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Anthem of the Sun

Grateful Dead - Anthem of the Sun Audio CD

A fair review of the Grateful Dead "Anthem of the Sun" Audio CD. Please note that the below review is the views of the authors, and authors only. You can get a complete list of all Grateful Dead reviews here, or go back to the Grateful Dead tabs.

Band: Grateful Dead
Title: Anthem of the Sun
Rating:

Release Date: 2003-02-25
Media: Audio CD

Tracks: 1: That's It For The Other One I. Cryptical Envelopment II. The Faster We Go, The Rounder We Get III.Quadlibet For Tender Feet IV. We Leave The Castle 2: New Potato Caboose 3: Born Cross-Eyed 4: Alligator 5: Caution (Do Not Step On Tracks) 6: Alligator (Live) 7: Alligator 8: Caution (Do Not Step On Tracks) (Live) 9: Feedback (Live)

I Love Them, But I'll Pass On This One
It's a bit too trippy and raw for my tastes. I love the Grateful Dead, and while I will concede the historical importance of this album and its revolutionary avant-garde and artist aspects, I'm not a big fan of it. Experimentalism is good, but this gets a bit excessive and furthermore one is hard pressed to find a few comprehensible lines of vocal lyrics in here.

The vocals are nowhere near the crisp greatness of American Beauty and Workingman's Dead. It was an important step in their development as a band, but thankfully not the final step. I get a kick out of New Potato Caboose, and I like long songs, but it is probably a few minutes too long. Born Cross-eyed has some great aspects to it. But the rest is pretty unremarkable in my opinion. I think they totally messed up the rendition of Alligator, they've done much better versions at their live shows and this version is just far too cluttered with the vocals and the kazoo sounds are way too overwhelming. Overall, the instrumentals are pretty darn good, if you can swallow the "experimentalness" and length of it all. This was basically the band members experimentation in the studio, where they got to experiment with some of the equipment for the first time and had full control of the production. They did a fine job of "sticking it to the record company", but that doesn't make this an appealing album. If you are going to grab this, make sure you also watch the film "Anthem to Beauty", which gives a lot of neat inside perspectives on how they made this. If you are going to get weirded out by this album, watching "Anthem to Beauty" ahead of time will increase your interest and the inside scoops will probably perk your interest and help you "swallow" it.

All this said, if you are a real fan, you just have to listen to this a couple of times. As for me, I've listened to it, and I will set it aside with the smug satisfaction of knowing that the Dead went on to do better things. The Dead were never as good at making albums as they were at live shows, but ultimately they DID make great albums and they made ones much better than this. In terms of maturity, more subtle instrumentation, vocal quality, and cohesiveness, American Beauty and Workingman's Dead totally eclipse this label, and so I recommend that anyone new to the Grateful Dead start there.

MY FAVORITE MUSICAL MIND BOMB.
To fully appreciate Anthem of the Sun you need to listen to it while peaking out on a good LSD trip. This is The Dead at their psychedelic best. Anyone who disagrees does not know what they are talking about. If you want to read something that refers to this music in a psychedelic fun sense, check out Luke Mitchell's Mind Bomb(read reviews first), as funny as this album is great. 5 Brilliant dark stars. Mind Bomb.

Dead Zone
There's something about elevated terrain that makes me kind of sleepy anyway, and when you go and add some of the Dead's dreamiest, spaciest music, well, let's just say you're risking zoning out completely. A while back I was driving through the Berkshire Mountains on the way from New York to Maine, blasting some of my favorite music and feeling pretty good, when I made the foolish mistake of putting on the Dead's classic ANTHEM OF THE SUN. ANTHEM had long been a favorite late night album of mine, but there are times and situations when entering the ZONE could mean entering the DEAD zone. I switched over to the Airplane's live BLESS ITS POINTED LITTLE HEAD, and that perked me up.

A few years ago, I responded to a thread here on Amazon and listed the Airplane's BAXTER'S and the Dead's ANTHEM OF THE SUN as my "trippingest" albums. I still think so, but in entirely different ways. BAXTER'S was all angles and jagged edges. Yeah, it ended with a love-in, but you had to ride through the "Schizoforest" to get there. It was also a set of distinct SONGS, whereas ANTHEM had the most organic flow of any "rock" album I had ever heard. Is it too pretentious to say it's "symphonic"? Well, so be it. It's all of a piece--all the more remarkable when you consider that it consists of studio tracks and excerpts of live recordings all spliced and diced in a way that could probably never be reduplicated. Mainly cuz no one alive is even quite sure nowadays how it was done.

As a devotee of rock (and other musics), I've always been almost obsessive about song titles and sequencing, but with ANTHEM, I just had to let go of that particular obsession. I'm sure there are Deadheads out there who can rattle off the titles of the record's "individual" tracks, but I am not one of them. "Alligator"--which stood out but also blended in--probably remains the only tune on the record I could whistle on command. I guess I do know the opener "That's It For the Other One" pretty well, but if anyone asked how its individual movements go, I'd be at a loss. "'Quodlibet whaa??"

But that's the beauty (American or otherwise) of this record. It's one of the reason that it tends not to be anthologized on any BEST OF packages. How could you isolate a single track? This is one album I don't even want to ever play on "random select. " In fact, I shudder at the thought. Theoretically, it could be interesting, and hey, it could all flow (just in a different way). If Tom Constanten's early electronica could be part of the orgainic whole, and if the bonus live tracks (totally live reprises of the album's second side, some fabulous "Feedback" and a surprise reprise of "Born Cross Eyed") fit in so seamlessly, why NOT mix things up even more.

Maybe someday, in some alternate universe, I'll give it a try. Just not in the Berkshire Mountains.
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Anthem of the Sun
Anthem of the Sun is a collage layers of sounds and combining live music parts and studio parts too make a tottaly stellar album, very acid rock buy today.

Love it
I've always liked their studio-produced stuff, much to the chagrin of some more serious aficionados. This purchase was to replace an old, long-lost copy. Every once in a while it's nice to hear a nice crisp rendition than to have to pore over tons of bootlegs to find just the one. ALLIGATOR.

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