CD of the Week March 25-March 31, 2001

The Grateful Dead

Anthem of the Sun

Warner Brothers

This morning I randomly grabbed the Grateful Dead’s second albumAnthem of the Sun off the CD shelf to listen to while I walked to work. Of course I have listened to it a million times, but it had been awhile when I dropped it into my Discman this morning.

As I listened I realized all over again what a psychedelic masterpiece this album is. I also learned that it is a great album to listen to on headphones.

The record starts off with the Dead epic suite, "That’s It For the Other One". It begins with the part of the song called "Cryptical Envelopment" which was written and sung by Jerry Garcia. As the title suggests this is a cryptical song with lyrics referring to some kind of death. Perhaps a suicide or murder or maybe an execution. Hardly Stereotypical hippie fare. The music alternates between quiet passages and intense jamming and that pattern sets the tone for the whole record.

"Cryptical" segues into what is called on the record, "Quadlibet for Tender Feet", more commonly known by Deadheads as the song, "The Other One". The autobiographical song written and song by Bob Weir relates to the time he spent as Neil Cassady’s roommate a few year’s before. In many ways this is the archetypal Grateful Dead song and they played it regularly through their entire career. The whole song has sort of a psychedelic flamenco feel that builds into a memorable groove.

"The Other One" suite winds down with several instrumental passages that are heavily dubbed and mixed. In fact if you are listening in headphones you can hear the drums move from one stereo channel to another. The cacophonous jam eases into the mellow "New Potato Caboose".

The Dead had a reputation of being a bit sloppy and they could be, but this song is perfectly executed from start to finish. Weir’s reading of the Phil Lesh/Bobby Peterson composition is right on and the rest of the band chimes in with precision backing vocals. At some point Garcia’s warm acoustic guitar and pedal steel guitar playing kicks in adding to the overall sound that previewed the more rootsy feel they would explore more fully on Workingmam’s Dead and American Beauty.

The jam out of "New Potato Caboose" drops suddenly into Weir’s little performed "Born Cross-Eyed" which is mostly a short groove song. Ron "Pigpen" McKernan takes the mic next and brings thing out of the ethersphere and down into the swamp with his bayou epic, "Alligator". Complete with kazoo solos this is a fun song cowritten by Pigpen, Lesh and Robert Hunter. The groove is unmistakable and the band jams on the theme for more than 10 minutes before Pigpen finishes things off with the R&B drenched, "Caution Do Not Stop on the Tracks". This song contains a typical Pigpen narrative backed by a monstrous, churning Grateful Dead groove firing on all cylinders.

The Dead were never very good at capturing their live sound in the studio, but part of the reason this album really works is that many parts of the record were actually performed live and then mixed with various studio overdubs. For more on the making of this record check out the excellent documentary, "From Anthem to Beauty" that was released several years ago.

In my opinion, this Album belongs in the same category of like-minded albums like Sgt. Pepper’s, Axis Bold as Love and Surrealistic Pillow in the pantheon of psychedelic rock.

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