I recently found a copy of the Afghan Whigs tribute album released by Summers Kiss Records. It wasn’t a great listen if only because the Afghan Whigs were such a great band that their intensity could not be readily matched by other musicians. Nor could the subversiveness of their music be recreated by others. And listening to someone else sing a Greg Dulli song just feels wrong.
But on the last track something happened. I heard a song, I’d never noticed before called Miles Iz Dead performed by a group called Zykos which was included on the Congregation album. The music is Placebo-ish. The singer keeps singing “Don’t forget the alcohol” and it sounds nothing like I sound when I remind my girlfriend of the same. Instead it’s sinister and maybe even frightening but it’s also compelling as fuck. It’s one of those covers where the covering band dug up something within the song that the original may have hidden or even lacked which is exactly what a good cover version should do.
6/7/1969 is the third show in the run and is a bit of a mystery as the Dead only performed one set worth of material while the other shows in the run found them playing two sets, thus it is unclear whether a set is missing from 6/7/1969. How insane is that?
6/7/1969 notes
The dead opened the show acoustically performing a brisk Dire Wolf flowing into Dupree’s Diamond Blues and Mountains of the Moon, which were both classics of the Dead’s staple. Though the Dead did not have a ton of songs in their repertoire in 1969, their ability to interchange many of the songs from electric to acoustic hinted at their versatility.
The Dead transitioned into Dark Star with their electric instruments and though plugged in they lack the fire of the DS to night’s prior which could be due to the band recovering from the epic dosing which had likely occurred the night before. DS becomes Saint Stephen and The Eleven and at first the boys still lack that spark that gets you all excited and causes you to forget that they’re playing songs you’ve heard over and over again, but then somewhere in the Eleven they manage to pull it together.
Sittin’ On Top Of The World swoops into Cold Rain and Snow, a song not played as much as one would hope,. This Cold Rain and Snow is much quicker than the one the Dead would come to play in the future. From there, the band slides into Doin’ That Rag which was delivered with much of the good humor the song relies on in both the playing and the singing and the band jammed with force to the song’s conclusion before giving way to Weir’s Me and My Uncle with great fluid guitar lines provided by Garcia.
Turn On Your Lovelight, the song that closed many a Grateful Dead show of the era, and every night of the June Fillmore run weighed it at 21 minutes which was 26 minutes shorter than the previous night’s Lovelight and this one featured a special treat in Janis Joplin whose vocals can first be heard 4 minutes and 20 seconds in. Joplin excites not just the crowd but Pigpen who start howling behind her. Joplin and Pigpen trade off the improv rap portion and both singers sound increasingly older than their ages which were both in the 20′s at the time of the show.
The lack of energy of this show as compared to others from around this time leads me to believe that 6/6/1969 may have indeed been the night a few members of the Dead were dosed. Of course, sometimes a recording doesn’t connect a listener with the experience of an audience member present but the band seemed to peak in The Eleven with nothing coming close to rival except for perhaps when Joplin took the stage. A weird Saturday night gig all in all.
The Antlers – Hospice – From French Kiss Records. Songs begin quietly with nice buildups and intensity threaded in. Not bad but I can’t imagine when I would ever listen to this again.
John Fogerty – The Blue Ridge Rangers Rides Again – A real enjoyable country album from the dude from the guy who gave us the Bayou swamp. Fiddles, peddle steels, the Eagles and Springsteen – what more could you want? All kidding aside, Fogerty is pretty underrated as a songwriter and artist between CCR and aspects of his solo career. The dude can write a song with the best of them (and play them). I’d venture that he’s in the top ten best living songwriters. But ironically this album is mostly covers including songs by John Prine, Delaney & Bonnie, Buck Owens, John Denver and one by the Everly Bros which Springsteen is on.
Sharon Van Etten – Because I Was In Love – pretty folk album with well written songs. I just checked her website and noticed she has recently played or is playing shows with some artists I really enjoy (Meg Baird, Speck Mountain, Great Lake Swimmers, Alela Diane, Hanne Hukkelberg).
