Grateful Dead - Rockin’ the Rhein with the Grateful Dead Rheinhalle, Dusseldorf, West Germany April 24, 1972
Grateful Dead - Academy of Music (bonus disc)
I’m a huge fan of 1972 Dead, it was basically the era of the band that finally pulled me into their rather large and scary web of appreciators. Rockin’ the Rhein, one of the band’s mass market releases, is a very fine example of the band’s European tour from which the “live” album (in quotes mostly due to some of the fixing up and the fact that it barely resembles what they were exactly like) Europe ‘72 hails from. It actually contains some of Pigpen’s strongest performances ever, in that a line up with songs like Lovelight, Hurts Me Too, and The Stranger don’t often go to making me terribly excited, but here they’re quite impressive. Even more so, the 18 minute Good Lovin’. And the Dark Star sandwich is pretty much worth the price of admission alone.
In retrospect I didn’t enjoy the bonus disc as much, but then again, if I was to pick the weakest stint from 1972, it might very well be the pre-Europe 72, Academy of Music stint. This sounds mostly like extras from DP 30, which wasn’t particularly impressive in the first place, but then again it’s “extras” like Dark Star, Playin’ and Caution. Which may mean I had an underwhelming listen more than anything else.
Ossian - Ksiega Chmur
Quietly, the backlog of the Polish ethnic/world/jazz ensemble has been making it to CD, if not to the United States. I’ve been hoping for this particular title, which on LP was called Ksiega Chmur Tom I (there was also a second part) to come out on CD as it’s one of the best fusions of various world music styles and possibly the superior album of the band from Ossian to Osjan. What really blew me away was the different in sound quality, the quality here is so good that it was like hearing a different album. Given the (slight) difference in titles, I kept wondering if I had something different, but it was just the clarity that brought out all the background voices and instruments out of the vinyl murk. Now I’m no particular expert in picking out the various styles of music involved here, but the presence of the tamboura drone on the first track definitely spoke of a merging of cultures. In fact, Ossian seem the obvious precursor to Atman or the Magic Carpathians, there’s definitely a flavor of the cosmic, and sometimes psychedelic, at work. And with the gigantic quality increase, I’m quite curious as to how some of the other albums might sound, as I felt that an album like, say, Osjan’s Roots was largely hurt by vinyl noise, given its largely quiet nature. Anyway, fans of groups like Aktuala and Between ought to find quite a bit to like here.