I remember Robert Hunter when he was making up American myths. But the lyrics are more of the old karma-go-round, with barely a hook phrase to come away with. C+Ĭapturing that ruminative, seemingly aimless part of the concert when the boogiers nod out, which doesn't mean nothing is going on-what do the boogiers know by now? Musically, this is a deceptively demanding combination of American Beauty and Aoxomoxoa, sweet tunes mined for structure and texture-including good fiddle, which figures, and good horns, which doesn't. Recorded Fillmore East, February 1970, and you had to be there. Really a Pigpen memorial album, although the Dead would never be so mundane as to put it that way. (And write.) B+īear's Choice: History of the Grateful Dead (Vol. Most of the rest, patchy though it may be, is laid-back good. But the best stuff here-the ensemble playing on 'Sugar Magnolia,' the movement of 'China Cat Sunflower,' Garcia's It Hurts Me Too' solo, the lyric to 'Ramble On Rose'-is a lot more than laid-back good. Sure they're beginning to sound very complacent-the whole 'Morning Dew' side could be scratched, and the long version of 'Truckin'' proves conclusively that the song doesn't truck much.

This live triple is where everybody except certified Grateful Dead freaks gets off the bus, but I've still got my card and it ain't a joker. And it's about time they documented their taste in covers-I've craved their 'Not Fade Away' for years. But even there they gather some of that old Dead magic. I wish some of this live double had been done in the studio-might have saved Bob Weir's faint 'Playing in the Band' if not his 'Me and Bobby McGee'-and the drum-and-guitar interlude isn't going to inspire anybody to toke up, much less see visions. But only 'Attics of My Life' has nothing upstairs. Robert Hunter is better at parsing American conundrums than at picking American beauties, so too many of the lyrics revolve around love, dreams, etc. This is the simplistic folk-rock album Workingman's Dead is supposed to be-sweeter vocally and more direct instrumentally, with words to match. The singing is weak, the guitar work often uninspired and the recording stinky. This resurrection from the golden days of the Haight suggests something about the value of iron pyrite when the assay office is far away. Inspirational Verse: 'Think this through with me.' A And the changeable rhythms hold out the promise of Uncle John's Band, who might just save us if we'll only call the tune. The sparse harmonies and hard-won melodies go with lyrics that make all the American connections claimed by San Francisco's counterculture there's a naturally stoned bemusement in their good times, hard times, high times, and lost times that joins the fatalism of the physical frontier with the wonder of the psychedelic one.

Of course they don't sing as pretty as CSNY-prettiness would trivialize these songs. Side two of this four-sided set contains the finest rock improvisation ever recorded, and the rest is gently transcendent as usual.

AĪn admitted fanatic raves to all the other admitted fanatics. One experimental cut which hasn't made it for me yet, otherwise fantastic. And although Garcia and Bob Weir both take vocal leads, their singing styles are still in Pigpen's white-blues thrall. McKernan's organ is almost as pervasive as Jerry Garcia's guitar.

It's also the only studio album that respects and documents the impact of Rod 'Pigpen' McKernan, who died in 1973 of cirrhosis of the liver. Pepper, Forever Changes, Mellow Yellow), the already legendary San Francisco band-collective's debut stood out and stands tall because its boogieing folk-rock epitomizes the San Francisco ballroom ethos/aesthetic-blues-based tunes played by musicians who came to rhythm late, expanded so they were equally suitable for dancing and for tripping out. One of the year's few supposedly psychedelic LPs that wasn't actually a pop LP (cf. What a Long Strange Trip It's Been: The Best of the Grateful Dead B.Bear's Choice: History of the Grateful Dead (Vol.

China cat sunflower studio