should i give the grateful dead a chance?

https://open.spotify.com/track/727MIUcOQhC9etXDqhHic8?si=dRV2m-A6Q0GFORxutGmSNA

Sounds like a college cover band

No sloppier than Chuck himself was in 72....

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

Love this 87 terrapin
Jerry so focused
Rest of the band not sure what part comes next

https://www.stereogum.com/2250575/grateful-dead-most-top-40-albums-billboard/news/

Beat That On Down The Line, Taylor...

13 studio albums, 180 live albums? something like that. Honestly Taylor could easily beat this by releasing 50 live albums.

Don't give her any ideas

Digging the new Dave's Picks with the pair of '85 Frost shows. I get why they fall back on '77 and the '72-'74 well so often with these archival releases, but it's nice for a change of pace. Jerry's voice is mostly shot, but he seems to make up for it with his solos. The 4/27/85 show seemed to have the better rep from the tape trading days, but the second night is better to me - less individual peaks maybe, but Jerry's voice is better, a better overall setlist and killer flow. I mean the entire second set run of "Hell in a Bucket > Crazy Fingers > PITB > China Doll > Drums > Space > PITB > Wharf Rat" is a nice run with great transitions. Both nights had a spark in the "Drums/Space" section.

Listening to Angel’s Share. Phil trying to teach “unbroken chain” to the band in the studio, hilarious

When is that clip from? I’ve heard rehearsal banter from 1995 when Phil is teaching the band unbroken Chain and it’s great. Jerry is definitely not keeping up.

Guessing calstars is referring to the digital studio outtakes they released with the Wake of the Flood reissue, from the August '73 sessions.

Yes
Phil reprimands “Weir” and then he and Jerry discuss the turn around

The funky middle section is a complete shambles, again sounds like a college band in a basement

In the ‘95 recording Phil’s explaining the arrangement to the band and yells over to Garcia, “you got that, Gorilla??” (Or something like that).

I didn't realize they had never played it until then, wow

asked this in the "digital era legacy song" thread but doesn't seem to be many deadheads in there, so i'll ask here

when did “althea” become one of the most popular dead songs? it’s not on a major album or any of the greatest hits, not one of the 50 most played according to jerrybase. yet it has 20 million more streams on spotify than “sugar magnolia.” what gives? is it a john mayer thing?

is it a john mayer thing?

I think so, yes

Yeah, I think that's a big part of it. I mean, it's also a damn fine song that I know non-Deadheads in my life even like, but it's probably the Mayer thing. He's talked in several interviews about how that was the song that got him into the Dead.

It’s also just like a really cool song and riff

I refuse to give Mayer credit for anything lol

Go To Heaven is their most underrated LP imho

If I had any ILM cred to worry about in the first place I might be ashamed to admit this, but I will be going to see Dead & Johnny at the Sphere this summer. No interest in seeing U2, got shut out of Phish there, so I took the chance when buddies of mine got an extra for a show out there (also because I've never even been to Vegas, so my wife and I are going to make a long weekend out of it).

If you're looking for non-Mayer culprits, Al Franken talks about how great Althea is at the beginning of the Long Strange Trip documentary from 2017, which was where I was first heard about it since I had wrongfully skipped Go To Heaven before then.

Oh that's right, I forgot about that scene.

Weird I never made the connection between Mayer and the slow but steady build in online hype for Althea. It’s a fine song but not a standout imo.

Relistened to a big chunk of the Andrew Hickey Dark Star episode last night. It’s so great even the second time around.

yeah wasn't a quality judgment, i do really like the song. one of the better studio dead tracks, imo. but it definitely has elevated in stature in recent years, and again, somehow has 20 million more spotify streams than sugar magnolia?

Well I mean, I'd rather hear almost any other Dead song than hear "Sugar Magnolia" yet again, but that is still a surprising surge in popularity.

side note: 'go to heaven' has to be one of their absolute worst album covers ever, what were they thinking

Cocaine

otm

Yall are on cocaine, that cover is great

Grateful Dead album covers I rank below Go To Heaven, in descending order:

Skeletons from the Closet: The Best of Grateful Dead
Built to Last
In The Dark
Without a Net
Grateful Dead (1967)
The first six Dick's Picks releases

And I'd like to argue that Go To Heaven would have been an excellent album cover if they'd been competent at making disco.

Nah, the Ampex tape style ones are actually pretty good and far better than the dumb fractals and skeletons on flying carpets of later entries.

such a classic Dead move to have use the white suits for the album cover after the album where they did a couple disco tracks, which of course had a more typical Dead style cartoon cover itself.

xp

I never realized that was supposed to be an Ampex tape. I was trying to keep my list contemporaneous to the actual existence of the band, because all of those are better than the pile of mostly dreck that followed Jerry's death.

However, I am a big fan of the covers from Dick's Picks 19-24. I only realized a few years ago that the background of the Baltimore Civic Center show is an overhead shot of the Chesapeake Bay that is flipped and mirrored.

https://cdn11.bigcommerce.com/s-w8qmypftv/images/stencil/1280x1280/products/1684464/3240958/My05NDUzLmpwZWc__88303.1674170192.jpg?c=2

yeah the Ampex thing resulted in a funny Grateful Dead/Shellac 1000 Hurts cover connection

I was reading an old Bananafish zine the other night only to learn that Hetty MacLise (née McGee, wife of Angus and former girlfriend of PigPen!) played a de-tuned tambura on the single version of "Dark Star". Supposedly the Dead was the band at her and Angus wedding in Golden Gate Park on the Spring Equinox of 1968, while the officiant was Timothy Leary.

Yeah, 19-24 are probably my favorites of the bunch, always love #19 (smoking show too!)

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/5/51/Grateful_Dead_-_Dick%27s_Picks_Volume_19.jpg

xp is that damn single available in digital form anywhere?

Is it not on iTunes? It was on the Long Strange Trip... comp, and remastered as an unlisted extra on the 2001/03 reissue of Live/Dead.

Spotify has the single version on the What a Long Strange Trip comp (the one with the black and red cover).

thanks, yeah I am looking for a CD bonus track not a stream

Physically it's also out on the Rhino San Francisco Nuggets box.

ah cool

lol, still never heard the studio recorded version after all these years.

I can't A/B them right now, but the 7" single duration is 2:50 while the version on the greatest hits comp is 2:41...

lol duly noted

"Dark Star" was initially released as a single in 1968, backed with "Born Cross-Eyed", a track written by rhythm guitarist Bob Weir. The single, to quote Phil Lesh, "sank like a stone." Of the 1600 copies that made up the original shipment in 1968 by Warner Bros., only about 500 actually sold. A classic live version appeared in 1969 on Live/Dead, the Dead's first live album. It also appeared on later compilations What a Long Strange Trip It's Been in 1977 and The Best of the Grateful Dead in 2015. It also appears as a bonus track on the 2001 reissue of Live/Dead. It also features Hunter's only appearance on a Grateful Dead record, reciting a monologue at the end of the song.

But how did it fare in Turlock?

looks like Rhino also reissued it in 2017!

https://www.discogs.com/release/10787641-The-Grateful-Dead-Dark-Star-Born-Cross-Eyed?ev=item-vc