![]() Garcia’s on the run, both from the law and female problems, but he doesn’t sound particularly blue he seems to accept his Karma, and is just hoping to get some sleep. Garcia’s vocals are also excellent on the sweet and perky “Friend of the Devil,” on which Grisman’s mandolin and lots of great acoustic guitar work provide just the right coloration for Garcia’s lament that the devil took his 20-dollar bill and vanished into the ether. ![]() More importantly, on American Beauty the band discovered lush harmonies, and in so doing one-upped the overrated CSN&Y just listen to the bouncy opener, “Box of Rain,” on which Nelson contributes guitar, Dead songwriter Robert Hunter contributes some mystical hoodoo in the guise of lyrics, and the group vocals are sweet as tupelo honey. Garcia wrote the better part of the songs, and on the LP his vocals, never his strong suit, are uniformly excellent. ![]() On American Beauty, the Dead had the assistance of some of their friends, chiefly guitarist David Nelson, mandolin savant David Grisman, and keyboardist Howard Wales. From opener “Box of Rain” to the lovely “Ripple,” Jerry Garcia and Company sing and play their way down the Golden Road of Everlasting Devotion, and even the diabolical “Friend of the Devil” and paranoid “Truckin’” are more friendly nods of the hat than Workingman’s Dead’s dark forebodings in the form of such songs as “Dire Wolf” and the Altamont-inspired “New Freeway Boogie.” As for American Beauty, it was prettier than Workingman’s Dead-a folk-rock LP that eschewed the doom-laden songs on its predecessor for songs that were, for lack of a better phrase, sunnier and more pastoral. On both LPs the Dead abandoned their free-form extended jams (1969’s Live/Dead had two sides with one song on them, and one side with two songs on it) for real songs, and on both they proved that they had plenty of great four-minute songs in them. My personal favorite is 1970’s Workingman’s Dead, but that same year’s American Beauty is a close second. As for the Dead, I think they did their best work between 19, when they released the lackluster Wake of the Flood, which a true fan, Robert Christgau, described as “capturing that ruminative, seemingly aimless part of the concert when the boogiers nod out.” As for when their live concerts finally settled into equal parts boredom and cult worship, I have no opinion, although I will say that the three shows I saw in the eighties were perfunctory and the Dead appeared to wish they were somewhere else.Īh, but at their best they were sublime. They see no difference between 1970’s brilliant American Beauty and 1978’s execrable Shakedown Street, and lack the discernment to recognize that the light of creative genius that illuminated the Grateful Dead at the dawn of the seventies had long since flickered out by the time Jerry Garcia passed away in 1995.ĭrug burn-out was the culprit, that and the natural order of the rock creativity virtually no one continues to make great album after great album-shit, by my accounting, even Bob Dylan did his best work between 19, and that’s if you count The Basement Tapes, which weren’t released until years later. The chief problem with Deadheads has always been their lack of quality control. One to score the acid, and the other six hundred to stare slackjawed at the dead bulb and say, “Looks lit to me, man.” I know, it’s a shitty joke, but there’s some truth in it. How many Deadheads does it take to change a light bulb? Six hundred and one. Remembering Robert Hunter, born on this day in 1941.
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