Grateful Dead

....the IKYR that had Jerry singing the "wish I was a headlight..." verse twice. Can't recall it right now, but I know it's out there. That's a neat version....

Love that tune! Wish they had played it more. Guess it plays better as an acoustic stand alone and they figured the electric version needed China Cat to get things rolling. Kinda like Peanut Butter needs jelly. Sometimes I just like peanut butter though. (with a touch of sourwood honey) The Harpur College version gets me every time. Just got my new stereo system and broke it in with a 2 show farewell (5/25/5/26 72) to the baddest dude this side of Josey Wales; that be Pigpen, of course. Oh its soooo sweet! Bought the Dylan mono recordings last week. Heard great things! After my spending splurge, settled on the Red Rocks stand alone. Dave 15 made me a 78 believer. Bobby sang a respectable Good Lovin for the last 15 to 20 years; however, it's just not the same without Pig. Wish they would have put that baby to bed after Pig. Man, you got to work hard to find reason to complain about music when u be a DeadHead. Have a wonderful weekend cats. And if the mood and opportunity strikes ya; getcha some good lov'in, for Pig's sake!!!!!!!! Sammy T

I heard Keith in a TV interview say that Page was an amazing player but musically Zeppelin did nothing for him -- not a fan at all. Pete Townsend said more or less the same but that he like them all personally and that Zeppelin got bigger than The Who.

Jerry said similar things in a 78 interview (think it was 78). And, likewise, he mentioned having liked their later stuff or later LPs. I would guess Jerry liked Morrison Hotel and LA Woman. Both of which have a strong blues element. Krieger apparently, and maybe there are others here who could elaborate this better, was playing classical and flamenco style guitar while finger picking. Hence Jerry's Raga Rock comment.

Subtle, that Garcia. I actually enjoyed that write-up a lot. I bought all the doors albums in Jr. High.. so I listened to them when I was young but the only CD of theirs I ever bought was LA Woman and I'm not sure if I ever even played it. I like them.. but well.. Interesting take. I can see that coming from Jerry. I half assumed it had something to do with the Bear LA days, when Jim used to send people to them to score for him. This makes a lot more sense.

The Doors were a great band to my ears. L.A. Woman is a better album than any of the Dead's studio work in my opinion (although Workingman's Dead comes close). Its funny, Keith Richards gave an interview a few months ago where he referred to the Grateful Dead as "boring shit, man". I love the Rolling Stones, the Doors and above all the Grateful Dead so its funny to hear them putting each other down. I think I read somewhere Jerry wasn't impressed by Jimmy Page and Zeppelin either who are rightfully regarded as amongst the greatest of all time. Maybe its because I dont approach popular music with a musician's ear but through the ears of a fan. And while we're on the subject of greatest American band, after the Dead the Velvet Underground rank very highly in my mind, they were definitely revolutionary-

From a 6/11/81 Gans/Jackson interview with Garcia in Conversations With The Dead: JACKSON: We're doing an issue of Bam Magazine on The Doors GARCIA: I never liked The Doors. I found them terribly offensive...when we played with them. It was back when Jim Morrison was just a pure Mick Jagger copy. That was his whole shot, that he was a Mick Jagger imitation. Not vocally, but his moves, his whole physical appearance were totally stolen from right around Mick Jagger's 1965 tour of the states. He used to move around alot, before he started to earn a reputation as a poet, which i thought was really undeserved. Rimbaud was great at eighteen, nineteen, and Verlaine. Those guys were great. Fuckin' Jim Morrison was not great, I'm sorry. I could never see what it was about The Doors. They had a very brittle sound live, a three piece band with no bass- the organ player (Manzarek) used to do it. That and that kinda raga-rock guitar style was strange. It sounded very brittle and sharp-edged to me, not something i enjoyed listening to. Kind of appreciated some of the stuff they did later, and I appreciated a certain amount of Morrison's sheer craziness, just because that's always a nice trait in rock 'n' roll. No, I never knew him, but Richard Loren, who works for us, was his agent and had to babysit him through his most drunken scenes and all the times he got busted and all that crap. He's got lots of stories to tell about Morrison. I was never attracted to their music at all, so I couldn't find anything to like about them. When we played with them, I think i watched the first tune or two, then I went upstairs and fooled around with my guitar. There was nothing there that i wanted to know about. He was so patently an imitation of Mick Jagger that it was offensive. To me, when The Doors played San Francisco they typified Los Angeles coming to San Francisco., which i equated with having the look right, but zero substance. This is way before that hit song, Light My Fire. Probably at that time in their development it was too early for anyone to make a decent judgement of them, but I've always looked for something else in music, and whatever it was, they didn't have it. They didn't have anything of blues, for example, in their sound or feel. JACKSON: Did you sense the negativity? GARCIA: No, not really. all I sensed was sham. As far as I was concerned, it was surface and no substance. Then we played with them after the Light My Fire thing, when they were headliners. We opened for them in Santa Barbara some years later, when they were a little more powerful. Their sound had gotten better - they'd gotten more effectively amplified, so Manzarek's bass lines and stuff like that had a little more throb, but their sound was still thin. It wasn't a succesful version of a three-piece band, like The Who or Jimi Hendrix, or Cream, or any other guitar power trio type three-piece bands. It's an interesting concept, a three-piece band that's keyboard, guitar, drums, but it was missing some element I thought was vital. I couldn't say exactly what it was, but it was not satisfying for me to listen to them. When they were the headliners, it was sort of embarrasing for us to open for them, cause we sort of blew them off the stand with just sheer power. What we had with double drums and Phil's bass playing - it got somewhere, and when they played there was an anticlimax feeling to it, even with their hits. In the part of my life when I was impressionable along that androgynous input, for me the people that were happening were James Dean and Elvis. Early rock and roll - i'm like first generation rock and roll influence. for me, James Dean was a real important figure. He was the romantic fulfillment of that vision.

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So I got my reply from customer service as to why my card was charged now rather than in two months time when this thing ships. Here is what they had to say on the matter: "Thank you for contacting Dead.net Customer Service. We apologize for any inconvenience. Due to the various payment issues with the Fare Thee Well box set, the company has decided to capture the funds of the pre-orders the morning after they are placed. We had quite a few issues where the item was shipped, but the funds were not captured due to expired authorizations, insufficient funds, etc. If you have any further questions or comments, please let us know." Captured, huh? Thats one way of putting it I guess. For me, this doesn't constitute best business practice. I can imagine the response when the next mega-box is announced and everybody who pre-orders gets charged hundreds of bucks months before the thing is released. Still, as long as this is the only place one can get these releases, then they can do what they like and we will keep coming back for more. The simple solution would be: Don't ship until the funds are "captured". How hard can that be?

I think I might start calling it Tahoma, like McKinley is now Denali. You know what goes friggin' great while at Mt Rainier, some good ol' 1978 Grateful Dead. And a giant can of Rainier beer of course. Take my kids camping in Ohanapecosh every summer, it's taught them a tremendous respect for the mountain. (Last major eruption was 1893 if you like that kind of trivia) Whoever mentioned the Gorge drive, spectacular too. Taking the kids to Hood River for spring break, there'll be some GD blasting on that trip too.