Grateful Dead album by album thread

ah, live dead. what a release! if you told me i had one era to pick, i think this would be it. the development of the material is coming together, the band is playing as a unit, the crowd's are getting it and that's fueling the band. i don't know if hey jude was a good vehicle for them but that's another story. this was my first exposure to them and much to my brother's dismay, i almost wore out his lp.

 

Live Dead is one of my all time favorites and the first album I had that required a flip to continue a song sequence. Dark Star ends delicately...flip the vinyl and St. Stephen comes out on fire...many times I had to turn the volume down after inching it up during Dark Star.

 

what WAS the translator smoking? Primo apparently

 

Live/Dead, just brilliant. The original live "Dark Star", "St. Stephen" and "Turn On Your Lovelight", the recordings which made them stage favourites for years. When it comes to live Dead releases I'd still place this in the top 5.

I still got to get me a copy of the Fillmore 1969: Complete Recordings one day if I can ever find a used copy at a reasonable price.

 

Ok, I'll take stab at it...


L-A-T-V-A-L-A


Nope, that's 7 letters...


No idea.

 

Live Dead was the first Grateful Dead album that I bought. I wore the grooves flat on the Dark Star side. It remains to this day one of my all time favorite pieces of music.

This entire period and all of the releases mentioned above are phenomenal. If you like this era of the band you really want all of them. The Fillmore box is just a monster. To think that a band could pull off a run of shows of that quality boggles the mind. Amazing runs of shows are common for the band though. A top twenty list could be made and released that would keep the remaining band members rolling in dough. It would also document every era of the band. So far we have the Fillmore Box (out of print) and the Winterland 73 box. Every era has a monster run that deserves this treatment. Having said that the Fillmore box still sticks out.

 

Hmmm, D-O-N-N-A doesn't work, either. That's 5 letters.

 

I got it!



B-E-R-T-H-A

 

There seems to be an overwhelming religiousity in the music and packaging of this album IMHO, though I’m not really sure how much is purposely implied and how much occurs by reflex in this observer. The girl on the front cover is evidently enjoying some lively resurrected status and is flying a flowing banner and holding a pyx. St Stephen’s ivy fills the word “LIVE”, and the background glows orange-red like a hot coal.

The actual “sound” of the album (clear quiet recording and echo) has always reminded me of a dark ornate old church or cathedral at night with a multitude of bright golden candle flames reflecting off gold metal surfaces. Call it synesthesia if you will, but annals of Dead-dom have alluded to some of these Fillmore gigs as a place of “high worship” and musical epiphanies, and they probably weren’t kidding much.

“Dark Star” deserves a book (but won’t get it tonight from me). Jerry once described it as a place they kept revisiting rather than a song. Musically, the opening lick sounds to me like one that might have been used in a folk tune to signal commencement of a nautical voyage, and the initial chord jams also summon images of sailboats catching a breeze in San Francisco Bay. The journey changes from version to version, but generally the jam starts with a recognizable tune then drifts into some modal explorations for several minutes, until they arrive back into the shallows where the first verse juts up like an island. Science in recent decades has shown a Dark Star to be one of great gravity and mind-boggling, reason tattering forces. Hunter probably was thinking along more allegorical lines when he wrote it at Dead rehearsal and Golden Gate Park so long ago. After the verse, it sails out into a musical abyss of Marianas Trench proportions, and that’s where the Dead do their marvelous thing. Jerry refers to some pre-rehearsed “signposts” that they can check-in to in the course of their freeform journey, and Harrison’s book had a scribble of the kind of way out notation (pentangles and arrows) Tom Constanten used for a multi-referenced non-linear composition. This is the ever-changing meat of the tune, and it’s always quite illuminating to hear what people (whether they be small children or adults) “see” when they close their eyes and listen. When that night’s journey is done, there is a hint of the DS theme like a searchlight beyond that the band follows like on in to the last verse, where the night’s muse “recedes in the nights of good-bye” and the decision is made to go “while we can”.

I already had my jabber about “St Stephen” in AoXoMoXoA, but it is a particularly jubilant version here over great musical boulders until they reach the stark hungry barren land with chilly winds and Manzanita, where the bow is stretched to it’s limits then released with previously uncontemplated force, possibilities, and implications…

“The Eleven” hurtles along as if exploded from a cannon. On the heels of the “Saint”, “The Eleven” conjures eleven loyal apostles, yet in reality it’s merely named after the eleven beat progression (3,3,3,2 repeating) the band is jamming. Nonetheless, the main lyrics are a zealous affirmation of open minds (the season of what), growth (the child has relinquished the reins), and faith (the test of the boomerang tossed in the night of redeeming). Hunter has written some quasi-liturgical numbered responses for Jerry to sing between the lines . (Like “seven faced marble eyed transitory dream doll”, etc.
I have to laugh, as a few years later Flo & Eddie released a comically similar "The Sanzini Brothers Return (With The Tibetan Memory Trick)" — 2:50 (Kaylan/Volman/Underwood);
One hen
Two ducks
Three squawking geese
Four Limerick oysters
Five corpulent porpoises
Six pairs of Don Alverzo's tweezers
Seven thousand Macedonians in full battle array
Eight brass monkeys from the ancient, sacred crypts of Egypt
Nine apathetic, sympathetic, diabetic old men on roller skates who all have a marked propensity towards procrastination and sloth
Ten lyrical, spherical, diabolical denizens of the deep who haul stall around the corner of the quo of the quay of the quivery, all at the same time.)

