Terrapin_Station

I suppose they named "The Eleven" accidentally.

. . . not that more unusual time signatures, or a certain abundance of them, are necessary for something to be progressive rock, but the Dead used plenty of different time signatures, polyrhythms, etc.

Lisnaholic

^ This seems a bit unkind, but has an element of truth: overrated - yes: difficult to get into - yes.

Any newcomer to GD might like to try what I did; listen to and fall in love with the American Beauty album first. That's easy to do because every one of the songs is well-crafted; gentle explorations of folky/bluegrass/country rock, with GD trying out harmonies inspired by Crosby Stills and Nash. Unlike the latter, GD's lyrics are consistently good too - neat observations about life on the road, fused with psychedelic insight:

"She's got everything delightful, she's got everything I need,
Takes the wheel when I'm seeing double, pays my ticket when I speed.
She comes skimmin' through rays of violet, she can wade in a drop of dew,
She don't come and I don't follow, waits backstage while I sing to you."

Unfortunately, they never came up with another album this good, and that's where their discography degenerates into a daunting pile of weakish material imo. Good luck, Ki!

^ This certainly qualifies as an unpopular musical opinion ! Me, Wikipedia and the Guiness Book of Records all disagree with it:-

^ This is a good appraisal of their talents and weaknesses. I think you had to be there, to get swept up in the live moment and enjoy their rambling spacey jams, so innovative at the time. On record you notice how thin those captivating jams actually were, and how bad the singing too.

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"Am I enjoying this moment? I know of it and perhaps that is enough." - Sybille Bedford, 1953

JGuy Grungeman

Personally, I entirely agree they are more of a live band than anything. Anytime GD comes up, I hear constant praise for their live albums. I'm no deadhead myself, and I'm very uneducated in GD. I couldn't name anything besides Friend of the Devil. But I'm more than aware of how deadheads claim their live shows and albums are so much better.

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I'm a pretty nice troll if you ask me.

OccultHawk

I saw them twice. Obviously, their shows had an exciting drug culture carnival atmosphere. I've listened to countless bootlegs and of course official live releases. Dark Star on Live Dead is one of the greatest rock'n'roll achievements ever but... I think when you really boil it down, your typical Dead Head is going to insist on the live show being the crux of the Dead experience because they want to believe they have a monopoly on that experience and quite frankly, most Dead Heads aren't very sophisticated music fans. The ones I knew couldn't appreciate anything else and therefore had no proper frame of reference for understanding what they were into. If you take a serious music fan with a wide appreciation for all types of music, it's clear their most important work was done in the studio.

But someone who toured around with them for months or years selling acid, whippets, and grilled cheese isn't likely to admit you can have a better experience just by listening to American Beauty. However, if his aesthetics were higher he probably wouldn't have bothered going to hundreds of Dead shows in the first place.

Terrapin_Station

I love live Dead, too, and there are some very cool things that they only did in live contexts, but I actually like their studio work more than anything else they did.

Re seeing them, I saw them maybe 20-30 times with Jerry going back to 1974. I've seen different offshoots since then about 15-20 times now, too, including the Chicago shows last year and the New York shows this year. Re OccultHawk's comment, I like a huge variety of music, and the Dead are only my #6 artist (after Igor Stravinsky, Frank Zappa, Todd Rundgren, Yes and Led Zeppelin . . . King Crimson would be my #7, and then after #7 I shuffle my favorites around more). But I suppose OccultHawk would say that's why I'm more of a fan of their studio work.

Chula Vista

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“The fact that we live at the bottom of a deep gravity well,
on the surface of a gas covered planet going around a nuclear fireball 90 million miles away
and think this to be normal is obviously some indication of how skewed our perspective tends to be.”

The Batlord

I think it's funny that anywhere else in America someone liking Led Zeppelin would not be cause for comment, but on a music forum Chula almost can't believe it.

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Mondo Bungle

originality > technical skill all day in terms of "talent"

Generic proggy wank is very impressive sure, but an amazing and forward thinking mind can come up with things like these, and it always baffles me where it comes from. Like, you guys just did this, somehow.

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Terrapin_Station

Well, Led Zeppelin is fairly out of fashion now with a number of demographics that post on music boards. It's not quite as bad as the Doors backlash, and certainly not as bad as the Eagles backlash yet, but it's getting there maybe.

Terrapin_Station

I'd say that craftsmanship (crafty writing/crafty playing etc.) > originality & technical skill