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There’s a short period when a teenager is learning to drive where they describe the sensation as the world rushing at them and admit, in a very un-teenager like way, that driving is harder than it seems.
Of course, this admission is never repeated. The human brain, it is said, may be best at filtering out unnecessary information rather than gathering it or even processing it.
Within minutes, the overwhelming onrush of data gets filtered down into a managable stream of only the most pertinent bits.
For me, jumping into the Grateful Dead with both feet at this late date in their career and in my extended adolescence has felt much like the young driver feels at first.
The sheer volume, thousands of shows, over four decades, often three hours long, over several dozen songs typically played at each, never a repeated set-list, nearly every show available online for downloading or streaming, in various incarnations, soundboards, audience and matrix, from various sources (board mixes from Betty Cantor, Bear, Dan Healy and others), it’s just total overload.
There’s just no way to stick to an organized dive through the pile, and no fun in resisting the natural urges to follow hunches and personal peccadilloes. I tend to like repetition. If I like a song or a specific performance, I want to play it to death before moving on.
Having struck a rich vein in the May 1977 shows, I have moved laterally amongst them.
Urges abound, such as to become a reviewer, a teacher, a polemicist, a scold. Urges to be resisted.
In retrospect, I think my fear as a teenager — that my personality would not allow me to be a reasonable part-time Grateful Dead fan while maintaining other passions — was well-founded. My decision to defer exploring was a wise one, if only from the perspective of a guy now listening to the Dead the entire 18 hours he is awake, whether by iPod, computer, car or sometimes computer and laptop simultaneously (playing a download while surfing the Internet Archive for specific points of comparison).
Since it is impossible to be unaware of the archivist’s dream that is the Grateful Dead live canon, I wonder whether those coming to the band post-Jerry (and post-Internet age) are all self-selecting obsessive-compulsive completists?
In other words, are we attracted by the data structure or by the music? Not to say the music isn’t keeping me here, it is way beyond my expectations and brings repeated and great joy, but is the obsession fueled by the fact that the music is there in such overwhelming volume to be surmounted?
As I have never attended a Grateful Dead show, or any show of an affiliated band or performer, when I listen to the “tapes” — now wholly in digital format — I am truly listening to the music.
Unlike those shows of other bands that I actually saw in person, where my mind can wander to the excitement of the night in question, the cost of tickets, the company I kept, the pre- and post- show routines or the striking visuals, I have no reference point for the Grateful Dead other than a few minutes of video (so far).
So I am actually listening to the music, and I imagine many others are too.
This fascinates me, because even though I have been involved as an enthusiast with other bands and other fans over the years, I have come to the conclusion that I am an extremist as far as listening to the music is concerned.
I have been a member of large online groups who discuss one band every day for a decade, and you can count the posts on two hands where the actual music has been discussed. Something more than “great show”, or “awesome set list”, or “wow, two hour show” — but actual comments on the playing or singing as compared to other shows or even the official recording.
Perhaps it is an affliction, to hear bum notes in an otherwise beautiful improvisational solo, an uninspired tempo, a singer talk-singing through an overplayed tune, a guitar lost in the mix, a keyboard with a cheesy tone.
To even understand that a solo was played at all. To watch the musicians rather than the videos played on the backdrop behind the stage. To notice a keyboard player causing a change in direction for the rest of the band.
I might sound judgmental, and I don’t want to be holding the way I experience music up as the only way, but given the amount of live music resources available to Grateful Dead fans, there must be an unparalleled number of fans of the band who actually listen to the music closely, compared to most other bands.
And I would bet it is still a relatively small percentage of total GD fans.
It occurs to me that some Dead fans may be using the tapes to reenact a concert scene, with all of the recreational elements that that entails. Imagining each of the three sets as distinct endeavors, each with a different purpose in the overall experience.
The customary long length of the shows is striking to me, and helps me understand the lifestyle aspect a bit better. Both band and audience were making a large commitment to each other, and that doesn’t even begin to include the time other than performance time on stage required to attend and put on a show.
It is dawning on me that the multi-set approach, the languid jams, the sheer elements of drone and repetition were all to be expected each performance — and that the shows had their own circadian rhythm, something predictable, unpredictable and reassuring all at once.
Listening to a whole show, for me, means sitting at my computer or on my sofa, doing something else, for a stretch of the day or night. I don’t have to stand in a large crowd, there is no weather, nothing unpredictable really happens, I am not at the mercy of food, drink or other inputs of perhaps unknowable provenance or effect, there are no travel worries or scheduling worries, no friends to inject something unexpected.
The volume is reasonable if not downright quiet, given the other tasks in progress and need not to disturb those nearby.