Sparklehorse + Fennesz – In The Fishtank #15 – The In The Fishtank series is a pretty cool thing. It usually pairs together two or three groups who combine their superpowers to make magical music. Some previous pairings are Low + Dirty Three, Isis & Aereogramme, The Black Heart Procession + Solbakken, and Willard Grant Conspiracy + Telefunk. Tortoise, Sonic Youth, and Karate have also particiapted. Fennesz is a laptop dude and Sparklehorse is Mark Linkous. #15 like a few other volumes is fun because you can listen and try and discern which artist did what and to whom. The results here are pretty trippy.
Monsters of Folk – S/T – This is Jim James, M Ward, Mike Mogis, and Conor Oberst. The music is what one would kind of expect: a blend of the styles of these guys. I don’t like these guys being billed as the Traveling Wilburys part 2 which I bet is not the fault of the band members but the music press. If your telling me anyone in this band is this generation’s version of Roy Orbison, George Harrison, Tom Petty or Bob Dylan please kill me. I totally respect Jim James and feel he has a ton of potential but he’s not at the level yet. Maybe one of the other guys in Monsters of Folk is Jeff Lynn from ELO. I don’t know. You decide but that comparison to the Wilburys has to stop.
The Grateful Dead’s 6/6/1969 show was the second of a four night run at the Fillmore West. The show clocks in at a little over an hour and sixteen minutes, which is the shortest amount of music recorded from any of the four nights.
There are some interesting aspects to this show including blues guitarist Elvin Bishop and Wayne Ceballos sitting in with the band for most of the show excluding Turn On Your Lovelight and Garcia having only played on the Lovelight (supposedly). Also, the set closes with a 47 minute Lovelight, which is the longest recorded version of the song and may have been the longest Lovelight ever played by the Dead.
One point of note, according to some Grateful Dead setlist websites, there is some confusion as to whether performances of certain songs actually came from a different night of the run. An example is this 47 minute Lovelight may have been played on 6/8/1969 and the Lovelight on that night may have actually been played two days prior. The reason for this confusion is the aforementioned band members sitting out a set as the Lovelight on 6/8/1969 does not feature Garcia or Pigpen who sat out on 6/6/1969.
In Dennis McNally’s A Long Strange Trip he writes that at one of these four shows the band and audience were heavily dosed by an amount of LSD which may have been valued upwards of $50,000. From the book: “…there was probably a full gram of crystal LSD in the juice…Lesh said later that one could taste the LSD in the juice. When it came time to play, he was so ecstatically zonked that he politely declined when Mickey told him it was time to go to work.”
Phil had to be helped with his bass and stated “The strings were all snaky, but beautiful colors, kind of fish or reptile scales.” McNally quotes Phil further as saying, the music was “the strangest polyphonic blues ever” and Elvin Bishop was invited to play along with them through this.
6/6/1969 notes
Smokestack Lighting shows off the blues side to the Dead with Elvin Bishop playing lead. The band admits they are “sadly depleted” without Garcia. Green, Green Grass of Home is straight Bakersfield. Me and My Uncle. Checkin’ Up On My Baby is a Bishop number. Beat It Down The Line has vocals with Bishop and Weir.
Lovelight starts out like any other of the era. Pig gives relationship advice to the audience about eleven minutes in. He’s a good problem solver and maybe one of the first improvisational rappers. To be honest, I can’t tell whatsoever whether Bishop or Garcia plays guitar on this one though the Lovelight jam sounds a lot like Garcia but being that the song is steeped in the blues, I can’t be sure. Also, though Lovelight is long, there is not much jamming as Pig pretty much dominates the song vocally throughout.
This is a weird show. Besides Lovelight, it is too short a show to really get into and Lovelight is so long that it becomes the main attraction. The Dead led by a different slinger is cool to hear and Bishop’s playing is fun to listen to but the band wasn’t working it as well as normal so perhaps this is the Dose show.
