The Song Fight Bulletin Board

This is not a facetious question. I'm actually asking:

The Grateful Dead. What, exactly, is the appeal, and what album of theirs should I buy to get the best taste of them? (Not as in "Well, JoS, you like standards and show tunes, so you'd like this by them", rather "This is their best or at least most representative album"

To date they have always just sounded like any of a thousand fairly good 60's jam bands. What makes them so great?

"Fat Mike I gotta let you know
It's not the tunes, it's their live shows
And all the people that you get to meet
Plenty of good vibes and decent drugs
Stinky people give you hugs
Walk around in your bare feet"

---"Jeff Wears Birkenstocks", by NOFX

I never got them.
I can't recommend anything.
Had to be there, I hear.

The Grateful Dead are an experience. that unless you've heard and seen them live I don't believe anyone can understand. When I say this I'm not trying to be snooty or elitist.
I was really lucky. I was in San Francisco in 1980's and not only got taken to four shows in Marin, but also saw The Jerry Garcia Band twice in Berkeley.
The Dead are not the greatest band ever; They are is the Greatest Experience ever, and this is all down to the mind state of the audience.
In Marin the auditorium has a large corridor that goes around the whole venue, and this was full of 'Heads' dancing... 2000 people in semi mutual altered states.
It was truly fantastical, and I still grin just thinking about it. This is why there are so many live bootleg tapes (that a lot of people think are awful) still around.
Once a Dead Head, always a Dead Head!

http://www.dead.net

Tip #1: Do not become the roommate of a hippie. It will not further your cause whatsoever.

haha, some of you guys crack me up. i'd guess i'd qualify as a deadhead. i've probably seen well over a hundred shows, first show i saw was in 1987. the thing about the grateful dead and their success can't easily be explained jim. alot of it is about seeing them live and the people. some people (like marcus for instance) hate the experience. that's cool. others (like me and king arthur) love the experience. the best music the grateful dead ever did was done on stage and not in a studio. i'd say they felt confined by the studio. the grateful dead were one of the few bands that had a real connection to their audience, and that connection was a big part of the love. in their fans eyes, they could seemingly do no wrong, but the truth is that deadheads are the bands harshest critics. they knew every show. they knew every lick in every show. and they would always compare shows. so the band had to perform at a very high level each night or risk the wrath of the tough love of their fans. and honestly, the percentage of people that would attend a grateful dead show that were ambivalent or didn't like their music was probably around 2-3% of the entire crowd. i have never been to concert by anyone else where so many people were simultaneously dancing. this is an infectious thing.

as for their studio music, if i had to recommend any of their studio CDs, i'd have to say "american beauty" beautifully captures the acoustic side of the band. "europe 72" does the same for the electric side of the band, and sounds more like a studio rcording than a live recording. and "blues for allah" is a classic, doing the jazzier side to the dead. any of these 3 CDs gives one a good idea into their versatility. but the best grateful dead is soundboard bootleg dead. cornell 77. barton hall.

i should also mention that the songlist that the grateful dead had in their live repertoire, that they could pull out on a moment's notice, easily numbered over 500 songs i'd guess. when the dead did a run of shows, they generally would not repeat a song in that entire run. they could play 10-15 shows and never repeat a song once. so if you happened to be lucky enough to get that "ripple" encore, you were one lucky bastard. this is a big part of why people would go see so many shows. you weren't getting the same show each night in any respect.

I'm not a huge Dead fan, but I do appreciate some of their tunes and what they brought to the live experience. I happen to own Aoxomoxoa which is great. The thing that inspires me about the Dead is that they were one of the first if not the first Acid Party bands.

Back in the days of Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters, the Dead would play at all the Acid Trip Experimental parties. Tom Wolfe speaks of them in the book The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. One of my most favourite books on the hippy movement. Anyway, I think the appeal is that they were the forefathers in a live setting of Rave culture. I've never seen a show, but their jamming abilities are legendary. They would make songs up on the spot and take the audience places where they would never think of going. That's why they had such a strong following, was because every show was a new trip. I have a lot of Dead Head friends who told me much about the experiences. I wish I could have seen them. The people at the shows assumedly were as much an experience as the shows themselves.

