Customer Reviews

Birth of the Dead

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

 

 

The clarity of these mostly wide separation stereo recordings is amazing. Rhino has done a 1st class remastering on the early studio sessions that comprise disc one. The 2nd disc is compiled from various 1966 concerts, and a closer listen to several of the tracks is deserved. To catch lightning in a bottle and evoke the pre-burn out years of the hippie era with memory fragments strung together in the manner of Neal Cassidy is a thankless task I shall not try again, thank you. Allow me to continue reviewing specific numbers, especially lively material found on the 2nd disc. Previous reviewers have boiled it down to a simple one word description, "great". Yeah, okay. but why is it great? It certainly isn't new, although in way it is since most of us we haven't heard it all before. My vote for the most astonishing find goes to the set closer, Keep Rolling By. It features PigPen sharing lead vocals at the start with Garcia along with Lesh and Weir doing back-ups. It sounds a little like something off Rolling Stones Aftermath... way off! Sitting On Top Of The World is solid, nice fat sounding lead bottom from Jer. Played just as fast as on the 1st Dead album, maybe faster, which reveals that was the tempo they played in when they were young and reckless.
Garcia asks the audience before the start of Its All Over Now, Baby Blue if any of the folks in the first row has a match. By the early '70s, the band would never again be casually communicative from the stage with their intense and potentially psychotic (first row) fans.
The intro by Bill Graham is a typical good natured rib, "the oldest juveniles in the state of California, The Grateful Dead." The set opener is a laid back but slouch-free Viola Lee Blues which soon picks up the tempo. This was their big show-stopper of the day, all but forgotten now. It has a curiously short mid-section but as such doesn't wear out it's welcome.. It's followed by a take no prisoners Don't Ease Me In. Pigpen then starts into his various blues and various rhythms.
The Dead were a trip band when these recordings were made. Yet the music is blues based, and the excursions into the new folk rock are inspired more by Dylan's Bringing It All Back Home than by The Byrds.
BIRTH OF THE DEAD is raw, not half-baked or too well-done.

When Rhino released the box-set The Golden Road in 2001, not only did they present each of the Grateful Dead's 10 original Warners albums with masses of additional previously unreleased material, they also included a new 2CD compilation of recordings that preceded their debut album. A couple of years later each expanded, re-mastered album was released in its own right, including the new compilation.
Birth Of The Dead comprises previously hard to find tracks recorded in 1965-66 for the Autumn and Scorpio labels, including their early singles, plus, on the second disc, 14 previously unreleased live recordings from the Bay-Area, made by Bear.
Although the band always had a love of American roots music, there is not much evidence on the early sides, which are mostly conventional folk-rock and blues with an eye on the main chance. The 1965 Autumn sessions, made when they were known as the Emergency Crew, were not released at the time but included Gordon Lightfoot's Early Morning Rain, the traditional I Know You Rider, which the Byrds and doubtless other West Coast bands were also performing, and most interestingly the original Caution (Do Not Stop on Tracks), a supercharged blues jam which was to turn up on Anthem Of The Sun.
By the following summer, when they returned to the studio in a session for the Scorpio label, the band had begun to experiment and evolve, and the material, such as the traditional Cold Rain and Snow, Don't Ease Me In and Gus Cannon's Jug Stompers' Stealin' (their first single), was more indicative of where their hearts lay. A single for Verve on which they backed Jon Hendricks in 1967 is also included.
The live tracks, from various San Francisco gigs in July 1966, have been sequenced to resemble a typical concert of the period, beginning with Viola Lee Blues, another Cannon's Jug Stompers original (written by the harmonica player Noah Lewis), but transformed by the Dead over nine and a half minutes to mark the start of the extraordinary journey which they and their audience were to share over the next many years. Their original Standing On The Corner keeps company with covers of songs by Henry Thomas, Otis Redding, the Mississippi Sheiks, Bob Dylan, Slim Harpo, Jimmy Reed, Bill Monroe, Blind Willie Johnson, Little Junior Parker, Lightnin' Hopkins and Blind Arvella Grey - all songs they were never to record. The set closer, Keep Rolling By, is listed as a traditional song but is more probably one of their own, and has the late Pigpen trading vocals with Jerry Garcia.
This is a fascinating document for anyone with more than a passing interest in one of the most inventive and creative musical forces of our times

