Let's talk about The Grateful Dead (studio, live, and side projects)

I feel the other way. Given that these are live performances I am always amazed at how precisely and subtly they can play, even in a stadium of 70,000 people. The odd wrong note and certain lyric flub just reminds me that they are human after all, and not some telepathic alien race sent to Earth to identify and pacify those who are susceptible to psychedelic music.

 

Gah! Against my own better judgement, I caught Bob & Phil on The View. Joy messed up the year Jerry died (1985?!?), and Bobby sang off key to an acoustic version of Friend of The Devil with Phil and Warren Haynes. They couldn't pick a Bobby song?

It is cool that everyone in the audience received a free copy of the newTo Terrapin release. Now how many of those ladies in the audience will actually listen to it?

 

The Dead on The View? That's just plain....weird.

 

Weird? It's just plain ... wrong.

 

Here's a link to today's performance on The View -

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gu0Q7lLYssQ

 

Odd for sure,
Nothing like when they levitated on Letterman

 

If the Stones tour this year it would be great to hear some album cuts but they attract such a general public audience that I don't think they can play anything but hits. The Dead were lucky to have a large cult following.

 

Finally cracked opened the Jerry Garcia Band Shoreline dvd that I for for Christmas. This is fantastic stuff! Jerry is in great voice and the whole band is really, really tight. I love the quicker version of Dear Prudence. Goes great with the Grimbergen Blonde I'm drinking!



Edit: That Prudence jam was fantastic!!!!! Jerry is all smiles!!

 

Covers have always been a big integral part of the Dead sets, like Me & My Uncle and Not Fade Away just for starters of the dozens one could name. At some point in the late 80's-early 90's I remember they put out feelers in Dupree's Diamond News and/or Golden Road for MORE suggestions for cover tunes. With such a rich body of GD originals, this struck me as odd (...Jethro Tull never felt compelled to resort to a Chuck Berry set.), but this led to popular choice picks The Weight, and Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds among others (I guess Brent came up with Foghat by himself, as was Phil's cover of Robertson's Broken Arrow.)

I always felt far less obvious covers would have been more riveting. My favorite fantasy was to be in the deep space midst of the 2nd set...The band seems to be shape shifting, everyone's dosed to the gills and hanging by their fingernails to the flimsiest shred of matter and reality. Bobby gets a fiendish grin and starts a pulse with Phil that becomes a two chord progression with a couple beats missing at the end which brings up some not quite recognizable primal memory in the crowd. Then some of the older crowd gasp and whisper, "OhGawd have mercy, surely not..."..but it is! .. as Bob snarls "Bob Bob Bo Bob Banana Banna Bo Bob, Fee Fi Fo Fob, Bob". Taper's pencils snap trying to stab out "The Name Game" as the second pass comes round "Phil Phil Pho Phil, Phanana Phana Pho Phil, Phee Phi Pho Phil, Phil". The groove locks, synapses crackle like lightning, the building starts reverberating wildly for the third passssssss "JJeerryy JJeerryy JJoo Jeerryy, JJaannaanna JJaannaa JJoo JJeerryy, JJeeee JJii JJoo JJeerrrryyyyyy, JJJJJJJJEEEEEEEERRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYY....."""""""""

 

What Foghat song did Brent sing?

 

I always wondered why the Dead did such obvious covers, they were obviously aware of other songs that weren't played on the radio, more deep cuts...maybe it was just laziness...of course I don't think the Dylan snooze-fests Visions of Johanna or Desolation Row were obvious covers (of which I saw the premiers of at Hampton 3-19 and Philly 3-25-86)...1987's Dylan breakouts in Cali were better (Masterpiece and Watchtower in Ventura and the Greek on the summer tour, again ones I was at...all in all I saw 5 Dylan premiers, I guess I was lucky, or not ) but maybe doing covers in themselves were signs of laziness, as they hardly did any in their seventies glory years, nor were they needed then...

 

Just a few that I grabbed off the shelf:

5/2/70
Don't Ease Me In (trad.)
I Know You Rider (trad.)
Beat It On Down The Line (Fuller)
Deep Elem Blues (trad.)
Cold Jordan (trad.)
Good Lovin' (Resnick, Clark)
It's A Man's World (Brown, Jones, Newsome)
Dancing In The Streets (Stevenson, Gaye, I. Hunter)
Morning Dew (Dobson, Rose)
Viola Lee Blues (Lewis)
We Bid You Goodnight (trad.)


