should i give the grateful dead a chance?

yes! The dude was a machine. I also sometimes think of krautrock when I hear those shows.

Riiight. Nothing evidences precision motorik quite like a double Bill / Mickey fill

no we are talking just bill. in europe. in 1972.

do keep up

Jon otm. Billy was better but Mickey preserved a lot of the psychedelic mysticism that defined them from the start. The freakin' beam is still a fixture of dead & co drums into space and it's still a bone rattling thrill to hear it live. Also, the best studio recording of playing in the band was on Mickey's solo album Rolling Thunder, horns and all: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZE7-2Qo9FTc

Listened to the Truckin'>Mind Left Body Jam>Spanish Jam>Wharf Rat on 07/31/74 during a night drive through the country. It's pretty sweet.

anyone know of any other good instances where they go hard, like the end of sunshine daydream's (1972-08-27) dark star?

early "The Other Ones" are the first one that comes to mind. can't name a particular show, unfortunately. i just know they could get pretty gnarly before Weir's vocals hit.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q0Sx0Li9gQs

I would like to apologize in this public forum to Michael Steven Hartman, aka Mickey Hart, for anything I might have said to disparage his involvement with the GD. I stayed up until 2 AM last night watching the closing of Winterland video and him and Bill are having so much fun together and Mickey is just bashing away like a kid and they sound really cool and the band sounds awesome and Donna's vibe is awesome and I just love hearing them like that and it reminded me of how great they could sound when they all play together in sync. or in Dead sync anyway. and i love that opening 1-2-3 punch of sugar magnolia/scarlet begonias/fire on the mountain and i love that not fade away with john cipollina. Sorry, Mickey!

I’ve written about my love for Dozin’ at the Knick, it was my gateway Dead record. I went to see a local band cover the whole show last night and had so much fun. “Terrapin” delivered all the spacy funky prog goodness.

someone brought stuff in to trade including cd sets of 12/10/71 fox theatre and june 10 1973 rfk stadium. that is my era. well, i do love the 60s dead too. gonna take them home. feel like 1970 to 1973 dead was the best american folk rock band in the land.

i've never read about the dead's impact around the world. who loved them? where did they hit big with people? were they beloved in japan? south america? they never went to those places. did the krautrockers listen to them? there should be a book about that. maybe there is one.

I think that 6/10/73 show is the longest ever and has part of the Allman Bros sitting in for the third set. It's a fun show.

yah i think its 4 discs.

It's 8LPs(!) because they try to avoid splitting the songs.

jam much?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VtJ8FIWx8og

i can't remember if i already posted this here. if i did its worth posting twice. so cool.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3H-CW12fBNA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C8oV1mUEWlk

#onethread

In reply to Sven way upthread: If you liked Workingman's Dead and American Beauty, also check Weir's aptly titled Ace; they've sometymes been described as a trilogy.

Watch: Phil Lesh Taps North Mississippi Allstars for Ron “Pigpen” McKernan Deep Dive on Episode Seven of The Clubhouse Sessions

Ace's songs became staples in the live Dead sets to a greater degree than most of the actual Dead albums. a total classic. Garcia's S/T solo as well, though it leans more experimental.

This is... something

https://www.newspringfieldboogie.com/

jerry's solo album has "deal," "sugaree," and "bird song" which are three of the best in the repertoire. better i think, than any of the staples introduced in ace, depending on how you feel about "playing in the band"

https://static.wixstatic.com/media/a42dbb_47453d81dd874b93b58e22961ff5cc3f~mv2.jpg/v1/fill/w_1112,h_1112,al_c,q_85,usm_0.66_1.00_0.01/a42dbb_47453d81dd874b93b58e22961ff5cc3f~mv2.jpg

the Ace studio recording of "Black Throated Wind" is top notch.

As I understood from one of the band bio books, these solo albums happened as they got a pretty sweet deal for making the solo albums right as the Warner deal was ending. They used the money to buy houses etc, which is why those tunes never ended up on a dead studio album.

Steal Your Donut

Speaking of which, what is the best GD bio?

The Dennis McNally book is the official one but I thought the Rock Scully one was the most entertaining read. The Dark Star oral biography of Jerry Garcia is a good read but very sad too. Phil Leah’s book is pretty good too, but more from his POV.

