Taking Sides: Workingman's Dead vs American Beauty

chris hillman has all kinds of good songs on that album. he knows what's up.

hahaha, on that discography list there are like TWO albums/artists that aren't either the dead or dead-related in the 70's. i have that chris smither album. i never play it. i should find it. i don't remember the cover.

i get the dead myth/associations thang, but if dolly parton did a bluegrass cover of "Bird Song" how many of her fans would even know it was a dead song? (i would LOVE to hear that by the way) actual deadheads are more well-known to most people than the actual music of the dead. you know? other than truckin'.

Internet age, my friend. You can cover a song that you know for sure nobody in your audience has ever heard by an artist you know they'd shun if they knew him, and thirty seconds later they've all hit Google and are frontin' like they knew all along. Two minutes later they've downloaded the entire catalog and are no longer frontin' because now they do know, kinda.

turning more people onto the greatness of the dead is not a bad thing.

i totally want to cover friend of the devil.

tales of the great rum runners is a great album by the way. robert hunter's album from 1974.

i've never heard the meat puppets cover of franklin's tower. apparently it came out on the rykodisc reissue of their first album as a bonus track.

Damn, I'd like to hear that.

i'd like to state for the record that i started listening to the dead in 1984 at the height of my new wave and hardcore and punkdom and i've never looked back since. my favorite bands in 1984 were probably crass, husker du, and the dead. they all fit together somehow in my mind at the time. but then acid makes a lot of things seem normal. anarchy peace & freedom!

Scott don't wear regular shoes.

I just don't think the suggested artists are really into the Dead, much as one might wish otherwise.

If you look at the volume by date on that list, it does seem that Deadicated threw the floodgates open.

I think a lot of artists simply didn't know the Dead had good tunes! I don't think they were anti-Dead or anything; I just think a lot of folks think of jamming and acid when thinking of the Dead, not awesome tunes that could become pop/Americana standards. Of course, AB and WD were damn good sellers, but impressions are hard to change.

The Dead had great songs-they had three excellent songwriters in the band, plus a great lyricist on retainer. I much prefer that aspect of the Dead to the jam stuff.

i totally want to cover friend of the devil.

-- ian, Monday, April 7, 2008 4:05 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Link

my dad's bluegrass band used to!

AB for me just cause WD doesnt have box of rain

but recently aoxomoxoa uber alles for studio dead

the Henry Kaiser Band do a lot of sweet Dead covers, inc. a great Dark Star that morphs into Love Supreme

Yep, I was just about to mention that Kaiser band which featured Tom Constanten and my hero Bruce Anderson. They did "Dark Star", "Mason's Children" and other stuff I'm forgetting.

On topic, it wasn't until January that I finally heard AB and WD in full, but I've always been in a weird position, Dead-wise: Resenting folks who put them down simply for being hippies, while simultaneously finding them a little bland and wishing they were genuinely psychedelic and less rootsy - which may not have even been their strong point. Of course, that's just a matter of personal bias.

Whatever. I like 'em both fine, but Workingman's is shorter and therefore more suited to my attention span. Really, though, I think I'd rather hear Blows Against The Empire.

The Dead had great songs-they had three excellent songwriters in the band, plus a great lyricist on retainer. I much prefer that aspect of the Dead to the jam stuff.

I'm going to be the "I like both aspects" dude. If the Dead were one or the other -- jam-a-rific or sweet songwriters -- they wouldn't mean as much to me. Sure, they might not be the best in either category but few bands can be pretty damn good at both. In a single concert, the Dead can take me from primo Americana folk music full of great lyrics, snappy compositions and sing-along choruses to full-blown neo-Miles fusion madness. I love it that about them.

I agree that the Dead without the jamming simply isn't the Dead. But they get tagged with the "jam-band" moniker when that wasn't the whole story at all.

blame not the tree for the rotten apples scattered beneath its boughs.

