Grateful Dead: Grateful Dead (a/k/a "Skullfuck", "Skull & Roses", etc) (1971)

Y’know, when most bands put out a live album it’s usually some kind of stopgap release, to buy time before the next studio set. Sometimes it’s to pay some bills. Sometimes it’s to show how much their songs have grown on stage. And sometimes the live album serves as a summation of a certain era. The Grateful Dead, however, are not like most bands.

While 1969’s Live/Dead focused on presenting a very specific (and meticulously rehearsed) portion of the band’s live shows at the time, this self-titled 1971 release is a perfect snapshot of the freewheeling nature of the band’s shows at that time (it is amazing what a difference two years can make). At this point, they were back down to the original five-piece lineup, and the constant touring made them into a tight, lean rock & roll machine. 

The biggest thing that sets the Dead’s initial live output apart from other bands is that their live albums primarily focus on material that had never appeared on album before (but were staples of their live rotation). The only song on this set to have appeared before was “The Other One”, on 1968’s Anthem Of The Sun, but that version was much shorter, a lot stranger, and was called “Quadlibet For Tenderfeet” anyway. Here, it spans the entirety of side two and kicks off with a five minute drum solo before the band careens off into outer space, only vaguely hinting at the song in its original form. 

Of the rest of the album, three songs are new originals that don’t otherwise appear on a studio Dead album - the rockin’ “Bertha”, the epic “Wharf Rat”, and a relatively embryonic version of Weir’s classic, “Playin’ In The Band”, which would soon grow into one of their most inspired live numbers. Here, it is just presented as a kickass rock tune. 

The rest of the songs on the album are covers, but ones that are so entwined into the Dead’s history that they might as well be originals. Some of them, such as “Big Boss Man” and “Me And My Uncle”, are ones they had been playing since the very beginning. Others, like “Mama Tried”, “Big Railroad Blues”, and the pairing of “Not Fade Away” and “Going Down The Road Feeling Bad”, were just starting to make themselves known in the band’s rotation, where they would forever remain. We are also treated to a fiery rendition of “Johnny B. Goode” and a version of “Me And Bobby McGee”, sung by Weir, that was one of two songs that the band would adopt, in tribute to Janis (the other being Jerry’s “Bird Song”, debuted later that year). 

Originally titled Skullfuck (and colloquially known as Skull & Roses), this album is a pristine example of a veteran road band who knew exactly what they were doing. This can be seen in the photo, from the gatefold, one of my favorite band photos ever. Five hardworking dudes who, for the past six years, had been to the edge of the cosmos and back, seen and done it all, and kept on chugging like a train. This would all soon change, and then ascend even further. For now, we rock.