![]() But beyond the surface-level turn-offs, their third album contains the best marriage of the early, aggressively psychedelic Dead and the softer, sweeter, more roots-oriented band they’d become in the early ‘70s. It was the band’s Spruce Goose (or in rock terms, Fleetwood Mac’s Tusk), in that its excessive cost and prolonged recording process put the Dead in debt and in hot water with their label. With a meaningless palindrome for the title, artwork that only a Hell’s Angel could appreciate, and one of my least favorite Dead songs ever (“Rosemary”), Aoxomoxoa was an album whose genius eluded me for a long time. Rhythmically dazzling, tonally disorienting, and structurally confounding, centerpiece “Alligator” stands shoulder-to-shoulder with any of the band’s more famous ten-plus-minute-long epics. “We mixed it for the hallucinations,” Garcia famously said, and as a result, the album achieved trippiness and experimentation that the Dead never topped with any of their following studio recordings. This approach, coupled with the group’s flightiness, led Hassinger to bail midway through recording, and the band replaced him with one of their concert soundmen. ![]() After recording The Grateful Dead in mono with “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” engineer David Hassinger, the band, dead-set on more accurate replication of their less buttoned-down concerts, added a second drummer, played around with tape speed on a state-of-the-art eight-track recorder, and began splicing live and studio recordings together. Listening to the Grateful Dead’s first two albums in succession is like chasing a PBR with absinthe. Because Amazon currently lists some 250 Dead albums (with another on the way in May!), I limited my scope to official releases, so unfortunately for all of you true, blue Deadheads out there, that means no Dick’s Picks. We were still learning how to be a band." These ten ensuing albums from their career span a thirteen-year period from 1968 to 1981, and as only befits the band, include both live and studio recordings. As drummer Bill Kreutzmann wrote in his autobiography, “We weren’t that good yet. It’s a worthwhile listen, to be sure, but it only contains a fraction of the experimentation and genius songwriting that was to come. 1967’s The Grateful Dead is, somewhat paradoxically, not included. Last week, the band’s self-titled debut album celebrated its 50th anniversary, so today, I share with you my own personal must-haves list. The Dead are still inspiring greatness, whether it’s in the form of music or revelatory music writing. Nothing cemented that like last year’s Day of the Dead compilation, which compiled five-and-a-half hours of covers from names like Courtney Barnett, Perfume Genius, Anonhi, Tunde Adebimpe, and even ambient noise musician Tim Hecker. ![]() In eras and scenes where leather, nihilism, “balls” and/or “intellect” prevailed in music, the Grateful Dead were perhaps the least cool name to drop in among your influences, but with their eclectic oeuvre now at everyone’s fingertips, their stock seems to have risen among even the hippest indie artists. As Jesse Jarnow wrote in Heads, his excellent book on the intertwined histories of LSD and the band, last year, “one can fully love the Dead without accepting every last bit of them.” Haight-Ashbury scenesters hated their folk albums, folkies hate the band’s jazz and prog albums, and nearly everyone who’s heard more than one Grateful Dead song hates “Touch of Grey.” Hell, even members of the Dead have disowned albums that some fans count as the band’s best. More casual fans, especially younger ones, tend to pick and choose albums and tracks that allow them to enjoy snapshots of the Dead while still staving off the aggressively uncool stench of the jam band scene. Most Deadheads (the band’s ride-or-die fans) will probably tell you that no studio album can capture the spontaneous glory of (insert concert from that particular fan’s teens or early 20s)- in other words, you had to be there. For that reason, any attempt to corral the Dead’s discography into a neat “best of” list is a fool’s errand.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |