Grateful Dead - Jack Straw From Wichita (1972)

Back in 2015, the ManRoy Music blog published an article about an early 70's "missing" album from the Grateful Dead, which has prompted this post. He wrote:
Whereas the Grateful Dead's previous four albums from 1967 to 1969 were the very definition of psychedelia, in 1970 they released two albums that redefined their musical careers. On 'Workingman's Dead' and 'American Beauty' the band's sound shifted from electric 'space' music to more acoustic textures and songcraft, while the songs themselves reflected an innovative mix of rock with folk, bluegrass and country music. Jerry Garcia has commented that much of the sound of those albums came both from his pairing with lyricist Robert Hunter, as well as the band's friendship with Crosby, Stills and Nash. Garcia said, "Hearing those guys sing and how nice they sounded together, we thought, We can try that. Let's work on it a little". However, after putting out two remarkable records in one year, the Dead didn't release another studio record until 1973's 'Wake Of The Flood', although they were far from dormant during that time span, with 1971/72 being a period of high artistic achievements. They carried on writing, and spent those two years touring extensively, and so many of the songs that were written in that time frame were never recorded in the studio, but instead were released as part of their two live albums, 'Skull & Roses' (officially titled 'Grateful Dead' after Warner Brothers refused to release it with the name the band wanted: 'Skull Fuck') and 'Europe '72'. The new songs featured on these two live albums extended and further explored the world that we were first shown in 'Workingman's Dead' and 'American Beauty'. 

Dead lyricist Robert Hunter has said that he wished that the songs from this period could have gotten the studio treatment as it would have made a great follow up album to the two 1970 releases, and would have been the final record of the 'American Beauty Trilogy'. This hypothetical studio album would include 'Jack Straw', 'Brown Eyed Women', 'He's Gone', 'Ramble On Rose', 'Tennessee Jed',' Mr. Charlie', 'Bertha', 'Wharf Rat', and 'Playing In The Band'. Additionally, this very strong collection of tunes could have been easily supplemented by other new songs that the Dead were regularly playing live but subsequently appeared on the solo records of Jerry Garcia and Bob Weir, in particular, 'Loser' and 'Sugaree' from 'Garcia' and 'Mexicali Blues' from 'Ace' would have worked especially. All of these songs highlight the amazing lyrical talents of Robert Hunter, and the collaboration with Garcia produced a group of amazing songs that told the stories of cowboys, gamblers, outlaws, drifters, and other disreputable characters that took place in an America that seemed to be on the cusp of modernity, but wasn't quite there yet, and wasn't so sure that it wanted to be there either. In fact, the music genre we refer to today as Americana can be traced back to many of these songs, as while being highly evocative of a time and a place, they also exhibit a timelessness that is characteristic of the best of music and art. 

In order to make the album that he wanted to hear, I've selected the most concise versions of the songs, as we don't need 10-minute versions on a "studio" album, and I've removed any crowd noise, but the recordings themselves were so good that I didn't need to do any more work to them. I stuck to the original nine selections, as that resulted in a 52-minute album, which was the perfect length, and so I didn't need to include the tracks from 'Garcia' and 'Ace'. I titled it after the first track, and so was able to use some superb artwork by Luke Martin, which is actually called 'Jack Straw', and was done in the form of a Grateful Dead poster.   

Track listing

01 Jack Straw
02 Brown Eyed Women
03 He's Gone
04 Bertha
05 Mr. Charlie
06 Wharf Rat
07 Ramble On Rose
09 Tennessee Jed
09 Playing In The Band

Grateful Dead - Days Between (1995) **UPGRADE**

While putting together the Dylan And The Dead post, it reminded me of a previous Grateful Dead album that I'd posted, which was the reconstruction of what would have been their final album in 1995. I used live and rehearsal takes of the songs, but at the time I didn't have the MVSEP programme to remove the crowd noise from the recordings, so I listened to it again to see if there was any noticeable noise that needed removing. As it happens, I must have been lucky with the chosen tracks as I couldn't hear any distractions on the songs, but what I did find was that the album seemed to drag on a bit, and on checking I found that the version that I'd posted was an hour and 11 minutes long. As well as that there were a couple of tracks that didn't seem to be up to the quality of the others, and so I wondered if I could trim a few minutes here and there to make it easier to listen to. I had a look online for suggestions or alternate recordings, and found a review of the proposed songs on the ManRoy Music blog, which chimed very much with what I had just heard. He said of the following songs: 
Easy Answers first appeared on the Rob Wasserman record 'Trios' where it featured Wasserman, Weir and Neil Young. The Dead’s version replaces Neil Young’s distorted guitar with Garcia’s auto-wah sound and Vince Welnick’s synth horns. I would have the Dead version more closely follow the Trio’s version with Garcia dialing up his distorted sound and losing the faux horns (and don’t try overdubbing a real horn section either, didn’t you learn anything from 'Terrapin Station').
Wave To The Wind is another Lesh song that features instrumental sections reminiscent of 'Eyes Of The World' but a vocal melody that just seems to meander. This would definitely fall into the filler category of the album.
Samba In The Rain is one of the two Vince Welnick songs in this collection. How do I put this kindly? It sucks. Enough said. (I never included this track anyway).
If The Shoe Fits is the third Phil Lesh song in the group. Lesh was never the most prolific of song writers so it’s ironic that he had three songs in the final years of the Dead. Sadly, none of these song are comparable to 'Unbroken Chain' or 'Box Of Rain'. At best, their quality level is more akin to something like 'Passenger' from the album 'Terrapin Station'. Not necessarily bad but let’s face it, no serious Deadhead thinks of 'Passenger' when discussing their favourite Lesh tune. 

