Search - Grateful Dead :: Birth of the Dead

The Oldest Juveniles In California

Ken Kaffke | San Francisco, CA USA | 07/06/2003

(5 out of 5 stars)

"The clarity of these mostly wide separation stereo recordings is amazing. Rhino has done a 1st class remastering on the early studio sessions that comprise disc one. The 2nd disc is compiled from various 1966 concerts, and a closer listen to several of the tracks is deserved. To catch lightning in a bottle and evoke the pre-burn out years of the hippie era with memory fragments strung together in the manner of Neal Cassidy is a thankless task I shall not try again, thank you. Allow me to continue reviewing specific numbers, especially lively material found on the 2nd disc. Previous reviewers have boiled it down to a simple one word description, "great". Yeah, okay. but why is it great? It certainly isn't new, although in way it is since most of us we haven't heard it all before. My vote for the most astonishing find goes to the set closer, Keep Rolling By. It features PigPen sharing lead vocals at the start with Garcia along with Lesh and Weir doing back-ups. It sounds a little like something off Rolling Stones Aftermath... way off! Sitting On Top Of The World is solid, nice fat sounding lead bottom from Jer. Played just as fast as on the 1st Dead album, maybe faster, which reveals that was the tempo they played in when they were young and reckless.
Garcia asks the audience before the start of Its All Over Now, Baby Blue if any of the folks in the first row has a match. By the early '70s, the band would never again be casually communicative from the stage with their intense and potentially psychotic (first row) fans.
The intro by Bill Graham is a typical good natured rib, "the oldest juveniles in the state of California, The Grateful Dead." The set opener is a laid back but slouch-free Viola Lee Blues which soon picks up the tempo. This was their big show-stopper of the day, all but forgotten now. It has a curiously short mid-section but as such doesn't wear out it's welcome.. It's followed by a take no prisoners Don't Ease Me In. Pigpen then starts into his various blues and various rhythms.
The Dead were a trip band when these recordings were made. Yet the music is blues based, and the excursions into the new folk rock are inspired more by Dylan's Bringing It All Back Home than by The Byrds.
BIRTH OF THE DEAD is raw, not half-baked or too well-done."

Birth of an extraordinary journey

Laurence Upton | Wilts, UK | 06/06/2005

(4 out of 5 stars)

"When Rhino released the box-set The Golden Road in 2001, not only did they present each of the Grateful Dead's 10 original Warners albums with masses of additional previously unreleased material, they also included a new 2CD compilation of recordings that preceded their debut album. A couple of years later each expanded, re-mastered album was released in its own right, including the new compilation.

Birth Of The Dead comprises previously hard to find tracks recorded in 1965-66 for the Autumn and Scorpio labels, including their early singles, plus, on the second disc, 14 previously unreleased live recordings from the Bay-Area, made by Bear.

Although the band always had a love of American roots music, there is not much evidence on the early sides, which are mostly conventional folk-rock and blues with an eye on the main chance. The 1965 Autumn sessions, made when they were known as the Emergency Crew, were not released at the time but included Gordon Lightfoot's Early Morning Rain, the traditional I Know You Rider, which the Byrds and doubtless other West Coast bands were also performing, and most interestingly the original Caution (Do Not Stop on Tracks), a supercharged blues jam which was to turn up on Anthem Of The Sun.

By the following summer, when they returned to the studio in a session for the Scorpio label, the band had begun to experiment and evolve, and the material, such as the traditional Cold Rain and Snow, Don't Ease Me In and Gus Cannon's Jug Stompers' Stealin' (their first single), was more indicative of where their hearts lay. A single for Verve on which they backed Jon Hendricks in 1967 is also included.

The live tracks, from various San Francisco gigs in July 1966, have been sequenced to resemble a typical concert of the period, beginning with Viola Lee Blues, another Cannon's Jug Stompers original (written by the harmonica player Noah Lewis), but transformed by the Dead over nine and a half minutes to mark the start of the extraordinary journey which they and their audience were to share over the next many years. Their original Standing On The Corner keeps company with covers of songs by Henry Thomas, Otis Redding, the Mississippi Sheiks, Bob Dylan, Slim Harpo, Jimmy Reed, Bill Monroe, Blind Willie Johnson, Little Junior Parker, Lightnin' Hopkins and Blind Arvella Grey - all songs they were never to record. The set closer, Keep Rolling By, is listed as a traditional song but is more probably one of their own, and has the late Pigpen trading vocals with Jerry Garcia.

This is a fascinating document for anyone with more than a passing interest in one of the most inventive and creative musical forces of our times"

Where it all began

Rob Watkins | Augusta, Georgia United States | 05/30/2003

(4 out of 5 stars)

"this album was originally part of the rhino boxed set of the warner brothers material, but now is released on its own. jerry garcia had approved this before he died, so it is kind of a mystery it took so long to get here. these are the first recordings of the nascent dead still known as the warlocks. they consist of one disc of demos and a second of live tracks. all in all it's a great collection of songs we all know and love revealing a bluesier dead than we may know. pigpen was still in the fore and it shows. jerry and bob are still finding their identities, but its all there. get this and twirl with your mommas!"