This past week my girlfriend and I found ourselves up in the later hours of a day gone by in a small hotel room in a city where last call had been rung. Flipping channels on the room’s TV we came across a rerun on MSNBC called 9/11: As It Happened.
For the next hour or so we watched a re-airing of the Today Show from that Tuesday morning. It was morbidly fascinating. I had a book resting on my stomach which had an ending in it that I couldn’t begin to guess at and the joy of Beatles remasters which could have been flowing into my head but instead I was glued to the wall mounted TV watching and waiting for an ending that I knew, dreaded and never wanted to see again. And hoping like an idiot that what I remembered wasn’t about to be replayed.
I started thinking about that time eight years ago. Not so much about just the terrorism and confusion but the surrounding media events. Like Letterman coming back. Like that first SNL. The Telethon where Neil Young played Imagine and Springsteen played My City of Ruins. And U2. Wasn’t U2 everywhere back then? Isn’t U2 everywhere right now?
This week I saw a list of the best fiction inspired by 9/11 on The Daily Beast. Unlike that format, music didn’t really have that many albums inspired by 9/11 (or at least not too many memorable ones) besides the necessary over the top country ones.
Take this with a grain of salt. Less than a year after 9/11 when the wounds were still fresh and didn’t seem like they would ever heal Bruce Springsteen announced he was recording a new album with the E Street Band inspired by September the 11th. This would be The Rising and the first Bruce/E Street album to come out after I reached puberty. Needless to say I was excited and even made uncouth and regretful statements like “if this is what it takes to get a new E Street band album…”
The album came out on July 30, 2002. For some reason I waited until 8 PM or so to get a copy. I was living in Saratoga that summer and honestly, though I’m ashamed to admit it, I think the fact that it was release day slipped by. This was a rare oversight on my part. Just take a look at my Mastercard bill going back a decade for confirmation. I jumped in the car and hopped over to Borders, bought a copy and headed back to the house and began listening and seven years later I still haven’t put that one down.
I was stunned. The Rising was great. It was long but great. Back in 2002 every song seemed to incorporate the events of 9/11. Waiting On A Sunny Day and the album’s opener, Lonesome Day with its joyous refrain of “It’s alright…” repeated thrice, reminded us that things would be getting better. But we were brought back to reality by Into the Fire with its opening lines that the “sky was falling and streaked with blood.” and songs like Counting on a Miracle, Worlds Apart, Your Missing, and Empty Sky set the scene.
The album continuously shifted from this sadness that contained a slight glimmer of hope we could grab hold of to the optimism and infective and uncontrollable delight that Springsteen has been creating for decades. I remember my mom that summer listening to Your Missing and breaking down in the back yard but I can also recall a drive into Albany with a friend doing nothing but singing at the top of our lungs to the album’s rockers.
The Rising had many purposes and it served them all. It was made to help us and its writer heal and to give us something to listen to when we began to ease back into normalcy and enjoy life again. It was the soundtrack to a movie that contained all the emotions in the spectrum bursting to be let out so they could compete with one another. But The Rising also had another purpose separate from all of the above. To just be a great album on its own. No 9/11 strings attached.
What amazes me is that The Rising was billed as the 9/11 album and yet years later it doesn’t have to be, it can be listened to as a topical piece of music or like any other album in the canon. There are no overt references to 9/11, no buzz words, no political statements. Until I played it this week in the context of thinking of 9/11 I realized I had forgotten all about its original history somewhere over the years.
If you played it for someone unfamiliar with its release, they may be clueless to its inspiration but perhaps if they listened hard enough they’d be able to guess that its music was being driven by events unfamiliar to rock music because maybe with every listen our recent history is always there somewhere and it what’s make the party in Mary’s Place all the more bittersweet or the anthemic “Come On, Rise Up!” refrain of My City of Ruins so inspiring.
