Thank you for following the 12th edition of my 31 Days of Dead project. I hope the playlist I curated brings you many hours of joy. In fact, I’m happy to announce that I plan on continuing to add tracks to the playlist I created for this project.
I also want to send a big thank you to Brian Levine for providing the killer artwork and Jason Freitag @linernotesmusicblog for hosting these projects. Feel free to follow so that you can read my contributions to “Grateful Dead Monthly” where we feature a GD show each month.
As promised, here is the “third set” for this year’s project. IG doesn’t provide enough slides for me to feature snippets of all of these tracks so here are most. Wishing you much health, peace, happiness, music and love in the New Year
Feel Like A Stranger – 10/12/84 (30 Trips Around the Sun) Cold Rain & Snow – 2/3/78 (Dick’s Picks #18) Samson & Delilah – 2/5/78 (Dick’s Picks #18) China > Rider – 9/20/90 (Road Trips Vol. 2, No. 1) Estimated > Eyes – 9/3/77 (Dick’s Picks #15) Dark Star > El Paso > Sing Me Back Home, Sugar Magnolia – 8/27/72 (Sunshine Daydream) Shakedown Street > Uncle John’s Band – 12/26/79 (Dick’s Picks #5) She Belongs To Me – 9/15/85 (Postcards of the Hanging) We Bid You Goodnight – 10/16/89 (Nightfall of Diamonds)
Questions. Are we indefinitely in pandemic-mode? Or will somebody (WHO, CDC, idk) tell us that it’s over? Delta was a thing, right? Now Omicron? There was a moment in March 2020 when an epidemic became a pandemic. Will there be a moment in the future when this pandemic becomes something else before the next one starts? Does anybody really know what time it is?Does anybody really care?
Oh, silly musings. The second Covid-year at LNHQ was very much like the first with maybe slightly fewer high-pitched convos about the intersection of individual choices and collective well-being. And, by those italics, I mean approximately the same number. Everybody here, I’m happy to report, got vax’d. Eventually. Trevor was a holdout for most of the year because he and his new partner (not sure if they’re married, maybe?) are “trying.” Jane’s response was a body-gag and an eye-roll, and then, “Yeah, ffs, they’re super trying.” Sometimes, as our esteemed Editor-in-Chief indirectly reminded us, trying is a better predicate adjective than a present participle. Grammar, ftw. Anyway. No stress, and no breakthroughs. We’re ok.
We’re also still sorta remote. OM is rarely here, but he’s the Board Chairman, and less involved in day-to-day ops. Trevor is something board-related. He is not sitting on the board (because no way), but he’s sort of an Executive Whisperer – my term. Mainly, he floats into the office to “drop off papers” and “check in.” Here’s an example from mid-summer:
TA: Hey, boss! [I’m not his boss anymore.] Need some signage. (Flings folder across the desk.) You stayin’ out of trouble?
JF: Hey, Trev. Good to see you. How’s stuff? How’s [your partner]?
TA: It’s Tre, by the way. Haha, rhymin’ like Simon, as per always. (Wink.) Aw, man. It’s alll good. You stayin’ out of trouble?
JF: Uh. Yeah? You doin’ ok? What’s up at Board level? Haven’t talked to OM in a bit. You bigwigs fixed the world yet?
TA: Haha, so funny. You’re always so funny. So you stayin’ out of trouble?
JF: I’m really not sure what that means. You’ve asked me three times.
TA: So funny. So so funny. Aiight. If you could just … (weird air-signature motion), Imma jet. [I’m honestly not sure what I signed, but there was a on-top memo from OM, so it seemed legit.] See ya.
Not if I see you first, bruh. I really don’t like that guy, and I don’t like that O does. Actually, I’m not even sure that he does. He and I chat regularly (weekly-ish), and he never mentions his would-be henchman. Maybe TA is a sleeper-agent like Tom on Succession. Yikes. He’s undoubtedly skilled in the dark arts of upspeak (or “high rising terminal”), while the rest of us at HQ prefer vocal fry. It’s no wonder that he doesn’t fit in.
