Has reached the Himalayan slopes of the Dead. Telling that apart from American Beauty their picks are all live picks. This is back on form after a few pop people that aren’t really that scary (Britney, Kinks).
Like the sound of the one with Branford Marselis sitting in.
https://www.theguardian.com/music/2020/may/11/grateful-dead-where-to-start-in-their-back-catalogue
I’m an old hippie, and my advice on where to start with the Grateful Dead is:
Don’t.
The actuality comes nowhere near the overinflated myth.
I kind of agree – I’ve tried several times with The Dead. 99% leaves me cold and mystified but American Beauty is a one off wonderful record. I also like some bits of Terrapin Station and I do like that Eyes of the World track. I suspect I am missing some kind of magic key that unlocks the rest of their world but I’m happy to leave it be.
Yeah, it’s not all crap, but the ratio is not that great.
Magic key? Lots and lots of drugs
Yeah, it’s not as if it’s all crap, but the ratio is not really that great.
I wonder if anyone who wasn’t around in the 60s and 70s gets in to the Dead now? I agree about American Beauty, I also like Workingman’s Dead and Blues For Allah but apart from that I can take them or leave them.
Nice to see Franklin’s Tower from BFA is the No 3 track in that list
Mars Hotel? Surely?
I wasn’t around then and I quite like them! I mean, I’m not a huge fan but I like American Beauty and Workingman’s Dead and the odd live album here and there. My dad doesn’t like them at all though.
I’m an odd boy, preferring their studio stuff, mainly as I don’t like trying to listen/imagine live music when I am, usually, in my car or cave. Sometimes a telly YouTube splurge will be of live music, but thus I have got to know their non live records well. Notoriously patchy, beyond Beauty and Workingmans, most are mainly filler with the scattered killer to make up for the dross. So there is an argument for the noviciate you seek out the greatest hits retrospective of a couple of years back, then spotty the albums whole and cherry pick. To be fair, put off by their reputation but loving the idea, I started with the covers tribute album, Deadicated. The more recent Day of the Dead, curated by the Dessner bros of the National is also good.
One day, when I am a big boy, I may try the live catalogue but it is a lifetime work that even Paul Wad couldn’t do grace to.
I’m a big fan. As well as Working’s Man Dead and American Beauty, I’d also include the earlier Anthem Of The Sun, Aoxomoxoa and of course Live Dead as complete essential works. The later studio stuff is patchy, but the killer gems make them well worth checking out, especially for the price. I’m not a completist but have them all up to/including Terrapin Station (the title track being a masterpiece). In my opinion Hunter & Garcia were a magnificent songwriting partnership, up there with the best, and as for Dylan being a poet, Hunter beats him on that one. Also, Garcia’s vocals are very underrated. They’re not that powerful and often get lost in a live setting, but up close, by God they can be achingly beautiful. As for the live material, I also have Europe ’72, Pacific Northwest, Cornell 77, Dead Set, and Wake Up To Find Out. These are essential Dead at their best live. Majestic. All you really need.
Here’s the finest version of Franklin’s Tower. Wonderful stuff. Have a good day all.
At their best they are unique but you have to be selective – there’s an almost ridiculous amount of stuff out there.
Absolutely agreed. That’s an art in itself, learning what to select for your own Dead collection as you go along. There’s a huge amount of music that’s not at all necessary unless you’re an obsessive Deadhead completist, let alone the cost.
I don’t think I’ve ever knowingly heard The Grateful Dead! A (fortunate?) gap in my musical knowledge.
I’ve heard them but somehow it’s as if I have never knowingly heard them, so little impression did they make.
I have around 280 Grateful Dead CDs, and so I think I can say that that particular gap in my musical knowledge has been …. plugged.
I’ve just noticed the reference to the lyrics of Ripple as ‘nice and simple’. ?! They’re beautiful, not a fucking camp fire sing along. The dude’s got no poetry in his soul, a monumental case of ear wax, or hasn’t listened properly to the song in the first place.
Foxy’s Guide to the Dead:
1) Buy the boxed set called ‘The Golden Road’.
2) Buy the boxed set called ‘Beyond Description’.
3) Download and burn all of the ‘Picks’ torrents you can find.
Enjoy.
PS I love them.
Carl’s Oversized Guide to The Dead
Go here where there are more than 14,000 Grateful Dead live shows available.
There is massive duplication (there are 983 recordings from 1990 alone), but I’m sure there will be some way of discovering the prime shows to listen to.
I haven’t listened, I just know the material is there.
Thanks for that Carl. Will do!
Thing is, the good ones on archiveDOTorg these days are nearly all only downloadable as MP3s. There was a time when they were all up there in flac and shn formats (i.e. lossless), and could be downloaded freely and turned into excellent live CDs. But then the breadhead deadheads running the nevernendingshow that has been scraping every last dollar out of the Dead legacy for the last couple of decades decided to start issuing various “picks”, in turn helping themselves to the rich seam of publicly available recordings (most of which were on archiveDOTorg) and putting them all out in nice cardboard covered ‘official’ sets at extraordinary prices. At the same time, archiveDOTorg was obliged to make the lossless versions unavailable or stream-only. Thus was Deadhistory monetised yet again. Luckily for me, I raided archiveDOTorg enthusiastically before the accountants took over.
