Live/Dead - Grateful Dead (1969)
a selection of live albums I love
You can’t do a focus on rock live albums without including the Grateful Dead.
They’d already released several studio records to critical acclaim but not much in actual sales. The band’s magic was in their ability to create live in the room, pushing each other into new territory every night. They’d been doing it for a couple of years by early 1969, and were already legendary in their small circle of California psych rock. So they decided to record that live show.
This was recorded with a cutting-edge 16-track recorder at two of their regular Bay Area venues in late February and early March of 1969. The band rightly understood that they had to present their music in enough detail that you could appreciate what they were doing, so they would forever be on the cutting edge of recording and concert technology.
The band’s set was pretty much the same every night, but each night would let them explore new territory inside the bounds of those loose jams. Twenty-three minutes of Dark Star is not for everybody, but if you’re willing to put in the attention you can hear the band learning from and conversing with each other.
Tracks like St. Stephen show off the band’s psych pop songcraft, while the Rev. Gary Davis’s Death Don’t Have No Mercy and the raise-the-roof jam on Bobby Bland’s Turn On Your Love Light showcase their love of all corners of the American musical tradition.
There are dozens of great live recordings of great performances from the 70s, 80s, and 90s, but this is a fascinating document of the beginning of something amazing.
If you’re interested in reading about The Dead, I highly recommend bassist Phil Lesh’s 2005 autobiography.
