For Deadheads only
Music Posted by schoth Sun, July 21, 2013 23:10:44
This song review is an excerpt from Mikes Grateful Dead Blog
China Doll is a moody ballad with one of the most beautiful transitions from minor to major in rock music that I’ve ever heard. This song was originally released on the From the Mars Hotelalbum in 1974 and featured harpsichord.
China Doll is very much revered but is still underrated. China Doll should be an even more high profile Grateful Dead classic than it currently is. I am sure the song is virtually unknown outside of Deadheads so it earns the distinction of being For Deadheads Only.
This song is so deep, eerie, and mysterious it disappoints me that more people aren’t exposed to it. It is a very slow melancholy dirge and another thing that might detract from it’s popularity amongst Deadheads and the public at large is that the lyrics are very vague. I am not even sure what the plot of the song is or if the dialogue is a one person monologue or between two people, etc. The opening lines are vague:
A pistol shot at 5 o’clock
The bells of heaven ring
“Tell me what you done it for”
“No I won’t tell you a thing”
It has been written in the books that (per Robert Hunter) the opening shot refers to a suicide but without that 3rd party information I wouldn’t have known that. This fact of the vague lyrics does not bother me at all because I love China Doll so much but I am just conjecturing that the unclear storyline and lack of identifiable characters (ie no “Black Peter” in this one) might have caused the song not to receive the fanfare I think it deserves.
original blog message: https://music.schothans.com/?p=117 Edit
Irwin mixed exquisitely detailed, intricate brass work with dense, exotic hardwoods in his designs. He also incorporated a lot of special features Garcia himself devised, like a loop that ran the signal back through the guitar so he could control his special effects with knobs on the body of the guitar or a built-in pre-amp hidden beneath Irwin’s inlays. “Jerry knew more about his guitars and equipment than anyone,” said Parish. After a Roland synthesizer was successfully attached to Wolf, Tiger went back to the shop for retrofitting. Garcia used the synthesizer attachment to make his guitar sound like a trumpet or other instruments.
on the guitar bodies. After Jerry’s death, the guitars returned to Doug Irwin, the master guitar maker who’s work Jerry Garcia so admired. In his will, Garcia left the guitars to Mr. Irwin who had devoted many years of his life creating them. Irwin sold his guitars, the Tiger and the Wolf, at auction on May 8, 2002. The Tiger was purchased by Jim Irsay for USD 850,000.
