Live/Dead by the Grateful Dead
Everytime I find an musical artist I enjoy, I slowly chip away at the discography. With each album, I notice the artist's change in style and their maturity, which seem to always take place between each disc. Sometimes though, I purposefully disregard something in the list (an unnessecary live album, the notoriously smashed studio album) and this album was one of them.
Throughout the constantly changing genre known as Rock'n'Roll, there are many things that have been defined in motion. The live performance and recording was the last to be developed and was first utilized as an instrument for Cream's Wheels of Fire LP. The band that arrived on the scene, morphing the idealogy of the live performance was the legendary Grateful Dead. The band was known for its long, winding jams filling up lengthy set-lists of songs with ethreal lyrics, derived from the mass quantities of drugs floating around at the time.
As I picked up this album, I was expecting something I couldn't relate to. I wasn't exactly someone who blew their own mind with a hit of LSD or someone who was part of that scene. I enjoyed the Grateful Dead's music, but I didn't know if this was for me. As I opened the shrink wrap, the album seemed to be warmer.
My ears were met with a fade in of a guitar doodling and a bass soloing, with such resonance as to make my car shake. The playing in "Dark Star" was not languid as it had been described, it was intellegent and leading to a point. A few minutes into the song, I am met with the conversing of instrumental phrases and ideas. The song is lengthy, yet every second counts.
That is the definition for this album: "lengthy, yet every second counts." Each song has long runtimes (the lowest being "St. Stephen" at a mere six minutes and forty-five sconds or the bonus track 45-single of "Dark Star" at 2:44 not originally on the actual album), originally on two LP's. None of the music is extraneous and all the playing is leading to a point, establishing an idea and slowly moving the boundries of what a rock band can play.
Singing had not always been a strong point of the Dead, but they utilize their unique style to make it enjoyable. On "St. Stephen", the harmonies are specific and encourage a sing-along value, while on "Dark Star" Jerry sings in a way to communicate the ethreal images in the lyrics. All of the music is enjoyable (even the 7:49 second track known as "Feedback" which is self-explanatory) and there is no reason that any person looking for a live album shouldn't purchase this.
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