In these blogs, I wrote a little earlier about the Grateful Dead.
Short take: I really never have understood the ulra-passionate appeal for a band whose songs, at least half, sound like sleepy Americana tunes, a genre that didn’t exist — at least in name — in the Dead’s heyday. Or it could also be described as Ronnie Lane music, only without the deep English musical accent that British musician layered on vocals and music.
I did promise further research into the Dead, noting that the only vinyl album I had was ‘Terrapin Station.’ So since that time I found some Dead I’d had digitally, namely the albums ‘Workingman’s Dead’ and ‘American Beauty.’
Of course like many listening to music in the 1970s, I knew ‘Casey Jones’ and the classic band on the road song, ‘Truckin’ ‘ which blesses us with one of the shrewdest summation lines of these years: “What a long strange trip it’s been.”
So this little additional homework has left me with two observations.
- The Dead are certainly good (in a down home sloppy sort of way). Listening to more of their music, I had my needle pushed above half a tank. I could listen to Ripple, Box of Rain, and Brokedown Palace on the porch with the sun shining all day.
- But I still don’t get how they are in the conversation of best rock band ever. But that’s the rhetoric I’d hear in some circles (California especially.) Jerry Garcia would probably agree that’s a strawman argument.