Ready Or Not, Grateful Dead's unfinished studio album

i seem to recall Weir having a fuzzed out tone at the end. not in a good way - more like in a "is his guitar broken?" way.

 

Oh I'm not as strong as a boycott, just not gonna pull the trigger until I see what price comes through in other venues. Surprisingly it's even $20 on Amazon at this point.

But this wouldn't be consistent then, since it's only one disc. Feel like $15 would be consistent/fair for this one.

 

Thank you mcrichley! Handy to have that in one place. I hope they can clean up that "Samba" enough to make it less of a jumbled, confused mess (although I think Jerry's solo might be intentionally dissonant, rather than wandering in and out of key). "Wave To The Wind" would have been nice to include; I actually like the Steely Dan-ish feel.

 

Yup, you are absolutely correct of course! I think I did 4 out of 6 in '90 as well, and then the whole run in '91.

 

I am no Dead expert (I'm just a casual fan!), but I sat and listened to many versions of all twelve tracks, ranging between 1993-1995, cross referenced to the top-voted versions as per headyversion.com .

I used the same Corinna they have (10/14/94, which is a great version that goes into a killer jam) but all the others were different. With that said, I exclusively used 1994 takes for consistency in time period and soundquality in board tapes.

 

It sounds like the "So Many Roads" was chosen for the last third when Jerry does some heavy emoting. Does the entire 17 minutes of "Corrina" make it on to the CD?

 

For this official disc? No idea.

On mine, yes. I used all Miller SBDs and crossfaded all nine songs to be a continuous performance. That Corrina jam is the highlight of the whole thing, as imo they slip into The Dead of the past, rather than 90s Dead if that makes any sense.

 

I agree that the "Corrina" is a highlight, and it's a song I like despite the bad rap it often gets. The 9 songs as they currently stand won't fit on a CD, a little something has to go.

 

Worse in what way? The cover is awful, but the material on this album is great.

 

Makes them easier to avoid.

 

Eh, screw it. Here's my reconstruction of the "final unfinished" Grateful Dead album, which I called Lazy River Road:
Grateful Dead - Lazy River Road (soniclovenoize reconstruction) - Google Drive

NOTE these are all sourced from Miller SBD live tapes commonly available on the live music archive and thus is NOT breaking any rules by posting here, as per the board rules.

As previously stated, I dove through many versions of these songs to find imo the best performances. The only same-choice I used was the 10/14/94 Corrina; the other 8 are different, and imo superior. I'm not much of a Deadhead, and I was mostly unfamiliar with these batch of songs and 90s Dead in general, so I had kind of an outsider view to it. Although I might have missed some nuance, I also think I had no personal bias in compiling this, which I think is a plus.

 

The comment was in context to the cover comments and was not reflective of content in any way

 

Did David in that video mention the sources these are pulled from? I can't bare to watch it all.

 

They are all soundboard only, Healy for first two and Cutler house mix for the balance

 

Probably that horrid tone that Weir uses for most of 92-95. That, more than anything else, is what renders a lot of this stuff painful to listen to for me. Make me long for the jangly tones of his 335.

 

yeah what happened to Lazy River Road? that one was Ok.

 

Agree, the 90s were all Weir.

 

Well, Dave & the team obviously listened to what their favorite versions were, but this is a subjective thing to say the least.

I personally like later version of most of these songs for a few reasons.
#1 Vince moved to using more natural (as much as could be at the time) sounding piano and organ sounds by 95, whereas in 92 he was still using more tinkling synth sounds.
#2 Most of the songs are more developed later on.
#3 The mixes are usually a bit drier and cleaner (which to some would be a bad thing)

So it depends. People are complaining about all but the Jerry songs, but to me, it is hard to find versions of half of these Jerry songs where he doesn't get lost, mumble or sound faint and tired at points... and versions where maybe he sounds pretty consistent, the overall performance isn't quite right or good. So "best" versions cannot be definitive.

RayS above suggested they used "So Many Roads" because of the emotion of the last part. And really that is the part that either makes or breaks the song for most people. Even the best versions, people who aren't familiar with late era Jerry are probably going to not be happy with his voice.

I'm not going to listen to any of these versions until the release comes out. I'm VERY familiar with all the songs and I already have my favorites for most of them. I already know off the top of my head which versions of "Corrina" & "Eternity" these are and I'm happy with both of those choices. I'm probably familiar with "Lazy River Road" and a few others too, but off the top of my head, I'm not sure.

