Taking Sides: Workingman's Dead vs American Beauty

But yeah, I think they sound great with booze or without! That's the thing though, they aren't really druggy albums. Well, that "Candyman" solo is pretty druggy. But it's relatively short.

but is it good without drugs? ;)

I dunno, are the Ramones?

We should revive the parse-Xgau 1000-post thread - I'm still not sure whether he's paying Attics a compliment or not here. Is the "nothing upstairs" line supposed to mean that it's the only one of the songs that doesn't actually have something interesting to say about "love, dreams, etc." or that it's it the only one where the music really reaches the heights promised by the lyrical them? Both?

still AB for me, but I am raising my opinion of WD.

I am sort of in love with "Easy Wind" lately ... I'm totally past the fact that Ron lamely croaks out "ballin" 3 times in the cut ... it's all about those stinging, Cipollina-esque, vibrato leads that punctuate the verses. and the fact that the drumming sounds so purposefully bad. until it all slams together for that "EEEEASY WIND" moment on the "chorus", such as it is.....

AB will still always win for the 'Candyman' pedal steel solo alone, but "Workingman's" is really working for me right now

and "Attics Of My Life" totally rules, despite the douchebag comments upthread

hahahaha! oh stormy stormy i almost revived a dead thread last week just to say that workingman's dead is PERFECT until pigpen shows up! for real! every song is amazing and i feel like easy wind is the only clunker in the bunch.

sorry.

I am raising my opinion of WD.

Yeah, I'm growing to appreciate the individual songs on WD more, but I like it less as an album because it sounds more disjointed. AB has more straightforward songs. The three I like least off of WD are "Uncle John's", "Cumberland Blues", and 'New Speedway" which work well in concert, but come off a little flat on the record.

Also, "Please don't dominate the rap, Jack/If you got nothing new to say" makes New Speedway Boogie in particular sound hilariously dated.

This thread sort of unfairly leaves out Europe 72 and the first Garcia solo album: you can't overlook He's Gone, Brown-Eyed Women, Jack Straw, Tennessee Jed, Deal, Sugaree, or Loser when examining this songwriting era.

i always thought the album version of uncle john's band sounded amazing. not flat at all. i think the whole album sounds great. even though i do have my problem with easy wind. man, if only candyman had been in its place. then you would have had a perfect album.

"Operator" is the better Pigpen track, out of his late-life offerings. It was a sad fucking day when I had outlived Pig, moreso than any of those other bastards who died at 27.

I prefer "American Beauty", which has more of those wonderful vocals. It is slightly less "country-rootsy", plus the backing vocals are mixed in stereo which makes it a more interesting listen.

"This thread sort of unfairly leaves out Europe 72 and the first Garcia solo album: "

Bob Weir's Ace also is another record from this time that has a bunch of tunes that became staples of the band's live set.

It is safe to say, this band was on quite the roll during this time.

To answer the original question, Workingman's Dead is about the best gateway drug for the group unless you are wanting to turn some on to their songwriting.

I am sort of in love with "Easy Wind" lately ... I'm totally past the fact that Ron lamely croaks out "ballin" 3 times in the cut

I love the way all of them congeal in this really weird way to produce the collective rhythm. It's so herky jerky, loose but tight, all that stuff. It just kind of tumbles along with with a very vague but definite sense of intent.

This thread sort of unfairly leaves out Europe 72 and the first Garcia solo album: you can't overlook He's Gone, Brown-Eyed Women, Jack Straw, Tennessee Jed, Deal, Sugaree, or Loser when examining this songwriting era.

Hunter has always been bummed that the original material on Europe 72 was never recorded in the studio. My all time fave Dead tune is on Europe 72..."Wharf Rat".

I go back and forth with these two records, AB and WD. I love them bot. For a long time I thought Workingman's Dead was the better album, but in '08 I've definitely been jamming American Beauty a lot more. I think my favorite is whichever one is playing RIGHT NOW. Unfortunately I don't have anything terribly insightful to say. Great harmonies, great songwriting, both records SOUND really good. Maybe Garcia says it best, "For me, the models were music that I'd liked before that was basically simply constructed but terribly effective - like the old Buck Owens records from Bakersfield. Those records were basic rock & roll: nice, raw, simple, straight-ahead music, with good vocals and substantial instrumentation but nothing flashy." I think that's pretty key, in regards to what came before with the Dead; it was a step in the right direction in my mind. Not that Live/Dead or s/t or Anthem are bad records--they're not at all--but a much more direct statement could be made to the record listener by "normalizing" a bit, holding back the weirdness factor.

