[SuchFriendsAreDangerous]

Originally Posted by Moshe

http://www.rollingstone.com/music/li...aving-19691231

That list was crap but it was worthwhile for the link to Lee's review the recent Dead documentary "Sunshine Daydream" which also evinced memories of my chat with Lee about the Dead at the Filter Magazine secret show in 2006. Good times!

http://thetalkhouse.com/features/vie...cWAD74.twitter

My entry to the Dead coincided with many other significant events in my young teenage life — initial exposures to sex, drugs, cars, girls, music — all had, at least in part, the Grateful Dead as a soundtrack. I smoked my first joints over Workingman’s Dead and American Beauty, listening across many lazy afternoons in M’s backyard, leafy green, with the speakers propped up against the window screens, blasting out the tunes. By the time Europe ’72 came out, just a couple years later, it seemed the band was in its healthiest state to date (not counting the ailing multi-instrumentalist Ron "Pigpen" McKernan, for whom the tour in Europe would be his last). The band was writing vibrant new songs and the musicianship was at a real high. I saw them for the first time myself shortly after Pigpen stopped touring with them, about half a year after this concert was filmed.
It was the full concert experience! Well, almost: it was lacking the smell of weed. What are the chances of getting a roomful of Deadheads together for a concert movie and not smelling weed in the theatre even once? Was everyone on baked goods or what? I really couldn’t figure that one out.

Two or three of the new compositions are quite open-ended, and some of the free playing involved put me in mind of the Dead, mostly in an inspirational, aspirational way. One of the highlights of their music, for me and for many others, is their ability to flow freely from song forms to deep improvisation and back again. They weren’t afraid to examine musical terrain over extended time, without worrying about the verse and chorus.. I used to claim that Sonic Youth had, on occasion, a similar template — our musical excursions may have been (on occasion) a bit more on the noisy side, but nonetheless explorations in sound. And like the Dead, our fans were usually willing to take the trip with us.

FUCKING EXACTLY! THIS is EXACTLY what me and lee talked about in 2006, in particular at that time how the Nurse material readily availed itself as a vehicle for great structured-yet-improvisational jams. Glad Lee is revisiting this with Last Night on Earth, the Dead comparisons I thought were obvious for that record..