Aoxomoxoa marks the completion of the band’s contractual obligation to Warner Brothers, and it is also is an interesting transition for the band’s musical development. Having developed into a heavily improvisational, free flowing jam band in live performances characterized by lengthy excursions, Aoxomoxoa, the meaningless palindrome coined by the album’s cover artist Rick Griffin, is …
Anthem of the Sun could be seen as the best expression of the Grateful Dead and how they would relate to the recording business and recorded music. The band never claimed to be oriented towards making music in the studio, and their efforts were initially geared towards trying to recreate the live sound in the …
“Morning Dew” was a contemporary folk song by Bonnie Dobson, and is a song that would stay in the band’s repertoire for their entire career. Written in 1962, “Morning Dew” was inspired by the film On the Beach, a vision of a post-apocalyptic world where the bewilderment of such total loss takes place as a …
“Sittin’ on Top of the World,” originally written by Walter Vinson and Lonnie Chatmon, recorded in 1930 by their group the Mississippi Sheiks, is another standard in American music. Confidence and optimism is driven home in both lyrical content as well as in the Dead’s arrangement. Adapted easily for a rock ‘n roll tempo, punctuated …
“Cold Rain and Snow” is another song pulled from the catalog of American folk music. This traditional was inspired by Obray Ramsey’s rendering with a solo banjo, and it is likely Garcia was attracted to it from his banjo playing days. The song would remain in the repertoire until the end. Again, we have a …
The Grateful Dead were described as ugly and ruffian, with the unlikely oddity of Pigpen as front man. The uniqueness of Pigpen as this character unlike anyone else in the band (arguably unlike anyone else, really) was largely part of the appeal of this act playing the circuit of small bars along the Bay Area’s …
I was in attendance at the Fare Thee Well shows much covered in the mainstream media, and some random guy started talking to me during some interval. His female friends were going on about how sexy Bobby still was with his beard and stache, and he leans in to me: “Have you seen the Lorax …
I think sometimes in an effort to amuse ourselves, it is very easy to lose sight of what truly inspires us to come to the circus in the first place. Even as I undertake to write about today’s subject, I am treading the border of deadly earnestness and the urge to ridicule. It’s so easy …