should i give the grateful dead a chance?

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?

I think the gulf between their iconography and their actual sound is a big part of this, too. After years of seeing all the skulls and trippy imagery on their merch, I was expecting a total psychedelic blowout and was initially put off by the wimpy, spidery music they actually produce. And yeah, Bobby is definitely the weak link, even though Ace is good as hell.

Has anybody ever compiled a list of the "definitive" versions of each Dead song, whether studio or live, or is that anathema to their spirit?

HeadyVersion is all user rankings of live versions

There's a site called "Heady Version" which is equal parts a good reference and maddening (in how they circle around certain shows and overweigh official releases), but it is a good way to explore what are considered the "best" versions and you can search by song:

http://headyversion.com/song/66/grateful-dead/dark-star/

As an example, I linked to the one for "Dark Star".

ha xpost

OK, would you consider someone who only listened to the "best" version of each song on that list alien to what makes the band special?

Pigpen can definitely be slog for me, but I never minded the Bobby cowboy stuff...I actually kind of dig those moments for the contrast they provide.

What I actively hate are the Chuck Berry covers. They're always a perfunctory slog, and an insult to the composer...with the single, and startling, exception of "Around and Around," Jersey City, 9/27/72 (Dick's Picks 11), which is far and away the best performance of a Chuck cover they've ever done.

Bobby's vocals may be the weakest link, but his guitar playing is excellent and a hugely important ingredient in their sound.

OK, would you consider someone who only listened to the "best" version of each song on that list alien to what makes the band special?

Maybe? But they have such a wide variety of types of songs and part of the appeal for many is how they structure their sets, so listening to songs in isolation might not give you a good feel for a typical show.

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.

This is all true, but the inverse is also true: nothing else quite scratches all the itches that the Dead scratch in quite the same way.

Which is also the problem with the many neo-jam bands that try to be the Dead instead of trying to be all the things the Dead tried to be.

Has anybody ever compiled a list of the "definitive" versions of each Dead song, whether studio or live, or is that anathema to their spirit?

― Halfway there but for you, Friday, May 7, 2021 9:37 AM (fourteen minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

A year or two ago I found a good spotify playlist that attempts to do this with a lot of their songs, and it was helpful for me in managing the overwhelming volume of material out there.
https://open.spotify.com/playlist/07NwtfKF2nCJMA2c6PYuaf?si=57f35515518a439b

I don't think it's totally anathema, there are definitely cases where a certain live version is "definitive," esp since they often didn't even have a studio version. Some of the stuff on Europe 72 is like this.

In fact, when I briefly played with a dead cover band as a journeyman dead fan, the guys in the band would often tell me "x is the canonical version if you want to check it out." Like I think most people would agree on the Scarlet/Fire at Cornell '77 being the canonical one, even though there will be contrarians saying some other version is "better." Of course there are also disagreements about which is best. If anything, I would say that *contentious* disputes about which is best are anathema to their spirit, but friendly discussions of that sort are part of the package.

Which is also the problem with the many neo-jam bands that try to be the Dead instead of trying to be all the things the Dead tried to be.

― keto keto bonito v industry plant-based diet (PBKR), Friday, May 7, 2021 9:56 AM (five minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

I feel like for a band to capture the spirit of the dead, they'd have to sound nothing whatsoever like the dead.

yeah I think that's a state of being for a band that it will try to ape what visible aspects made their iconic archetype band what they were. But aping something that was arrived at while trying to answer questions for oneself and therefore travelling between several points and knowing what one was searching for to get there are 2 very different things. One may or may not actually find what it was looking for but creates along teh way and one makes an empty facsimile. Might be good at the moment though.

I always thought the next band that was trying to do what the MC5 were trying to do couldn't sound like the MC5 or it would defeat the purpose. like. Not sure how many other bands taht would be true of. Can would be one I think, John Coltrane and a few other questing jazzers.

Bobby's vocals may be the weakest link, but his guitar playing is excellent and a hugely important ingredient in their sound.

