"Keep Your Day Job." That's almost as bad as a song entitled "Put Out That Doob." You're acting foolish and you don't look cool/Re-write your resume and put out that doob.
I wrote an article a few years ago about IMO the worst GD songs..... Enjoy... Grateful Dead Songs That, Well, Suck: Gimme Five
I think it's the lyrical content more than the music. A musically incredible song called Don't Go On Tour would have also been ill-received.
Hey man, don't put this on me! There are probably a dozen others from '78 alone that should be on that list. I just can't remember them all!
Those all belong in the running. France gets a pass from me for being album-only. Wave to the Wind is pretty embarrassing. I'm OK with IWTYH. Eternity is also bottom-5 material. Money Money isn't just a bad song musically (which it is) but it is an awful lyric. The GD catalog has a pretty broad subject list, but gold digging (not mining, which fits right it) doesn't belong. Dupree's may have a similar concept but it has a sense of humor and much better music behind it. In what I'm sure will be a controversial pick, I'll also nominate Lazy River Road. I never liked it much and heard it at almost every show I went to. Boring.
It's just good sound advice. Like the song Situation Vacant by the Kinks--why does he quit his job before looking for a better one? Makes no sense.
On the other hand... I don't ever remember looking at (or being at a show) and thinking... man, I hope Jerry doesn't play Peggy-O. Nor do I ever remember thinking "well that was a waste of 6-9 minutes".
All this talk of Peggy-O has reminded me of the Hunter-Haynes piece... that also talks about Fennario... "Lay of the Sunflower".
Re: ‘90s Peggy-O’s 6/24/94 Vegas is known as a good one from near the end. It can’t compete with earlier years but maybe gets consideration for the play-in game for late-era long shots.
The thing that amazed me about 94... is that while his fingers might have been starting to fail him... Jerry's voice sounded really good on the ballads, IMHO.
Money Money is the worst of the “prime” era. A lot of the 90s tunes were less than stellar, but feel like more half thought out ideas than terrible tunes. Keep Your Day Job is pretty bad, more lyrically than musically. Some of the Brent tunes are awful, but I feel bad being overly critical. I Will Take You Home out of Space always makes me think the spaceship took a wrong turn and landed at a Michael McDonald concert.
It may be a moot point. Are spot on. If the final isn't 4/12/78 vs. 4/16/78 then we're all delusional.
I always liked Lazy River Road, though I can’t remember the last time I played one. That probably says more about the era than the song though.
Might as well throw this Fall 89 Peggy-O into the mix. There's some gremlins plaguing Weir's guitar, but Jerry sounds good, he gets bopping mid way through, and it has some nice solo's.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with Lazy River Road. Good song that might have been a classic in another decade. "So Many Roads", on the other hand, is in my opinion a classic. It's at least as good as "Black Muddy River", which I also consider a Jerry classic. Had these songs been sung in the 70's... we'd be all looking at them very differently. It sure wasn't the song's fault it arrived a decade or so too late. This, of course, also explains why I have difficulty understanding people who completely dismiss the 90s. No 90s... no So Many Roads... and a world without So Many Roads is not as good a world as one with that song in it.
