Not live, and apropos of nothing, but just because I got such a gosh darn kick out of listening, drafting, and writing this back during my alcohol days on 2016, here's a review of:
Grateful Dead – American Beauty – (1970)
Social consciousness is difficult to escape these days. Given today's climate, escape seems a desirable alternative to engagement. But figuring out the root cause of how we got here might mean merely chasing the original cause down the rabbit hole, naked and bare-assed for the world, struggling to fit in something not made for humans. That’s unsatisfactory. So how do we address the religiosity and rigidity of our sociopolitical state of mind, or much more importantly, how do we find the way around it -- down and off the beaten paths to La Honda, a little bit further, if you will? Holding hands with Garcia, Mountain Girl simply intones, and the rest follow her lead.
The Warner Brothers promo for this album states: “I’d like to tell you that [so-and-so left to follow the Dead and can be found skinny dipping at your local motel]. But you’re no fool. You’d complain. We'd get in trouble. And Jerry Garcia probably would get busted again.” Oh yes, you would. You’d complain. Or you’d shut the shades and smoke your smoke, secretly hoping she’d Phoebe Cates up in your door and lecture you for wanting her.
Or something.
So it’s a bit sexist and heteronormative for today's times, sure. It’s also paradoxically a bit communal in spirit – if only you saw the world as the Dead, then hell, we’d all be individualist democrats. And at heart, it really is one of the most mellow drink, ####, fight, throw your fists at God and former lovers album that ever could be recorded, guerilla-style but with an alluring gentility, as Americans always have been. Brash, gentle, individualist, contemplative about all three things. Ripple. Box of Rain. Truckin’. Candyman. Brokedown Palace. It tunes in, turns on, attempts to thoughtfully drop out.
So what happens when American Beauty and freedom meet the inevitable realities of politics and of life in general? Well, we deal with it in the way Americans have dealt with it since our original crossing. Water. What? Yes, water, that baptismal rite (this album is full of passages and travel; echoes of the frontiersman and settlers abound on it). There is also perspective and empiricism, and pantheism, of course, but for which we would not have hippie and transcendental movements. For better or worse, this album brims with Americanisms and high Americana, seeing religion through the lens of nature; seeking to address eternal questions through individual perspective and the brief understandings of the tangible and present; and the plain old good fun and heartbreak through the outlaw’s mind when the majority doesn’t suit him. It’s radical individualism, presented with a panache and flair that answers to nobody, and it is a singular achievement of the holdover ‘60s into the ‘70s. They may have made the acid illegal, but the flashbacks of what once could have been are here to stay. There isn’t a song on this album that isn’t memorable, doesn’t have a quote worthy of a passage of rite in life. It was made for yearbooks, if only it hadn't been done so often before. But if you're unafraid to be a bit redundant sometimes, you can leave others a pearl of wisdom of what your uncool self always wanted to be.
And did I mention it has the best album cover possibly ever put forth on a rock album, beautiful rosewood and a powder blue ambigram that also reads "American Reality?" Look closer, you'll see it. Don't dig deeper, just go beyond. Anyway, enough of that, here's the important stuff.
For natural wit and yearbook quotes everywhere (one from each song):
“It’s just a box of rain…wind and water. Believe it if you need it. If you don’t just pass it on…sun and shower, wind and rain, in and out the window like a moth before a flame…it’s just a box of rain, or a ribbon for your hair, such a long, long time to be gone, and short time to be there.” - Box Of Rain
“I ran down to the levee but the devil caught me there, He took my twenty dollar bill and he vanished in the air.” - Friend Of The Devil
“Sweet blossom come on, under the willow, we can have high times if you’ll abide. We can discover the wonders of nature, rolling in the rushes down by the riverside.” - Sugar Magnolia
“It’s floodin’ down in Texas, poles are out in Utah. Gotta find a private line.” - Operator
“Come on all you pretty women, with your hair a hanging down, open up your windows cuz the candyman’s in town…if you got a dollar boys, lay it on the line, hand me my old guitar, pass the whiskey round” - Candyman
“Ripple in still water, when there is no pebble tossed, nor wind to blow.” - Ripple
“In a bed, in a bed, by the waterside I will lay my head. Listen to the river sing sweet songs, to rock my soul...sing a lullaby beside the water, lovers come and go, the river roll, roll, roll” - Brokedown Palace
“The shape it takes could be yours to choose…what you may win, what you may lose.” - Till The Morning Comes
“When there was no dream of mine, you dreamed of me.” - Attics Of My Life
“Busted, down on on Bourbon Street, set up, like a bowlin’ pin…what a long, strange trip it’s been!” - Truckin'
"Fare you well my honey/fare you well my only true one/all the birds that were singing have flown except for you alone" - Brokedown Palace
