Thursday - June 25, 2009

The Dead Have Arisen?

It’s not much of an admission, but I was a Deadhead back in my late teens and early 20s. Not one of those totally immersed in it, wild Children of Nature types, going On The Road and living out of a VW camper, making ends meet by selling grilled cheese sandwiches at concerts ... but I got myself to dozens of shows, owned all the albums, a bunch of bootlegs, and didn’t listen to much else in the way of music for several years. Eventually my musical world expanded, and my time at those concerts eventually led me to become an audiophile. In terms of sound, and to play with the old audiophile idiom, there was so much there there at the shows, that the issued vinyl, a plain old stereo, a good Fisher phonograph, and a good set of speakers was quite a let down. Hell, it was a disaster. And that was one of their better albums.

And that’s one of the things that made being a Deadhead difficult. You could talk forever about fusion, jug band music, blues, rock, jazz, musical communication, brain surfing, into, the whole bit. But you couldn’t share it via vinyl. Nor via cassette tape. The World’s Greatest Jam Band could not put together an album with decent sound. Ever. Never, not once. Europe ‘72 was about the worst thing ever pressed into vinyl. Well, maybe Live Dead on 8-track. Things got a little better towards the middle 80s, but not by much.

The band mostly broke up when Jerry Garcia died in 1995. I say mostly, because everyone in the band was almost always in some other bands at the same time, and after a couple of fits and starts there is once again a group touring called The Dead. It’s the surviving band members, lately with the help of Jeff Chimenti and Warren Haynes. Death never stopped this band; I’m pretty sure that more members have died over the years than are currently playing in the band. [see? that deadhead shit is still in me somewhere]

Anyway, pretty much the only way to make an outsider understand was to drag them to a concert. Sure, they could sort of glean something from albums or bootleg tapes, but it just wasn’t right. In the mid to late 90s a series of concert tapes were turned into CDs, the whole Dick’s Picks and From The Vault collections, and they were mostly great, but they weren’t really there.

I pretty much moved on with life. It’s only once in a great while that I turn out the lights, crank up the very fine stereo, and leave the world behind for a couple hours. But while surfing through Amazon last week, I traipsed down the Dead Aisle and read the reviews on a couple of throwback albums. Newer releases of old master tapes. And I gave it a try, just to see.

I needed a miracle ... and I got two. To Terrapin and Live At The Cow Palace are both albums from the end of the Keith & Donna era, what could be considered the peak of the wave for the Old Kingdom - First Intermediate Period of the GD. They’re published on HDCD, whatever that is, and the sound is ... pure. No hiss, no pop, no scratch. No filtering. The band doesn’t sound like they’re 5 miles away. The music actually has a soundstage, and not the millimeter tall, 2 foot wide kind you usually get even on most “good” CDs. Somebody, somewhere, did something right. Both CDs are concert recordings, but from the instrument feeds, not from microphones out in the audience.  So they don’t have the background noise and they don’t have that sense of power, that electric aural intensity of a few hundred thousand watts coming your way through 200 speakers in the old 4 story tall Wall of Sound. But these CDs do have a presence nonetheless. They’re quite forward, and here that’s a good thing.

I was prepared to be let down. I am thrilled to be let up. And further up. A 19 minute Sugaree, a 23 minute space jam filled Playing, and a 15 minute Morning Dew? With several Drums?? 2 albums with 5 CDs filled with into? With actual detail - you can sometimes hear Keith or somebody kicking the piano, keeping time. Takes me back, in the best possible way. And without the chemically induced ball of orange light travelling up and down my spine this time. I’m too old for that shit. But it’s nice to wake up the memory that the best Snoopy Dance is done to a kickin’ rendition of Sugar Magnolia [the 8 1/2 minute S.M. on Cow is darn good, but it isn’t truly magical].

When in doubt, twirl.

Posted by Drew458     on 06/25/2009 at 04:20 PM   
Filed Under: • Music •  
• Comments (1) • Trackbacks(0)  Permalink •  

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