but I think it's really trippy and works perfectly with the music. That's from August 1972.

After that, there's a good version on the Grateful Dead Movie DVD bonus disc, from October 18, 1974. The thing that drives me crazy is, it's one of the times that Ned Lagin stayed onstage after the Seastones part of the set and continued to play when the rest of the band is playing. You can even see him in the background tweaking teh controls on his white face ARP Odyssey. But you can't actually hear him! What! The! FRELL?!

The only other Dark Star from the classic era I know that we have a visual record of is, apparently, the one they played in Copenhagen, on the Europe '72 tour. The concert was shot on video for Danish TV, but I believe the portion that was aired didn't include Dark Star. I read the Dead have a copy of the entire show in their archive, but for them to release on DVD, they'd have to make a deal with the Danish TV people. Hence, it's never been issued, I don't think.

Actually, I take that back, I remember hearing there's some footage of the Dead's Woodstock performance, which I know included a Dark Star, so there might be footage of that, but I've never seen it. I always heard they not only played (by their own admission) badly at Woodstock, but they almost got killed, or at least, severely injured. First they were getting electrical shocks off the vocal microphones because they weren't grounded correctly (or maybe the guitars weren't grounded correctly, who knows), then the winds turned the giant projection screen they were using for a psychedelic light show into a giant sail, which nearly caused the stage to collapse.

Yeah, there's footage of them playing Dark Star and The Other One at the last Winterland show from New Year's Eve 78, and there's probably audience shot footage of most of the Dark Stars from 89 onwards (as well as probably at least a few of them were captured on video screen feeds, I know there's a Dark Star on one of the View From The Vault DVD's), but those in general, aren't as good as many of the favorites from circa 68-74.

As for The Other One, one of my favorites is the New Year's Eve 87 pay-per-view, which had an unusual arrangement where Weir started singing the first verse as they segued out of the preceding space jam. It's the only time I can think of where Phil didn't play the ascending bass line that usually led into The Other One proper, with the band usually jamming around for a couple minutes before Weir would enter with the vocals. On this occasion, Brent Mydland plays atonal digital piano fills between the vocal lines during the first verse.

And there's also a The Other One in the Beat Club footage from the Europe '72 tour, though it wasn't broadcast at the time. I know I've seen on Youtube, but I'm not sure if they've released it on DVD or not.

There's also a very good The Other One on the Grateful Dead Movie DVD bonus disc, from October 17, 1974 (the night before the above mentioned Dark Star), with Spanish Jam and Mind Left Body Jam stuck in between the two verses, with Jerry playing a little slide guitar too.

[JKL2000]

The problem with the Dead is, after about 1969, they were far too often quite content to be the world's highest paid bar band. I think they were about the only arena or stadium band who could get away with playing as many cover tunes as they did (check the setlists, from the early 70's onwards, the first set was often times half cover tunes).

The cover tunes worked when it was Pigpen singing It Hurts Me Too, Turn On Your Lovelight, or other blues tunes. But often times, the country tunes fell flat. I still can't comprehend why they included You Win Again (a Hank Williams song) on Europe '72 when the two Pigpen originals they were doing on that tour, Chinatown Shuffle and Two Souls In Communion, were left off. About the only thing that was really good about hearing the Dead perform something like The Race Is On or Big River was hearing Jerry do those Bakersfield style guitar solos.

And certainly when they were doing blues songs later on, during the 80's and 90's, was a mistake. Bob Weir didn't share Pigpen's ability to sing those songs with the authenticity they demanded. Renditions of Walkin' Blues, Little Red Rooster, Wang Dang Doodle, Turn On Your Lovelight, etc from that era only serve to perpetuate racial stereotypes about white people and blues music. And while some people arguably sang Bob Dylan songs better than Dylan than himself, Bob Weir wasn't one of them.

I think most of those cover tunes were only done because Weir wasn't writing very much (each album would typically have only one or two Bob Weir sung songs), and I think Jerry liked taking turns with Weir and others on lead vocals so he wouldn't have to sing all night long. Hence, you had things like Donna Godchaux leading the band through You Ain't Woman Enough and the handful of songs that either Phil Lesh or Brent Mydland would sing in concert (which often times included cover tunes).

On the other hand, there were certain cover tunes that tended to sound great, typically the ones they'd do toward the end of the show. Their versions of Morning Dew, Going Down The Road Feeling Bad, and sometimes Not Fade Away were usually pretty happening. In those instances, it was far preferable to hear a cover tune than, let's say one of those endless renditions of Casey Jones they liked to encore with during the 73-74 era.

