Grateful Dead
Infrared Roses

I said to myself: why are you going to review the historic albums of the Grateful Dead, surely everyone has them, both the studio pearls and - especially - the legendary live ones: Live/Dead, Europe '72, Skull ‘n Roses, Steal Your Face, Dead Set, Reckoning, Without A Net, not to mention the avalanche of invaluable live recordings that have exhausted fans and bankrupted entire families (I'm missing about ten Dick’s Picks, but I don't have the courage to get them from the USA). Then in my substantial collection, I found, right next to Without A Net, a themed compilation that in '91 the Dead decided to dedicate to the "Space" sections of 1989 and 1990, plundering even (in my opinion and not only mine) several versions of "Dark Star" and some other instrumental cues pre and post "Drums" (the famous "Jam" sections).

Here a brief illustration is appropriate for the benefit of the poor in spirit (but theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven) who may not be familiar with such terms, and may their lordships have indulgence, because like all Deadheads I cannot conceive of the existence of infidels who do not profess the Word of Garcia. When the Grateful Dead developed their complete musical form, at some point around '67, two different souls coexist in Them, which only in this band will always manage to live together and interpenetrate: the knowledge and veneration of traditional music of the USA - from bluegrass to jug music, from country to rock and roll, from soul to R’n’B - and the ability to get lost and lose listeners in the most incredible jams that rock music has ever recorded. These torrential improvisations on stage, not infrequently over 30 minutes long, could take cues indifferently from both Wilson Pickett's "In The Midnight Hour" (32 minutes in 1967, from "Fallout From The Phil Zone") and, traditionally, from a short three-minute single with a gigantic impact on the history of rock, called "Dark Star" (48 minutes in 1972). Another characteristic element of their jams became the absolute free form (sometimes dissimilar from free jazz only for the lack of winds), the coexistence of different genres and musical inspirations in the same track and the overall and constant pleasantness and epicness of even the most atonal improvisations, which soon spread the legend of the constant telepathy on stage between the members of the Dead. Indeed, the way the band constantly accommodates variations, sudden curves, the famous "segues" between tracks improvised by the individual members, particularly by the uncatchable and liquid lead guitar of Jerry Garcia, "Captain Trips," seems really otherworldly. The Dead's free improvisations will soon become a special attraction of their concerts, and even when the multiplication of classics and the contraction of the average length of tracks (at the end of the "acid" period) will suggest the thinning from the set or the lyophilization of the legendary “Dark Star” and “The Other One," the band will always include more or less extensive improvised sections, from five to twelve minutes, often repeated several times in the kilometer-long sets (even five hours of concert).

This "Infrared Roses," a collage of heterogeneous sections and dates distant from each other, is structured in the form of four suites (like the four sides of a double live album) of three movements each and is characterized by the particularly futuristic sound that the Grateful Dead adopted from around 1988 until the last concert of July '95, making extensive use of MIDI guitars and synthesizers, snare and steel drums, synthesized basses and everything that makes a show, including a ton of lasers on stage because the eye also wants its share and the Dead were still those who in '78 had played at the foot of the Pyramids with a truly pharaonic light show. Appropriately, the sound collage takes its cue from the spontaneous music that the legions of Deadheads have always produced with voices, hands, and feet waiting for the band to come out, and what else could a tribe of hundreds of crazies do, following the Grateful Dead’s trucks by motorcycle and car, camper and tent concert after concert, location after location, during long tours? Then flow alien landscapes, sapphire rivers, alabaster skies, and obsidian beaches, tribal percussion and rhythm machines, synth guitars and pulsing basses, the sax of Branford Marsalis and all the effects that the band has managed to gather under this galaxy of psychedelic and always very elegant perceptions (like the sound effects of “Dark Side Of The Moon”). Among the great improvisations selected here, I will only mention “Little Nemo In Nightland," a wonderful title inspired by Winsor McCay's character for one of the most beautiful and imaginative tracks that the Dead have ever recorded, in the hope that listening to this 58-minute spatial digest (still composed of mostly unreleased concert excerpts) will suggest deepening, affection, and thereafter frenzy towards the legendary, lost Grateful Dead. In 1995 Jerry will leave the earthly world, undoubtedly smiling as he had always done throughout his life, and there will be no doubts about the end of the group. Despite the occasional reunions and nostalgic projects of the Other Ones, Dead, and Furthur, it is probably not possible to imagine the band without those famous nine fingers, and no guitarist has yet dared to imagine taking his place. The treat for the Deadheads is the appointment of July 4, 2015, at Soldier Field, where the last concert of the Grateful Dead and the last public appearance of Jerry Garcia took place, for a celebration both twentieth and fiftieth (the Dead were formed in 1965) and a reunion of at least three concerts, which obviously promise to be legendary and full of guests. In all these years Bob Weir, Phil Lesh, and the two drummers Hart and Kreutzmann have shown themselves to be exceedingly active, engaged in many projects and always talented, and we all expect a new page of history. “And we bid you goodnight”!