Archive of September 2007
OK, I’ll admit
It’s kind of weird that my longest blog post in just about forever is all just a lengthy apology for sort of liking this one Grateful Dead song. (And now I’ll go ahead and mention that this post is really an apology for an apology, if only so I can use the ‘sometaithurts’ category.)
14:53 | 0 CommentsFranklin’s Tower, Live at Winterland Area, June 9th, 1977
So, I’m generally not really a Grateful Dead fan at all, and never have been. The closest I’ve ever been to a Grateful Dead show was when I was about 19 I went and hung out in the parking lot at Alpine Valley for an hour or so one summer afternoon when they were there. I didn’t even try to get into the show, or to score any drugs. I was just there with a friend as a sort anthropological exploration.
I think part of the thing is, I remember seeing a lot of Grateful Dead t-shirts and stickers and cover art before I ever actually heard them, and also being aware that people who were into them tended to take a lot of acid and so on–;and so from the look of these things and the band name and all this stuff surrounding them I somehow had this idea that when I actually got to hear the Grateful Dead that it would be like the most intense, freaked-out sort of heavy metal music ever. So finally one day I went out and bought a copy of American Beauty, and when I put that on I was all like “WTF? This is country music!” and I just was never really into them after that.
So, all that said, I have had a couple of friends in high school and college who were big fans, and into the whole tape trading thing, and I’ve always found that part of Grateful Dead fandom to be a bit intriguing, although obviously I’d be more interested in that scene if it revolved around a band that I actually, you know, liked. But from knowing one or two of these guys with big Dead show collections, I learned that I don’t mind listening to a Dead show tape from time to time, and that there are three things in particular that the Dead do that I downright enjoy. These three things are the “Space” improvisations (sometimes), the “Drums” sections (usually), and the song “Franklin’s Tower” (almost without fail).
I’m not sure what it is about Franklin’s, exactly. It’s just sort of mildly groovy and enjoyable. I don’t have a clue what the words are supposed to be about, but I like the vocal harmonies in the chorus. I just know I like to hear a good version of Franklin’s Tower.
Of course, not all their fans like to admit it, but the Dead were known for being pretty hit-or-miss, and not all live recordings of Franklin’s Tower are worth the time, even if you like the song as I do. I recently went poking around the truly vast collection of Grateful Dead recordings that’s up on the Internet Archive, just to try out different takes on this one song. I think I found my favorite, and I’m posting it here for anyone who might be interested.
A word of warning to those with slow connections, or little patience for faux-bluesy jamming: this is a seventeen-and-a-half-minute recording, and a whopping 23MB download. But the guitar sound has a bite that I’m not used to hearing from the Grateful Dead, and it really takes the song to another level.
12:56 | 0 CommentsStory of my life this weekend
Nothing else has really happened in the last 48 hours now. I cannot find a way around this miserable error. I have well and truly screwed the pooch.
11:52 | 0 Comments