Grateful Dead - Candyman

What the hell, let's just keep going with this thread for a little while. Here's Jerry Garcia on pedal steel guitar again, on a song from the Grateful Dead album American Beauty. It's sometimes noted that it's the only Dead album that does not have an electric guitar solo by Garcia. That's true, but it does have this pedal steel solo. In earlier posts I talked about how Garcia sometimes played the instrument in a very traditional style, and sometimes went off into psychedelic space. Here he kind of splits the difference while playing long slow lines in this long slow song.

In a side note, this is also one of the songs that first taught me to love the sound of the Hammond organ, as guest Howard Wales comes in at the third verse, playing the drawbars as well as the keys, adding a rich flavor to the overall mix.

New Riders Of The Purple Sage - Dirty Business

Continuing from yesterday, with another post of Jerry Garcia playing pedal steel guitar. Today it's a selection from the first New Riders of the Purple Sage album.

Garcia was a full member of the group, but was gone by the second album, as the NRPS made the transition from Bay Area bar band to nationally touring unit. It was clear they were going to require more time and energy than he could spare from the Dead. But on this album he is a mainstay of the group's sound, playing both traditional-sounding parts and more psychedelic sonic seasonings.

Here we get something of both. The pedal steel is played through both a wah-wah pedal and a distorted guitar amp, lending a decidedly non-traditional sound to what is, ironically, a rather traditional song, a kind of cowboy movie in verse.

Grateful Dead - Dire Wolf

For a year or two around 1970 Jerry Garcia seriously worked on his pedal steel guitar playing, and recorded a number of songs where that was his main instrument. On this song he gets as close as he ever did to playing the instrument in a traditional fashion. Not so coincidentally, this song was the most 1950s-country-sounding that the Dead ever wrote and recorded.

Notice how Garcia weaves in and out of the vocal line throughout, in addition to the sparkling solo. That solo builds to a sequence using high notes that few instruments besides a pedal steel can pound into your brain quite so effectively.

Federally Mandated Cat Blogging

I don't want to, I have to.


more cat pictures

Songwriting 101

In the New York Times, of all places, there is an ongoing series in which songwriters talk about songwriting. Here Peter Holsapple, American post-punk icon, explains his approach to writing the bridge of a song.

T. Boone Pickens May be Rich, But He's an Idiot

One reason I love the lefty blogosphere is stuff like this.

The Age of Reagan

It's not often I link to Richard Cohen of the Washington Post, but this time I think he nails it. A taste:

In "The Age of Reagan," Princeton historian Sean Wilentz posits that Reagan was the transformative president of our times. I don't know about that. But I do know that in the recent primary debates, Republican after Republican invoked Reagan the way Democrats once did Roosevelt, and they vowed, knock on wood, to be a similar kind of president. If they meant what they said, that would mean no energy plan worth its name and, worse, chirpy assurances to the American people that all would be well.