Various Artists - Day of the Dead

Pitchfork 81

In the summer of 1987, MTV sent a bewildered VJ crew to report live from the long-rolling party taking place outside of Grateful Dead shows, this particular one manifesting at Giants Stadium in New Jersey. Besides broadcasting the news of a massive tailgate onto nationwide cable systems, the station pumped the band’s “comeback” hit “Touch of Grey” a few times an hour. While the 22-year-old sextet was already capable of selling out Giants Stadium, MTV’s “Day of the Dead” report fully transubstantiated the Grateful Dead and the Deadheads from an underground phenomenon into a legitimate part of mainstream American culture, as much an '80s phenomenon as a '60s band. Until Jerry Garcia’s death in 1995, the Grateful Dead would grow more popular each year, the Day of the Dead extending to nearly a decade. The director of the band’s ticket office and others would point to the MTV special as the tipping point towards the gate crashes and mini-riots of the '90s.

It was this popularity, too, that codified the deep uncoolness of the Grateful Dead during the same years, at least among a certain taste-making elite. Being anti-Dead had been part of the uniform for years (see the Teen Idles’ “Deadhead,” from Dischord’s very first 7” in 1980). That attitude, too, went mainstream a decade or so later, via Kurt Cobain’s homemade “Kill the Grateful Dead” shirt. The Grateful Dead boogied, perhaps occasionally achieved choogle; some of their fans were definitely on serious drugs, egregiously friendly, and stood out in crowds. They were easy picking for punks and the DEA alike.

This year’s Day of the Dead is a new 3xCD , five-and-a-half-hour compilation produced by the National’s Bryce and Aaron Dessner as a benefit for the Red Hot organization. With a cast of dozens drawn from a cross-section of indie-ish musical worlds, the set, like its MTV predecessor, signals another milestone in the San Francisco band’s profound influence on American music, closing old circles and opening new ones. In the same way that no single Grateful Dead show (or song performance, or even era) could ever be definitive, the 59 tracks of Day of the Dead represent (merely!) a major entry in the ever-deepening catalog of Grateful Dead covers, interpretations, and reinventions. Already containing universes, the Dead’s songbook is what makes the set enjoyable as a whole, transcending the performers and their translations. Perhaps even more than those of Bob Dylan (no stranger to covering the Dead), the songs of Jerry Garcia and lyricist Robert Hunter welcome musicians of all stripes—loud and quiet, singers and instrumentalists, big-eared non-virtuosos and players alike.

With an artist list that connects Mumford & Sons (who blanch the Satanic urgency right out of “Friend of the Devil”) to So Percussion (who carry “Terrapin Station (Suite)” to thrilling new realms), the set ranges eclectically in both style and level of inventiveness. Most anyone with any kind of appreciation for the Grateful Dead will find probably at least an hour or three of music to dig and really groove with; Dead freaks might also find a good deal to snicker at.

Where the Dead’s critical revival on the fringes of the early 21st century freak-folk scare hinged on the band’s weirdness (LSD, musique concrète, countercultural activity, untethered improvisation), Day of the Dead’s reclamation feels comparably restrained. Though the contributions nod at various Day-Glo threads, the core of the project is made from the softer colors and textures that have defined indie rock in recent years. At the center is a National-anchored house band that come off as conservative literalists compared to the Dead themselves—pleasant, but not usually taking the music anywhere especially new. Instead, they treat the songs as new standards (which they are), pairing them with vocalists. Just as the Dead’s hardcore '60s experimentation dissolved to messy stadium-sized calypso thunder, Day of the Dead is more dancing bears than skull-and-lightning Steal Your Faces. But fun prevails and sunshine abounds, and the set manages to capture a wide range of available Grateful Deads, channeled via Senegalese jazz groovers Orchestra Baobab, noise sculptor Tim Hecker, and many more.

Among the few to really nail the Dead’s communal and conversational bounce, Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks take a reassuring and natural turn through a Europe ’72-style “China Cat Sunflower->I Know You Rider,” Robert Hunter’s Joycean psychedelia finding its perfect match in Malkmus’ quizzical tongue-twisting. Other bands apply their own filters, highlighting bands the Grateful Dead maybe even wished they were. Representing the kinder, gentler side of the nu-Dead revival, Real Estate cleanses “Here Comes Sunshine” of its hippie jazz pretensions and buffs it into the AM gold the Dead themselves couldn’t quite conjure for 1973’s Wake of the Flood. On the far left of the dial, Oneida drummer Kid Millions conducts a hyper-condensed realization of “drums/space” that draws a direct line from the Dead’s infamous second-set jam session to present day Brooklyn. Joined by So Percussion for “drums” (who shimmer like Mickey Hart’s most melodic dreams), Oneida tumble episodically from drone to synth swirl to stoned guitar chatter, covering a familiar through-line with an un-Deady focus. It is the centerpiece of one of several Day of the Dead sequences that approximate the Dead’s ever-variable song-suites.

