should i give the grateful dead a chance?

listening to the dead tonight. sounds great. wake of the flood. blues for allah. aoxomoxoa. man, i dunno, if you don't like aoxomoxoa...you don't like great rock records or something.

and sorry if i badmouthed phil anywhere on here cuz he really does sound great on those albums. great sounding bass. i don't think i really did badmouth him. just said that i love the god-like jack casady. ain't nothing wrong with that. jack rules.

"Rosemary" off Aoxomoxoa is an underrated tune imo

pulled out the triple lp glastonbury thing and forgot there was a 24 minute dark star on there. listening now.

http://www.popsike.com/pix/20090808/130323564183.jpg

make that 26 minutes.

wait, no, that's a 4. my eyes aren't so good anymore.

is it any good?

on the cd version apparently it's followed immediately by a brinsley schwartz track, which has got to be some kind of step down

it seems like the entire dick's picks series is on spotify, by the way, which is not great news for my coworkers

the brinsley schwartz track is on side 2 of the first lp (the dead is side one) but its relatively short and the rest of side two is a great mighty baby jam.

o but that dark star is okay. definitely nothing you would want to play for someone who has a grudge against the dead.

its funny that right around when this thread got revived someone on my facebook posted about that national dead covers thing- which is just a gag or something? - and the guy who posted it is a 40-something indie rock lifer and he just gagged at the idea of the dead and so did all his 40-something indie friends. they just hated the whole idea of the dead.

Clutch is the ZZ Top of metal

This is a disgusting insult to both ZZ Top and metal.

clutch more zappa-esque or something. they're way better than primus anyway. if primus still exist. i kinda don't have a need for clutch as long as harvey milk are around. i did like pure rock fury by clutch though. after that i couldn't really hang.

but anyway for once i actually agree with crazy phil! one song from zz top pretty much beats most people's entire catalogs.

and clutch were never really metal.

that's the other part i agree with.

"the rest of side two is a great mighty baby jam."

Intriguing. The song "Egyptian Tomb" rules.

I like Clutch, theyre really good live. Robot Hive-Exodus and the one before that (Blast Tyrant?) I like a lot. Of course, they are not as good as ZZ Top, but few are.

that glastonbury thing is worth the money just for the pink fairies and the edgar broughton epic and the mighty baby. and the gong. and hawkwind of course. one of the better festival comps.

Side A
The Grateful Dead: "Dark Star....bury" – 24:12
Side B
Brinsley Schwarz: "Love Song" – 4:10
Mighty Baby: "A Blanket In My Muesli" – 16:00
Side C
Marc Bolan: "Sunken Rags" – 2:29
Pete Townshend: "Classified" – 3:53
David Bowie: '"Supermen" – 2:44
Hawkwind: "Silver Machine and Welcome to the Future medley" (recorded at The Roundhouse, London on 13 February 1972 ) – 7:27
Skin Alley: "Sun Music" – 4:50
Side D
Daevid Allen and Gong: "Glad Stoned Buried Fielding Flash And Fresh Fest Footprint In My Memory" – 23:10
Side E
Pink Fairies: "Do It" – 4:09
Pink Fairies: "Uncle Harry's Last Freak-Out" – 19:47
Side F
Edgar Broughton Band: "Out Demons Out" – 20:24

That looks pretty awesome. The song names are fucking outrageous.

That looks/sounds amazing.xpost

kyuss/down/witch are not as good as the dead. i still hang with the first clutch album "transnational speedway league" & there was a decent song or two on "the elephant riders" but I mean, I wouldn't call that a good album...

i kinda look at clutch like i look at a band like cake or something. i've got nothing against them and i even enjoy some of their stuff and i know they have devoted fans who love their stuff and they seem like decent dudes, but i just don't feel the need to listen to them. although, like i said, i played pure rock fury by clutch a bunch of times after it came out. i kept reading great reviews for it and i gave it a chance. but nothing after that really did it for me. i tried a couple after that. i think i said nice things about them on a clutch thread.

i mean, i think its kinda cool that there is a cake cult! who would have guessed?

like all the people on ilm who love spoon. the cult of spoon!

