The Grateful Dead

[Vacant Horizon]

Built To Last was the rare Garcia/Hunter tune that seemed kind of pedestrian to me.

 

And I don't ever really need to hear Mexicali again.

 

songwriting did take a bit of a nose dive after In the Dark.  that seemed to be the final set of solid tunes.  and don't even get me started on mexicali!  jesus christ i hate that tune.  the dead cover band i play with (in which i'm the only head) loves that tune and it absolutely must be played like the studio version.  we recently played a festival and the keyboardist busted out his trumpet for it.  that was kind of cool, i guess, but kind of exemplary of him 'not getting' the vibe.

[Oil Can Boyd]

10/27/79

Cape Cod Coliseum - South Yarmouth, MA

Indirectly thaat is the show that got me into the Dead.  My family was on Cape Cod that August and I got really sick so I lay in bed for a few days listening to the radio.  Some local radio station kept playing ads for the show and also played a lot of Dead songs and it made me realize that I liked them.  Didn't see the band until the next year though ...

[Skian]

Here is a little gem a friend passed on >

Jerry, Mickey, Santana and Friends. 

Feb 1987

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EmN0mFHDH2w

[IRememberDBoon]

I've always liked the studio versions of Easy to Love You and Far From Me. Never have found live versions that surpassed them, which is unusual with the Dead.

PERFECTLY PLAYED. I was on the 5th row. What a show. I LOVE LOVE LOVE Jerrys solo. I think this was a bust out after like ten years.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XrUTNG7QL5c

 

 

 

 

[Vacant Horizon]

i love all of brent's tunes, except i will take you home.  that and we can run kind of brought built to last down a notch.  i've come to really like just a little light.  i always enjoyed a brent tune in the first set.  a nice break.  a perfect first set had tom thumbs and a brent tune.

 

concerning brent, i was looking at the annotated GD lyrics website and was surprised to see a handful of tunes brent supposedly wrote that weren't played.  lyrics by barlow.

[NoJ]

Indirectly thaat is the show that got me into the Dead.  My family was on Cape Cod that August and I got really sick so I lay in bed for a few days listening to the radio.  Some local radio station kept playing ads for the show and also played a lot of Dead songs and it made me realize that I liked them.  Didn't see the band until the next year though ...

 

Thats kinda cool....

[Mr. Heartbreak]

The video isn't great on this, but the audio is just fine:

http://youtu.be/OLnXLmPuzDY

[i'm only sleeping]

^ I think I saw that  in a crappy copy of the "Dead Ahead" dvd with sound & video totally desync...

[Moss]

Just listened to a great show from Red Rocks on GDradio earlier.  I was really enjoying it because I could picture the venue.  Then got pissed because I realized I was 17 years old at the time, living nearby and could have been there if I wasn't such a dork.

[Shug]

http://www.relix.com/video/relix-tv/2012/12/19/phil-lesh-with-ryan-adams-and-the-cardinals-wharf-rat

 

Not a bad cover of Wharf Rat by Ryan Adams with Phil, it sounds pretty good in a twangy country rock arrangement.

[NoJ]

Today, I listened to Playin' from SSDD while walking around during lunch. What a great version of a great tune.

[Lammycat]

Great compilation of Garcia quotes/interviews on his musical tastes and collection:

 

http://deadessays.blogspot.com/2013/08/garcias-record-collection.html?showComment=1377264943348#c6993498933874131997

 

 

 

 

Love this quote by Garcia on The Doors:

 

“I never liked the Doors. I found them terribly offensive… Morrison was just a pure Mick Jagger copy; that was his whole shot, that he was a Mick Jagger imitation…totally stolen from right around Mick Jagger’s 1965 tour of the States… [His] reputation as a poet I thought was really not deserved. Rimbaud was great at 18, 19, and Verlaine. Those guys were great. Fuckin’ Jim Morrison wasn’t great, I’m sorry. I could never see what it was about the Doors. They had a very brittle sound live, a three-piece band with no bass…that and the kinda raga-rock guitar style was strange. It sounded very brittle and sharp-edged to me, not something I enjoyed listening to… I was never attracted to their music at all, so I couldn’t find anything to like about them. When we played with them, I think I watched the first tune of two, then I went upstairs and fooled with my guitar. There was nothing there that I wanted to know about… I’ve always looked for something else in music, and whatever it was, they didn’t have it. They didn’t have anything of blues, for example, in their sound or feel… All I sensed was sham. As far as I was concerned, it was just surface and no substance.” (

[Mr. Heartbreak]

That's too bad that Jerry had such a blind spot regarding the Doors, though it's not surprising. They were almost polar opposites in their approach (theatrical vs. non-theatrical, dark vs. almost hippy-dippy, etc.), but they certainly had some things in common. The Dead started off with Pigpen doing a lot of blues tunes like King Bee and Good Morning Little Schoolgirl, and the Doors were fond of covering Crawling King Snake and so forth. They also have an interesting commonality in that there was a definite hard-bop or free jazz influence. Garcia was into Ornette Coleman, and the Doors were known to quote Coltrane's Afro Blue frequently. Also, interestingly enough, both Garcia and the Doors covered Get Off My Life Woman.