Supposedly, there was a contingency within the Dead's circle, circa 74-75, that was concerned that Phil and Jerry were taking the "weird music" side of things too far, vis-a-vis their involvement with Ned Lagin's Seastones project and bringing that weirdness into the Dead's performances. But Jerry's first love I think was always traditional American music forms, ie rock n roll, bluegrass, folk, country, and blues, as evidenced by his own songwriting and things like Old And In The Way and the recordings he did with David Grisman during the last few years of his life. And given some of the songs Lesh sang onstage with the Dead (including the brilliant Box Of Rain, the song he wrote with Robert Hunter for the American Beauty album), I get the impression he enjoyed playing "traditional" stuff too.

I'm not sure there's any footage of them playing the full That's It For The Other One suite. I'm pretty sure there's nothing from the late 60's or early 70's, but there might be some audience shot footage from the handful of times in the summer of 85 that they played Cryptical Envelopment.

As for Dark STar, the best footage of that is probably the version in Sunshine Daydream. Given the aversion some people around here have to the non-performance footage that was used in Genesis In Concert, some might not like the Terry Gilliam style cut out animation that's used during the improvisation, but I think it's really trippy and works perfectly with the music. That's from August 1972.

After that, there's a good version on the Grateful Dead Movie DVD bonus disc, from October 18, 1974. The thing that drives me crazy is, it's one of the times that Ned Lagin stayed onstage after the Seastones part of the set and continued to play when the rest of the band is playing. You can even see him in the background tweaking teh controls on his white face ARP Odyssey. But you can't actually hear him! What! The! FRELL?!

The only other Dark Star from the classic era I know that we have a visual record of is, apparently, the one they played in Copenhagen, on the Europe '72 tour. The concert was shot on video for Danish TV, but I believe the portion that was aired didn't include Dark Star. I read the Dead have a copy of the entire show in their archive, but for them to release on DVD, they'd have to make a deal with the Danish TV people. Hence, it's never been issued, I don't think.

Actually, I take that back, I remember hearing there's some footage of the Dead's Woodstock performance, which I know included a Dark Star, so there might be footage of that, but I've never seen it. I always heard they not only played (by their own admission) badly at Woodstock, but they almost got killed, or at least, severely injured. First they were getting electrical shocks off the vocal microphones because they weren't grounded correctly (or maybe the guitars weren't grounded correctly, who knows), then the winds turned the giant projection screen they were using for a psychedelic light show into a giant sail, which nearly caused the stage to collapse.

Yeah, there's footage of them playing Dark Star and The Other One at the last Winterland show from New Year's Eve 78, and there's probably audience shot footage of most of the Dark Stars from 89 onwards (as well as probably at least a few of them were captured on video screen feeds, I know there's a Dark Star on one of the View From The Vault DVD's), but those in general, aren't as good as many of the favorites from circa 68-74.

As for The Other One, one of my favorites is the New Year's Eve 87 pay-per-view, which had an unusual arrangement where Weir started singing the first verse as they segued out of the preceding space jam. It's the only time I can think of where Phil didn't play the ascending bass line that usually led into The Other One proper, with the band usually jamming around for a couple minutes before Weir would enter with the vocals. On this occasion, Brent Mydland plays atonal digital piano fills between the vocal lines during the first verse.

And there's also a The Other One in the Beat Club footage from the Europe '72 tour, though it wasn't broadcast at the time. I know I've seen on Youtube, but I'm not sure if they've released it on DVD or not.

There's also a very good The Other One on the Grateful Dead Movie DVD bonus disc, from October 17, 1974 (the night before the above mentioned Dark Star), with Spanish Jam and Mind Left Body Jam stuck in between the two verses, with Jerry playing a little slide guitar too.

At this point the ignorant would be asleep...

[Dana5140]

No, this is good.

[moecurlythanu]

At this point the ignorant would be asleep...

Or watching YouTube videos in one of the myriad threads made just for them.

[JKL2000]

At this point the ignorant would be asleep...

No, this is good.

I was really just commenting on the amount of material GuitarGeek churned out for this thread! Amazing.

[Count de Dorcol]

[JKL2000]

I would probably warn an ignorant about Donna Godchaux.

[pb2015]

Although the early 80s generally isn't my favorite Dead era, there are some good videos from it.

[Svetonio]

Unbroken Chain is a lovely song. (...)

From the Mars Hotel is their best studio album IMO.

[Vic2012]

At this point the ignorant would be asleep...

[GuitarGeek]

From the Mars Hotel is their best studio album IMO.

It's an ok album. Unbroken Chain and Jerry's fuzz guitar on China Doll are the main reasons to own the album. it also includes Money Money, one of the worst songs the band ever performed/recorded (perhaps bested only by Keep Your Day Job, a song so bad it didn't make it onto In The Dark). Pride Of Cucumunga is a decent enough song, which I don't think was ever played live. And the rest of the album consists of tunes that were played better onstage.

For my money, the Dead's best albums are Anthem Of The Sun, Aoxomoxoa, Live/Dead, American Beauty, Europe '72 and Blues For Allah, not counting archival releases, of course.