The Day of the Dead Tribute album celebrates 50 years of the Grateful Dead. And what it illustrates is an ongoing, ever-changing, ever-evolving rich music whose only thesis has been continual exploration.
The Dead's music always changed because the original band members, who came from such different schools of music--Pigpen with the blues, Bobby with rock and country, Jerry with bluegrass, Mickey with his multi-ethnic crazy poly-rhythmic percussion, Phil with the classical and modernist Stockhausen influence--knew how to listen to each other. The band never, ever, not for even one minute, sat still. None of them forced their own vision too much onto the the concept of the band--it grew organically and constantly throughout their careers. Some times they weren't great musicians, but man did they to listen to each other well, which is what created the magic, as Weir explains in this latest interview with Rolling Stone: "if somebody was a little unsure of where we were or was hearing something differently, if you could hear that and jump on that, then the song would transform. It was magical." It still is magical, as Weir explains the current configuration of the band. But it continues to breathe on with these younger bands that pay tribute to the Dead in this 5-disc tribute album. Unafraid of exploration, they dug in and they used their ears, really listening in order to create beautiful music.
What the Day of the Dead tribute album also shows is that the Grateful Dead's magic was in the songs. The Dead's shows were legendary for the positive energy the band co-created with their audiences and the monstrous freewheeling experimental jams they were capable of. But it all started with exceptional songwriting, the launchpad for musical joy. Jerry Garcia and Robert Hunter were a perfect pair in songwriting. Hunter's penchant for storytelling--always allusions, never absolute statements, made it possible for listeners to create their own songs in their heads. Making it personal, giving the listener the option to make their own story up about the song, makes it much more powerful than an outright declaration. Put together with Jerry's tastefulness in incorporating such a broad space of the American music idiom created a whole world for listeners to get lost in. If nothing else, Jerry was an encyclopedia of American music. Whether it was blues, gospel, soul, R & B or country, he made it fit without forcing it. And the stories always fit the songs, too. Bob Weir is also a gem of a songwriter with tunes like "Jack Straw" and "Estimated Prophet" that are just timeless.
The tribute starts with "Touch of Grey" by The War On Drugs (the band name for Kurt Vile, Adam Granduciel and company). It's a perfect beginning because it's an impeccable re-imagining of the song. If you dissect the new version, bit by bit, it's the same song--similar tempo, same rhythm guitar and keyboard licks, similar inflections on the vocals, though some notable changes. But when you're done, it's a completely different, almost unrecognizable new song and could very much exist on its own. The new version is also an earworm to say the least--I heard it for days after listening to it--and it also caused me to re-think the lyrics. The truly melancholy aspect of Hunter's lyrics comes out a little better in The War On Drugs version. Hunter recollects the creation of the song in this stimulating interview and says it's strange that a song so popular you can hear it in the supermarket was written when he was in the absolute dregs. If you listen to the lyrics, it comes out, but the chords are bittersweet and you can taste some hope. "I will survive." The lines "Every silver lining's got a touch of grey" have always gotten me and maybe the song rings truer because now I, too, have a touch of grey.
There are too many highlights to mention all. I really like Courtney Barnett's take on "New Speedway Boogie"--the rhythm is perfect and along with the deadpan delivery of the lyrics, the song comes out powerful and spooky, like the original, but it's a new song. I could listen to Bryce Dessner's "Garcia Counterpoint" on repeat all day--just Jerry-like noodles on the guitar. Not Jerry, but echoes of Jerry. Bonnie 'Prince' Billy doing "Ruben and Cherise," "Bird Song," and "If I had the world to give." Another delight is the full-on symphonic and over-indulgent "Terrapin Suite." The Dead did many things in excess but they never performed "Terrapin Suite" in its entirety in concert, and this version is excessive, grandiose, and beautiful--truly inspired. Performed by The National, Grizzly Bear, members of the Brooklyn Youth Chorus, and a small symphony, they really nail it.
Banjoist Bela Fleck and bassist Edgar Meyer do a wonderful take on "Help On the Way." A longtime collaborator/friend/admirer, it does not surprise that Bela Fleck nails it. I'd like to imagine that if Jerry didn't pick up the electric guitar, he would be a lot like Bela Fleck, a virtuoso of the bluegrass world. On paper, I didn't think "Help on the Way" would work as a banjo tune, but Fleck and Meyer's technical chops do justice to when the band nailed this song, like how they did during the 8-13-75 show captured on the recording One From the Vault.
There are plenty of bands totally new to my ears included on the tribute. Up pops Charles Bradley and Menahan Street Band doing a fun, almost unrecognizable version of "Cumberland Blues." The Tallest Man On Earth & Friends doing "Ship of Fools." Never heard of these bands, but I like them now.
But musicians familiar to me showed up in different ways.
As a Jazzer, I love Vijay Iyer, who I've written about before, and I like his take on the rarely played "King Solomon's Marbles" and I appreciated Bill Callahan's laid back version of "Easy Wind." Never took Callahan as a fan of the Dead, but it makes sense. I like what Callahan said about the Dead: "I feel like the Dead managed to show the bridge from the past to the future in a respectful way. Much more so than the Stones who felt like pillagers to me. The Dead breathed life into the old songs, expanded the lungs of the old songs." It wasn't just the old songs that the Dead respected; it was the feel of the old songs. The lineage that makes us who we are as Americans playing American music.
Deadheads are known for their dogmatism. There are Grateful Dead purists who say that nothing without Pigpen is worth listening to. Given Pig died in '73 and his last show was in June 1972, we're shutting ourselves out of a lot of good music. I stand by that statement of not closing our ears to the new stuff.
I also stand by another statement I made in my Ode to Pigpen: 'If you put on, let's say, the 2-22-1969 "Turn On Your Lovelight," 22 minutes of a rollicking frenzy led by the late, great Pigpen, a true one-of-a-kind, and then compare it to, let's say, anything created in the rock and pop genres afterwards, or at least in the last 20 years, the latter is going to sound like a bunch of mopey, whiny shit made by douchebag-cleaning pansies.' It's hard to compare anything now to what the band did with Pigpen. And yes, I do believe listening to a lot of the songs on the tribute (not all), there is more of a tendency toward mopey and whiny--I'm not sure what it is with the current generation of musicians. Where is that overwhelming sensation of optimism inherent to that American sound that the Dead encapsulated? One example is Ira Kaplan's take on "Wharf Rat," but there are a number of others, even those I did like, that were on the mopey side. I'm a huge admirer of Yo La Tengo and Ira Kaplan's work--have seen them in concert multiple times in multiple continents--but "Wharf Rat" for me is a song of redemption, the closest maybe that the Dead get to the salvation trope that is the basis for Christianity. When the narrator of the song sings "I'll get up and fly away," and what a glorious feeling it is when Jerry sings those lines, we are saved. All of us. In Kaplan's version, it feels a little more like resignation than redemption. More sadness than joy. There is deep sadness in the original song, of course, like just about all the songs in "our long list of songs about tragedy,"as Bob Weir calls the Dead's repertoire. But I missed the redemption in this version. And there is missing hope in some of the other songs on the tribute, too. Even though the Dead's songs were all about desperadoes losing their way through misadventures, there was always hope and humor. Maybe it's not a bad thing that there is less hope in some of the versions on the tribute. I did like this particular version of "Wharf Rat"--didn't love it, though, admittedly, but maybe the lack of optimism says something about our times. We're not quite as innocent as we were in say 1967 or even 1990. The Times They Are A-Changing and that's what's special about timeless music. It can be re-invented to fit the new times. And I'm sure we'll be listening to re-imagined versions of the Dead 200 years from now.
