Every critic alive gracefully smiles at this record, dismissing it with
the statement 'this is yet another attempt to put that famous live Dead
sound on record', but I tell ya: either no critics really listened to
this record, or, well, the live Dead pretty much sucked around 1969. The
record isn't horrendous at all, nope, parts of it are even enjoyable (other
parts are dreadful, though). But there's not a single trace of an instrumental
jam on this record, the thing that the Dead were most famous for, after
all, and some songs do not differ very much in mood from the assumingly
'classic' American Beauty. The funny thing is that, while all the band
members are really good at their instruments, especially Jerry Garcia
on guitar and Tom Constanten on keyboards, they almost never really know
what to do with them. True, this time around the band had obviously decided
to try their hand at something more 'conventional', drawing on all kinds
of rootsy and folkish inspirations to help them in the process, but they
were still too stoned to make anything decent. Indeed, I've rarely seen
such a sloppy, uninspired, draggy bunch of songs all collected together
on one record. The basic impression is that most of them are based on
some rudimentary folk melody or other, which the band members effectively
try to profanate by diluting it with rather bland instrumentation and
a loose, almost 'stoned' style of playing. Even worse, some tracks are
offensively spoiled by dated gimmicks, like electronic voice encoding
('Rosemary').
But never mind the spicing up: it's the heart of the tree that's rotten.
When you finally take as much listens as you need to get to the musical
essence of the songs, you'll see that it's usually plain banal. The opening
tune, 'St Stephen', for instance, is built on a perfectly simple fast
folk melody - it's just that the song is so stoned out that you don't
notice it for a while. The ballads are totally uninspired and uninspiring,
and no matter how convincingly Lesh or Garcia try to pull them off, it
just doesn't work for me: I'm not aware of who actually gets the lead
vocals on 'Mountains Of The Moon', but it doesn't matter - the song is
plain dull, and the pretty harpsichord does nothing to save it in the
long run. As for 'Rosemary', it's all plain atmosphere: slow, noodling
acoustic guitar with those dreadful encoded vocals, thankfully lasting
not more than two minutes.
The good news here is a couple of spooky country-western send-ups, complete
with Robert Hunter lyrics that deal with the usual country-western topics
(personal problems with the juridicial branch of power in 'Dupree's Diamond
Blues', personal problems with maturing in 'Doin' That Rag'), but dress
them up in pretentious and not very entertaining imagery. However, nobody
listens to the Dead for the lyrics: I'm able to enjoy the former song
because it has the closest thing to a solid melody on the album (one has
only to close one's eyes to the fact that it's a generic country-western
pattern), and able to enjoy the latter one because the chorus features
a fast, nice, inviting, and at the same time somewhat ominous riff (Garcia's
trademark style, eh? or is it Bob Weir? I'm not sure of their separate
functions on the albums) that nicely intertwines with the organs. I'd
say that the song presages the very similar (in mood, not in melody) 'Friend
Of The Devil' on Beauty, but of course, this one is overlong and overall,
still boring, at least when it comes to the regular verses.
Apart from these two acceptable numbers and some tasteful slide work on
'Cosmic Charlie' that more or less works as the album closer (it could
have been shorter by a couple of minutes too, though), however, there's
no real good news about the record. 'China Cat Sunflower', the best known
song off the album, is plain stupid - a typical example of how crazy and
pointless hippie music could be when it wanted to. Some say that it was
a great live number, but I can't judge by the version on here. It's completely
chaotic, with several guitars going in completely different directions
and a complicated drum pattern that goes in a third one, while the 'nah-nah-nah'
hippie backing vocals try to simulate a 'nice' vibe throughout. And, of
course, the truly low point of the album, for which I refuse to even give
it an overall rating of nine (these guys need to be punished), is a horrendous,
eight-and-a-half minute long mantra ('What's Become Of The Baby?') that
has no instrumental playing at all - just a lot of echoey, almost dissonant
chanting that makes your ears burst and your patience explode. Whereas
the liner notes call the song 'eerie', I just say that the 'song' is ridiculously
bad and could have been recorded by just anybody. Typical hippie excess,
you'll say? Well, might as well be - but that's just yet another sign
of the record having dated badly.
Whatever. I mean, the main problem is very easy to see - the band's members
were (still are, I guess, at least, the ones that are still alive) very
unskilful songwriters. And what happens when a very unskilful (but very
stoned) songwriter takes a handful of moderately decent folk/country melodies
and performs them as if he were playing a Jefferson Airplane song? You're
right - shit happens. Later on (actually, on the next album) they'd correct
this mistake, outgrow this transitional phase and throw the 'psychedelic'
elements out of their folkish rip-offs, but that would be later on. For
the moment, forget about buying this album. Isn't it strange that a band
that's always quoted as one of the main psychedelic ensembles and hippie
gurus of the Sixties didn't really hit its stride until the Seventies?
Well - like I said, shit happens...
(by George Starostin,
Only Solitaire)
|