Loaded vs. American Beauty

I always thought "Lonesome Cowboy Bill" always kind of sounded a bit like the Dead. I could definitely hear the Dead playing it and Garcia singing it in my mind.

One of the reasons I'm enjoying VU 1968-1969 live bootlegs so much right now is that they stretch out on almost every song, playing with its structure, adding pieces one night that they'll evidently not add again: but the songs underneath are really solid and so it's no stretch to play that way.

Someone brought up the Band earlier; I'd love to hear them play in a similarly exploratory but every live performance by them I've found has been quite lean (except for "Chest Fever" which doesn't count).

I have rarely come across with a poster whose opinions I disagree with more than in which we apologize for sobering up (underrated aerosmith albums I have loved) on this thread!

But are you having a good time? that's the important question.

Oh yes, no worries there. I've never heard "American Beauty" but then I don't think I've ever heard a Grateful Dead album.

Give it a shot! You won't wake up in a VW van in a puddle of patchouli, I swear.

'xpect I'll get round to it one day

IMHO Euler is right on re. VU bootlegs. They did stretch out the songs a great deal (Sweet) Sister Ray & What Goes On in particular could fan out way into the ozone on feedback missles. They bring me great joy.. Earlier VU boots from circa '66 are also interesting since they really focus on long free improv noise pieces.

The Sweet Jane connection has always intrigued me--the albums are only separated by two months (Loaded was released first), so I'm sure it's quite accidental...I like the Grateful Dead a lot through their first few albums, but I just don't see that anything on American Beauty comes close to "Sweet Jane," "Rock and Roll," or "Oh! Sweet Nuthin'."

my teenage self is smacking my grown self for saying that "Box of Rain," "Sugar Magnolia," and "Ripple" are all better than the Loaded versions of those three songs, but my grown self is stronger & can hit harder & besides what do teenagers know? still, this thread isn't a good way to meet American Beauty - before you can dig it you kinda gotta divest yourself of any anti-Dead baggage you're carrying. Took me years. Five years ago, even, I'd have been arguing that even weak-ass Loaded trumps the collective output of the Grateful Dead. Then one day I said "how well do you actually know this band whose work you always dismiss?" and that was kind of the end of that.

Took me years.

Life really is too short for that

I dunno my exposure to the Dead was limited almost entirely to college acquaintances forcing me to listen to endless show bootlegs and the occasional spin of Workingman's Dead and American Beauty. And then there was that Freaks and Geeks episode with Ripple and some other AB songs in it... I dunno the playing and songwriting has just always struck me as really fucking weak. their stabs at country are pathetic compared with the genuine article, which is the other thing that always put me off them.

living where I do, I can't really shed the baggage, there are so many negative associations with their stuff, and they're constantly shoved in my face on a regular basis.

They seem to be, errrrrrrr, somewhat more visible in the USA than outside the USA, like exponentially more

their stabs at country are pathetic compared with the genuine article, which is the other thing that always put me off them.

there's a whole lot of country & bluegrass pickers covering dead songs who don't really agree with you on this Q btw. obv they generally can't sing for shit, but if you rep for country pickers and not the dead, congrats, you're posing

obv they generally can't sing for shit

this is a big part of country to me

I don't know shit about bluegrass

Some formerly anti-Dead people have opened up enough in the past 5 years to at least check out American Beauty. It's kind of a hippy/jammy/psychedelic/beardo-friendly era right now, at least among the people I know. My mom was really into American Beauty, Workingman's Dead, the first Dead album, and that first New Riders of The Purple Sage record. I grew up hearing those records a lot so I knew it wasn't all tubby noodle-fests. if I'd had to hear endless bootlegs at college first, woulda been much harder to dig em.

I was actually hoping this thread might help divest some folks of baggage, but mostly it's been about Steve Howe. Never a great aid in the divesting of baggage, Steve Howe.

I will also slag off Sweetheart of the Rodeo for similar reasons, if you like

xp

Life really is too short for that

not sure really what you mean - my Dead baggage is essentially the same as Shakey Mo's - I'd hear them and go "oh, Christ, not the fucking Dead." turned out having spent years basically cultivating a reaction-formation based on bullshit social cues was a colossal waste of time & that I'd been missing out on music that I'd really have enjoyed.

