Customer Reviews

Terrapin

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

 

 

Joe Gallant's "Terrapin" is a jazz interpretation of the Grateful Dead's "Terrapin Station" (1977). This remake has two issues. First, the album is too processed and overly cluttered. "Terrapin" sounds like Gallant was too ambitious and wanted this project to be all things at once. For example, the techno sounding big beats and digital weirdness contribute nothing. Had Gallant stripped this down into something simpler, it would have been more compelling. Second, while the style of jazz here ranges from Swing to Dixieland, the primary vehicle is Avant-garde. Avant-garde never met the success of other jazz forms because it's intentionally inaccessible. Likewise, much of this music is 'rough on the ears' as the arrangements get lost in mazes of cacophony. Avant-garde aside, "Terrapin" features many musical passages of beauty. The swingin' 'Estimated Prophet' is a highlight along with some remarkable moments in the Terrapin Station Suite. Furthermore, Joe Gallant and his group get high points for integrity and effort. The exertion behind "Terrapin" must have been epic given the ambitious and extremely complex result. Indeed, this project employed a symphony orchestra, full brass section, rock band, assortment of ethnic instruments and a digital arsenal. If the listener is looking for a great jazz interpretation of the Dead or Gallant's best work, go with the "Blues for Allah Project." "Terrapin" has some highlights but it is so large that it ultimately collapses in on itself.

First of all, this is a CD for Grateful Dead fans. If you're a fan of the Grateful Dead, you may absolutely love this CD. Alternately, you may vehemently hate it. I'm kinda dancing on the line between love and hate. Let me explain: This CD is Joe Gallant and some huge jazz orchestra performing all the songs from the dead's Terrapin Station album in vastly different styles than the original. Sometimes, it sounds great and energetic, with all the instruments getting their improvisory space as in "Dancin' in the Streets' and "Estimated Prophet'(The best moment of the CD is when the latter (sung by Ike Willis) rises from the ashes of the former in a cool segue.) Other times, the need to fill the John Zorn style of quick style shifts makes the actual "Suite", for instance, sound too trying-to-be-experimental , it just sounds stupid, especially with too much pseudo DJ blah blah blah. I listen to the first "side" a lot, but the actual Terrapin Suite is too much to listen to all the way through. On the whole, I give it a 3 for attempting to expand listeners' consciousnesses. If you want to find a really amazing experimental-popular hero who is also into the dead, look up Henry Kaiser.

As great as Gallant's earlier Blues For Allah Project is, that's how horrible this album is. I am a deadhead and a long time jazz fan. So my objection is not that these tracks don't sound like the originals. My objection is that they are too self consciously arty and over produced. They are almost entirely unlistenable. The execptions are the tracks, like Estimated Prophet, on which Gallant does what he is great at, wonderful big band charts that let the beauty and verasatility of the music become a playground for an excellent group of players swing.

Too much strings, too much sampling, why is Bill Walton singing (rapping), regardless of how big a deadhead he is?

Illuminati is a great live band. skip this cd.

This album is pretty mind-blowing in both its soul and eclecticism. There's touches of big band, jazz, blues, gospel, bluegrass, psychedelia, soul, modern classical....and it all, amazingly, hangs together. The soulfulness of the Dead's music is really brought out- check out the frenetic Dancin in the Streets and the Donna Godchaux song Sunrise, re-invented as a sort of cross-pollination of Peggy Lee and Ute Lemper! While I enjoy Jazz is Dead, this album is on another level entirely.