After reading this critique I realised that he was talking about exactly the tracks that I felt let down the album, and so I decided to remove them completely. 'Childhood's End' seemed to me to be the least worst of Phil Lesh's contributions, although the vocals do still detract from it, so I decided to keep that but to re-jig the running order so that the album no longer ends on that track. As most of the remaining songs are fairly lengthy, including the lovely title track which clocks in at nearly eleven minutes, then we are still left with a perfectly acceptable and concise 54-minute record, so see what you think of this drastic revamp of an earlier post.

Track listing

01 Liberty
02 Corinna
03 Lazy River Road
04 Eternity
05 So Many Roads

06 Childhood's End
07 Days Between
08 Way To Go Home

Dylan And The Dead - Dead Man, Dead Man (1987)

Towards the tail end of the 1980's, Bob Dylan was somewhat disillusioned with the direction of his own music, and so began trying to regain it through his fandom for the Grateful Dead. To him, they represented a clear exit door for this growing world of artistic commercialism, which began to subtly taint his work in the latter part of the decade. Both intrigued and fearful of this necessary change, Dylan decided to join the band on tour in 1987 as a third guitarist, before putting his name to an immortal project with the band. That spirit of live show magic that had clearly struck a rod of lightning in Dylan’s career was captured on their 1989 live album 'Dylan & The Dead', which consisted of seven songs written and sung by Dylan, with the Grateful Dead providing accompaniment. Rattling through a string of Dylan hits, the album showcases the unlikely synergy between these two artists, unshackled by the expectations of artistic commercialism, they indulge themselves as they descended into spiralling renditions of 'All Along The Watchtower' and 'Slow Train'. A clear, unspoken agreement existed between both Dylan and The Dead on this record, that ensured the songs they played would be nothing more than loose blueprints for a plan of musical spontaneity. But while the Grateful Dead might have, on paper at least, seemed like a rather bizarre and esoteric choice to return Dylan to a state of glory, there is a transcendental crossover that exists between the two artists that is showcased on the album. It was recorded during a successful stadium tour known as the Bob Dylan and the Grateful Dead 1987 Tour, featuring the two artists performing separately and together, but although it achieved strong initial sales, the album was poorly received by critics, although they did have some kind words for several of the tracks. Despite this, the album initially sold well, reaching No. 37 on the Billboard charts in the U.S., No. 38 in the UK, and earning a Gold certification in the U.S. Prior to embarking on the tour the two artists rehearsed nearly fifty different songs together, mostly Dylan compositions, but also including Buddy Holly's 'Oh Boy', Paul Simon's 'The Boy In The Bubble', and Kris Kristofferson's 'They Killed Him'. I've taken the very best of these recordings and compiled a double-disc set of nineteen of those rehearsals, of which only three eventually appeared on the live album. 

Track listing

Disc I

01 When I Paint My Masterpiece

02 Man Of Peace

03 I'll Be Your Baby Tonight

04 I Want You

05 Dead Man, Dead Man

06 Queen Jane Approximately

07 In The Summertime

08 If Not For You

09 Gotta Serve Somebody

10 Tomorrow Is A Long Time

Disc II

01 John Brown

02 The Wicked Messenger

03 Watching The River Flow

04 They Killed Him

05 All I Really Want To Do

06 John Hardy

07 Pledging My Time

08 The Ballad Of Frankie Lee And Judas Priest

09 It's All Over Now, Baby Blue

Grateful Dead - Terrapin Station (1977)

