I don’t go *that* deep into the Dead, but I’m fully onboard with just about everything they did up until around 1974. This double (mostly) live album is the second double live album they released, and it came out only 4 years into their recording career. A good chunk of the material here hadn’t yet been released by the band, and many became standards (‘Bertha’ and ‘Playing In The Band’) and contains one of their most outstanding, compelling tracks (‘Wharf Rat’), as well as a mind melting side-long take on 1968’s ‘The Other One’. The version of ‘The Other One’ here may lack a bit of Anthem’s flat out anarchic acid madness, but this more refined version is most welcome. Even though there’s some studio sweetening here, it’s a lovely trip in what it would have been like to see the band in 1971, with unbelievably great recording quality, thanks to the Dead’s trailblazing front of house sound engineer Betty Cantor. Betty captured crystal clear stage recordings that are unparalleled to this day.
Album Of The Week - The Grateful Dead (1971)
Album Of The Week - The Grateful Dead (1971)
Album Of The Week - The Grateful Dead (1971)
I don’t go *that* deep into the Dead, but I’m fully onboard with just about everything they did up until around 1974. This double (mostly) live album is the second double live album they released, and it came out only 4 years into their recording career. A good chunk of the material here hadn’t yet been released by the band, and many became standards (‘Bertha’ and ‘Playing In The Band’) and contains one of their most outstanding, compelling tracks (‘Wharf Rat’), as well as a mind melting side-long take on 1968’s ‘The Other One’. The version of ‘The Other One’ here may lack a bit of Anthem’s flat out anarchic acid madness, but this more refined version is most welcome. Even though there’s some studio sweetening here, it’s a lovely trip in what it would have been like to see the band in 1971, with unbelievably great recording quality, thanks to the Dead’s trailblazing front of house sound engineer Betty Cantor. Betty captured crystal clear stage recordings that are unparalleled to this day.