What Happens When you Listen to 18 Hours of The Grateful Dead in a Single 26 Hour Session?
Warning to all Dead Heads — this was written from a place of flippancy, affection and some ‘comedic’ exaggeration. If I disliked them THIS much I wouldn’t have lasted 18 hours. Anyway, with that out of the way…
It was only recently I realised that I had never listened to anything at all by The Grateful Dead in my entire life. “I’m in my fifties.” I thought to myself. “If I’m going to listen to them before I die it’s going to have to be now.” So I settled down one morning and plunged in, although with some trepidation as I always had the suspicion they’d be somewhat boring, repetitive and not to my taste.
And 18 hours worth of their music I later I had a incredible epiphany — The Grateful Dead ARE as boring, monotonous and not to my taste as I had expected… with one or two exceptions.
Normally when I binge on a band for the first time I tend to find myself swayed to them to a certain degree but with the Dead that never quite happened. To be fair a lot of the fault is with myself as I’m not a fan of country meets folk meets West Coast rock meets stoned musical waffle so the Dead didn’t really stand much of a chance of successfully storming my musical prejudices from the start. Anyway, here are a few brief observations I noted about my experience with my experience which cover both their albums and (some) live concerts -
1. Jerry Garcia should never be allowed to solo, ever.
Look, I’m not saying Jerry Garcia is a bad guitar player; it’s just that he often sounds as though he’s attempting to do a highly accurate impersonation of one. Technically he’s rather good but I find it’s WHAT he plays to be so exasperatingly dull. “Where’s he going with this?” I’d find myself asking, along with “When’s he going to stop?”. And it all sounds so samey as though you could extract a Garcia solo from any Dead track and transplant it into any other Dead track at random and it would still fit. That’s not really how guitar solos are meant to work.
As I said, I’m not saying he’s a bad guitar player but every time he stepped forward to play a solo somebody should have wrenched the guitar from his hands and smashed it to pieces on stage before he could start. At least something interesting would be finally happening!
2. I think the rhythm section might be where the interest lurks.
So Garcia’s solos didn’t do it for me but what the rhythm guitars, bass and drums (there’s two drummers in the Dead) were up to was vastly more interesting and intricate. The interplay between them all is that of musicians who know exactly how to play off each other and, more importantly, integrate well together. The overall effect is that of a cohesive and pleasing sound that the audience responds to.
3. A cohesive and pleasing sound that the audience responds to.
I know this might seem like an odd criticism but I think my main problem with the Dead is that they are SO audience (well, their audience anyway) friendly. Their sound is accessible, folksy, unthreatening and well meaning. It’s tailor made to avoid inducing even the slightest hint of a bummer. But that’s a problem for me as there’s no real grit here, no feeling of any surprises in store. It reminds me of why I love King Crimson. This is not music to instigate a revolution or effect change. This is music about stasis and eating fudge.
4. They frequently sound like early Fleetwood Mac played at half-speed.
This doesn’t really need further explanation but it does explain that, despite all the musicianship here, why the Dead can sound so dirgey (appropriate for the dead at least) and repetitive. Although they do have some musical tricks up their sleeve. For example — if the Dead want to provide a song with a BIG FINISH then they do so by simply speeding everything up and playing the riff faster. The audience responds to this but it’s only an effect of an increased tempo rather than anything of genuine musical interest.
5. They’re somewhat melodically tedious.
This is unfair as I knew going in that the Dead’s biggest reputation was that of a jam band. But this does mean that they often lack strong hooks to really pull the listener in unless, that is, you’re content to listen to Garcia widdle about and that could be where the weed would be essential. Either way, their melodies tend to exist within a very limited spectrum which doesn’t help ameliorate the repetitiveness.
6. I really loved Terrapin Station!
Okay, so pretty none of the 18 hours worth of the Grateful Dead I listened to excited and moved me in any way whatsoever, but I did really enjoy their album Terrapin Station. The track Passenger is a great, tight, upbeat, energetic little number with some really great vocal harmonies going on. I also really dug the title track, an 18 minute piece with orchestra (I think the addition of the orchestra, normally a death sentence for most rock bands, helps here because, for me, the Dead needed all the help they could get). It opens with one of the sweetest melodies Garcia ever wrote and, again, it’s the interplay between all the members that knit it all together. It gets really stupid and silly but that’s also what helps make it cute and I’m sure if you’re stoned then hearing a full choir, with an entire orchestra behind them, belting out “Terrapin!” is exactly what you want to hear.
Anyway, in the space of a single day I’d went from having never heard anything by The Grateful Dead to having heard more of them than I would ever want to fit into a single life time. And hey, at least they’re better than The Eagles.
