The singing is weak, the guitar work often uninspired and the recording stinky. This resurrection from the golden days of the Haight suggests something about the value of iron pyrite when the assay office is far away. Inspirational Verse: 'Think this through with me.' A And the changeable rhythms hold out the promise of Uncle John's Band, who might just save us if we'll only call the tune.

The sparse harmonies and hard-won melodies go with lyrics that make all the American connections claimed by San Francisco's counterculture there's a naturally stoned bemusement in their good times, hard times, high times, and lost times that joins the fatalism of the physical frontier with the wonder of the psychedelic one. Of course they don't sing as pretty as CSNY-prettiness would trivialize these songs. Side two of this four-sided set contains the finest rock improvisation ever recorded, and the rest is gently transcendent as usual.

AĪn admitted fanatic raves to all the other admitted fanatics. One experimental cut which hasn't made it for me yet, otherwise fantastic.

And although Garcia and Bob Weir both take vocal leads, their singing styles are still in Pigpen's white-blues thrall. McKernan's organ is almost as pervasive as Jerry Garcia's guitar. It's also the only studio album that respects and documents the impact of Rod 'Pigpen' McKernan, who died in 1973 of cirrhosis of the liver. Pepper, Forever Changes, Mellow Yellow), the already legendary San Francisco band-collective's debut stood out and stands tall because its boogieing folk-rock epitomizes the San Francisco ballroom ethos/aesthetic-blues-based tunes played by musicians who came to rhythm late, expanded so they were equally suitable for dancing and for tripping out. One of the year's few supposedly psychedelic LPs that wasn't actually a pop LP (cf.

What a Long Strange Trip It's Been: The Best of the Grateful Dead B.

Bear's Choice: History of the Grateful Dead (Vol.

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