I’m not a massive fan of the Dead, but what people here are saying reminds me of Neil Young, in that he can sing remarkably well in tune when he cares to, but very often doesn’t bother. The effect of that is presumably what he wants, and it certainly works for me.
There’s also the Crosby/Nash connection there as well - his harmonies with them were usually spot on.
What made me mention Phish in the first place was that a Phish song randomly came up on my MP3 player on my way to work (well, my thumb drive plugged into my car). I just had to spend the last hour or so in my car and as it turns out, it wasn’t a single song but a full length concert that had come up so listened to the next 45 minutes or so of it.
I said in my first post that I started a thread about the Dead earlier and I’ll mention the same thing here that I mentioned in the other thread, part of the problem is that most of the recordings of the Dead (live) have absolutely atrocious audio which doesn’t help anything. With Phish, not only were people bringing digital recorders to the concerts but it’s my understanding that Phish would actually let people plug their recorders directly into the soundboard. So some of the recordings are pretty damn good and the ones that aren’t really good, are still miles better then what came out of the 70’s.
I like the Dead, but I’ll take Phish over GD any day.
I know a guy who has a full wall of DAT’s (digital audio tapes) from at least the '80’s, obtained from plugging directly into the Dead’s soundboard.
The cleaner audio only points out the tuning and technical challenges the Dead wrestled with even more.
Lesh was best around 1970 when he wrote Box of Rain. His countertenor harmonies were good in Workingmans and American Beauty era.
Latter days of Grateful Dead through post-Dead side projects before the liver transplant he ranged from OK to barely tolerable. Coincidentally while typing this my iPod shuffled to Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues from Terrapin Station Live recorded 15 March 1990. He sounds just fine. My only criticism on that track is his strange diction/pronunciation of the lyrics. Maybe he’s channeling Dylan. His pitch and tone are on target.
Nowadays (second liver) he sounds fucking horrific. I haven’t listened to recordings of The Dead (latest touring incarnation) but I have listened to Phil & Friends boots ca 2000. He vocally pisses on the primal Jerry tunes (e.g. Dupree’s) on a regular basis.
I still give top marks to my Phil & Friends boots though - the extended jams with Haynes and other guests is insane.
Beg to differ with most of this.
The AUD recordings of Phish may be slightly better (yards, not miles) than comparable GD AUDs because mic technology advanced. Nevertheless tapers could and did get nice AUD pointing some Nak 300s at the wall of sound back in the day.
Phish didn’t give SBD access after 1992 or so.
The official archive of Grateful Dead (the Vault) is high quality. Betty Boards are highly circulated GD boots from the 70s. Crispy as all hell.
Heh! Now I don’t feel so bad about the song I recorded a few years ago, which makes me cringe everytime I listen. But hell, it’s on my “bucket list”, so what the shit, right? 
Thanks, by-tor, and yeah, live they really sucked sometimes. Wouldn’t a monitor solve that problem, musicians?
Thanks
Q
It wasn’t so much a question of becoming “better”, but Nash did influence them to the point where they recognized the value of good singing and harmonizing. And with many of the songs already having great lyrics, it was a shame to have them lost in the wavering reedy tenors of the band’s early days. As for alt-country, it seemed like all of rock-and-roll was gravitating in that direction once the first flash of psychedelia ended.
Notwithstanding the Dead’s better singing from Workingman’s on, give me the older psychedelic period any day. I don’t believe I own anything by the Dead later than Live Dead.
Here’s the thing, and I think I speak for most of the casual listeners of GD and Phish. I don’t know what an AUD or a Nak 300 is. All I know is what I hear on the radio and the stuff I downloaded on Napster when I was in college (which is what I was listening to in the car earlier), maybe some other old recordings I happen across from time to time. I’m not a Dead Head, it’s not that I have the 5/23/73 concert from Anycity, USA and I’m emailing people and spending time on message boards trying to find a better quality copy of it. It’s just kind of a “call 'em as I see 'em” kind of thing, not something I’m doing research on as a dedicated lifelong fan of either band.
I was going to try and make a comparison by posting the first clip that comes up on youtube when you search for “Grateful Dead Live” vs “Phish Live”. But the problem with that is that any thing on youtube of the Dead is almost guaranteed to be professionally done (since it’s video, in the 70’s) whereas there’s about a 50/50 split of cell phone video/pro work when you look at Phish stuff. So you can’t really draw a fair comparison that way.
