Can't enjoy listening to the Grateful Dead?

In addition to the American Beauty/Workingman’s already mentioned, I think any of the following would be great starting points for live Dead music (all official releases at some point):

One From the Vault (GAMH 8/75)
Without A Net (Various ‘89/’90)
Sunshine Daydream (Veneta 8/72)
Dick’s Picks 3
Steppin’ Out With The Grateful Dead (UK ’72) (Or Hundred Year Hall or really any Europe 1972 shows you can find)
Any of the ’77 releases (Dick’s Picks 3, 29, To Terrapin, May 77 Box Set, Winterland June 1977 and more)
Ladies And Gentleman (Fillmore East April ’71)
Dick’s Picks 8 (Legendary 5/2/70 show with acoustic and electric sets)
Dead Set/Reckoning (1980 RCMH Shows, Reckoning = acoustic, Dead Set is tunes from the electric sets)
Dozin’ At The Knick (Spring ’90)

 

I have never been a fan. My ex-wife took me to a concert and I was bored out of my skull by the really long jams that seemed very repetitive to me. I need to give them another visit, though, as I am now very big fans of some bands from that era that I disliked at the time, including The Band (who I kind of associated with The Dead back in the day).

I think I'll start with American Beauty and Workingman's Dead.

 

I agree ’77 is probably the best application of tightness/proficiency meets unexpected greatness. Maybe point someone to a ’72 if they would dig the proficiency first—thinking of your Dave Brubeck fan type. Maybe a ’74 or a ’69-‘71 for the Charles Mingus to Sun Ra fan. A ’73 or a ’78 the best balance of those extremes.

And there are a lot of great Charlie Miller soundboards on the Archive. When in the ’80’s I probably hit ’85 most with ’81,’83 close behind.

 

i just watched the sunshine dream blu-ray and listened to your suggested video.
i liked the blu-ray a lot a nice mellow vibe of improvisation.

the thing is that i dont love it.... i just like it and enjoy it. but i dont adore it....i think garcia still holds me back...a bit too much jazz..and i dont like jazz either.....the albums are even worse.

i guess im just a casual fan. we'll see.

 

I bet you would love it if you were trippin balls like the naked guy on the pole.

 

ill never know...i quit drugs :-I

 

good move, its a lot to go through. there is however no question that the naked guy is having a pretty good time.

 

I never cared for them until I started digging into live albums. Waaaaay better than their studio work, IMO.

 

Tried and tried for decades, both studio and live. The only track I really like is "Terrapin Station". American Beauty and Workingman's Dead are pleasant. The rest doesn't move me.

 

Too jazzy, eh? How about some killer garage punk-rock Grateful Dead? Try it:



It would certainly appeal to fans of bands such as: 13th Floor Elevators, Television, The Sonics, The Modern Lovers, Chocolate Watch Band, Flamin' Groovies, Talking Heads, etc.

 

My favorite Dead era has shifted over the years and now resides in the late 60s (early Dead) grungy, rawer GD. It's real hard not to like this song. From one of my favorite Dick's Picks (vol. 22), Viola Lee Blues:

 

Indeedy!

 

As others have posted, American Beauty and Workingman's Dead. These albums should (imo) be in any decent American Rock or Folk music collection.

 

Lots of great descriptions. So you would say the grateful dead relied heavily on improv? That is why one song never sounded the same twice. That is magical.

I always thought that dead heads were some secret club, that you had to work your way up to get in. If thats not the case then everyone would call themselves a dead head. Maybe it's just the fact I've never experienced a community before out of all the concerts I've been to. Rush, Stones, Eagles, Moody Blues. Theres no stereotypes. That's what your saying though RayS that there are distinctive traits to dead heads that can't help but attach itself to the music?