Or maybe its themes are universal, stretching beyond a specific day or place and we all at sometime or another just need to clear the furniture to the walls and dance or build something back up after its been wrecked and rise again.
(I didn’t want to detract from the above post, but the reason I included the video from Bruce’s performance of My City of Ruins from the Tribute to Heroes telethon was that Bruce was one of the only artists or the only artist to play an unreleased song not already known to the public and to point out that Bruce had written the song prior to 9/11, in regards to his NJ)
In June of 1969, the Grateful Dead played a four night stand at the Fillmore West with a few guests accompanying them on stage along the way. These shows interested me because I recently read that more LSD was running through their system than humanely possible (and larger amounts than were normal even for the Dead) and wanted to see if they’re playing was noticeably affected. It has been documented that for at least one set Garcia and Pigpen, and maybe other band members sat out and did not play and at one point Phil Lesh had to be walked to the stage and where his bass was strapped around him.
Even though I know that the band members were taking copious amounts of acid during this era, I have not really been able to tell in my listens to various shows if a if a given member was tripping and since there is strong documentation that LSD was prevalent during this run, I buckled down and listened.
A few words should be spent on where the Dead were at musically in 1969. The setlist had not yet blown up yet but the band was in full exploration mode and still learning how to play with one another and what the band lacks in song diversity they greatly make up for in excitement and improvisation. A listen to their Fillmore West 1969 box set, which consists of shows recorded in February and March, confirms this.
6/5/69 – notes.
Set one opens with the mystical ballad, Morning Dew. Me and My Uncle follows. Doin’ That Rag has a nice tight jam and segues into He Was A Friend Of Mine, sung by Garcia with some great harmonies and a little vamp that appears many years later in the Tenth Avenue Freezeout version on Live in NYC (coincidence?). A short Hard To Handle and a strong Cosmic Charlie. Cryptical Envelope > Drums > The Other One > Cryptical Envelope kicks off the meat and potatoes of the show and ends set one. Interestingly, Billy starts The Other One via Drums and the band follows.
The second set is continuous. China Cat Sunflower > Sittin’ On Top Of The World > Dark Star > Saint Stephen > The Eleven > Lovelight. China Cat is compact with an outro jam. The Dark Star begins like almost all Dark Stars of the period and the exploration section at the midway point features the band members going in separate ways resulting in disorganization for a few minutes before returning to the song’s main theme. Stephen is fiery and the William Tell Coda into Eleven is nice. The energy in Stephen hints at what is to be heard in Eleven where the band just flat out rocks.
One of the other reasons I wanted to write about the band in this time period was that each Lovelight contained a Pigpen rap that differed from night to night. As Dennis McNally noted in A Long Strange Trip, one night Pigpen took it upon himself to sell the Brooklyn Bridge to an audience member for pocket change. The 25 minute Lovelight on 6/5/1969 involved lessons from Pig’s mama as well as her inquiries as to Pig’s health. Good stuff.
After listening to the show, I couldn’t tell whatsoever if the band was diverted due to dosing but the show was a ton of fun to listen to. Here is a link to the 6/5/1969 Grateful Dead show from the Fillmore West.
The newest installment of the Dead’s Road Trip series just arrived in my mailbox. I swear, after I order the discs and between the time when the Dead send me notice that the product has shipped and it arrives I spend each day in anticipation wondering “will it arrive today?” I wait for the mailman each morning, groan when I don’t see manilla packaging, even go back later in the afternoon in the instance that the mailman forgot to give me all my mail and made a second trip. When I finally turn my key and open that mailbox and see a package with the Grateful Dead insignia stamped on the return address, I am like a kid on christmas morning. (and then I don’t even listen for days just so the anticipation can be taken up a notch!).
