should i give the grateful dead a chance?

Is jelly roll driving you stone mad?

aoxomoxoa is really good imo let me break it down by track

St Stephen -- top 3 dead jam, Garcia's deep folk knowledge under proper west coast psych lens. better live of course, '69 st stephens are utter fire but still psych dead at their best 10/10
Dupree's Diamond Blues -- i often find the Dead in storytelling mode kind of nihilistic and unpleasant and this is why -- what is the narrator's opinion of the proceedings here? amused, kinda? something sleazy about it, like the closer I get the sleazier it feels, which is a weird way for a genteel folk blues song to behave, and very compelling as you keep looking at it again, like a slasher movie 9/10
Rosemary -- so delicate and odd, JG's vibe isn't usually in the English folk realm but it's clear he knows that stuff, too -- the instrumental intervals are like nothing else in the catalogue, should be longer though. 8/10
Doin' That Rag -- JG is really not the man to be singing this weird, extremely historically centered (San Francisco after the tourists have started moving in & everybody's feeling aggro about it & about things generally) tune though he settles into it about halfway in. If you told me "this song uses every major chord in the scale at least once" I would believe you. the coda is tedious, 7/10
Mountains of the Moon -- more of JG getting the straight-no-chaser folk out of his system but of course they're hippies so they gotta roto the vocals. This & Rosemary represent a single impulse not shared with the rest of the album really. v hypnotic jam though 10/10
China Cat Sunflower - lol it's only 3:40 here, that's not even like an appetizer bite of CCS. plays more like straight SF psych, that intro is so convincingly off-the-cuff. knowing the heights this one reaches live it's hard to be objective about the tame studio version but as a template it does the necessary, 9/10
What's Become of the Baby? - so this would be the Truly Weird GD right but I feel like their hearts aren't truly in it, it's a gesture & maybe an assertion of Seriousness. An unconvincing assertion, there were lots of people doing this better in '69. still, they commit to it for eight minutes, 5/10
Cosmic Charlie - what, are you fucking kidding, this is an all-time jam no doubt, with more of that weirdo "why do I get a sleazy vibe off you?" "philosophy" -- blues as shared hallucination, the tension between JG's folk-music-instructor past & the band's we-are-always-higher-than-God life is in perfect balance here. winds up the album with another "more going on musically that it feels like if you're just nodding your head" song just like the album opened. reportedly a commentary on their local scene, how would I know, these phrases feel so hermetic that you just sort of have to listen like you would to a poem about a painting you've never actually seen. 10/10

couldn't make it past 30 seconds of St. Stephen's awful group vocals and clumsy attempts at syncopation, sorry

bud you know I got love for you but when a grown person who knows music says they "couldn't make it past thirty seconds" of anything I know they didn't do any actual listening

I listened for 30 seconds until someone let out a whoop/yell and then I was like "nope, I'm done"

haha fair. what you gotta do is hear how electric that yell is on 5/23/69, you see the [is ushered offstage by an enormous cane]

lol

ftr i started in on live/dead afterwards and was enjoying it somewhat more until i had to do something else -- the one person i know irl who loves GD (rather implausibly given the rest of his taste, aside from he's old) swears by the live jams

but there's a tone to the over-chirpy deployment of the "deep folk knowledge" on aoxomoxoa that just rubs me up the wrong way. smugness? maybe that's not the word tho, maybe i'll have to listen more to pin it down…

unconvinced i will ever come to love the singing

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

You've got me started now. I just listened to this and it's garbage. And that "St Stephen" song sounds like any ramshackle bottom-of-the-bill band ca. 1969/70.

yes i don't think i'd much like the baby song if i just heard it on its own out of the context of what was around it, but in context it seemed like a nice rest mood-wise

also as i was skipping around finding what came before and after i noticed that xgau disliked only it in his original review and that made me like it a bit more also

I don't think the Grateful Dead are for the likes of us, i.e. Britishes.

that yell is, of course, awesome

it's awfulness is only exceeded by the drums and guitars going out of sync immediately afterwards

Didn't the drummer study with Stockhausen or something? How come he can't play a piss easy song like that?

xp That's when the magic happens! How do you like Royal Trux so much, but not that moment(!?)

that is actually kind of a good question...?

