should i give the grateful dead a chance?

Part of the magic of the Dead is how they can be transcendental one moment and objectively awful the next. I personally have a bit of a soft spot for Pigpen, but know he is an obstacle for many; they also might be my favorite band, but I'd be happy never hearing another one of their Dancing in the Streets or Not Fade Away covers ever again. I think that coming to accept and even loving that friction is key.

xp

yes but it does make the band sound really terrible by any of the usual standards for judging music lol

No, I don't think the post does that at all. It nicely sums up a lot of the preconceptions that people come to the Dead with and how most of them are usually wrong.

Always got the sense that Bobby was kind of just there to give jerry a break from vocal duties. Could he be the weakest link in the band?

I think the gulf between their iconography and their actual sound is a big part of this, too. After years of seeing all the skulls and trippy imagery on their merch, I was expecting a total psychedelic blowout and was initially put off by the wimpy, spidery music they actually produce. And yeah, Bobby is definitely the weak link, even though Ace is good as hell.

Has anybody ever compiled a list of the "definitive" versions of each Dead song, whether studio or live, or is that anathema to their spirit?

HeadyVersion is all user rankings of live versions

There's a site called "Heady Version" which is equal parts a good reference and maddening (in how they circle around certain shows and overweigh official releases), but it is a good way to explore what are considered the "best" versions and you can search by song:

http://headyversion.com/song/66/grateful-dead/dark-star/

As an example, I linked to the one for "Dark Star".

ha xpost

OK, would you consider someone who only listened to the "best" version of each song on that list alien to what makes the band special?

Pigpen can definitely be slog for me, but I never minded the Bobby cowboy stuff...I actually kind of dig those moments for the contrast they provide.

What I actively hate are the Chuck Berry covers. They're always a perfunctory slog, and an insult to the composer...with the single, and startling, exception of "Around and Around," Jersey City, 9/27/72 (Dick's Picks 11), which is far and away the best performance of a Chuck cover they've ever done.

Bobby's vocals may be the weakest link, but his guitar playing is excellent and a hugely important ingredient in their sound.

OK, would you consider someone who only listened to the "best" version of each song on that list alien to what makes the band special?

Maybe? But they have such a wide variety of types of songs and part of the appeal for many is how they structure their sets, so listening to songs in isolation might not give you a good feel for a typical show.

I think if I could explain something to young me about the Dead is that you can't expect them to scratch the same itch that other seemingly related types of music might scratch. They have psych trappings but they won't scratch the heavy psych itch (other than maybe Anthem and some early stuff, and even then, it's not gonna be riffage like Zep or Sabbath). It's too sloppy and not "advanced" enough to satisfy a prog rock or fusion itch. It's not funky enough for funk, it's not pickin enough for country, it's noodlier than pretty much anything on earth.
The Dead are just, like, The Dead, man. You take them as they are and they return the favor.

This is all true, but the inverse is also true: nothing else quite scratches all the itches that the Dead scratch in quite the same way.

Which is also the problem with the many neo-jam bands that try to be the Dead instead of trying to be all the things the Dead tried to be.

Has anybody ever compiled a list of the "definitive" versions of each Dead song, whether studio or live, or is that anathema to their spirit?

― Halfway there but for you, Friday, May 7, 2021 9:37 AM (fourteen minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

A year or two ago I found a good spotify playlist that attempts to do this with a lot of their songs, and it was helpful for me in managing the overwhelming volume of material out there.
https://open.spotify.com/playlist/07NwtfKF2nCJMA2c6PYuaf?si=57f35515518a439b

I don't think it's totally anathema, there are definitely cases where a certain live version is "definitive," esp since they often didn't even have a studio version. Some of the stuff on Europe 72 is like this.

In fact, when I briefly played with a dead cover band as a journeyman dead fan, the guys in the band would often tell me "x is the canonical version if you want to check it out." Like I think most people would agree on the Scarlet/Fire at Cornell '77 being the canonical one, even though there will be contrarians saying some other version is "better." Of course there are also disagreements about which is best. If anything, I would say that *contentious* disputes about which is best are anathema to their spirit, but friendly discussions of that sort are part of the package.

Which is also the problem with the many neo-jam bands that try to be the Dead instead of trying to be all the things the Dead tried to be.

― keto keto bonito v industry plant-based diet (PBKR), Friday, May 7, 2021 9:56 AM (five minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

I feel like for a band to capture the spirit of the dead, they'd have to sound nothing whatsoever like the dead.

yeah I think that's a state of being for a band that it will try to ape what visible aspects made their iconic archetype band what they were. But aping something that was arrived at while trying to answer questions for oneself and therefore travelling between several points and knowing what one was searching for to get there are 2 very different things. One may or may not actually find what it was looking for but creates along teh way and one makes an empty facsimile. Might be good at the moment though.