Jim, Definitely check out a live show of theirs (recorded of course).

http://www.archive.org/audio/etreelisti ... ful%20Dead
There you can find more Dead shows than any sane person would ever want or need.

Check out 5-8-1977, this is a great show. This one is considered by some one of their "best shows ever."
Best songs in that show are (in my opinion):
Brown Eyed Women
Jack Straw
Mama Tried
Morning Dew
Fire on the Mountain

I also think their official live release from 89-90 "Without a Net" is great. Check it out if you are wanting to buy a CD. Something live is basically what you want if you want to get an idea about the Grateful Dead. The studio albums just don't capture the essence of the band like a live performance does.

On a related note, I found my birthday Dead show a couple of days ago (7-12-1976). Kind of cool to listen to and think that I was popping out of the womb when they were jamming. Not a bad show either. Has a really good version of "Help on the Way/Slipknot".

You can find shows at archive.org from a lot of other bands, too.

actually, the "dick's picks" series of live CDs, which is put out by the band's engineer and archivist with the band's blessing, is an excellent set of CDs to get a feel for what live dead sounds like captured in fairly pristine audio. the dead sunk tons of money in their live sound set up (ton's of klipsch monitors for instance).

the first 3 or 4 CDs are most excellent shows and recordings. in fact, one of them is a live recording of the debut of "blues for allah" at the great american music hall in san francisco (might be dick's picks vol. 1). great stuff.

Good call, Jack. I forgot all about Dick's Picks.

factorT wrote:Jim, Definitely check out a live show of theirs (recorded of course).

http://www.archive.org/audio/etreelisti ... ful%20Dead
There you can find more Dead shows than any sane person would ever want or need.

1) My comment above was made with acknowledged ignorance, not disrespect
2) the Archive rocks!

I never 'got' the greatful dead either. I've always been on the outside looking in. Once, me and my best friend in High School drove downtown (ATL) to hang out outside of a dead show. We even ate free spaghetti handed to us in a napkin. It was interesting to say the least but the music never moved us.

With that said..who doesn't like 'touch of grey' or 'casy jones' or 'truckin' for that matter.

I have a tape that a friend recorded for me (which has none of those songs) of two live recordings. I love them. They are very relaxing and good for long bike rides.

I'm still on the outside looking in though. I still don't 'get it' and I imagine I never will.

I never 'got' them - and reading Jack's description makes me want to 'get' them even less.

...I'm gonna file 'em away with Pink Floyd, Steely Dan and Jimi Hendrix in the " I don't get it, and I really don't want to get it" file.

Caravan Ray wrote:I never 'got' them - and reading Jack's description makes me want to 'get' them even less.

...I'm gonna file 'em away with Pink Floyd, Steely Dan and Jimi Hendrix in the " I don't get it, and I really don't want to get it" file.

well hell, that's some fine company to keep.

Jim -

Well, first off, "The Grateful Dead Movie" just came out on DVD, and if you want a taste of what it was like to go to a show, rent that. There's plenty of music, but it's also very much about the Deadheads and the whole scene. It was recorded in 1974, right around the end of the sixties

Just for listening to the music, "Europe '72" would probably top my list. Open secret about that one: the instruments were all recorded on tour in Europe, then they came back, set up the entire PA system, piped all the instruments through the appropriate speakers and everybody (except maybe Pigpen) re-did their vocal tracks. So it's a little less "raw" than it might otherwise have been, but the harmonies are sweet.

I love the music, but a big part of the appeal for me was that it was the whole "scene" that existed. Most of the time, when they played in a city, they would do two or three or four concerts in a row, different songs every night (most of the opening acts never figured that out)... and you could mail order tickets. All of which meant it made sense to travel a thousand miles to see the Dead, 'cause you were getting more than just one show.

