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Towards the end of the 60s, San Francisco and California in general were populated by hippies, lysergic acids were legal, and those famous "happenings" were assuming ever larger proportions.
It was in this setting that Jerry Garcia put together the Grateful Dead; like the hippie movement itself, this band found itself with an inordinate number of musicians who filled even the largest stages, just think of the line-up... 4 guitarists, two drummers, vocals, keyboards, and more.
Live/Dead is exactly one of those live recordings made during those happenings, the band and particularly Garcia played under influence, they were all up on that stage and all together, each song lets the artists go into improvisations, but simultaneously they remain united as if they were an aerobatic squadron painting the sky with their smoke trails, and once they exit the scene, the sky resembles a painting.
Dark Star would become one of their warhorses accompanying them during their countless live performances, just this one stretches over 20 minutes, inebriating, mystical, and never monotonous or heavy.
Saint Stephen starts with timid noises from Garcia's guitar, flows into a psychedelic melody and recalls Easy Rider-like scenarios.
Every song on this album has its own flavor, always seasoned with the same essence of the Grateful Dead. This album, if absorbed under the right circumstances, can make those same atmospheres come alive again that surrounded the band during the years of their peak... those years when they all together occupied a building in San Francisco, lived happily, carefree... lysergic.
A tip: if you have the chance to taste the vinyl version... don't miss it.
Tracklist Lyrics Samples and Videos
01 Dark Star (23:07)
Dark star, crashes
Pouring its light into ashes
Reason tatters, the forces tear loose from the axis
Searchlight casting, for faults in the clouds of delusion
Shall we go, you and I while we can
Through, the transitive nightfall of diamonds
Mirror shatters in formless reflections of matter
Glass hand dissolving to ice petal flowers revolving
Lady in velvet recedes in the nights of goodbye
Shall we go, you and I while we can
Through the transitive nightfall of diamonds
02 St. Stephen (06:32)
Saint Stephen with a rose, in and out of the garden he goes,
Country garland in the wind and the rain,
Wherever he goes the people all complain.
Stephen prospered in his time, well he may and he may decline.
Did it matter, does it now? Stephen would answer if he only knew how.
Wishing well with a golden bell, bucket hanging clear to hell,
Hell halfway twixt now and then,
Stephen fill it up and lower down and lower down again.
Lady finger, dipped in moonlight, writing "What for?" across the morning sky.
Sunlight splatters, dawn with answer, darkness shrugs and bids the day good-bye.
Speeding arrow, sharp and narrow,
What a lot of fleeting matters you have spurned.
Several seasons with their treasons,
Wrap the babe in scarlet colors, call it your own.
Did he doubt or did he try? Answers aplenty in the bye and bye,
Talk about your plenty, talk about your ills,
One man gathers what another man spills.
Saint Stephen will remain, all he's lost he shall regain,
Seashore washed by the suds and foam,
Been there so long, he's got to calling it home.
Fortune comes a crawlin', calliope woman,
Spinnin' that curious sense of your own.
Can you answer? Yes I can.
But what would be the answer to the answer man?
03 The Eleven (09:21)
High green chilly winds and windy vines
In loops around the twisted shafts of lavender,
They're crawling to the sun.
Underfoot the ground is patched
With arms of ivy wrapped around the manzanita,
Stark and shiny in the breeze.
Wonder who will water all the children of the garden
When they sigh about the barren lack of rain and
Droop so hungry neath the sky.
William Tell has stretched his bow till it won't stretch
No furthermore and/or it may require a change that hasn't come before.
No more time to tell how, this is the season of what,
Now is the time of returning with our thought
Jewels polished and gleaming.
Now is the time past believing the child has relinquished the rein,
Now is the test of the boomerang tossed in the night of redeeming.
Seven faced marble eyed transitory dream doll,
Six proud walkers on the jingle bell rainbow,
Five men writing with fingers of gold,
Four men tracking down the great white sperm whale,
Three girls waiting in a foreign dominion
Riding in the whalebelly, fade away in moonlight,
Sink beneath the waters to the coral sands below.
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