Am I alone on this one...Live vs Studio Grateful Dead.

Cafe Society
1

I love the Grateful Dead, but I feel like I’m the only one who much prefers their studio music over the live concerts. Don’t get me wrong, there’s plenty of live shows from other bands that I like just fine. I keep trying to like it. XM has a Grateful Dead station so they’re always playing full concerts. But everytime I listen to it it sounds like two singers and a handful of instruments all kind of off in their own world playing random melodies with nothing coherent between them. I’ll admit that part of it is the generally terrible sound quality and I’m sure part of it has to do with jumping in in the middle of the show instead of getting really into it right from the beginning. The lack of intoxicating substances probably doesn’t help either. But even with all that, I just can’t find the appeal.

Does anyone else prefer their studio music?

2

Yes

3

Yes I’m alone or Yes you also prefer studio recordings?

4

I also prefer to listen to, via media, the studio recordings. But…I am that way with just about any music.

To me, there is a wide use-gap between live performances and recorded music.
(I don’t know what ‘use-gap’ means to anyone else, but I am making it up now to substitute for whatever word I’m looking for)

In live performance, you are entering the musicians’ world. They are sharing it with you, and sharing more than just music: you can get that from a CD. Not all bands provide good entertainment; that’s just a fact. And nothing wrong with that; there is at least one band, and several styles of music, that I enjoy seeing live but don’t listen to otherwise, because they’re great entertainers, and I appreciate that. The music just doesn’t resonate with life in general.

In recorded performance, the listener is bringing the music to the listener’s world, adapting it to suit the listner’s particular desires at the time.

To me, it’s just two very different experiences, and I am actually surprised when I find performers who I enjoy both ways.
While I do have fond-ish memories of my one and only Dead show, and appreciate several of their songs…the studio versions…the live versions just do nothing for me. (And in fact are rather annoying)

Edit: My grammar, et al, absolutely SUCKS in this post, and I am going to beg forgiveness rather than go fix it. I’m currently in a gorgonzola-and-honey induced haze, and am not inclined to pull out of it just yet

5

Yes. :wink:

Okay, yes, in the cold sober light of day (which in my case has been the past 35 years, give or take) I much prefer them in the studio. I love the band but I never really got the live messy reel-to-reel bootleg aesthetic.

6

Definitely not. Live/Dead and Dick’s Picks IV blow away the only two great studio albums, Workingman’s Dead and American Beauty. So do many other of their live shows now available on CD. They have well over 50 shows available in whole or in part at their website, www.dead.net.

7

in a studio there can be quality mixing, multitracks and good acoustics. also some processing or other affects done.

live can have less than good acoustics, flubbed parts. jamming can feed off crowd energy and result in 3 or more hours of music with high energy.

if you listened to lots of studio work before seeing live it might produce an expectation.

studio work and live, especially for a jam band, can be very different. you can like both but might be in the mood for one or the other. you could have a live collection and not listen to the same exact song twice in a year, with their existing music that was recorded by tapers.

8

Joey P, I take it you never experienced a Dead show in person?

I can’t really imagine getting the Dead without having been there. One thing I’m very thankful for in my life is that I’m basically just old enough to have been able to see the band a bunch of times during their last performance peak, '89-'90.

9

Nope, I’m 30. Jerry died when I was 15. However, a few years back I saw the Allman Brothers with opening act Phil Lesh and Friends. At one point they were all on stage together. That’s about the closest I’ve ever been.

10

Everybody says those, the 1970 acoustic studio records. They are great, but I also like, as whole albums:

The Grateful Dead (1967)
The most accessible version of the original Pigpen-fronted band. Not quite as explosive as some '66 shows, but it’s pretty tough, and “Viola Lee” is allowed to stretch.

Ace (1972)
This was credited just to Bob Weir, and they’re all his tunes, but the whole band plays on it, and almost all the songs became live standards. It’s a Grateful Dead album. The brisk jangling innocence of “Cassidy” here doesn’t bear much relation to the way the song would take flight in concert, but it’s awfully pretty.

From the Mars Hotel (1974)
“Unbroken Chain” is the one Dead song for which the studio version really is better than any of the live ones.

Blues for Allah (1975)
The record where they really left Pigpen’s band behind (two years after his death, and much longer since he’d been the performing center). Totally original, and fairly difficult for many listeners, but one of the finer-polished jewels in the studio legacy.

Terrapin Station (1977)
The orchestra parts and production sheen were derided among some live aficionados, but I like it. I wish they’d gotten around to finishing the music for all the rest of Hunter’s “Terrapin” suite lyrics that don’t appear here.

And I like scattered cuts from all the others.

Still, the studio work is such a small part of the Dead’s output and legacy, there’s no way I’d be as devoted as I am if that’s all there was. Hell, there were a couple hundred songs in the performing repertoire over the years that were never recorded in the studio at all!

