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.

Grateful Dead: Vintage Dead (rec. 1966)

 Taking a break from the regular albums with this set that I finally snagged, after looking at it for years. All of the material on this is also on The History Of The Grateful Dead, which I have, but this is the cooler set, I think. Short, sweet, and to the point. Recorded at the Avalon, in September 1966, this features an energetic, young Dead, and some blistering guitar work from Jerry. There is some killer Pigpen here, with “Hurts Me Too” and “In The Midnight Hour”, both of which show that he could work a room from the very beginning. 

Within months of this performance, they would release their debut album and begin the first of many great transformations. This set offers a perfect little window into those frenetic early days.

Grateful Dead: American Beauty (1970)

 One of the greatest examples of a band immediately building on momentum, the Dead’s fifth studio album came only four and a half months after the already-iconic Workingman’s Dead. This wasn’t simply next-level - this went through the fucking roof, and kept on going. 

As with its predecessor, this is an album that zeroes in on the song, and it features the band mostly in an acoustic-driven setting, with very little of the jams for which they are known. Also, as before, they were working with a batch of songs that not only were the best they had to offer, but some of the best that have ever been written, period. 

For the first time, the Dead boasted four lead singers on an album, as Phil Lesh chose this time to bless the world with “Box Of Rain”, perhaps the Dead’s greatest song. Bob Weir brings the classic “Sugar Magnolia”, and Pigpen offers his first original song (the upbeat, criminally under-performed “Operator”).  The Garcia/Hunter partnership delivered yet another crop of classics, including “Friend Of The Devil”, “Ripple”, “Candyman”, and “Brokedown Palace”, each drawn from a different facet of the American folk tradition. 

One of the major focal points of these two albums were the vocals, specifically the harmonies. They worked closely with Crosby Stills & Nash, who taught them vocal arrangements and how to layer harmonies. This new skill was played to great effect on the slow, pensive “Attics Of My Life” as well as the rockin’ “Til The Morning Comes” (sadly, performed only five times ever). 

Everyone throws their hats in the ring on the album-closing, autobiographical “Truckin’”, which not only went on to become one of the songs most identified with the band (and one whose lyric appears in more yearbook quotes than any other) but a song that was recognized by the Library of Congress as a national treasure. And for damn good reason. If ya know, ya know, y’know?

There are a lot of pinnacle albums by iconic artists that are perhaps a bit overrated, for one reason or another. This is not one of them. American Beauty is just that. It is a treasure.

Edit (12 hours later):

As I spun this album last night, it occurred to me that my copy is far too beat up for such an important album in my collection, so I nipped over to Target and snagged this exclusive edition just now. Aside from feeling a bit gross about buying a Dead album at Target, this is a beautiful pressing and it sounds phenomenal. 

Grateful Dead: Workingman's Dead (1970)

 

While the Dead was letting Live/Dead define the era (and pay the bills) the band had already moved on, capitalizing on the newly flourishing writing partnership between Jerry Garcia and Robert Hunter. While that team was responsible for all of Aoxomoxoa, that album was something very different. Workingman’s Dead was the point where that duo stopped simply emulating the folk tradition and started contributing to it. This first album of 1970 features a laid-back, acoustic-based Dead, one that believed in serving the song, over musical chops and trippy ideas. 

This time, it was all about the songs. The ones offered on this album were songs that, with few exceptions, stayed with the band for the rest of its days. “Uncle John’s Band”, which opens the album, is one of the band’s most iconic songs and the closer, “Casey Jones” was another of the band’s all-time classics (despite being played only 21 times in the back half of their career). Between those bookends we have cosmic folk (“High Time” and the brilliant “Dire Wolf”, featuring Jerry flexing his pedal steel skills), death ballads (“Black Peter”), grimy rock & roll (“New Speedway Boogie”), revved-up bluegrass (“Cumberland Blues”), and some dirty blues (“Easy Wind”, written by Hunter and sung brilliantly by Pigpen). 

This was a completely new Grateful Dead and I can only imagine what it was like for a fan to hear this for the first time. On this album, the band wasn’t trying to emulate or replicate their live experience but instead they were totally focused on the song itself, as an art form. Cleverness was replaced with depth, experimental bits were traded for concise, coherent thoughts, and sonic density gave way to spacial balance. It helped that they had such a brilliant batch of songs at their disposal. 

