Album of the week- The Grateful Dead: Anthem Of The Sun
Made up of uncountable edits that take elements of studio recordings and various live performances, Anthem Of The Sun is not only among the best audio representations of the psychedelic experience, but a groundbreaking production. While it would be relatively easy in 2025 to edit a recording with a DAW that allows cutting, pasting, and dragging tracks, the fact that the Dead (along with their live sound engineer Dan Healey) put this together on 8 track analog tape is a true wonder of audio production; the music equivalent of Dock Ellis’ infamous (acid drenched) no hitter.
Apparently it was Jerry Garcia who came up with the concept (which hadn’t been previously attempted by anyone else) of combining live and studio tracks, and Phil Lesh took the opportunity to add in sprinklings of avant garde/ musique concrete. The end result is a completely engrossing mind fuck of an album that is my personal fave of the Dead’s entire output. Frank Zappa - whether under their influence or coincidentally- spent the rest of his career editing together live and studio performances, but the Dead did it first.
Even though the sides have individual track titles (and even titles within titles), the whole thing plays out as a continuous suite of music, and is best listened to in full. The songs (sprinkled throughout) are hook laden, but are overshadowed somewhat by the energetic, hypnotic group interplay. This is the first Dead album with two drummers, with Bill Kreutzmann and Mickey Hart completely locked in to a propulsive tempo where they seem to share a brain.
I’m thankful that Black Flag made their love of the Dead known; it was a driving force (along with accidentally tuning in to an outrageous version of ‘Feedback’ played on the Grateful Dead Hour when I was driving home from a Teenage Fanclub concert one night) for me to ignore the oft heard Gen X anti-Dead cliches and dig in. This album and Live/ Dead really took root in my soul, and while I never had the interest (or patience) to go down the route of live Dead tape trading, I grew to love just about everything they did up ‘til 1974 or so.
Love this album! I had a really complicated relationship with the Dead during my teen years, but when I was in my mid-20’s I heard “Live/Dead” with a bit of distance and it completely upended all of my previously established feelings about them. For a few years after I pretty voraciously consumed everything I could get my hands on from this ‘68-‘69 period. The Dead are one of my favorite bands now, and Anthem is a triumph.
If you like *Anthem* and *Live Dead* and the double drums, you'd probably like some of the late-period Drums and Space jams. The official release *Infrared Roses* is one place to go for this, but I also recommend John Hilgart's site Save Your Face and his MP3 "mixtape" edits of instrumental/improvisational passages.