Grateful Dead (Skull & Roses) [Remaster]

Performer: Grateful Dead
Artist: Merl Saunders
Engineer: Bob Matthews; Betty Cantor
Producer: Grateful Dead
Distributor: WEA (Distributor)

Notes: 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 self-titled first album contains the main ingredients of the unique musical stew the band would brew over the coming years. Upon its release in March 1967, it brought the musical and philosophical ideals of the freak counter-culture out of the Bay Area and into the ears of mainstream America. "The Golden Road (To Unlimited Devotion)" is a Summer Of Love anthem nonpareil. "Good Morning Little Schoolgirl" shows off the Dead's ability to reinterpret the blues, and Pigpen's natural front-man qualities. The hyperactive rockabilly of Jesse Fuller's "Beat It On Down The Line" and the rearranged traditionals "Sitting On Top Of The World" and "Cold Rain And Snow" are proof that, despite the group's anti-establishment fashions, their lyrical symbols and musical forms were as time-honored as the English folk-tale that provided their name. While the cover of Bonnie Dobson's eerie anti-war epic "Morning Dew" and the women-and-wine rocker "New, New Minglewood Blues" are energetic portrayals of hippie values, the closing number, Noah Lewis's "Viola Lee Blues," is the album's grand, mind-blowing concoction and a highlight. The remastered version's live bonus tracks include some never-recorded garage-rock and blues cuts and a 23-minute "Viola Lee Blues" bearing the first hints of the modal riff at the foundation of Dead milestone "Dark Star." One of the things that made the Dead such a unique live act was the sheer variety of their influences. The vastness of the musical terrain they covered is well demonstrated on 1971's GRATEFUL DEAD, nicknamed "Skull & Roses" because of its cover art. It captures the band's live sound at a time when their marathon, acid-inspired concerts were swiftly becoming the stuff of legend and earning them legions of new fans. This set conveys the typical arc of a Dead show. The band could be economical and straightforward, with brisk, stripped-down numbers like the lilting "Bertha," the straight-forward country of "Me and My Uncle" and Merle Haggard's "Mama Tried," and the country-folk of "Me and Bobby McGee." They could just as easily go into lugubrious album-side-filling improvisations like "The Other One," and pump out loose-limbed, groovy versions of '50s rockers like Buddy Holly's "Not Fade Away" and Chuck Berry's "Johnny B. Goode." The set concludes with the laid-back, joyous jam of the traditional "Goin' Down the Road Feelin Bad." Conspicuous in his absence is singer/keyboardist Ron "Pigpen" McKernan, whose alcoholism was beginning to take its toll.

Rolling 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..."

The Grateful Dead were right there at the birth of the 1960s West Coast psychedelic scene, but they handily incorporated simple folk, blues, and country sounds into their swirling, jam-oriented style. With an endless touring schedule and a huge following of devoted fans, the group fueled hippie visions well into the '90s and sparked the jam-band movement that would eventually fill the void left by the dearly departed Grateful Dead after the passing of guitarist Jerry Garcia. Since Garcia's passing, surviving members of the band have participated in various musical projects, including a reunion tour in 2003 under the shortened name of "the Dead."

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