should i give the grateful dead a chance?

so weird how they killed China Cat and Rider then sounded like a substandard bar band that half learned their own song

yes, and they're up against one of their best studio moments ever & one of their finest songs -- Box of Rain is an outlier I think, doesn't really fit it with their live look at all. It is disappointing that they never, to the best of my knowledge, figure out a way to make it work live, it's so good, despite trying over 100 times.

save your face blog rules even though it hasn't quite converted me to 94 just yet. deadessays blogspot is also fun to read through if you want to get deep, deep into the weeds, i discovered the 6/24/70 aud from there, now one of my all time faves.

Though defunct, http://www.deadlistening.com/ led me to some great shows, but it may exceed one's tolerance for the type of comments mentioned a few posts up:

Here the audience tape provides a glimpse into the sonic tidal wave of the Grateful Dead in a fashion not readily available in any other tape this reviewer can bring to memory. After the “lady finger” section of the song proves to be intensely personal - it is so within the head that the head expands to fill all space - the flash pot/gunshot that follows becomes an endgame for the senses. The music becomes enormous, even cataclysmic, as if towering forces are locked in battle. Galaxies collide, exploding in endless eruptions. Above it all, a cymbal swell begins to take form, certainly a mainstay portion of this tune. But this tape brings it into bone bleaching focus. The swell begins to level everything in its path, yet the music muscles its way even higher. Nothing is left of personal space. There is no room left. Here, we are lost to the music. We are gone. And the sound wall continues to roar. This one passage delivers the goods so completely, it starts to make sense why people would religiously follow the band from show to show for decades. You come out on the other side wondering, what just happened? Sensational.

that's almost poll-worthy

lol it's hard to remember sometimes that those cosmic pronouncements are about the same band that could also produce this (on the same site!)

Mind you, I am walking you into Bob’s “learn slide guitar on the job” phase, and I apologize in advance for this. Haven’t heard about how bad Bob was on slide? Well, my friends… there is little to say, and painfully plenty to hear.

Sometimes I just wonder if deadheads have ever heard any other bands before.

It makes for ideal pastures as far as I’m concerned. And in listening to the more exploratory expanses of this fine show I am continually brought to the state of mind where my eyes can no longer perceive the physical space around me. The vivid imagery which floods my vision while my eyes are closed tight suffuses everything continually. And in that vision where light burns around shadows and perspective swims in a sea of joy, I am repeatedly exposed to a musical journey which seems to travel through a landscape constructed of a Mandelbrot set fractal.

I kid, rather than mock — I wish something would move me as much as any given Dead show moves this blogger!

Sometimes I just wonder if deadheads have ever heard any other bands before.

In my experience, most Deadheads I've met fall into one of two camps - all Dead/Garcia all the time, or voracious listeners with surprisingly varied tastes.

i respect the Dead for a few reasons:
- the loyalty they inspire
- the band and its followers' role in tape and bootleg culture
- a few decent studio cuts

otherwise, i'm totally lost as to what the fuck is the big deal. most of it is unlistenable garbage even if one is high as giraffe balls.

(and like posters at the beginning of the thread, i've tried plenty of times, i sold drugs when i was an Oberlin student)

xp yeah obviously the second kind exist in good numbers, but it's the first kind that's sort of dumbfounding sometimes. They talk like Jerry invented improvising, like no other band has ever gone "outside," like john coltrane hadn't already made his most experimental albums and died by the time the first grateful dead record came out (roughly), like there wasn't also stuff like electric Miles and Mahavishnu orchestra by the time Europe 72 came out, etc.

I had a friend who for a long time listened almost exclusively to classical music with the Dead as his one concession to popular music.

xp yeah obviously the second kind exist in good numbers, but it's the first kind that's sort of dumbfounding sometimes. They talk like Jerry invented improvising, like no other band has ever gone "outside," like john coltrane hadn't already made his most experimental albums and died by the time the first grateful dead record came out (roughly), like there wasn't also stuff like electric Miles and Mahavishnu orchestra by the time Europe 72 came out, etc.