I think some of the appeal may have been similar to what appeals to a lot of people about baseball: it's not just the one game you're at, it's how that particular game figures into the road trip, the season, the whole history of the game. Setlists were posted to usenet as soon as the show let out; tapes were made and traded (the Dead officially allowed taping as of 1984). If the band started playing a "rare" song, somebody near you in the audience could tell you the last time they played that song; if they played a common one, somebody could tell you how it compared to the version they played the week before in Baltimore.

The shows were also... for me, the perfect combination of structured and flexible. If Jerry sang the opener on Friday night, the opener Saturday night would probably be a Bob song; somewhere in the first set, Bob would most likely do a Dylan song; the first set would end with "Day Job" and the encore would be "Liberty" (in jokes there). You sorta knew what was coming next, but there would usually be a surprise or two. Dead setlists have a fractal dimension of "just exactly perfect," when viewed over a run, a tour, a year, a keyboard player's tenure, or the history of the band.

Umm, basically, rent the Grateful Dead Movie, and if you still don't get it, that's okay. Not everybody did, and that just meant more room on the bus for the rest of us

Charles

Hmmm... Thanks for all the feedback, everyone.

I did actually see them once. I had a job as a ticket taker at Univ. of Washington in the early 80's and they played there, and I had to take tickets and stamp the hands of stoned people. I stepped inside every now and then to listen and just thouht "eh". I get the whole "experience" thing, but it just seems to me that any drug-related experience would be enhanced simply by the quality of the music being played.

A joke I once heard:
Q: What do Deadheads say when they're sober?
A: Hey, this music sucks.

I'll check out some of this and rent the Grateful Dead Movie and come to a conclusion as to whether or not this was just a had-to-be-there thing, which means their music will die a slow death over the ensuing decades, or if there's really a there there.

Jim of Seattle wrote: I did actually see them once. I had a job as a ticket taker at Univ. of Washington in the early 80's and they played there, and I had to take tickets and stamp the hands of stoned people.

Okay, Jim, we gotta sort this out, 'cause the only time the Dead played the U. of W. was 5/21/74. If it was the early '80s, then it would've been at the Seattle Center Coliseum. And if it was the '82 show, then that was the day after the Second Decadanal Field Trip down in Veneta, and, well, you know. I'm sure most of the people at that show stepped outside now and then to find out if they had given you their ticket and get their hands stamped again, and just thought "eh."

I'm just, you know, saying...

Charles

Hmm, that's strange. This wasn't at the Coliseum, it was at a small venue on UW campus, seats maybe 3-400. I'm pretty sure it was them. Lots of people dancing around, a whole big event. '82 sounds about right.

In '88 I saw them at the Oxford Plains Speedway. Little Feat were there too.

In '91(?) I saw a show at Madison Square Garden. I bought the ticket on the street, and it turned out to be twelfth row center. When I got to my seat, I received a lot of grief from the people in that row until they realized that, unlike them, I actually had a ticket to be sitting in that row. Then I became their best friend. They would, in turn, ask to borrow my ticket, leave and get a couple beers, and come back with my ticket and a beer for me. I drank a lot.
Then our car got impounded and I took a bus to Worcester.

[/flashback]

factorT wrote:Jim, Definitely check out a live show of theirs (recorded of course).

http://www.archive.org/audio/etreelisti ... ful%20Dead
There you can find more Dead shows than any sane person would ever want or need.

Check out 5-8-1977, this is a great show. This one is considered by some one of their "best shows ever."

Been spending some time here lately. While the instrumentals are amazing, the vocals are still the impediment to my heart. Too bad they didn't spend a fraction of the time working on vocals as they did on instrumental mastery. But that's my opinion, obviously.

factorT wrote: Check out 5-8-1977, this is a great show. This one is considered by some one of their "best shows ever."

"ok, everybody take a step back. and take another step back. and another step back....."

actually jim (and roy for that matter), you guys should check out the CD "not for kids only" put out by david grisman and jerry garcia. awesome CD. and your kids will love it too.

http://www.acousticdisc.com/acd_html/acd9.html

the thing about the dead (and garcia of course) was their amazing versatility and how their music (and the influences on it) transcended so many different genres. i have seen them play with ornette coleman one night and carlos santana the next. these guys could literally play it all.