“Lovelight” of course is the Pig doing what the Pig does best, grounding theband and audience and the preceeding Lightning straight down to The Earth. It should be so horribly incongruous, but it works in a beautiful sweaty natural way.

Side 4 could’ve been anything, based on the setlists. The “Other One”s are all blistering, but it’s good that they saved it until “Skull And Roses” when they learned to “open it up” in the middle like “Dark Star”. They could’ve used the blues “It’s A Sin” about mistreating lovers, but it’s ultimately the old “Death Don’t Have No Mercy” that leaves no doubt as to Death’s utter finality. We fade into caustic “Feedback”, then into an old little prayer about “take your rest, lay your head upon your Savior’s breast”. And they bid us Good Night.

As I said at the beginning, there’s some religious mojo going on here on this particular album. Some may be frightened of the zillions of iconic skulls, but I always think of philosopher Alan Watts pointing out the celebratory nature of the dearly departed in the catacombs or those Asian temples made of thousands of laughing bones. Such was the nature of the Dead’s all embracing reality of I-Ching, Jesus, and whatever else makes up one’s world.

The back cover has that juxtaposition of the word DEAD over the Stars And Strips. They reportedly did sometimes see themselves as adventurous counter-culture patriots of sorts. An interesting bit of trivia; Many people saw a second word “acid” across the top; ‘a’ on top of the D, ‘c’ on top of the E, ‘I’on top of the A, and the full ‘D’ dropping down to the bottom.

 

Well done, that was driving ME around the twist.

And I bid YOU good night!

 

Coltrane levels of improvisational dexterity and imagination.

spiritual music of the highest caliber.

collective musical conversation beyond genre.

the best live Dead release, and one of the greatest live albums ever, period.

if i was gonna turn someone on to the Dead I'd give them this album and American Beauty.

 

Oddly, I've never heard this album! I have been intrigued by it for years but never got around to buying it. I do have the Fillmore West 1969 3 Disc set which is indeed very nice. My only problem with that set is a lot of times during the heavier jams the band seems to be out of tune. Although I can't tell if it's the recording, out of tune instruments, or just playing the wrong notes. It doesn't detract too much from the enjoyment, but it can be a little jarring.

That being said, the Darkstar on FW 1969 is fantastic. Very musically spacey.

 

I'll also add that I find it a beautifully recorded and presented album. I love the ambience and soundstage -- you can really put yourself "in" the music.

 

if you have a turntable, find yourself a nice complete copy on vinyl -- it's a great way to enjoy the piece.

 

That does sound like a nice time! Certain albums do lend themselves to better listening on vinyl. And I don't just mean the sound, but the actual experience of putting on an album side and then flipping it.

Was this a double album?

 

i think that's Weir -- his chording has a discordant "rub" to it on this album. honestly, I never really noticed it until you mentioned it -- i kind of suspend intonation requirements when listening to the GD. either you indulge them that, or they could drive you crazy! probably one of the things that keeps people away from their music...

 

yes -- a double LP with an excellent cover and a cool little illuminated book with the lyrics.

 

Although I can never remember dates and mostly went through the 70s and 80s with unmarked cassettes, I've got to say that I've listened to dozens of "Dark Star"s, including all the versions on the 10CD box and even Greyfolded, and I find it pretty amazing that given all the variations before and afterwards they happened to end up with the one which mosts bears repeated listening for the LP, especially since it seems to be basically a single unedited performance. There are other "St. Stephen"s and "Eleven"s, etc. one might argue could take the places of those on "Live/Dead", but for "Dark Star" I think they nailed it for all time, and I'm glad it's the one they decided at the time to preserve.

 

Are you referring to Live/Dead of Fillmore West 1969? I never hear it outside of these particular '69 recordings. Not that they don't do out of tune elsewhere but on here it's a bit much. Particularly on The Eleven towards the end and majorly on 'Jam' on disc 3.

 

wasn't this before he was fired by Jerry for a few weeks? (late '69, around the time of Mickey and the Hartbeats) It certainly gave him the impetus to practice guitar more and get better...

 

I've always thought that while the rest of the album is a good show (I much prefer the studio "St. Stephen") and broke ground for live pop albums, this "Dark Star" is the stuff. I suspect this track is one of the rocks the Dead's reputation is founded on.