Description
The Grateful Dead – Built To Last (CD)
Label: Arista – 260 326
Format: CD, Album
Country: Europe
Released: 1989
Rights Society: BIEM / GEMA
Barcode: 4 007192 603268
Label Code: LC 3484
Built To Last – the album version does not include Brent Mydland’s “We Can Run”. Released on October 31, 1989. “Black Muddy River” is an examination of life at forty-five years old. “Victim Or The Crime” was written by Bob Weir and actor Gerrit Graham. “Believe It Or Not” and “Sh*t Happens” were recorded as demos for this album, but were not released. Included is Brent Mydland’s “I Will Take You Home”, written for his daughters Jennifer and Jessica. Much of the album was recorded at George Lucas’s Skywalker Ranch studios.
Tracklist:
1 Foolish Heart
2 Just A Little Light
3 Built To Last
4 Blow Away
5 Victim Or The Crime
6 We Can Run
7 Standing On The Moon
8 Picasso Moon
9 I Will Take You Home
Notes:
Comes with a fold open poster cover and a merchandise flyer.
Reviews:
++++++++++++++ After the runaway success of the almost live IN THE DARK, on the new album Grateful Dead adopted a completely different approach to recording. The basic rhythm tracks were recorded at George Lucas’ Skywalker Ranch in Northern Marin County, and the band members then evolved their individual parts on their own, interacting directly with the music even when they were all in separate rooms. Digital technology allowed slave copies to be made and worked on without any loss of sound quality, so the players could change their parts without muddying up the final mix. The end result is the cleanest sounding Grateful Dead record ever. ++++++++++++++
nr. 1 Hang on, I’m looking for the right word. Somewhere beneath San Francisco must be a deep, dark underground pool for melody and musical invention, with a secret feedline up to the Dead’s recording studios. How else to explain twenty years of uncompromising excellence and rock’n’roll integrity? Sloppy excellence? To be sure. Ramshackle integrity? Who’d deny it? But the DeaD is the DeaD and who’d want them any other way? Their last album, IN THE DARK, finally scored the platinum sales they’ve always deserved, and this one demonstrates the same flair for combining Jerry Garcia’s liquid guitar with understated synths, sharp production and songs that mean a little more every time you hear them. The word is awesome. HMV advertisement, Q no. 39, December 1989
nr. 2 Without the focus provided by at least one serious ego the DeaD have always had a potentially disastruous tendency to defer to each other. The results are arrangements which plod in order not to leave anyone behind, songs which lack melodic imagination, some occasionally lamentable vocalising and solos that stammer where they might reasonably be expected to soar. Fans who found IN THE DARK indecently FM-friendly will warm to BUILT TO LAST for precisely the qualities that drive non-initiates to distraction. It’s a resolutely un-glossy piece of work with no obvious single. The keynote first four tracks, tentave workouts with spindly instrumental filigree. Garcia’s VICTIM OR THE CRIME is more haunting and provides a base from which to launch some of his characteristic guitar excursions; the same party’s STANDING ON THE MOON, which conducts itself like something on The Band’s second album, has an affecting dream-like quality achieved by some quite sparing guitar and a sense of occasion missing elsewhere. * * DAVID HEPWORTH, Q no. 38, Nov. ’89
nr. 3 The trio of songs Garcia has written with that maestro of tarot logic, Robert Hunter, are gems. FOOLISH HEART, the American single, is like FRIEND OF THE DEVIL surfacing on TERRAPIN STATION and, when you consider how many millions of guitarists there are out there, the magnificent distinctiveness of his style, like the sun bursting through the clouds, elevates him, in my estimation, to an exalted position alongside Andy Warhol and Orson Welles as one of this century’s greatest artists. The title-track is another melancholy victory song, but the album really belongs to Bob Weir. His PICASSO MOON revists the barroom locations of ONE MORE SATURDAY NIGHT and, while the dual drummers scatter beats like fireworks and claps and castanets pepper the firmament, he declares his abiding wonder at the wondrousness of it all. And finally there is his VICTIM OR THE CRIME, indisputably the Dead’s finest achievement in 15 years. Initially it appears a chaos of cross-purposes , an unresolving internal argument between the components of the song until it coalesces into an incadescent journey through the outer-limits, the rhythmic machinery shifting to avoid the meteorites Mydland flings at will. Harking back to the gorgeously tangled Bedouin excursions of BLUES FOR ALLAH and even beyond to the farthest-out ever harmonic freeform of DARK STAR, it shows the DeaD have never lost touch with the essence of their greatness: they retain the sensory apparatus to be amazed and the genius to communicate amazement. STEVE SUTHERLAND, MELODY MAKER, OCT. 1989
