I've always liked Touch of Grey.

There's a radio version that skips the solo. WTF?

Best part of the song.

Musicianship, American Beauty, Workingman's Dead, the "Blues for Allah" suite, Garcia's bluegrass roots, having Mingus and Coltraine as influences, having a keyboard player named "pigpen", fucking with Warner Brothers while recording "Anthem of the Sun", Dick's Picks, cheap drugs at their shows, allowing fans to tape and distribute their live catalog, not crap.

Smelly deadhead ex-girlfriend that gave me Chlamydia, most of the rest of the catalog, patchouli, causing the jam band phenominon to happen, crap

On the balance, not crap

Brett Eugene Ralph wrote:I have casually considered, any number of times, picking up American Beauty and/or Workingman's Dead, the two "rootsy" Dead records that so many Deadheads (and others) are certain I will enjoy. Up to this point, though, I haven't been able to bring myself to do it. Let me know what you think.

I will.

I am pretty sure I'll think they're half-assed and about half as good as a bad Bob Dylan album. But we'll see.

I really gave this band a shot since I have come around on a fair amount of shit I found repulsive in high school.

American Beauty has some decent songs. Like almost half. Workingman's Dead has a little less. Jerry Garcia was an excellent guitar player. That stage setup with all the speakers is hilarious in a good way.

Everything else is crap. The "psychedelic" music is a total failure, perhaps the worst of anything that could possibly be classified as psychedelic. It's interesting how an extremely popular band with two drummers managed to get two completely shitty ones.

The fact that there's an archive of their existence at a major university is mind boggling to me.

vockins wrote: The "psychedelic" music is a total failure, perhaps the worst of anything that could possibly be classified as psychedelic. It's interesting how an extremely popular band with two drummers managed to get two completely shitty ones.

The fact that there's an archive of their existence at a major university is mind boggling to me.

yeah, imho there's NOTHING remotely psychedelic about their music. it's jammy americana. some tracks that aren't jammy are OK. "shakedown street" i recall liking a little.

i don't really "get" the archive thing either, i mean, why a university would want it, though apparently there is a lot of research done about them.

stanford, historically speaking a more proper venue for this, wasn't really interested.

Not crap on their individual musicianship and theoretical talent, but when considered as it were: Crap.

In 1978, the Grateful Dead played a series of shows in Giza, Egypt, at the site of the Giza pyramid complex, which includes the pyramids of Khufu (aka "The Great Pyramid"), Khafre, and Menkaure, as well as the Sphinx.




http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8iNUsrWtVFs

In my considered opinion, this is roughly 1,000,000 times more bad-ass than anything you or your band has ever done.

Horuss wrote:In my considered opinion, this is roughly 1,000,000 times more bad-ass than anything you or your band has ever done.

Great to have you back, sir!

You are a fine, fine man.

The Crapful Crap.

tmidgett wrote:So I bought Wake of the Flood and Workingman's Dead, which I haven't heard since I was sixteen.

Will get to them at some point. I'd actually kind of like to like them, at this point in my life.

Just please take my advice, and never ever, for the love of "BOB", attempt listening to "Let Me Sing Your Blues Away" off of 'Wake of the Flood'...

Seriously - best just to move along and pretend it doesn't exist.