After 9/19/70 (up to Lovelight - just wasn't in a Pigpen mood) I've moved to the 73 Winterland box. Taking it from the top. Finishing up 11/9/73 first set now. This is a blistering Playing In The Band. The jam has been in the double-time jazz fusion pace for pretty much the whole thing. Finally showing some signs of slowing down at around 15:30. Now back to the theme. No spacy explorations, just 15 minutes of focused energy. I'm not super familiar with this run. I feel like this show may get a little overshadowed by the Playin-UJB-Dew-UJB-Playin and the Dark Star from the next 2 nights. I'll go through the run, but I'm definitely flagging this PITB for repeat listening.
One of the trunks yes, I can't remember which one though or if 5/8 was involved in that tape-prankster righteous caper. My hazy memory involves a barn or an out in the woods house and running cable to a root cellar or garage all while the owner was unaware... probably not exactly like I remember, but let's never let the facts get in the way of a good lore. It is a hardcore taping story for sure so I'll go digging for it soon. Tape on you crazy tapers.
Yeah. Thanks for reminding me i need the complete Winterland Fall '73 Box now too. I have a retail copy of 11/11 pulled from the used bin a few years ago.
7/7 is my gem o' the box; but I can tell from the cheap seats that you are dialed into these recent latter 70's boxes so what can I really add other than enjoy it when you get there
I just listened again to the H>S>F from 5/9/77 and it is maybe the greatest sounding 2-track recording I've ever heard. I could listen to it multiple times per day for weeks, I think. The drums sound incredible and I think it's the best performance of the sequence I've heard them play. Plus it's the opening of the show. Plus for me the 5/7 & 5/8 shows are just as great. I even like the reverb!! Yes I love the GSTL box and I'm now loving the 78 box. It is noteworthy how radically different the band sounds only 14 months later. Yes different Jerry guitar and different keyboard set-up but that's the least of the changes.
Okay so I'm a newbie to the Grateful Dead. What records should I listen to so that I fall in love with them like I did with the Beatles?
Workingman's Dead and American Beauty, then Grateful Dead (aka Skull and Roses) and Europe '72, and, if you pass these tests, the final challenge: Live/Dead, which is as, I believe @MikeP5877 put it, the mothership of all live Grateful Dead recordings. If you like all five then you're good to go.
It's not going to be like the Beatles. They didn't write swimming pools, and they didn't have matching suits and hair. The Fabs obviously had live prowess but were forced to abandon it for logistical reasons. The GD were first and foremost a live band through the entirety of their career. Generally speaking, they didn't like the studio and the studio didn't like them, although their studio output, in my opinion, is underrated. That said. I would start with this: This live album (and live is where I think anyone should start with this band) marks the point where they were leaving psychedelia, and moving towards simpler song-oriented material. As a big Beatles fan, I think this is the end of the pool you should start in. If you like it, you can then move forward or back with the other albums. If you don't like it, well, you've saved yourself another obsession.
Just get Live/Dead, man. Dive right in. Also, the song "Terrapin Station" from the album of the same name. That is if you'd like to approach the band from the psych/prog side of things instead of the folk/country/blues side.
What have you heard so far? Everyone has put some good advice here - but I would say that if you start with the 1971 S/T live album and don't like it much, or even make the leap into Live/Dead and have the same reaction, do try out Workingman's Dead and especially American Beauty as well. The live album, as has been said, documents their set at the point where they had completed and perfected their turn from heavy acid rock improv towards songs, and yet still managed to include a full-album side exploratory jam vehicle with 5 minute drum solo. (the Other One) The main critique of that record (Self Titled because the original title the band submitted was Skull ****,) is that it is fairly short on original material - apart from the already released Other One, all the songs on the double album except for Bertha, Wharf Rat, and Playin' in the Band are covers. So please check out Workingman's Dead, American Beauty, and even Wake of the Flood for some of their best studio work in that kind of 'hippy Americana' vibe, even if you're not hooked right away by the live albums.
I don't think starting with any studio Dead album is a good idea, especially Workingman's and American Beauty because, for me, part of enjoying those two is knowing where the band was prior. To listen to the earlier studio and especially live output, and then go to those albums can be an experience, because those mark a shift into a different gear. To go straight to those two studio albums as an avid fan of the band that, to many, basically represents the gold standard of album rock, I think, potentially sets up @Beatmaniac to be at sort of a loss insofar as appreciating what's going on. Which is to say I'm prescribing the opposite of "Don't Ease Me In." Of course we could always tell him to fly to the next Dead & Co. show, drop acid, and go from there. There's just too many options for entry these days.
Most The Beatles-esque jumping off LP for the GoGD? Damn. Many will disagree but give Summer 1969's Aoxomoxoa a shot before giving up on 'em. Folky 'n lysergic song based effort. No Aox? No American Beauty, me thinks.
For the record, I ordered RT 1.1 and 1.2 with the hopes of getting the bonus discs like others here have, and despite already owning both (buying them from dead.net originally too IIRC), this time they arrived with bonus discs! Huzzah!
I hope it came across that I was not disagreeing with your rec of Skull **** as a first look, but only stressing that if someone didn't like it, they shouldn't give up before checking out the classic studio material. In my own experience, American Beauty, the more famous cuts from Workingman's (Casey Jones, Uncle John's Band,) and 'St Stephen' served as an introduction, convinced me I should check out this band some more, but I didn't really become a fan until I spent a couple of nights listening to the Live disc of the What a Long Strange Trip its Been compilation: (St. Stephen from Live/Dead, Me and My Uncle and Playin' from SF, and Ramble on Rose, Brown Eyed Women, Cumberland Blues, Jack Straw, and Tennessee Jed from Europe 72.) That's material that's far from representative of the way they really sound live, (the most jammed out thing there is Cumberland Blues,) but still has that energy that was enough to reel me in.
I think I was setting up straw men on the account of crappy reading comprehension. But I stick by what I said, I'm just probably reacting to imaginary boogeymen. I simultaneously have a work document open, which isn't helping what I'm writing here.
I've come to really like Aoxomoxoa, even in the 1971 remix, which is all you can find on CD these days, (though "What's Become of the Baby really suffers without all the effects found in the original mix IMO.) I agree, there's definitely a lot of Beatles-esque studio work in that one - the mixdown was a performance in itself, with band members sitting in the studio fading up and down on cue (Or maybe that was Anthem of the Sun. Probably both, Aoxomoxoa was one of the first albums ever in 16 track.) LOL, this is a going to be a 'list everything ever' question when all is said and done, I think.
I've only heard it on youtube: It was officially released as one of the LP reissues a few years back. I'm sure hoping the forthcoming 50th anniversary edition includes it on CD. The channel I posted is also the only place I've heard Hunter's Jack O Roses and the Keith and Donna album as well.
Oh goody, I must buy. I hope it is the original mix, but if they just tack an unreleased show onto the end of it like last time, I will still buy.
I know it's a first world problem, but I don't own any CD of Aoxomoxoa, and was recently looking at the 2002 (?) Rhino CD ( the 1971 remix,) which I had my eye on for the bonus tracks - rare studio jams. But I'm pretty much locked in to that 50th anniversary edition no matter what, (still due in 2019 as far as I know, but the president of Rhino has talked about moving them up a bit,) and 1000% more if it has the original mix. It's only 9.99, so I thought pretty hard about it, but instead I went with the Grateful Dead Movie Soundtrack.