I always thought the next band that was trying to do what the MC5 were trying to do couldn't sound like the MC5 or it would defeat the purpose. like. Not sure how many other bands taht would be true of. Can would be one I think, John Coltrane and a few other questing jazzers.

Bobby's vocals may be the weakest link, but his guitar playing is excellent and a hugely important ingredient in their sound.

Yeah Bobby is an utterly unique rhythm guitarist. His playing feels precisely calibrated to fill in the spaces in between what Jerry and Phil are doing without muddying up the mix. He also generally had a much lower flub-rate than Jerry, even in the earlier years

He does that awesome and rare thing where his parts fuse with Jerry's to the point that it's not always clear who's playing what.

Yeah, it took me a long time to train myself to pay attention to Bobby's guitar.

I think Bobby was key in keeping the band grounded and from flying too far off the reservation, he seemed to be really good at reading the energy level of the crowd and nudging the band back to center sometimes. And in the later years, when Jerry would get really bad, he was the battery that kept them going.

"And in the later years, when Jerry would get really bad, he was the battery that kept them going."

his tone got more and more questionable at the end but he seemed to try to play in a more straightforward rhythm style near the end, I guess in an attempt to smooth things out while Jerry's flubs and presence become more and more a problem.

I thought the story was taht he was nearly kicked out in 1968 because he couldn't keep up with the improvisations but went and woodshedded and got a bit better.BUt he always seems to be playing a little behind where most rhythm players wold be playing. Which might fit better with this lot than it did elsewhere.

Does seem to be doing ok in what I've heard.
I remember noticing taht the instrumentation for some of the cowboy songs did change quite a bit too at one point. I think on a song that came out of a major jam. So may have been an El Paso from Veneta or something. THink it had a particularly vivid guitar part which would therefore be more jerry than him but still it surprised me.

Kreutzmann plays pretty behind too

I love kreutzmans tone, totally unique. That snappy snare and short rolls

From a previous discussion of Weir:

Christgau's early Dead articles, archived on his site, incl. mention of the Pigpen-Weir band, which was an idea some or all of the others had, but, according to xgau, they couldn't afford it, meaning, I take it, couldn't afford to hire more musos for such a band, or sep. road crew, if they shunted this projected thing off to sep. gigs, rather than opening act on Dead tours (Xgau says Pigpen was the favorite of a big audience segment, be hard to follow, esp, when shifting gears into more varied excursions).
I do know people who turned against them when Pig was gone, won't listen to anything later.

― dow, Wednesday, August 19, 2020 6:13 PM (eight months ago) bookmarkflaglink

hard to follow, esp, when shifting gears into more varied excursions) And this was already happening while he was in the Dead, which was a reason for wanting him excised, again according to the 'gau.

― dow, Wednesday, August 19, 2020 6:16 PM (eight months ago) bookmarkflaglink

The Pigpen Review! I think a "review" was pretty full-sized presentation.
Musically, this made sense, but because the Dead was also a spiritual unit, it was distressing. Then it was revealed that this was a breakup with a difference: two groups would result but the new one, to be called the Pigpen Revue, would tour with the Dead.
It never did happen, partly because the group, which is always in debt no matter how much money it earns, couldn't handle the finances. When the Dead appeared here last February, Tom Constanten was on organ. But Pigpen was on-stage too, banging inaudibly on a set of bongos and singing or blowing mouth-harp sometimes. The Dead wouldn't have been right without Pigpen to root them to the ground,and they knew it. Not only was their music better than ever, so was their gestalt. On their recent Aoxomoxoa (Warner Brothers WS 1790), the last three credits read: "Bill Krutzmann/Percussion; Tom Constanten/Keyboards; Rod McKernan/Pig Pen." He is his own instrument.
From https://www.robertchristgau.com/xg/news/grateful-69.php (Also explains the Dead Saga thus far)
After that, I mentioned Weir as a journeyman/everyman figure, as Ringo, and maybe Pig had some of the same appeal. It very belatedly occurs to me that Weir's rhythm playing fits w Garcia so well because he was Garcia's student at that guitar store, though one reason, as mentioned here and there, like in an early Rolling Stone article, I *think*, for spinning him off into a side band was that Garcia wasn't so pleased with his playing, at least for a while.

Btw, have yall heard those 1969 Fillmore and Pavilion shows he's describing w such appeal (also mentions a good Central Park appearance in between)?? Must check archive.org.