Having said all of the above, if you are on a mission to explore the dead, archiveDOTorg is STILL the place to start – only bother with the shows that get great ratings; the audience there is pretty discerning. The same is true of the massive amount of Phish gigs they host, though those are mostly still available in lossless format; the star ratings will guide you to the best stuff.
I’d rather have a tub of Cherry Garcia.
A very good idea.
I’ll be two metres behind you in the queue.
No queueing necessary here. I have a tub of it calling me from my freezer right now.
650kCal, but heigh-ho..
I am Deadnostic – a few of the studio albums ripped to itunes and that’s about it. So have just listened to one of the two live shows recommended as ‘where to start’ in the BTL comments in the article (a good discussion) – being The Sunshine Daydream Concert, Veneta, Or 8/27/72. The other is the Cornell University 77 that comes top of all Dead live lists (I gather). And you know what, it’s great working music. If you tune out for 2 mins to focus on that spreadsheet and come back, it’s gently moved on but you don’t need to worry about having missed anything too vital. They are bang right that to get the Dead you need to listen to a whole concert. rather than just a few tracks.
Welcome to the floating, meandering, time-dilating wonder that is the Dead on a roll.
Like most people it seems I only ever listen to Workingman’s Dead and American Beauty. Occasionally, usually nudged into it by one of our resident Deadheads, I give them another go, but invariably come to the conclusion yet again that they just weren’t very good. But then, speaking as someone who fell asleep some time during the third hour of a Dead gig at the Rainbow, I would, wouldn’t I? Give me Family and/or Spooky Tooth any time.
Seems a few of us have had similar experiences with the Dead. As a voracious devourer of music in my youth, I assumed they would be the motherlode of ‘psychedelic rock’ but the reality was quite different: meandering, hesitant, spindly country-ish jams with weak vocals. My distain for Jerry Garcia’s guitar playing has been voiced in this forum before (as have the rebuttals!).
Then again, I haven’t given the Live Dead cd I’ve had since the 80s a spin for five years or so, so I’ll put it on now and see if anything clicks this time round.
Update – Nope.
American Psychedelic is a very different beast to ours, as for the most part it’s rooted in the blues. UK psychedelic is rooted in a more non musical tradition, that of Lewis Carroll, Lear etc seen through a time telescope into a hallucinatory re-imagined Victorian and Edwardian era. This can also be traced back in parts of our literary and cultural traditions in regard to all this otherworldly and magical. Very Celtic. Very British. That’s why if you really want to visit Thin Places in sound, Piper and Pepper etc are excellent turnstyles. With American Psych, it’s more of a detached sonic flow from the delta to the appalachians, The Dead were unique in being both that and truly cosmic/space trippers. Jimbo and The Doors fused The Blues with Blake and the European poetic tradition, basically. That gave them their uniqueness. As for the much lauded 13th Floor Elevators, I just can’t get past the jug. It’s a downer, that jug.
PS: On finishing the previous post, Traffic immediately came to mind. I love that band. Very underappreciated these days. They managed to incorporate blues, soul, funk, folk, and psych. Tremendous. I’m not so fond of Mason’s songs (Hole In My Shoe is dreadful. It always was way before Neil got hold of it, fittingly). Otherwise, so much great music in their catalogue. Winwood & Capaldi are another great songwriting partnership that fall below the radar, unfairly. The Dead and Traffic were mutually friends and admirers. That legendary jam they had in San Francisco ’68 must have been something else. Sadly no footage or recordings were made.
Excellent post, Rob. You’ve summed it up nicely.
I would say Jefferson Airplane perhaps overlap slightly into that British sensibility. Lyrically of course with White Rabbit, but also just in their more austere, quieter stuff. Embryonic Journey sounds like Davey Graham, for example.
By the way, what are “Thin Places”?? Is this somewhere I would want to go??
Thanks Arthur. You’re quite right about Jefferson Airplane, and the lesser known Pearls Before Swine also drew somewhat from the same Anglo source. As for Thin Places, it’s a term used by the ancient Celts for places where the barriers between worlds, of this one and the next, is literally thin. Boundary places like the edge of a forest, lake, river, sea shore, (hence the old Celtic ninth wave, the one that carried you over to the land of Tir Nan Nog). All sacred places, like standing stones as well. Portals. The later Celtic Church adapted it for their needs, which was fine because they were very much more in tune with nature, and were quite egalitarian and mystical. They had women bishops like St Brigid. In my opinion far more in tune with the original spirit and message of Christianity which chimed so well the Celtic Soul. The Synod Of Whitby, and a miserable old bigot called Wilfred on behalf of the far away big boys (some things never change) put paid to it, although it does still exist in its own quite and wonderful way.
If you do venture to a Thin Place, and you happen upon an offering of food and refreshment, be sure to ask if it is given freely and without obligation, lest your arse be whisked off under a mound to the land of Fairie, especially if it’s a SFWTB elfin chick. We’re not talking Tinkerbell here. Otherwise known as The Tuatha De Danann, The Sidhe, or The Gentry, they’re generally not that disposed towards humankind, even if you’re Jon Anderson.
Happy birthday Steve Winwood, 70 the other day, a tremendous and terrific talent.
Absolutely seconded. I revisited Arc Of The Diver the other day. Excellent album, and let’s face it, a lot of his late 80s hits were damn good songs that only a music nazi would outright dismiss. He does a few of them on the superb Greatest Hits Live that I mentioned in another post, and they’re even better in a full band setting and free of the somewhat dated production of the time.