should i give the grateful dead a chance?

Excerpt from "AQUARIUS RISING" by Robert Santelli

Part 1

The largest crowd that ever gathered for a rock festival did so at Watkins Glen, New York, in July of 1973. Outdrawing the previous high at Woodstock almost two to one, more than 600,000 young people sardined themselves into the Watkins Glen Grand Prix Raceway for a single-day festival known as the Summer Jam. Featured groups were the Grateful Dead, the Allman Brothers, and the Band. Time travelers arrived early for the killer soundcheck with excellent weed, walkie talkies and hella good microbrews.

So that's what the Doctor Who in America episodes are about.

lol tyler :)

i. someone explain "seastones" to me
Here is an explanation via Mutant Sounds, of all places
http://mutant-sounds.blogspot.com/2007/04/phil-lesh-ned-lagin-seastoneslpcd197519.html

Seastones sounds greaat!

it is. the Dead vault on archive.org has Seastones sets for some of those shows 1974-75 iirc

RE: Veneta, I wasn't aware you could post a 36 minute video on youtube, but here ya go:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KJIS97uuSWY

listening to the dead set tyler told me to get.

p good so far

funny, after all the fighting, the first thing that's struck me is how much "sugaree" sounds like The Band

totally, matt! I brought up the Band yesterday b/c it was the hook my friend used to get me into the Dead (via Europe 72)

Reading some of Scott's fantasies upthread is totally making me wish Richard Manuel had a shot at "Candyman".

I'm thinking about making the friend who showed me The Last Waltz sit through at least the first disc of Europe 72

i would not introduce someone to the band through the last waltz fwiw

The footage of the Dead from Festival Express is incredible imo.
Great footage of The Band, too, actually.

Reading some of Scott's fantasies upthread is totally making me wish Richard Manuel had a shot at "Candyman".

― Handjobs for a sport (C. Grisso/McCain), Wednesday, April 20, 2011 1:59 PM

I wuz robbed!

should i give the grateful dead a chance?

black throated wind is good

hahahaha the OP benton was an old school sockpuppet, maybe one of the first.

yours?

My bad, WmC.

no, jack cole iirc. he had a few... Erin Caruthers?

this long jam on "china cat sunflower" is dope, i might "get" the dead

you're well on the way. Black Throated Wind is def one of my top five Weir jams.

does china cat sunflower morph into i know you rider?

yes it does!

Does it ever not?

i don't know!

i figured as much!

Listening to and enjoying Europe '72 right now, but honing in on what I generally don't like about the Dead. They just don't hold still! Like, they threaten to hit a groove, but then solo over everything. I realize that may be a selling point to some. At least they're more interesting soloists than the schmuck in Phish.

TBH. blown away that anyway would not like the Band. The Band is soul music. The music is great, but it's really all about the vocals.

what was that line upthread about 68-72 Dead refusing to play a bassline lol?

xpost

there are earlyish ('68) Dead shows where China and Rider aren't joined - Dick's Picks #22 features a smokin' morph of Dark Star>China Cat Sunflower>The Eleven, for example

europe 72 is so gd partly because it was the one live set that the Dead ever overdubbed/sweetened with studio vocals etc

so saddened to see scott and others not really digging the band. along w gene clark and gram parsons, richard manuel makes up my 'holy trinity' of heartbreakingly beautiful country rock singer guys (and yeah, the thought of manuel covering 'brokedown palace' or one of hunter/garcia's other ballads is p tantalizing).

been listening to Harpur College 1970 today for the first time ever & it's a good show though I think I'm gonna have to listen several times to really get what's so over the top great about it, compared to 1972 shows, say (though the acoustic set at the start's pretty unique I think? at least circa that era).

BUT: holy shit @ the closing "We Bid You Goodnight", that is some soulful collapse at the end...I love it when the Dead get exhausted b/c they mine it so well, & this is something that can really only come out in the live shows I think.

nah, lots of the 1970 shows started w an acoustic set (some 69 shows, too, I think) - the weird thing abt the official Harpur College release is that its in mono - some of the electric set is v v full-on psychedelic Dead (Dancing in the Streets, Other One)

(and yeah, the thought of manuel covering 'brokedown palace' or one of hunter/garcia's other ballads is p tantalizing).

I thought about starting a "songbook swap" thread to ponder other pairs of artists doing this, but I'm still kind of mesmerized by Dead/Band.

yeah I liked the third disk of the Harpur College show the most, but wasn't blown away by the second disk---doesn't lift off the way 1969 shows often do...but this is just my superficial first time reaction & I'll surely go back to it. the mono thing is pretty interesting (I'm listening to the Dick's Picks version)

Dark lyrics: http://www.dead.net/song/dire-wolf

I'm reading Game of Thrones (thanks for the rec, ILX fantasy nerds!) which features dire wolves so I am pretty much winging this song to myself all the time.

Winding? No. Singing.

dire wolf is definitely one of my top 5 Dead songs

The steel guitar solo on that is so killer

Hold on, did The Band ever use one? Maybe that's my problem, not enough pedal steel!

i can't think of any band w/pedal steel

i think they grew out of being a rock n roll bar band more though

a little note about that Veneta '72 show is that it funded a business which is still going strong today, the Springfield Creamery (run by one of Kesey's kids).

anyone who doesn't dig The Band needs to see the "Festival Express" performance of "I Shall Be Released", it's probably on youtube but I don't like posting those auto-embeds.

"Bird Song" is gorgeous

Dude, next thing you should get is Jerry's s/t solo album, the one with the wheel and the 10 of diamonds and the titty on the cover/
Seriously, check that shit out.

WTF is with this ongoing saga of the kids who were lost by their parents and their fucking hippie ass parents aren't even going to the tent to check on them????

x-post That Garcia album is great. First thing that made me think I might like the Dead. And I do, as long as they're playing Country Rock.

also recommend the ace album cuz its really just a good dead album and not really a weir album. and it sounds great.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E-AhJhiBYxs

i still can't figure out which weir solo thing i don't like the most. kingfish? bobby & the midnights? blah.

Where the Beat Meets the Street is pretty awful.

For Dead lyrics, this is a fun site:

http://artsites.ucsc.edu/GDead/agdl/

oooh boy dark star was super cool but this cover of sing me back home by merle is terrrible and feels like it lasts for 1,000 years

xp

You know - I'm pissed at that guy. Like I've seen that site around since the late 90s or so and I had a lot of respect for it. Like, yeah, guy's really trying to parse these lyrics. So maybe 5 years ago, the guy's like "and my books gonna come out! the Annotated Grateful Dead lyrics book!" And I got the idea into my head that the dude had taken all this crowd-sourced information that he'd been accruing on his website over the years, put it all together, and come out with some academic product. The book turned out to just be stuff from the website, basically verbatim, with pretty illustrations and stuff, but no scholarly insight whatsoever. Like, I thought dude had some behind-the-scenes moves or whatever. It was very disappointing.