Sound-In-Time - Clocks are running late...

Jerry Garcia is my best friend. Although I have never met him, I feel that way. His voice is as familiar to me as my own father's. Maybe because I grew up with it, but his voice immediately effects me in unidentifiable ways. It is comforting and happy, it calms and excites me at the same time. He's like a best friend or brother or uncle that I trust explicitly, and whatever he says, goes. He is my god. Well, I wouldn't go that far, but he certainly is god-like in a way, his music pulsing through my veins and inspiring my faith.

Because at their live concerts the Grateful Dead spend so much time improvising, and that is included in the beginning of the video, there is this tremendous excitement that comes over me when the noticeable beginning of the song bursts through the "tuning" and playing around.

I see:

skipping.
arms waving in the air
a girl in a dress dancing around in circles in a field banging on a cowbell
sing-a-long
a church miracle session, people singing and raising their arms to the sky, overcome by faith and peacefulness

Skeletons are singing "I will survive," is that irony? Sort of an eternal "getting by."

There is so much imagery inherent in the language of the piece. I see green cows being milked to fuel lamps, and teenagers struggling to read in class, and emaciated dogs and thick red velvet curtains being drawn to block out the blinding blue dawn (or in reference to another Dead song "Scarlet Begonias," the yellow sky), clocks running around an apartment cluttered with sleeping bodies, someone painting the sky by number, clouds exploding with mixes of silver and grey swirling all around me, winning love like its a game, people wearing shoes for gloves... and of course, skeletons and roses.

The ascending notes before the chorus quicken the heartbeat with anticipation and excitement.

A note on recording style:
"JK: It seems that the recording has a more live sound than on past albums.
Garcia: Yeah, the sound is good. It sounds more like the way we play - more...it's the way we perceive music to work. The studio is a little sterile, and the studio playing approach is a sterile approach compared to what we do. So yeah, we were able to capture some of that feeling for this."

While it is clear that the sound would have had to be recorded in a studio to be dubbed over the skeletons, I would agree with Jerry that the Grateful Gead and Gutierrez did a good job of capturing the live feel of the music happening there and then through video.