Recently, I not-so-humble bragged to O that the Liner Notes Instagram is probably the tightest music blog account in the world. He didn’t agree, but sorta shrugged – it was a text convo, so I’m reading in the shrug. He posited that he’s the LN Peter Gabriel – “important at the beginning,” but less so now – and I’m the LN Phil Collins. My response was, obviously, “Dude, stfu.” And then, “You’re still important – you run the freaking board that I answer to. Or Ed does, or whatever. Also, you’re not Peter Gabriel. You’re more like Peter Green, and I’m Lindsey Buckingham. The guy who took this entity to the next level, and then stuck around for a long-a$$ time doing cool sh!t until he got unceremoniously dumped for a prettier face. Which means ECM is the LN Stevie Nicks. Anyway, thanks for putting ‘Land of Confusion’ in my head.” I don’t interact with O enough. I miss that guy, and wish that I saw him more.
And I wish that I saw brand-new, well-caffeinated LN CEO ECM more! He’s awesome, and does a truly righteous version of “Rhiannon” on the keys. (Not kidding.) We’re rarely at HQ at the same time, so we connect via Zoom and FT otr. I haven’t seen much of the staff, either, but the aforementioned EIC JTB asked me to mention her dogs and add that they’re well.
I’m well, as well, if you care, and I’m staying out of trouble. Or trying to. And one of the things that helps in that regard is running and listening to Spotify. Seamless segue into my stats.
Spotify does this Wrapped thing. (I covered some of the problems with streaming services in the 2020 post. Those problems still exist. Spotify should pay artists more.) It’s a mildly entertaining Snapchat-ish video that tells what you heard, but, more importantly, how tethered you are to the green dot. And, yeah, real tethered here.
Before revealing numbers, though, Spotify felt it was important to remind me that …
But that …
Hells yeah, I did! I can’t even describe how much I had to do, much less how I totally did it. My job, first and foremost. My other job, i.e., this blog. Husband and dad stuff. House work, yard work. I showered and shaved many times, and spent time in the bathroom for other reasons (even more) many times. I watched stuff on tv, and saw a few movies. I ate and slept. I traveled some. I ran my ass off, almost literally. I did the eff outta all that.
Spotify CEO Daniel Ek, who would be way cooler if he actually figured out how to buy Arsenal FC, instead of playing footie footsie with some of the Invincibles, doesn’t really care. He only cares whether I was listening to music on his streaming service, while I was engaged in those endeavors. Turns out … I was.
Mic droppp. That’s the affirmation that I was looking for. It’s like the SAT – you’re in the 99th percentile! And there’s more …
Like which ones?
Oh my gosh, I couldn’t be more excited that there’s a genre called Bubblegrunge and that it cracked my top five. Hold on, how many artists, though?
Wait. I got this. It was Caroline Polachek, right? She makes seriously good music. Her track “Bunny Is a Rider” was Pitchfork’s #1 of the year, and I listened to her 2019 album Pang almost every time that I rode the bus to work. Eh, jk. It was pry the Good Ol’ Grateful Dead.
Nope …
Whoa. Definitely didn’t see that coming. Top 1/1,000 %, though? Fantastic. Mr. Ólafsson and I should probably connect soon for an interview. Hmu, Víkingur!
Tbh, who can get enough of an Icelandic classical pianist born in 1984 (I was in high school) playing the prelude to a cantata titled La Damoiselle élue by a French composer born in 1862 (Claude Debussy) based a poem titled “The Blessed Damozel” by an English author born in 1828 (Dante Gabriel Rossetti)? Also, is it weird that Spot’s bot assumed that VÓ’s pronouns are they/them? Probably not.
VÓ released that track last year, but he released two records this year – a sort of remix version of his Debussy/Rameau album from 2020 and a new album of material by Mozart and his contemporaries. I listen to a lot of what my best friend calls “sleeping music” – mellow tunage on the bedroom speaker at night. Last year, it was mostly Erik Satie piano stuff. This year, it was (for a while) VÓ piano stuff. Hence, the minutes. Lately, it’s been a Spotify-generated playlist called “Melancholy Instrumentals,” which is really long – like six hours. Again, mostly piano stuff. My Wrapped thing revealed that my top five songs were from that playlist. My best friend says that I just padded my stats this year by hitting that playlist over and over and over. True-ish. That playlist did sorta unintentionally drive up my numbers, but I didn’t listen to it in order to do so. It also screwed up my algorithm. My Release Radar now features a lot of classical music.