Beside that though I agree with Rodney Toady that stereotypes are hogwash. Grateful Dead fans come in all shapes and sizes. Thank you Rodney. I have figured out what is keeping me away from the Grateful Dead. I don't have a problem with the music at all. It's the sense of trying to find something that isn't there. That I could never reach the level of dead head status. What right do I have trying to dissect and understand the Grateful Dead? I will say this. Over the past year I ran into a few dead heads who liked to claim ownership over the band. They came off with a feeling of how dare I try to reach their level. How dare I understand the band. A couple of bad experiences made me run away but I'm determined to give this band a second try. In my opinion you don't have to follow the band around to every show and have a grateful dead shrine in your basement to be a fan. I don't believe that makes me any less of a fan then the guy who does those things. I think this feeling of ownership comes from being such a long time loyal follower because of how many decades their material spanned. Not many bands can say they were pushing new material for 30 years with more or less the same group of people! That's dedication right there. Yeah, I respect the generation before me who were fans of this music but some dead heads just didn't want to give me the time of day. Didn't want to let me into their circle, very cultish. Not speaking for all the fans at all just my personal experience. That is why I started this thread. I wanted long time fans of the grateful dead to show me what they were all about. As time goes on, as my understanding of the band starts to click, the more I'm starting appreciate them.

 

The 'Deader than thou' pose is very off-putting. Forget the fans and the image and forge your own relationship with the music.

 

In my opinion, even the first album sounded great on the original vinyl, and I love the old Warner CD's from way back when (The remasters, from 2001, I think, have compression on them that kills the sound IMO). My system is tailored to that sort of music, especially their earlier stuff, but I think most of their music sounds great. "Blues For Allah", "Terrapin Station", and "Go To Heaven" all sound excellent. And same with "American Beauty". And on my system, so does "Europe '72" and so does that Skull & Roses one from '71.

I guess it depends somewhat on the system you're running, as I do feel that certain older music does sound best on gear from that same era, but perhaps there are some not-too-invasive steps you can take to make your current system more-pleasant-sounding.

 

"Deadier than thou"....

 

But they should be

 

I don't consider them "true" Deadheads. We are a welcoming bunch and understand that there are many different ways and many different levels of appreciating them. Everybody has their own way man, don't harsh their mellow!

 

It's funny to see this thread. I just spent the last several days swappin' some Dead with someone.

CLANG! ...... "Bring out your dead!

CLANG! ...... "Bring out your dead!"

CLANG! ...... "Bring out your dead!"

CLANG!

 

If you're outside that culture, it should be completely understandable why people might put off by some of the audience behavior. Witnessing the carnival atmosphere and several fans in different galaxies caused me to not want to return, despite liking the music. One guy was on the ground convulsing, which required 3-4 men to hold him down. Another was walking around with white power covering his face (no, it wasn't coke) and he was clearly in a different galaxy. The guy next to me looked at me and said, "he's returning back to his job as an accountant on Monday." We did get a laugh out of it.

Same deal here. Unless one feels solidarity over the music or possesses nostalgia for the summer of '67, this might be a struggle to feel sympathetic too. Just to catch a concert, an outsider may not care to rub elbows with that collection of freeloaders and vagrants.

Read an article in the Ottawa Citizen once, and the writer indicated that the Dead played before an uncritical audience. My initial reaction was, "he's got it exactly right!" The band had a segment of the audience who saw music as secondary to the trip. Before any protests and is "offended," let me explain that the same would be said about NFL fans, at the same stadium, who would be drunk before kickoff. Try and tell me that they're receiving full enjoyment from these events when they're past the limits of what their minds and bodies can control.

 

As brew ziggins put it, just plow ahead and create your own scene with the music. I think I expressed this before but I was about the least deadhead looking guy around for my sixty or so shows. You would see folks in button-down oxford shirts—shirt tails out of course— hitting a show after their day at the law firm just as you would see dreads-to-toes-tie-dyed-hadn’t-showered-in-a-week-selling-falafel-to-get-to-the-next-town types. Maybe someone looks down their noses at the other but that is their bag and no need to involve yourself.

Like anything people can get possessive or poser-y which is a shame when it happens to someone genuinely interested in the music; but I think in this thread, and I genuinely find on the forum, all the deadheads are happy to share which is super cool.