I mentioned above somewhere that there was never a good performance of "Samba in the Rain", not even remotely. I mean, there are versions where they get some energy or sound into it and usually the harmonies are relatively in tune, but musically, they are always lost in that tune. Just could not find their way. So I'm not expecting much from that song.

I'm a little surprised they used an early version of "Way to Go Home" because of the keyboard issues I mentioned above, but maybe it'll be a great groove. It's a cool little R&B tune. I know many hate it (my wife being one of them) but I've always liked it as song and always thought someone should do a really cool cover that could do it justice.

"Days Between" is a well written song where I've always felt never got performed to it's potential, so I'm sure I'll find this version to drag too.

"Liberty" is a song that grew on me after Jerry died and the GD were officially gone. And it's an odd one in the Dead universe where many many versions are SO similar (in a good way, they're very consistent with the harmonies, tempo and overall performance). Come to think of it, 10/14/94 might even be my preferred version, I can't remember.

"Easy Answers" is going to be a weird one. Most performances sound like early demos where the band is unsure of themselves, but every once in a while the band got a fire under their ass and did something with it. There is a version from March of 95 that kicks, but that's because Bruce is sitting and pumps some energy into the band. But there is another one, with just Vince, the date escapes me, that was surprisingly rocking. So I hope that's the case here. - I mentioned above that when this song got to The Other Ones after the Dead, it was a really good well-developed groove. There is a live version from 98 on one of the Furthur compilations that I listen to often.

I'm both glad and sad the Phil songs aren't on there. I'm glad because talk about not finding good performances of these songs... there's 3 tracks that people would be complaining about and would be hard for a guy like me to defend!

But I'm also sad because they are part of the story.

There is an acoustic version of "Childhood's End" from 94 (Technically a Phil & Friends show, but it was Jerry, Bob, Phil & Vince acoustic) that was nice. But I think people will forgive me for saying this: Phil shouldn't have sang most of his own songs if he wanted them to find a good place in a comp like this.

The band NEVER figured out how to play "Wave to the Wind" correctly. It's a great song, that with the right band and a good singer could have been a killer tune. Even if the Dead could have gotten their act together in this time, I don't think they would have ever nailed it. It's a lot like "Unbroken Chain" in that way. That's not a knock on the Dead's capabilities. Obviously I'm a huge fan, but it's a nod to the way they work individually and collectively. They don't become someone's backing band, they always each play how they feel like playing in any given moment.

"If the Shoe Fits". This is another one that just never got past the feel of a demo. Put a Phil vocal on it and you've got a song that people just don't get. - In fact, I'm having trouble thinking of how it goes and I've heard it a lot. I'm going to go listen to that one today...

 

I've been waiting for this type of release since I got into the Dead in 2016. Day 1 for me.

 

Probably my least favorite GD song. A reality humorless version of "Keep Your Day Job" with an uninteresting tune.

 

By the way, the stream of Lazy River Road on Spotify sounds no different to me then the Miller SBD source. I was already on the fence on this one but i think that seals it for me that I don't "need" it.

That said, after hearing it, I AM kicking myself for not pulling the trigger on the Giants Stadium box. They hit it out of the park with that one.

 

Neil Young cowrote "Easy Answers."

 

And performs it with Weir on Trios

 

Would be cool if Liberty could cross over and get radio play or get featured on the streaming services.

 

I like that they're trying to do something with this bunch of songs. But from what people are saying, it sounds like a botched effort. It seems they took a bunch of live performances, but seemingly chosen at random, and did nothing to fix them (when the Dead were very erratic in that era). For instance, if Garcia sang well but soloed badly on one version, and sang badly but soloed well on another version, why not combine the best bits?

And the lack of Phil songs hurts. The main problem with most of those songs, in my opinion, is Phil's weak vocals. This coulda/shoulda been a golden opportunity to fix that, just as the Dead's vocals were sweetened in the studio for the "Europe 72" live tracks.

And that cover! Good Lord! So god awful! I don't know if I've ever seen an album cover that I dislike more. Is there even a single person here who likes it?! What were they thinking?!

Soniclovenoize, thanks for sharing your version. I haven't listened to what you've shared yet. But based on your track record with your blog, I'd suspect you've done a better version than this official version. You should post what you did there too.