I purchase the Road Trips because the sound quality is dynamite but one thing I despise with a capital D is that they sell you a bonus disc which only the first few thousand orderers or so get. This means if you buy too late you get two discs instead of three and sometimes that bonus disc has the best material on it and the most amount of music. This to me is insane. Just include the disc as part of the set. Don’t make me panic waiting for my order to come to see that I am getting the complete release and freak when I do not. Luckily I found a website that has downloads of pretty much every Road Trips and their bonus discs.
Let me set up what Road Trips is all about. Instead of a complete show (though Vol. 2. No. 2. from the Carousel Ballroom in Feb. 1968 is a complete show), you get highlights from a specific run at a venue (MSG September ’90) or a certain period (such as Summer ’71, October ’77 or Fall ’79). Perusing the message boards at the Dead.net store will show you just how outraged some deadheads are that someone they don’t know or trust is chopping up or paring down shows for them (click. I promise that just because you click doesn’t mean you are a complete loser. (that’s what I keep telling myself every time I click)). I don’t care about the rearranging and pairing. I just love the Dead and am psyched each time they release anything in Hi Def sound. I would buy the soundchecks if available. Sad?
Which brings us to the newest Road Trips. Vol. 2. No. 4 comes from the Dead’s 1993 run at the Cal Expo venue. The 1990′s were not the Dead’s greatest period. A. Jerry was so sick at times he eventually…died. B. The band began using ear plugs to hear their monitors and stopped listening to one another and C. At a certain point the Dead just stopped exploring except in Drums/Space which could go on for longer than a third of the concert and even then the setlist staples could drag. Disclosure: Road Trips Vol 2. No. 1 from the 1990 MSG September run is the complete opposite of the above. Proving that every once in a while these guys could still get it up. The band is so energetic you can feel the Garden floor moving through the headphones.
The music on the newest Road Trips comes from two of the three nights of the Cal Expo run and is an interesting take on the Dead at this stage in their career. Jerry’s voice is shot, the recording job is a bit flat and the band seems to have lost that thing that cannot be named but makes you play your favorite air instrument as you listen, but you get some fair to good to something better than good that is nowhere close to great takes on songs from their cannon such as Here Comes Sunshine, Deal, Fire On The Mountain, Cassidy, Uncle John’s Band, Ramble on Rose, Playing In The Band (over 18 minutes), Shakedown Street, Dire Wolf and High Time.
Some rarities are also present: Box of Rain, Crazy Fingers (a real treat), Liberty, The Same Thing, Gloria and Broken Arrow. For Dylan fans the Dead played When I Get My Masterpiece as well as Stuck Inside Of Mobile With The Memphis Blues Again. There’s a little bit of everything including a Rhythm Devils for the completely insane but it’s not a compelling listen from beginning to end.
If you do the math, this is not a rave review. If anything this Road Trips is probably a great example of a typical Dead performance during this final era but that’s not really a selling point is it? More like a historical marker or document. Though it may actually make you toss on something from their past and marvel at just how great these guys were once upon a time.
The Soulsavers – Broken – The follow up to 2007′s It’s Not How Far You Fall, It’s The Way You Land again features Mark Lanegan on lead vocals and behind him is some dark brooding music that in some hellbent universe would serve for spiritual and gospel songs hymned in a church of fellow heathen worshipers. Pensive and moody as only Laegan could serve up and with song titles such as Death Bells and You Will Miss Me When I Burn which prove it. Will Oldham, Richard Hawley, Jason Pierce, Mike Patton and Gibby Haynes also add vocals.
A.A. Bondy – When The Devil’s Loose - If you’ve bought any dour singer-songwriter stuff with a bit of Americana in the early 2000′s that may have been reviewed in No Depression than this may be up your ally but then again you may have no need for it then. Like the Soulsavers album this has a downward ambience to it which makes the songs more interesting and the album is enjoyable to listen to.
The Twilight Sad – Forget The Night Ahead – Their self titled E.P. was a huge favorite of mine in 2006 when it first came out (and the track That Summer, At Home I Had Become The Invisible Boy was a force). Like the prior reviews, this is more intensity but with a Scottish accent leading the way. These guys maximize on the impact that vocals and heavily pounded drums can have when they mingle with a cacophony of guitars rising up. This is their second full length.
