1970s Favorites: The Grateful Dead 1970-73 Edition

The Grateful Dead were one of the greatest under-appreciated rock ‘n’ roll bands in the world in the early 1970s, with Jerry Garcia on lead guitar, Bob Weir on rhythm guitar, Phil Lesh on bass, Ron “Pigpen” McKernan, and later, Keith Godchaux on keyboards, and Bill Kreutzmann on drums. In fact, I think the Grateful Dead, along with Creedence Clearwater Revival, were THE Great American Rock And Roll Bands of the era.

From the mid to late 1960s, the Dead were very much a psychedelic band, probably best appreciated while the listener was under the influence of some serious hallucinogens. They did a few songs during that era that I like, but nothing that really blows me away.

However, in 1970 the Dead switched gears and recorded and released Working Man’s Dead and American Beauty, two of the greatest rock albums ever made. Neither album sounded much like anything the Dead had ever done before; they are mostly acoustic country rock albums, and they contain some of the Dead’s greatest music: “Casey Jones,” “Uncle John’s Band,” “Truckin’” and “Friend Of The Devil,”  to name just a very small sample of the awesome music on those two albums.

During the early 1970s, Jerry Garcia and his song writing partner, Robert Hunter, wrote some classic American music, as did Bob Weir and his writing partner, a Wyoming rancher named John Barlow. Songs like “Bertha,” “Jack Straw,” Tennessee Jed,” and my personal favorite, “He’s Gone,” were all written in 1970-72. Those songs are classic rock ‘n’ roll songs set in the American west, something that no band had ever really done before. Dennis McNally’s book, A Long Strange Trip, tells the story of Bob Weir driving from his ranch in Marin County, California, to Pinedale, Wyoming, where John Barlow ran his parents' ranch, so that they could drink Wild Turkey and write songs together. It makes me happy to imagine Weir hitting I-80 in 1971, and cruising across Nevada, through Salt Lake City, to Evanston, Wyoming, and then heading north to Sublette County.

Ironically, the Dead never bothered to put the music they wrote in the early 1970s on a traditional, studio recorded album. Most of it is found on their live album, Europe ’72. Nothing beats that album as roadtrip music, but the problem with Europe ’72 is Jerry and the boys did a lot of overdubs before they released it, so Europe ’72 doesn’t sound as much like the Dead sounded live in 1972 - their best year - as it could have. And as everyone knows, live Dead is the best Dead.

To really hear and understand why the Dead were as good as they were back then, you need to listen to two live albums that were recently released. The two albums are basically soundboard tapes that have been sonically enhanced to high definition audio. Those two albums are:

Road Trips Vol.3 No.2, recorded in Austin, TX, on November 15, 1971

and

Dick's Picks Vol. 11, recorded live in Jersey City, NJ, on September 27, 1972

Neither of these albums are readily available through Amazon.com or your local Barnes and Noble. The best place to find them nowadays is eBay, sadly. However, they are both worth the time and energy it takes to seek them out. 

In March 1973, Pigpen died of a gastrointestinal hemorrhage at the age of twenty-seven. For me, his death marks the end of the classic era of the Grateful Dead, even though Pig was no longer touring with the band due to his health problems, and they had hired Keith Godchaux to take his place. The Dead went on to record more brilliant music, right up until Jerry Garcia died in 1995, but they never again sounded exactly the same as they did in ’72.

Ron "Pigpen" McKernan 1945 - 1973

True Grit

 

I originally saw the Coen Brothers' True Grit the week after Christmas ten years ago. I’d forgotten just how good it is. Everything about it is spot on - the cast, the direction, and the adaptation from the original novel. The last third of the movie really - and surprisingly - provoked such an emotional response in me tonight, from the scene where Rooster Cogburn faces down the Pepper Gang by himself, to Rooster riding Mattie Ross to safety on Little Blackie. That night ride is so beautifully shot, and when Rooster has to put the horse out of its misery, it brings tears to my eyes. Yes, I’m a big John Wayne fan, but the Coen Brothers/Jeff Bridges version is in a separate universe from the 1969 film. It’s one of my favorite movies.

Men Without Women

Randy's Records, November 14, 2020

Nowadays, unless it’s a new album by Bruce Springsteen, most of the vinyl records I buy have some emotional resonance for me, which means I mostly buy old stuff. If I can find an original pressing of a favorite album rather than a reissue, it’s even better.

In 1982, my brother Phil gave me the album Men Without Women by Little Steven and the Disciples of Soul for Christmas. Little Steven is actually Steve Van Zandt, Bruce Springsteen’s best buddy and lead guitarist in the E Street Band. It’s a great album – Steve’s take on 60s soul music. Phil passed away in 2006, and my original copy of the album disappeared years ago. I finally found an original pressing of the album at Randy’s Records around 2017 or 2018, which made me really happy, because it had never – up to that point – been reissued on vinyl. Finding that album was also like having a little bit of Phil back with me, which I think was ultimately the point. Unfortunately, in December 2018, I took my new old copy of Men Without Women with me to a Little Steven concert at The Depot, hoping for an autograph, and due to circumstances beyond my control, I lost the album. I recognize that losing an album is really a #firstworldproblem, but I have missed having it in my collection ever since. Even buying the newly remastered CD version that came out this year did nothing to alleviate the sense of loss I felt over misplacing my vinyl copy.