Enough about Spotify. Let’s get down to business. The gold of 2021.
I’ve read all the usual year-end lists. Pitchfork’s was annoying – friend of the blog BH called it “pretentious garbage (at first glance).” NPR’s was even moreso. The others were ok. The best one by far (no surprise) was Amanda Petrusich’s piece for The New Yorker. There, she described music’s role in her life as “omnipresent, necessary, alimental,” until she had a baby and her listening habits “shifted.” AP, with characteristic eloquence, explained:
“The act itself—putting a record on to fill the room—felt significantly less compulsory to me. I had a baby, in June, and took several months of maternity leave; surely those events played some part in the decision not to have new releases blaring at all hours. Or perhaps it was a delayed reaction to the psychic tumult of 2020—my wounded spirit forcing me to account more quietly for what we’d collectively endured (and are still enduring). I thought often about something the saxophonist Pharoah Sanders said, after my colleague Nathaniel Friedman asked him what he’d been listening to: ‘I haven’t been listening to anything.’ He eventually elaborated: ‘I listen to things that maybe some guys don’t. I listen to the waves of the water. Train coming down. Or I listen to an airplane taking off.’
I like that way of thinking—gently separating the idea of listening from the purposeful consumption of so-called music. There has always been a lot of beautiful sound in the world, things so plainly lovely that it feels humiliating even to type them out: songbirds at sunrise, a creek after a storm, boots on a gravel driveway, a blooming bush beset by bumblebees. When I wasn’t using my stereo, I sang made-up tunes to my daughter—badly—and watched her discover her wild, throaty cackle. In the predawn darkness, I listened happily as she cooed to herself in her bassinet. I found that my partner has a secret voice—higher-pitched, goofier, almost quaking with joy—that he uses when talking to a baby. Those experiences colored the way I heard and metabolized new records. I found myself pulled toward albums that were elemental, tender, free—music that felt genuinely of the world and not a mediated reflection of it. Music that could melt into a landscape; music that had not been produced so much as conjured.”
Wow. I honestly wish that I could say the same. Mediated reflection of the world? That’s badass, and reminds me of when I was a semiotician. (Jk, I was a mere pretender. And now I’m just yappy online.) I found myself pulled toward albums, and tracks, that … well, clicked? For me. I’m an intentional listener, but sort of an intuitive one (oversold both adjectives, high five), so I’d never describe the music that drew me in as anything other than good or cool. She’s a rock journo, and a more skilled writer than I am. That probably explains why she sounds articulate and thoughtful, and I sound like a jerk from college.
AP mentioned Pharoah Sanders. He’s an icon in a world short of them. Quick bio. (I’ll do a Jazz Is… post about him soon). Born in 1940 in Little Rock, Arkansas. Moved in 1959 after high school to Oakland, California and met John Coltrane. Moved in 1961 to NYC and met Sun Ra, who fed and clothed him at a while, and encouraged him to change his name from Farrell to Pharoah. PS joined Coltrane’s “classic quartet” in 1965 and contributed to the epochal recordings Meditations and Live in Seattle. He has had a fruitful solo career since then – you might have heard “The Creator Has a Master Plan” from his 1969 album Karma. And he’s still at it.
The best album that I heard this year was Promises by PS and Sam Shepherd, a Brit EDM producer, who records as Floating Points. As usual, the header image was a spoiler. The pic is from a quick meet-and-greet on the roof at LNHQ last spring. I was the only one here. We drank green tea at a distance, and chatted awkwardly about nothing in particular, until a songbird landed nearby and treated us to a concert. PS wordlessly sang a duet. It was amazing. (Also, full disclosure, this is all make-believe, but it’s fun to imagine.) Shepherd composed a nine-movement suite, featuring Sanders and the London Symphony Orchestra, which is awesome in its subtle power. When the strings gain momentum around 3:20 into Movement 6, oof.
