should i give the grateful dead a chance?

lol....i think this nu jam renaissance is making me go another 180 back to my original skepticism and low key hostility towards the Dead after coming around for a few years....

but god it's like talking to Jehovah's Witnesses love all you but still

though i listened to blues for allah yesterday on my walk, the first long one has a kind of cool disco/jam vibe

xpost I guess I've never really heard this trove of good songs? I 'm first to admit I've never really searched for them that hard, since it's not really my thing, but I like several on "American Beauty" and I know "Shakedown Street" and "Touch of Grey" and a few others and that's about it. The mystery to me, as an outsider, is how this band could exist for decades and not achieve more in the studio, unless, as you imply, either they did, or it really was via the live performances that the songs came to, well, life. But I've given a few concerts a shot, too, and the Sirius channel, and even Europe '72, and nothing has ever clicked. I was in a diner in Iowa the other week and I heard this shambling, sloppy music coming from the kitchen. I didn't know what it was, exactly, but I definitely suspected it was the Dead, confirmed when they played one of the songs I knew. But hey, there's a lot of bullshit I like that lots of people don't like, too.

I dunno, I like the idea of the band, but while I know it's not exactly apples to apples I always felt the Band did best what at least the Americana era of the Dead was trying to do. But I think that's true for lots of bands and the Band.

The fake Hells Angels thing, in the book they say the Angels in the UK were sort of unaffiliated and relatively innocuous poseurs. Some even crafted their own uniforms! There's the famous story of the real Hells Angels coming in for a visit from America at the invitation of George Harrison and basically scary the hell out of everybody.

....and then they cover "Good Lovin'"

Yeah, but you just skip that... there are 278 more minutes of music on whatever set you’re listening to.

The mystery to me, as an outsider, is how this band could exist for decades and not achieve more in the studio, unless, as you imply, either they did, or it really was via the live performances that the songs came to, well, life.

I think a lot of their studio albums of really good, though obviously they’re not the focus for most fans.

Josh, they’re probably just not your cup of tea, but I could list out some great songs if you’re really interested!

Also, I agree the Band is better than the Americana era of the Dead (American Beauty, Workingman’s Dead); but I’m not really into that (relatively minor) era / mode of the Dead.

xpost Go for it! Pick, like, 10 from 1975 on or whatever.

There's the famous story of the real Hells Angels coming in for a visit from America at the invitation of George Harrison and basically scary the hell out of everybody.

yeah i mean, at least based on Hunter S, the Bay Area Angels were just thugs....also got the sense lots of them were at over 30 if not pushing 40 at the time, but hard dead enders

Yeah, but you just skip that... there are 278 more minutes of music on whatever set you’re listening to.

― Theodor Adorno, perhaps the greatest philosopher alive today (morrisp), Saturday, June 8, 2019 9:46 AM (two minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

threat or promise haha

The mystery to me, as an outsider, is how this band could exist for decades and not achieve more in the studio, unless, as you imply, either they did, or it really was via the live performances that the songs came to, well, life.

I think the main reason they didn't achieve more in the studio is that they just didn't want to. Studio work was boring. As the doc points out, they were all about having fun, and apart from Workingman's American Dead Beauty, and maybe some of the nitrous-inspired fuckery on Anthem and Aoxawhatever, studio work simply wasn't fun for them. Hell, they stopped making records entirely for seven years, and the one they eventually put out (In The Dark) was recorded in a simulated live environment (empty theater, all their gear set up on stage as it would be for a show).

'uncle john's band" "dire wolf" "casey jones" all fucking amazing songs that stand up with prime band material imo

it's never merely that they have a great batch of songs to draw on or that they inevitably turned these songs inside out and found new, loose, shambolic, paths through them (cf. the evolution of "sugaree" live through different eras of the band, or the way "playing in the band" becomes a boiling cauldron of dark water the longer it is stretched out); it's.... both

it's also fine to not "get" this or to even want to "get" this

(i sometimes think people who don't get the dead just haven't found the right show (mine was pembroke pines 77 baby!!! which is why i mentioned "sugaree")) (but also i'm not gonna force this theory on anyone lol)

july 69 is also the month that two london HA chapters received official charters and hence approved status, so i guess they jumped from the fake poseur column to the actual real angels (on vespas) column there and then lol -- they certainly feature far more in the story of the hawkwind end of the uk underground after 1970

anyway green's book has several interviewees effectively saying that the pre-altamont interraction (with the us *and* the uk angels) was not in the event SO awful that it set the radar pinging as it probably shd have, in respect of what altamont wd become

(re george harrison's invitees: there were apparently only two of them? and as far as i can find UK people were more annoyed at their extreme rudeness and arseholism than actively scared of them but many of these tale-told-years-later need a cupful of salt with them) (i shd def reread the booth)

xpost Why not? Given all the things people like and say about the Dead, including what you literally just wrote, why would someone not want to even try to get it? Like, Phish, I could give a phuck, but the Dead has always been intriguing, if only on paper.

https://www.beatlesbible.com/wp/media/681204_george-harrison-hells-angels-memo-apple-580x386.jpg

xpost Why not? Given all the things people like and say about the Dead, including what you literally just wrote, why would someone not want to even try to get it? Like, Phish, I could give a phuck, but the Dead has always been intriguing, if only on paper.

