silktempest's Full Review: Workingman's Dead [Remaster] by Grateful Dead
For a band so umbilically attached to 1960s psychedelia, THE GRATEFUL DEAD had a surprisingly extended career, spawning the best part of four decades. In the early 1970s the cut-and-past complex epics of their sophomore effort Anthem of the Sun had been replaced by a languid folksy approach, by a bluesy roll with some rocking instrumentation in between. Their members' roots in Country & Western, Blues and Folk become evident as their numbers finally laid the playlist walls down. Their first "rootsy" release was 1970s Workingman's Dead, with its themes of desert acquiescence, rambling men, evil women, deranged trains of thought and tragic events such as their doomed Altamont bid opening for THE ROLLING STONES.
Worknigman's Dead can be roughly divided between tough Bluesy rockers, including some penned and sung by their ready-to-die-biker Pigpen (a few months away from oblivion), extended acoustic meditations by guru Jerry Garcia and collective efforts resembling jugband and Country & Western renditions of traditional songs. Lyrics courtesy of their collaborator Robert Hunter.
As in some Rock N'Roll releases of the epoch (THE ROLLING STONES' Exile In Main St. and THE BEATLES' Let It Be come to mind), Workingman's Dead has a peculiarity - it is rooted in tradition, in the genres that gave birth to Rock N'Roll and 1960s popular music, but it remains an experimental release.
Improvisation, which was a speech in itself, becomes the framework for some remarkable lyrical reflection, adding another layer to their counter-cultural hypertext. Uncle John's Band unfolds with promise, breeze through the early 1970s' mist, inviting listeners to "come and see" an open-ended future on the run. The track progressively becomes darker and shadier, with a lilting melody colliding with the cathartic chorus - a nice contrast, a hole in the traditional tissue. An ambiguous nirvana, suspending judgment, letting music do the talking follows, something THE GRATEFUL DEAD usually emphasized, with their music-as-message approach. The dark chords' fulfillment (metaphorically, the arrival of Uncle John to "bring his children home") signs the speaker delving in the text and never bouncing back - that is, the promise is one of reconnection between the subject and speech. Here we have something more complex than by-the-book Psychedelia, "have you seen the light?". The band returns for an a capella section ("got two things to talk about").
In the late 1960s-early 1970s crossroads, that kind of transformation, where the old was new again and the new was ageing quickly, was pivotal for the emergence of a (much harsher and traditionalist) Rock scene in the early to mid 1970s, with Glam Rock replicating Chuck Berry and Scott Walker under layers of indulgence, Hard Rock updating Blues Rock with amphetamines and Progressive Rock mimicking Free Jazz and Classical Music.
Dynamics also reveal interesting differences between their high times and the low shocking potential of their means of expression. The stoned travelogue of High Times follows mixing past sonorities and then-contemporary sensibility with Garcia acquiescing to one's own misfortunes instead of giving up next to externalities. Psychedelia, individualism and tradition are not easy words to reconcile, but THE GRATEFUL DEAD now builds micro-narratives within the collective framework of free love, set to rootsy music. Being on the road is bold ambiguity, "don't let me go", "will I ever know?", the band sings in unison, but individual voices are clearly identifiable, turning the "one voice, one world" approach another gritty hypertext. If Uncle John's Band was the breeze, here pace resembles desert search for one's own shadow - a timely journey. "Tomorrow comes trouble". High Times unfolds a never-ending acoustic drone disguised as Country-Western fiddle moaning, unpacking the counterculture in the heart of Americana.
Easy Wind offers a counterpoint, boosting self-confidence mixed with despair, waiting for catharsis. Between a torn self and a ravaged world, Pigpen's speech simultaneously sounds more authentic than the past (in his gravely rasp) and yet fairly removed from the ashes of tradition, focused on urgent currencies. It is the play of presence and absence in time ("and the river keeps on talking/but you never get anywhere to say") what enhances the ironic title, the track a vintage DEAD number.
It is noticeable when instruments usually relegated to the background take center place here, as Pigpen's voice becomes a pinpointing exercise amidst raging acoustics, curvaceous percussion and unleashed harmonicas - instruments progressively interwoven, harmonizing and reinforcing a second voice here, the thunderous outcomes lurking beneath the imperturbable speech (a high watermark for Rock improvisation, but set in a framework that differs from the 1960s). During this sonic epiphany the singer's catharsis arrives just in the tail-end of the track, as a stubborn post-mortem statement from the doors of oblivion. Additional layers are conferred by knowing that Pigpen was on the verge of succumbing to booze and etc - a haunting, larger-than-life nightmarish atmosphere to an otherwise tough guy Hard Blues speech ("gotta find a woman/be good to me").
Not to be underrated in this transition from tradition to revival are the instrumental chops of THE GRATEFUL DEAD. Apart from the bluesy, rootsy thorns in Garcia and Pigpen's voices which made the newfound approach tailor-made for success and "authenticity", this band had few peers in what comes to elongating their songs onstage, ready for audience's immersion (maybe THE ALLMAN BROTHERS). This band managed to craft songs, not just excuses for jamming, their songs persist under the spotlights.