Thanks.

Bear Owsley’s is wild and it’s absolutely insane no one has tried to make a bio movie about him.

I was pleasantly surprised by Fare Thee Well. It’s not exactly a happy tale but pretty revealing about how these guys interacted in the very late years.

And unlike most other products of the official GD machine, the Good Old Grateful Deadcast is essential listening imo. TONS of info and “I was there” testimonials from a larger cast of characters than is typical of most GD histories.

Do you get the dulcet tones of Big Steve?

Not much; I feel like it’s mostly studio engineers and producers and celebs like Lee Ranaldo, E Costello, Ira Kaplan and other stoners who attended shows long, long ago.

Second the Good Ol’ Grateful Deadcast… I’m sure I’ve sung its praises here or on another GD thread. It’s probably one of the best, most meticulously produced podcasts I’ve ever heard on any topic, let alone just about the Dead.

^^ yes

I third Good Ol' GDcast (great production values/storytelling IMO), but would also highly rec 36 From The Vault (with Steven Hyden and Rob Mitchum) to any Dead newbies, even though that pod is now defunct--that show's methodical run through the Dick's Picks series was a huge help to me in understanding the live setlist canon (including the songs off Ace and Garcia mentioned slightly upthread), how it often (almost always?) significantly differs/differed from their studio output and finding exciting pockets/eras of live bootlegs of theirs in general.

(Also, I take Kirk Van Houten to be a Bob Weir cowboy song devotee, or maybe strictly Chuck Berry covers)

certainly strikes me as the kind of character to think the definitive version of "Good Lovin'" was by the dead

LOVE the Deadcast.

I'll fifth the Deadcast. I was hesitant about an "official" podcast, but it's really well done. I also appreciate how they get the dirty, but necessary, work of the sales pitch over and done with in the first 2-3 minutes before turning it over to Jesse Jarnow. I love the way they find the greatest stories from tangential people and fans.

I almost skipped a recent episode ostensibly about "Money, Money", arguably one of the worst Dead songs of the '70s and wisely shelved after a few performances, but it detoured into some fantastic Ned Lagin talk and tour stories from John Perry (of The Only Ones!).

The detours are so great and often have a tenuous-at-best connection to whatever song is supposed to be the topic of the episode.

I hate you all - I’m now binge listening this for the first time.

Some of the images just took the person’s face and added rainbow tie-dye clothing or rainbows above their head. One put a person in Dead gear at a baseball stadium in the backdrop, though it looked nothing like Oracle Park despite having Oracle’s logo across the top of a scoreboard. One lucky fan had their entire face turned into a tie-dye skull, complete with a missing nose and decayed gums and lips

caught up with the deadcast through AB. i will have to say i never paid much attention to the lyrics of "Till the Morning Comes" but those last bit of lyrics definitely aren't good. i did find it funny how they were suggesting the reason they stopped playing it was because of those lines yet the band had no problem playing "Mexicali Blues"

I've gone back and forth on that one (assuming you mean "You're my woman now, make yourself easy."). I don't think it's a caveman-like order, but it does have a tinge of the ugly, patriarchal side of so-called "free love." OTOH, the rest of the song is kind of opaque to me and I've never been sure I understood the context.

"We can share the women we can share the wine" always struck me as a more obviously problematic line.

that line has always bothered me but like the narrator is an escaped criminal who murders several people and then the other con he escaped with, it would be really weird to say "oh ok but they have to be noble murderers who are cool about women"

xp yeah, I get how it could be considered problematic. i think my brain just had it wired in as some hippy "mellow out" chant.

singing about having sex with a 14 year old however....

xp yeah, but it still feels very celebratory the way the line is sung

it's a story! literally the next thing the guy does is say "I killed the watchman and took his watch & some money" and his interlocutor says "fuck...I mean if you killed that guy, who's to say you won't kill me" and then by the end of the song Shannon has killed Jack Straw. it's in a major key, Jack Straw does not feel bad about his outlaw life -- he's just trying to stay alive and he's not any kind of moral example. he does indeed feel celebratory -- he just busted out of prison and killed a guard! sharing the women and the wine is considerably less problematic than his status as A FUCKIN MURDERER.