I concur; however, they are very far from what I typically listen to these days. But you can't change classic and inspired. Throw side 1 of Blues for Allah in that category as well (except for those damn horns on TMNS, of course).
You make it sound like I went to shows only to get drunk on Rolling Rock, yell “Pig!” at security and make merciless fun of people wearing friendship bracelets when I made so many other important contributions to the scene. Remember the letters you got with tickets advising, “Hey, be cool because there are so many new people on the scene”? Those were inspired by me. Your welcome.
This reads like an ad for Time-Life’s Vietnam series. “When I arrived at the airport I told the cab driver I just got back from Vietnam. He said, ‘So what? So what?’”
And my feet were too narrow for Birkenstocks. Those were designed for Fred Flintstone as far as I can tell.
ISWYDT. Nice. And on its best day it was never good. Ordering has frequently been an experience that causes gnashing of teeth and lobbing of projectiles. I'm in for the 2020 sub and after that I'm cherry-picking off of ebay. Rhino/WEA is on double secret probation. If I could sneer like that I'd do it all the time. Being a local back then I got to see 4 different concert runs in 1987. March, May, August and December. Very tentative in March, much better (and rocking) in May @ The Frost, a deeper groove in August (Phil had fun at those Calaveras shows) and by December the weird had returned to a certain degree (12/27 is very jammy) and the blueprint was in place. The March shows were not good, but that eastern tour certainly helped. By the time I saw them next it was a relief because the March shows had me thinking about getting off the bus, at least for a while. But the lure of The Frost was strong, and those two shows were reassuring. Whoever made that comment you refer to is silly. And they were released 4 1/2 months apart. Can any major act from the rock era match that? Yes I know Miles could take 2 days and cut 4 killer albums but I'm talking about mortals.
Bringing it All Back Home and Highway 61 Revisited were released slightly over five months apart in 65. Pretty decent two-fer. Revolver and Sgt Pepper were ten months apart.
not to brag or anything, but I've handed out literally thousands of likes in the last ten months on Stevehoffman.tv.
What I like about this cartoon is it reminds me of bringing my little brother to GD shows my friends weren't going to or couldn't. I was 18-20, and he was six yrs. younger than me, but he's always been older than his years so I didn't even think twice about bringing him. Anyway, years later he thanked me a couple times because almost every single one of his friends his age never saw Jerry, and he saw him twice.
Re: 1987: I saw three runs and a couple of single shows that year and everyone was pretty much having a blast. Obviously, having Jerry back was a huge rush and he could have played just about anything and gotten a good reception, but fortunately, he was playing well, very much "within the lines", as someone said. This year features some of his most "scorching" lead playing, where he's playing with focus and intensity at fast tempos on songs like "Fire on the Mountain" and "Hell in a Bucket", but there isn't really a lot of exploratory jamming. Songs like "Playin" and "Eyes" shrunk to six minutes. There was a show on the spring tour of 1988 where both sets (sans encore) fit on a single 100-minute tape. So in retrospect, it's probably not considered a top year because if you're just listening to some Dead, and you can pick whatever you want, you're usually going to reach for something a little more "jammy," otherwise it might not scratch that itch. But if you want to hear some of the best soloing (as opposed to jamming) that Jerry ever did, you've got to check out 1987. And again, just a reminder, 4-6-87 is the best "Jack Straw" ever.
I think someone mentioned (maybe it was @US Blues) that the jams were within the songs rather than being jams proper. And even if I surmise wrongly, what I love about '89 Dead is what I hear in Phish today--jamminess in the way the players interact, as if they are all skiing downhill together but winding in and out of each other's paths.
The Beatles released two classic albums every year for most of their career, but yeah, not so many in the years since then. (Sorry, it's still SHMF, I had to mention the Beatles). Buzzcocks released Another Music in a Different Kitchen and Love Bites six months apart. Hendrix released Are You Experienced and Axis: Bold as Love about 6-1/2 months apart. Not as quick as the Dead (see what I did there) but not too shabby either.
Between October 1975 and October 1976 there are three Van Der Graaf Generator albums. Also one Peter Hammill solo album 6 months later. They practically lived at Rockfield Studios in Wales.
Ironically, I've come to appreciate their studio albums more myself, and for exactly the same reason you cite. They're not supposed to reproduce the live experience any more than Rubber Soul was (to pick an example that just floated by). That said, even with that increased appreciation, it still hasn't appreciated to the degree that I want to listen to those albums instead of the hundreds of other studio albums by other artists that I like better. It's like, as live performers, the Dead were in rare company, among the best of the best, and offering music unlike anything else you've ever heard. As studio artists, outside of 2 or 3 masterpieces, they're mostly just pleasant, enjoyable music. Kind of cool if you want to hear a different take on some of the songs, and the vocal harmonies are usually much better than they are live, which really helps on songs like "China Doll" and "Attics of my Life". But nothing that really gets me excited the way a fifth-generation cassette of a smoking live "China>Rider" really gets my blood flowing. Or, as a friend of mine once said in the mid-80s, "It's a shame that there's such a huge difference between the music you can buy in a record store with the name 'Grateful Dead' on it and the music you hear at a Grateful Dead concert." I've made the decision to skip buying something because I already have a good copy of that show, but I've usually regretted it later. Lately I've been particularly regretting skipping the purchase on 2-26-77 and 1-22-78, given the amount of discussion those shows have received around here. I had those shows on cassette. Then I upgraded to CD-R. Then I probably upgraded to better CD-R. But at some point, the physical media went away and I still have the MP3 files on my IPod, and I might even the FLACs still on some drive somewhere, but I'm at that stage in life where it's nice to just crank up some great-sounding, well-mastered CDs even if the MP3's sound "almost as good". As for rounding out your stash of things you're "'supposed' to buy"? I never increased my level of musical enjoyment so much as the day I vowed to stop buying albums that I thought I "should" own and only buy albums that I really wanted to hear. (Sadly, this was only four or five years ago, but life, as they say, is for learning).
Of course, even being a subscriber wasn’t enough to save all the poor people in the UK (?and Europe?) who were stiffed with the delivery of Dave’s 31.
We could come up with a long list of jazz greats who packed a lot of genius into a short time frame, but one of my favorite feats is Ornette Coleman recording The Shape of Jazz to Come and Change of the Century just 4.5 months apart, and everything he did on Atlantic within 22 months. Or, before Bobby Hutcherson got to record his debut release in 1965, from April 1963-September 1964 he recorded as a sideman: Jackie McLean/ One Step Beyond, Destination... Out!, Action Eric Dolphy/ Conversations, Iron Man, Out to Lunch Grant Green/ Idle Moments, Street of Dreams Grachan Moncur III/ Evolution Andrew Hill/ Judgment!, Andrew!!! Tony Williams/ Lifetime And in the meantime he also led a December 1963 session with Joe Henderson, The Kicker, that didn't come out until 1999.
Getting back to the GoGD and all things Slipknot!, the second live version from 9/28/75 is open air, loose but tight and tension-building. Perhaps not an all-time version, but a necessary listen if you dig on this sort of stuff. After the birth of someone who can't walk us out in the morning dew, they follow up with a short but blistering version of TMNS with Jerry cycling ideas until he hits upon the mantra and brings home the goods in a big way.