nr. 4 BUILT TO LAST, but not for speed. The DeaD certainly took their sweet time delivering the follow-up to their belated 1987 platinum breakthrough LP, IN THE DARK. Given the band’s wellproven live strengths, Deadheads already have better, more effervescent versions of those tunes on tape. The icy clarity of the Jerry Garcia and John Cutler’s production combined with the dominance of leisurely rhythms leaves too much of BUILT TO LAST verging on the frigid. The virtues of band democracy notwithstanding, the four numbers sung and co-written by the junior DeaD member, keyboardist Brent Mydland come close to boring. Truer to the DeaD aesthetic are the weird melodic twists and haunting tone of Bob Weir’s catchy VICTIM OR THE CRIME and the bluesy contemplation of BUILT TO LAST and STANDING ON THE MOON, two gently bewitching Garcia/Hunter songs whose themes of emotional stamina and spiritual yearning are given special credence by the fragile charm of Garcia’s singing. ROLLING STONE, no. 567, Dec.1989
nr. 5 Grateful Dead records are strange products: Deadheads have already heard the songs live, the tunes invariably sound better in concert or on bootlegs, and non-deadheads will avoid the thing like bad cheese. But 1987’s IN THE DARK was a pretty fun ride. Though clearly the offspring of aging minds, the record was far more playful than the slow-moving BUILT TO LAST. I have nothing at all against the greying of rock’n’roll. I just want my rockers growing old, not being old. Part of the problem lies with keyboardist Brent Mydland, whose four tunes bleach BUILT TO LAST’s already bland fare. Were it not for Garcia’s tasty arabesques and the rumble of drum twins Kreutzmann and Hart, I would have thought I’d slapped on the new Poco record by mistake. Although there’s no TOUCH OF GREY here, Jerry’s still the Dead’s most articulate and lovable oldster, partly because he’s got able-bodied lyricist Robert Hunter graying there with him. SPIN, 12/89
nr. 6 De DeaD is een van de grootste enigma’s in de popgeschiedenis. Muziek die urenlang doorsuddert als een pot hachee van de vorige.gif week. Als muziek terwijl u werkt alleszins genietbaar. OOR, NOVEMBER 1989
nr. 7 Die Siegelbewahrer des Hippietums bringen alles, was man von Ihnen erwartet, erinnert an die besten WORKINGMAN’S DEAD oder MARS HOTEL. Eine sorgfalt produktion mit instrumentalem farbenspiel, bewegten Sangern und einer spielfreudigen Band. * * * * ME/SOUNDS, Dezember 1989
nr. 8 For the first time, the world’s longest-running cult band employed state-of-the-art technology, resulting in a slick sound that must have caused shockwaves around Haight-Ashbury. Rhythm sections were generated from machine shops and from a metalwork plant. ROLLING STONE, no. 567
nr. 9 Though the hookwise production values are even more obtrusive, this still sounds like the good old Grateful Dead. Except for newish guy Brett MYdland, who sounds like Don Henley. Survivors have to stick together. rating: C+ ROBERT CRISTGAU, RECORD GUIDE THE 80’S, PANTHEON
nr. 10 From the opening track, the FOOLISH HEART single, it is clear that the DeaD are not content to sit back and rest on their laurels. Musically the band is in top form, the drums exploding behind chiming guitars and Brent’s expanding pallet of keyboard textures. More than ever before the song lyrics – from Weir’s THE VICTIM OR THE CRIME (which he insist should have been the album title) to Brent and Barlow’s WE CAN RUN- directly address the vital, real-world concerns of the 1990’s, notably personal and planetary survival. JAMIE JENSEN, BUILT TO LAST, FANTAIL 1990
nr. 11 The DeaD have never lost touch with the essence of their greatness. They retain the sensory apparatus to be amazed and the genius to communicate amazement… BUILT TO LAST sounds proud to be around. MELODY MAKER, 11 oct. 1989