Clutch are good on my Ipod at the gym. Some of their songs are serious workout enhancers. 1000111011 or whatever the fuck its called came up on shuffle today and helped out big.

i guess what i'm really trying to say above is that i respect fandom. even if its not something i myself like. i just like when people geek out about their favorite stuff. and i try hard not to tag fans of any band as lame or dumb or whatever. except phish fans of course...yuck. hahaha, just kidding. sorta.

and tool fans obviously.

they tag themselves anyway when they buy the t-shirts. (that's probably an old onion joke. can't remember.)

I agree. I'm pretty passionate about the bands I love, as well as my sports teams, so there is no reason I should judge anybody else if they are the same way, albeit with bands (or teams) I can't stand. Most of my friends are huge U2 fans, who I can't stand. We're still friends. They know I'm not a devil worshipper based on the bands I like.

Box of rain is a righteous tune, just dialed it up.

That's my favorite Dead song, hands down!

Lesh truly can't sing but he's perfect for that song. Its hard to explain, but its an emotionally moving performance. I love it.

It's about his dad dying, I think.

Also: last song Jerry ever played iirc

Youre right on the first one, Drugs, not sure about the second one, though it may be right.

found the keith & donna album from 1975 for a dollar today. not bad!

Lesh sounds good on "Box". he sounds TERRIBLE on live stuff i've heard from post-AB. didn't he have some vocal cord issues? or something?

I love about 5 classic Bobby tunes unequivocally, but most of my dead exposure these days comes from the XM/ Sirius channel when I'm driving a rental for work (which happens a lot these days) and it's gotten to where I have a hard time not flipping the dial when a Weir song comes on.

AB is amazing cause all the singers sound good on it. magic in the studio i guess, cause otherwise garcia is the only vocalist i like.

^otm. i think the same thing about workingman's, too

i dunno about studio magic so much as 'anyone can lay down a good vocal take if they have a couple weeks'. i mean, they don't sound like good singers, just ... not egregiously bad ones? i mean, i enjoy their bad singing + think it fits an aesthetic -- but one of the dick's pickses ends with a version of 'goodnight' which is so wonky i find it hard not to laugh. not laugh in a mean way, but laugh, still.

I wonder if their dodgy live vocals have anything to do with their monitoring situation. They were doing weird stuff with the monitors all behind them and double mics out of phase to cancel out any feedback, etc. But I wouldn't be surprised if they couldn't really hear themselves properly. Also drugs.

This just occured to me, but for people who have rejected the Dead for their dodgy, hit-or-miss live performances, browsing the internet archive's selection of Phil & Friends shows. I used to listen to these a ton and they were shit-hot.

http://www.archive.org/search.php?query=%28collection%3APhilLeshandFriends%20OR%20mediatype%3APhilLeshandFriends%29%20AND%20-mediatype%3Acollection&sort=-avg_rating%3B-num_reviews

OK, after decades of dismissing them, I finally gave Live/Dead a spin. I kind of dig it. There are moments that conform to my long-held image of the Dead (basically, an aesthetic based around the idea that effort is for squares, man), but those are shockingly few and far between. And "Feedback" is a revelation. What other Dead records are like this?

Check out Two From the Vault.

Will do, thanks.

Live/Dead is great!

http://images.uulyrics.com/cover/g/grateful-dead/album-dicks-picks-vol-22-lake-tahoe-ca-223-2468.jpg

Live/Dead is great!

― Dr. Suggestban, or How I Learned to Stop etc. (Drugs A. Money), Tuesday, April 26, 2011 12:29 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark

Yeah, I'm surprised at how much I'm digging it. I mean, it sounds like the Dead, but they seem to be actively engaged in what they're doing in a way I haven't heard...but then, all I've really heard are the singles and snippets of uber-desultory live recordings from the late 70s on.

http://i895.photobucket.com/albums/ac156/tparks9243/GratefulDead-DicksPicks-Vol4-Fillmo.jpg

tarfumes, forgot to mention it, but you should maybe give mickey hart's rolling thunder album a listen. i dig it. kinda fucked-up mishmash of stuff and part of me sorta wishes the dead had made a couple more fucked up mishmash albums and just let the tapes roll. it works for them! plus, it rocks! "young man" is the jam.

Cool, thanks! Will check out. Right now I'm really digging the surprisingly garagey DP #22. And Europe '72 is growing on me. I don't care that the vocals were overdubbed after the fact; based on what I've heard/read, I think I prefer it that way.

Basically, I'm kicking myself for not getting into them sooner.