Grateful Dead

PLAYLIST: A Beginner's Guide to the Grateful Dead Live Vol. 2

Hey, I'm Tom Hamilton, and I'm the guitar player from Joe Russo's Almost Dead, as well as the host of Goin’ Down the Road on the Grateful Dead Channel on SiriusXM. If you are a newcomer to the Grateful Dead's music, here are five picks that I think will just kind of open up your whole thing and bring you closer into the music. And if you're an old head and you've been listening to this band forever...there's still five picks that I think are going to blow your mind. Let's get into it!

“Estimated Prophet” - Live at Red Rocks Amphitheatre, Morrison, CO, 7/8/78

My Grateful Dead fandom started very early in my life. My old man was a huge Dead Head and there were a lot of cassette tapes around the house of shows. I dug it and I was always asking to listen to certain things. When I was around four, he gave me my own cassette of Red Rocks ‘78, so I could stop asking him to play it for me I guess. So I've been listening to that show my whole life, it's like ingrained in my DNA.

It's hard to pick one song from this whole thing, but the segment that really lights me up all these years later as an adult from that show is the opening of the second set, the “Estimated Prophet” > “The Other One” > “Eyes of the World.” I think that's peak Grateful Dead at the height of their powers with Keith and Donna. I know ‘77 gets a lot of love and I'm not being a contrarian, but what I really enjoy is that there was a shift in energy and tone going into ‘78. When I was a little kid, I loved the “Werewolves of London” and the “Terrapin Station.” But as of today, as a middle-aged dude, that “Estimated > Other One > Eyes” segment is what does it for me. 

“Hard To Handle” Live at Fillmore East, New York, NY, 4/29/71

Ladies and Gentlemen… The Grateful Dead, from the Fillmore in 1971 was another show I had on cassette as a kid. My older brother was also a huge Dead Head and introduced me to that show. There's a lot of great, great stuff on this that I've listened to my whole life, but the “Hard to Handle,” it's just the greasiest thing man. It is feral the way that Garcia is playing and I mean Pigpen, you know he Pigpen’s the s**t out of this one and the jam is just f***ing ferocious. 

My older brother was always introducing music to me. 1990 was the year The Black Crowes released “Hard to Handle,” and he got me into the Crowes. And then when he got this Fillmore show on cassette from one of his high school buddies, he played it for me. It was like, “Hey, I know you love The Crowes, and you love that song. Did you know that song was a cover?” Which I had no idea. Obviously, I'm 10 years old or whatever. And I hear the Dead's version of “Hard to Handle,” and I'm like, what the f**k is this? You know? It's really a smoking version of that song off of that show. 

“Wharf Rat” - Live at JFK Stadium, Philadelphia, PA, 7/789

So the theme here obviously is that a lot of my Grateful Dead fandom was influenced upon me by my dad and my brother and all of their friends. I wanted to go and see the Dead when I was a kid because my dad went when I was very young, and then he started taking my older brother in ‘87. To which, I was jealous double fold because it's not just that I'm not getting to see this music live, but also that they get to do something together, and obviously I want to be involved. 

So in 1989, it's the summer and they're playing JFK Stadium in Philadelphia, which was an enormous place that held 100,000 people. At some point leading up to that show, JFK got condemned by the city. It was just falling apart and was not structurally sound. And for some reason, the Grateful Dead decided they were still going to play their concert there. I remember it being a very big conversation in my house with my mom, you know, being like, my husband and my kids aren't going to go to the show at this condemned place. To which everybody was just like, that will be fine. And it was, it was totally cool.

If ‘78 was the peak of the Dead's powers with Keith, I think from ‘87 to ‘89 is the peak of the Grateful Dead at their powers with Brent, and this show is a shining example of that. I love so much about it, but the “Wharf Rat” was one that, as a kid, there was a lot of rewinding and playing of that cut of that tune. Garcia's tone went very metal by this part of the ‘80s and he really used a real distorted tone. I grew up listening to the metal of the 80s, listening to Randy Rhodes and Ozzy and Van Halen and stuff like that. So hearing Garcia's tone change, I was just super into it and he f***ing rips this one open in the solo section. 

“Help on the Way” / “Slipknot!” - Live at the Great American Music hall, San Francisco, CA, 8/13/75

This is probably my safest pick of them all. But just because it's a theme song, doesn't mean it's not true! From the album One From The Vault…it is THE version of “Help>Slip>Franklin.” In my opinion, it’s the gold standard of what that little sandwich does. It's perfect in every way. The original intention of it is all still right in all of their fingertips. They had just made this record. So I think there's something very interesting about when you hear bands play their newest material at the time, it still has that thing, you know, they're still excited about the songs. And whatever intention was there when they wrote it and recorded it, it's usually still pretty present. So that's all there, you know, and what else can you say? If you're a Dead Head, you know this track and you know this album, and it's perfect.

“Dark Star” - Live at Shrine Auditorium, Los Angeles, CA, 8/24/68

For my final pick, I’m sticking with the vault series with “Dark Star” from Two From The Vault. This is some of the most punk rock s**t that the Dead's ever done. It is devastatingly heavy. The jam of this “Dark Star” is like listening to Joy Division, it is so dark and gothy-feeling. And the only thing happening percussively is that f***ing shaker. This is like a 20 minute song, and it’s the only thing happening the whole time, and it's all that’s needed to be there. It's really, really, cool. I love it so f***ing much. You can hear the confidence and the swagger of every member of the band at once. There is no one on that stage that is playing anything that is not full of control of their instrument. It's pretty magical.