From Amazon.com
How Do You Categorize the Grateful Dead?
Album Rating: (5 of 5 stars)
Review Comments: There is little doubt in my mind that this record represents for many San Franciscans the Grateful Dead in all their psychedelic glory. Its an excellent example of impressionistic aural painting using both live and studio created components to layer a thick canvas of sound that so closely represents reality if "viewed" from afar, but when you drill down, is comprised of bits of noise, guitar, voice and electric instruments that seem like they are incomprehensible. Relax, enjoy, and let yourself go. They were so good at this live .. and they probably got closer to capturing that experience here than on any other record or bootleg you'll ever hear. If you're a fan, buy it. Its a must.
However, reading some of the comments by those who are not so thrilled by this record, I see that they may not have the common experience that this record speaks volumes of. It seems that many people point at other records recorded in the same time period by our heros and others as "better". I'm not so sure. While I would be the first to say that both Workingman's Dead and American Beauty are also high quality work, I feel like they are simply other sides of the Grateful Dead. Yes, there were times when I thought they were one of the best country rock or country blues bands. Jerry Garcia had roots in jugband, country, folk, banjo, Appalachian, and so many more styles of music. And Mr. Pen brought the funk, and down and out blues. But are the 3-5 minute format am radio style tunes "better" than this masterpiece of psycedelphia? Sorry, but I'm not convinced.
This is the band as I remember them on many a night in the Carousel Ballroom, the Family Dog, the ex-slot car track at Ocean Beach. Fantastic! And the references here of the Acid Test era, Neal Cassidy, the unbridled joy of dancing wildly to polyrhytmic Alligators in the swamps of the south only drives home how eclectic the Grateful Dead was coming out of the electric jug band sound they invented.
So how do you categorize them? I remember Bob Weir saying once if not many times "Talk among yourselves while we get tuned .. you know you have many selves, don't you?" The GD had many selves. AOXOMOXOA selves, Do Not Stop on Tracks selves, Love Lights selves, Live Dead (both kinds) selves, and on and on selves. Its true, they never managed to capture on a single record the experience in total, but here they capture a solid stripe of the experience. If this is the only Grateful Dead recording you own, I'm afraid you've got a long way to go to filling out what they had to offer, but none the less, this is CORE material. I highly reccomend it.
I Love Them, But I'll Pass On This One
Album Rating: (2 of 5 stars)
Review Comments: I love the Grateful Dead, and while I will concede the historical importance of this album and its revolutionary avant-garde and artist aspects, I'm not a big fan of it. It's a bit too trippy and raw for my tastes. Experimentalism is good, but this gets a bit excessive and furthermore one is hard pressed to find a few comprehensible lines of vocal lyrics in here.
The vocals are nowhere near the crisp greatness of American Beauty and Workingman's Dead. It was an important step in their development as a band, but thankfully not the final step. I get a kick out of New Potato Caboose, and I like long songs, but it is probably a few minutes too long. Born Cross-eyed has some great aspects to it. But the rest is pretty unremarkable in my opinion. I think they totally messed up the rendition of Alligator, they've done much better versions at their live shows and this version is just far too cluttered with the vocals and the kazoo sounds are way too overwhelming. Overall, the instrumentals are pretty darn good, if you can swallow the "experimentalness" and length of it all. This was basically the band members experimentation in the studio, where they got to experiment with some of the equipment for the first time and had full control of the production. They did a fine job of "sticking it to the record company", but that doesn't make this an appealing album. If you are going to grab this, make sure you also watch the film "Anthem to Beauty", which gives a lot of neat inside perspectives on how they made this. If you are going to get weirded out by this album, watching "Anthem to Beauty" ahead of time will increase your interest and the inside scoops will probably perk your interest and help you "swallow" it.
All this said, if you are a real fan, you just have to listen to this a couple of times. As for me, I've listened to it, and I will set it aside with the smug satisfaction of knowing that the Dead went on to do better things. The Dead were never as good at making albums as they were at live shows, but ultimately they DID make great albums and they made ones much better than this. In terms of maturity, more subtle instrumentation, vocal quality, and cohesiveness, American Beauty and Workingman's Dead totally eclipse this label, and so I recommend that anyone new to the Grateful Dead start there.
MY FAVORITE MUSICAL MIND BOMB.
Album Rating: (5 of 5 stars)
Review Comments: This is The Dead at their psychedelic best. To fully appreciate Anthem of the Sun you need to listen to it while peaking out on a good LSD trip. Anyone who disagrees does not know what they are talking about. If you want to read something that refers to this music in a psychedelic fun sense, check out Luke Mitchell's Mind Bomb(read reviews first), as funny as this album is great. 5 Brilliant dark stars. Mind Bomb
Dead Zone
Album Rating: (5 of 5 stars)
Review Comments: A while back I was driving through the Berkshire Mountains on the way from New York to Maine, blasting some of my favorite music and feeling pretty good, when I made the foolish mistake of putting on the Dead's classic ANTHEM OF THE SUN. There's something about elevated terrain that makes me kind of sleepy anyway, and when you go and add some of the Dead's dreamiest, spaciest music, well, let's just say you're risking zoning out completely. ANTHEM had long been a favorite late night album of mine, but there are times and situations when entering the ZONE could mean entering the DEAD zone. I switched over to the Airplane's live BLESS ITS POINTED LITTLE HEAD, and that perked me up.
A few years ago, I responded to a thread here on Amazon and listed the Airplane's BAXTER'S and the Dead's ANTHEM OF THE SUN as my "trippingest" albums. I still think so, but in entirely different ways. BAXTER'S was all angles and jagged edges. Yeah, it ended with a love-in, but you had to ride through the "Schizoforest" to get there. It was also a set of distinct SONGS, whereas ANTHEM had the most organic flow of any "rock" album I had ever heard. Is it too pretentious to say it's "symphonic"? Well, so be it. It's all of a piece--all the more remarkable when you consider that it consists of studio tracks and excerpts of live recordings all spliced and diced in a way that could probably never be reduplicated. Mainly cuz no one alive is even quite sure nowadays how it was done.
As a devotee of rock (and other musics), I've always been almost obsessive about song titles and sequencing, but with ANTHEM, I just had to let go of that particular obsession. I'm sure there are Deadheads out there who can rattle off the titles of the record's "individual" tracks, but I am not one of them. "Alligator"--which stood out but also blended in--probably remains the only tune on the record I could whistle on command. I guess I do know the opener "That's It For the Other One" pretty well, but if anyone asked how its individual movements go, I'd be at a loss. "'Quodlibet whaa??"
But that's the beauty (American or otherwise) of this record. It's one of the reason that it tends not to be anthologized on any BEST OF packages. How could you isolate a single track? This is one album I don't even want to ever play on "random select." In fact, I shudder at the thought. Theoretically, it could be interesting, and hey, it could all flow (just in a different way). If Tom Constanten's early electronica could be part of the orgainic whole, and if the bonus live tracks (totally live reprises of the album's second side, some fabulous "Feedback" and a surprise reprise of "Born Cross Eyed") fit in so seamlessly, why NOT mix things up even more.
Maybe someday, in some alternate universe, I'll give it a try. Just not in the Berkshire Mountains.
Anthem of the Sun
Album Rating: (5 of 5 stars)
Review Comments: Anthem of the Sun is a collage layers of sounds and combining live music parts and studio parts too make a tottaly stellar album, very acid rock buy today
Purchases
1 That's It For The Other One I. Cryptical Envelopment II. The Faster We Go, The Rounder We Get III.Quadlibet For Tender Feet IV. We Leave The Castle
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