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Grateful Dead

lordsummit

lordsummit

Moderator
Sorry to start another Museum music thread, but whilst idly blobbing through Amazon, I spotted this:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/o/ASIN/B000...&pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_p=125824291&pf_rd_i=468294

Has anyone got it? Is it any good? Or is there a better way to get some of the Dead's music? I've always liked what I heard but as there's so damn much of it I never know where to start, so I always end up buying something else.

Thanks
 
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My credit card has similarly been twitching over that - it is certainly prime period Dead and all the albums (that I've heard) have something good to offer. I believe the mastering is very good, it was certainly very well reviewed when it was released and it includes a lot of hard to find material. I'm very tempted myself as I've only got three albums from it (the two live ones and American Beauty) all on CD and they'd probably move on easy enough on my CD list...

Hmmm....

Tony.
 
As I have all the albums I've never been able to justify the cost (even though there's a stack of unreleased stuff in there as well that I lust for).

Like any Dead discussion, every Deadhead will have their favourite Dead period (they went through a number of fairly distinct phases) so it rather depends on what sort of music you like as to what to recommend.

This collection covers (in my opinion) their best and most inventive phase. You get the initial bluesy album, the two overtly psychedelic studio albums Anthem Of The Sun and Aoxomoxoa, the two blue-collar/countryish albums Workingman's Dead and American Beauty (which has ezquisite songs and close-harmony vocals) plus a swathe of seminal live albums that range from the loose jamming of Live/Dead to the tight harmonies of Skull & Roses and Live In Europe.

Except for Workingman's Dead and American Beauty a newbie to the band might find them a bit ramshackle and unless you're into the psych side I'd start with either of these two. Having said that, the culmination of their psych era (at least as represented by this set), Live/Dead is superb, with long, drawn-out versions of earlier stuff with their trademark loose-but-tight instrumental passages that it's hard not to be drawn into (though the exception here is Feedback, a track which does exactly what it says on the tin).

There are now a squillion and one official live releases from this era each of which has something to be said in its favour but sorting out a best is a bit of a personal thing.

After 1973 they were a much patchier band in the studio and some of their live performances suffered badly in the vocal department, though Garcia lost nothing instrumentally and there are many many wonderful live albums to cose from.....but start with the earlier era fisrt.
 
As a longtime "Deadhead", I can tell you NO. Don't buy them. Their studio albums are mostly lame. Stick with the live concert releases, ie. Dick's Pick's (there's not a bad one). WAY better music. The magick of The Dead only happened during the shows, never in a controlled studio. I have over 300 cassette tapes of sound board mixes to prove it (college!) ;)
 
I made this box set my first ever Grateful Dead purchase when it was priced at about £65.00 and have never regretted buying it - there was too much to take in at once so I spread the listening over quite a few days.

It's beautifully packaged, sound quality is excellent (even though my present player doesn't support the HDCD format available on the discs), and it contains a huge amount of fantastic music in my opinion. I have my favourites but wouldn't want to tarnish the experience for anyone else coming to the set for the first time.
 
I'm sure you will not regret it - I'd actually argue that the studio recordings are a great baseline to assess the many superb live recordings later, plus you do get Live Dead which has a fantastic version of Dark Star and other tracks on it. The ones I'm most interested to hear are the two 60s psyche period LPs, I'm ashamed to say that I've never heard them!

Tony.
 
Its a really nice set isn't it? When you work out the per disc cost of it, it really is a bit of a bargain, I think.
 
Yes, but now it's official! You may wish to wear your greying hair in a ponytail as a visible badge of your status.
 
B-Diddy said:
As a longtime "Deadhead", I can tell you NO. Don't buy them. Their studio albums are mostly lame. Stick with the live concert releases, ie. Dick's Pick's (there's not a bad one). WAY better music. The magick of The Dead only happened during the shows, never in a controlled studio. I have over 300 cassette tapes of sound board mixes to prove it (college!) ;)
Click to expand...
Biddy

I have always loved 'Blues for Allah'. If I were to get one official Dead live recording, which one should I get?

cheers

Simon
 
'Live/Dead' must be close to definitive for the early Dead, and is included in the set that our Administrator has just acquired.

Effing marvellous, really!

G
 
Live Dead is indeed wonderful - I had that one before along with Live 72 and American Beauty (all now listed in my CD sale list!). I've so far listened to Anthem Of The Sun and Aoxomoxoa which were the two I was most eager to hear. I'm certainly impressed - I knew AOTS was considered a landmark psych album but wasn't expecting the Cage / Stockhausenesque musique concrète aspects. Amazing stuff.

Tony.
 
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