Found my notes for the mythical 'lost' Dead album:

- Bertha (100 YEAR HALL)
- Playing in the Band (ACE - tho my preference is for one of the long jammy versions, really - the one from the last Lyceum show in 72 is pretty special)
- Wharf Rat (ROCKIN' THE RHEIN)
- Deal (GARCIA)
- Bird Song (LADIES AND GENTLEMEN...THE GRATEFUL DEAD)
- Sugaree (DICK'S PICKS 3)
- Greatest Story Ever Told (ACE)
- Mexicali Blues (STEPPIN' OUT WITH THE GRATEFUL DEAD)
- Loser (GARCIA)
- To Lay Me Down (GARCIA)
- The Wheel (GARCIA - man, Jer's first solo rec is just full of great songs AND some well wiggy 'experimental' stuff)
- He's Gone (EUROPE '72)
- Jack Straw (EUROPE '72)
- Brown-Eyed Women (EUROPE '72)
- Ramble On Rose (EUROPE '72)
- Tennessee Jed (EUROPE '72)
- Comes a Time (STEPPIN' OUT - the Garcia solo version from a few years later really doesn't do the song justice)

Wow. That's basically the record Hunter wanted the band to make. If they could've extended the studio magic of AB and WD to this batch, it would've been a monster record.

The Playing in the Band on the March '74 Dick's Picks from the Cow Palace is great too.

I can't imagine a greatest anything that doesn't have something from AB or WD, or a DS>SS, CC>IKYR, H>S>F or S>F, but that's just me. I'd keep

- Wharf Rat
- Deal
- Bird Song
- The Wheel (maybe)
- He's Gone
- Jack Straw

and lose the rest

the Dead aren't the only 'jam band' to write good songs, btw, tho they get more style and authenticity points

wishing they were genuinely psychedelic

I always have to lol at stuff like this

Workingman's is shorter and therefore more suited to my attention span

I was gonna say, WD is the album for r0ck fans who might not be otherwise inclined. AB is for folkies.

aoxomoxoa uber alles for studio dead

otm

Right now I prefer American Beauty, and it's "Box of Rain" that tips the scales, because otherwise they're both just full of great songs, but "Box of Rain" is more than just great.

On other Dead material of the time: I've said it before on ILM, but the 8/27/72 show at the Veneta Fairgrounds in Oregon is killer. Firstly, it totally has that arc from folk to space back to folk...and in the comedown from "Dark Star" it segues into a goofy "El Paso", back into "Dark Star", and then into a cathartic "Sing Me Back Home" (which you can here on the So Many Roads box set, but trust me, it's better in context). It's simply incredible.

I can't imagine a greatest anything that doesn't have something from AB or WD

It's not suppose to be a greatest hits album; it's basically the track list for the studio album Hunter always wanted the Dead to make after AB.

someone YSI that shit, i don't have time to sift through boots and odds n ends.

xp - ok, i can read. isn't there supposed to be great stuff on ACE?

apologies, if you thought i was getting uppity. I wasn't. I was just pointing that out.

i totally want to cover friend of the devil.

-- ian, Monday, April 7, 2008 4:05 PM (4 hours ago) Bookmark Link

haha i totally have a grateful dead tabs book from 9th grade if you need those chord progressions dude

xp - no, dude, i was being self-deprecating

yes lindsay please!!!!! i would love a grateful dead tabs book.

i have 2. unless my mom has thrown them out by now.

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gotcha!

What's the relationship between "Ripple" and Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat's "Any Dream Will Do"?

^Andrew Lloyd Webber was a deadhead?

yikes if there's overlap between deadheads & music theatre geeks

American Beauty by a long shot: better songs, better pacing, more diverse instrumentation.

was looking for a Europe '72 thread fwiw

No way dude
Workingman's is stranger and less predictable

Like the chords of / high time / and the misery of / black Peter /

Guess Scott's right, come to think of it; I still haven't heard that many country, folk etc. covers of these songs----but here's a good "Ripple" from Hot Club of Cowtown's singer-fiddle Elana James, on her second solo album---nice steel guitar too: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GYPlm0iVDMI

Also performed by my cousin's bros at his memorial; that was good too.

Some timd ago I was listening to 60s retro radio show on an area college station. They accidentally played two cuts in a row from AB ("Friend of The Devil" and "Sugar Magnolia"), and afterwards the DJ remarked that it was one of the only albums they could think of from a group with multiple singers where each of the first four songs has a different lead (Phil, Jerry, Bob, Pigpen). Found that interesting.

Lol flappy's revive pretty much sums up my Dead semi-fandom

I need to track down that 'lost' album

Both are great, but if I had to pick just one it would be WD, with "Dire Wolf" being by favorite track.

Cumberland Blues is probably my favorite Dead track, and it's on Workingman's Dead. Then again, Ripple is probably my second favorite Dead track...

I like the version of CB on Europe 72 better though

Who can name all the personages on the WD cover?

err, isn't it just the band + Robert Hunter?