On your question of improv, in my book yes it was improv, but it was not wildly erratic or without a rigid structure, and generally happened within pretty slight degrees. Looking back on it, or as I still listen, more so this year— I am kind of getting extra nostalgic this golden-year anniversary— the twists and tweaks to how a song was played or phrases were improved, within a given year anyway, not so much year to year, are on the whole pretty small; but as you dial in on them more, and build expectations about the number of ways they get phrased, or when you can better imagine just where the fingers are supposed to be going next and don’t, the little differences grow bigger in your eyes.

My guess is “Eyes of the World” would be the song most often changed structurally over the years, with different breaks or sections added subtracted to build in these little improv way stations.

Click on the date links below and play the Eyes in these shows, in that order, from the same year,

1973-11-14
1973-2-22

Here are a few different years for how their playing changed, drummer count, guitars, sound systems, piano player moniker, Jerry waist size, room sizes, vibes, moods, you name it.

1978-4-08
1981-5-15 [small tape splice in it]
1985-6-27

 

Not a huge fan, but Side 2 of "Terrapin Station" is sublime. Check it out.

 

Another thing I have been meaning to bring up is, certainly any audio gear head should really love this band’s focus on hi fidelity live sound. They would have to be top three as far as bands that drove the development of live sound. This book here is a fantastic read regarding all they put into their instruments and sound systems as well as discussing the some of the makings of the albums.

What made me think of this point was double checking a comment I wanted to make about out of phase condenser mics used to cancel background noise. Read the microphone section if not the whole Wall of Sound description here and tell me there was not some serious audio brainpower there.

On top of embracing the Plangent process for improving tape transfers, I dug this up again recently to remind myself what they did to correct Two From the Vault, a great sounding disc for being a 1968 live tape.

"When we originally recorded this back on August 23-24, 1968, our record company then was Warner Bros. Records. 1" - 8 track was the very rage and State-of-the-Art of the recording industry. Because our approach to recording was then considered controversial (years ahead of our time), Warner Bros. would not entrust this new equipment to us without their engineers chaperoning. The engineers they sent to us were accustomed to recording Big Band style and were not familiar with Rock & Roll close microphone techniques. This together with the fact that Mickey and Billy's drums were premixed one to a track and the vocal and audience microphones were also combined, gave an immense amount of leakage.

When we first began making rough mixes of these tracks, we noticed the combined leakage of every instrument onto every track. This caused severe phase cancellation and time smear that reduced the time image to nothing. So, the challenge to bring back these tapes wasn't reviving the sound of the instruments, but, rather correcting and restoring the immense time smear disparity.

Enter Don Pearson, now Dr. Don the Time Master, and B&K 2032 F.F.T. analyzer. We used Phil's bass track for the time center, and compared this track to the others. Thus we were able to measure the distance in time between the various microphones. Using this information, we then transferred the delay time measured by the analyzer, to TC1280 delay units. This along with careful mixing achieved a nearly perfect stereo image. In headphones, you will be standing on the front center of the stage and you'll be able to tell where everyone is.

This show was recorded on two consecutive nights. The band's equipment had been taken down at the end of one night and set up again the next. We were able to measure that the equipment was set up approximately one foot different than it was the night before. Because of the magic of today's technology, we are able to appreciate a tape that was unusable before. HOORAY!

From Maestro Healy and Dr. Don the Time Master" [1]

 

I'll say this much: Considering the lineups, style changes and 30 years of performance, I probably only like <50% of their music and it's only about half of that that I really love. I've made this point more than once here and the members have been more than gracious and accommodating to me, despite "not quite being one of them," to try to put a label on it.

So for me, someone who saw the band ~20 times from '82-'85, I can't consider myself a Dead Head. I am neither bothered by nor proud of this. It's a meaningless moniker to me. When the Dead were hot, they made some of the best improvisational music of any era, and I am heavily steeped in '50s-'60s jazz. I like what I like and don't what I don't.