The deceptive Country ebullience of Dire Wolf hides the infamous "don't murder me" lyrical shot. There is, Far West is never far enough. "Two hundred times, sins". The band dwells in laments, but the lessons to be taken from the tortuous history are circular reinforcements of one's unbounded freedom. This is the closer they get to Jack Kerouac, with a more conventional vocal and sonic approach to Americana roots of Psychedelia.
The extraordinary, barbed-wire cavalcade of handclaps and defused guitar riffs unveil New Speedway Boogie. Denouncing large-scale events as pathological homogenization and materialist naivety, THE GRATEFUL DEAD obliquely slaps (simultaneously) life on the road and the illusions of an easygoing peace and love movement in an ethical wasteland. This one is addressed to THE ROLLING STONES and their Hells' Angels friends in Altamont. Here the DEAD reverse what the STONES would achieve in Exile In Main St. - the wall of sound is deconstructed to reflect the skeletal tension, ethical and political, of walking a Rock N'Roll tightrope. All the falling stars, all the fragility embroiled in transformational dreams are enhanced. The band faced the eye of the 1960s hurricane saying "one way or another/ these problems got to give" as well as, in critical key, even recalling Enlightenment, "you got to carry the load". New Speedway Boogie stings without violence, with the force of dynamics, which propels the calm, yet resolute Garcia mourning broken bonds and bones.
With voices in tandem, THE GRATEFUL DEAD finds another vehicle, an alternative to the alleged newfound collective identities of the 1960s. Instead of just letting the individuals' music do the resulting cacophonous talking, they agree on a common starting point and try to sing in unison. The gritty outcomes simultaneously challenge orthodoxy and the individuals themselves, not returning to an hegemonic cultural individualism. What could be taken as a seemingly traditional move trumps the card of the underpinning orthodoxy with dynamics, instruments and voices liberally put in the "wrong" places, against conventions. The outcomes are not a new coalescing whole, a new identity, but a play of identities, ambiguity, an open-ended dialogue.
Cumberland Blues is another more conventional moment of reflection. With a ramshackle Hillbilly motif, THE GRATEFUL DEAD ignites on, but just for the sake of walking tradition and remaining identical with their critical selves ("I had a good time"). Instead of a creative, ambiguous blurring of Americana and Psychedelia, the band simply plays the tune straightforwardly, like the great live band they were, reinforcing their identities (still, their voices never merge, remaining an exploratory hypertext). Walking softly through past, this band refused to "face the music" of a collapsing present. If this is no counterculture we should find another name.
Another snails' pace travelogue crowds the seemingly never-ending Black Pete, an extended Blues lament, not a life-affirming one, but a cry for lasting peace that never comes. Spilling self-esteem over a Moog organ and a reflective, interrogative guitar riff, Garcia recounts time through suffering - "anybody knows/from sin/in jail/weather down here/die so fast" - then pledges "just wanna have a little peace/to die". The duration of Black Pete counters the fatal lyrical impulse, resigned before crawling time. Negotiating the absence of fate in a post-God world where risk and contingency abound is what Modernity is about, "wait and see", "run run see", "ever me?". There's no reconnection. A slow swansong by THE GRATEFUL DEAD, one of their boldest statements on the matter, eventually collapses in continuous, monotonous existence, sinking down the drain.
You don't have to resort to staples such as 23-plus minutes Dark Star to understand being "in the bus" with THE GRATEFUL DEAD live - just check Workingman's Dead listing. From Uncle John's Band to Casey Jones (both justifiably classics) you get an 8-song roller coaster of sheer emotions turned to appealing music - which finds their unconscious resonance against the background of established genres.
The bookending statement, Casey Jones - the band's first radio hit, predating their future hit Truckin' - is an ambiguous ("travel ahead/travel behind") account of the 1960s stone cold picnic. Psychedelia, individual identities, collective freedom, states of mind, experimentation, ebullient sexuality ("travel ahead/the lady in red"), interaction ("travel with you/is travel with me"), ambiguity between past and present, sly subversion of tradition - everything that makes Workingman's Dead one of a kind is present in this deceptively modest, embodying song. Anarchic detuned riffs meet Garcia's labyrinthic narrative - a nice, dynamic contrast, the song seemingly directionless, yet structured from section to section by the tranquil flow of uneasy words ("And you know/that notion/just crossed my mind") colliding on eerie acoustics. "Casey Jones/you'd better/watch your speed". Open-ended irony ("travel the train/I'm just poking) deconstructing linear utopias (the conventional, gorgeous soloing) to the pace of unruly dynamics (check the drums) is a nice traditional-nontraditional closure to a great, underrated album.
If San Francisco psychedelia is still alive back in 2009, much of the responsibility lies in the shoulders of those new traditionalists, THE GRATEFUL DEAD, which refused to die when their scene slowly collapsed, whose message was effortlessly encapsulated in unsuspected vehicles. See ya.
File under: Live Dead
Tracklist:
* * * * 1/2 Uncle John's Band * * * * High Times * * * 1/2 Dire Wolf * * * * * New Speedway Boogie * * * 1/2 Cumberland Blues * * * * 1/2 Black Pete * * * * * Easy Wind * * * * 1/2 Casey Jones
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