That’s when it all began:
Side One:
(1) That’s It for the Other One
A – Cryptical Envelopment
B – Quadlibet for Tenderfeet
C – The Faster We Go, The Rounder We Get
D – We Leave the Castle
(2) New Potato Caboose
(3) Born Cross-Eyed
Side Two:
(1) Alligator
(2) Caution (Do Not Stop on Tracks)
Jerry Garcia (3rd left): Lead Guitar, Acoustic Guitar, Kazoo and Vibraslap
Bob Weir (3rd right): Rhythm Guitar, 12 String Guitar, Acoustic Guitar and Kazoo
Ron McKernan (far right): Organ and Celesta Claves
Phil Lesh (2nd left): Bass, Trumpet, Harpsichord, Guiro Kazoo, Piano and Timpani
Mickey Hart (2nd right), Bill Kreutzman (far left): Drums, Orchestra Bells, Gong, Chimes, Crotales, Prepared Piano, Finger Cymbals
Tom Constanten (not shown): Prepared Piano, Piano and Electronic Tape
And just what else did you expect my first post to be about??!!
and a Happy 71st Birthday to Phil Lesh ….. Furthur!
Yay, Chris! Can’t wait to listen.
Thanks for that, i just listened to the podcast. Off to the grind soon, will have to listen to the album later on.
As a Dead fan, but not official Head, i’m unaware of most of their actual history. So it’s great to be taken by the hand and shown the way from the beginning, and in the context of what else was going on at the time. And from a UK perspective too. As GF says, more please.
I will definitely be paying more attention to the Dead’s bass lines now. I was always too busy listening to the guitars. (and vocals).
It’s always nice to hear the actual voices of Spillers too. Everyone always has such nice ones! But it’s always a shock to hear the accents too. Of course i know you’re English but by the laconic tones of your posts and love of the Dead, if i somehow imagined your voice, it was in a laid back California accent! (i wonder if anyone ever imagines Fintan or me talking, it’s in a UK accent!)
Just listened to Confessions. Brilliant, Chris. I’ll be listening to Anthem for the first time in ages with new (cloth) ears later. Thanks for doing this – informative, entertaining and definitely helpful.
Just had a first re-listen to Anthem and enjoyed it a lot as I was listening out for the things you mentioned, Chris. Not exactly a reappraisal (I already liked it, of course) but certainly felt I had a much better idea of what was going on! Thanks for that.
Chris: Great first go, keep it up. Now we need to go Furthur!
Side one is so similar in so many ways to Quicksilver’s ‘Happy Trails’ B side: as we were commenting offline recently, the two groups were so close emotionally and geographically that it’s not surprising that they influenced each other. From Wiki I see that some of the live parts of side one came from the LA Shrine auditorium, Nov. 67. That’s where and when I first heard QMS and where parts of Calvary from Happy Trails were recorded! I don’t know how much Dan Healy contributed on each album but he was there.
I love the 60′s psychedelic sound, total jam, total freedom.
I was intrigued with the GD image, it’s quite similar to one that’s on my desktop, mine’s by a German/Guatemalan artist and was done about the same time.
Thank you for the kind comments, amy, Maki & gf. And thanks for dropping in, theoldmancunian: turns out he’s an old school friend I haven’t met for 40 years!
gf: when the Dead went off to tour the songs for Anthem, QMS went with them and Healy did the engineering for the stage and the record. The Anthem cover was created by a chap called Bill Walker, following the effects of yagé consumption.
Chris: I listened to the music first, just finished listening to your most interesting and articulate rap on your trip into the GD, fantastic! I sat here under the headphones with a cup of tea and a permanent smile on my face and occasional giggles. I really enjoyed that and I will listen again and take notes. Could you list the pieces that you played and maybe put ‘em all in the dropbox? I’d love to be able to listen to them again, and again.
Please do more of these, maybe a regular feature?
I’m pleased to have produced a smile, gf. I was afraid I’d send any listeners to sleep!
The music is mostly available on Spotty, so it seems a waste to clutter the dropbox up. And, having found the album from which I’ve taken the extracts, you could take in the whole thing….
1. All New Minglewood Blues, from Shakedown Street.
2. Cryptical Envelopment, from Anthem.
3. Theme from the 1985 series of Twilight Zone. I grabbed this from the 30-second sample on Amazon.
4. Neal Cassady, apparently recorded at the opening of the Straight Theater, SF, on 23rd July 1967. So probably not, as I claimed, at an Acid Test. It’s included in a show from November 10th 1967, on archive.org: http://www.archive.org/details/gd67-11-10.sbd.sacks.1612.sbeok.shnf.
5. The Other One, from the ‘Skull & Roses’ album.
6. New Potato Caboose, from Anthem
7. New Potato Caboose, from Two From The Vault.
8. Mystic Eyes, by Them. I got this from somewhere on the web and could easily drop it if you like.
9. Feedback and We Bid You Good Night, from Live at Fillmore East 2-11-69.
Exponentially more enjoyable listening than the Repetition A-list, Chris, thank you.
Nice job done there.
‘Bout time you stepped up. Now how do we get Mnemonic to post something?
Just put a microphone, an iPod and a drink under her nose at a Social, and press ‘Record’.
Thanks, Chris, for prompting me to listen to this great album again in full. Sadly I’ve become a member of the iTunes generation, skipping randomly and chaotically through 15,000 tracks on the PC, never knowing what will crop up next. And so, to sit down and play through this again and really listen was a real delight.
