should i give the grateful dead a chance?

Listened to that live set and hooboy that run of “Greatest Story Ever Told” through “Hard to Handle” is a bit too much Weir lead vocals for me.

If I let myself start buying the 50th A. sets, would also get Anthem of the Sun and prob Aoxomoxoa---how's the debut s/t?

xp haha! i think that is first eve "greatest story" — and it shows!
funny, i was listening to that new live set included with The Band's Stage Fright and it's like those dudes were Steely Dan compared to the Dead. But then again, you don't ever get that weird trainwreck danger you do from the Dead.

(All of the live bonus sets are still on archive.org, or were the last tyme I checked.)

weird trainwreck danger you do from the Dead.

how's the debut s/t?
It is okay. The live set included is nothing revelatory, its worth is dependent on your opinion of those early days. There isn't a whole lot of jamming, outside of "Viola Lee Blues." The sets on WD and AB are both more interesting. Have not listened to the Anthem 50th, though it looks good. I don't think they released one for Aoxomoxoa.

They did one for Aoxomoxoa which has both stereo mixes of the album on disc 1, and a live show from the Avalon Ballroom on disc 2.

so they did! My bad.

Does anyone stand for weirs solo record from 78? Overcooked

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fGB46f4fGzc

typo or accurate description?

I’m at the “why do i keep trying to listen to this terrible band” stage which, if this thread is anything to go by, is the first stage of fandom

did the dead ever do “la woman”?

Halfway through Robert Greenfield's Bear: The Life and Times of Augustus Owsley Stanley III. He was, as Sydney Greenstreet would say, quite a character. His lineage encompassed the highest reaches of Kentucky politics--governor, senator, even talk of a presidential run one year.

XXP that was me last year!

that's me at time as a confirmed fan

My road to moderate Dead fandom went from seeing them with Dylan and Petty in the late '80s and thinking they were boring and kind of embarrassing (Dylan and Petty were fine), to enjoying "Touch of Grey," to picking up the Long Strange Trip 2-CD compilation sometime in the '90s, to having a crush on a hippie chick who gave me some live tapes to listen to, to hearing a live track from a Jerry Garcia Band album in a record store and really clicking with Garcia's guitar playing ("oh yeah, this guy was great"), to a full immersion in the Napster/Slsk era. I've listened to their full studios discography over the years and a whole bunch of Dick's Picks and other live shows available on streaming, and I've reached the point now where they are among my go-to's to toss on whenever I can't think of what else to play. My early objections to their ragged vocals and rhythms have turned into fondness, and I recognize that at their best as a live band they were truly great. Just took a while for me to hear it.

did the dead ever do “la woman”?

― brimstead, Monday, March 29, 2021 11:44 AM (fifty minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

I don't think so, but after thinking about it for a bit I could imagine Jim Morrison bellowing out a version of West L.A. Fadeaway (except for maybe the verse about the mob/"copacetic").

my cousin (who i went to my only dead show with) and I used to sing the opening line of 'bombs away' just to enrage each other. I haven't heard the whole record though.

Probably just as well, though there are some l a session guys on there I think

Too bad The Doors didn't cover Dead (can well imagine Morrison listening, though, around the time of Morrison Hotel for inst) Los Lobos did do "West L.A, Fadeaway," and it fit right in.
from my Nashville Scene ballot comments re 2010 albums:

On Los Lobos' Tin Can Trust, it seems like the narrator is on the
verge, he's some old tired guy, but made up his mind to do something,
take revenge and/or a commission, various indicators of volatility
keep rolling by or up the block, and little jolts--I know, enough with
the foreplay already, but the tension keeps getting renewed,
reinforced, and the Dead cover, "West L.A. Fadeaway," fits perfectly,
with no crunchy granola attached
(it's all sidewalks and traffic, the whole album, and then
there's the sardonic "happy ending" history short). A cliche to say
it's a soundtrack for movies you can make up, but it really seems to
work that way, rumbling implications--if it were so definite a
storyline, would get too familiar too fast, perhaps. It is badass
urban country, obsessive as a shot glass lens.

the 8/24/72 dark star is a total masterpiece. i love it. that's it for now.

Veneta was like 3 days later which is a major peak on a number of songs .

2/26/77 PITB>The Wheel>PITB was playing on the Sirius Dead station on my morning commute. Good one!

That was one of the first shows I burned off archive.org when I started really getting into live GD.

Me too. That setlist is like their greatest hits for me.

the 8/24/72 dark star is a total masterpiece. i love it. that's it for now.

Still not quite sure I understand why they released the following night (a just fine, but not exceptional show for ‘72) instead of this one as a Dave’s Picks.

Who knows what they’re thinking. Seems to me they could have done a box set of the entire Berkeley run as a nice complement to the celebrated Oregon show. The Berkeley run is excellent from start to finish and I assume that just about any ‘72 release sells well.

I don't know if this is the best thread for it, but if any of you had, as I did, grown to love the hilariously irreverent and loving blog, Thoughts on the Dead, Brother of the Dead posted an update yesterday that Rick, the guy behind the blog, lost his battle with cancer at the terribly young age of 46.

I'll be firing up some Dead tonight (and schmedibles) in his honor tonight.

yeah that is a shame — very funny guy. 46, way too young.

I seem to always come back to roughly 70-72. I don't think the band ever sounded better - Kreutzmann's crisp drumming, Jerry's guitar still a bit raw sounding etc, everything usually pretty tight but just loose enough, etc. Plenty of good moments after that, but I'm more of a Harpur College guy than a Cornell guy.

No.