And the playlist. It’s real long. That might seem like an editing fail, but it’s not. The thing’s pretty-well sequenced, and each song is worth your attention. Remember, every stream puts food on somebody’s table in these trying times! Neil Young, Dave Grohl, and Megan Thee Stallion don’t need the pennies, but many of the rest do, so listen through.
Curious about that Spotify playlist image? Fun fact. Indiana State Highway 21 was decommissioned in 1965. It’s now part of U.S. Highway 35, which runs northwest to southeast. Basically, I’m a lifelong Hoosier, and I couldn’t find a good ’21 pic.
Well. That’s a wrap. And a circular one, at that. The January New Sounds post featured a collage with a big white circle by Yatuka Matsuzawa. The December New Sounds post features a painting with a big black circle and several other, more colorful circles by Wassily Kandinsky.
Kandinsky hardly needs an intro, but here ya go. Born December 16, 1866 in Moscow, Russia; died December 13, 1944 in Neuilly-sur-Seine, France. In his nearly 76 years on Earth, he made some of the most important abstract art in history. Here’s a cut-and-paste from the Wiki:
“He spent his childhood in Odessa, [Ukraine], where he graduated [art school]. He enrolled at the University of Moscow, studying law and economics. Successful in his profession—he was offered a professorship (chair of Roman Law [no idea, and I went to law school]) at the University of Dorpat [in Tartu, Estonia—Kandinsky began painting studies (life-drawing, sketching and anatomy) at the age of 30.
In 1896, Kandinsky settled in Munich …. He returned to Moscow in 1914, after the outbreak of World War I. Following the Russian Revolution, Kandinsky ‘became an insider in the cultural administration of Anatoly Lunacharsky and helped establish the Museum of the Culture of Painting. However, by then ‘his spiritual outlook … was foreign to the argumentative materialism of Soviet society,’ and opportunities beckoned in Germany, to which he returned in 1920. There he taught at the Bauhaus school of art and architecture from 1922 until the Nazis closed it in 1933. He then moved to France, where he lived for the rest of his life, becoming a French citizen in 1939 and producing some of his most prominent art.”
The header image is from the Bauhaus period.
I don’t have a clever segue this time.
The New Sounds from December 2021…
The year-end post (with the best albums list and the best tracks playlist) will follow in a few.
December 31 The Wheel > China Doll > Playing Reprise 5/19/77 – Fox Theatre, Atlanta, GA
This year’s project concludes with the back end of a long and involved Playin’ Sandwich from 5/19/77 at the Fox Theater in Atlanta (Dick’s Picks 29). Tribal drumming provides a perfect entry into a languid version of “The Wheel” that makes you feel as if you are floating on a cloud.
The jam out of “The Wheel” returns us to “Playin” territory before Garcia busts out “China Doll” and what an incredible bust-out it is. To give you an idea of what a rare and special treat this was, consider that “China Doll” was last played on 10/19/74 (Winterland), and it would be played only two more times in 1977 (6/4 and 12/29) and once in 1979 (5/8), before finding its way into the acoustic sets in the fall 1980. . This is a stand-out performance of “China Doll.” Garcia sings it with spooky, mournful overtones. The closing jam is fully played out and exquisitely gorgeous. The gravity of this “China Doll” is much like the Cornell Dew (5/8) and the Buffalo “Comes a Time” (5/9) – all are heavy and about as close to definitive as you can get. And oddly enough, all three disappeared from the band’s regular repertoire after May/June 1977. Why mess with near-perfection?
The band drops into “Playin’ Reprise” but they are in no rush to cross the finish line. Instead, they revisit the spacey realm from which they came and luxuriate here for 10 minutes which is nearly as long as the pre-Drums main song proper. The “Reprise” is majestic and triumphant. In another rare move, there is no encore on this evening. None was necessary.
December 30 The Other One > Comes a Time 4/26/72 – Jahrhundert Halle – Frankfurt, West Germany
Wow! This one starts off flying! After the drums and bass intro, the band launch into an absolutely legendary “Other One” that is so in the zone it has to be heard to be believed. Jerry explodes out of the gate with a blizzard of lightning-fast notes that are so furious and intense that it feels like a runaway train. The man is possessed.
