Sunday 2/4/24
Is the sound of any band so distinctly demarcated by year as that of the Grateful Dead? You hear a few bars of music and you can identity the performance as being from 1966, 1967, 1968, 1969, 1970, 1971, 1972, 1973, or 1974.
Jerry Garcia's guitar tone in 1968 had a lot of heft to it, while also being something of a laser. On performances of "St. Stephen" from that year, that timbre feels like it's shaking the ground beneath you--especially with the opening riff--and can also bore through a mountain. It's among the most physical of guitar tones.
I like how "Dark Star" got longer across the whole of 1968. The shorter, faster renditions of "Dark Star" from earlier in the year have their appeal, too. Talk about a change of pace, though, from a February 1968 "Dark Star" to an October 1968 "Dark Star." Those earlier versions are almost like celestial garage affairs. We have the transitive nightfall of diamonds doing its thing, but Sky Saxon and his Seeds could be hanging out in the driveway looking in (or would that be Sean Bonniwell with the Music Machine?), having thought they had cause enough to be there but maybe not after all.
I'm listening lately to a number of early performances of "Casey Jones," a fascinating and well-written, smart number. The Beatles' "She Loves You" is, among many other things, smart. It's clever. "Casey Jones" is clever. Watch your speed is a warning/bit of advice/potent reminder that operates on multiple levels. The earlier versions don't have the chugging drive--which was a Grateful Dead speciality--that the studio and later versions would. We can even detect a calypso touch. The Rolling Stones' "Start Me Up" was an anthemic rocker that didn't need a large space to be effective, which is how many anthemic rockers work, and why they're so often lacking. They're more about people having something to punch the air to in unexamined tribal union, rather than anything substantive. "Start Me Up" got a similar start back when it first emerged as a song provisionally titled "Never Stop" in 1975.
A Grateful Dead show I keep returning to again and again--though that could be said about a number of them, in truth--is this outdoor affair at MIT on May 6, 1970. People say that the Dead's cover of Martha and the Vandellas' "Dancing in the Street" didn't become a special affair until, say, 1977, a year whose spring shows have acquired mythical status. The Northeast run documented on the May 1977: Get Shone the Light box set is music you could study for your entire life. I'd suggest hearing this performance, though, at this gig which was part of a nationwide student-based protest against the Kent State killings. Later on you'll hear Garcia complain about the cold. But listen to the solo he plays on "Dancing in the Street." I don't think anyone else could do what he does here. It's like a sea, isn't it? With no separation between the notes at times, the guitar solo as sublime pooling.
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