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Coming to grips with the decline of Mr. Garcia post-70s, much in the vocal department is a depressing side road for me. Maybe because, as I tout so openly, I am middle-aged.
The 1984/85 New Year’s Eve performance of Shakedown Street, a song I always liked on the radio, on the So Many Roads collection, has to contain the worst vocal performance of a lead vocalist on any officially released album ever.
Jerry, by my calculation, was 42 or 43.
Now, maybe that night he was famous for having a cold or something, but come on. The Scarlet Begonias from Hamilton, Ontario, 1990, a few tracks later on So Many Roads isn’t much better.
Then I get to Terrapin Station, 9/12/1991 a couple more tracks in, and I find myself moved. Before I have a chance to read the date, the melody grabs me as it always does and immediately I find myself in another state of mind. Then the singing.
I am listening to a dying man. Easy to say now, but he didn’t die for another four years.
Yet he’s dying there. No man who wasn’t dying would be allowed to sing in that vocal state – he’d hurt his vocal cords and do permanent damage. Only a man with no future would have been permitted to push himself like that.
I cannot get beyond the line “I will not forgive you”, although I know its a trick played by retrospect.
Then, later “The storyteller makes no choice, soon you will not hear his voice . . . “
If you have any love for what Jerry Garcia created, or for the man, take a listen to this vocally painful version if you haven’t in a while.
All but despondent, I then stumble upon Whiskey in the Jar, a gem in so many ways. If the chatter mid-rehearsal in 1993 is to be taken at face value, Garcia begins playing this old Irish folk tune from deep memory, then singing along. If I had any doubt that Garcia’s first love was bluegrass and that he was a genius, it is dissolved here.
His banter with Bob Weir about the song and its lyrics captures what so many have written about him — he is enraptured by the music, a bit of a wise guy in the process — “I haven’t [heard it in 30 years] either, I just remembered it” he responds to Bobby, with either a bit of prodding one-upsmanship in his voice or maybe he’s just on something.
When he says “great lyrics, it’s a cool song” he sounds like a teenager.
He would later, some research reveals, record the song with David Grisman later that year — adding another must-hear to my long list.
So Many Roads, performed with the Grateful Dead that final show in Chicago in 1995, closes the CD. I recognize that there are a lot of interesting coincidences and foreshadowings going on, and as a novice I will not attempt to put it all together.
I will simply note that I have read Garcia idolized Dylan, and that the ending background vocals are quite reminiscent of Knocking on Heaven’s Door. That The Well has some really great message board threads organized by song, and that I read somewhere that Robert Hunter sometimes wrote lyrics for Garcia to serve as a message to Garcia.
And that there are many oblique references to other Dead-repertoire songs in the lyrics to So Many Roads.
My favorite is the one I caught on my own, the first line: “Thought I heard a blackbird singing”, reminding me of Morning Dew.
Dear Dead Diary:
So I’ve taken a little break from posting. It doesn’t mean I haven’t listened to the Grateful Dead non-stop since my last post.
I just needed some time to consolidate my thinking.
I’m sure I’ll drop my standards soon, but it will be fun someday to look back and see my earlier, obviously wrongheaded views in print.
So here goes.
First, this band played way too many shows of much too long a duration for way too many years.
Second, this band and its fans enthusiastically killed the golden goose.
Third, the golden goose had his own issues that led him to prefer working himself to death (by playing music) rather than doing something else.
Fourth, something happened to Jerry’s voice somewhere between 1978 and 1981, I haven’t worked through that era yet, but his vocals pre- and post- that event, whatever it was, are completely obvious within 5 seconds of listening.
Fifth, starting in the eighties, the crowd sounds more like a typical rock crowd, in terms of the intensity of the cheering, you can hear the hero worship and stridency (it happened across many bands, if not all of them). It’s pretty stunningly obvious after having listened to a couple of months of 70s shows exclusively.
I could go on, Dear Diary, but there’s the gist of it.
My basis for being a curmudgeon is all right there. But at least no one can say I only like the era I recall from my youth, or of the shows I attended, or the music that accompanied my young romances, because there was no Grateful Dead for me in any of those years. Well, almost none.
I have probably listened to only 20 songs where Brent sings, thus far. I recall that the Eighties were keyboard-centric, and hated them contemporaneously as well as ever since.
It is not a good sign that I don’t like Mr. Mydland’s singing at all. Very Eighties, over-singing without a good voice drives me nuts. And the Dead’s originals from that era are too keyboard-driven for me.
So I’m worrying here a bit, although it would be a relief not to have so much to wade through in such detail.
I think the path here is to stay focused on the Seventies for now, with brief forays into the late 60s and the Pigpen era for some relief.
I’m listening to Hey Pocky Way, whatever that is, from So Many Roads, if that helps explain anything . . .
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