Grateful Dead - Earthquake Country (1969)

Following the success of their second album 'Anthem Of The Sun', The Grateful Dead regrouped in 1969 with pianist Tom Constanten and lyricist Robert Hunter as new members, and started work on their next studio album. Recording went well and a number of new songs were laid down, with the 'Earthquake Country' album looking set for imminent release. Just as things seemed to be going so well, Ampex manufactured and released a new 16-track multitrack recording machine, and the Dead were so keen to try it out that they dumped all the songs that they'd already recorded and spent the next eight months experimenting and re-recording all the music again from scratch. Being able to utilize twice as many tracks as they were used to gave the band room to add more and more sounds to their recordings, but this sometimes meant that the music got lost in the dense and cumbersome mix. Luckily the original recordings were not lost completely, and so this is a reconstruction of what the album that eventually became 'Aoxomoxoa' might have sounded like if that Ampex machine had not made an appearance.

Track listing

01 Dark Star
02 Saint Stephen >
03 The Eleven
04 Clementine
05 China Cat Sunflower
06 Mountains Of The Moon
07 The Barbed Wire Whipping Party
08 Doin' That Rag
09 What's Become Of The Baby
10 Cosmic Charlie