ALBUM REVIEW: Grateful Dead - Live / Dead

    It's amazing that it took nearly four years before any sort of live Grateful Dead release—as early as 1967, it was blatantly obvious that the stage was the place where the Grateful Dead were meant to be captured. Songs would be expanded and drawn out into the double-digit minute runtime, vocals would vamp and ramble, organs and guitars would take on a new life of their own, unbound by the very amps that released their notes. By the end of the 60s, the Dead had effectively shown their faces across venues of all sizes, from the Avalon Ballroom to the Winterland Arena to the primary focus of today's album, the Fillmore West. Throughout February 27 to March 2 of 1969, the Grateful Dead played a miraculous series of shows at the historic venue, playing a series of mind-expanding sets and jams. The ensuing results were all captured on sixteen-track tape, paired with some previous material played at the Avalon, and packaged up for a November 1969 release. Live / Dead may not be the greatest encapsulation of the Grateful Dead in a live setting, but there are seldom few live albums that can match the enthusiasm, spontaneity, and craftsmanship of a fantastic performance quite like Live / Dead has. The snapshots we have throughout this album showcases the Dead at the pinnacle of their game, so completely in sync with one another and so musically adventurous and exploratory that it comes together to form a whole that is undoubtedly greater than the sum; X-factor, if you will. It leaves nary a doubt—the Grateful Dead may very well be the greatest live act to ever step foot on a stage.

    The first time I ever realized the true excellence of the Grateful Dead was when I heard the album's opening track as a young and slightly stupid teenager in high school—it was then when I was first introduced to the awe-inspiring cosmic journey that was this album's recording of "Dark Star". Standing at 23 minutes in length, rising into supernovas of guitar expression before free-floating into soft, tentative verses sung by Jerry Garcia, all before careening back up into a combustion of spontaneous guitar and organ and percussion. Throughout the entirety of the Grateful Dead's history, "Dark Star" (or simply "IT") has been the group's most transcendent expression of pure musicality, so much so that even the first four notes of the song were enough to elicit pure excitement from the audience. It may not be the greatest "Dark Star", and it may not be the longest "Dark Star", but it's hard to argue that it isn't the most iconic. As if that wasn't enough of a treat, the group cleanly moves through their show-stopping run of four songs from their early prime; "Dark Star" straight into Aoxomoxoa's "St. Stephen" straight into the never in-studio song "The Eleven", which then eventually ran into a Pigpen sung version of Bobby Bland's "Turn On Your Love Light". On original vinyl copies of this album, this majestic run of four songs alone had to sprawl across three sides. It doesn't even matter that "The Eleven" and "Love Light" are taken from a January show at the Avalon—this run of four, particularly the odd meter of "The Eleven" and the exciting blues vocal vamping of "Turn On Your Love Light", contain some of the greatest rock jams ever put to any record press. Each element of the group is beautifully sold on these recordings, from Phil Lesh's melodic and sometimes contrapuntal bass playing to Garcia's free-flying guitar to Ron McKernan's unmistakable role as grizzled bluesman of the group to the brilliant synchronicity of drummers Mickey Hart and Bill Kreutzmann. Every piece molds together into a glorious sum.

    This continuing excellent presses on throughout the final side of the album, undoubtedly its most experimental and unconventional. Only one real song takes up the last half, a rendition of Gary Davis' "Death Don't Have No Mercy". Compared to the album's lively, sometimes rigorous performances prior, "Death Don't Have No Mercy" is underpinned by an unwavering melancholy and unsettling nature. This emotion is almost certainly emphasized by Jerry Garcia's mysterious, almost mournful vocal performance, which only seems to grow in emotion as the song nears it's electric climax, making its way into the pure, unstructured sonic experiment that is "Feedback". This isn't exactly a song, per se, as much as it is a pure outlet of noise and sounds and ideas from the band's amps. In some ways, however, Garcia's guitar takes on an even greater life with "Feedback"—it doesn't sing so much as it does cry and wail, howling out in spontaneous notes and atonal hums before calming back down towards the end, cooing out more discernible notes and half-melodies. All of this leads into the group's final send-off for the show and the listener, a rendition of the traditional "And We Bid You Goodnight", done in pure a capella by Bob Weir, Jerry Garcia, Phil Lesh as the album winds back down from chaos; "and I bid you goodnight, goodnight, goodnight" the final sung words as the album ends, the needle reaching dead wax. An awe-inspiring show, and you didn't even need a ticket to get into the venue.

    To think that this was only a portion of the shows they played. Since 1969, the entirety of the group's monumental stay at the Fillmore West has since been released in a spectacular 10-disc set. For those who are not die-hard Deadheads like the fellow writing this review, I think that Live / Dead is more than filling, provided the extraordinary performances you hear don't also get you to hop on the bus. 75 minutes is all it takes to show what there is to "get" about the Dead, and it does it all while cementing some of the group's most essential, must-hear songs. A 16-year old Lambda was impressed with Live / Dead when he first heard it; that same Lambda is now completely infatuated with it, and many more recordings like it. For those who are unfamiliar with the Grateful Dead, listen to Live / Dead; for those who compare shows and tapes to find their favorite versions of "Playin' In the Band" or "Scarlet Begonias / Fire on the Mountain", listen to Live / Dead; for those who think they don't get the Dead, listen to Live / Dead. There is nothing more to say.

RATING: ✯✯✯✯✯✯✯✯✯✯

Listen to Live / Dead.