^^ ian not b_l

I think my favorite is whichever one is playing RIGHT NOW.

The classic answer. : )

http://i166.photobucket.com/albums/u120/kingkonggodzilla/history_fpo_walton.jpg

"My all time fave Dead tune is on Europe 72..."Wharf Rat"."

WR's on Skull and Roses, not '72. Great song though.

I vote for AB. The remastered CD has a great live version of Truckin. THe beginning's cut off, but the band is killing it. Garcia has an awesome 5 minute solo, then botches the lyrics coming out of it badly, like only Jerry can.

Workingman's Dead is the only Dead LP I've ever really enjoyed from beginning to end. (There are probably 4000 other Dead LPs I've never even tried to listen to, though, so who knows, maybe I'd like all of them if I tried.) Never much got into American Beauty beyond "Truckin,'" oddly enough.

I guess WD always just seemed to me to have lots of really catchy songs (and "Dire Wolf" is easily my favorite Dead song, no contest), and AB's seemed more amorphous, somehow. Haven't listened to the latter in years, though; especially judging from Broheems' post upthread, maybe I'd hear more in it if I tried listening again.

actually the stereo that Geir likes is what puts me off American Beauty, or at least off the remaster - I mean, I like the record, but the separation is so aggressive that I find it distracting. Also, the vocal on "Operator" really drives me nuts for some reason.

The more aggressive the better. Stereo is supposed to sound HUGE.

i do like that early 70's dead era the best. and i like the 60's studio stuff a bunch. i am a weird dead fan though. i actually prefer listening to their studio albums. mostly cuz my three favorite things about the dead are 1)jerry 2)robert hunter 3)jerry. and jerry always sounds great in the studio. i do like the official live stuff. europe 72. i love dead set/reckoning.

hey, here's a question. since i am such a fan of the garcia/hunter writing team - and i feel that their work together is somehow weirdly underrated or neglected in some way - can anyone tell me why other artists of the 70's weren't all over those songs. to cover, i mean. i've got thousands of 70's records and off the top of my head i can't think of one great dead cover on a rock/folk/country/whatever album that i own. i've got at least 50 albums from the 70's with friggin' Eagles covers on them, you know?
can anyone think of any good ones from that time? how about country covers? even now, i would think someone could do great things with it must have been the roses or sugar magnolia or tennessee jed or you name it.
maybe i just own the wrong albums. i have a cd by an italian prog/folk/psych band called howth castle that has a dead cover on it. man, i'm really blanking.
i mean, what a wealth of material! and you could make hits with a lot of their songs that were never hits, couldn't you? couldn't kenny chesney take alabama getaway to town. i think he could.

i went to youtube to look for new riders videos, cuz they did lots of live covers back in the dya incl some dead stuff IIRC, and found this dope video instead:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dqF32XzL09U

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B000000SUE/theannotategr-20

NRPS doing several early seventies Dead cuts on this Live in Japan disc.
granted, it was recorded in 1993.

I've certainly listened to AB more. I like Easy Wind better than Operator.

i think i might hav heard a bluegrass cover or two. fire on the mountain, maybe? dolly parton should do a dead cover album.

http://www.deaddisc.com/GDFD_GDcovers.htm

I gotta hear that Cache Valley Drifters album

The Pop-O-Pies did two or three really entertaining versions of "Truckin'," but I don't think they count.

yeah, new riders...but it doesn't get more dead-identified than that. unless it's hot tuna. and they probably did some too. though i can't recall any. but, jeez, i've got a zillion rustic singer/songwriter type records and i can't think of ANY dead songs on any of them. i just think it's weird considering how big their catalog is. and not just garcia/hunter, but there were great lesh/hunter, hart/hunter, weir/hunter tunes too. montgomery gentry would own mexicali blues! they could change the age of the 14 year old girl in the lyrics if they needed to. though they are badass so maybe they would leave it. see, i'm even stretching into john perry barlow territory to make my point.

i think a) they weren't exclusively singer/songwriter-identified, of course, and b) anyone who got the songs also got enough of the mystique that they might have figured leave well enough alone.

i like Lyle's FOTD a bunch

we are talking about infinitely singable hummable memorable tunes here. is it a conspiracy? or do people see these songs as so identified with the dead that they don't want to mess with them? i can't believe that. people mess with everything. these are songs that were made to be reinterpreted. cuz jerry and hunter were all about the mythic blues/folk tradition and all that. reinventing and reinvigorating the old stuff. i think on some level they wanted those songs to be in that bigger than life mythic tradition.

