Ready Or Not, Grateful Dead's unfinished studio album

Discussion in 'Music Corner' started by TerpStation, Oct 1, 2019.

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  1. IFP

    IFP Forum Resident

    Location:
    United States
    Hey thanks man! I look forward to giving these a listen!
     
  2. dsdu

    dsdu less serious minor pest

    Location:
    Santa Cruz, CA
    [​IMG]
     
  3. John69

    John69 Forum Resident

    Location:
    Connecticut
    The first in-ear monitor show was 05/19/92 Cal Expo.
     
  4. MikeP5877

    MikeP5877 V/VIII/MCMLXXVII

    Location:
    OH
    I sense an "In-ear monitor" box set in our near future.
     
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  5. Crispy Rob

    Crispy Rob Cat Juggler

    Location:
    Oakland, CA
    Around summer ‘92 IIRC.
     
  6. Crispy Rob

    Crispy Rob Cat Juggler

    Location:
    Oakland, CA
    You beat me to it. That sounds exactly right. I do think that while convenient for the band, perhaps ironically they resulted in members not listening to each other as closely as before, although with Jerry’s deterioration happening at the same time it’s hard to say for sure how much theyvaffected things.
     
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  7. Terrapin Station

    Terrapin Station Master Guns

    Location:
    NYC Man/Joy-Z City
    I'm unfortunately probably the only one who had hoped that they'd actually go into the studio and work these tunes into a studio album, as they believe it would have sounded sometime between the mid 90s to now.

    They could have either done this simply with a recent incarnation of the band, or they could have employed a bit of Zappa's xenochrony to extract Garcia vocals and guitar parts from live recordings of the tunes and worked them into the studio recordings.

    I'm a rare sort of chap who loves studio Dead even more than most live Dead.

    This album is okay as it is, but I wouldn't call it their "unfinished studio album," it's more like a collection of sketchy live versions (as in literally sketchy--working out rough sketches/ideas) of relatively obscure late-period tunes.
     
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  8. uzn007

    uzn007 Pack Rat

    Location:
    Raleigh, N.C.
    I agree that that would probably have been more interesting than this live album. I'd like to hear the band "finish" these songs somehow. Using Zappa's techniques would be a brilliant idea, and a lot easier to do now in the digital era.

    Sure it wouldn't be a "real" GD studio album, but as others have suggested, it still might have been better than Built to Last and it would have been an act of creativity rather than curation, which seems like a better way to honor those songs.
     
  9. Guy Smiley

    Guy Smiley America’s Favorite Game Show Host

    Location:
    Sesame Street
    Can’t find a clip of it, but I love the scene where a bunch of babes think Chong is Garcia and they’re doting on him. Cheech is being ignored and he’s trying to get some attention saying “Hey! Hey, I’m Santana!”
     
  10. pbuzby

    pbuzby Senior Member

    Location:
    Chicago, IL, US
    Easier to do now, but still difficult (especially since I don't think they have a lot of great Garcia performances available in this era, tbh), and although some fans here are advocating the idea I suspect others would be up in arms about it.
     
  11. uzn007

    uzn007 Pack Rat

    Location:
    Raleigh, N.C.
    Sure, but some fans would be up in arms about literally anything they released. The Grateful Dead thing to do would be to honor the music and not worry about pleasing everyone.

    Yes, it would be work, but maybe the best way to honor these songs would have been by spending some time finishing them, instead of just sending Lemieux into the vault with a list.
     
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  12. Dennis0675

    Dennis0675 Hyperactive!

    Location:
    Ohio
    I don’t get what is unfinished about these songs. They played them many, many times and they are very consistent. In the world of the dead, all songs are unfinished but like them or not, there is no reason to think they aren’t as finished as say truckin. Now, Wave to the wind or Childhoods end might be unfinished songs and why they weren’t included. If they would have taken any of these songs into the studio they just would have been shorter, possibly with a bit more production to sweeten them up.

    The real question is if jerry would have selected these songs for the studio not I’d he would have changed the words or music until it was “finished”.
     
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  13. pbuzby

    pbuzby Senior Member

    Location:
    Chicago, IL, US
    I don't think any amount of vault digging and editing would produce a first rate studio album of those songs played by the 92-95 GD. I'd be glad if recordings surfaced to prove me wrong about that.
     
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  14. Crush87

    Crush87 Forum Resident

    Location:
    New York
    First rate? I don't know if anyone is saying that.