7/31/71
Big Railroad Blues (Lewis)
Hard To Handle (Redding, Isbell, Jones)
Me & Bobby McGee (Kristofferson, Foster)
Not Fade Away (Hardin, Petty)
Going Down The Road... (trad.)
Johnny B. Goode (Berry)
Sing Me Back Home (Haggard)
Big Boss Man (Dixon, Smith)

4/26/72
Me & My Uncle (Phillips)
Next Time You See Me (Harvey, Forest)
I Know You Rider (trad.)
Big Railroad Blues (Lewis)
Turn On Your Lovelight (Malone, Scott)

10/19/73
Promised Land (Berry)
Don't Ease Me In (trad.)
El Paso (Robbins)
I Know You Rider (trad.)
Me & My Uncle (Phillips)
Big River (Cash)
Morning Dew (Dobson, Rose)
Johnny B. Goode (Berry)

Sept. '74 (DP 7)
Beat It On Down The Line (Fuller)
Big River (Cash)
Me & My Uncle (Phillips)
Not Fade Away (Hardin, Petty)
Morning Dew (Dobson, Rose)

8/13/75
Around & Around (Berry)
Big River (Cash)
Going Down The Road...(trad.)

12/31/76
Promised Land (Berry)
Mama Tried (Haggard)
Good Lovin' (Resnick, Clark)
Samson & Delilah (trad.)
Around & Around (Berry)
Not Fade Away (Hardin, Petty)
Morning Dew (Dobson, Rose)
We Bid You Goodnight (trad.)

5/22/77
Dancing In The Streets (Stevenson, Gaye, I. Hunter)
Samson & Delilah (trad.)
Morning Dew (Dobson, Rose)

12/29/77
Mama Tried (Haggard)
New Minglewood Blues (trad.)
Promised Land (Berry)
Good Lovin (Resnick, Clark)
I Know You Rider (trad.)
Not Fade Away (Hardin, Petty)
Johnny B. Goode (Berry)

12/26/79
C. C. Rider (trad.)
Me & My Uncle (Phillips)
Big River (Cash)
New Minglewood Blues (trad.)
Promised Land (Berry)
Not Fade Away (Hardin, Petty)
Around & Around (Berry)
Johnny B. Goode (Berry)

 

no, these are all Grateful Dead songs, in my world, and that's the only one that matters...the eighties covers had more of sense of cheese about them, I guess...

 

I believe Brent sang Willie Dixon's
"I Just Want to Make Love To You"
With which Foghat had a minor fm hit.

 

Not much of a serious Dead Head, more of casual listener. Love American Beauty & Workingmans Dead but I just picked up a copy of BOB Weir's ACE cd from the used bins.
Cost me a whopping $5. What a great cd, I'm really digging this cd for sure..Never heard it before and just grabbed it on a fluke. Glad I did.

 

^^^^^^

You should check out Bobby and the Midnites and the Bob Weir solo album too.

 

I always thought "The Wheel/Garcia" album made a good "2nd set" for "Workingman's Dead", and likewise "Ace" made a good "2nd set" for "American Beauty".

p.s. yes, I was referring to Brett's "Foghat" cover of Willie Dixon. Willie Dixon covers like "Little Red Rooster" etc are just a little less common than the Dylan covers...it was quite fitting and humbling that allegedly Willie's last lyrics "Eternity" found music by Weir, and into the Dead canon.

 

Thanks for the tip..I'll have to check those out.

 

Uncut has them as the cover story this month..
But I was real disappointed that the article was so short.
"Jeeeese, can ya spare it ?"
I read it at the newsstand..I'm reluctant to buy a magazine
that I can finish reading at the newsstand..

 

Took you up on your tip and hit my local used store. Same place I got the ACE cd. Didn't find the two you mentioned but I did find this:





Another great score for a whopping $5 the salesman wanted $10 but I've done MUCH business with him plus the disc is Beat to Hell but the inserts are pristine.
Once I got home I gave the disc a good cleaning but no dice. So I did something I would NEVER do normally. I had it resurfaced at Hollywood video, Yeah I know but the cd had to take one for the team..Not as great as Beauty or Workingmans but I think it will grow on me..

 

Best sounding Mars Hotel you'll get. The only weak songs on this album are Loose Lucy (which is debatable, just because of the lyrics - great live, though!) and Money Money. It was worth the $5. Great score!!

 

Say, HunterHeads and DeadHeads,
It's come to light recently on the "new Bob Dylan album" thread that all but one of the songs on the new album are co-written (or at least assisted?) by Robert Hunter. I personally am really stoked about this for reasons I've already mentioned there. (And may be ultimately the most enduring (and enduring) artifact to come out of the Dylan/Dead "connection" that goes back decades. Album out April 28.

http://www.stevehoffman.tv/forums/showthread.php?t=176411&highlight=dylan

 

i've been revisiting the So Many Roads (1965–1995) box set this past weekend.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/So_Many_Roads_(1965-1995)

All things considered I think this set holds up really well.

It feels as though a lot of care was put into the selection process.

interesting to note which things are represented and which are not -- not songs from 1977 for example, which seems odd.

 

Although it would probably never be used this way, I think it would be an ideal introductin to the Dead - you really can't cover the span of their career and material in less than five discs anyway. It's also remarkable because, at the time, none of the material had been officially released, and yet they managed to come up with some spectacular performances (okay, given the volume of material to choose from, maybe it wasn't THAT remarkable).

I like it a lot as well...