I don’t have XM myself, but I’ve heard the Dead channel there, and you’re right, it’s not the best presentation of the live material.

What are a couple of your most favorite studio cuts? Maybe there’s a good-quality whole-concert recording particularly featuring those songs which would appeal to you.

11

My favorites are probably just the “normal” stuff the casual listener will have heard. I’m not a die hard fan, I just like them…
Truckin’
Casey Jones
Sugar Magnolia
Uncle John’s Band
Mexicali Blues
Friend of the Devil
Mississippi Half Step
Shakedown Street
Chinacat Sunflower
Feel Like A Stranger
Hell In A Bucket

I suppose, as far as GD goes, this is probably the poppiest stuff they have.

12

Joey P, as much as I love the historical literacy, the brilliant live innovation and sheer technical mastery that the Grateful Dead brought to American rock-n-roll in the late 1960’s (and well beyond), the magic was never truly captured in a studio setting, but instead was chronicled live in random settings---- nondescript dumps, small, run down theaters, little out-of-the way venues in off the beaten track locations and then finally proper concert halls, then ampiththeaters and eventually stadiums in the final years that the music was really running it’s course.

13

Well, my sister brought the Dead home from college to me, and my first exposure was studio work, then I went on to do my share of shows during my hippy days, so I’d say that going to a show and having the whole live audience experience is awesome, but when it comes to popping in a CD I own more studio than live. I also think that Wake of the flood, Blues for Allah and In the Dark are great albums.

14

I’m a big fan of Unbroken Chain and Terrapin Station. But Mars Hotel is a weak album except for that song. In my opinion. Terrapin Station is great, but it was far better on the many live albums it is available on.

Unbroken Chain wasn’t performed live until the last year and the performances were okay, but the sound is weak and the studio performance is just better in that instance.

15

Song-wise some of my favorite tunes are live only (AFAIK) - Jack Straw, Wharf Rat, Dark Star (yeah, I know there’s a studio version, but it’s not a real Dark Star).

Other songs from the studio have live versions (if I can find one) that aren’t very impressive - the aforementioned Unbroken Chain, New Potato Caboose (one of my all-time favorite Dead tunes off of my favorite Dead album Anthem of the Sun) so I much prefer the studio versions.

Anthem of the Sun was my introduction to the Dead from my college roommate. I was a prog/'70s fusion kind of guy and their country stuff didn’t really do much for me at first but Anthem got me hooked. Another one of their studio albums I liked was Wake of the Flood. There’s something about the sound and production that gives it a particular mood that I enjoyed.

These days Anthem of the Sun is the only studio album on the iPod and the rest is live. That’s where they reached their highest peaks as a band. IMO, of course.

I think people ultimately gravitate towards the live material because it’s the band at their best and there’s so much live material out there. You can indulge your preferences. It’s like wine. Would you like a '71 Dark Star, a '74 Dark Star or an '85 Dark Star? Soundboard or audience? Do you prefer your Help on the way/Slipknot/Franklin’s Tower with or without Keith and Donna? We have plenty in stock!

16

Anthem of the Sun, as I expect you know mack (but others may not), is actually a studio album assembled from live recordings, edited and layered atop one another, with further studio recordings and processing. I think of it in a category with Infrared Roses and Grayfolded–neither a pure studio record nor a true live one. (I like all three of these very much, but they’re surely among the least accessible things in the Dead catalog!) If I’m not mistaken, the “New Potato Caboose” and some other parts of Anthem appear in their unedited live form on Road Trips: Vol. 2, No. 2: Carousel 2/14/68.

17

I think you’d have to say that Touch of Grey is their poppiest tune, it was, like, ya know, a top ten hit, and shit.:wink:

18

I listen to a genre of music that I call “We were stoned when we recorded this, we’re counting on you being stoned when you listen to it”. I’d say that applies to a lot of live “jam band” music.

I know MY standards are lower for live music. But, then, I’m happy to trade professionalism, and even a “clean” sound, for spontaneity and some brownies from that cute girl in the handmade peasant blouse.

19

I did huge amounts of LSD on a regular basis for about twenty years, and as a consequence of that I spent a good deal of time in the company of deadheads.

I love American Beauty and Working Man’s Dead. Most of their other studio stuff I’m ambivalent about. Their live stuff makes me want to kill myself.

20

I like them both as a live band and a studio band. Their musicianship and rapport on stage was amazing – someone would start picking a tune during a lull and everyone would pick it up (there’s an amazing live version of “Finiculi, Finicula” that still blows me away because it’s clear they didn’t rehearse the piece at all – yet it sounded like they’d played the song for years). About the only thing I don’t care for live is “The Other One,” which, for some reason, they played nearly every show.

What was nice was that live they made changes and improvised on the studio versions of songs, turning them into something that had all the good qualities of the studio song but more of them.

What I liked about them live was that they took chances and didn’t try to duplicate the studio sound. The improvised and created some great music that wouldn’t fit into a studio format.