Oh yeah, getting stuck in a convo with one of those heads that can't (or won't) acknowledge improvisation in any other context are maddening. You try to mention Coltrane or any sort of contemporary improv scene and they just stare blankly before swinging back to a "but Jerry".

what i find interesting about these sorts of conversations is that it makes me wonder what value i find in bands like...well, let's say NNCK, or why i sometimes listen to old WWVV live sets on a loop all day. maybe it's the influence of jazz, noise, and electronics? this is the most palpable reason i've ever settled on, because part of why i can't stand the Dead is that their sound has always struck me as incredibly "thin," and i think part of that is simply instrumentation.

I had a friend who for a long time listened almost exclusively to classical music with the Dead as his one concession to popular music.

― Mazzy Tsar (PBKR), Monday, June 10, 2019 4:32 PM (thirty-six minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

That basically describes Keith Godchaux IIRC

ya i dunno i think this sounds pretty good. some of these videos i've seen have verged on embarassing but they sound nice!

https://www.facebook.com/BobbyWeir/videos/464980101037007/?__xts__[0]=68.ARB60fBGKZ6W1CaXJpOKOp2vKqIXxhyRaClS9bgIwz4z0_41pFWJOqUy5emaQzGccTo8FHLYHKzQPpwJdR-rUNIltMiZ6aFujZ_KZhxkf_VoyRjwJmUCw-p0VHNCjs4S_IOvz8ClVqtY8TVjwWIQ8Z1S83iU627ES7XucaXT3CZe4uYONo4j2HwPzuh9-mxHyTw87IXZO6DFqrh1VX_-siLVwgvwcAOE9tEZG8sjdWUGuDShlajO_yMFuIjqXvQloNnyIGZ_7NXcJyBpLGkYv7lwGen0Sj1u4RjzbkAvSXujs8CyA-LbHswYL3inWTIFNlGO5UKPqSolUwUx-VWkNHg5Tw6DjsF-ELE&__tn__=-R

still not convinced they mic mickey until drums/space tho

doing my daily ritual of listening to This Day in History and wondering if anyone of Throbbing Gristle were into the Dead? I'm actually listening to Seastones for a change and it sounds very 'Industrial'. Whole show is killer, Wall of Sound AUD. Providence 6-26-74

https://archive.org/details/gd74-06-26.moore.weiner.gdADT17.16037.sbeok.shnf/gd74-06-26d3t01.shn

def a possibility:

https://i.pinimg.com/originals/41/fd/94/41fd9471bbfacb0ee74e56f98f3968a4.jpg

ha! God(dess) Bless E

Switched to the Matrix and Bill now has 8 arms.

I always thought Seastones was more filler entr'acte new age electronics, not grotty bass feedback and ring oscillation through 1000 speakers.

seastones is something that should be entirely my scene in theory but is just so tedious in practice

only lagin/dead i dig is the SNACK benefit, now there is the wanky prog jams i always wanted from the dead

This is a pretty good writeup of a recent Dead & Co. show. Normally I hate this kind of "young person parachutes into cultural phenomenon, comes away unimpressed" story, but this one is well written.

I felt a pang of regret at not going to the Citi show -- he played WOLF maaaaaan! I feel like it would have been fun in a certain way just to experience even an echo of the atmosphere of Dead shows since I never got to attend one. Then I was reminded that even in the $150 seat I almost bought off a friend I'd basically be watching them on a giant television, and then I watched a couple of videos of some pretty weak and sloppy drumming behind John Mayer's highly skilled but somehow unspirited soloing ("too perfect" in the same sense that Miles found George Coleman's solos to be, no risk taking, no mistakes) and a very unpleasantly noodly piano. I still have mixed feelings about not having gone just bc it could be "the last chance." I'm very torn between "the whole thing is a boomer con" and "experience something larger than yourself" in my views on it.