Things cool down temporarily as the band prepares to take you on a long, deep ride into the cosmos with fluid jamming that shifts through a myriad styles and themes: we get Feelin’ Groovy teases towards the beginning, an incredible “Clementine” jam at around 18:20 (the rare Hunter-Lesh song from 1968 that was never recorded), Bobby’s Spanish Jam attempt beginning at the 27:30 mark, and a spell-binding jazz jam at 31:44 that builds with jaw-dropping intensity and brings everything back to earth for the final verse. Of course, there is a lot of the standard ’72 weirdness in there that we all love – a bass solo, Space, Feedback, a Tiger jam and Sputnik jamming. A serene and beautifully poignant “Comes a Time” feels like a warm hug after the journey that preceded it.
December 29 Truckin’ > Jam > Mind Left Body Jam 5/19/74 – Portland Memorial Coliseum, Portland, OR
This show from Portland, OR on 5/19/74 is the 5th with the Wall of Sound and it includes exceptional versions of China>Rider, BT Wind, Peggy-O and GDTRFB as well as a very rare Money Money (played only 3 times) but today we are here to talk about the incendiary Truckin’ that comes at the end of the show. After the lyrics, we get an intense buildup leading to an explosive climax. From there things get interesting as the boys take us on a long, creative and very unique jam that starts in hyperdrive and moves into an extra distorted “Mind Left Body” jam. This post-Truckin’ jam is the epitome of what Phil refers to when he said “when we were at our best, we could turn it on like a faucet.” Boy, do they ever.
December 28 Sugaree 5/22/77 – The Sportatorium, Pembroke Pines, FL
“Sugaree” became a show-stopping powerhouse in 1977. With patient, creative, delicate buildups, and ascending-descending, cascading runs all leading to majestic, frenzied peaks, it is no wonder why 7 of the top 10 versions of all time are from 1977 as ranked by headyversion.com (5 of them are from May ‘77!) – 5/22 (Pembroke Pines), 5/28 (Hartford), 5/19 (Atlanta), 5/5 (New Haven), 10/16 (Baton Rouge), 5/11 (St. Paul) and 3/18 (Winterland). I could have been persuaded to choose any of those but after several listens I decided to go with 5/22/77. BTW, I reserve the right to change my mind. What is your favorite “Sugaree” and why?
December 27 Jack Straw 11/6/79 – The Spectrum, Philadelphia, PA
Back in the day of cassettes my brother and I used to refer to this “Shreddy Straw” as “The Jack of all Straws.” Jerry’s noodling is fast and furious, and boy do I love his triumphant vocal inflection in the final verse – “by the MORNIN’ light!!!” Chills!
December 26 Weather Report Suite > JAM > U.S. Blues 6/28/74 – Boston Garden, Boston, MA
The 30 minute “jam” that takes place in between this “Weather Report Suite” and “U.S. Blues” is one of the most psychedelic musical journeys the band has ever taken. There are four distinct mind-bending segments to this jam. The first is a “Mind Left Body Jam” that is certainly among the very best. It starts with a melty, underwater cosmic that eventually speeds up into an upbeat and triumphant melodic jam. There are some nice bell sounds here that I’ve never heard on any other version. Next, is a lovely instrumental “Dark Star Jam.” It lasts only about 3 minutes and stays in the melodic, rather than the spacey zone. This dissolves amid a wash of bass and cymbals. Jerry starts a two-chord progression and the band quickly follows his lead. A groovy, jazzy, ¼ tempo freeform jam emerges. Kreutzmann’s drumming is incredible. Jerry is still using the wah-wah pedal – at times, his playing gets quite aggressive. Then things get sucked into a psychedelic vortex as the band enters “Feedback > Scary Tiger Meltdown.” Amazingly, they somehow emerge with a bluesy shuffle that becomes “U.S. Blues.” This “Jam” reinforces the famous quote by Mickey Hart: “We’re in the transportation business—we move minds.” Essential listening.
Liner Notes 