 

Today, I finally decided that screw it, I was going to see if they had another copy of the album at Randy’s Records. I get nostalgic for deceased family members this time of year, so I didn’t even care if it was an original pressing or the new reissue. Because of social distancing and the exploding Utah COVID numbers, Tristen and I had to stand in line about fifteen minutes to get into Randy’s. Once I finally got in the store, I searched the record bins, but to my dismay, there wasn’t a copy of Men Without Women to be found, new or old. I finally asked a clerk if they had the album, and after debating with him over the title of the album (which I admit is a little weird; Steve Van Zandt named it after an Ernest Hemingway short story collection), he went in the backroom and found a copy from 1982 that even contained the poster that came with the first pressing. Not only that, it was in great shape and reasonably priced. You better believe I snatched up that sucker and paid for it without a second thought.

Right now Little Steven and the Disciples of Soul are singing the song “Forever” on my turntable – one of my all-time favorite love songs, and a song that never fails to bring a tear to my eye – and I’m reminded that life doesn’t always suck. Sometimes it’s pretty good.

 

70s Favorites: Underrated artists

Music from the early 1970s is my happy place. I made an iTunes playlist that consists entirely of music from that era that I listen to whenever I’m down or discouraged (which has been a lot, lately.) It’s funny, because I’m old enough to remember some of the music from the early 70s that I currently listen to when it first came out, but not all of it. My older brothers and sister didn’t listen to anything wilder than Simon & Garfunkel or The Carpenters – four artists I do like – so it was up to me to discover Who’s Next and Exile on Main Street on my own, which I did toward the end of the 1970s, when most of the contemporary music on the radio sucked.

 What I like most about music from the early 1970s is the quality and the diversity. Some of my favorite bands were at their creative peak, like Creedence Clearwater Revival, The Who, The Stones, and The Grateful Dead. Classic country by people like Merle Haggard, George Jones, Tammy Wynette, and Buck Owens are a big part of my love for music from that era, as well as some superlative soul music by Marvin Gaye, Al Green, The Chi-Lites, and Stevie Wonder, among many others. But they weren’t the only game in town. Lesser known performers (for their era), such as Gram Parsons, Little Feat (a great, influential band that deserved to be bigger), Ry Cooder, and John Prine also put out some wonderful music. In the fall of 1973, Bruce Springsteen released one of his earliest and best albums, The Wild, The Innocent, and The E Street Shuffle, to fairly dismal sales. And there is a 1973 jazz/blues album by veteran performers Big Joe Turner and Count Basie entitled The Bosses that I absolutely love.

 Anyway, I was listening to my early 1970s playlist in my car yesterday, and Ry Cooder’s version of the Civil War anthem, “Rally ‘round The Flag” caught my ear. Cooder is an amazing guitarist, and he turned that old song into a slow blues, and it’s pretty great. I actually discovered the album that it’s from, Boomer’s Story, in 2007, thirty-five years after it was originally released. Ry Cooder has done some incredible music over his long career, but it doesn’t seem like many people have heard of him. Cooder digs up old songs and reimagines them in different musical genres. On Boomer’s Story, Ry Cooder performs an excellent instrumental version of James Carr’s late 60’s soul classic, “Dark End of The Street,” as well as the WWII chestnut, “Comin’ In On A Wing and a Prayer,” in a way that makes you think the guys in the plane probably didn’t make it. Like I said, good stuff. I was even lucky enough to find an original 1972 vinyl pressing of Boomer’s Story at Randy’s Records a few years ago.
 

So today I am paying tribute to the early 1970s by posting some albums that most people probably have never heard, but if you care about good music at all, you should. If you were fortunate enough to hear Ry Cooder’s Boomer’s Story, Big Joe Turner and Count Basie’s album The Bosses, Little Feat’s Dixie Chicken, Gram Parsons’s Grievous Angel, and John Prine’s Sweet Revenge when they were first released, I congratulate you on your superb musical taste, and I’m kind of jealous.

Excitable Boy

 

Late spring 1978, and there was an incredible new song playing on the radio. It was called “Werewolves of London,” and my late brother Phil and I fell in love with it immediately. It hit all the right notes with us: werewolves, rocking guitar (provided by the legendary Waddy Wachtel, we later learned), howls, and the deep baritone voice of singer Warren Zevon. My other late brother, Ray, informed us that he had heard the whole album playing in a record store in Provo, and everything else on it was just as good as “Werewolves.” Ray said the album was named Excitable Boy.

 

That was it. I had to have it. My fourteenth birthday arrived and Phil gave me Excitable Boy, in LP format of course. Ray was right; the whole album WAS just as good as “Werewolves of London.” There were songs about a headless, well-armed, zombie mercenary soldier named Roland, a psycho killer who does unspeakable things to his prom date (with back-up vocals by Linda Ronstadt), and an innocent man hiding in Honduras (because he went home with a waitress who turned out to be a Russian spy) who needed lawyers, guns, and money to get himself out of his predicament.

 

Excitable Boy blew my fourteen-year-old mind, and I had to share the album with my late best friend Don. Warren Zevon hooked him, too. I then scrounged the money together to purchase Zevon’s other album (he only had two at the time), his self-titled debut that he had released in 1976, and it was even better than Excitable Boy. I became a life-long Zevon fan, and his music seldom disappointed me. I even saw him live in concert in 1988 at the Utah State Fairgrounds, when he opened for Los Lobos (now THAT was a damn good show.)

 

Zevon died of mesothelioma in 2003 at the too young age of 56 (the same age I am now), but not before releasing one last classic album, The Wind. Also before Warren died, David Letterman devoted one whole show to an interview with and music by Warren Zevon, where he revealed the most important lesson he had learned about life, the immortal words “Enjoy every sandwich.”

 

Thanks, Warren.