Joan Baez with The Grateful Dead – Unreleased Studio Album (1981)

And here´s another fine rarity in this crazy, little blog:

A Joan Baez studio album with the Grateful Dead backing her, was recorded in late 1981, but never released !

And I never knew this existed.

Joan Baez was dating Mickey when this happened, which is a major reason why it was created.

And we can hear some real fine compositions of Joan Baez.

Her version of “Children Of The 80s” is much better than the one that was recorded later. And “Warriors Of The Sun”is another highlight … a perfect mix between the music of Joan Baez and Grateful Dead.

And her version of the Traditional “Jack-A-Roe” really fantastic  ..

And her “Happy Birthday, Leonid Brezhnev” was another example, that she was a very political person:

So … Listen and enjoy this rarity.

Alternate front+backcover:

I guess this album was put together from different sources. because the sound differs from track to track.

Thanks to everyone who made these tracks available. And I add some more lyrics from this really interesting album.

Recorded at the Barn, Novato, CA 1980

Personnel:
Joan Baez (guitar, vocals)
Jerry Garcia (guitar)
Mickey Hart (drums)
Jim McPherson (keyboards, drums)
Bob Weir (guitar)
Bobby Vega (bass)

Tracklist:
01. (For The) Children Of The Eighties 5.41
02. Don’t Blame My Mother 4.02
03. Marriott, USA 5.47
04. Happy Birthday, Leonid Brezhnev 4.43
05. Lady Di And I 5.14
06. Lucifer’s Eyes 4.10
07. Warriors Of The Sun 8.38
08. Jack-A-Roe 4.00

All song written by Joan Baez,
except 08, which is a Traditional

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Grateful Dead – Aoxomoxoa (1969)

Aoxomoxoa is a 1969 album by the Grateful Dead.[4] One of the first rock albums to be recorded using 16-track technology, fans and critics alike consider this era to be the band’s experimental apex. The title is a meaningless palindrome, usually pronounced “ox-oh-mox-oh-ah”.

Rolling Stone, upon reviewing the album, mentioned that “no other music sustains a lifestyle so delicate and loving and lifelike”. The album was certified gold by the RIAA on May 13, 1997. In 1991 Rolling Stone selected Aoxomoxoa as having the eighth best album cover of all time. (by wikipedia)

The Grateful Dead’s third studio effort was also the first that the band did without any Warner Bros. staff producers or engineers hampering their creative lifestyle and subsequent processes. As they had done with their previous release, Anthem of the Sun, the Dead were actively seeking new forays and pushing envelopes on several fronts simultaneously during Aoxomoxoa (1968) — which was created under the working title of “Earthquake Country.” This was no doubt bolstered by the serendipitous technological revolution which essentially allowed the Dead to re-record the entire contents when given free reign at the appropriately named Pacific High Recording facility. As fate would have it, they gained virtually unlimited access to the newly acquired Ampex MM-1000 — the very first 16-track tape machines ever produced — which was absolutely state of the art in late 1968. The band was also experiencing new directions artistically.

This was primarily the net result of the budding relationship between primary (by default) melodic contributor Jerry Garcia (guitar/vocals) and Robert Hunter (lyrics), who began his nearly 30-year association with the Grateful Dead in earnest during these sessions. When the LP hit the racks in the early summer of 1969, Deadheads were greeted by some of the freshest and most innovative sounds to develop from the thriving Bay Area music scene. The disc includes seminal psychedelic rockers such as “St. Stephen,” “China Cat Sunflower,” and “Cosmic Charlie,” as well as hints of the acoustic direction their music would take on the Baroque-influenced “Mountains of the Moon” and “Rosemary.”