In this way and others, the Dessner brothers find different ways to interpret the Dead, in micro and macro, letting artists stand in for the band’s various sides. During the set’s approximated jam sequences on the second and third discs (Lighting and Sunshine, respectively), the Dead’s weirdness shines through, including a father/son space-dub jam-out by Terry and Gyan Riley on a near total reconstruction of Bob Weir’s “Estimated Prophet” (yes, that Terry Riley). The band’s jam flagship “Dark Star” gets several treatments, including a happening studio improv labeled “Nightfall of Diamonds” and a full pass by the Flaming Lips, where the Oklahoma psychedelicists translate the song’s theme into a krautrockin’ bassline and build a jam that doesn’t so much go anywhere as build a safe space for Dead freakdom in whatever galaxy the Lips are occupying these days.

More than nearly any other act that might be considered for a massive multi-disc tribute, Grateful Dead songs retain a three-dimensional historical presence. Even the most casual fans know that each Dead tune comes available in a range of versions from a variety of periods in the band’s history, at varying tempos and with different collections of musicians and gear and drug habits. Day of the Dead serves a variety of purposes, and at its best engenders genuinely fresh perspectives combined with excellent performances. Like many a Dead show, it doesn’t always hit the mark, but unexpected magic emerges often enough to make the whole operation worthwhile: over here, a spooked Lee Ranaldo/Lisa Harrigan duet on “Mountains of the Moon”; over there, Bela Fleck’s banjofied “Help on the Way/Slipknot” drawing the connections between Garcia’s mid-’70s prog period and his own banjo roots.

Some of the most exhilarating moments come during songs the Dead themselves didn’t give much attention to, like “Rosemary“—nitrous-washed on 1969’s Aoxomoxoa and barely played live—which finds a freaky-folky new setting with Mina Tindle (and Friends) uncovering the song as a melodic precursor to Garcia and Hunter’s more accomplished later work. Providing more subtle renovations, Will Oldham (who previously recorded a gorgeous “Brokedown Palace” for a 2004 tour single) rightly earns three slots on the collection. On “If I Had the World to Give,” played by the Dead in 1978 and dropped, he pulls the rare trick of creating a performance perhaps more definitive than the Dead’s own, stripping the song down to only piano and erasing the '78 Dead’s two-drummer pomp. He doesn’t quite manage the same feat on “Rubin and Cherise” (a solo Garcia staple, played a few times by the Dead in 1991), but finds his own Bonnie turn on the song, yo-yoing from Garcia’s preferred melody but standing astride and moving freely inside Robert Hunter’s magic-touched world in a way that many of the other singers here don’t manage.

What is most surprising, maybe, is that—on a tribute to a fundamentally guitar-driven band—the guitar and its inevitable solos are deemphasized. There are guitar moments, of course, like William Tyler’s Garcia-gone-countrypolitan curlicues that dot Hiss Golden Messenger’s “Brown Eyed Women” and a hypnotic 10-minute “Wharf Rat” fronted and jammed by Yo La Tengo’s Ira Kaplan, though on the latter the guitars themselves are gently blurred into a Nationalist haze. On a live Wilco version of “St. Stephen” featuring the Dead’s Bob Weir, Nels Cline’s unceasing lead torrents stand out, perhaps the closest anyone on the collection comes to Jerry Garcia’s own approach. But it is over the past decade and change, as well, that Garcia has become fully accepted into the alternative pantheon, an audible pillar of American guitar alongside John Fahey, Television, Sonic Youth, and others, and Day of the Dead is a ripple in an already busy pond. A new all-star set Dead tribute could be assembled every year or two and the range of interpretations might never be exhausted, such as on Songs to Fill the Air, an exquisite folk-leaning tribute CD-R issued as part of WFMU's annual fundraising marathon this spring.

In some regards, the only question is how long the current revival can possibly last. With five-and-a-half-hours here that range from art-song rewrites (Anohni and yMusic’s “Black Peter”) to fantasias about what it might’ve sounded like had the Dead said “yes” to Bob Dylan’s request to join them permanently in 1989 (War on Drugs’ “Touch of Grey”), it would seem we may’ve reached peak Dead, if history hadn’t already concluded such a thing to be impossible. But to top it, some of the surviving bandmembers will tour baseball stadiums this summer under the Dead & Co. logo, minus Phil Lesh and accompanied by John Mayer. While they might not be producing new material (other than a jam or three), Dead & Bro, combined with the Dead’s current fashionability, could likewise constitute something large enough for another generation of musicians to define themselves against—at least until they discover Live/Dead and/or LSD. In the mean time, extending the Deadhead tape trading network of the '80s (where live versions of “Touch of Grey” were a hit a half-decade before Arista Records or MTV got their hands on it), the Dead’s songs will continue to flow by their own folkways.

