Grateful Dead

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Grateful Dead

 

Grateful Dead

The Grateful Dead became such a larger-than-live social phenomenon that it would be easy to overlook their music, or simply dismiss it as self-indulgent noodling for stoned hippies. But the Dead's music occupies a unique niche; their open-ended approach to songs and sound was unprecedented in rock. Their emphasis on live performance and their self-sufficiency- in effect the band became a self-contained music industry- fathered the jam-movement that flourished in the '90s with Phish, the Dave Mathews Band, Blues Traveler and the countless others that have followed. All forged lucrative careers built on the Dead's lead: Music mattered more than image, tours counted for more than slickly crafted studio albums, and concerts were improvised in the moment, assuring that no two would ever be alike.   

The Dead began as the house band for the acid tests in mid-'60s San Fransisco, making the transition from a jug band to garage-blues rockers documented on the Birth of the Dead album, and eventually something far more difficult to categorize.

This was a band whose legacy was forged on the stage rather than the studio, in large measure because the Dead used their songs as starting points for improvisation rather than as ideals to be duplicated. They treated America's indigenous music- blues, bluegrass, country, jazz, folk and early rock & roll- as one long, living tradition that demanded to be transmuted and expanded nightly. They covered songs of their contemporaries, especially Bob Dylan, Buddy Holly, Woody Guthrie, the Dixie Cups, and Bobby "Blue" Bland. Bassist Phil Lesh was an accomplished avant-garde composer, guitarist Jerry Garcia recorded with everyone from David Grisman, to Ornette Coleman, drummer Mickey Hart was one of the first musicians to introduce world music and rhythms to the rock lexicon, and virtuosos such as Brandford Marsalis and Bruce Hornsby sat in with the band. To avoid repeating themselves, they ricked looking foolish or inept, and sometimes did.

Garcia applies the dexterity of his bluegrass-banjo background to electric guitar, and he developed one of the signature styles of modern times, an unhurried approach to the instrument that stood in sharp contrast to rock's faster0is0-better orthodoxy. In additions, his songwriting collaboration with lyricist Robert Hunter provided the foundation for the Dead's career: "Dark Star," "Uncle John's Band," "Ripple," "Bertha," "Casey Jones," "China Cat Sunflower," "U.S. Blues," the epic "Terrapin Station," and their sole Top 10 hit, "Touch of Grey." Garcia's interplay with Lesh and guitarist Bob Weir was support by two percussionist in Hart and Bill Kreutzmann who favored busy polyrhythms over more conventional rock beats, while a succession of keyboardists brought disparate strengths to the band's many eras: the blues raunch of Ron "Pigpen" McKernan, Keith Godchauz's jazzier voicings, Brent Mydland's versatility with synthesizers. 

The early albums, particularly Anthem of the Sun, are ambitious but awkward, as the Dead experiments with everything from finger cymbals to crotales and extended song suites. Live Dead is where the band finds it voice, particularly on a 24-minute "Dark Star" that is closer in feel to Miles Davis' jazz-fusion than rock. The song is the acid test, if you will, of Dead-dom, both the defining work in the canon and the most demanding. It was among the first Hunter lyrics written for the band is the centerpiece of countless concert recording to surface of the next 30 years with its open-ended, modal-jazz structure.

Workingman's Dead, in part inspired by the rustic soul of the Band, ranks as the Dead's studio masterpiece, following closely by American Beauty. The focus is on the songs, rather than the jams, and these would provide the focal point of an era, spanning 1969-74, when the Dead played some of the most remarkable concerts in American history virtually every one available ins some incarnation thanks to the band's dedicated tapers. The band's last major statement as a studio band would be Terrapin Station, the epic title track ranking with the finest of the Hunter-Garcia collaborations.

The late '70s and '80s saw the Dead struggling to remain relevant amid unfriendly commercial trends, hitting its nadir in disco experiments such as Shakedown Street, but improbably scoring a major hit with the wryly touching "Touch of Grey" from In the Dark. That said, the polished pleasantness of most of the Dead's latter-day studio recording is depressing coming from erstwhile pranksters. The Dead often found themselves going through the motions in concert as well, providing a soundtrack for a party they no longer had any desire to join.

Garcia's death in 1995 effectively ending the band, but not the flood of recordings. Particularly remarkable is the Dick's Picks & Dave's Picks series. Dick's Picks was named after the late Dead tape archivist Dick Latvala, and Dave's is named after David Lemieux who took over archival releases after Dick's passing in 1999. Both series cherry-pick some of the band's finest concert recordings. Best of the bunch is Dick's Pick Volume 4, which culls highlights from two masterly 1970 performances at the Filmore East in New York. Here the full range of the band's arsenal is represented: the luminous "Dark Star," a raging "Not Fade Away," the sheer nastiness of Pigpen on his showpiece, "Turn on Your Love Light."

A few months later, the Dead nearly topped that performance; their Harpur College concert in Binghampton, NY (Vol. 8) should give pause to anyone who buys into the Dead's reputation as mellow. Fresh off recording Workingman's Dead, the band opens in acoustic mode, which brings a more melodic concision to the arrangements and a bite to the voices that carries over to the electric set. Garcia and Lesh slug it out on a majestic "The Other One," while "Viola Lee Blues" and "Morning Dew" build to howling climaxes.  The group even wages war on Martha and the Vandellas' ebullient "Dancing in the Street," transforming it into a freakish, funky, antiwar meltdown. When it comes down to their best concert: most will tell you it's Cornell (5/8/77).

The unlimited looking for an entry point to this bewildering catalogue should seek out The Very Best of Grateful Dead, a good one-volume retrospective, or So Many Roads, a box set that gives a solid overview of the Dead's many incarnations as a touring band.

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Grateful Dead