1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die: 172. Grateful Dead – Live/Dead (1969)

 

I did own a Grateful Dead album once, but it never really grabbed me, and I wondered if that’s because it was a later one from the 80s. Thus I never really pursued them further, despite their legendary nature. I was aware of the “Deadheads”, the army of loyal fans and, although I’m probably not going to become one of them, I now have more of an understanding as to why they exist.

The Grateful Dead are another classic Californian-sound band that essentially were Jerry Garcia (possibly the only figure in this list with an ice-cream flavour named after him, unless Phish are on here) plus a revolving door of other musicians, as far as I can tell. They were pioneers of the “jam band”, with live performances forming lengthy jams around their songs, thus each live performance was a unique event and hence the growth of a loyal fanbase who would follow them from concert to concert.

I have made my thoughts on live albums known before, how sometimes they can capture a particular moment in time and how other times they are a form of Best-Of album palatable to music snobs. This one doesn’t capture any crowd ambience, but knowing how the Dead operate, it is clearly going to be one of many variations of their tunes (and is actually compiled from a few different performances).

Enough blather, is the music good? Yeah, it’s pretty accomplished. Mostly the tracks have a jazz-rock feel to them, inevitable really as they are designed for improvisation. The opening track, Dark Star, is a monster 25-minute epic of noodling that takes up an entire side of the album, while the other one-side wonder is Turn On Your Love Light which is much more of a blues jam (led by Ron “Pigpen” McKennan rather than Garcia), and is a glorious exploration moving through all kinds of blues forms – this is more the kind of thing I was hoping for from the BB King live album, to be honest (number 59). I think for some of the tracks it probably helps to be a little bit high, and also actually at the concert, to really soak up the ambience and enjoy the thrill of just letting the music take you on a mysterious journey – I’ve said this kind of thing before on the pure jazz albums, that it’s more about just feeling the music rather than expecting a strong structure to follow.

And it was definitely better than the album that I bought (which I think must have been Built To Last). And it made me want some Ben and Jerry’s, unless that was the scent of weed lingering from 1969.