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| Name: |
Tim Nelson
<timothy.nelson@yale.edu> |
| Rating: |
4 / 5 |
| Comments: |
This boxed set (5 CDs) covers the the October 1974 Winterland concerts that were documented in the Grateful Dead Movie. Some performances were previously very poorly selected and mixed on the Steal Your Face album released in the 70's. This new set was remastered from the original multitrack tapes, using modern mixing and sound enhancement, with excellent results. The Dead were at their musical peak in 1974, in the opinion of many listeners (including me), but why submit this to the Rhodes site?
Grateful Dead pianist Keith Godchaux had a brief musical peak period with the Dead before he seemed to lose focus and interest, and 1974 had some of his best performances. Although he primarily stuck to acoustic piano, he was often coaxed to the Rhodes. He/they almost never gave the Rhodes a lead voice in the band mix, and sometimes it gets lost in the interplay of guitars. However, when he dove into the Dead's group improvisation (that inspired many of today's jam bands), the result could be a stunning musical conversation among all of the instrumentalists, and surprisingly closely related to the experimentation going on in the jazz world at the time. Godchaux had chops, but he used them in supportive roles instead of solos. The sound of the Rhodes on these recordings is very guitar-like and mid-range-heavy in tone (a problem here), but your ears will find and follow it. It's fun to hear the group pass the ball from player to player as they develop a melodic idea, and here Keith could be really good. Check out Caution Jam, The Other One, Scarlet Begonias, and what develops from them. |
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| Name: |
William Hutchison
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| Rating: |
1 / 5 |
| Comments: |
I'm not going to waste my breath on the Dead as i find them insipid to begin with but i will say this about Keith Godchaux, he probably took one look at that Rhodes piano and said "What the hell is this piece of shit!?! Get that shit out of here!! I'm only here to play my musty, dusty stiff acoustic piano dagnabbit"!! |
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