Open Listening Part II

The Grateful Dead have never played or recorded the same song twice.

You're thinking...that's a lie. How can that be possible?

Well! Let me tell you. Most songs that you hear by popular artists today are very clear in their script. There is a beginning, a middle and an end, and the same song on two different albums or in concert could sound more or less identical. This is not the case with the Dead, which is what I find so intriguing and wonderful about their music.

Improvisation! They let the music take over themselves and they just play. Many of their songs duplicate on other albums, but they are never the same. Each album is a recording of a particular venue, so the series of songs they play all blend in to one another. Sometimes it is near impossible to tell where one ends and the other begins. The Dead will also often take the liberty of drifting off course in the middle of a song and jamming with each other until they feel like going back to what they wrote. It was all about experimentation through sound.

This is how I feel for my "second" listening. It sounds different every time I listen to it. There are notes I pull out, ways Jerry says certain lines, and beats that I find each time. But here goes:

*the skeleton's hands move to frets in the general sense following the notes coming from the real guitar.

*It's hard for me to pull out specific instruments and their parts because it all blends so beautifully together.

*the teal overtones of the animation are classic Gary Gutierrez.

*The band members don't play to the camera, they keep it as real as possible.

*You almost stop realizing when they switch from humans to bones.

*Their sense of humor and ease is really apparent through their "skeleton jokes."

*The dog that runs by during "dog hasn't been fed in years," is carrying a converse shoe attached to a leg bone that in the next shot you see a techie trying to reattach to the drummer skeleton's foot.

*The crowd roars when they turn into people. Almost as if they're cheering the transitioning effect.