I thought they went through like 3 different feels between 70 and 71. though possibly more to do with Mickey Hart finding out about his dad having embezzled so much from the band and leaving in early 71. So they retreated from the full out space exploration of 70 and became the greatest bar band ever to quote somebody who I can't remember and then worked their way back out to longer exploration. Would love to have 70 incrementally morph into 72 while exploring the same sound. BUt I think they heavily retreated from long jamming in 71. Seemed to be back to it by the time they went to Europe and definitely were doing half hour Dark Stars by the time of Veneta.

Been listening to this show throughout the day tho, really enjoying it
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CRSiAwqVJRE

xp you've got it right re: their evolution from 70-72. I think a really interesting transitional period is fall 71, when Pigpen took a temporary break from the band and Keith joined on keys. They still have a foot firmly in "saloon Dead" territory, but they also start to really stretch out again (e.g. the legendary 10/31/71 "Dark Star"). At the same time they were breaking in a lot of the new Europe 72 songs. If I had to pick one show from that tour I'd go for 11/7/71, Harding Theatre, San Francisco, which is on the Archive in a good-quality soundboard taped from a radio broadcast. Keith is playing a properly out-of-tune honky-tonk piano, and there's an incredible Dark Star -> The Other One -> Me and My Uncle -> The Other One suite in the second set. "Me and My Uncle" is rarely worth comment, but this particular version blew my mind the first time I heard it materialize out of the Other One space jam. It absolutely RIPS

Wild to read through the "journey" of my old posts on this thread gradually coming around over many years.

I think if I could explain something to young me about the Dead is that you can't expect them to scratch the same itch that other seemingly related types of music might scratch. They have psych trappings but they won't scratch the heavy psych itch (other than maybe Anthem and some early stuff, and even then, it's not gonna be riffage like Zep or Sabbath). It's too sloppy and not "advanced" enough to satisfy a prog rock or fusion itch. It's not funky enough for funk, it's not pickin enough for country, it's noodlier than pretty much anything on earth.

The Dead are just, like, The Dead, man. You take them as they are and they return the favor.

Got a CDR of Terrapin Station & Shakedown Street that has been getting quite a bit of road use. Those are pretty good albums, couple tunes kinda wack. It would have been hilarious if Arista had gotten one of those tunes on the charts and the Dead play a TV show like Solid Gold. Still too weird man...

Soul Train line to Shakedown

Ha! The Dead on Soul Train might have happened on Earth III.

lol, of COURSE this is already a whole genre of video
http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=soul+train+grateful+dead

almost as entertaining as the People Dancing to Steely Dan account

The world is delightfully weird sometimes.

The Dead are just, like, The Dead, man. You take them as they are and they return the favor.

This is spot on and after all these years of trying last year it clicked for me. Stop searching for something that it is not but just enjoy the bomb songs and guitar trips through bright and shiny meadows.

Found my copy of Dick's Picks vol 16 last night and have the wrong disc as #3. It's Modey lemon not them, I don't remember the last time I took the cd out or actually having a copy of Modey Lemon. Which is a pain since not sure if I have this 3rd disc now. Oh bummer.

So haven't had cd out in way too long and not sure where I was when I did. Hoping that I have a reverse of this and it wasn't at somebody else's place. 69 Dead is pretty cool. Glad that wasn't disc 2 where they actually go from Dark Star into Other One and back which if forgotten they ever did.

I think if I could explain something to young me about the Dead is that you can't expect them to scratch the same itch that other seemingly related types of music might scratch. They have psych trappings but they won't scratch the heavy psych itch (other than maybe Anthem and some early stuff, and even then, it's not gonna be riffage like Zep or Sabbath). It's too sloppy and not "advanced" enough to satisfy a prog rock or fusion itch. It's not funky enough for funk, it's not pickin enough for country, it's noodlier than pretty much anything on earth.

The Dead are just, like, The Dead, man. You take them as they are and they return the favor.

Excellent post.

yes but it does make the band sound really terrible by any of the usual standards for judging music lol

actually the other day i was getting more out of live/dead than ever before, until that fucking lovelight song. there's always some bullshit like that to fuck up any enjoyment i get from this band. do those who become fans just put up with this stuff until they like it or until it gets better or do you just have to be very selective with your listening?

I bet you’re a big fan of “good morning little schoolgirl”

Oh I definitely still feel like that -- it's usually what my friend calls the "Bobby cowboy shit" that breaks up the flow for me. I imagine that for the true heads it was all just one big party and you didn't really care, like it was fun to hear your friend Bobby do his little cover of George Jones even if it wasn't up to snuff, cause the acid was kicking in or that whippet you just did was great. Which admittedly does make them sound like a shitty band. But I just see it as part of the total package, in the same way that Jerry's flubs come with his high points. Because there aren't a lot of guitar players in the world that could just play almost non-stop, eavily exploratory, largely improvisational lead for three hours and not have flubs, unless you're talking about like a John McLaughlin-level player.

As I said above, there are also the myopic deadheads who seem to have never heard other music and really believe that Bobby is a top level country singer/musician. I saw someone on youtube refer to Bill Kreutzmann as "the greatest jazz rock drummer of all time" which is hilarious. Bobby is a really good and really interesting rhythm guitar player though, and Kreutzmann's drumming is rock solid and works well for what they do.

Part of the magic of the Dead is how they can be transcendental one moment and objectively awful the next. I personally have a bit of a soft spot for Pigpen, but know he is an obstacle for many; they also might be my favorite band, but I'd be happy never hearing another one of their Dancing in the Streets or Not Fade Away covers ever again. I think that coming to accept and even loving that friction is key.

xp

yes but it does make the band sound really terrible by any of the usual standards for judging music lol

No, I don't think the post does that at all. It nicely sums up a lot of the preconceptions that people come to the Dead with and how most of them are usually wrong.

Always got the sense that Bobby was kind of just there to give jerry a break from vocal duties. Could he be the weakest link in the band?