Grateful Dead “Grateful Dead” (aka Skull and Roses) 1971/2021 50th anniversary limited edition yellow vinyl. Today is my birthday so I’m spinning the Dead’s quintessential live album from my birth year. I’m also the only person in our household who likes the Dead and I get to listen to whatever I want to today. Grateful Dead (which the band wanted to title Skull Fuck but that was outright rejected by Warner Bros. for obvious reasons) was the band’s best selling record, charting at #25 in the US. The tracks are live performances from April 1971 at New York’s Fillmore East and Hammerstein Ballrooms plus one song, “Johnny B. Goode,” recorded live at San Fransisco’s Winterland Ballroom. I know all of these songs backwards and forwards, having spent my late teens and early 20’s as a Dead Head-lite – I only went to about 6 or 7 shows between ’89 (at Alpine Valley) and ’92 and only traveled as far as Hamilton, Ontario to see them.  That said, a few of the songs on Grateful Dead are some of my absolute favorites: “Bertha,” “Mama Tried” (originally by Merle Haggard) and “Playing in the Band” from the 1st of the 4 sides are all Dead classics. Side 2’s “The Other One” at almost 20 minutes in length is another classic but I’ll admit to spacing out/taking a bathroom break during it, just like I would during their concerts (or during “Drums/Space” – same deal). I don’t mind the noodling but it just goes on…so long. Anyway Side 3 gets back to the fun stuff, especially the aforementioned “Johnny B. Goode.” Their rendition of “Me & Bobby McGee” is ok but I did grow up on Janis Joplin’s version in heavy rotation so that will always be my preferred version. Side 4 is fantastic: the mellow-psych meandering of “Wharf Rat” is an awesome trip and the iconic cover of Buddy Holly’s “Not Fade Away” which has always been on of my top Dead picks, with the excellent dual Bo Diddley drums undercurrent with Jerry’s guitar lightly soaring overhead that morphs into the record’s final cut, “Goin’ Down the Road Feeling Bad.”

Here’s the Dead playing “Not Fade Away” at Alpine Valley in ’89: