One of the worst bands I ever saw. Went to two Dead shows, walked out of both of them.
They suck live.
I mean really, really, really suck.
L
I DO seem to not remember so well the Dead days in town being more "colorful". dB^D
Well SHUCKS! Why do you think everybody’s stoned?
Attended their concert in March 1973 Nassau Coliseum, NY.
They played a long concert. One of the security guards mentioned they liked the music too.
“They suck live.”
IMHO, not so great in the studio, either.
Bad singing and bad rhythm aren’t my cup of tea. And when they go on about it at a half hour per song it gets close to water boarding.
But, hey, if you are into that sort of thing good for you. Different strokes and all.
They suck live.
I mean really, really, really suck.
L
What a narrow-minded and flippant observation.
I'm sure the fact that they "really, really sucked live" is why they were one of the most successful touring bands in history. Year after year, they were one of the top grossing bands. They must have been doing something right.
I imagine you hate G-d d--m hippies as well.
Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
If you want a band that safely replicates their studio material and never improvises, I'm sure there are many to be found. That is probably more your cup of tea.
The Grateful Dead hold a unique place in the pantheon of live experimental rock/blues bands. Their vocals were quite mediocre, but, improvisationally, Jerry pushed the envelope repeatedly. Sometimes that didn't work out. Other times it was great. "No guts, no glory."
I went to one show in 1972 I was probably the only person not high. I agree, they really sucked, boring badly played jams. The crowd were the ugliest people I have ever seen.
Never understood why they were so loved, most likely because of the drug atmosphere at and leading up to the shows.
What I like about the Grateful Dead live is that they don't mechanically play the same "set" over and over again like so many other successful rock bands. Nor do they employ those stupid rock concert cliches like shouting to the audience that they are the "best crowd ever" and "Great to be back in (name city here)".
Instead, they play a completely unique concert every time out. Sometimes, their setlist from the previous concert doesn't even repeat a single song. And even when they do play the same song, it sounds completely different than any other time they played it.
So over their 2,319 concerts averaging 23 songs - we have 53,337 completely unique performances. Die hard fans can listen to a version of "Morning Dew" for instance and immediately identify it as the version that was played on June 29, 1973 in San Diego, CA. Even though Morning Dew has been played by the band 254 times in concert. That is because the other 253 performances of the song are completely unique and distinguishable from each other.
Even before the rise of the Internet, fans have been trading tapes of the concerts for decades, trying to achieve the "Holy Grail" of owning every single Grateful Dead performance ever.
The band actually encouraged the fans to do this and even started making soundboard recordings of their concerts so that their fans would have decent quality tapes to trade.
I know the Grateful Dead make for easy punching bags here on Free Republic because they are essentially just a bunch of dirty, smelly, drug-addled hippies who have thousands of other smelly, dirty, drug-addled hippies following them around the country in ratty micro-buses and falling-apart RVs. That said, they are very talented musicians with a gargantuan oeuvre of live recording that will be listened to by even straight clean people for decades to come.
You must have been sober like me. Hate these guys and I don’t “get” the whole scene and love for their music.
I think they suck.
Well - they were very inconsistent, especially when they got older and Jerry was in poor health. Their regular fans didn't notice the difference - but I've seen some live performances where the vocals especially were cringe-worthy. I love the music, was never over fond of the vocals. Always wondered what they would have been like with a good vocalist.