― Josh in Chicago, Saturday, June 8, 2019 8:07 AM (one minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

lol i guess i just spent 20 years hating the dead and now that i like them i don't feel the need to convince anyone. but, as evidenced by this thread (and also as evidenced by how many times i've told my story about getting into the dead on this board, it was v much a dawning realization that happened while i listened to "sugaree" in a park), you're right, they *are* intriguing, and i also think the process of getting into them is kinda inherently interesting

Go for it! Pick, like, 10 from 1975 on or whatever.

Whoa whoa whoa... 1975 on? Is this a trap, lol?

xx-p that's the famous advance warning, yes -- looking a bit deeper, the "only two turned up" version seems to refer to apple itself, there may have been more wandering around london that day

Me, I’m still at the “intriguing but still I take the needle off/change the playlist after 30 seconds, don’t dig the Deadhead lifestyle” phase but maybe in my few remaining decades I will finally see the light.

Some of my favorite Dead-written songs (as “songs”):

St. Stephen
China Cat
Bertha
Wharf Rat
Manson’s Children
He’s Gone
Jack Straw
Ramble on Rose
Tennessee Jed
Mississippi Half-Step Uptown Toodeloo
Row Jimmy
Stella Blue
Eyes of the World (...heck, just listen to Wake of the Flood!)
U.S. Blues
China Doll
Unbroken Chain
Money Money (just kidding, it’s the pits)
Franklin’s Tower
Fire on the Mountain
Touch of Grey
Standing on the Moon

For me the issue with the Dead songs... I like the stuff that inspired them, the Harry Smith stuff, and the songs, you know, they wrote good songs. Attics of My Life is a great song. But they were always, even when they managed to hit the harmonies OK, they were always ragged, which isn't something I'm into. I grew up listening to Crosby Stills and Nash - obviously there's a lot of crossover there but CSN's harmonies were so much better. They're honestly just as limited in what they can do instrumentally as they are vocally, but I can adjust to an aimless noodle better than I can to a good song sung badly.

Was listening to "In Revolving Ash Light" from _Grayfolded_ again yesterday. I really liked _Plunderphonics_ and Grayfolded has been a struggle for me, because on first listen it just sounds like the fucking Grateful Dead. Going back to it after listening to the Dead is like re-listening to "Free Jazz" after actually getting some kind of functional understanding of free jazz; I can pick it apart and hear what Oswald is doing with the material, what he hears in the performances. This is useful to me because I have been very slow to understand the appeal of '69 Dark Stars; I came in through '72, and Oswald doesn't really touch '72. I don't think _Live/Dead_ is ever a record I'll like. I think St. Stephen is a perfectly awful song and have no particular desire to hear Pigpen do anything, which basically leaves Side A, and Garcia's soloing on it comes off to me as this protracted guitar hero thing, like listening to the goddamn Allman Brothers or something. Also, fuck the cuica.

Anyway, yesterday I listened to "In Revolving Ash Light" on headphones and basically heard Garcia's constant soloing as background - listen to enough of it and it's easy to ignore. What I heard in it yesterday was the roil and churn of the background, the way adding multiple layers increases the chaos inherent in pretty much any Dead performance. The way Oswald is interested in getting Garcia to harmonize with himself, the panning, the instruments popping in and out. Over everything else the way Oswald replicates the flow of a good Dead performance. I know it's a hippie cliche, but it does remind me a little bit of a Mandelbrot zoom, the way it seems like it's growing and going somewhere but is really just getting deeper into itself.

I might have to try Cleveland '73 again. I hear it described as "inside out", but mostly it just sounded like lethargic bunk.

there's a bit in richard neville's playpower about the angels visit to london/apple... the details of which escape me now, but would have been a near contemporary recollection of events.

xp the Allman Brothers rule, wtf

Manson’s Children sic

picked up a boot recently with the demo version of that & a stretched-out live rendition from the miami pop festival with some of the worst vocals i've ever heard the dead lay down (looking at you bob weir), but the playing is mindbendingly intense!

whoops, lol

MASON’S Children

Josh try the aforementioned Wake Of The Flood/Blues For Allah/Mars Hotel run, some good songs on those

xp the Allman Brothers rule, wtf

― Ambient Police (sleeve)

they're no hampton grease band (now THERE'S a jam band for you!)

the allman brothers do fuckin rule

their appeal seems p distinct from the dead despite surface-level similarities

Just listened to a bunch of those songs. Some I know from other people doing them, like Bertha and Wharf Rat (Midnight Oil is like the least Dead-y band ever). Some of those songs are totally fine but all in the same loping funkless slow-groove-while-guitar-noodles-aimlessly mode that I don't really like. Some of those songs totally sound like Band songs that aren't as good as the Band, but I do like the Wake of the Flood stuff, which I'd never heard. Still very Band-y, but not bad! I have a bad feeling that as much as people may prefer live versions of this stuff they may make the aspects I don't like go on even longer and more prominently - off harmonies, rhythm-free rhythm section, incessant guitar noodles ...