The folky “Dupree’s Diamond Blues” — which itself was loosely based on the traditional “Betty & Dupree” — would likewise foreshadow the sound of their next two studio long-players, Workingman’s Dead (1969) and American Beauty (1970). The too-trippy-for-its-own-good “What’s Become of the Baby” is buried beneath layers of over-indulgence. This is unfortunate, as Hunter’s surreal lyrics and Garcia’s understated vocals languish beneath the soupy sonics. In 1972, Aoxomoxoa was overhauled, and the original mix — which includes several significant differences such as an a cappella vocal tag at the tail end of “Doin’ That Rag” — has yet to be reissued in any form. When the title was reworked for inclusion in the Golden Road (1965-1973) (2001) box set, three previously unreleased and incomplete studio instrumental jams — respectively titled “Clementine Jam,” “Nobody’s Spoonful Jam,” and “The Eleven Jam” — as well as a live rendering of “Cosmic Charlie” from a January 1969 performance were added as “bonus material(s).(by Lindsay Planer)

Personnel:
Tom Constanten (keyboards
Jerry Garcia (guitar, vocals)
Mickey Hart (drums, percussion)
Bill Kreutzmann (drums, percussion)
Phil Lesh (bass. vocals)
Ron “Pigpen” McKernan (keyboards, percussion)
Bob Weir (uitar, vocals)

Additional musicians:

John “Marmaduke” Dawson – Debbie – Peter Grant – Mouse – David Nelson – Wendy

Tracklist:
01. St. Stephen (Garcia/Lesh/Hunter) 4.31
02. Dupree’s Diamond Blues (Garcia/Hunter) 3.36
03. Rosemary (Garcia/Hunter) 2.03
04. Doin’ That Rag (Garcia/Hunter) 4.46
05.  Mountains Of The Moon (Garcia/Hunter) 4.05
06. China Cat Sunflower (Garcia/Hunter) 3.44
07. What’s Become Of The Baby (Garcia/Hunter) 8.17
08. Cosmic Charlie (Garcia/Hunter) 5.33

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Grateful Dead – Kongressaal Munich/Germany (1972)

Grateful Dead slipped the shores of America and crossed the pond for its first-ever major European tour in April 1972. The legendary 22- show run spawned Europe ’72, a live triple album that remains one of the band’s best-selling and most beloved releases. A tour this momentous deserves a boxed set of historic proportions and Dead.net has stamped your passport to relive every note from the European tour with Europe ’72: The Complete Recordings, an individually numbered, limited edition collection that includes more than 60 discs with over 70 hours of music featuring every show from what is arguably the Grateful Dead’s greatest tour.

The tour offers a snapshot of a band at the top of its game, still ascending in the wake of three straight hit albums— Workingman’s Dead, American Beauty, and the live Grateful Dead (“Skull & Roses”). It had been a year since the lineup had gone to its single-drummer configuration, six months since Keith Godchaux had been broken in as the group’s exceptional pianist, and this marked the first tour to feature Donna Godchaux as a member of the touring band.

And here´s the complete show from their gig in Munich … recorded at the Kongressaal on May 18, 1972

Total time: 186:30 (3:06:30) !!!

Enjoy this trip ! Maybe this trip tells a story about the time, when we were young !

Personnel:
Jerry Garcia (guitar, pedal steel-guitar, organ on 14.)
Donna Jean Godchaux (vocals)
Keith Godchaux (piano)
Bill Kreutzmann (rums)
Phil Lesh (bass, vocals)
Ron “Pigpen” McKernan (organ, harmonica, percussion, vocals)
Bob Weir (guitar, vocals)

