Grateful Dead (Skull & Roses)

One of the things that made the Dead such a unique live act was the sheer variety of their influences. The vastness of the musical terrain they covered is well demonstrated on 1971's GRATEFUL DEAD, nicknamed "Skull & Roses" because of its cover art. It captures the band's live sound at a time when their marathon, acid-inspired concerts were swiftly becoming the stuff of legend and earning them legions of new fans.
This set conveys the typical arc of a Dead show. The band could be economical and straightforward, with brisk, stripped-down numbers like the lilting "Bertha," the straight-forward country of "Me and My Uncle" and Merle Haggard's "Mama Tried," and the country-folk of "Me and Bobby McGee." They could just as easily go into lugubrious album-side-filling improvisations like "The Other One," and pump out loose-limbed, groovy versions of '50s rockers like Buddy Holly's "Not Fade Away" and Chuck Berry's "Johnny B. Goode." The set concludes with the laid-back, joyous jam of the traditional "Goin' Down the Road Feelin Bad." Conspicuous in his absence is singer/keyboardist Ron "Pigpen" McKernan, whose alcoholism was beginning to take its toll.