Month: June 2024

Workingman’s Dead, Grateful Dead, Warner Bros., 1970

I’ve always thought this was a great album; today I decided it’s better than that. I praised The Band’s Big Pink and brown albums for trying to bring folks together in divisive times. The Grateful Dead was doing it too with Workingman’s Dead and American Beauty.

Big changes for the Dead on this album. The band decided to be tuneful, of all things. In a memoir one of them said for years they’d leave the Fillmore after a psychedelic set laughing that no one went home whistling that. Then they decided to give melody a chance. Robert Hunter was writing lyrics that described things. The words jumped out at me: are you kind; when life looks like easy street, there is danger at your door; won’t you come with me; come with me or go alone; he’s come to take his children home; ain’t no time to hate; I can hear your voice; don’t think too hard; you know what I’m saying; one way or another, this darkness had got to give; who can deny, who can deny; I can’t help you with your troubles if you won’t help with mine.

They aren’t singing about fighting in the street or Anastasia’s screams. If their words were any more communitarian, they’d be singing Kumbaya. I like that they are positive. Workingman’s Dead: Come for Casey Jones, listen to it all for the tunes and the lyrics.

Live/Dead, Grateful Dead, Warner Bros., 1969

What a wonderful album. All the good parts and none of the excessive and self-indulgent stuff. Dark Star, Saint Stephen, and The Eleven are improvisational but take care of business, almost like jazz. Pigpen made Turn on Your Lovelight a personal statement—take your hands outta your pocket. Death Don’t Have No Mercy made me think of the Reverend Gary Davis. Outstanding all the way down even if you aren’t on acid.

I learned a word from Discogs. A double record set with side 4 on the flip of side 1 (and 2 with 3) is called auto-coupled. It’s for folks who use a record changer—put side 2 atop side 1 on the tall spindle, push the arm over, play them, and flip them over. If you have a turntable, there’s the bother of playing side 1, then putting that back in the sleeve, taking the second disk out for side 2, then repeat. When I was young, my family had a Santa rubber eraser sitting on the tone arm of the record player so it wouldn’t skip.

I still have the insert for this record. It is an 11×17 sheet folded over with Celtic-style art and the lyrics, such as they are.

History of the Grateful Dead, Volume 1 (Bear’s Choice), Grateful Dead, Warner Bros., 1973 (recorded 1970)

The Wikipedia article for this record says a lot, partly by what it leaves out. It was intended to be the first of a series; there weren’t any others. Owsley ‘Bear’ Stanley produced it as a tribute to Ron McKaren, aka Pigpen, who died as it was being produced. Garcia said the band had to agree to this in order to get Europe ’72 the way they wanted. ‘We had to give them four records to get two. It represents us in early 1970, when we’d never done a record,’ he said. Someone’s memoir said that McKaren played a solo acoustic set, which he rarely did, which inspired Garcia and Weir to play a set with just their acoustic guitars. What they left out: None of it was good. I only play this one when I am playing them all.

But if this record was necessary for Workingman’s Dead, American Beauty, and Europe ’72, then I give my heartfelt thanks to everyone involved.

Grateful Dead, The Grateful Dead, 1967, Warner Bros.

Vintage Dead was how the Grateful Dead sounded in 1966. Not good. This was their first studio record, and it was excellent. Much of this is catchy pop music. The organ riff in Cold Rain and Snow sounds a bit like the little tunes to play when warming up, but I can dance to it—it works. In Sittin’ on Top of the World I can’t tell if the singer has figured out that his baby has left and he’s going to suffer. Maybe it’s denial, maybe he’s too high to care, but it is a bouncy little song. The lyrics in Cream Puff War sound serious—you’re killing each other’s souls– but by the end the Just Kidding flag is flying—go somewhere else to fight your cream puff war. The Golden Road to Unlimited Devotion might  be spiritual, maybe, but it is about getting high and dancing barefoot. The New, New Minglewood Blues has a line I know I’ve heard before—my number one occupation is stealing women from their men—but I can’t find it in any rock song older than this.  

A big improvement from Vintage Dead was not to give Pigpen 20 minutes to run Midnight Hour into the ground. He did a good job in six minutes on Good Morning, Little Schoolgirl. The bluesmen such as Junior Wells and Muddy Waters who did the song played it straight. They didn’t want to sound sexy when addressing a school girl. Man, Pigpen went the full Humbert Humbert on this version. The way he sang I want to put a tiger in your sweet little tank still sounds creepy.