While Built To Last was the Dead’s last studio album, it wasn’t intended to be. In the early ’90s, the band began unveiling new songs, all of which became mainstays in the rotation, until the band ended. Over that time, attempts were made to record these songs for a new album but, by this point, there was no way the Dead were going to be able to focus on something like that. And so it went down, that the Grateful Dead ended their run with a “lost” final album.
There had been several attempts, in the bootleg world, to assemble hypothetical versions of that final album (I have even come up with a couple myself). Finally, in 2019, came this collection. Produced by the band and their master archivist, Dave Lemieux, this is a pretty solid set, and a great postscript to the band’s career.
Missteps are abound but there are only two things wrong with this album:
1) “Samba In The Rain” is the worst song ever. Pretty much every Deadhead will agree with that.
2) there are no Phil songs. He had three new originals (his first in 15 years) and one of them was really good. One of them was decent. And one of them was horrible. The really good one is “Childhood’s End”. That song deserved more attention. The decent one was called “If The Shoe Fits”. It’s a very goofy song but for some reason I have always dug it. Which leaves us with “Wave To The Wind”, one of the most nonsensical and boring songs in the band’s entire catalogue. None of that matters since they are not here (I’m assuming that it has to do with the rift between Phil and the rest of the band…bummer).
What we do have here, however, is a mostly-fantastic collection of late-period Dead songs that are all as vital as anything else they’ve done.
That being said, Bob Weir offers up three songs, all of vastly debatable quality. I have grown to dig (or at least appreciate) them in time but, back then, I hated all of them. Especially “Corinna”, which still kinda sucks, but it always led to some amazing jams onstage. This version is not among the best, at least during the song portion, but it works. “Easy Answers”, we always called “Cheesy Answers”, but it has a cool vibe and it sounds like it was a fun song to play. The best one is “Eternity”(mostly due to the Willie Dixon co-write). One of Weir’s darker and more mysterious songs, and one that usually went to some cool places during the jam.
Vince Welnick delivers two songs, the only originals he brought to the table (both co-written with Robert Hunter). “Way To Go Home” is actually pretty badass. Not fantastic but it was always a fun one, and it’s got that dark & dirty late GD vibe so it’s super cool too. “Samba In The Rain”, however, is just obnoxious and bad. Really bad. It sounds like that one random original song from some poolside band on a low rent cruise ship, and Jerry’s MIDI does it no favors either. Across the board, without a doubt, the worst song ever released under the Grateful Dead name.
Fortunately that song ends and we are treated to one of the greatest songs ever released under the Grateful Dead name: Jerry’s super pensive, super poignant “So Many Roads”. This song has the power to reduce me to tears, and the version played at the band’s last show never fails to do so. The version here is from 1992, when the song was still relatively new. Honestly, not the best version that I’ve heard, but it still put on the waterworks (especially Jerry’s singing in the outro….kills me).
Elsewhere, Jerry gives us the bouncy, catchy “Lazy River Road”, which might have been the single, had they actually made that album. It’s a fun one, for sure, in that “Ramble On Rose” sort of way. The album opens with “Liberty”, a song that almost exclusively resided in the encore slot. Definitely one that would get us headed to the gate early. As an opener, however, this song soars and could also have been a single (perspective is a funny thing).
Closing the album, however, is Jerry’s pièce de résistance: “Days Between”.
This was the final song written by Garcia/Hunter and it really feels like it too, almost like they knew (despite writing it more than two years before the end). This song is basically an ode to life - birth, death, and all the days between those points. This is all set to a very haunting, almost ghostly musical arrangement, and is a song that led to (and, often, out of) some phenomenal jams. One of Garcia’s all time greatest offerings.
Who knows how the final album would have turned out. Maybe more songs would have cycled in by that point, pushing out the bad ones. Surely there would have been a Phil song, at least one of the three (I recall him mentioning a fourth one, called “Red”, but it never appeared). Perhaps they would have hired an outside producer (like Daniel Lanois, Bob Ezrin, or maybe even Rick Rubin) and made a really killer LP.
Then again, just like Europe ‘72, maybe this material was destined to be presented on a live album. Despite being released 25 years too late, this set pulls it off. While I feel they could’ve used a few better performances, this offers a pretty clear snapshot of where the Dead were, creatively, at the end of their run.
No comments:
Post a Comment