should i give the grateful dead a chance?

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.

https://open.spotify.com/track/0CLex45IpTEpI0bnqdP51H?si=d8JU3jaiTy-n4yy3if5onQ&context=spotify%3Aalbum%3A4lIEJBo7dxCQJj4LUtME3X

That time animal collective sampled Phil

I worked a phil lesh concert once! pretty gnarly crowd 😆
made me happy

What kinda work

was doing event/hospitality at a venue. always wanted to be doing artist services though, they had some fun 🙃

I am listening to Three from the Vault right now - the first show of Hart's hiatus. First live Bird Song (and a couple of others), second live Playing in the Band. From a review on archive.org of someone who was there:

Well I am 62 now and it would have been fine if that show never ended and it some ways it has not.

love that energy!

listening to workingman's dead and finding it hard to describe the resonant and palpable salve the sound offers me. never expected to be struck in that way.

I dig the songs as well. I've been into the Dead for about a decade now but I feel like an odd sort of Deadhead because I don't care for the freeform jams, which I know for many (most?) is the central attraction. I love it the kind of jamming in, say, a "Here Comes the Sunshine" or a "China-Rider" transition.

But no matter how I've tried, I can't get into the less "tuneful" stuff in the middle of a "Playing in the Band" or "The Other One", where Phil's playing a flurry of what sounds to me like random notes rather than a bassline, while Jerry is making wah-wah sounds or just picking out notes, etc. There will be pockets of interest but I just get bored.

But I keep trying because, hey, maybe someday it will click. After all, I never thought I'd like the Dead to begin with, and now I have a calendar filled with noteworthy 1974 shows that I plan to listen to on each 50th anniversary.

i've said it on here more than once. i love robert hunter/garcia songs and robert hunter lyrics and i love all of the 1972 euro tour because i feel like this is the one time where i loved bill kreutzman and realized how much i like the dead with just him drumming. sad but true. the jams on that tour are by far my fave. but the late 60s dark stuff is definitely cool. don't get me wrong. i'm also a big studio album fan.

robert hunter should be in the RRHF by himself if he isn't. he's a folk hero imo.

kreutzmanN

Has anyone read Bill's book? Any good?

Bill’s book is okay, it is exactly like sitting next to him on a barstool reminiscing about his career - which is both a plus and a minus. He’s warm and approachable, but it doesn’t really dig too deep and gets a bit repetitive. I found Phil’s book to be the best written by a former member.

Have not read the Billy book but I kinda think reading a few gives on a Roshomon view of the Dead.

I thought Rock Scullys book was the most cinematic and entertaining. Phil’s feels honest. The oral history of Garcias feels very tragic. Parrish’s book fills some other angles but I did not feel it was totally honest. McNallys book is a detailed overview.

well i'm having a realtime realization that part of my difficulty in differentiating between aforementioned songs / vibe theory

is that Spotify has been very confusing to me for several years in weening between studio albums and "live" albums, down to the format of the interface / app i just have not yet been able to craft my dead journey therein

so i'm working with that reality now and gladly getting my mind blown

that makes me wanna listen to all the studio LPs in order <3

I have spent a lot more time with the official live stuff up to Dead Set over the last few years

I'm not ready/worthy for Dick's Picks yet

Oh, sleeve, you just need to hear this one show from . . . .

Also, I recommend relisten.net for your non-official live show needs as they have everything chronologically, usually with multiple versions (it's a helpful UI for what's in archive.org.

A friend of mine listened to every Spring 77 show in order last year.

recently learned of this women’s note-for-note piano arrangement of “eyes of the world” from the louisville 77 show

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=voLdRQ-19dc

i've never bought a Dead cover CD but i would totally buy a CD of her doing that. so pretty.

good morning, the sun is out and I am playing American Beauty for the first time in forever

Yeah, Holly Bowling is great! One thing to cover a Dead (or Phish) song, another entirely to nail specific live versions like she does.

still playing the studio LPs, I am up to Mars Hotel

this was fascinating, are there really only three studio tracks they never played live?

https://faroutmagazine.co.uk/the-grateful-dead-songs-never-performed-live/

Bear Owsley’s biography from a few years back is a breeze to go through. That man lived 10 lives before he turned 30.