should i give the grateful dead a chance?

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

jesus, they pressed 10,000 and the only copy on Discogs is $75

Any Dead stuff is just absolutely insane in the secondhand market. For crying out loud, the 1994 show by itself, taken from the big box with one live show for every year from '65'-95 is going for $250 and up. A 1994 show!

I can get an OG (1600 copies made) for $45, that is insane

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.

― citation needed (Steve Shasta)

the velvets-dead dialectic is such a huge thing for me (a lot of me getting into the dead was through tyler w so maybe not surprising lol). opposing forces that nonetheless i see as occupying the same sonic space. i wish there was a tape of the velvets' set on 4/26/69! we can only hear them secondhand, filtered through the dead's set.

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.

the go to heaven defender has logged on

"Althea" is one of their best numbers ever and the studio version is crisp and lovely, "Alabama Getaway" likewise they were seldom that hot in studio, "Lost Sailor" is easy listening gold!! simply beautiful!, "Easy to Love You" is a fuckin' pop tune!! a good one!! the cover suits the vibe, they're present to the moment, it's a groove

my man <3

https://i.imgur.com/7VhKa0S.png

Band literally snow blind from the coke dust blowing out of Jerry’s hair

I'm also a big defender of Go To Heaven, as Althea was my own point of entry for the GD. Maybe the front and back covers should've been switched? The coked-out group photo always reminds me of the back cover of Bat Out Of Hell. Nope, not good at all

dead-related album that i played for the first time in a long time the other night. sounds so great on vinyl. you can probably find a better-sounding version online. this clip is not ideal. short-lived band led by dead pal tom constanten and gary hirsh who was in country joe & the fish. might not be to everyone's taste. it's a weird one. i think byron coley was the person who urged me to buy it at a record show awhile back. might have already posted it here! sorry, if so. it definitely grew on me too. it starts slow and then builds. like a dead set kinda. from 1972.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ZwBMuol-w8

“Shakedown Street” to me is the best Disco Dead tune.

Every once in a while I head the studio version of Feel Like a Stranger and am amazed it was released. It sounds so terrible and amateurish to me but maybe that’s just me.

a lot of the late 70s Help/Slipknot/Franklin performances always sounded under the disco influence to me.

i've been getting into this band!

in reading the early posts on this thread, i think i would offer that the appeal is the deeply registered and irrefutable vibe and feeling as opposed to like specifically the songs (though the tight ones are amazing). but i'm still super ignorant when it comes to the dead so that's just an entry level posit.

for me it's definitely the songs. but i know for others its definitely the vibe.

i like to hear that! i was singing a tune that i came up with recently and i referenced the grateful dead in it which is kinda when i knew they've been making an impression on me. something about this band + the sun on a pretty day is an incomparable experience. same with fleetwood mac in that way.

"i think i would offer that the appeal is the deeply registered and irrefutable vibe"

I definitely think the early Dead pre-Keith/Donna and the country tunes definitely was about surfing the cosmic vibe. Not that they would not go to outer space after that period, but those early live shows are often just one big ole' jam.