I think all the Trux stuff I really like (ie, from Cats and Dogs on) has a pretty shit-tight rhythm section, for one thing. And Hagerty as a guitar player just goes places that are so unpredictable, always keeps me guessing without devolving into tuneless wankery, and I appreciate that a lot. Whenever I listen to the Dead I get the sense that they're trying to do a certain thing (a folk pop song, a blues jam, a "jazz odyssey", vocal harmonies, etc.) and, unfortunately, failing. I don't get that sense from the Trux, they aren't trying to nail any particular trope, they're turning them inside out.

fwiw the one thing that I heard on St. Stephen that I thought sounded pretty good was Jerry's guitar tone.

His guitar playing is the only thing about the Grateful Dead I like.

a fair take tbh

but there's a tone to the over-chirpy deployment of the "deep folk knowledge" on aoxomoxoa that just rubs me up the wrong way. smugness? maybe that's not the word tho, maybe i'll have to listen more to pin it down…

also yes its condescension. the west coast hippie vibe was incredibly condescending

That's funny, I don't hear that presentation of "deep folk knowledge" or stuffiness, reverence, whatever... if anything, it's playful and irreverent(!)

the GD were pretty sarcastic and condescending too. some of bobby's banter on late 60s shows are downright mean. would harsh a trip man

Well, sure... "Everybody take two giant steps back, so the folks in front of the stage don't end up two-dimensional."

I don't think that comes through in the music, though

is drumming a thing you'd learn from stockhausen? he was more or less totally allergic to the notion of a good beat

the GD were pretty sarcastic and condescending too. some of bobby's banter on late 60s shows are downright mean. would harsh a trip man

so much of their banter is just smarmy. my favorite is at the end of a luminous "he was a friend of mine" here:

https://archive.org/details/gd1969-04-23.sbd.miller.88501.sbeok.flac16/gd69-04-23d1t02.flac

GD: plays first song
fan: Morning Dew!
GD: No. Fuck you. You gotta stick around to hear Morning Dew

is drumming a thing you'd learn from stockhausen? he was more or less totally allergic to the notion of a good beat

― mark s

idk can seemed to do pretty good on the drumming front

anyway i am definitely on whatever team holds that anthem of the sun and aoxamoxoa or however the fuck you spell that crap is horse puckey and that they're putting in "psychedelic" weird crap to cover up the fact that they had no fucking idea how to write or record a proper "psychedelic" song at this point (it's an open question as to whether they ever figured that out), and that whatever else you can say about the "roots" music from '70 on at least the goddamn songwriting is basically solid

there are better psychsploitation albums than "anthem of the sun"

i like "what's become of the baby" but only because nobody else does, i like henry flynt and the insurrections too and they're objectively terrible

13 posts and no one has mentioned that neither GD drummer ever studied with Stockhausen

nobody wants to fucking talk about tom constanten here, i mean really why would you

i'll talk to you about peter kaukonen all fucking day though

Ok, this kind of discussion is what originally drew me to ILM and what I still truly love. Interesting hearing the Brits constitutionally opposed to the Dead give some of it a try. (Lol to Shakey's 30 seconds.) You might be surprised how they can get their hooks in you if you give them half a chance. I've been there.

what is the narrator's opinion of the proceedings here? amused, kinda? something sleazy about it, like the closer I get the sleazier it feels, which is a weird way for a genteel folk blues song to behave, and very compelling as you keep looking at it again, like a slasher movie

JCLC starts to get at a central element of the Grateful Dead. That bemused, we're all fucked/going to die/let's have fun while we go/I got mine mentality. It pervades so much of their stuff, like Mexacali Blues and Jack Straw. Cowboy nihilism.
It has the seeds of the yuppie mentality in it. Everyone thinks the Dead are some sort of flower children. Let's just say, it wasn't the Stones that brought the Hell's Angels to Altamont.

If Americans can love The Fall, I reckon Brits can love the Dead.

Just started Peter Richardson's No Simple Highway earlier today.

A lot of you haven't listened to aoxomoxoa on nitrous, and it shows.

FULL DISCLOSURE: I haven't either.