this album was originally part of the rhino boxed set of the warner brothers material, but now is released on its own. jerry garcia had approved this before he died, so it is kind of a mystery it took so long to get here. these are the first recordings of the nascent dead still known as the warlocks. they consist of one disc of demos and a second of live tracks. all in all it's a great collection of songs we all know and love revealing a bluesier dead than we may know. pigpen was still in the fore and it shows. jerry and bob are still finding their identities, but its all there. get this and twirl with your mommas!

I love the Dead's early stuff: Jerry's warbly singing, Pigpen's early musical style, the wonderfully fast versions of Cold Rain and Snow, the banter with the audience and Bill G., etc. This collection has all of that, and also, honestly, some song versions inferior to what we hear on the first few Warner's studio albums. Now in some cases that doesn't matter because what you hear is either good enough or at least historically interesting. Just keep in mind that you are hearing a band that is honing their craft and still fashioning some of their more well-known tunes. It's by turns raw if original phrasing, herky jerky tempos, and quaint guitar licks (which I like). If you understand that going in, it helps. Did I pay the full $20 something dollar fare for this? No. But I grabbed a copy for my pre '73 Dead collection, which I consider the band's sweetspot period, and also serves to remind me of when I was in my own good Millbrae, CA band and thought those S.F. guys were just competition! Heh!

I've been a huge Deadhead for years. I enjoy just about any Dead, but I'm not an indiscriminate Head. My personal favorite period is '70-'72, with '72 being my absolute favorite year. I hadn't really listened to much early Dead in a long time when I decided to pick this up, and I'm really glad that I did. The studio stuff is great. I love hearing the band at the their rawest. The live set is fantastic. It turned out to be the same show as an old tape that I have -- one of my only '66 bootlegs. It's really good stuff. Raw psychedelic energy. The early rock influences are in abundance with a glimpse of the psychedelic juggernauts they would turn into in a few short years. Highly recommended for anyone with an interest in seeing where this very American band started their journey.