My own listening experience may be as peculiar as anyone else’s approach to attending a show — and I want to remember that. The person who judges a show based on the parking lot scene or the activities conducted during intermission is no different from a guy listening 30 years later to a soundboard tape while performing some other task in a placid and controlled environment, listening for how the bass player goads the guitarists into something new.
It’s all absolutely meaningful to me, as an individual, while being perhaps non-representative or even antithetical to someone else.
I have been surprised and somewhat comforted by the commenters to this blog thus far, who largely are folks who keenly enjoy listening to these musical artifacts. I have been waiting for someone, or many someones, to come along and tell me I am not seeing the forest for the trees, or am missing the spirit intended by the band, or of the scene at large.
It hasn’t occurred yet. But when it does I hope to receive it with an open mind.
Just as my downloading from Archive.org was picking up steam, The New York Times comes along and throws a monkey wrench into the works.
The Times article looks at Dead fandom and focuses in on the tapes, and the question of the best Grateful Dead live tape ever.
I become informed that the Cornell University show at Barton Hall, May 8, 1977, is the likely fan favorite.
The problem for me is that 1978 is a far cry from the 1971-73 era I have initially focused on. I realize that my process will devolve into utter chaos if I have to navigate through thousands of shows without an effective and simple organizing principle.
As you expect by now, curiosity got the best of me and I decided to acquire a matrix tape, a tape created by a fan by combining a soundboard tape with one or more audience tapes.
[As an aside, I have decided that I will not yet allow myself to be sucked into the debate over whether soundboards or audience tapes are better sources. I do understand that there has been a recent change in Grateful Dead organization policy about downloading of soundboards (and possibly matrixes) and will surely, inevitably, delve into those issues after I become more conversant with the music.]
How can you not immediately listen to the “best Dead tape ever”?
My familiarity with Shakedown Street (released, I believe, a few months after this concert) gets me off to a good start, as New Minglewood Blues serves as the opener at Cornell. The performance seems to stake out some immediate high ground, as it is punchy and crisp.
Jerry then leads the band into the languid Loser, a song I happen to know well from Cracker’s great cover of it on their early 90s album Kerosene Hat.
The performance alows the college audience to cheer the great lines — “I can tell the queen of diamonds by the way she shines.”
Four and a half minutes in, Jerry Garcia lets his guitar do the talking. He plays a piercing, simple lead embellishing the melody line, very direct, using some kind of effect. I first thought he starting playing lower than he wanted, switching quickly to higher notes, but after a bit of Googling figured out that Jerry used an octavizer from time to time. Apparently, and I’m not a gearhead, this effect raises the pitch played by an octave. There are a few notes that are played throughout the minute and a half solo that are an octave lower than the bulk of the solo.
I don’t know whether this is intentional or not. The nature of the octave shift is such that the “lower” notes don’t sound out of place at all, in fact after a few listens, you expect them. They could be intentional, or unintentional. If unintentional, I have to wonder whether Garcia’s foot slipped off the pedal or something to explain the short lapses in octavizing.
Regardless, the solo follows a live form that is tried and true for pleasing me. Essentially he plays the same solo twice, setting up the theme in the first, then nailing it in the second, with a twist.
The syncopated twist at the end of the solo will surely put a grin on your face. If you are not already familiar with that version, enjoy the phrasing because after a few plays it won’t strike you as unexpected any more.
The solo is uncharacteristically consise, like a clarion, direct and shimmering as if a high slide solo. The minor flaws in the first go-round add drama as Jerry rounds the airport for another crack at landing this baby, and he does.
After being thrilled by the solo, I will no longer be surprised by anything Garcia plays, because he can clearly play more conventionally, more like Jerry, or more experimentally. He is choosing at all times to sound like he does, and that is an important lesson for me to learn early in this journey.
By unleashing that solo in the second song of the show, Garcia foreshadowed what many fans consider to have been their best ever. I’m not buying that entirely — there can be no best of 2500 or so different unique things. I won’t be so easily diverted off my quest by thinking the hard work has been done for me.
But maybe the band was especially excited to ferociously rock the Cornell ROTC headquarters that spring.
Following up with some reading after my first listen to Barton Hall 1977, I was gratified to see a few other Deadheads call Garcia’s Loser solo at Cornell his best ever. Thanks to the Internet, our opinions can be ratified immediately. And there’s always someone who thinks anything was the best ever.
Nonetheless, my love for the solo propelled me into a listening frenzy. My reading indicated that that stretch of 1978 is reknown. I obtained a few more of the shows on each side, and fully diverted from my 1971-73 study for a side trip to 1978.
The mix of some new songs, with their additional melodic and rhythmic complexity (Estimated Prophet being an early favorite of mine) provided additional fuel for my fire.