I have said many times that at least to my ears, the best music the Grateful Dead were playing on a consistent nightly basis was in the years 1968-1969 and again in 1989-1990, both high-water marks for the kind of improvisational, loosely structured sound that defined their music…
Pigpen was at his boozy, bluesy best in the mid to late 60’s, still keeping the band somewhat grounded in the R’n’B and Blues traditions when the rest of the group were getting heavily into psychedelic free-form, and Brent Mydland was often the unsung hero of many a late 1980’s Dead show, his passion and brutal intensity lighting a fire under both Jerry Garcia and Bob Weir, not wanting to be upstaged by the young guy just itching to steal the fucking spotlight from the old road veterans…
There were a few nights in 1989 and 1990 that still make my hair stand up on end as I re-listen to them. The Grateful Dead were capable of sheer, indescribable musical brilliance on just about any given night, and they were other nights where they performed and sounded like a lackluster band of high-school kids playing in their parent’s backyard.
Most live Grateful Dead is bootlegs, right?
In my college days I got a couple of cassettes made from a couple of different band’s audio guy’s recording.
These were shows I saw, where the band sounded pretty good. But the cassettes sounded like everything was off-key.
I don’t know why that is - maybe a more technically-literate audiophile can pipe in - but lots of unedited live recordings (even from the sound board) sound out of tune.
I never saw the Grateful Dead live, either. Do people that saw them live think they sounded better live than on the bootlegs?
Also, on the Europe '72 album, the only GD album I know of that’s not a bootleg, they sound OK. Nobody’s voice is full and rich, but neither is it off-key.
Overdubs. I don’t know if there is a specific explanation for what you said about the concerts sounding better in person, but I think some flaws - like being a little off-key - are just more apparent when you’re away from the energy of the concert and giving things a second or third listen.
I am by no means a Grateful Dead fan - but was lucky enough to get the full back stage experience when they were playing in NYC at Madison Square Garden. Quite the set up - a real carnival back stage with hot dog stand, arcade cames, a few simple rides - just for the kids and families associated with the band!
Those guys traveled in style.
However, the point of this is that I could also see on stage from back stage…there was a part where each of them went on stage and did a solo…the audience was going bonkers and screaming and hooting for joy…but on stage, you see those not performing going behind a curtain.
What were they doing?
Wild sex? Drugs? Orgy and drugs?
Nope.
One had headphones and was watching a small television (I heard it was I Love Lucy on DVD), another was reading a book and another was taking a nap. So, from back stage, I could see thousands of screaming, stoned fans going nuts at the solo performance, while those in the band not performing looked like they were in the waiting room at the dentist’s office.
So, regarding being in tune, let’s just say it appeared they were all following the beat of their own inner-drummer, and doing the show by rote.
Oh, and just walking into MSG that night, I had a contact high within about half an hour and it was really kind of fun to be a part of that traveling circus, albeit just for a few hours.
the band has always allowed people to tape their concerts. you might have been restricted to a certain area of seats or lawn, that area was selected for its quality sound.
being there live is irreproducible. a good tape is better than nothing.
They’re a band beyond description
Broadway pit orchestras do similar things when they’re not playing - read, do the crossword, etc (although I doubt they watch I Love Lucy and take naps). I suspect many bands after touring 10-20+ years get to that point.
My go-to place for concert recordings is the Live Music Archive. The “Betty” board tapes mentioned upthread are there, but unfortunately became streaming-only a few years ago. Or I’ll see if there’s a Dick’s Picks or Road Trips that strikes my fancy and pry open my wallet. If I’m really motivated I’ll dub a board tape off of the LMA but that’s not very often.
I like the Dead more for their playing and songs than their singing ability so their spirited but less than golden-throated singing doesn’t bother me so much.
Another like that is (was) Johnny Cash. He wasn’t a good vocalist, and got worse as he aged. I have friends that are self taught on the guitar and play better than he did.
All that said, I liked the guy’s music.
Me too! Don’t forget the cancer at the end of his years that made his voice sound really pitiful.
And what was this thing with playing the guitar up the neck? Was he avoiding the sound hole by doing that, because he knew he was no picker?
Thanks
Q
It strikes me as a different topic - I don’t think of Johnny Cash the same way. He played simple songs simply and delivered them cleanly and, IMHO, rocked.
He held his acoustic up high because that’s what was cool and how it was done back in the day - and so he could make a machine-gun move by picking up the guitar and sighting down the neck 
Like I said, I love the guys music, but in interviews he admitted difficulty carrying a tune.
I’ve certainly read interviews with him saying he couldn’t pick. Also, there’s the lyric from Let the Train Blow the Whistle - “On my guitar sell tickets
So someone can finally pick it”.
I noticed this same thing with the guitar. I think the first time I took note was the 'toob video of Ghost Riders in the Sky on the Muppet show. On review I see he’s capo’ed so he can play G chords. He is strumming upstream of the hole. What do you think?