Review: Grateful Dead & Garcia Self Titled

Grateful Dead – Grateful Dead (Warner Brothers WS 1935)
Jerry Garcia – Garcia (Warner Brothers BS 2582)

The Grateful Dead are always changing. With every album they seem to have changed. Not by a large margin, but rather just enough so as not to stagnate in one particular musical field.

The newest Dead effort, a double-live set, is a frozen portrait of the Grateful Dead’s music as performed in three separate gigs this past summer. The cuts were culled from performances at the Fillmore East, Winterland, and the Manhattan Center. That frozen piece of live Dead shows the group in top boogie shape.

Lead guitarist-vocalist Jerry Garcia, most aptly described it in the Rolling Stone interview, “It’s us, man…The new album is enough of an overview so that people can see that we’re like a regular shoot-em-up saloon band. That’s more what we are like. The tracks all illustrate that nicely. They’re hot.”

A shoot-em-up band indeed. Juxtapose this album with their earlier Live Dead and you have two different bands. Although the Grateful Dead have not really made any great leaps into a new brand of music, it seems that in the course of three albums, they have changed from a mind-blowing jamming band, to a rocking boogie band.

The Dead are ever-improving as separate musicians, they have adopted a tight, well-rehearsed set, and seem to have abandoned the old format of playing an all-night long gig comprising of thee or four songs. Side Two is the exception, however, with “The Other One,” an eighteen minute improvisation that is an excellent sampler of the older Live Deadmaterial. This actually makes it quite convenient for the listener. Sides one, three, and four for contemporary Dead. Side Two for contemporary Dead doing vintage Dead. It may sound strange in print, but to shorten the explanation, Grateful Dead is almost a mandatory purchase for the afficiando as well as those who know the Grateful Dead only as “the-guys-that-did-Truckin’.”

Now Garcia is a different story. Right off, Dead freaks will love Jerry Garcia’s new solo album. The more naive will most probably not be so fortunate on being able to appreciate it. Why? It seems Garcia will never be predictable in what he does musically. Side one is typical Grateful Dead material in the Workingman’s Dead-American Beauty vein. The flip side is space music of the 2001 vein. It’s so odd that it comes off.

About the first side. “Deal” is happily one of the most accessible pieces of country-rock-folk to have been released in a while. The instrumentation, done completely by Jerry Garcia with the help of Dead drummer, Billy Kreutzmann, is truly exhilarating. With Garcia’s knowledge of steel guitar, banjo, and lead and rhythm guitar, the arrangements are consistently full of chugging, gurgling, and bouncing riffs. “Bird Song”, “Sugaree”, and “Loser” follow the same pattern of excellence. Yes, there are the musical moments Dead freaks thrive on, and after the blockbuster first side, the second side could be blank and not detract from the conclusion on the album’s high quality.

It’s hard to believe what Garcia himself said of the album, “It’ll just be me goofing around”.

Side two opens with “Late for Supper” a collection of noises played at different speeds with moans, sighs, and television programs drifting in and out. In fact the whole second side pretty much follows that same formula, with yet another exception. “To Lay Me Down” is a nice, good-old-fashioned song.

When most people think of space music, they think of the boring brand of music that you hear on the Tang commercials while the man talks about spacemen guzzling the drink in outer space. Side two is definitely not boring, the only true disappointment with it is that you can’t easily dance to it.

The Grateful Dead are rock n’ rollers at heart, with a taste for the bizarre. Listen to Grateful Dead for their rock n’ roll side, and Garcia for that taste for the bizarre.

Courtesy of the Door (aka San Diego Door) – Cameron Crowe –  February 10, 1972 – February 24, 1972