Grateful Dead Fillmore West 1969 CD

 This and Live/Dead are ESSENTIAL primal GD!
This is coming from someone who literally has thousands of hours of live GD music in his collection. Disc 3 alone is proof that the band was never the same once Pigpen became ill and eventually passed. There was just SOMETHING about the way they jammed so intensely (1) behind him and (2) coming out of the Pigpen-led numbers. The 25-minute "Jam" is unreal...such intensity that does not let up. Amen!
Submitted by c (c@zmosis)
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 Magical
I've always listened to the 1969 Grateful Dead with a little hesitation. I often thought the Dark Stars from this year were a little bit loud and the feedback on Garcia's guitar and Constanten's soul-less organ were a little too much for my ears. But I've also heard some great '69s. I bought this album on my birthday and listened to the entire thing in one day. Here's my opinion: Disc 1: Morning Dew is an extremely beautiful opener. The vocals seem a little bit off on the first disc, even on the Pig Pen tracks, but it's the music that makes up for that. Good Morning Little Schoolgirl proves Pig Pen to be the ultimate bad ass. Doin' That Rag, has always been, in my opinion, a somewhat silly song, but there have always been those parts that tickle me pink when I hear them like the barbershop thing at the end. I'm A King Bee is solid though the greatest version of that song is from Birth Of The Dead in 1966. If you want my opinion the Birth Of The Dead performance of King Bee may be Pig Pen's finest hour at a time before the Dead was playing long jams. Cosmic Charlie has a great slide solo opening and then we have Turn On Your Lovelight which was always a great closer with Pig bringing down the house. Disc 2: Dupree's Diamond Blues starts off the next night with an acoustic flavor as Garcia rearranges the folk classic Betty And Dupree. Played very simply with a great story (he could've played it back in the 20s), we then go into the Dead's ultimate fairy tale, Mountains Of The Moon. This is where Constanten's organ playing is welcome to my ears. I love the little acoustic solo Garcia plays at the end before swapping his guitar for the electric and launching like a cat on silent feet into Dark Star. This evening I was taking a walk near the ocean heading north in the direction of San Francisco. As this song was playing, I realized that I was only 25 miles away from where they had played it 39 years earlier. Following Dark Star is St. Stephen which rocks mightily then going into The Eleven. At one point in this song, when you know they are going to go into Death Don't Have No Mercy, Tom Constanten leaves his organ post and Pig Pen comes in. You'll notice that Pig's organ playing is definitely more full of the blues. Death Don't Have No Mercy closes the poetic journey of Disc 2: Disc 3: That's It For The Other One is where Bobby shines. This is his finest hour from the 60s. Through the heavy bombardment movements of The Other One to the slow, orchestra like waltz of Jerry's Cryptical Envelopment, it's a very intense performance sort of like the one heard on Two From The Vault. Alligator is next, with Pig Pen singing about the biggest old alligator that he's ever seen. And then Kreutzmann and Hart give us our six minute drum solo. After some chanting the drummers launch us into an almost half hour jam which goes through many changes. We then get one more taste of Pig Pen with Caution (Do Not Stop On Tracks) which seems kind of forgettable after what we've just heard. But it's still worth a listen. If you have Live/ Dead, you might recognize that at the seven second mark at the beginning of Feedback through the 37 second mark at the end of And We Bid You Goodnight is the same performance from Live/ Dead. It truly is a magical performance by the American version of the Magnificent Seven.
Submitted by Will (Half Moon Bay, CA, USA)
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