MoeFOH's Album of the Week... Week #31

[MoeFOH]

MoeFOH's Album of the Week 🎶

Same as the movie thread, each week we're going to spotlight an album... be it a classic, new release, hidden gem, or outright turd... and open it for discussion: i.e. post up your favourite tracks, clips, lyrics, experiences if you saw live, etc... or dive deeper and give us a critique on why you think it's great, overrated, or a complete train wreck... And finally score it for us...  

All contributors go into a monthly prize draw for a 3-cigar sampler! 

PM me with suggestions if there's an album you want to nominate for next week's discussion. 

 

Week #31: Live/Dead

Wiki says: 

Live/Dead is the first official live album released by the rock band Grateful Dead. Recorded over a series of concerts in early 1969 and released later the same year, it was the first live rock album to use 16-track recording.

In 2005 the tracks "Dark Star", "St. Stephen", "Death Don't Have No Mercy", "Feedback" and "We Bid You Goodnight" were released, in their original sequence and with a new mix, on the respective February 27, 1969 and March 2, 1969 discs of the Fillmore West 1969: The Complete Recordings box set (the first 1:34 of "Dark Star" can be found on the previous track, "Mountains of the Moon"). "Feedback" and "We Bid You Goodnight" were also released on the triple disc, highlights release Fillmore West 1969.

The album was met with very positive reviews, with Village Voice critic Robert Christgau writing that it "contains the finest rock improvisation ever recorded" and Rolling Stone magazine's Lenny Kaye saying it foreshadows "where rock is likely to be in about five years". In his ballot for Jazz & Pop magazine's 1970 critics poll, Christgau ranked Live/Dead as the third best popular music album.

In retrospect, AllMusic notes that "few recordings have ever represented the essence of an artist in performance as faithfully as Live/Dead", while Grateful Dead scholar Blair Jackson regards it as the best psychedelic rock album of the 1960s. Engineer and author Michael Hageloh claims that with the album, the Dead "spontaneously create[d] the form now known as 'jam rock'" and became "legends with a generation-spanning cult following". Drummer Bill Kreutzmann comments "It was our first live release and it remains one of our best-loved albums. Its appeal was that it took great 'you-had-to-be-there' live versions of songs like 'Dark Star' and 'The Eleven' and put them right in people’s living rooms.

In 2003, the album was ranked number 244 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the 500 greatest albums of all time, and 247 in a 2012 revised list. It was voted number 242 in the third edition of Colin Larkin's All Time Top 1000 Albums (2000). Based on such rankings, the aggregate website Acclaimed Music lists Live/Dead as the 395th most critically acclaimed album in history.

Over to you...

How do you rate it? 🤔

Thoughts, experiences, memories... post em' up! 

Score it out of 10!  

[MoeFOH]

 

[Doctorossi]

I haven't heard it in decades. I don't think I'd have an opinion unless/until I hear it again.

[joeypots]

This one is a little too trippy for me. Skull and Roses? That’s  an album.

[Namisgr11]

I vaguely remember being a Deadhead in college in the early 70s.  😜  I concur with joeypots in that Skull and Roses and Europe '72 are my favorite live Dead albums, with more rocking, bluesy, and country-western goodness than Live Dead.  But the latter captures the era of the acid-soaked Fillmore shows the best, and Pigpen hadn't yet become the very sick shell of his earlier soulful self.  Dark Star, taking up an entire side of vinyl, will forever be a classic of acid improv, arguably its greatest example of all.  Get out your lava lamps, incense, and Colombian gold!

[Chibearsv]

Dead never has really interested me.  Too mellow.  Although one of my favorite lifetime quotes is from one of my roommates when I lived in Boulder: "Dude, we're going to drop acid and see the Dead at Red Rocks". Still cracks me up that it was such a matter of fact statement.  I've heard plenty of Dead songs from those days but in words of this forum, I don't get it.

[bassistheplace]

I still like the Dead. Spent some Spring Breaks following them in the mid-80's. While Skulls and Europe are more "listenable" I like how Live gets how weird this band could get. 7/10 for me