Day of the Dead - Grateful Dead Tribute

This looks like it may be interesting. Can "all" the songs survive without the context of a Dead concert? It's about time we found out!

Various Artists - Day of the Dead

Digital tracklisting (EAD 3624)

“Thunder” (Vol.1)

01. 'Touch of Grey' - The War on Drugs
02. 'Sugaree' - Phosphorescent, Jenny Lewis & Friends
03. 'Candyman' - Jim James & Friends
04. 'Cassidy' - Moses Sumney, Jenny Lewis & Friends
05. 'Black Muddy River' - Bruce Hornsby and DeYarmond Edison
06. 'Loser' - Ed Droste, Binki Shapiro & Friends
07. 'Peggy-O' - The National
08. 'Box of Rain' - Kurt Vile and the Violators (featuring J Mascis)
09. 'Rubin and Cherise' - Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy & Friends
10. 'To Lay Me Down' - Perfume Genius, Sharon Van Etten & Friends
11. 'New Speedway Boogie' - Courtney Barnett
12. 'Friend of the Devil' - Mumford & Sons
13. 'Uncle John’s Band' - Lucius
14. 'Me and My Uncle' - The Lone Bellow & Friends
15. 'Mountains of the Moon' - Lee Ranaldo, Lisa Hannigan & Friends
16. 'Black Peter' - Anohni and yMusic
17. 'Garcia Counterpoint' - Bryce Dessner
18. 'Terrapin Station (Suite)' - Daniel Rossen, Christopher Bear and The National (featuring Josh Kaufman, Conrad Doucette, So Percussion and Brooklyn Youth Chorus)
19. 'Attics of My Life' - Angel Olsen
20. 'St. Stephen (live)' - Wilco with Bob Weir

“Lightning” (Vol. 2)

01. 'If I Had the World to Give' - Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy
02. 'Standing on the Moon' - Phosphorescent & Friends
03. 'Cumberland Blues' - Charles Bradley and Menahan Street Band
04. 'Ship of Fools' - The Tallest Man On Earth & Friends
05. 'Bird Song' - Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy & Friends
06. 'Morning Dew' - The National
07. 'Truckin’' - Marijuana Deathsquads
08. 'Dark Star' - Cass McCombs, Joe Russo & Friends
09. 'Nightfall of Diamonds' - Nightfall of Diamonds
10. 'Transitive Refraction Axis for John Oswald' - Tim Hecker
11. 'Going Down The Road Feelin' Bad' - Lucinda Williams & Friends
12. 'Playing in the Band' - Tunde Adebimpe, Lee Ranaldo & Friends
13. 'Stella Blue' - Local Natives
14. 'Eyes of the World' - Tal National
15. 'Help on the Way' - Bela Fleck
16. 'Franklin’s Tower' - Orchestra Baobab
17. 'Till the Morning Comes' - Luluc with Xylouris White
18. 'Ripple' - The Walkmen
19. 'Brokedown Palace' - Richard Reed Parry with Caroline Shaw and Little Scream (featuring Garth Hudson)

“Sunshine” (Vol. 3)

01. 'Here Comes Sunshine' - Real Estate
02. 'Shakedown Street' - Unknown Mortal Orchestra
03. 'Brown-Eyed Women' - Hiss Golden Messenger
04. 'Jack-A-Roe' - This Is the Kit
05. 'High Time' - Daniel Rossen and Christopher Bear
06. 'Dire Wolf' - The Lone Bellow & Friends
07. 'Althea' - Winston Marshall, Kodiak Blue and Shura
08. 'Clementine Jam' - Orchestra Baobab
09. 'China Cat Sunflower' -> I Know You Rider - Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks
10. 'Easy Wind' - Bill Callahan
11. 'Wharf Rat' - Ira Kaplan & Friends
12. 'Estimated Prophet' - The Rileys
13. 'Drums -> Space' - Man Forever, So Percussion and Oneida
14. 'Cream Puff War' - ****ed Up
15. 'Dark Star' - The Flaming Lips
16. 'What’s Become of the Baby' - s t a r g a z e
17. 'King Solomon’s Marbles'- Vijay Iyer
18. 'Rosemary' - Mina Tindle & Friends
19. 'And We Bid You Goodnight' - Sam Amidon
20. 'I Know You Rider (live)' - The National with Bob Weir

 

Mandatory pre-order for me, and I'm looking forward to it quite a lot. I like the scale of the project and am keeping my fingers crossed that The Flaming Lips who do 'Dark Star' can muster some of their past strength to do it justice.

 

Scared to do "Dark Star"? 'Nightfall of Diamonds' - Nightfall of Diamonds

 

The National's "Morning Dew" on all songs considered.

New Mix: The National Covers The Grateful Dead, Free Cake For Every Creature, More »

 

Poor Brent.... nobody wants to cover his songs.

 

Missed opportunity for a metal cookie monster vocal version of I Don't Need Love.

 

Daniel Rossen, Christopher Bear & The National's cover of Terrapin Station (Suite)

 

Pitchfork piece about the project, including a bunch of quotes from some of the artists.

To be brutally honest, I'm not all that excited about this. It comes off like a hipster roll-call project, top-heavy with people who openly admit that they a) are barely familiar with the Dead's music, or worse, b) don't even like the band!

