Customer Reviews

Anthem of the Sun

5 star:		(27)
4 star:		(12)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

"Anthem Of The Sun" is The Grateful Dead's second album originally released in 1968. Even at this stage, the band was already turning new corners and had reinvented itself both in the studio and onstage. The original five-piece Dead line-up had expanded with the addition of second drummer/percussionist Mickey Hart and additional keyboardist Tom Constanten giving a fuller muscular sound to the entire band.
"Anthem Of The Sun" captures the psychedelic Dead in its prime and is a mindblower to listen to with headphones. The album itself is a carefully constructed mix of studio and live recordings along with a tedious but rewarding editing and mixing job and wild studio effects.
Tracks such as "The Other One", "Aligator" and "Caution" have since become Grateful Dead classics and are among many a Deadheads favorites.
The bonus material on the Rhino remaster is a complete unedited live recording of "Alligator", "Caution" and "Feedback" captured at the Shrine Exposition Center in Los Angeles in August 1968. This is worth the price of the reissue alone as it features the band fully jamming with the ignition turned up to full - a prime example of when the band members were all on the same wavelength, they truly gave it their all.
As a hidden bonus track, an alternate mix of "Born Cross-Eyed" is featured which includes an additional 30-seconds of feedback sound collage in its fadeout.
As mentioned above, The Grateful Dead had already turned a corner with "Anthem Of The Sun" and this was ONLY their second album. It all depends on which Deadhead you talk to when asking what the bands greatest album is. However, in my opinion, "Anthem" ranks up there with "Live/Dead" as the Dead's all-time greatest album. The Beatles have "Sgt. Pepper". The Beach Boys have "Pet Sounds". Pink Floyd has "The Dark Side Of The Moon". The Grateful Dead has "Anthem Of The Sun".

This remastered CD is an essential replacement for the original CD issue. Rhino's remastered version not only cleans up the sound, but it also restores the dynamics of the original mix, so the louds are LOUD, the lows are LOW, etc.

The song list on ANTHEM includes most of the new material the band was performing in concert in '67-'68. Some of ANTHEM was recorded in the studio, the rest is a collage of concert recordings (anywhere from a half dozen to a dozen, it's hard to tell) faded in and out chaotically by Garcia and Lesh. They say they "mixed it for the hallucinations," and that effectively describes the album's ambience.

Apart from the chaos, ANTHEM includes some nice melodies - particularly "Cryptical Envelopment" and "New Potato Caboose."

"Alligator" is the great original Dead jam/dance number. It lurches forward from complete goofiness to a kind of wriggling rhythmic grandeur; then Garcia steps in and propels the tune into Pigpen's bluesy voodoo-love rap, "Caution: Do Not Stop On Tracks." This finale builds gradually, deceptively grows calm and then explodes into feedback & electronic squeaks and squawks, cymbal crashes, just a whole lot of noise.

They don't make albums like ANTHEM OF THE SUN anymore.

The bonus material is of the same vintage as the live TWO FROM THE VAULT recordings, and it demonstrates how these ANTHEM numbers sounded before they received the studio treatment (including, but not limited to, the famous kazoos on "Alligator"). Great performance from start to finish. The CD also includes a hidden bonus track, well worth the search.

Only 4 stars because the ANTHEM mix is somewhat crude & sloppy, though that's a natural outcome when drug-addled amateurs take over the studio. Dick's Picks 22 and Volume 6 of the Dead Download Series make some of album's source material available in the raw, but the artificial ANTHEM is still one of my favorite Dead discs.

This is probably one of the ten best CD's I own. In my opinion, it's not as much of an album as it is a work of art; it was assembled in a radically different way from pretty much every other rock album out there. The only thing I can think of that blends live and studio recordings in a tasteful manner is Miles Davis' Live-Evil... and even that has some problems with it. Every second of this album is meaningful and stimulating; I find it very hard to do anything but listen when I put it on. Perhaps this is why the Grateful Dead have such a reputation for being a "stoner" band. After all, hallucinogens would only enhance the hypnotizing nature of the music here.

What really blows my mind, though, is how tasteful and brilliantly sequenced the edits are. Pink Floyd didn't do nearly as good a job of making everything flow smoothly and sound natural on their "psychedelic" album, The Piper at the Gates of Dawn; some songs on it have sections that were clearly cut short. Here, one can barely tell what segments came from where and how long they last. Both sides of the album sound like one giant song, which I think is really a good thing.

As an added bonus, live versions of the entire second side as well as "Born Cross-Eyed" are included. They're not the best to listen to right after the album propper, but sound awesome when heard seperately.