Tracklist:
01. Truckin’ (Garcia/Lesh/Weir/Hunter) 10.34
02. Sugaree (Garcia/Hunter) 7.19
03. Mr. Charlie (McKernan/Hunter) 4.01
04. Jack Straw (Weir/Hunter) 4.51
05. Tennessee Jed (Garcia/Hunter) 7.46
06. Chinatown Shuffle (McKernan) 3.16
07. Black-Throated Wind (Weir/Barlow) 6.57
08. China Cat Sunflower (Garcia/Hunter) 5.29
09. I Know You Rider (Traditional) 6.54
10. El Paso (Robbins) 4.43
11. Hurts Me Too (James/Sehorn) 8.19
12. You Win Again (Williams) 4.55
13. Playing In The Band (Weir/Hart/Hunter) 10.59
14. Good Lovin’ (Clark/Resnick) 12.37
15. Casey Jones (Garcia/Hunter) 6.52
16. Sitting on Top of the World (Carter/Jacobs) 3.33
17. Me And My Uncle (Phillips) 3.33
18. Ramble On Rose (Garcia/Hunter) 6.44
19. Beat It On Down the Line (Fuller) 2.48
20. Dark Star (Garcia/Hart/Kreutzmann/Lesh/McKernan/Weir/Hunter) 28.20
21. Morning Dew (Dobson/Rose) 11.11
22. Drums (Kreutzmann) 1.08
23. Sugar Magnolia (Weir/Hunter) 7.04
24. Sing Me Back Home (Haggard) 11.35
25. One More Saturday Night (Weir) 5.00

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Grateful Dead – Anthem Of The Sun (1968)

Anthem of the Sun is the second album by the rock band the Grateful Dead. Released in 1968, it is the first album to feature second drummer Mickey Hart, who joined the band in September 1967. In 2003, the album was ranked number 287 on Rolling Stone magazine’s list of the 500 greatest albums of all time.

The mix of the album combines multiple studio and live recordings of each song. The result is an experimental amalgam that is neither a studio album nor a live album, but both at the same time (though it is usually classified as a studio album).

Drummer Bill Kreutzmann’s description of the production process describes the listening experience of the album as well: “…Jerry [Garcia] and Phil [Lesh] went into the studio with [Dan] Healy and, like mad scientists, they started splicing all the versions together, creating hybrids that contained the studio tracks and various live parts, stitched together from different shows, all in the same song — one rendition would dissolve into another and sometimes they were even stacked on top of each other… It was easily our most experimental record, it was groundbreaking in its time, and it remains a psychedelic listening experience to this day.” (by wikipedia)

As the second long-player by the Grateful Dead, Anthem of the Sun (1968) pushed the limits of both the music as well as the medium. General dissatisfaction with their self-titled debut necessitated the search for a methodology to seamlessly juxtapose the more inspired segments of their live performances with the necessary conventions of a single LP. Since issuing their first album, the Dead welcomed lyricist Robert Hunter into the fold — freeing the performing members to focus on the execution and taking the music to the next level. Another addition was second percussionist Mickey Hart, whose methodical timekeeping would become a staple in the Dead’s ability to stop on the proverbial rhythmic dime. Likewise, Tom Constanten (keyboards) added an avant-garde twist to the proceedings with various sonic enhancements that were more akin to John Cage and Karlheinz Stockhausen than anything else coming from the burgeoning Bay Area music scene.

Their extended family also began to incorporate folks like Dan Healy — whose non-musical contributions and innovations ranged from concert PA amplification to meeting the technical challenges that the band presented off the road as well. On this record Healy’s involvement cannot be overstated, as the band were essentially given carte blanche and simultaneous on-the-job training with regards to the ins and outs of the still unfamiliar recording process. The idea to create an aural pastiche from numerous sources — often running simultaneously — was a radical concept that allowed consumers worldwide to experience a simulated Dead performance firsthand. One significant pattern which began developing saw the band continuing to re

fine the same material that they were concurrently playing live night after night prior to entering the studio.

