While not the Dead’s primary intention, their travelling carnival, aided by their audio engineer/acid cook Owsley “Bear” Stanley, played a key role in its spread. This 2016 books is like a less showy expansion of Tom Wolfe’s 1968 classic Electric Kool-Aid, paying close attention to the way LSD spread throughout the US and was tied to enormous social changes still felt today. Heads: A Biography of Psychedelic America, by Jesse Jarnow This interview conducted by Whole Earth Catalogue editor Howard Rheingold for a family-themed issue of Interview magazine offers insight into the bonds formed by the epoch-defining band. Interview with Jerry Garcia & Bob Weir, 16 April 1991, by Howard Rheingold This tome by the band’s in-house historian, who toured with the group for years, is the most comprehensive single volume. You could fill a whole shelf with books about the Dead, many written by members of the group. Where to start with the Grateful Dead – playlist Spotify Further readingĪ Long, Strange Trip: The Inside History of the Grateful Dead, by Dennis McNally Other highlights include the shouty scorcher St Stephen, the rockabilly Turn on Your Love Light (sung by keyboardist Ron “Pigpen” McKernan) and a classic example of Garcia’s psychedelic Americana, a cover of Reverend Gary Davis’s Death Don’t Have No Mercy.ĭick’s Picks Vol 3: Hollywood Sportatorium, Pembroke Pines, FL, 22 May (1977) It’s part rock, part jazz, part ambient space.
INTRODUCTION TO THE GRATEFUL DEAD PLUS
Side one features just one song, Dark Star, a 23-minute odyssey with Garcia’s crystalline guitar, Weir’s unorthodox rhythm chords, Lesh’s fuzzy bass strides down low, plus bright keyboards and two percussionists going wild. The four-sided Live/Dead was their first official live album: those who didn’t make Ken Kesey’s acid tests or collect early bootlegs could finally hear what the fuss was about. Playing live music is like being in a rowboat in the ocean.” The shows were the Dead’s principal art. Garcia famously once said: “Making a record is like building a ship in a bottle.
Grateful Dead: Dark Star (live) – stream Spotify Contrary to most of the Dead’s output, these are songs that were best served on their concise studio recordings. There are rockers, too, namely Truckin’ and Sugar Magnolia, classic rock radio hits that inspired monster live expansions in the years to come. Box of Rain, written for Lesh’s dying father, raises grief to the level of high art as the band harmonises: “What do you want me to do, to do for you to see you through?” Big-bearded Garcia seems cuddly, but on Friend of the Devil takes on a rakish, outlaw persona. Brokedown Palace has Garcia trading his blazing electric guitar for a pedal steel, and Ripple is an acoustic campfire song with touching, simple lyrics. Attics of My Life groups leader Jerry Garcia with rhythm guitarist Bob Weir and bassist Phil Lesh in close vocal harmonies – a rebuke, perhaps, to those who accused the Dead of jamming by the seat of their pants. The countrified tunes are the stars of the show. American Beauty, more than anything else, shed some of their soupy psychedelic baggage, replaced it with mellifluous folk-rock, and helped them reach a wider audience. There is a degree of truth to this assessment, but there are many different phases to the Dead.
It is easy for people unfamiliar with their music to dismiss the Grateful Dead as amorphous jamming for dirty hippies whacked on LSD. Grateful Dead: Box of Rain – stream Spotify
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