There's a lot of Grateful Dead 'live' material out there. As is always the way of these things, it's difficult to resist the temptation to compare and contrast every available item of product in the hope that definitive decisions can be made on the band's finest gigs and individual tracks.
In the case of the Dead, apart from the earliest concert releases 'Live/Dead', 'Grateful Dead/Skull & Roses' and 'Europe 72', that'd be the 73 CDs which comprise the entire European tour recordings package, the multi-disc 'Vaults' albums, the 10-CD Fillmore '69 set and the 36 albums (many multi-CD) in the 'Dick's Picks' series, then. So good luck with that.
Newcomers to the phenomenon that is Grateful Dead fandom might find the notion of 'definitive' Dead something of a zero-sum game. While I'm willing to believe there are Deadheads out there so immersed in, and intimate with, their heroes' entire canon – to the extent that they really can shake out a single reading of 'Dark Star' or 'The Other One' from the many versions extant and advance a persuasive argument for that choice – it's worth remembering that these are complex musical tapestries, each rendering nuanced and textured, performed by brilliantly inspired and very stoned musicians reacting to a room's shifting atmosphere and the 'vibes' (as they'd have said on the Haight in 1967 and Phil Lesh still did in his 2005 memoir) of an equally spaced audience.
A reading of 'Dark Star', for example, could begin hesitantly, the band feeling its way into the inter-galactic journey ahead, escape velocity yet unreached. Half-an-hour later, as they segue to 'St Stephen' or 'The Other One' or 'El Paso' or whatever they feel like doing at the time, they can have you believing that the aggregate of Jerry Garcia (lead guitar), Bob Weir (rhythm guitar), Phil Lesh (bass), Pigpen (organ/harp) and percussionists Mickey Hart and Bill Kreutzmann is, without question, the best band in the world.
Yes, the songs are often that long. At 11mins, the 'Dark Star' on 'Two From The Vault' is one of the shorter versions. For my part, while I've been a fan of the Dead since 1968, I can admit to barely scraping the surface of the band's entire output. Yet for anyone it would take diligence and patience indeed to sit through the entire oevre as an exercise in dry academic analysis – something the Grateful Dead were never about anyway – and a keen ear to comprehensively evaluate and alight on a single reading as the measure by which all others are judged.
(I'd guess that some, but I'm sure not all, such Dead disciples are a bit like those folk who swear blind they were at the 1970 Isle of Wight festival; a show which, had it attracted as many as we might be led to believe, would surely have caused its Solent island home to have slipped its moorings and sunk somewhere off Finisterre).
The Dead's Haight-Ashbury friends and neighbours Jefferson Airplane have also been subject of a plethora of live releases – though nowhere near to the extent of GD – since this magnificent band shook off its tail feathers and turned into a rudderless AOR Starship. Yet for all the live Airplane records out there, none comes close to the original and best: 'Bless Its Pointed Little Head'. Despite the undoubted excellence of some of the later material, to these ears JA's first live album from 1969 remains unequalled. The Who, too, have had the live treatment more than once. Yet who would dare claim that 'Who's Last' or 'Live at The Albert Hall' could hold an outstretched Zippo to 'Live at Leeds'?
So is it the same with the Grateful Dead? Irrespective of endless Dick's Picks and innumerous Euros 72, had they already nailed it with 'Live/Dead' in 1970? I'm willing to be swayed by a diehard Deadhead with a terminal Dark Star habit and an elegant argument for a performance buried deep in the European tour box, but listening again to the major part of the L/D set – 'Dark Star>St Stephen>The Eleven>Lovelight' – it's difficult to imagine the band bettering it. For a 23min track, this 'Dark Star' has always felt much shorter, proving time really does fly when the band itself is flying so enjoyably. And 'The Eleven' is simply astounding, played by young musicians yet to hone their chops but who still seem telepathically connected, absolutely on fire and ready to storm heaven.
'The Eleven', arguably the album's high point, segues into a 15min 'Turn On Your Lovelight' and an opportunity for Pigpen to go through his bluesman's routine, complete with call-&-response crowd exhortations and some stunning drum interplay between Hart and Kreutzmann. After that the album drifts into a slower blues, 'Death Don't Have No Mercy' followed by an overlong example of what could befall the Dead if Lesh were unleashed to remind everyone of his avant-garde credentials (although if you'd dropped a tab of Owsley's finest at the beginning of 'Dark Star', by the time you reached the final feedback squalls of, er, 'Feedback' you'd probably find yourself in on the secret of life itself).
In conclusion, although perhaps nothing would give me greater pleasure than to while away my remaining days doing nothing but listening to Grateful Dead live albums in search of the band's motherlode, it ain't gonna happen. But I'm happy to keep carrying the flame for what something still tells me is still the original and best.
Frequently bought together
This item: Live / Dead
£7.47
In stock
+
£10.34
Get it 29 Jan – 15 Feb
Usually dispatched within 4 to 5 days
+
Total price:Ìý$00
To see our price, add these items to your basket.
Choose items to buy together.
Customers who viewed this item also viewed
Page 1 of 1 Start againPage 1 of 1
- The Best of the Grateful DeadAudio CDGet it 19 May – 29 JulUsually dispatched within 3 to 7 months
Top reviews from other countries
- Dibber DobbsReviewed in the United States on 23 November 2024
Beautiful Music, but no Zombie References
-
-
-
-
Marco Antônio Silva ThomazReviewed in Brazil on 14 April 2021
Grateful Dead na essência