The Morning Dew sounded pretty good. Maybe I should just try to go see the current Bob Weir thing sometime -- he's fun.

he's "doing it for the kids," or the kids' money... if the kids were a bunch of boomers who never stopped smoking pot and thought of themselves as "cool parents"

sorry, i'm being a bitch, i just hate the Dead

i skipped this year but i went to citi night 2 in 2018 and i'd say there was a bunch of stuff that was pleasant but kinda plodding and a genuinely great 20 minutes of communal joy during st stephen -> the eleven. experiencing that moment in a stadium was pretty powerful. i don't dare to listen back though.

the best piece of dead journalism ever imo is jeff weiss's magnum opus on fare thee well : https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/6wqgz4/the-grateful-dead-chicago-fare-thee-well-2015

sorry, i'm being a bitch, i just hate the Dead

― blue light or electric light (the table is the table), Thursday, June 27, 2019 5:22 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

don't flatter yourself that we care either way

I still have mixed feelings about not having gone just bc it could be "the last chance."

i love the dead but let's be real "the last chance" was a few decades ago and yes this is a boomer con. you are not missing much. i went last summer and had fun laying on a blanket on the grass getting high w/ friends but it was too expensive just for that, it's really just another outdoor concert, and the music was more or less equivalent to a dead cover band. "something larger than yourself" at a dead & co show in 2019 is mostly the screen that you are watching them on and the sea of drunk fans who are mostly in pretty rough shape.

thx, ur a good dude for putting my regrets to rest

I used to think all live Grateful Dead was all just a single, interminable song. Now that's exactly what I love about it.

this 'cream puff war' is outstanding

https://archive.org/details/gd66-12-01.sbd.ladner.8575.sbeok.shnf/gd66-12-01d1t10.shn

often when i'm listening to the dead i get to a particularly terribly played song with awful vocals and i wonder 'why am i listening to this shit?'. this isn't one of those times

oh yeah that is a great one, kind of interesting because it's more of a straightforward "psychedelic jam" than one would usually expect from jerry

Yeah Jerry going off there. So energized, into this era for sure (early Dead kind the only road I go down for the most part these days cause I am lazy).

Man do I love "Viola Lee Blues." Something about that song really gets me.

same

I know it's probably an obvious/consensus pick, but I love this version so much
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3vC6ZfzIBEg

going out on top for sure

dp22 and rio nido '67 are also fine versions

a couple months ago i did try to find live versions of every song on that first lp because while people have come around to it for a long time it was deprecated despite containing some of their all-time classic material

had to give up on that 'cause (1) i couldn't sit through pig doing "good morning little school girl" (2) there are better live versions of, say, "morning dew" than there are of "the golden road" (label didn't hear a single...)

Yeah that version is really really great. I love when they would dig in that hard. I mean sounds practically like the Dead C for a bit there. Rules.

lol waht

After the breakup of the Soviet Union, Lithuania could not afford to send its basketball team to the 1992 Olympics.

The Grateful Dead offered to sponsor the team provided they played in tie-dyed uniforms. The team wore them on the podium when they took home the bronze medal. pic.twitter.com/gswqYbrGgE

— Bocaj (@pisschalice) February 3, 2020

you see those shirts on ebay sometimes for $$$ they are extremely sick

i would 100% wear one of those

Gave this beer a chance, and it’s great:

https://www.dogfish.com/brewery/beer/american-beauty-hazy-ripple-ipa

How many chances do the grateful dead deserve, really

for work reasons i am currently giving aoxomoxoa its first even chance, things aren't going well tbh

How many chances do the grateful dead deserve, really

As many as it takes, maaaaaaaan.

xpost

Which mix?

i sort of like the long droney gregorian chant kind of thing ("what's become of the baby"): it's not that good but at least it isn't so fucking PERKY, most of the rest of it just drives me mental

the mix that's on spotify (2013)

Is jelly roll driving you stone mad?