Description
The Grateful Dead – The Grateful Dead (LP, Picture disc)
Label: Rhino Records – R1 557478
Format: Vinyl, LP, Album, Limited Edition, Picture Disc, Reissue
Country: US
Released: 20 Jan 2017
Cover – Mouse Studios
Barcode: 081227941802
Tracklist:
A1 The Golden Road (To Unlimited Devotion)
A2 Beat It On Down The Line
A3 Good Mornin’ Little School Girl
A4 Cold Rain And Snow
A5 Sittin’ On Top Of The World
A6 Cream Puff War
B1 Morning Dew
B2 New, New Minglewood Blues
B3 Viola Lee Blues
Notes:
Limited Edition Of 10,000
50th Anniversary Edition
Vinyl in very fine condition. In original plastic outer (opened) with two label stickers.
Reviews:
+++++++++++ This time all the material was written by the group and they devised a new recording strategy: mixing the live and studio versions. It took six months and four different studios. Producer Dave Hassinger parted with the group because he found it impossible to work with them. So it was down to Jerry and Phil, together with Dan Healy, to assemble an album from live tapes and studio material. The whole lot was mixed down on a 8-track machine which gives a slightly crowded and cluttered effect… all 8 tracks being used continually with loads of stuff going on all the time. The album typified the long instrumentally orientated pieces the DeaD had been playing at the Acid Tests. Two sides of non-stop music made it difficult for airplay. The first album with two drummers and T.C. ALLIGATOR/CAUTION is a Pigpen vehicle with raucous feedback jamming. ALLIGATOR was a Hunter song although not credited as such, and came from the Trips Festival. THE OTHER ONE is dedicated to OWSLEY and sung by both Garcia and Weir. Weir sings also on NEW POTATOO CABOOSE and BORN CROSS EYED is his first major attempt as songwriter. A later Phil Lesh remix of the album brings out the ideas more clearly, but the album remains a much better indication of how the band sounded at the moment, with long, innovative numbers replacing the shorter epics of yore.+++++++++++
nr. 1 As flawed as it was ambitious, ANTHEM was a fascinating collection of sounds and feelings, cutten from excessively produced over-laden studio sessions to raw live performances. A record clearly ahead of its time. GOLDMINE, July 1987
nr. 2 It’s jumbled, it’s confused, it’s hard to get into, but I love this album just the same. A grand psychedelic experiment, ANTHEM is the DeaD at their strangest; it’s the band testing its wings after having been dissatisfies with their first record. As a result, it’s overly ambitious-a tad on the abstract side-but contains some great jams. Also, the little electronic section midway trough side one still gives me thrills. Not for the unadventurous. **** BLAIR JACKSON, THE MUSIC NEVER STOPPED, PLEXUS, UK
nr. 3 The DeaD’s long modal jams may be the stuff of mesmerism in concert (though even there it’s questionable), but they’re simply self- indulgent and boring on disc. rating ** DAVE MARSH, R.S. RECORD GUIDE
nr. 4 The DeaD set about trying to intruduce some of the excitement and fluidity of their live-act onto vinyl. This they did by taping a number of their shows, which they then mixed together, often one on top of another, adding layer upon layer to form a side-long waterfall of sound and fury. An exception of the overall lyrical abstruseness of the lp is the Weir and Kreutzman penned second section, which serves as Grateful Dead’s memorial to their old friends and Acid-Test comrade Neal Cassidy. The second side has Pigpen singing lead on two songs, bot h of which intercut between assorted live versions joined by extended jams and highlighted by Garcia’s overdubbed and ultra-sharp lead guitar . JAMIE JENSEN, BUILT TO LAST, 1990
nr. 5 As if the band wants to make up for their pretty anonymous debut album, this is an album with character. Starting with an inspired and weird OTHER ONE, mixing live- and studio recordings, all the unadventurous will get off the bus. And although it’s a “difficult” song, it swings like hell. The keyboard-work on ALLIGATOR is remarkable. ANTHEM is the first real evidence of a group who is willing to take chances and to experiment. The power and drive of the drums on the live segment of ALLIGATOR is extra-ordinairy. Dynamite!! * * * ERIK SCHOTHANS, July 1992
nr. 6 I think this is the DeaD album that I play the most, and is perhaps my favourite of them all. The whole of side one is bloody brilliant…it starts with a 3-part medley THAT’S IT FOR THE OTHER ONE – an attractive easy-paced song CRYPTICAL ENVELOPMENT that ends with an astounding change of rhythm and a drum solo. and then THE FASTER WE GO..which is pure Grateful DeaD magic. …Garcia and Lesh soloing away, crossing over and playing off each other, Weir and Pigpen adding layer upon layer of sound, and the two drummers lashing out landslide rhythms that explode on the top of your head. It all glides perfectly into NEW POTATOE CABOOSE and BORN CROSS EYED and the whole side is just one unbelievable thing after another. Superb stuff. Side two features ALLIGATOR, the mainstay of DeaD concerts in their early days, and close with CAUTION which is the only thing that sounds contrived, with an assortment of Pigpen’s growling vocals and lots of electronics. Certainly one of the best rock albums ever to come out of San Francisco. ANDY CHILDS, ZIG ZAG, vol. 3, no. 11
nr. 7 The Grateful Dead – GD (Warner Bro. W 1689) the first lp, released in mono. The original releases were on the gold Warner Brothers label. Released on March 17, 1967. The cryptic lettering above the words “Grateful Dead” reads: “In the land of the dark, the ship of the sun is driven by the Grateful Dead”. Most of the tracks were recorded in a span of five days (Monday night through Friday night, mixed on Saturday afternoon) at RCA Studio A in Hollywood, CA, and produced by Dave Hassinger, a Warner Brothers staff production engineer. “The Golden
Road (To Unlimited Devotion)” was recorded later at Coast Recorders, at 960 Bush Street in San Francisco. This tune had about 60 takes; the album version includes an overdub of Bill Kreutzmann drumming on the strings of Garcia’s guitar while Garcia is fingering the chords. “The Golden Road” was the working title for this album, but was changed. “Alice D. Millionaire” and “Tastebud”, a blues number featuring Pigpen on vocals, were probably recorded for the album but were not released. “McGannahan Skjellyfetti” was the pseudonym used by the band as the author’s name for the group compositions (“The Golden Road” and “Cream Puff War”). “McGannahan Skjellyfetti” was a character, the protagonist’s ‘literary agent’, in Kenneth Patchen’s “Memoirs Of A Shy Pornographer”, published in 1945. I. W. Slabicky, 1993
nr. 8 Much of the band’s concert material, whi at this stage still consisted in the main R&B and folk covers, was chosen for thE debut Warners album, recorded in four da, in January 1967. One of the last San Fra ciscc- bands to cut an LP, the Dead we dispatched to Los Angeles (Frisco’s commE cialised neighbour) and placed in the conti of producer Dave Hassinger (who’d engineeri much of the Stones’ mid-60s work).
Their disappointment with the resuits h long been on record (“mediocre perforinanc of material we were able to do much bettei remembered Garcia), and the frenetic pace some of the songs, including a ruined “Sittii On Top Of The World» and “The ‘Goldi Road (To Unlimited Devotion)» single, w later put down to too much speed during t] sessions.
Despite that, there’s much to commei here, not least the rapidly advancir interplay on “Good Morning, Little SchoolGirl” and the closing “Viola Lee Blues”. Ai “Cream Puif War» remains an acid-garage classic – freak-out music played to perfection, with a fluid 1O-minute.extravaganza th built to the kind of maddeni’nçrescendo on the Dead could pull off.
from Record Collector