Tom Russell – Blood and Candle Smoke – I remember seeing his colorful album artwork way before ever listening to his records but once I listened I was sold. Russell’s voice is distinct like Johnny Cash, though not as distinct. His music weaves folk, americana, native american sounds and some other American action and he’s got a tendency to use noticeable backing vocals behind him from the lovely Gretchen Peters. Joey Burns, David Henry and John Convertino are some of the backers here. On the first track Russell drops the names of some cool books along the way.
Castanets – Texas Rose, The Thaw & The Beats – This has to win for best album title. Vic Chesnutt type vocals with spooky folk backing. Come on, you know that’s what you’ve been missing in your record collection. No seriously, maybe this is what’s been missing in your record collection.
Joe Maddon, manager of the Tampa Bay Rays and who bears an uncanny resemblance to Kurt Wagner of Lambchop, has to be the coolest guy to ever step on a baseball field. Maddon died his hair black to be like the Man In Black for a themed team road trip called the Ring of Fire tour where the team would wear all black. I’m pretty sure I’ve read in the past that Maddon’s favorite band is The Clash. I need this guy’s baseball card.
I’m listening to Love’s fourth and final Elektra album Four Sail and it keeps reminding me of early Pink Floyd records and Syd Barrett solo albums but is nowhere in the vicinity of greatness as Forever Changes (though Always See Your Face featured in the High Fidelity movie is pretty great).
I got into Love through Forever Changes after seeing it on display in Record Stop and thinking “reissue of a band I’ve never heard of! awesome!” Those were the days when one could throw money at things they’d never heard and thankfully this was in my formative listening period. Forever Changes is really the only Love album I truly enjoy listening to but because it is so great I periodically and systematically will give Arthur Lee another shot though never with great success.
What I like about Forever Changes is that it evokes a pastiche of beauty, strangeness, claustrophobia, great vibes and delusional paranoia. The album’s first two tracks, Alone Again Or and A House Is Not A Hotel set the scene: the wonder and excitement of the dawning of the moment’s youthfulness and the personal alienation and intense fear floating around the edges of this optimism which bled right through the music.
“Yeah, I heard a funny thing
Somebody said to me
You know that I could be in love with almost everyone”
“And the waters turned to blood, and if You dont think so Go turn on your tub And it its mixed with mud You’ll see it turn to gray”
It is truly a record of its’ times, recorded during the Summer of Love in 1967 and released just after the Summer had expired in November of that year and the music reflects the changing of the seasons throughout. It was made by a band that evoked a lot of the mysticism of the San Francisco scene but was based in Los Angeles where Forever Changes was also recorded and where the spirit had less to do with group vibes than personal survival. The fact that Arthur Lee and some of his cohorts had personal demons to struggle with probably also added to the music’s relistenability and long term intrigue.
Interestingly, Neil Young was first slated to co-produce Forever Changes with Bruce Botnik but had to bail due to other engagements (sound like something Neil Young would do?). It’s a great what-if, isn’t it? Would Forever Changes actually be better if Lee hadn’t shared production duties with Botnik and Young had? Part of what makes Forever Changes great is it’s somewhat obvious non sequitur musical segments and lyrics and a few flaws here and there and maybe a guy like Neil Young would have honed in on smoothing some of this out, but then again maybe not.
This past August was the fortieth anniversary of Woodstock. I joked to a friend a few days ago about whether the media would make a big deal about the upcoming fortieth anniversary of the Stones’ Altamont Raceway Concert that went horribly awry and was the complete opposite, at least in surviving documentation and public perception. In many ways, even though Forever Changes came out two years prior to the time between these two festivals, it represents the shift in mood and spirit and sometimes even music of these two historical markers. Obviously, that’s just an observation and means nothing really. Take it for what you will.