I will also slag off Sweetheart of the Rodeo for similar reasons, if you like

lol the singing on that record bugs the shit out of me

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/53/139143421_e433ad8375_o.jpg
this guy was always trouble.

a couple weeks ago as I was moving into a new rehearsal studio I had to pass by not one but TWO different groups of aging fucks with their tie-dyed t-shirts tucked into their dockers arguing about the Dead ("no dude what you gotta hear is that set with just Mickey, Bob, and Jerry kicking it in Marin in '91, so laid back" = ugh I stab you)

not sure really what you mean

I thought you meant you'd spent a few years learning to love them, having to work at it a bit.

genre purity is a wonderful and rewarding pursuit

telling the good from the bad with a given genre = purism?

like, I don't have any problem calling a fair amount of what the Dead did country... it's just shitty country.

i started with what a long strange trip its been when i was 16. just cuz i'd never really listened to them before and thought i should give them a shot. and this was at the height of my punkdom. but, like i said above, also the height of my acidness. i devoured that 2 album set. i couldn't believe how much i loved the songs. black peter, tennessee jed, ramblin' rose, they sounded amazing to me. i stuck to studio stuff for years. and dead set (and reckoning), which is another great showcase for the songs. i still listen to the studio albums way more than i listen to live stuff.

and i love jerry's voice. and old and in the way is a good place to hear dead bluegrass!

as far as rock bands that made great stuff for bluegrass people to play, the dead are right up there with dylan and ccr.

compared with the genuine article compared with the genuine article compared with the genuine article compared with the genuine article compared with the genuine article compared with the genuine article compared with the genuine article

if you wanna argue that their country stuff is better than their source material (Buck Owens, etc.) you are bonkers

xp

I thought you meant you'd spent a few years learning to love them, having to work at it a bit.

no no - it's just that I make a habit of, every few years, checking out something I think I hate to see if I feel differently about it. I recommend this to all music-lovers because there are a lot of dumb reasons for not liking stuff (social cues, meaningless bias, breadth/range of experience i.e. there's stuff that you want to have heard a lot of other stuff before it'll make much sense). and your ears change, your tastes mature or grow or shift, anyway. I saw that American Beauty was getting some 20-anno treatment or something and I was like "give that one a shot, maybe you'll like it" and bang. And then I heard the super-psyched-out debut at a party, and it was like "wait - has this band always been really interesting & I'm just a dick about it?" and it turned out the answer to that Q was "yes."

Shakey Mo they're doing their own thing for Christ's sake not trying to be stuff you wanna be high-falutin' about

I just posted a similar post in the Monae thread re testing one's assumptions.

Maybe we can create an Empire Burlesque vs In the Dark thread to really fuck shit up.

I'm poor and don't like stealing music for free, so testing my assumptions about certain things that I've hated on first listen is not really a luxury I can afford. sorry

it's just that I make a habit of, every few years, checking out something I think I hate to see if I feel differently about it. I recommend this to all music-lovers

Imagine a lot of us do this, or similar, already. But I don't hate the Grateful Dead, they just don't register much either way.

I'm guessing you know somebody you could borrow the key Dead albums from if you were actually interested xpost

I have a hard enough time keeping up with all the music I actually WANT to hear, but then I'm not one of the people around here that gets sent tons of free stuff/downloads whatever they want

xp

I'm guessing you know somebody you could borrow the key Dead albums from if you were actually interested xpost

this is true. the problem is I hate these people and don't want to talk to them.

i'd like to give a shout out to rca special products cuz in the early 80s these were two of my fave things to play:

http://www.arrakis.es/~e.miquel/rnranimal/images/offilp/wildchildlp.jpg

http://static.rateyourmusic.com/album_images/s596397.jpg

(didn't have a lot of money back then. always looking for budget comps. both on pair records!)

lookit Lou's muscles!

The Dead....I really don't know: I've been giving them a chance every now and then for like 30 years - I'm on my third copy of American Beauty, and still, compared to Sweetheart, Gilded Palace, all the Band records, Moby Grape and so on, it doesn't really do it. I do however, love the first NRPS.

"I thought you meant you'd spent a few years learning to love them, having to work at it a bit."

it took me 30 years of listening to finally LOVE the byrds.

took me twenty years of going back to it to finally understand why people loved exile on main street so much.

took me 25 years since i first heard them to truly LOVE and appreciate magazine.

i still listen to the studio albums way more than i listen to live stuff.

This is pretty important. The Dead's live rep as being these masters of improvisation who created these unique tapestries of psychedelic fire every night has been vastly overstated by both their fans and detractors. The early 70s studio stuff is where it's at for me, including the first Jerry and Bobby solo albums.

(although I think there was a glimmer of hope for them in the late 80s just before Brent died - R.I.P.)

i dunno, sometimes I prefer the jammier stuff, though I'm not an intense collector or anything. actually the official live albums usually do the trick.

it took me 30 years of listening to finally LOVE the byrds.

There's quite a few ahead of the Dead in the queue tho!

i dunno, sometimes I prefer the jammier stuff, though I'm not an intense collector or anything. actually the official live albums usually do the trick.

Well yeah, the official live albums are highlights. But if you try to explore further than that, it can be very scattershot indeed.

I've never heard Loaded all the way through though. I think I'm going to try to track down a copy tonight.

I still don't LOVE The Byrds beyond the obvious stuff. 20 years of trying.

I barely even like the Byrds.