should i give the grateful dead a chance?

(me, I've been on a slow conversion for several years from antipathy to grudging appreciation to modest admiration. which I admit started with a crush on a hippy chick.)

biggest change in my life since I stopped posting to ILM regularly = FINALLY getting into the Dead in a BIG way (nothing past 77 tho') - and so I wish to disown/delete my lame post waaay upthread - thee Dead really are THE great kosmic American guitar band, wonky vox and all

just saying.

it's unfortunate that I've not had the chance to explore more of their music since 'live/dead'. in fact the only dead-related thing I've heard was Garcia's playing in ornette's 'virgin beauty'.

hehe....British sigular/plural band-verb agreement issues amuse me.

The Dead are pleasant enough. They don't require - or particularly reward - deep thinking to listen to them. Certainly they don't deserve the amount of vitriole they get, but I don't understand how they (their music?) could change anyone's life.

Really what's happening here is they're just jamming on one chord. Can does this too, but the key difference is they usually use a repetitive bass line, whereas the Dead never do.

I think listening to the Dead looking for Can reference points isn't going to yield anything fruitful, though. I personally listened to the Dead for years before I heard any Can albums, but when I did I immediately was struck by how similar the jams are in style, if not in sound.

The larger point I was trying to make is that the Dead have explored the outer edges of improvised and free music, but they don't really get any credit for it. If they were as commercially unsuccessful and as unknown as Can were, everyone on this board would be a GD freak.

Wherefore I shall shortly purchase Workingman's Dead, Live/Dead and Blues for Allah

I feel like most ILMers should stay far away from studio dead stuff post-Blues for Allah ('76 I think). There are lots of great Dick's Picks stuff to choose from.

The ONLY GD album that I expect ILMers to like is "Grayfolded," just because of John Oswald's name is attached to it (used and spliced over 50 performances of 'Dark Star' to make a 90-minute 'Dark Star'). The sound is amazing, and it's fun to hear an early 70s Lesh bass line mixed in w/ some midi Jerry from the late 80s, etc. Great stuff.

Also, watch the final episode of "Freaks and Geeks" and then see if you feel a little better about them.

For my part, I've tried numerous times to get into them, but have yet to really ever want to listen to them. However, I do hold onto the early records, because I do occasionally feel like giving them another shot, and the band is pretty relaxing (though that lack of edge may account for my relative disinterest).

I guess it boils down to the fact that I like them in small doses (ha ha), which may miss the point of the Grateful Dead.

I heartily recommend Terrapin Station and Shakedown Street for anyone who likes '70s slick Steely Dan-ish production values. TS is a prog album and one of my favorite studio albums (behind Workingman's Dead and American Beauty).

Donna Jean nailing her part, thought, that's up for debate ...

mcd - When you listen to TStation, do you actually listen to the whole album or just the TStation suite at the end? Everything else sounds better live (esp. the Estimated Prophets). I think Shakedown Street is a lot harder to defend. Disco Dead, no thanks.

and more importantly: can someone explain what the draw is w/ dead albums from workingman's dead era onward? i was able to immediately click with the early psych stuff but i still don't get the later stuff no matter how many chances i give it. it still just seems like ho-hum bar band music. does it take awhile to sink in or what?

And like I've said before, I can't vouch for any studio Dead past 1976. The live stuff from the early 80s on is also pretty hit-or-miss, but there is a lot of fabulous stuff from the late 80s/early 90s. There are about 1,000 live SBDs on archive.org, for anyone interested in checking this stuff out for free.

And Two from the Vault is great; Skull and Roses is AOK (I forget what the original name of that album was; something like "Fuck Your Face")

I can't believe that people have let this statement stand for three years...

oh and of course Grateful Dead - Fillmore West 1969 - The Complete Recordings

okay but i'm still looking for a reason to care about workingman's dead, american beauty, etc. up to blues for allah. this period still goes over my head, as far as why people are such fans of it.

do what i did: download it first. i ended up liking it enough to want my own copy of it.

I get the feeling that this period is going under a reappraisal right now (Jeff Tweedy covers "Ripple"; WOldham covered "Broke-down Palace," etc.), but it's just their pop Americana stuff (WDead and ABeauty). I think the appeal of these albums (these two seem to be the albums that the widest segment of people connect with) is the songwriting - narrative-driven songs, acoustic but not folky, melodic but not symphonic. The unsung hero of these albums is Robert Hunter, GD's main lyricist. I don't remember it perfectly, but Hunter said one of his proudest moments was overhearing a coal-miner talk about the song "Cumberland Blues" and say that the man who wrote it must have been a coal-miner.

Eh, etc. etc., I've always been married to the live performances over the studio output, but those two albums are pretty special. Sure, there is something kind of corny about both album covers (the faux-cowboy affect of Workingman's Dead; the 'Beauty' bleeding into 'Reality' on American Beauty). Sure, well, I don't want to keep going on about this - got shite to do. But yeah, great albums; I'd love if more people agreed.

skullfuck, wasn't it?

Yes, i think you're right. "Fuck Your Face" is song by, er, another band.

When they were making ABeauty, here was Phil Lesh's idea for the album: record the Mojave Desert air for 30 minutes, then record the Fisherman's Wharf in SanFran (I think) for 30 minutes. And that would've been the album. Lesh was non-plussed when the execs didn't go for it.