![]() ![]() Though the band has an epic narrative (told in Amir Bar-Lev’s rapturous four-hour Long, Strange Trip documentary ), much of the Dead’s story and significance remains purely musical. ![]() ![]() ![]() Performing from 1965 to 1995 with guitarist and songwriter Jerry Garcia, the Dead survive through a vast body of live recordings, originally traded by obsessive fans and now preserved on a long string of official releases. "(They) were one of those outrages, one of those scandals, that create a new life style or a new world view." The sound of the Dead "went down so many microphones and hooked through so many mixers and variable lags and blew up in so many amplifiers and roiled around in so many speakers and fed back down so many microphones, it came on like a chemical refinery.As avatars of San Francisco's ’60s-born counterculture, the Grateful Dead have served as an alternative to American reality for more than a half-century. Witnessing their early incarnation in that counter cultural maelstrom writer Tom Wolfe described the original Acid Tests in all their inspired glory. The Dead honed their act as house band for Ken Kesey’s Merry Pranksters. They incorporated country, folk and blues, recorded with Bob Dylan, Kingfish, Merl Saunders, Wynton and Branford Marsalis. I object to us being labelled purely a psychedelic band." Fair enough. When pushed Garcia said, “Labels are exploitative. The band’s legendary improvisations and the fact they probably played more live shows and for longer than anyone else only add to the enigma. There have been seventy odd retrospective/posthumous live releases since they called it a day at Soldier Field, Chicago (July 9, 1995) – Garcia died exactly a month later – yet their studio albums can be works of wonder, especially those from the early 70s. Given the Dead’s MO, one where live performances were the Holy Grail and studio recordings a means to an end, making sense of their vast catalogue is problematic. ![]()
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