Yeah Bobby is an utterly unique rhythm guitarist. His playing feels precisely calibrated to fill in the spaces in between what Jerry and Phil are doing without muddying up the mix. He also generally had a much lower flub-rate than Jerry, even in the earlier years

He does that awesome and rare thing where his parts fuse with Jerry's to the point that it's not always clear who's playing what.

Yeah, it took me a long time to train myself to pay attention to Bobby's guitar.

I think Bobby was key in keeping the band grounded and from flying too far off the reservation, he seemed to be really good at reading the energy level of the crowd and nudging the band back to center sometimes. And in the later years, when Jerry would get really bad, he was the battery that kept them going.

"And in the later years, when Jerry would get really bad, he was the battery that kept them going."

his tone got more and more questionable at the end but he seemed to try to play in a more straightforward rhythm style near the end, I guess in an attempt to smooth things out while Jerry's flubs and presence become more and more a problem.

I thought the story was taht he was nearly kicked out in 1968 because he couldn't keep up with the improvisations but went and woodshedded and got a bit better.BUt he always seems to be playing a little behind where most rhythm players wold be playing. Which might fit better with this lot than it did elsewhere.

Does seem to be doing ok in what I've heard.
I remember noticing taht the instrumentation for some of the cowboy songs did change quite a bit too at one point. I think on a song that came out of a major jam. So may have been an El Paso from Veneta or something. THink it had a particularly vivid guitar part which would therefore be more jerry than him but still it surprised me.

Kreutzmann plays pretty behind too

I love kreutzmans tone, totally unique. That snappy snare and short rolls

From a previous discussion of Weir:

Christgau's early Dead articles, archived on his site, incl. mention of the Pigpen-Weir band, which was an idea some or all of the others had, but, according to xgau, they couldn't afford it, meaning, I take it, couldn't afford to hire more musos for such a band, or sep. road crew, if they shunted this projected thing off to sep. gigs, rather than opening act on Dead tours (Xgau says Pigpen was the favorite of a big audience segment, be hard to follow, esp, when shifting gears into more varied excursions).
I do know people who turned against them when Pig was gone, won't listen to anything later.

― dow, Wednesday, August 19, 2020 6:13 PM (eight months ago) bookmarkflaglink

hard to follow, esp, when shifting gears into more varied excursions) And this was already happening while he was in the Dead, which was a reason for wanting him excised, again according to the 'gau.

― dow, Wednesday, August 19, 2020 6:16 PM (eight months ago) bookmarkflaglink

The Pigpen Review! I think a "review" was pretty full-sized presentation.
Musically, this made sense, but because the Dead was also a spiritual unit, it was distressing. Then it was revealed that this was a breakup with a difference: two groups would result but the new one, to be called the Pigpen Revue, would tour with the Dead.
It never did happen, partly because the group, which is always in debt no matter how much money it earns, couldn't handle the finances. When the Dead appeared here last February, Tom Constanten was on organ. But Pigpen was on-stage too, banging inaudibly on a set of bongos and singing or blowing mouth-harp sometimes. The Dead wouldn't have been right without Pigpen to root them to the ground,and they knew it. Not only was their music better than ever, so was their gestalt. On their recent Aoxomoxoa (Warner Brothers WS 1790), the last three credits read: "Bill Krutzmann/Percussion; Tom Constanten/Keyboards; Rod McKernan/Pig Pen." He is his own instrument.
From https://www.robertchristgau.com/xg/news/grateful-69.php (Also explains the Dead Saga thus far)
After that, I mentioned Weir as a journeyman/everyman figure, as Ringo, and maybe Pig had some of the same appeal. It very belatedly occurs to me that Weir's rhythm playing fits w Garcia so well because he was Garcia's student at that guitar store, though one reason, as mentioned here and there, like in an early Rolling Stone article, I *think*, for spinning him off into a side band was that Garcia wasn't so pleased with his playing, at least for a while.

Btw, have yall heard those 1969 Fillmore and Pavilion shows he's describing w such appeal (also mentions a good Central Park appearance in between)?? Must check archive.org.