The extended “That’s It for the Other One” suite is nothing short of a psychedelic roller coaster. The wild ride weaves what begins as a typical song into several divergent performances — taken from tapes of live shows — ultimately returning to the home base upon occasion, presumably as a built-in reality check. Lyrically, Bob Weir (guitar/vocals) includes references to their 1967 pot bust (“…the heat came ’round and busted me for smiling on a cloudy day”) as well as the band’s spiritual figurehead Neal Cassidy (“…there was Cowboy Neal at the wheel on a bus to never ever land”). Although this version smokes from tip to smouldering tail, the piece truly developed a persona all its own and became a rip-roaring monster in concert. The tracks “New Potato Caboose” and Weir’s admittedly autobiographically titled “Born Cross-Eyed” are fascinatingly intricate side trips that had developed organically during the extended work’s on-stage performance life. “Alligator” is a no-nonsense Ron “Pigpen” McKernan workout that motors the second extended sonic collage on Anthem of the Sun. His straight-ahead driving blues ethos careens headlong into the Dead’s innate improvisational psychedelia. The results are uniformly brilliant as the band thrash and churn behind his rock-solid lead vocals. Musically, the Dead’s instrumental excursions wind in and out of the primary theme, ultimately ending up in the equally frenetic “Caution (Do Not Stop on Tracks).” Although the uninitiated might find the album unnervingly difficult to follow, it obliterated the pretension of the post-Sgt. Pepper’s “concept album” while reinventing the musical parameters of the 12″ LP medium. (by Lindsay Planer)

Personnel:
Tom Constanten (piano, electronic tape)
Jerry Garcia (guitar, kazoo, vibraslap, vocals)
Mickey Hart – drums, orchestra bells, gong, chimes, crotales, piano)
Bill Kreutzmann (drums, glockenspiel, percussion)
Phil Lesh (bass, trumpet, harpsichord, kazoo, piano, timpani, vocals)
Ron “Pigpen” McKernan (organs, celesta, claves, vocals)
Bob Weir (guitar, kazoo, vocals)

Tracklist:
01. That’s It For The Other  7.57:
01.1. Cryptical Envelopment (Garcia)
01.2. Quadlibet for Tenderfeet (Garcia/Kreutzmann/Lesh/McKernan/Weir)
01.3. The Faster We Go, the Rounder We Get (Kreutzmann/Weir)
01.4. We Leave the Castle (Constanten)
02. New Potato Caboose (Lesh/Petersen) 8.26
03. Born Cross-Eyed (Weir) 2.04
04. Alligator (Lesh/McKernan/Hunter) 11.20
05. Caution (Do Not Stop On Tracks) (Garcia/Kreutzmann/Lesh/McKernan/Weir) 9.37
+
06. Alligator (live) (Lesh/McKernan/Hunter) 18.43
07. Caution (Do Not Stop On Tracks) (live) (Garcia/Kreutzmann/Lesh/McKernan/Weir)  11.38
08. Feedback (live) (Constanten/Garcia/Hart/Kreutzmann/Lesh/McKernan/Weir) 6.58
09. Born Cross-Eyed (single version) (Weir) 2.55

06 – 08.: recorded August 23, 1968

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The Grateful Dead – Same (1967)

The Grateful Dead is the debut album of the Grateful Dead. It was recorded by Warner Bros. Records, and was released in March 1967. According to bassist Phil Lesh in his autobiography Searching for the Sound: My Life with the Grateful Dead, the album was released as San Francisco’s Grateful Dead.

The album was recorded primarily at Studio A in Los Angeles in only four days. The band had wanted to record the album in their hometown of San Francisco, but no good recording studios existed in the area at the time. The group picked David Hassinger to produce because he had worked as an engineer on the Rolling Stones’ “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” and Jefferson Airplane’s Surrealistic Pillow album (on the latter of which Jerry Garcia had guested as well as having suggested the album’s title). Demands by Warner Bros. resulted in four of the tracks, originally longer, being cut short. Phil Lesh comments in his autobiography that “to my ear, the only track that sounds at all like we did at the time is Viola Lee Blues. … None of us had any experience with performing for recording … although the whole process felt a bit rushed.”

The album was seen as “a big deal in San Francisco.” Even though this was true, it did not see much air play on AM radio stations outside San Francisco. It would be a couple of months before free-form FM radio stations began to take shape. Warner Bros. threw the band a release party at the Fugazi Hall in North Beach. Joe Smith is noted for saying he is “proud that Warner Bros. is introducing the Grateful Dead to the world.”