Anthem Of The Sun, in its original vinyl form, was the first Dead album I acquired, a little after it first appeared in UK shops, in 1969, and I still believe it is probably the best album to buy first by the band, as it holds the key to so many aspects of this most rich and diverse of groups. Grateful Dead records fall most basically into two camps: those recorded in the studio and those recorded on stage in front of an audience. It is on their live performances that their reputation rests, and more albums of live recordings by the Dead have been released than probably by any other band in history. The first of these, Live/Dead, from 1970, remains a high watermark in the history of live albums and is still the best point of entry for those wishing particularly to explore that side of the band.
Anthem Of The Sun was the second album by the Grateful Dead, and was as innovative and ambitious as their excellent debut album, The Grateful Dead, had been conventional. Although essentially an 8-track studio album, the endlessly creative Dead were trying to find a way to translate their live sound onto record, and to this end were multi-tracking onto tape all the live concerts the band were playing during the six month period they were recording and mixing the album. For the studio engineers it was an exasperating process and having begun in Los Angeles CA, three dissatisfied studios and four months later they finished up on the East Coast, at a fourth studio, Olmstead Sound in New York NY, with their own live soundman, Dan Healy. Having laid down the basic skeleton of drum tracks (using both Bill Kreutzmann and new recruit Mickey Hart) for the album's five tracks, the band then overlaid a complex collage of fragments derived from live concerts and any amount of studio performances and overdubs, additionally utilising the electronics and John Cage-style prepared piano of Tom Constanten, who was yet to join the band, and the experimenting members of the Grateful Dead.
When they had finished in the studio in December 1967, a further period of some months of live mixing followed, drawing from 16 recorded concerts, some as recent as 31 March 1968. It is believed that a significant proportion of the live segments on the completed master is from the Carousel Ballroom (soon to become Fillmore West), San Francisco CA on 14 February 1968. Some of the other live recordings from the Kings Beach Bowl, Lake Tahoe CA between 22-24 February 1968 can be found on Dick's Picks 22.
The result of this marathon enterprise was a magnificent psychedelic tour de force of sonic majesty, which was matched by its jubilance, celebration and passion, and synthesizing the studio Dead and the live Dead into an organic whole. No album had ever been prepared in this way before, and in hindsight the technique can be seen as a kind of prototype "plunderphonics", paving the way many years later for remix pioneers like John Oswald, who was subsequently to brilliantly tackle the Dead's masterpiece Dark Star.
The original vinyl album suffered from rather murky mastering which buried some of the most brilliant aural effects, and a remixed version overseen by Jerry Garcia in 1971 superceded it. It was this second version that was used for earlier CD transfers. For this edition, the original tape sources have been used to create with crystalline clarity what must be the definitive stereo version, in HDCD "Rhinophonic Authentic Sound". The vividness of the sound picture immediately strips away the decades that have passed since their creation, presenting an awesome soundscape of myriad tumbling galaxies and dying stars.
For those who already own Anthem Of The Sun on CD, it is still worth considering this edition because, apart from the superior mixing and mastering, there is some 35 minutes of fabulous bonus live material, recorded at the Shrine Exposition Center in Los Angeles CA in August 1968, shortly after the album was released. The lengthy Alligator (the first product of their partnership with lyricist Robert Hunter, and centrepiece of the album) and Caution (Do Not Stop On Tracks), which together made up the second vinyl side, explode here into a final four minutes of inspired Feedback.
Finally, there is the hidden track at the end - the mono single mix of Born Cross-Eyed (flip of the original studio Dark Star, and the A-side of the same release in the UK), which has an extra section of multi-layered feedback at its close. Dark Star, recorded at the Anthem sessions but never intended for the album (rather as Strawberry Fields Forever was not on Sergeant Pepper), can be found appended to the remastered Live/Dead.

Is it their best? In my opinion, yes. I love the songs on the first side, they sound so peacefully paradisical. New Potato Caboose is a good one! So is the first one "Comin, comin, comin around and around, comin around in a circle!" These kids today need to get passed their money-leeching poser Linkin Parks and Limp Bizkits and have a taste of real, potent music like this. It's beautiful! But noooo, it's associated with "hippies" and hippies are bad, mkay?

Rhino Records should be applauded for their excellent remaster in of the 1968 classic "Anthem to the Sun." It one of those rare occasions when digital remastering of an album improves not only sound fidelity, but additionally gives the fan an entirely new perspective on the brillance of the orginal recording, itself. I found myself hearing song lyrics that were cryptic and entire overdubbing touches.(Did you catch the Dead's use of Mexican miriachi horns the first time around? I won't tell you where; but it's in the mix.)

