Historical Analysis

The band is made up of 7 people:
Jerry Garcia (guitar+vocals)
Bob Weir (guitar+vocals)
Phil Lesh (bass+vocals)
Bill Kreutzman (drums)
Mickey Hart (drums)
Keith Godchaux (keyboards)
Donna-Jean Godchaux (vocals)

The band itself was born in the Early 60’s (under the name The Warlocks), and solidified its lineup by about 64 calling themselves, "The Grateful Dead".


Influences:
The Grateful Dead are best known for their contributions to the Psychedelic Rock genre, which started around 1964 in San Francisco with a similar movement going on in England. Other groups that influenced or were influenced by The Grateful Dead (in some cases it was both) were:

The Jefferson Airplane, The Beatles, Pink Floyd, Quicksilver Messenger Service, The Byrds, and the Beach Boys.

The Origins of Jam Rock:
The Dead were very original in their genre because they were one of the pioneers of it, at least in America. They adopted the form of their live concerts from the Jazz musicians of the time, most notably John Coltrane. Dark Star is a prime example of this amalgamation. He did this by incorporating long improvised sections into their standard blues songs.

The Dead’s use of this style led to the creation of what we today call Jam Rock, where long sections of the concert are totally improvised with songs running into each other often without set lists.

Compositional Style in History:
The Dead utilized many different structural forms in their songs, but predominately relied on the 12 bar blues stanza form. Because Garcia’s roots lied in bluegrass, their vocal harmonies are reminiscent of the old-time country songs of the previous era. As stated before, they also incorporated jazz forms into concerts. They also drew from the classical movement of the time, incorporating lots of indeterminacy into the music. It is this amalgamation of textures that placed no limit on their stylistic possibilities.


THE META-CRITIQUE

As far as the analysis itself is concerned, I feel it was quite comprehensive. Certain sections may have been more helpful that others.

The Syntactical analysis, for example, was an awkward task. Songs like Dark Star do not translate easily to a Schenkerian Analysis. Even thought it was not necessarily a difficult task, some may feel that this mode of analysis takes something away from the piece. On the contrary, I found it to be quite beneficial as it let me see the song in a way that I had not before. If I could have I think I would have dove a little deeper into the intricacies of the harmonic progression outlined in the jams. Perhaps in time that analysis will come.

The Open Listening was harder than I thought it would be. Because i've heard the song so many times, it was hard to get rid of my preconceived notions about it. Hopefully someone who hasn't heard this version can post a comment or two on that section and give their 2 cents.

Hope you enjoyed the analysis. PLEASE leave some comments and add to the page.