Don't take my word for it, read the piece.

 

I see your point about the hipster thing. Then again, the unfamiliarity thing might actually work in its benefit. It means that the artists are likely to bring their own style to the table and reinterpret the songs with a fresh perspective - rather than performing boring, rote, jam-bandish, predictable renditions.

 

No Paul McCartney? He did a film on Grateful Dead once "Grateful Dead - A Photofilm" (1995) . I believe he's a fan.

 

While I was writing this, notesofachord came in with a quicker and pithier response. On the other hand I don't put in all this work for nothing so:-

The fact that some, or a majority, of the performer aren't Grateful Dead fans doesn't weigh with me at all. We know what a faithful set of cover versions sounds like: it sounds like The Art Of McCartney, and while that collection isn't bad it's also never more than pleasant. In fact the Courtney Barnett version of "New Speedway Boogie" is very much along those lines. It's a perfectly appropriate, pleasant version of the song. If the rest of the album were like that, it would be fine, but maybe too reverent. I'd rather hear performers who don't have such a weight of affection for the material that they feel unable to stretch a little.

The Grateful Dead were themselves a probing band who wanted to try things in different ways. If Jerry had been brought a project like Day Of The Dead I think he'd have gone for it in a big way because I don't think that he ever felt that he had given the perfect interpretation of his own material: the Folk tradition is very much open to the idea that there's someone in the next town who can perform your own material better than you can. Speaking as a long-time Dead listener, I absolutely think that other people could do their songs better, and I must say: when I heard that version of "Terrapin Station" upthread I went from thinking "Yes, this a pretty good facsimile of the studio version" to "wow, I'm not sure that this isn't better than the original!". (Which, by the way, is one of my favourite GD songs.)

So without exactly hyping this collection, I think it's wonderful to have such a large-scale expansion of the hitherto rather sparse coverage of the GD songbook, and I'm really looking forward to hearing it in full.

 

The film was really a gift to Linda, since it used her photography of the GD. I was at the London Film Festival when he presented it and I got the impression from what he was saying that he wasn't a particular fan of the GD, though I can't remember what he said that gave me that impression so I may be remembering wrongly.

 

Yeah maybe. I was kind of surprised when I found out about the film. Can't say I've heard him talk about Grateful Dead a lot in interviews. I think Linda maybe had a little looser musical tastes. The Paul wants to be #1 on the charts.

 

I am kind of amazed but not shocked that this Forum has introduced Paul McCartney into a discussion of an indie rock Grateful Dead covers collection.

 

I am interested to see the vinyl monstrosity of moving a packed 5cd set to LP. Not surprised that the 4AD website lists it as "coming soon" with the new Radiohead set delayed to August and the new Neil Young coming out in December.

 

I ended up ordering the 5 CD package and have been enjoying the released samples. I've always thought that Hunter and Barlow's lyrics would more than hold up on their own. Probably a good idea to set the music free for a new generation to discover, listen and (re)interpret. It's also for a very good cause.

 

Listening to the download of this now. Songs are great but it's pretty compressed. DR6 or 7 on the tracks I've checked. Hoping the vinyl sounds a little better but as someone pointed out I don't know it the LP box will be made anytime soon.

 

Nearly five and half hours' running time ... or: about what the real Grateful Dead took to tune up.

I'm going to be dipping into this today but early impressions have been moderately promising: I thought that the Cass McCombs take on "Dark Star" (at four minutes) was going to be perfunctory but it segues directly into a very tripped-out second section credited to "Nightfall Of Diamonds" (whoever that is; my physical copy with credits should be here later today) and then straight into Tim Hecker's tribute to John Oswald, which is understandably also pretty psychedelic. It's a nice little sequence and shows that they haven't just treated this as an opportunity to slap together a "Roots" compilation in the approved T Bone Burnett format.

On the "reconstructive" side, Lucinda Williams gives a reading of "Goin' Down The Road Feelin' Bad" that is so downbeat that it may well be that she never heard the Grateful Dead version. Angel Olsen's take on one of my all-time favourite Dead songs, "Attics Of My Life", should have been an opportunity to pull off some spectacular close harmony, but to my taste she falls well short of the original version by a bunch of guys who - let's face it - could barely sing in the first place. Now ducking.

Ira Kaplan is a new one on me, but his take on "Wharf Rat" is out of the Lou Reed Sprechsgesang playbook: way too low-key. Got to say I miss Jerry on this one.

From what I've heard so far this seems like a contender for the most genuinely interesting album of the year.

[edited to say: The Rileys' version of "Estimated Prophet" is something of a WTF moment)

 

Black Muddy River is beautiful.

 

So much love, affection and respect from this project...and still nobody has the stones to cover "What's Become of the Baby"

edit: at least Lesh did it:

 

I've never heard Courtney Barnett until this morning, but I think I love her!

 

She's great and I really like her rendition of New Speedway Boogie. I think one of the stronger songs on this compilation so far...

Check out her first LP, "Sometimes I Sit and Think, Sometimes I Just Sit"

 

I'd have to say I'm curious to know more about the LP box set too. Will it be a condensed version? But you're probably right in assuming it won't be available for quite awhile. Wish they would release some details about it soon...

 

He's the main singer for Yo La Tengo.