If you want to be transported back to the warm early morning where like 10 people are walking around Haight Street and they all smiled at each other or felt secure enough to say snide surrealist welcomes or play dress-up with out anybody being jealous or mean for no reason - hey, you! Lenny Bruce going by in a car leaning his head out the window shouting "get a job you commie!" and 2 or 3 people standing around laugh as they listen to the Muni bus driver singinging Here Comes Peter Cottontail with the folding door opening and closing in time with someone's Mr. Magoo impression. Calmer, wilder, simpler, literate longer lasting days with friendly barbs tossed with no one lonely for too long. Nights when anyone could take part in an exciting but raw and edgy barely begun music and art happening just beginning to flower. This 2 record set is a vivid snapshot of the early and less exposed first moments that are still very special. Life and Time magazine hadn't discovered the hippie havens, CBS anchor Harry Reasoner hadn't yet brought the Dead into America's living rooms along with the wildly gyrating overdosed dancers that would make even the upstarts and free radicals cringe a bit. The worst was yet to bum... Manson and Altamont, Super Spade and speed... but in late '65 the feeding frenzy was still a couple years away. This CD more than any other has the initial spark, the fresh-faced good vibes and twisted, unashamed howdy highs that the Dead and their friends had to spare. Folk music, Blues roots, Beatle boots and low rent Victorians. The city was still a nice place to live. The Dead and even Dylan were still young, and learned what little worldliness they seemed to have from the Beat scene that had made 'em pay their HQ dues.Folk Blues going electric had been done before Dylan - the first 2 John Hammond records on Vanguard turned the musicians on who would soon be turning on a whole lot of kids. Here they are when they are the kids, playing and singing their bolts off, not knowing what they were exactly doing, but not really worrying much either. I like every track on the 1st disc. I've had a lot of these sessions on tapes before, but here they sound brighter and clearer than ever before. You don't have to be a Dead fan to enjoy this collection, in fact that may tend to work against your enjoyment. Leave any pre-conceived expectations behind. It isn't American Beauty. It's 1966, man! Like the coolest year in the history of the world. Pretense hadn't spoiled everything good about the youth culture yet. In San Francisco, 5 months before Mr. Tambourine Man, The Beau Brummels unconsiously invented the next step towards the folk-a-rock-a-boom with Laugh Laugh. If you love that song and you aren't biased in advance against the Autumn Records Sly Stone production, you'll enjoy the Dead subverting any potential commerciality with rousing covers of folk staples like Early Morning Rain. The Dead's version lives and breathes that song's lyrics. It's supposed to sound awkwardly alienated, yet high with hopes and irreverence. That misfit attitude permeates throughout the early originals, with such exquisitely rough diamonds such as The Only Time is Now, Confusion's Prince, Can't Come Down, and the entire 1st disc as a whole. The music here is less isolated and pressured to be commercial than the 1st Warner LP, still a must have with the garage hidden in Cream Puff War, Golden Road To Unlimited Devotion,+ the organ/guitar instrumentation of Cold Rain and Snow. To fans of their 1970 onward stuff who say the 1st LP is too fast, I say most of their post 1967 material was too slow! They should have kept taking whatever jacked them up in my opinion! I love the early studio takes of Stealin' -released on the Scorpio single, and I Know You Rider - both tighter by far than later stretched out live versions. The 2nd live disc is an added bonus, worthy but sprawling.

I have been looking for this for years.This is loaded with great music.The best surprise is that most songs have never been released or extremely hard to find.Most of the songs on this disc are in the beginning when pig pen was still alive.The music is original to the 60's believe me when you listen to this you will know what I mean.My thoughts are buy this while you can you wont regret it.

As a Grateful Dead CD I would actually give this 4 stars. A great companion piece to the first album. I am not a true fan (I don't dig the live 17-minute space jams) but I love the San Francsico music scene in the mid to late 60's and the early Dead were a big part of it. Studio songs on the first CD are usually less than 3 minutes long. Live CD a little longer but nothing exceeding 8 minutes. Definately more of a "Pigpen" ruled affair at this point but I love their covers and songs, and the approach. Harmonies fix most vocal weaknesses within. Trippy yet restrained in blues and folk-rock traditions. Will recommend this CD only after Working Man's Dead, American Beauty, First album.

The title of the cd says it all. This is where they came from , although the jugband roots are hardly present here.

...The first CD in this 2 disc set features early recording sessions of the Dead that did not make it to record. It was from recording session before they got the contract with Warner Brothers.

Most of the songs on the first CD ended up on the Dead's later albums. The versions that got released are much better than what is here. Many songs are repeated twice, once as an instrumental and then repeated with the vocal tracks laid down. There are other songs on this CD that were never released, mainly because they were not good enough to be released.

The first CD ends up being an interesting artifact, showing the Dead as it was evolving into a real group. It makes a nice bonus disc to a boxset. But, it isn't worth buying on its own. You wouldn't want to play it repeatedly.

The second disc is early live recordings of unknown origin. It starts out with Viola Lee Blues. It is the umpteenth live version of Viola Lee Blues, and all the others are better.

There are some great tracks on the second disc. These are live songs that the Dead has never played again. It is the one thing of value on this album. Well played songs that are not available anywhere else. But, there are not enough of them to warrent buying this.

With a bazillion other Dead CD's available, this would be one of my last choices.