The song “Alice D. Millionaire” was inspired by an autumn 1966 newspaper headline “LSD Millionaire”, about the Dead’s benefactor and sound engineer Owsley Stanley.

In the original design for the album cover, the cryptic writing at the top read, “In the land of the dark, the ship of the sun is driven by the Grateful Dead”, with the phrase “Grateful Dead” in large letters. At the band’s request, the writing, except for “Grateful Dead”, was changed by artist Stanley Mouse to be unreadable. According to fan legend, the saying is from Egyptian Book of the Dead.

The band used the collective pseudonym McGannahan Skjellyfetti for their group-written originals and arrangements. The name derived from a corruption of a character name in the Kenneth Patchen work The Memoirs of a Shy Pornographer. (by wikipedia)

 Greatful Dead live at the Golden Gate Park, April 1967

 

The Grateful Dead’s eponymously titled debut long-player was issued in mid-March of 1967. This gave rise to one immediate impediment — the difficulty in attempting to encapsulate/recreate the Dead’s often improvised musical magic onto a single LP. Unfortunately, the sterile environs of the recording studio disregards the subtle and often not-so-subtle ebbs and zeniths that are so evident within a live experience. So, while this studio recording ultimately fails in accurately exhibiting the Grateful Dead’s tremendous range, it’s a valiant attempt to corral the group’s hydra-headed psychedelic jug-band music on vinyl. Under the technical direction of Dave Hassinger — who had produced the Rolling Stones as well as the Jefferson Airplane — the Dead recorded the album in Los Angeles during a Ritalin-fuelled “long weekend” in early 1967. Rather than prepare all new material for the recording sessions, a vast majority of the disc is comprised of titles that the band had worked into their concurrent performance repertoire. This accounts for the unusually high ratio (seven:two) of folk and blues standards to original compositions. The entire group took credit for the slightly saccharine “Golden Road (To Unlimited Devotion),” while Jerry Garcia (guitar/vocals) is credited for the noir garage-flavored raver “Cream Puff War.” Interestingly, both tracks were featured as the respective A- and B-sides of the only 45 rpm single derived from this album. The curious aggregate of cover tunes featured on the Dead’s initial outing also demonstrates the band’s wide-ranging musical roots and influences. These include Pigpen’s greasy harp-fuelled take on Sonny Boy Williamson’s “Good Morning Little School Girl” and the minstrel one-man-band folk of Jessie “the Lone Cat” Fuller’s “Beat It On Down the Line.” The apocalyptic Cold War folk anthem “Morning Dew” (aka “[Walk Me Out in The] Morning Dew”) is likewise given a full-bodied electric workout as is the obscure jug-band stomper “Viola Lee Blues.” Fittingly, the Dead would continue to play well over half of these tracks in concert for the next 27 years. [Due to the time limitations inherent within the medium, the original release included severely edited performances of “Good Morning Little School Girl,” “Sitting on Top of the World,” “Cream Puff War,” “Morning Dew,” and “New, New Minglewood Blues.” (by Lindsay Planer)

And this was the start of a real brilliant career !

Greatful Dead live at the City Park, Denver, September 1967

Personnel:
Jerry Garcia (guitar, vocals)
Bill Kreutzmann (drums, percussion)
Phil Lesh (bass, vocals)
Ron “Pigpen” McKernan (organ, harmonica, vocals)
Bob Weir (guitar, vocals)

Tracklist:
01. The Golden Road (To Unlimited Devotion) (Garcia/Kreutzmann/Lesh/McKernan/Weir) 2.07
02. Beat It On Down The Line (Fuller) 2.27
03. Good Morning, Little School Girl (Williamson) 5.47
04. Cold Rain And Snow (Ramsey) 2.25
05. Sitting On Top Of The World (Chatmon/Vinson) 2.01
06. Cream Puff War (Garcia) 2.25
07. Morning Dew (Dobson/Rose) 5.00
08. New, New Minglewood Blues (Lewis) 2.31
09. Viola Lee Blues (Lewis) 10.12

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