Bill's 75th Birthday Celebration show, Deadcasts, Jarnow's v. Deadicated adventures in annotation, and moooorrrre of course:
http://view.email.dead.net/?qs=e79179b8823fd29ce50776ffa035b3b90c093ce3c8c718a0e6a7060dfea0d1dcdb1d495acacf6918cbb4ee943038a13723a0eb0b265925e642b80ed5a35446903f2c340c460d8a0b63f325559667e082

I think the gulf between their iconography and their actual sound is a big part of this, too. After years of seeing all the skulls and trippy imagery on their merch, I was expecting a total psychedelic blowout and was initially put off by the wimpy, spidery music they actually produce.

this! for years I was let down by this

i thought they were a metal band for many years before actually hearing them when I was a kid

Tender jerry (must have been the roses, Stella blue) is my least favorite jerry

Same here re image & iconography vs the music.


I think the first Dead I ever actually heard was courtesy of a friend’s older brothers mix tape w Fire and maybe Uncle John’s Band. good intro, but not at all what I was expecting

HI DERE. Really enjoying reading y’all’s posts about this band, but just don’t have the energy today to make another one of my periodic attempts to listen to them.

I really really love what they & Lowell did with “Stagger Lee”. I wish Shakedown had been a stronger set of songs (“Fire” & title track notwithstanding obv) because they were really approaching something interesting there

god i do love how wimpy and spidery their music is though, so glad it isn't endless overdrive and blues scales and psychedelic lyrics

Are there a subspecies of dead fans who don't really like China/Rider or Scarlet/Fire? I don't really, does that make me not a true head?

I have never given a damn for Scarlet Fire. I could take or leave China Cat but it makes a great launching pad for I Know You Rider, which absolutely needs a launching pad to get off on the right foot.

Rider is alright. Probably my favorite of those four. I like the studio version of Fire on the Mountain a lot though.

There's definitely something "special" about the sound of that Cornell 77 Scarlet/Fire, but it's not exactly my thing, and I hate it when the piano starts grinding those major triads over and over again.

I love China Cat Sunflower.

Not saying you're not a dead fan if you don't like one of those transitions, but if you don't like either, I'm gonna have to check your card.

Scarlet/Fire can be by-the-book. So can China/Rider. But when the latter is good, it sums up almost everything good about the dead in one neat and tidy package.

As basic a choice it may be, the Europe ’72 China/Rider turned me onto the Dead. I’d never been one for rootsy/Americana music but the Dead kept popping up as a reference in my Sixties reading—I of course was familiar with who they were and their uncool rep, but had never heard them. Listening to “Rider" in particular was like scratching an itch I didn’t know I had. Went on discogs and immediately bought the LP, and started getting into hippie country. As silly as it sounds to say, the guitar solos in “Rider" sounded so thrilling and free. And those harmonies! (Though I was a little disappointed to learn they were just overdubs…)

XP yeah, I forgot the show but it was a China/Rider performance that finally had me turn the corner on getting into the Dead.

Although, I guess my definition of that means skipping over 90% of the Weir/Pigpen tracks

The China/Rider that opens Dick's Picks 12 (1974 Providence/Boston) was one of the first GD song(s) that grabbed me – typifies that jazzier loose-but-tight sound that you hear in the best 73/74 shows where everyone is noodling at the same time w/o sounding like a mess. Also nice delivery of the "Wish I was a headlight ..." part, which is really all I'm looking for in Riders.

Yeah actually the Europe 72 China/Rider is pretty good, as are a few in 73. China Cat's feel is tricky, it can get really clunky and awkward when the touch isn't light enough. The lyrics are also on the dippier end of hippy dippy and the vocal melody is awkward. But sometimes they nail it and it sounds really good.

Guy who looks like Garcia era bob weir carrying a huge bag of laundry down the street, what’s on your iPod

He’s not gonna spend one more Saturday night with dirty jorts.

Wake up to find out thatcha fly’s been open all day

Aahh the Truckin’ on Pacific Northwest ‘73/‘74 is so great! It starts like a great songy song and then morphs into this freaky and psychedelic jammy jamm Jammm. Haven’t heard this a version of Truckin’ that rips so hard

Yeah, that's a great one. That entire PNW box is a treasure trove and I'm glad I splurged on it.

As a very casual and selective Dead listener, it's really interesting to see your various takes on the band, what got you into them, and what you dislike, since most of my friends are in the "nah man, they suck" camp. And there are many times I think they're right.

https://preview.redd.it/v40m7ctx5l171.jpg?width=960&crop=smart&auto=webp&s=f85fa9b66d4c88403a54c98c43a3f05091b9bf52

^^ kinda agree with that poster but I'd narrow the "great years" to 89-90. and of course the first half of the 70s.