Grateful Dead - Fillmore West 1969
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Artist: Grateful DeadBrand: Rhino
Edition: Music CD
CD Release Date: 2005-11-01
Music Label: Rhino Records
Soundtracks:
- Morning Dew
- Good MOrning Little School Girl
- Doin' That Rag
- I'm A King Bee
- Cosmic Charlie
- Turn On Your Lovelight
- Dupree's Diamond Blues
- Mountains of the Moon
- Dark Star
- St. Stephen
- Eleven
- Death Don't Have No Mercy
- That's It For the Other One
- Alligator
- Drums
- Jam
- Caution (Do Not Stop On Tracks)
- Feedback
- We Bid You Goodnight
Music reviews of Fillmore West 1969
Music Review: More shades & tones added to the already-brilliant "Live Dead" canvas
Rating: 5 Stars
Make no mistake, this is a TOUGH CD to review.
At one end of the scale, you have the tie dyed-in-the-wool faithful, the Deadheads. At the other end, you have the folks who bristle at the mention of "The Grateful Dead." In the middle, casual fans who might enjoy American Beauty, Workingman's Dead, Grateful Dead (Skull & Roses) or Europe 72...probably the most popular of the "core" Dead albums.
In addition, albums were always a part of the Dead's merchandising strategy, but the real development of their music happened on stage. The "non-fans" are probably sick of hearing about the Dead Heads as "part of the band," but like it or not, the band's comfort zone was on stage, following that elusive muse through every hedge-maze imaginable. From Bob Weir learning to play slide guitar on stage ( ! ) to the seemingly endless waits between shows for the next mind-bending performance of "Dark Star," this band printed "There is nothing like a Grateful Dead concert" on their albums for a reason.
Live / Dead has long been considered one of the greatest live albums of all time. While many audiophiles still bemoan the coldness of digital CD technology versus the warmth of vinyl, it was a great day indeed when you could pop in a single CD and hear the album start to finish, without flipping through four album sides.
For some, "Live Dead" was a taste. For others, it was a full meal that satisfied completely.
Then came the 3-CD version of the "Live Dead" concerts we're discussing here, and the limited edition (10,000 copies) "Fillmore West 1969: The Complete Recordings."
What's the incentive for owning either if you already have "Live Dead?"
Well...imagine a painting. A brilliant one, rich in detail and staggering in complexity. And it's painted in red, green, yellow and blue...the primary colors. That's it.
And when the painter opened up his paint box and showed you the additional hues and tones and shades at his disposal, you wanted to see what he could REALLY do if you turned him loose.
"Fillmore West 1969" is a 3-disc set featuring highlights of the four nights' worth of concerts (February 27 - March 2, 1969) that spawned "Live Dead." "Fillmore West 1969: The Complete Recordings" a 10-disc set (plus a bonus disc from the Carousel Ballroom in 1968 and two other Fillmore West shows outside of the "Live Dead" run) featuring the complete performances from all four nights.
Unless you own a time machine, you can't be there. But either of the two mega-sets will get you as close as possible to the experience, rather than the edited snapshot that is "Live Dead"...even though it's still a mighty fine snapshot.
On the 3-disc set, in addition to the familiar "Live Dead" tunes, you get "Morning Dew," a 23-minute "That's It for the Other One" (quite a contrast to the brief taste consumers were given on "Skull & Roses"), which leads into the magnificent insanity of "Alligator" (4:00) > "Drums" (6:52) > "Jam" (25:31) > "Caution (Do Not Stop on Tracks)" (9:13) > "Feedback" (7:54) > "We Bid You Goodnight" (2:01).
The Dead got a little smoother after the sad passing of Mr. McKernan. When the band moved to Arista records, there was a deliberate and consistent effort on the part of the record label to "make hit records"...something that was never the band's forte. Pigpen's blues and R&B-flavored freakouts on classic tunes like "Smokestack Lightning," "Death Don't Have No Mercy" and "Turn On Your Lovelight" were as much a central element of the original band's sound as the orange sunshine bee stings that sprang out of Jerry's guitar. British bands like The Rolling Stones and John Mayall's Bluesbreakers were feeding "America's Music" back to America with chunky, testosterone-laden, Marshall stack-propelled Chuck Berry riffing, but the Dead were pioneers of "psychedelicizing" the blues (hat-tip to the Chambers Brothers for that descriptor). That led to the garage rock movement so ably immortalized on Rhino's Nuggets: Original Artyfacts from the First Psychedelic Era, 1965-1968. They tackled blues, free-form improvisation, and tight little numbers like "Cold Rain and Snow" from their first album.
They did it all, and they were fearless. And now you can dive into the deep end of the fearless pool.
In the 3 & 10 disc editions of these concerts, it's all here...the relentless jamming, exploring, searching, stumbling, falling, getting back up and roaring straight ahead without knowing where the road would go or where it would end.
Of course, there are some who might listen to ALL of the music I've written about and STILL walk away scratching their heads. That's OK...the Dead is a band you "get" or you "don't get," and you tend to "get it" at the right time, hearing the right song, straight out of nowhere.
For me, it was "Wharf Rat" on "Skull & Roses." That's when I got my first look at the master painter's paint box and saw what he could do with it. I then explored the earlier works and kept an eye on everything that followed, stunned by songs like "Stella Blue" and "Bird Song."
That said, I can recommend either the 3-disc version or the long-gone 10-disc set. They're both trembling and exploding roses.
Description of Fillmore West 1969
By 1969, the Grateful Dead's marathon free-form performances were fundamentally expanding the known boundaries of rock music. Grateful Dead Records' new 3-CD gold mine presents a bounty of iconic Dead songs recorded at their now-historic Fillmore West dates from February 27 to March 2, 1969. Indulge in the essential Grateful Dead at the Fillmore in 1969, the cosmic peak of their phenomenal rise to global superstardom.The 1969 double album Live/Dead holds a special place in the Deadhead universe; indeed, many band members and their inner circle consider it to be the band?s best overall collection as well. This expanded, three-CD edition is culled from the same February/March ?69 shows at the Dead?s de facto live home, San Francisco?s Fillmore West. What?s documented here are not only some of the greatest performances of the band?s early era, but the still-evolving template for much of the band?s later flights of improvisation. The first, blues-dominated disc pays tribute to a band that a couple years earlier had been but an ambitious bar covers ban! d, while the second chronicles the Dead?s expansive "Dark Star/St. Stephen/The Eleven" triptych wed to a cover of the Rev. Gary Davis? "Death Don?t Have No Mercy," 2/28/69 performances that turn on the freeform interplay that would become their trademark for decades to follow. The set?s final disc is highlighted by a vigorous, nearly hour-long workout that jams its way through the band?s early "Alligator," "Caution" and the obligatory drum break to the traditional closer, "We Bid You Goodnight." Said to be the first 16-track live recording, the epochal performances here are burnished to near sonic perfection via HDCD mastering, a heady, if ironic wedding of technology and the band?s rootsy, musical humanity. --Jerry McCulley
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