Album of the Week: The Grateful Dead- Workingman's Dead

I've often heard it said that the Dead are one of those bands you either love or hate, yet I find myself somewhere between these two extremes. For the record, this has nothing to do with their live stuff, either. I was very heavily into Phish until recently, so I'm not averse to lengthy improvisations and wading through 3 or 4 CD live releases. The problem with the Dead for me is a combination of how long they were around and how hit-or-miss they could be. The former because I much prefer their first decade of existence, and the latter simply because of the ephemeral nature of live shows, particularly for jam bands. At their worst, they could be an incredibly sluggish and boring band, but at their best, they could truly transcend. So I neither love nor hate the Dead as a general rule. When they're good, they're actually great, but when they're bad, they're embarassing to listen to.

With all that out of the way, I wish Workingman's Dead got the kind of love that American Beauty does. Both albums represent the Dead at the point in their career when they embraced their roots as a jugband, bringing in country, folk, and (stronger) blues influences. Along with this came the incredible vocal harmonies they learned from their friends Crosby, Stills, and Nash (and maybe Young, too). Yet I've always thought of Workingman's Dead as the more successful of the two albums, not in terms of its songs, but for its entirely believable transformation of the Dead from an acid dropping, psychedelic, improvisational, and rockin' live band to a hard drinkin' band of the people.

See, American Beauty is a stellar album, but Workingman's Dead completely nails what it's trying to be. Trey Anastasio of Phish remarked during a Charlie Rose interview that the Dead were the greatest American band ever, and I think what he was getting at was their ability to take all the entirely American musical idioms and put their own spin on them. Moreover, with the songs on Workingman's Dead, the band created songs that are so startlingly close to classic American folk songs, blues, ballads, and country work songs that I didn't realize until recently that they weren't covers or adaptations. Instead, the band were crafting new myths about old heroes (like Casey Jones), old folk tales, and, most pleasingly, old standard topics like women, drinking, and hard jobs. If American Beauty is the kind of album that everyone knows and loves, and you can drink/sing along to with friends, then Workingman's Dead is the album you put on in order to drink alone to.

While not the quintessential Dead album (I think Europe '72 has the best mix of excellently played 'songs' and deft improvisation), Workingman's Dead is a damn near perfect American album. Weirdly enough, for being an album so connected with the distant past, it feels appropriately classic 40 years later, as if they knew that the songs they were making during this era were destined to become staples in the same way that the old songs they grew up on were. Intentional or otherwise, Workingman's Dead is one of the finest albums ever recorded, and even if you think you hate the Dead, you might be surprised how much you love this.