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The Grateful Dead, or the quintessence of Psychedelia. And not the polished, sophisticated kind of the post-Meddle Floyd, nor the sugary, pop-ish one of the Beatles; but the raw, sick, and rebellious kind; a child of the blues that crawled out of a muddy swamp and decided to drop a dose of mescaline and fly towards the infinities of space.
Fathers of an almost endless discography (to be fair, not always up to par), the Grateful hide within their studio albums some gems like Aoxamoxoa and American Beauty, just to name the most famous; but it's only live that the Dead show their full and terrifying potential; in this realm, they enjoy, often under the influence of dubious substances, disrupting the structure of their songs in long and thrilling jam sessions that easily exceed 20 minutes in length. Not surprisingly, the pinnacle of their production is the amazing double Live/Dead, a cornerstone of the genre and music as a whole, which contains, among other things, Dark Star, THE symbol of psychedelia, one of those tracks capable of wiping out entire discographies.
After this album, the band, probably realizing too late that they had the terrible idea of releasing one of those Masterpieces that will haunt you for your entire career and overshadow everything you'll do from that point on, decided, to avoid cumbersome comparisons with their past, to veer slightly to the side, adding country elements to their sound which finally introduced the group to the large American masses; less delirious than at the beginning but still of excellent quality.
So after two albums much loved by the public, the group decided to record a new live album, also a double, theoretically christened Grateful Dead but known to most, due to the splendid cover, as Skull & Roses. I’ll state right away that the album doesn't reach the heights of the first live (how could it, anyway? Albums like that are recorded, if you're among the few chosen, only once in a career) but it is nevertheless an excellent, as well as a very enjoyable testimony of this extraordinary group in the second phase of their career. Given the recent past, the Blues/Country sounds stand out more compared to Live/Dead, and there are more tracks with shorter durations, but there are also more pronounced echoes of the sounds of the early days, such as in the 18 minutes of "The Other One" or in the two final tracks, both nearing ten minutes.
In short, a worthy manifesto of what the Grateful Dead were at that time, a historic group at the peak of its maturity. This will be followed by another massive triple album recorded during the first tour in the old continent (Europe '72, always very interesting) and then the band will enter a temporary phase of creative stagnation, followed by a career of more subdued tones, but still open to experimentation and capable of creative flair, as demonstrated by the good and experimental "Blues for Allah".
Peace & Love!
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