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Jerry Garcia
All Good Things: Jerry Garcia Studio Sessions
(Rhino)
Part One: Garcia
First Appeared in The Music Box, August 2004, Volume 11, #8
Written by John Metzger
Jerry Garcia’s studio outings are as underrated, intriguing, uneven, and
perplexing as those of his other outfit — the Grateful Dead. Indeed, the
entirety of the famed guitarist’s solo career was built around an
experimentation with sounds, styles, and arrangements that often didn’t fit
within his primary ensemble’s admittedly variegated repertoire, although the
five albums (Garcia, Compliments, Reflections, Cats
under the Stars, and Run for the Roses) that compose the recently
released box set All Good Things are certainly close cousins. Naturally,
some of the songs did appear within the Grateful Dead’s concerts, but there are
even more that didn’t. This effectively allowed Garcia to take a vacation from
one portion of his life in order to pursue another, although there was also an
undeniable give and take between the two worlds. All of these albums have been
remastered and padded with a plethora of bonus material that expands each set to
twice its original length, while a sixth disc, appropriately titled Outtakes,
Jams, & Alternates, features even more previously unissued tracks. Overall,
it’s a superb collection, one that illuminates the ups and downs of Garcia’s
life outside the Grateful Dead. Here, is a closer examination of its individual
components.
 Jerry Garcia
Garcia
(Rhino)
Between 1970 and 1972, the Grateful Dead was an extraordinarily prolific
outfit. Not only did it craft a pair of masterpieces (Workingman’s Dead
and American Beauty) and pull together two magnificent concert sets (Grateful
Dead and Europe ’72), but its members also collaborated to various
degrees on numerous other projects, including the debut from New Riders of the
Purple Sage and solo outings from Bob Weir (Ace), Mickey Hart (Rolling
Thunder), and Jerry Garcia (Garcia). All of these albums offered a
different twist on the heady brew of country, folk, and rock that the Grateful
Dead was exploring at the time, and not surprisingly, many of the songs — no
matter on whose collection they first appeared — were already a part of (or soon
would find their way into) the group’s rapidly expanding repertoire.
Perhaps what is most interesting about Garcia’s self-titled solo debut,
however, is how seamlessly he mixed his more adventurous, avant-garde fare with
material that fit so well within the Grateful Dead’s canon. Easing fans into the
maelstrom, the first side of the effort featured a quartet of tunes — the
rollicking Deal, the sweetly sonorous elegy Bird Song, the lilting
swing of Sugaree, and the melancholy-drenched Loser — that were
already familiar to fans. While there indisputably is a clean, studio polish to
the tracks, they also vigorously sprang to life — a notion that is even more
true in their newly refurbished state. Indeed, whether it’s Garcia’s sweeping
pedal steel, his biting electric slide, his bubbly bass, his tenderly picked
acoustic, or his swirling organ accents — he played all of the instruments
himself, save for the symphonic drum accompaniments provided by Bill Kreutzmann
— each song was carefully fashioned into a brilliantly sparkling folk-pop gem.
As for the latter half of Garcia, it featured two additional
collaborative compositions with Robert Hunter — the gently intimate To Lay Me
Down and the orbital gracefulness of The Wheel — fused within a
strange kaleidoscope of chaotic mayhem. Not unlike The Beatles’ sound collage Revolution 9 or George Martin’s strangely psychedelic classical
contributions to its Yellow Submarine soundtrack, Garcia’s own ornate
musings surged with ideas that darted manically, building a tension that eluded
to the Grateful Dead’s space segments 20 years hence.
Unfortunately, the bonus material featured on the expanded rendering of Garcia is largely disappointing, and as such, its appeal is geared toward
the most diehard of the Grateful Dead’s fans. The alternate versions of
Sugaree, Loser, and The Wheel are superficially different in
their stripped-down arrangements, while the studio jam titled Dealin’ from
the Bottom is utterly forgettable. Not that it matters — the original album
was delightful just the way it was. 
This is the first installment of a six-part series, which will examine All Good Things: Jerry Garcia Studio Sessions
album by album. The entire set is rated:
All Good Things: Jerry Garcia Studio Sessions
Part Two: Compliments
Part Three: Reflections
Part Four: Cats under the Stars
Part Five: Run for the Roses
Part Six: Outtakes, Jams, Alternates
All Good Things is available
from Amazon.com. To order, Click Here!
For Canadian orders, please
Click Here!
For UK orders, please
Click Here!
Garcia [Remastered & Expanded] is available
from Amazon.com. To order, Click Here!
For Canadian orders, please
Click Here!
For UK orders, please
Click Here!
Ratings
1 Star: Pitiful
2 Stars: Listenable
3 Stars: Respectable
4 Stars: Excellent
5 Stars: Can't Live Without It!!
Copyright © 2004
The Music Box
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