They would take this idea to the next level, only four and half months later, cementing their place in history with the classic, American Beauty….

Grateful Dead: Live/Dead (1969)

By the time sessions for Aoxomoxoa wrapped up, the Dead’s relationship with their label was strained, at best. They were half a million in the hole and really didn’t give a fuck.  So the obvious choice was to make a live album. The stage was their natural playground, and they recorded every show anyway, so it could be produced for next to nothing. They could pay back maybe part of what they owed. So they drew from a run at the Fillmore, 2/27-3/2/69, and assembled a set that was as close an approximation to the live experience as you’d get (on any given night), and an album that became a cultural icon. 

The only song on this set to appear on a prior album is “St. Stephen”, which is delivered here in its definitive arrangement, leading into the wiry, frantic “The Eleven” (via the “William Tell Bridge”). “Dark Star”, previously a brief single, is presented here in all its glory, stretched out to take up the entire first side of vinyl. For the uninitiated, this is a most audacious introduction. For those who “get it”, it is no less impressive. 

Pigpen shines on “Lovelight”, fronting the band and doing what he did best, for all of side three. The Dead back him up and get down and dirty, like a lysergic soul revue, while the last side of vinyl is taken up by the dark and spaced-out “Death Don’t Have No Mercy”, which leads into a cacophony of feedback and an a cappella gospel lullaby to the end the program, with pretty much all of the bases covered. 

By the time this came out, the Dead had already moved into the acoustic-based Americana realm, where they would have great success, leaving Live/Dead as an exclamation point to their first three years, and a pristine example of just another night at the Fillmore West.

Grateful Dead: Aoxomoxoa (1969)

Anytime someone tries to slag off the Dead’s studio albums, my mind immediately goes to this haunting work of art. Rather than trying to replicate their live sound they instead used the studio as a creative tool, and came out with a set that carries all of the vibe of a live performance, filtered through a cloud of baroque whimsy (and a lot of nitrous, so they say), resulting in perhaps the most unique offering in the band’s vast catalogue. 

Three versions of this album exist. The first, which never officially came out, was recorded on 8-track and was more of a dry run than anything. Stifled by the limitations of 8-track recording, they moved to a 16-track studio where they re-recorded the album, and used all those extra tracks to insert all sorts of weird, and they came out with a work that stands completely apart from anything else they ever did. 

This version is the 1971 remix, which features a more expansive stereo range, with the weird tamped down a bit. While the 1969 mix is the cooler of the two, I kinda prefer this mix. It’s larger than life. It stares you in the face and it consumes you, while the original version hits you from deep within (kinda like the dichotomy between the two mixes of VU’s third album - both are valid, and totally vital, but the “closet mix” is where it’s at). 

So much of this material is of its time and place that it’s no surprise that only a few songs from this album really went the distance. “St. Stephen” and “Cosmic Charlie” had a couple of brief revivals later on, and “Dupree’s Diamond Blues” always kinda hung there in the once-a-tour bag, but “China Cat Sunflower” went on to become one of the band’s most-performed songs, never leaving rotation, always exciting and inspired. 

This album cost a fortune to make, and pushed the patience of their label to its absolute limit (it was worth it). They made up for it with Live/Dead….

Grateful Dead: Grateful Dead (1967)

 

Slapped on a new stylus and I can’t think of a better way to kick it off than with this kickass debut. This was the first Dead album that I really latched onto and it really dug its claws into me. My college band played pretty much this whole album and i still find it incredibly inspiring. By the time this album came out, however, they had already moved on and were exploring the long-form suites that would make up their next album, Anthem Of The Sun (which is also incredible).

About half of this album would remain a part of the band’s repertoire until the end, while the album’s two fully original songs - “The Golden Road” and “Cream Puff War” would never be played again. The ones that remained included “Cold Rain And Snow”, “Beat It On Down The Line”, and the epic “Morning Dew”, which was one of the band’s most enduring jam vehicles.

The thing I love the most about this album is how fast everything is played. Legend has it they were totally zipped up on diet pills the whole time which gave the album a far punkier sound than what would follow. This is the sound of an excited young band with big plans and is a perfect culmination of their first two years as an electric unit.

While they may have made albums that were more sophisticated, albums that were more popular, and albums that stand among the most significant American artistic works, the Dead never made an album better than this fiery debut.