Grateful Dead - Aoxomoxoa
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Free Music Notes for Aoxomoxoa
Free Music Review: The Dead's best studio album
Hit: 5 Stars
The Grateful Dead's masterpiece 'Aoxomoxoa' remains one of their best records. In fact, I think it's their best studio record. Phil Lesh, Bob Weir and Jerry Garcia all just jam on this one.
'St. Stephen' became a concert staple for the Dead, and it appears on many of their bootlegs (look at most of the 'Dick's Picks' series and you'll probably find 'St. Stephen' on the bootlegs, say, 10 or 11 times maybe). The vocals are strong, and the guitar riffs are powerful, as only Jerry could deliver.
Other highlights here are 'Doin' That Rag,' 'Cosmic Charlie' and another concert classic, 'Rosemary.'
Overall, this is highly recommended for any Deadhead. Released in 1971, it sounds just as good today as it did back then.
Highly recommended. ENJOY!!!
Free Music Review: My fav Grateful Dead Studio CD
Hit: 4 Stars
Aoxomoxoa (can't pronounce it) is a very spacy CD with beautiful acoustic moments and some trippy stuff as well.
There is a different mix (original 1969 release)of the album much prefered by Dead Heads but this is all there is on CD at this stage.
A good way to get introduced into the Grateful Dead is getting this CD.
Free Music Review: Love it
Hit: 5 Stars
This purchase was to replace an old, long-lost copy. I've always liked their studio-produced stuff, much to the chagrin of some more serious aficionados. Every once in a while it's nice to hear a nice crisp rendition than to have to pore over tons of bootlegs to find just the one.Free Music Review: Studio Dead Plus
Hit: 4 Stars
Aoxomoxoa was the band's third album, the eagerly awaited follow-up to Anthem of the Sun, originally released in June 1969, but remixed and re-released in July 1971, and it is this remix that has been used for subsequent CD re-issues.
Whereas Anthem synthesized the bands live and studio halves into a glorious whole, Aoxomoxoa is a purely studio affair, more song based, and although some lengthier pieces were considered and rehearsed in the studio for the album, they were not used as they were considered more suitable for a live setting. The Eleven, for example, was instead recorded live for their fourth album, the legendary Live / Dead, which was being recorded at live concerts during the same period. To quote Jerry Garcia from a Deadheads' newsletter, "If you take Live Dead and Aoxomoxoa together, you have a picture of what we were doing then. We were playing Live Dead and we were recording Aoxomoxoa." The studio and live sides of the band had been awarded their own platforms.
Earlier recordings for the album were also junked when the studio acquired an early 16-track Ampex. This was instantly taken up by the band with enthusiasm and is responsible for the album's remarkable clarity, though one of the reason for Jerry Garcia's 1971 remix was that he found the original results muddy and cluttered. He also removed some multi-tracks, harmonies, phase-shifting and stereo effects, which means that whatever our personal preferences we are listening to this album though Garcia's 1971 revisionist ears, not to the band's original 1969 statement. Whilst I wouldn't deny anyone the right to hear the remix, I would also like to hear the record as it sounded in 1969, and since this has been newly remastered in HDCD it seems a missed opportunity not to have gone back to the original mix, as was the case with Anthem Of The Sun, and brought it up to quality, whilst still retaining the stereo panning and other effects from 1969.
The songwriting axes had also changed since the previous album, to which all band members had contributed. The band had met up with writer and lyricist Robert Hunter, and having already collaborated with Garcia on Dark Star, and with Phil Lesh and Pigpen on Anthem Of The Sun's Alligator, had since become the band's lyricist in residence, mostly working with Jerry Garcia. The pair of them composed the entire album (with some musical contribution from Phil Lesh).
The songs have proved themselves of enduring quality, with favourites such as St Stephen (which also appears on Live Dead), China Cat Sunflower and occasionally Cosmic Charlie featuring in the band's live repertoire. Others were precluded from live performance due to the adventurous instrumentation and structure of the studio creations. The lyrics and arrangements are of a maturity that shows that there was far more to the band than mere acid-prankstering and partying, and the band had cohered musically as a unit, with the line-up as before but with Tom Constanten now recruited fully into the band. Only the "difficult" eight-minute chant What's Become Of The Baby breaks up the flow of the record as Americana sing-a-longs like Doin' That Rag complement blues tunes like Dupree's Diamond Blues, the single from the album (Cosmic Charlie being the B-side).
The playing time of this remastered edition has been more than doubled with the addition of four bonus tracks. These consist of three superb extended studio jams from August 1968, including The Eleven Jam, showing some of the original intentions of the album before a complementary live album was envisioned, and a live version of Cosmic Charlie from the Avalon Ballroom in San Francisco for the Live Dead tapes on 25 January 1969 (incidentally the same day that the Beatles recorded Let It Be at Apple Studios).
This was to be the band's last overtly psychedelic studio album, since the band went through the most organically brilliant reinvention of musical history with 1970's Workingman's Dead.
Free Music Review: The End Of An Era
Hit: 5 Stars
This marked the last of the dead trippy psychedellic age so this is a must. You need this album with the 3 other 60s albums, self titled, anthem, this one, livedead, then your set! Their our some great songs on this album like st stephen dupree etc. One song that isnt so great is whats become of the baby all it is is its just jerry saying that plus some weird electric stuff on it. This to me is like the part 2 of anthem because it just has the same feel great trippy album its good for any dead fan who ecspecially likes the 60s era for them.