Drowned In Sound 80

The lion’s share of the songs come from Jerry Garcia’s fruitful partnership with lyricist Robert Hunter, spawning a string of Americana-tinged classics from the first half of the Seventies. Despite being easily the Dead’s strongest original songs, the Garcia-Hunter catalogue is responsible for several of the least exciting reinterpretations here. Phosphorescent’s cover of ‘Sugaree’ is the second track on the releases, and swaps out the original’s gradually unfurling groove into a painfully cheesy country shuffle, while Bruce Hornsby and DeYarmond Edison’s intensely syrupy re-reading of ‘Black Muddy River’ feels much too skippable, and The Lone Bellows’ version of ‘Dire Wolf’ is so straightforward as to render itself unnecessary. Mumford & Sons were somehow brought on board too, and they do the unthinkable and butcher one of the Dead’s most beloved tunes, ‘Friend of the Devil’, recasting it as charmless photofit Radio 2 pop. Then again, several of the more straightforward covers are completely wonderful when done right. Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy helms an aptly noodly run through of ‘Bird Song’, while gothic ballad ‘Loser’ is perfectly delivered in its rightful lethargic country form by Grizzly Bear’s Ed Droste and Little Joy’s Binki Shapiro sharing lead vocals.

The breadth of styles on display throughout the compilation is its greatest strength, and also allows some of the songs to seemingly realise their true selves in their new interpretation. Although it’s far from Adam Granduciel’s finest vocal performance (or perhaps he’s doing an impression of the vastly overweight and often strung out Eighties Jerry Garcia, who went from owning a beautiful elfin voice to singing like a particularly untalented tramp on a cold day), having The War on Drugs play the Dead’s latter day US chart hit ‘Touch of Grey’ is a stroke of pure genius. The song explodes to life as a propulsive modern indie track, as does Local Natives’ version of ‘Stella Blue’. A reinterpretation the Dead’s post-1974 disco sound by American banjo player Béla Fleck is another massive highlight. Fleck, assisted by vocalist Oliver Wood and none other than India’s greatest living tabla player (and former collaborator with the Dead’s second drummer Mickey Hart) Zakir Hussain, loses none of the funk and hook-heavy noodling deployed by the Dead on ‘Help on the Way’ - all the while rearranging it for banjo, bass, and tabla.

And then there’s the two epic suites, buried deep in the sprawling compilation, and paying heed to the Dead’s loftier aspirations. The epochal cosmic jam ‘Dark Star’ appears in various avatars, as an instrumental jam, a digital deconstruction (by Grateful Dead hater, Tim Hecker, in tribute to John Oswald’s infamous rework of the same song), and a pair of covers, one of which is by The Flaming Lips. The grandiose ‘Terrapin Station’ however, truly takes the concept of a cover to insane new heights. The song was already the somewhat divisive and overblown finale to the Dead’s 1977 album of the same name, seeing them jettison jamming and songsmithery for a 16-minute suite that delved into the complexity of prog, cheesy synths, and symphonic music. Here, an assembled cast record a fully fledged version of the epic, including full orchestra and choir, and a new passage for percussion composed by Bryce Dessner. Daniel Rossen sits in for Jerry Garcia’s voice, and it’s perhaps the most uncanny embodiment of the man’s magical and all too underrated vocal presence to date. Perhaps I’m projecting, as both Rossen and Christopher Bear from Grizzly Bear are present, but the suite seemingly takes on the spiralling emotional grandeur of Grizzly Bear’s Veckatimest. The re-recording of ‘Terrapin Station’ is a really magnificent achievement, arguably outdoing the Dead’s own recording of their most complex ever composition.

The Dead’s earliest and most energetic youthful period, as a twangy blues- and R&B-obsessed young band in San Francisco in the mid-Sixties is poorly represented on the record. Only Fucked Up acknowledge the era, with a simmering version of ‘Cream Puff War’ from the Dead’s 1967 self-titled debut. There’s just so much on offer throughout this monumental record, that it seems obtuse to complain about what’s missing, but a bit more of that early acid and blues material wouldn’t go amiss. What’s more, as far as this record’s concerned the group’s ill-fated early member Ron 'Pigpen' McKernan didn’t even exist (many of you will probably think it’s all the better for it, but the Grateful Dead story without Pigpen is incomplete, dammit!)

Inevitably one can barely scratch the surface in a few hundred words on such a massive compilation as this. We’ve not even mentioned Stephen Malkmus & the Jicks' swaggering version of the ‘China Cat Sunflower > I Know You Rider’ pairing, or The National’s haunting rendition of ‘Morning Dew’, or Ira Kaplan (of Yo La Tengo) working showstopping magic on soaring nocturnal ballad, ‘Wharf Rat’. The scope of the Dead’s legacy is unfathomable, and the Day of the Dead project tries to take almost all of it on. The songs The Grateful Dead left behind, the many thousands of hours of recordings, the thirst for aimless rambling, the outright acid madness - it’s all here on Day of the Dead. It’s overblown, it’s almost too much to take in, it's got a sizeable chunk of dodgy singing, and it’s way too long - and as such it’s a wonderful tribute to The Grateful Dead, unlikely to ever get topped.