Tuesday, May 11, 2021

More Of The Same, But Different Dept. - Th' Dead

Whut we gots here is a swell unofficial repackaging of all the bonus tracks from The Golden Road and Beyond Description box sets, compiled into studio & live sets. The way it should have been done. Bonus tracks are, of course, a marketing scam to get us to repurchase what we already have - like remastering - and I can't think of a Dead album qualitatively improved by them. Or any album, actually - they mostly foul up the original. Pet Sounds with Trombone Dixie tagged on at the end? Fuck off!

Remember that monster container ship that blocked the Suez canal a while back? This is what it was carrying. Two shitloads of quality merchandise. Even the covers [shewn at left - Ed.] are swell, unlike the drooling Crayola rehab art on Dave's Picks.

These guys were just so damn good!

This post made possible thru a grant from the Lupine Assassin Bunny Wabbit Refuge & Lucky Charm Warehouse.

25 comments:

  1. Talk among yerselfs. I have to go through my yearly immigration nonsense today. You'd think after eleven years they'd know who I am, but it's back to ground zero every year, like I just got off the boat.

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  2. Strangers in a strange land.

    Aren't we all, almost everywhere.

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    1. Yup. We're all tourists. Or should think of ourselves as such. Passing through.

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  3. Keeping Shakedown Street real baby.

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  4. This comment has been removed by the author.

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    1. Once again FGW self-censors a fine, funny, and inoffensive comment. (I still have it, if you want me to re-post).

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  5. Coincidentally, the Dead have a tea (no, not that kind) collection called Grateful Tea, from Love Some Tea. The tea is hand-picked by farmers from the Karen and Lahu Hill Tribes in the mountains of northern Thailand, the tea is free from fertilizer, herbicide and chemicals, and shipped in sustainable packaging with recycled paper and environmentally-friendly ink.

    https://www.app.com/story/life/2021/02/23/grateful-dead-tea-available-supporting-hill-tribe-farmers-thailand/6744013002/

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    1. And, the music starts after your first sip!
      Is Tie-Dye a flavor? Dancing Bears? Orange Pekoe Sunshine...

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    2. Tie-Dye could be a flavor with a head full of Ibogaine or DPT.

      Orange Pekoe Sunshine, now that has texture and scope. Bravo Sir, bravo!

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    3. I've got a few of these somewhere. Jerry Garcia Ties & Grateful Dead Designer Ties. I don't wear ties though. And really bizarre merchandising.

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  6. Bureaucracy is,
    was, and
    always will be your friend.
    Good luck. As if your birthday isn't enough...
    another 365 days have passed you by.
    They just want to be sure your not using the temple as a tax dodge!

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    1. Bureaucracy will probably be the future employment for too many people soon.
      Anyway Farq, tell them to "get off my island!"

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  7. Dear Subscriber

    Here are your tunes!

    Please remember to tell all your friend about this swell new music-adjacent initiative!




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    1. ... and that can be the problem. I stick with the studio albums (each and every one of them fine, fine pieces of work in their own diverse ways) with occasional forays into the "live" recordings. I put quotes around the "live" because live recordings are obviously not recreating the live experience, just one aspect of it, and to think of them in any way as more real and true is to get lost in memory, possibly someone else's. There is nothing artificial (in the sense of less real) about making records in a studio, nothing fake about any part of the production process that creates the art in your mind. It's all magic. Listening is not in the past.

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    2. I thought ALL music was recorded live.

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  8. I'm a limey, well-experienced in bouncing between my synapses on Delia Psychic enhancements. Us Euros mostly find The Dead a mediocre blue grass bar band with some one-key noodling. If you want your music mind-expanding and excitingly unhinged, what you need is Gong and Hawkwind's 1970s opuses, then explore ad-lib. I will try the GD here AGAIN, but given even "Live Dead" and "Anthem of the Sun" are a bit "Is that it?" (yes, I did on LDS, fans of Owsley), fear this will be the mistake of hope over experience.

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    1. "Mediocre blue grass bar band with some one-key noodling"?

      We "need" Gong and Hawkwind?

      Must be all that LDS you took.

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  9. Where do I start with the Dead. I bought the solo stuff Ace and Garcia in 1972 but didn't dig the whole live experience till much later. They only played Scotland once in Edinburgh Playhouse 1981 but by that time I was in thrall to Talking Heads and Gang of Four. I left mid set to watch a European football game on TV in a nearby pub. Over 30 years later I saw Ratdog at an outdoor show in Canterbury and was blown away. So many great new songs I'd never heard and positive energy. Been catching up ever since.

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    1. Most peoples' gateway Dead is American Beauty and Workingman's. But I'd recommend a movie - Long Strange Trip - The Untold Story Of The Grateful Dead. It's "free" if you're paying fealty to Jeff Bezos, Absolutely Free from the Pirate Bay (this age's equivalent to the Library of Alexandria, and the most important cultural resource on the planet). It gives you a real insight into the whos, hows and the whys, and the sheer fun they had and shared around ("If it wasn't fun, we didn't do it"). Among its many revelations is how superbly well they harmonised live in the studio (no trickery).

      If you come to the Dead to check your own expectation boxes, you're going to come up short. Forever and always none of the above.

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    2. I was at the Ratdog gig in Canterbury, what a lovely little festival that was. I agree with Shug, Ratdog were great, I've given up trying to enjoy The Greatful Dead, it just doesn't work on me.

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  10. Here's the Dead movie. Big file - be patient - it's worth it! And don't tell Jeff ...

    https://ufile.io/yvzvouw7

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  11. As a Bay Area kid in high school 30 miles due east of the intersection of Haight & Ashbury during the years 1970-1974, you'd think I would have seen them...at least ONCE. Nope. I did see Garcia play ONCE, at a free concert at the Cow Palace. No...I was all Mott the Hoople (not a ticket to popularity in Concord, CA in 1972...)

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    1. I saw Mott live around the time of their first album. They were great, but I didn't stick with them. Maybe I ought to go back and pick up where I left off.

      Gigs! Big gig feature coming up tomorrow. Save your memories for then (if you still have 'em!)

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