"Anthem" was a revelation for those who thought the self titled Grateful Dead debut album was unimpressive. The commerical failure of their debut album, did allow the Dead to demand carte blanche by Warner Records to experiment with the extended format, claiming the 3 minute format failed to do justice to their signature open ended jam style of playing. With the release of Anthem, a year later, those Dead skeptics realized that the master tapes of the first Dead album had a fade out and an edit cut on each song just as the Dead were getting into "Deadjam mode." With the release of "Anthem" the Dead were developing a fan base that would form the foundation their devoted following, Deadheads.

Conceptually and musically Anthem is brilliant, however for the Dead and Executive Engineer, Dan Healy, "Anthem" was "on the job training" on recording and producing a record album. As a result, the sound quality of Anthem was far from perfect: muddy vocal tracks, unbalanced instrumental tracks, distortion on both the high and low end of the musical register, and a numerous post-production gaffes. In addition, the Dead and engineer Dan Healy were using a studio that was far from "state of the art" for that era. EMI Studio One, on Abbey Road in London, where the Beatles recorded "Sargeant Pepper's was "state of the art" for 1968.

As their fans began to demand state of the art sound fidelity, rock musicians began to demand the use of state of the art recording studios. A few bands built their own state of the art studios. Remastered compact discs of classic albums has become a growing cottage industry of the major music labels. Remastering uses digital technology to remix the original master tapes and for a clearer fidelity of sound. There is a point to all my digression about remastering, bear with me.

Buyer beware: The recording industry is well aware of consumer demand for remixes of classic albums and often does "rush job" remastering, or remastering of albums that don't really need digital remastering. I've often listen to remastered compact discs and was at a loss to find any improvement to the fidelity of the original vinyl release. Sometimes the remastered edition sounds WORSE than the orginal vinyl sound from the master tapes.
Having stated those qualifiers about remastering, we can revisit the case at hand, the Rhino remastering of "Anthem to the Sun."

The venerable collector's label Rhino has done a remarkable job of remastering "Anthem" an album that is near and dear to the hearts of Deadheads, psychedelic music lovers, and classic rock fans, alike. It really doesn't get any better than this.The attention to details of sound by the engineer makes the Rhino edition not simply a money making venture, a painstaking effort to restore "Anthem", much as the craftsman restores a painting by a master artist. The addition of an hour of new music that doubles the time length the original "Anthem", without disturbing the orginal order of songs, is simply gravy for Grateful Dead fans.

The end result isn't a disc where one simply hears an improvement on the original fidelity of "Anthem", ...one really hears "Anthem to the Sun" for the very first time. Rhino has once again demonstrated that remastering is a labor of love, not a selling point to close the deal on a medicore product.

Possibly one of the trippiest albums ever released, it is essential for Deadheads and anyone interested in the San Fransisco psychedelic scene. This is not an ordinary album in the sense that the Dead went into the studio and recorded a bunch of songs, like their first album. It is basically two side-length suites: "Cryptical Envelopment>The Other One>Cryptical Envelopment>New Potato Caboose>Born Cross-Eyed," and "Alligator>Caution>Feedback." This is not exactly how it is listed on the album, but the order the songs were played live. Most of the album comes from the Dead's classic 2/14/68 show at the Carousel Ballroom (get that show!), some of it comes from the studio, such as the first "Cryptical."
The album benefits and suffers from this live/studio hybrid. Granted, the Dead had the opportunity to polish their vocal harmonies, which they often butchered live, but the kind of segues and improvisation/experimentation they do isn't really suited for a studio album; it's more suited for raw, undubbed live recordings. Plus, parts of the album haven't dated very well; the musique concrete at the end of That's it for the other one and "Caution" are kind of silly out of context of the era.
Regardless, this is still a great album, and many of the composed melodies are quite catchy. The beginning sequences of "Alligator" and "New Potato Caboose" are delightful and wouldn't sound out of place on classic rock/oldies radio. Also, Jerry Garcia's tone is fat, meaty, and powerful when plugged into his early Gibson Les Paul, quite unlike his later Fender Strat and Tiger guitar tones.

Thirty five years ago, I played this for a friend...who said it made her feel just like she felt in Kindergarten, when everything was mysterious and wonderful. The first part of this disc alternates between live and studio work...and contains some of their best recorded playing. New Potato Caboose vies with the closing soprano trio of Richard Strauss' Der Rosenkavalier as my favorite music of all time. Truly amazing.