'Terrapin Station' is the ninth studio album by The Grateful Dead, and was released on 27 July 1977 on the band's new label, Arista Records. When their own record label folded, combined with a change in their management, The Grateful Dead signed with recently founded Arista Records, as label head Clive Davis had been interested in working with them since his time at Columbia Records. A proviso of signing to the label was that they had to agree to work under an outside producer, which was something they had not tried on a studio album since 1968's 'Anthem Of The Sun'. Keith Olsen was chosen to produce, and the band temporarily moved to Los Angeles, as Olsen preferred to work at Sound City, where he had recently achieved success producing Fleetwood Mac's 1975 comeback album. Rhythm guitarist Bob Weir's 'Estimated Prophet' examines a character's delusions of grandeur and California's propensity for false prophets, while 'Dancin' In The Streets' is a cover of Martha & The Vandellas' 'Dancing In The Street' from the early days of the band, given a new arrangement that prominently features singer Donna Godchaux. 'Sunrise' was Donna's first singing-songwriting effort for the Grateful Dead, and has been acknowledged as a tribute to the band's recently deceased road manager, Rex Jackson. Bassist Phil Lesh's 'Passenger' was inspired by Fleetwood Mac's 'Station Man', and Weir's 'Samson & Delilah' was a new arrangement of Reverend Gary Davis's traditional song, retelling the story from the Tanakh. 

Lyricist Robert Hunter wrote the lyrics for the first part of the 'Terrapin' suite in a single sitting, during a rare Bay Area lightning storm, and on the same day, driving across the Richmond–San Rafael Bridge, Jerry Garcia was struck by the idea for a singular melodic line, turning his car around and hurrying home to set it down before it escaped him. When they met the next day, Hunter showed him the words and he said, "I've got the music". They dovetailed perfectly. Once recording was complete, Olsen then added strings, horns and choirs to the tracks at studios in London, unrequested by the band. For 'Estimated Prophet', Donna's vocals were multi-tracked and he had Tom Scott add lyricon and saxophone. In a further quest for commercial potential, he ignored other contributions, secretly erasing Mickey Hart's timbale part entirely, and then hired a string section to fill out that passage instead. Weir also felt that all the orchestration and choral stuff was given too much prominence, and tried to negotiate with Olsen, but he stuck to his guns. Though the heavy sound production was of its time, it was unusual for a Grateful Dead album and a departure from their earlier, edgier psychedelic albums or their more recent Americana or jazz-blues efforts. Garcia said Olsen had "put the Grateful Dead in a dress", and was unhappy with the string sections and choirs on the title suite, complaining "It made me mad. He and Paul Buckmaster had an erroneous rhythmic sense; they changed it from a dotted shuffle to a marching 4/4 time." Reaction to the production from both fans and critics was similar, although the songs themselves received  a more positive response. This version of the album is more what the band actually wanted it to sound like, with the songs stripped of their strings, horns and choir. 

Track listing

01 Estimated Prophet
02 Dancin' In The Streets
03 Passenger
04 Samson & Delilah
05 Sunrise
06 Terrapin Part 1

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

Grateful Dead - Solar Anthem (1968)

It was an interesting project putting together the Dead's 'Earthquake Country' album from the 'Aoxomoxoa' out-takes, and so i thought that I'd attempt a similar thing with their previous album 'Anthem of The Sun'. This was one of their most experimental albums, as the recording process involved the band recording all the songs in the studio, and then Garcia and the band mixing it with parts taken from live recordings that the band taped from concerts in late 1967 and early 1968, as well as slotting in weird electronic tape effects from Tom Constanren, a friend of Phil Lesh, who'd been drafted in to provide piano, treated piano, and John Cage-influenced sounds. For this reconstruction I've found some out-takes which have for years been considered to be the original studio recordings, although some people now believe them to be from a live concert in late 1967. I admit that they do sound live, but if they are then someone's done a great job of editing out every piece of crowd noise from the tapes, but either way they sound great, and include some sublime soloing. I've used the studio version of 'Born Cross-Eyed' from the b-side of the 'Dark Star' single, and as a bonus there's a rare studio version of 'Turn On Your Lovelight' and a take of 'Caution' (Do Not Stop On The Tracks)' from 1966. The cover is an alternate one that housed a remixed version of the album in 1972, and I've renamed it 'Solar Anthem'.

Track listing

01 That's It For The Other One
02 New Potato Caboose
03 Born Cross-Eyed
04 Alligator >
05 Caution (Do Not Stop On Tracks)

Bonus

06 Turn On Your Lovelight
07 Caution (Do Not Stop On The Tracks) 

Grateful Dead - Days Between (1995)

Gerry Garcia of The Grateful Dead died on 9th August 1995, and he was still performing with the band right up to his death. Some of these performances were unreleased songs which could well have been recorded in the studio for another Dead album in 1995. However, it was not to be, and so all we are left with are live versions of the songs, and as Deadheads recorded almost everything they ever played then it has been relatively easy to piece together what the album could have sounded like using these live versions, and where possible some rehearsals from the same year, all edited and faded to sound like the final studio album from a much-loved band.

Track listing

01 Liberty
02 Wave To The Wind
03 Corinna
04 Lazy River Road
05 Eternity
06 So Many Roads
07 Way to Go Home
08 Days Between
09 Easy Answers
10 Childhood's End
11 If The Shoe Fits