(I concede it's not fair to keep bringing up the Band, because not only were they exceptional, even they couldn't keep it together for more than a couple of albums.)

Anyway, maybe I'll give that mid '70s streak a shot! Rush, I do see what you're getting at when describing the way the guitar kind of turns in on itself. I just wish the playing was more interesting (to me), but also to be fair, if I wanted to hear something on par with (either) Miles Davis Quintet I would just listen to that.

I will say I watched a Dead & Co. set on YouTube for some reason and if you ever doubted Jerry's importance wow you should see what a turgid shitshow it is now

I thought trey did a very good job on the initial few shows. I don’t have a problem with John Mayer as a guitar player but his style is too one dimensional. Multi-dimensional is a good way to describe Jerry’s approach, I guess

(I concede it's not fair to keep bringing up the Band, because not only were they exceptional, even they couldn't keep it together for more than a couple of albums.)

I have a pet theory about how The Band had 'it' up 'til 70, when they got outpaced by band's they influenced, like the Dead, Little Feat, Neil Young, Sir Doug etc.

I don't think they were outpaced, it's just that they changed the DNA of music. Afterter the Band, even Eric Clapton and the Beatles and the superstar like were trying to be like the Band. The acts you note I think came close to the *idea* of the Band, but of course they were a one-off.

I blame Manuel and Danko sinking further into alcoholism and drugs, ceding all control to Robbie

“Cats under the stars” and “Reuben and Cherise” are two lovely Jerry solo things that y’all should check out

I also don't really associate the Band and the Dead that much. feel like the Band is fundamentally an R&B/rock n roll band and the Dead is a folk band

yeah

the band are r&b

oh you said that, lol

“Cats under the stars” and “Reuben and Cherise” are two lovely Jerry solo things that y’all should check out”

Seconded...

"The Weight," "Up On Cripple Creek" and "The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down" are about as definitive as Band songs get, and there's nothing particularly or conventionally R&B or rock about them. I think the key to the Band is that no matter what they were playing they were innately soulful and funky, more a matter of "how" than "what." The vibe and groove of "Cripple Creek" in particular is a good example of a song whose vibe the Dead sometimes echoes, at least to my ears, but imo minus the soul and funkiness, at least not to the degree that the Band delivered it.

i like the grateful dead. i think they're a pretty good band,

Up On Cripple Creek is funky as hell!!

One of the funkiest of all time! but there is nothing particularly r&B or rock about it.

I also don't really associate the Band and the Dead that much. feel like the Band is fundamentally an R&B/rock n roll band and the Dead is a folk band

I blame Manuel and Danko sinking further into alcoholism and drugs, ceding all control to Robbie

Some of those songs are totally fine but all in the same loping funkless slow-groove-while-guitar-noodles-aimlessly mode that I don't really like.

Anyway, maybe I'll give that mid '70s streak a shot! Rush, I do see what you're getting at when describing the way the guitar kind of turns in on itself. I just wish the playing was more interesting (to me), but also to be fair, if I wanted to hear something on par with (either) Miles Davis Quintet I would just listen to that.

― Josh in Chicago

if you want to listen to the dead at all you really have to get into the lope. the dead are the lopiest band ever. also, i've heard the dead trying to be "funky" - "funkless" is absolutely not a pejorative when it comes to the dead imo.

i do think there's some really good stuff on blues for allah, but i'm a proghead. i feel like the prog on there is better than the awkward forays into seven and eleven they tried to do back in the '60s.

the dead of course were never on par with miles, but particularly after miles opened for them in '70 they started to get this "shitty fusion miles" vibe, which to me is worth listening to. they peaked in '72 for me.

tried cleveland '73; didn't last five minutes with "dark star", too much of nothing, but the china->rider clicked with me for whatever reason. i don't know if i'd heard any '73 china->riders before. vox were really nice! jam wasn't as good as the song portion, which is... rare with the dead... but was still good. i'll have to check out 11-11.

lol shitty fusion miles. It's like that bit in the first Wayne's World.

Wayne: Who is playing tonight?
Doorman: The Shitty Beatles
Wayne: Are they any good?
Doorman: No man, they suck!

i think aimless solos are cool, what's the point of having an 'aim' anyway