Grateful Dead - Birth Of The Dead (2003) @ 320

Birth of the Dead Review by Lindsay Planer

Before the Grateful Dead were signed by Warner Brothers, they woodshedded their style, playing live in a variety of capacities (such as their work as the unofficial house band at the various Acid Tests up and down the California coast) and also cut a handful of studio demos around the Bay Area. The double-disc Birth of the Dead includes the bulk of those incipient sessions, as well as some of their primordial concert performances -- all predating their 1967 self-titled debut album. Appropriately, for a primarily historical release, the contents are configured chronologically. The disc begins with six tracks from November of 1965 for soon-to-be legendary Bay Area underground FM DJ Tom Donahue and then-partner Bobby Mitchell, whose Autumn Records label yielded sizable sides by the likes of the Beau Brummels. Under the moniker of 'The Emergency Crew,' Jerry Garcia (guitar/vocals), Ron "Pigpen" McKernan (vocals/harmonica/organ/percussion), Bob Weir (guitar/vocals), Phil Lesh (bass/vocals) and Bill Kreutzmann (drums) recorded a cover of Gordon Lightfoot's "Early Morning Rain" -- purportedly at the behest of producers -- the communally-credited "I Know You Rider" and the originals "Mindbender (Confusion's Prince)," "Only Time Is Now," "Caution (Do Not Stop on Tracks)" and "Can't Come Down." ("I Know You Rider" stayed in the Grateful Dead's revolving repertoire for the next 30 years, while "Caution (Do Not Stop on Tracks)" would become a powerful blues-meets-psychedelia vehicle in the months ahead.) The last batch are from a mid-1966 session at Buena Vista Studios (which wasn't connected to Walt Disney) with overdubs done at Western Recorders. The results netted their first 45 rpm "Stealin'" b/w an early speedy reading of "Don't Ease Me In." (The latter resurfaced every once and a while throughout the remainder of their long, strange trip, including another studio remake for the 1980 album Go to Heaven). "Fire in the City" is an interesting footnote as the Grateful Dead back up legendary jazz singer Jon Hendricks. The number was part of a soundtrack to the anti-war documentary film Sons and Daughters (1967). The 'Live Sides' are derived from several gigs circa July 1966 and the juxtaposition provides a glimpse of how the quintet developed by leaps and bounds onstage, in real time. Extended workouts of "Viola Lee Blues," "I'm a King Bee" and "Keep Rolling By" are harbingers of the next step in their perpetual evolution, while the compact arrangements of "In the Pines," "Sitting on Top of the World," "Nobody's Fault but Mine" and "Big Boss Man" hearken back to the earlier material. All said, Birth of the Dead aptly encapsulates the band's formative era, bridging the gap between the seminal single-CD Rare Cuts and Oddities 1966 and the 1967 self-titled debut on Warner Brothers.

CD 1 (Studio) 

 1. Grateful Dead - Early Morning Rain 

 2. Grateful Dead - I Know You Rider 

 3. Grateful Dead - Mindbender (Confusion's Prince) 

 4. Grateful Dead - The Only Time Is Now 

 5. Grateful Dead - Caution (Do Not Stop On Tracks) 

 6. Grateful Dead - Can't Come Down 

 7. Grateful Dead - Stealin' 

 8. Grateful Dead - Stealin' 

 9. Grateful Dead - Don't Ease Me In 

 10. Grateful Dead - Don't Ease Me In 

 11. Grateful Dead - You Don't Have To Ask 

 12. Grateful Dead - Tastebud 

 13. Grateful Dead - Tastebud 

 14. Grateful Dead - I Know You Rider 

 15. Grateful Dead - Cold Rain And Snow 

 16. Grateful Dead - Cold Rain And Snow 

 17. Grateful Dead - Fire In The City 

CD 2 (Live) 

 01. Grateful Dead - Viola Lee Blues 

 02. Grateful Dead - Don't Ease Me In 

 03. Grateful Dead - Pain In My Heart 

 04. Grateful Dead - Sitting On Top Of The World 

 05. Grateful Dead - It's All Over Now, Baby Blue 

 06. Grateful Dead - I'm A King Bee 

 07. Grateful Dead - Big Boss Man 

 08. Grateful Dead - Standing On The Corner 

 09. Grateful Dead - In The Pines 

 10. Grateful Dead - Nobody's Fault But Mine 

 11. Grateful Dead - Next Time You See Me 

 12. Grateful Dead - One Kind Favor 

 13. Grateful Dead - He Was A Friend Of Mine 

 14. Grateful Dead - Keep Rolling By 

It’s no secret that the Grateful Dead jumped the shark many, many times during the course of their long career. In fact it’s pretty easy to dismiss the group outright as figureheads of the sixties counterculture’s gradual descent into hippie/yuppie oblivion, as their constituency dropped back into the mainstream American fold during the rather nihilistic, Cocaine-fueled post-Nam years and carried the band along with it. But behind the burden of all this history lies a remarkable early career that, while by no means providing the most extraordinary music of the times (our articles here should have made that one clear enough by now), managed to give us a good run of righteous records. Now Birth of the Dead, a relatively generous two-disc set released by Rhino Records back in 2001, adds another, perhaps even more exciting piece to the puzzle that is early Dead.

Split between studio and on-stage material, the material found on the former represent some of the band’s earliest forays into the recording studio, and the sounds they waxed during these sessions are a revelation. The band here is raw, frazzled and gnarly, still rooted in the blues and folk traditions they emerged from and free from any of the light funk fusion flavors that would come to tarnish their jams in the proceeding decade. The tempos here are fast, the guitars brittle and Pigpen’s Vox Continental dripping with garage cool. Had it come from any other group, Mindbender (possibly the crown jewel of the collection) and Can’t Come Down would be regarded as psychedelic folk-rock nuggets of the highest caliber. One almost wishes that some of the instrumental takes of these songs would be shuffled around the disc instead of being placed back-to-back with their masters, but the lack of vocals here help alleviate any repetition irritation. The most unusual cut on the first take is probably Fire In the City, in which the band is found backing jazz singer Jon Hendricks on a political number originally written for use in a mid-sixties documentary feature. The combination works much better than one might expect, with Hendricks letting his hair down a little beside Jerry Garcia’s piercing blues leads.

The live disc is a further joy, painted in surprisingly crisp sound quality and featuring a lengthy anthology of 1966 concert recordings apparently culled from a number of sources. Some of the usual suspects are to be found here, numbers which would follow the Dead onto their debut album such as Viola Lee Blues and Sitting On Top of the World, but these are backed with some rarely-heard material from the era, including a solid rendition of Dylan’s oft-covered It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue and the traditional ballad In the Pines. The blues and R&B numbers in-between are all solid, if not particularly exhilarating, but are definitely worth their weight for hearing this band in its prime really cut loose. The seven-minute closing romp Keep Rolling By has some razor-sharp Garcia guitar action going – at times sounding more like fellow Bay Area pickers John Cippollina or Jorma Kaukonen than his own latter-day self “ and a bevy of endearingly ragged group vocal shouting. Merry Prankster Dead like it should be.

So if you’ve never really given the band their due, put off by their mythological hokum and alarmingly obsessive legacy, give this set a shot and see where you end up. There’s a lot of great rock and roll to be found here, and it deserves to be taken on its own merit. And if you’re digging this and haven’t already jumped into the band’s self-titled debut (released a year after the material contained herein was recorded but born of many of the same impulses), maybe now you’ll have the proper context to digest that often underrated set. ~ Mindbender

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