I caught a documentary on Sky Arts a few months ago on the making of the early Dead albums. It, or at least parts of it, must have dated from c.’93, I would guess (Garcia was still alive and interviewed!). What was interesting was to hear Phil Lesh talk through the mixing process, and how on (That’s It for) The Other One they mixed with no little skill (considering it had never been done before) small sections from a variety of studio and live recordings. It seems that Warner Bros. gave them unlimited studio time and unprecedented freedom in the studio – though they had to pay for it. As Lesh says, they viewed it as paying for their education! It seems they drove more than one ‘straight’ sound engineer round the bend and out of the room before they finally got their hands on the mixing desks to do what they wanted .. and thank God they got that freedom!
My apologies .. I clearly wrote that last comment before listening to Confessions. (Carving out the time to do so is somewhat tricky for all those annoying reasons that work and normal life force upon you ….) Anyway, sorry, Chris; you clearly had seen and referenced the same Anthem to Beauty programme, and indeed recall it rather better!
Much in here rings so true, though with some slight differences: North Manchester suburbs rather than the South; a family steeped in classical music (though with much the same reactions – I recall their horrified reaction when I played them some Steve Reich when I was about 15!; .. but we have a lot in common, not least through the people we met at school (and, yes, it was one and the same!).
I suppose I came to it rather later. I picked up on Live Dead as my first Dead album, and I well remember listening to it with much the same reaction in the very self-same Rare Records (a fine shop where I spent many an hour, and most of my pennies.) It may even have been you who first pointed me towards the Dead, I really can’t recall – or perhaps it was that other Chris H.?
Anyway, this is a lovely piece, Chris. Thank you. It does the music justice, and will, I hope, persuade others to get (back) on the bus …..
@theoldmanc: The ‘documentary on Sky Arts’ was the Classic Albums film, Anthem To Beauty, that my podcast refers to. [You pay money to Murdoch?! Shame on you!]
@gf: Dan Healy is one of the talking heads in that documentary.
@amy: I can’t be counted an ‘official Head’; I only saw them play live four times!
Phil’s bass is definitely the way into Live/Dead’s Dark Star. As they used to say, if Phil is ‘on’, the band is ‘on’.
pay money to Murdoch? Please, never that – well, except for the footie (how else are we exiles to get our dose of red passion?) … no, my money goes to that nice Mr Branson. Funnily enough I was only talking yesterday morning with my wife about spending time in the first Virgin record store in Manchester, (the one near the long-gone, I guess, Lewes’ department store), with its eccentric but very much of-the-time cushions on the floor and aura of exotic tobaccos! That would have been around 1970-71 when I think I really started to get into the Dead.
Finally got my work week over with and a chance to listen to the album. Loved it, thanks, especially Alligator. (oops, forgot to listen for the bass, too caught up in the whole jam.)
Thanks for persevering, amy. My first post seems to have attracted a very small but quite enthusiastic audience. (Now, who does that remind me of?)
IMHO the Dead’s peak was undoubtedly between 1968 and 72. During that period, they were so ambitious and confident that pretty much any show is worth a listen. Before that, they relied too much on covers; after that, they got a bit too noodly and aimless (Garcia & Keith), then too smacked-out (Garcia & Keith again), then too smooth (Brent), then just too worn-out and inconsistent (Garcia again). There are some great things after 72 but not enough.
You’re right about the decline or rather patchy output post-’72 and it’s interesting to ponder the reasons.
My take on it would be along the lines of:
- Pigpen’s death and the loss of someone who rooted them to the soul of American music
- the undue, over-bearing and unmerited influence of Donna Godchaux – just what did she bring to the band? and what was her hold over them that they put up with it for so long?
- Keith G’s inability to handle the role, the pressure, the spotlight and probably the fear of not being Pigpen
- the drugs, the drugs, the drugs – and let’s not forget the heavy drinking that Phil Lesh slumped into as he himself confesses in Searching For The Sound. (At this distance it is truly horrific to look back at the number of talented young men and women destroyed by substance abuse. I don’t know whether you’ve read the excellent Electric Eden about (the reasons for) the rise of folk-rock in the UK in the 70′s and its subsequent decline, but the casualty list is frighteningly high.)
- the interruption brought about by the problems with Hart Snr. I know that Mickey came back but I wonder whether they had lost something in that time.
- the ridiculous touring schedule and the financial burden of inter alia the Wall of Sound
- the ‘prog rock’ suites (Weather Report, Terrapin, Blues for Allah)
Against that, as you’ve quite rightly pointed out elsewhere, is the emergence of Bob Weir; I’m not sure I particularly like his song-writing but it was an important counter-weight to a declining Garcia, and his guitar playing just gets better and better. If Lesh is no standard bass man, then I think that the same could be said about Weir’s ‘rhythm’ guitar.
I could go on – and I think there are other reasons for the decline – but you’re right, ’68-’72 was the peak of this extraordinary, unique band who 40 years on still seem to generate fierce loyalty and disdain in equal measurement. I know which side of the scales I place my stone!
Good stuff, Chris! As you know, I’ve only recently started exploring the Dead so having this introduction has really helped. And as Maki said, having your description and then listening to the album is a great way to learn.
Re the Classic Albums series – I took the Damn The Torpedoes DVD to the US with me and played it to one TP fan and one complete greenhorn and they both loved it. (The latter is my son and he’s now a complete convert, yay, after I showed him a 1985 concert film as well. He now thinks Mike Campbell is God.)
Glad you got something from it, tfd. I do think that you’d like the 1970-72 period Dead, when the jamming was less frantic and the songs were stronger.
And I’m very jealous of the fact that you can share music with your son: mine will never be anywhere close to a Deadhead. He’s still in the ‘Snoop Jazzy MC Ice Dogg ft. Fiddy Pee’ area, which is some distance away….
Well, I pretty much brainwashed Matt when he was growing up, you know, by playing RT/Fairport and Bruce and singing folk songs round the house all the time…