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This isn't exactly a Dead cover but the Seldom Scene do a version of "Rider" (aka "I know You Rider") that sounds as if it was filtered through the Dead. Maybe the Dead's take gave the Seldom Scene an idea on how to cover it.

I've been listening to a lot of early 70s bluegrass and the influence of AB and WD can be heard in the Seldom Scene, Norman Blake, John Hartford, etc.

okay, well then if the songs are too tied up in the tie-dye mythos, maybe after enough time has passed people will forget those associations and just see them as good songs. i love singing along to dead songs! they are fun to sing. and i'm not much for singing along.

WR's on Skull and Roses, not '72. Great song though.

Yes! Brain fart. Thanks. Man, do I love "Wharf Rat."

when did that old & in the way album come out? cuz i'll bet that influenced a lot of nu-pickers. the way they do a song like wild horses reminds me of a lot of the newer bluegrass interpretations of pop songs.

Here's a start, Scott:

http://www.deaddisc.com/GDFD_GDcovers.htm

Bluegrass was already responding to California hippie country by the time Old and In the Way released its first record in, I think, '74 or '75. (Maybe it was even '73?) Nevertheless, it did have a huge influence on bluegrass.

I think the issue is that if you cover a Dead song you're not just covering a song - you're either allying yourself with the mythos in some way or you're taking the piss (the Pop-o-Pies). The Dead have always been one of those bands whose name alone is enough to put some people off for good. Those people are wrong-headed for a bunch of reasons in my opinion, but at the same time, I used to be one of 'em: if I'd heard somebody was covering a Dead song, that would have served as bio for that person in part, and that part of the bio would read "burned out hippie." Not that I'm defending this sort of thing, I've since grown out of it! (Though I'm still not likely to cover any Dead songs, even though there are plenty of them that I really enjoy singing.) But I also know tons of people haven't & won't.

calling Toby Keith:

"I come in from Memphis
where I learned to talk the jive
When I get back to Memphis
be one less man alive
Good Mornin Mr. Benson
I see you're doin well
If I had me a shotgun
I'd blow you straight to Hell"

Chris Hillman covering "Ripple"!

http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=10:kjfoxqq5ldae

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'.

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

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?

Workingman's is stranger and less predictable

this and especially

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

this

are otm

this is a really arbitrary decision but i'd have to go with workingman's bc of how much i love "dire wolf" and "casey jones"

I think my favorite is whichever one is playing RIGHT NOW

this is the lamest possible way to get into the grateful dead but i remember i bought american beauty in college just bc of how much i loved the counting crows cover of "friend of the devil." took me a while to adjust tbh

there is no bad way

love those seasick chord changes in "high time"

Freaks and Geeks

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fRHZr3VlpgE

(Ends with the two lead female characters setting out for a summer--or a lifetime--as Deadheads.)

Agreed that I prefer Workingman's Dead, not just because Cumberland Blues is my fav Dead song. Beauty has some transcendent classics sitting beside mediocrities (Ripple is incredible, Candyman not so much), but Workingman's Dead stays at a fairly high level throughout.

candyman is so good! that pedal steel solo!

i think as much as i associate both albums with each other they have very distinct moods for me, american beauty is kinda this shining shimmering thing and workingman's is pretty ghostly and introverted throughout. at the moment i think i prefer the second mood but i also feel like it could easily switch back in the next 5-10 years

Back to the cover, I guess bill is on the stairs, Mickey is talking to pigpen, and hunter’s on the far left. Those were the three I wasn’t sure about

Here is more info about that cover than you ever wanted to know:

http://www.popspotsnyc.com/workingmans_dead/