The Dead's second album tipped them over the threshold in an instant
- with a record like that behind their back, a devoted cult following
was immediately guaranteed. Anthem Of The Sun, as far as I understand
it, often draws comparisons with After Bathing At Baxter's, and I can
justify the comparison - it's the second album I've heard that can definitely
be enjoyed only while you're tripping. I suppose everything on here, at
least, the studio side, has been definitely recorded while under the influence
of pot or maybe something more serious - otherwise, romantically minded
hippies wouldn't have too much of a ground to identify themselves with
it. My personal "music reviewing paradigm", however, doesn't
support pot smoking as one of its integral parts (even if I had reader
comments provoking me to do you-know-what); so I just say no and try to
review music from a standard point of view, which means that all you potheads
might just skip this here review. Why don't you check out the Timothy
Leary home page instead?
Anyway, Anthem Of The Sun (what a bloody pretentious name, too) is a 'double'
experience: its first side consists of a bunch of sloppy studio jams,
and the second side presents us with a sloppy live jam, recorded at the
end of 1967 in some LA hole. Taken from a non-drug-influenced point of
view, the studio side simply sucks - all of it. I can hardly distinguish
'That's It For The Other One' from 'New Potato Caboose', and that short
bit at the end, the chaotic two-minute noisefest of 'Born Cross-Eyed',
just violates every possible law of music, so I'm not amused. The most
vicious thing to realize is that this is not even avantgarde - these guys
just take what could be some potentially okayish melodies and jams and
then brutally warp them through some hideous 'psychedelic' techniques
of theirs, like randomly changing tempo, key, throwing in bits and pieces
of riffs and solos that don't seem to belong anywhere, singing off-key
and crowning it all with some very weak production. Sometimes it sounds
as if they recorded one piece of the 'song' on one hand-held tape recorder,
another one on another, and then spliced them together by playing these
two at the same time and holding a third one ten feet away. Oh, and with
all the tapes chewn, of course. I will admit that the main melody of 'That's
It For The Other One' (in the first part, called 'Cryptical Envelopment')
is a wee bit catchy and could have been worked into a pleasant, moving
ballad, but they go ahead and bog it down with the usual cacophony instead.
Pathetic. The liner notes actually say that for 'That's It', "overlays
of several concert performances were mixed together to create a multi-dimensional
song suite". Well, it ends up having so many dimensions that I feel
like an astronaut thrown out in space without a spacesuit on...
Fortunately, the second side is much better, simply because it has 'Alligator'
on it. Ooh, I like that one - at least, the main fast part when they really
jam, not the ending part where they slow everything down and start playing
random crap seguing into 'Caution' which sucks just as much as the rest
of this stuff. 'Alligator' was the first officially released Dead jam,
and while the recording is supposedly not up to the band's highest standards,
it really showed the world what a masterful machine this band could be
when they really locked themselves into a tight groove. They function
ideally as a band - not just a collection of self-indulgent soloists,
and the alchemy works. Mickey Hart's dexterous, swinging, paranoid drumming,
"Pigpen"'s cute organ swirls, Garcia's frantic leads, all this
entwined with wonderfully ridiculous kazoos, it really gets my blood flowing.
I can't imagine any other American band at the time putting on a show
like that. Okay, maybe Santana - but Santana weren't around yet. 'Alligator'
really saves the record, dragging it up one or two points; unfortunately,
as I said, the track then neatly segues into 'Caution (Do Not Stop On
Tracks)' which bores you for two minutes with simplistic rhythms and then
completely falls apart, degenerating into four minutes worth of feedback,
scratching, hoarse grunts from instruments and silence. Also recorded
live, but I wish I hadn't mentioned that...
All said, Anthem Of The Sun is still a key historical document of unbelievable
significance - together with Baxter's, it is perhaps the best epitomy
of 'psycho excesses' that San Francisco was so rich on those days. Calling
this stuff "crap" in an open and uncompromised matter seems
a bit of a stretch to me, as it would involve getting into the discussion
about the ups and downs of hippie culture, the usefulness of acid substances,
etc.; but certainly, the album has not dated well at all, and I'd be very
surprised if I found out that it still finds its own particular fans after
all these years. Me, I just don't buy into that aesthetics as a whole
- and for the record, hippie philosophy and culture resulted in a lot
of far more pleasant and truly enjoyable records than this one. Namely,
give me Surrealistic Pillow or even Quicksilver Messenger Service over
this c... er, sorry, over this outdated product any time of day. But if
you're like me and you see this for ten cents lying somewhere in a used
bin - give it a try. You need to hear it at least once to get a whiff
of that culture. Hey, c'mon, it's not that bad. A whiff of hippie excess
never really hurt anyone. And if you're particularly drawn to Live Dead
performances, 'Alligator' might be a treat as well. Sure is for me.
(by George Starostin,
Only Solitaire)
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