    We have an amount of untouched live recordings to last a few lifetimes, and they're still coming. I would have been down for an attempt at doing something different even if it fell short.
     
    ianuaditis likes this.
  15. fishcane

    fishcane Dirt Farmer

    Location:
    Finger Lakes,NY
    These are live cuts and they were finished the moment the song ended, did you want charging choppers up and down your carpeted hall added somewhere?
     
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  16. ronbow

    ronbow Senior Member

    Location:
    St. Louis MO
    Hmmm - not the disaster i thought it might be and moderately enjoyable. However, while several of these performances capture some real expression - SMR, DB in particular - in general this seems to be an arbitrary selection of flawed tracks, and far from definitive, especially wrt flubbed / mumbled vocals, and even some of the intros / trims are far from crisp. I can’t imagine this is the best they could have put together. My two cents.

    I do wonder what they might have been able to do w a more “creative” approach - edits, fly-ins, perhaps even some overdubs - to put together something a bit more definitive for this last batch o’ tunes...
     
    Last edited: Dec 8, 2019
  17. Gammondorf

    Gammondorf Forum Resident

    Location:
    Boston, MA, USA
    This release isn't as good as I hoped or as bad as I feared (like many of you, I made a similar homemade comp years ago). These songs could have made a decent album and a slight step-up from Built to Last.

    For In the Dark, you have all 3 songwriters delivering 8/8 solid tunes:

    Jerry goes 4/4 with Touch of Grey, When Push Comes to Shove, West LA Fadeaway and Black Muddy River.
    Bob goes 3/3 with Hell in a Bucket, Throwin' Stones and My Brother Esau
    Brent goes 1/1 with Tons of Steel

    Good mix of tunes and the right split between songwriters.

    For Built to Last, we only get 4/9 good tunes, with weak Weir compositions and too many Brent tunes:

    Jerry goes 3/3 with Foolish Heart, Built to Last and Standing on the Moon
    Weir goes 0/2 with Victim or the Crime and Picasso Moon
    Brent goes 1/4 with Blow Away plus Just a Little Light, We Can Run and I Will Take You Home

    Way too many bad Brent tunes and two very weak Weir tunes (although Victim got interesting later when RatDog would go dark with it, especially when Rob would break out the bow.)

    For Ready or Not, we have the same issue, 5/9 good songs with decent Jerry tunes but weak Weir material and terrible contributions from the keyboardist:

    Jerry goes 4/4 with Liberty, Lazy River Road, So many Roads, and Days Between.
    Bob goes 1/3 with Corrina plus Eternity and Cheesy Answers.
    Vince goes 0/2 with Samba in the Rain and Way to Go Home

    The tepid performances of the (relatively strong) Jerry tunes is what holds Ready or Not back from being better than Built to Last; Weir shows a slight uptick from Built to Last; Vince's contributions were unfortunate. Phil was wise to keep his stuff buried.

    A few closing thoughts:

    1. As Weir goes, so goes the overall quality of the album.
    2. Never let the keyboard player write songs.
    3. Money Honey is still the most embarrassing catalog song
     
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  18. mcrichley

    mcrichley Forum Resident

    Location:
    Toronto
    I went looking through the 30 Days Of Dead tracks from over the years, and Lazy River Road from 7/31/94 was included in 2015... it's a very upbeat punchy version with great energy from Garcia and minimal flubs - a preferable to the one on Ready Or Not.
     
  19. spinyn

    spinyn Senior Member

    Location:
    New Orleans
    I am enjoying this more than I expected to but do find I like the Vince songs the least. Not surprising...I never warmed to him much. It went downhill when Hornsby left for me.
     
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  20. Instant Dharma

    Instant Dharma Dude/man

    Location:
    CoCoCo, Ca
    You have a beautiful tan, man.
     
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  21. mcrichley

    mcrichley Forum Resident

    Location:
    Toronto
    The vinyl pressing sounds fantastic. Jerry’s vocals on Lazy River Road really jump out of the speakers.
     
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  22. dsdu

    dsdu less serious minor pest

    Location:
    Santa Cruz, CA
     
  23. Dennis0675

    Dennis0675 Hyperactive!

    Location:
    Ohio
    It really does sound amazing. I’m shocked by how many times I’ve played this. It’s still in my play pile since the day it arrived.
     
  24. SJR

    SJR Big Boss Man

    I've been streaming this since release and really quite enjoy it. I picked up the vinyl before Christmas but I've yet to play it. After reading good reviews of sound quality I'm looking forward to giving it a spin.
     
    Dennis0675 likes this.
  25. spinyn

    spinyn Senior Member

    Location:
    New Orleans
    I continue to enjoy this release a lot. I am glad they did it and got this representation of late GD, not a good period, out in an enjoyable and relevent way.
     
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