 

Still, not surprising. The Dead were more of a Beatles/Dylan influenced band, and the Doors were all about taking the whole Elvis/Jagger frontman deal to its inevitable, very dark, conclusion.

 

I also love Garcia's comments on rap:

“Rap is not music – it’s talking… It’s talking in meter, it’s got rhyme and it has meter, it has rhythm; it’s not music. It’s okay, there’s nothing wrong with it, I have no problem with it, it just isn’t music. And people who get to be great at rap are not great musicians, they’re just great at rap – there’s no road from rapping into music…

Couldn't have said it better myself.

[Analogman]

http://www.relix.com/video/relix-tv/2012/12/19/phil-lesh-with-ryan-adams-and-the-cardinals-wharf-rat

 

Not a bad cover of Wharf Rat by Ryan Adams with Phil, it sounds pretty good in a twangy country rock arrangement.

 

I think he has played with Phil a few times. And Phil covers some of his songs from time to time.

 

Do you know the Ryan song Rosebud? Most seem to think that song is about Jerry, although there are those who say it is not.

[Lammycat]

I'd say Garcia's take is less of a blind spot and more of a spot on take. Beyond a couple of years in middle school, I never saw the appeal of the Doors. Morrison always annoyed me, I guess, and I can see Garcia's point about them being surface minus substance. 

[Analogman]

Oddly enough, I've read similar quotes from Robert Plant and members of The Who. The song Sally Simpson is based on something Pete saw at a Doors show.  I disagree with what they had to say. But - it's all good.

 

I wonder if Jerry knew that he and Jim had some things in common. Their admiration of The Beats is one of the things they could have talked about.

 

I figure part of that was the friction that went on between the L.A. and S.F. bands. That was still going on in the 80s - at least in the early days of the metal scene.

[Mr. Heartbreak]

I'd say Garcia's take is less of a blind spot and more of a spot on take. Beyond a couple of years in middle school, I never saw the appeal of the Doors. Morrison always annoyed me, I guess, and I can see Garcia's point about them being surface minus substance. 

Let's swim to the moon

Let's climb through the tide

Penetrate the evening

That the city sleeps to hide

 

Come on, that's a great rock lyric.

Also, I'd put Celebration Of The Lizard up against pretty much any Robert Hunter lyric, and I love Hunter's stuff.

[i'm only sleeping]

I only disagree with Jerry as long as I'm not seeing Jim Morrison,... I can enjoy some Doors tunes (well, only Morrison Hotel, really). As soon as he appears in the tubes, I fully understand Jerry. Maybe this is an effect of the preponderance of vision over hearing when forming biases. But this would fit better in the appearance vs sound thread...

[Skian]

I knew of Jerry's view on the Doors and Jim Morrison. I did realize it was so harsh.

Aside from the Blues connection I don't see a comparision between the bands.

Its like comparing San Fransico to Los Angeles. The only connection they

have is California.

[Mr. Heartbreak]

There really was an antagonistic relationship between L.A. & S.F. bands back then. I know Zappa was more associated with L.A., and he thought the S.F. stuff was crap. It's okay to like them both - I do - and it's okay to compare and contrast them, too. The artists themselves sure did.

[mountain bed]

 

 

I figure part of that was the friction that went on between the L.A. and S.F. bands. That was still going on in the 80s - at least in the early days of the metal scene.

Exactly. A lot of contempt regarding NoCal v SoCal. SF being perceived as naive and pretentious, and LA being show-biz and plastic.

 

That's really the only time I've ever heard Jerry talk shit about other bands/musicians. Very out of character for him I'd say.

[i'm only sleeping]

Exactly. A lot of contempt regarding NoCal v SoCal. SF being perceived as naive and pretentious, and LA being show-biz and plastic.

 

 

 

This is still the perception 10000 Km away,  30 years after. Biased by appearances, I guess.

[tongue-tied lightning]

hey, i'm just about done reading the book Dark Star. Anyone have thoughts on it ? better books on Jerry out there ?

 

i'm reading about Jerry getting deeply into herion, and the 80's were not a good time.

i saw a lot of shows in the 80's, don't really remember them, but was his playing really off ? or was it more of he had good days, bad days ?

[Mr. Heartbreak]

From what I have heard, he had good and bad days. I never saw a really bad show, and my first one was in '82. But my own personal feeling is that by the 90s, he had more bad days than good. I know a lot of folks on the board here listen to 90s Dead with some frequency, but I can't do it: if I listen to a 90s show, I'm likely to skip the Jerry tunes. I think they were surviving in spite of him, not because of him. Very sad story, really.

[tongue-tied lightning]

Jerry's drug use, which by his own acount, he seemed to enjoy untill the 80's when he became a "junkie"

i am i wrong in thinking he had times of being drug free in the 90's ? re-hab worked for small preiods of time i thought