Grateful Dead (Skull & Roses) CD

The Grateful Dead: Jerry Garcia, Bob Weir (vocals, guitar); Ron "Pigpen" McKernan (vocals, harmonica, keyboards); Phil Lesh (vocals, bass); Bill Kreutzmann (drums, percussion).
Recorded at RCA Victor Studio A, Hollywood, California and Coast Recorders, San Francisco, California. Includes liner notes by Blair Jackson.
All tracks have been digitally remastered using HDCD technology.
Contains an untitled hidden track which follows "I'm A Hog For You."
Grateful Dead: Jerry Garcia, Bob Weir (vocals, guitar); Phil Lesh (vocals, bass instrument); Ron "Pigpen" McKernan (harmonica, organ, background vocals); Bill Kreutzmann (drums).
Additional personnel: Merl Saunders (organ).
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." These tracks were restored in 2001, when the Dead's Warner Brothers catalog was reassessed for the Golden Road (1965-1973) box set.] ~ Lindsay Planer
The Grateful Dead's second live release was an eponymously titled double LP whose cover bears the striking skull-and-roses visual motif that would become instantly recognizable and an indelibly linked trademark of the band. As opposed to their debut concert recording, Live/Dead (1969), this hour and ten minutes concentrates on newer material, which consisted of shorter self-contained originals and covers. Coming off of the quantum-leap success of the studio country-rock efforts Workingman's Dead (1969) and American Beauty, Grateful Dead offers up a pair of new Jerry Garcia/Robert Hunter compositions -- "Bertha" and "Wharf Rat" -- both of which garnered a permanent place within the band's live catalog. However, "The Other One" -- joined in progress just as Billy KreutzmannRolling Stone (11/11/71, pp.55-56) - "...a mixture of pleasant good-time music and solid solos, brought up and made even more attractive by the Dead's uniquely rich and magestic sound..." -Lenny Kaye
Q (7/93, p.107) - 3 Stars - Good - "...It's on originals like Garcia's haunting, melancholic 'Wharf Rat' and Bob Weir's tricky 'Playing In The Band' that they're at their best and Bill Kreutzmann's bomping drums are things of joy as ever..."
Down Beat (1/02, p.74) - 3.5 stars out of 5 - "...Clarified the band's instrumental strengths and a propensity for collective improv..."
Mojo (Publisher) (p.152) - "This is the Dead as garage band....It's improved with age and re-mastering, restoring faded guitars solos and adding prime outtakes..."