In keeping with my posts thinking of the Beatles and Jimi Hendrix as electronic musicians, I thought I’d round out the techno-hippie trifecta with the Dead. Their fans might lean to the crunchy granola side, and they did some of their most endearing work in unplugged mode, but for the most part the Dead were a cutting-edge high-tech operation. By the time I was going to see them in the 1990s, they were heavily into MIDI guitar and electronic drums. They released an entire album of their synth-heavy improvisation called Infrared Roses, with cover art by Jerry himself.
Infrared Roses is a better idea in concept than execution. Freeform electronic improv is a great idea in the right hands, but sadly by this point in their career the Dead were just fooling idly around. Still, Infrared Roses has some moments of sonic intrigue, and I’ve pulled a few interesting samples out of the noodly morass. It inspired me to do some freeform electronica improvising of my own, though I preferred to do it over four-on-the-floor dance beats.
While the Dead didn’t do anything too musically exciting with their gadgets, just the fact of them was eye-opening for me. It was fun to hear Jerry play synth flute and such via MIDI guitar. His playing was a lot more adventurous back in the sixties by feeding back his regular old guitar Hendrix-style, but the MIDI sound had its own charm. Real guitar nerds will enjoy this exhaustive rundown of every guitar Jerry ever performed or recorded with.
The Dead’s actual music didn’t sound much like the hip-hop and electronica I mostly prefer now. But there were some formal similarities. One of my favorite aspects of DJ music is the seamless transitioning between songs. At their best, the Dead performed some nice transitions of their own, some planned, some spontaneous. These transitions became integral to the Dead’s repertoire, which came to revolve around suites like Scarlet Begonias -> Fire On The Mountain. The most exciting transitions were the spontaneous ones, as songs dissolved into a freeform jam that coalesced unexpectedly into new songs. My favorite of these is from 9/27/72 at the Stanley Theater, when they segued smoothly from Dark Star into Cumberland Blues.
The Dead were pioneers of PA system technology, especially with their epic Wall of Sound. Their system was more conventional by the time I went to see them, but it was still pretty slick. Because they used wireless in-ear monitors and foot switch controls for the vocal mics, there wasn’t any extraneous sound bleeding into the stage mics. The PA broadcast noise-canceling frequencies, the way fancy Bose headphones do. All the way around, the sound at Dead shows was crystal-clear, even in giant echoing stadiums, without extreme loudness. It was a huge disappointment to go hear other bands with lesser systems in the same venues. Like, after seeing the Dead at Giants Stadium a few times, I saw U2 there and it was like having a bucket over my head. Techno-hippies for the win.