Having bitten off so much, I will soon have to return to the many revelations buried within Barton Hall.
And there are a few other things I came across during that stretch of 1978, including what really may be my candidate for Garcia’s best ever solo. Maybe anyone’s best solo, ever.
And as a guitar fan, I do not say that lightly, and have in fact never said it before about any solo (although I have sometimes been tempted).
Finally I can talk about the music. While I was reading the McNally book mentioned earlier, I decided I needed some Dead music to listen to.
The two shows I downloaded ended up serving as my exclusive Grateful Dead music for over two years. The multiple CDs I burned for each show never left my car.
Knowing I wanted to relive the days of hearing Europe ’72 with my friend, I selected largely at random the Berkeley Community Theater show of August 21, 1972 and the Gaelic Park show from NY of August 26, 1971.
My reaction to these shows was to be stunned. Perhaps my decade-plus enjoying Americana (Alt-Country) had softened me up, but I was shocked at the breadth of the song selections, the rocking element, the clarity of the soundboards and the fact that the performances did not sound dated in any way.
A relatively obscure (to me) Chuck Berry number Promised Land smokes. The lyrics exalt the trip to California from the American South, and I raced to learn about who was playing that amazing Jerry Lee Lewis-style piano. I learned quickly that Keith Godchaux joined and overlapped with the late Pigpen, who died in late 1973.
Pigpen, I soon figured out, was the guy singing the emotional and earthy blues numbers prevalent on the Gaelic Park CDs. One of my first “revelations” was that Pigpen’s illness/death deprived the Dead of a rougher blues element that would have made them more attractive to me in the 70s as a blues-rock fan.
His Empty Pages on Gaelic Park is stunning, especially the emoting at the ending. The Dead sound like Big Brother and the Holding Company on the tune, it’s completely San Francisco psychedelic blues a la Janis Joplin.
Back to Berkeley, I fell in love with almost every song. He’s Gone tied into the story about Mickey Hart’s father, and the song’s languid and mournful pace made a lot more sense after I knew the story.
Jack Straw sounds almost like a Broadway show tune in its complex multiple parts and lyrical wordiness, and has great playing by Jerry. It also always gets a rise from the crowd with the “we can share the women we can share the wine” line, which gave me a sense of how the lyrics are taken to heart by the fans.
I also got a kick out of the following line that shows a concern for “sharing” one’s own with others when maybe they haven’t shared theirs yet. The cheer after that line indicates that the 60s ethos clearly didn’t wholly eradicate normal human behavior as far as selfishness goes.
Me and My Uncle turns out to be written by John Phillips and is a staple of these shows from that time. The storytelling is fun and fits well with the Dead’s themes of western cowboys, poker games, theft and treachery. Bob Weir seems to enjoy portraying the evil nephew in a way that makes each version a unique performance.
I could go on and on and am just scratching the surface. I can’t think of a better era than 1971-72 for a newbie to digest. The bands’ classics/staples, such as Uncle John’s Band, Sugar Magnolia and Playing in the Band are all there and sound fresh and inspired.
The shows are so long that digesting them can take weeks of casual listening.
Mississippi Half-Step Uptown Toodeloo was a revelation for me in the Berkeley show. The multiple voices repeating the “across the Rio Grand-eo” line are ragged and sometimes off key (Donna Jean) but majestic nonetheless, then Jerry resolves the tension with a great solo dancing simply around the same melody line.
It makes you want to sit around a campfire and sing, regardless of whether you can sing or not. Well, some people. In my car, two of my family members who can sing were sort of appalled at the harmonies. Meanwhile, I had a lump of joy in my throat from the feeling of the entirety.
At that point, I realized that I would be going this path largely alone, and that I was indeed falling into Deadhead-hood. Better late than never.
I also suddenly understood that there were hundreds, maybe thousands of these multi-hour shows over decades. How would I ever penetrate the catalog?
I punted for a while on the project and simply enjoyed MY two shows. These two will always be the standard I use for evaluating new shows I obtain — do they make it into the circle of that Berkeley date and the Gaelic Park show “on the whole”?
A normal person might be satisfied with two great shows from an era. The obsessive in me has very recently gone back to the archives to experience a slew of other shows from that time. It will be some time before I can compare the other shows against the others, but what I am realizing is that I can sit and enjoy 3 hours of any show without getting restless to hear my old standbys.
The sheer volume may in fact be a curse of sorts. We’ll see. But the human desire the find the best show, the best performance of each song, begins to snake around me and interfere with what I have, an embarrassment of riches in terms of free, fantastic quality Grateful Dead.
Time to start thinking about other eras to explore as well.
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