Phil Lesh was the 'core four' band member with an interest in modern classical/electronic music, and he did study with Luciano Berio for a while. Also:

During many 1974 Grateful Dead concerts over several tours, including Europe, Ned Lagin performed a middle set of electronic music, including parts of his composition Seastones, on computer-controlled analog synthesizers with Phil Lesh on electronically processed bass. Some sets included Jerry Garcia playing guitar filtered through effects processors and Bill Kreutzmann on drums; these sets occasionally segued into the final Grateful Dead set

Garcia's first alb also has a number of 'out' electronic pieces that may well have been inspired by Stockhausen and similar. And of course he turns on Ornette's Virgin Beauty alb.

As a Britisher Deadhead I'm going to say that there are more of us than you might think - I know Biba Kopf and Edwin Pouncey are major Deadheads, the Dead always played pretty large venues when they toured the UK, and I know of at least one UK Dead outdoor celebration festival that a pal of mine goes to every year.

Just say no.
― Andrew L, Tuesday, 23 July 2002 01:00 (seventeen years ago) bookmarkflaglink

what a long strange etc

LOL

Apologies if I've mentioned my conversion point before - I went to see Television at ULU (about 14 years or so ago) and enjoyed 'the jams' much more than the songs, which got me to thinking about similar groups - and voila! The Dead. Still think that there's a strong similarity between the Verlaine/Lloyd and Garcia/Lesh/Weir interactions. And there are moments when Garcia and Richard Thompson sound very similar.

All true. Was thinking of Fairport in connection with this thread last night, now there was a band with a phenomenal rhythm section.

relistening this morning and still finding it p hard work: feels like every time there's a rhythmic turnaround (which is often) they somewhat bludge it, i really don't like the vocals or the pervasive bumptious mimsiness, and 40-plus years of reading the word aoxomoxoa with that as the cover but never trying the actual record out had unfortunately led me to anticipate some blistering mix of mex-psych and maximal peyote drift, woodstock-era santana meets castaneda meets oscar zeta acosta and um it's not that (which is perhaps not entirely their fault lol) (but is better than this even if the dream of it only exists in my stereotype-ridden head)

stockhausen and/or berio plus remotely understands syncopation (let alone clavé or bugalú or whatever) wd also be a thing i had more time for (= 70s miles so i guess already exists in the world)

ts live/dead vs live/evil

also ts live/evil vs live/evil lol i have no work excuse for listening to sabbath today but i might end up doing so anyway

The Dead shared a bill with various Electric Miles groups, and Miles speaks relatively well of them in his autobiography (at least compared to the Steve Miller group). They did get a bit fusion-y round abt their 73/74 tours tho I don't think anyone would ever mistake them for the Mahavishnu Orchestra.

Kreutzmann/Hart are always more rhythmical stiff than just Kreutzmann on his own, especially in the studio.

basically my favourite garcia will always be the guitar on virgin beauty

feels like every time there's a rhythmic turnaround (which is often) they somewhat bludge it

ha yes. that malkmus is reportedly a big deadhead feels like a data point always worth remembering if trying to describe what the Dead do

live dead update: having to re-process unprejudicially a fvckton of stuff i came up as a year-zero uk punk teen summarily dispensing with (mainly lumpishly bad white versions of black music i guess)

tbf i have come to terms with some of this in UK terms (white 60s blues is a problematically interesting phenom, i am sorta kinda here for rory gallagher if not clapton lol) and possibly can for this ur-version full of unrelated stuff i bridle against for different reasons BUT

also "feedback" is no ARC-WELD :|

(white 60s blues is a problematically interesting phenom, i am sorta kinda here for rory gallagher if not clapton lol)

The minimalist/restrained school of late '60s/early '70s British blues/blues-rock is fantastic. Robin Trower > Rory Gallagher. Also, Free.

I never got why people (OK, often Brits) apparently compared (or I guess compare?) Television to the Grateful Dead. While I concede they both have guitars, beyond that I don't hear it. Fairport has a little more in common, at least on the surface, but of course the musicianship and singing in Fairport is superlative. (I don't hear any similarities between Garcia and Thompson either, for that matter.)

Robin Trower > Rory Gallagher.

love to Rory but this is the truth

Irish Tour 74 doc is on Amazon Prime right now
what a fucking cutie love Rory