Many people would say this Dead album is TOO weird, and just doesn't seem like it fits in with things they did like Workingman's Dead. It might seem weird at first, but after a few listens you see, although psychedelic, the music is fresh and colorful, each song is unique. Only one song is written by Robert Hunter, and the rest are by band memers,which sets this apart from the rest of their stuff. It reminds me more of a live performance with effects put in in the studio, and it kind of is. This is an attempt to change the Dead's style after their first album, still trying to find the right path to go down. The heavy psychedelic influence wouldn't really last, but it gives us a unique perspective at the Grateful Dead.

In 1967, the Dead released their debut, and was often considered unimpressive by both rock critics and fans. Honestly, I haven't heard that album, so I can't say. The following year comes Anthem of the Sun, which was a collection of studio and live cuts, often spliced within the same cut. A couple new things happened to the Dead, including the arrival of Mickey Hart, and unofficially (until their next album, Aoxomoxoa, when he became a full-time member), Tom Constanten. The band needed Constanten, because Ron "Pigpen" McKernan tended to prefer an R&B style of keyboard playing, and Constanten was capable of more complex stuff. Phil Lesh had a love for 20th century avant-garde classical like John Cage, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Edgar Varese, etc., and a lot of that influence shows through in this album. Thanks to Mickey Hart's inclusion in the band, they started having a more percussive approach here, that especially shows on the cut "Alligator". Hart was and still is to this day a big percussion enthusiast (his 1990 book Drumming at the Edge of Magic, co-written by Jay Stevens shows his enthusiasm clearly and I strongly recommend that book). "That's It For the Other One" is a truly wonderful and strong opener. You first hear Jerry Garcia sing the song, and this is during the mellow part. I usually thought of the Dead as laid-back, but this is really intense, I never imagined the Dead being this intense! When they get rocking, then you hear Bob Weir take his turn at vocals. Near the end of the piece, the band starts getting very experimental with strange electronic effects. In fact, I can't help but think the Dead was actually exploring some of the same grounds Pink Floyd had prior to Dark Side of the Moon (like Ummagumma) here, or perhaps those early '70s Krautrock groups like early Tangerine Dream, Amon Duul II, Ash Ra Tempel, Can, etc. The Dead never had anywhere as dark or sinister tones as those German groups often had. The Dead often had a more "good timey" sound, after all they were an American band that showed everyone their American roots (most especially on Workingman's Dead and American Beauty), but you know most roots rock bands like The Band themselves would never go into avant garde territory the Dead sometimes done. "New Potato Caboose" is a rather laid-back piece, with harpsichord and celeste, and then the band gets jamming. "Born Cross-Eyed" is a short, psychedelic piece, with some Spanish influences, especially from the trumpet, courtesy of Phil Lesh (he was trained on trumpet before becoming a bassist). "Alligator" demonstrated the presence of Mickey Hart, especially with the extended percussion solo in which both Hart and Bill Kreutzmann get their share of the spotlight. There's some extended jamming, which you often expect from the Dead anyway. The last cut is "Caution (Do Not Stop on the Tracks)". It starts with lots of percussion and spoken vocals from Pigpen. I, for some reason, get reminded of a song Can recorded on their album, Ege Bamyasi (1972) called "Pinch", in which their vocalist Damo Suzuki was doing similar spoken vocals, and drummer Jaki Liebezeit doing similar percussion to what the two Dead percussionists were doing on "Caution". After that, the band goes right into avant garde territory. I get this weird feeling that Anthem of the Sun had just as much of an impact on those Krautrock bands of the '70s as the usual suspects like Pink Floyd and Stockhausen. If you're a Krautrock fan and don't run at the thought of the Dead, pick up Anthem of the Sun, you'll be surprised! You'll find a lot of similarities (as well as plenty of difference, as well).

This certainly isn't for everyone. Those who like the folk/country feel of Workingman's Dead or American Beauty might find this album hard to take in. Same for people not familiar with avant-garde music might write this album off as "noise". But those who like the more experimental end of psychedelia, you're certain to enjoy this album. People often refer to Jefferson Airplane's After Bathing at Baxter's to be the most psychedelic album to come out of the Bay Area. They probably hadn't heard this album, as this certainly is more so, in my opinion.

One last thing, I don't consider myself a Deadhead, or even much of a Dead fan, I never saw a Dead concert, but this is truly an amazing album, and highly recommended.