Grateful Dead - 1971 - 1973 Pt. 2

Because of the complexity of this project I thought I would use it to give a peek into my process.  While each project is different the more complex the project, the more planning and research involved.

Every project always starts with an idea that can be expressed with a what-if question. What if Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young had completed Human Highway? What if The Beatles recorded one more album? What if KISS dropped the Elder concept album and returned to a heavy sound like originally planned?

Most of these questions are triggered by a bit of passing trivia such as the fact that 1973 was the last time that all four Beatles released new albums in the same calendar year. This project was spurred on by the fact that between American Beauty (released Nov 1971) and Wake of the Flood (released Oct 1973) the Dead released two solo albums and two live albums. Each of these live albums contained enough new songs, never recorded in the studio, to fill a single album. The solo albums were not so solo. Jerry played everything but drums on his and Bob’s album was solo in name only and the fact that he wrote and sang all the songs. So, what if they released albums under the band name containing all of the new songs?

Once the question is formed I look at the time line in question to see how everything fits to get an idea of how the reconstructed albums might look. In this case I’m putting the first two new albums roughly in the same place as the two solo albums with the third being placed between Europe ’72 and Wake of the Flood. The live albums are not going away. I’ll address those in a moment.

Because I am a visual person, if needed, I’ll make some charts and tables to help me organize everything. The table below shows the release schedule of all the albums between 1969 and 1974. I did this to see how often they released albums. In general, as was the norm of the time. They released one or two albums each year roughly 6 months apart. Usually in May or June and in October or November.

I then gather the pool of songs and sort those by whatever criteria is appropriate for the project. In this case I sorted them in chronological order by the date of the first appearance of the song whether it is the first live performance or first appearance on an album. The table below shows the song pool with the name of the song, where it comes from, the first appearance and the length of the track. I color coded each column to better visualize where each song can go. The basic rule of thumb is a later song cannot appear earlier, but an earlier song can be saved for later. There is a small margin to fudge things. Just because a song was first played live on one date doesn’t mean it was written the day before.

Once that’s done I start loading the songs into my sequencer. I use Magix’s Audio Cleaning Lab for this. It’s a nice program that allows me to shuffle the songs around, do some editing if needed and place track markers. It also has some decent mastering options (EQ, volume normalization, stereo field width and more) and the ability to burn the finished CD or export the tracks to most of the common digital formats.

I also make sure the project will fit on the appropriate medium. If it is from the pre-CD era I make sure that the tracks can fit on each side of a vinyl album. If it is for a CD it must be less than 80 minutes. I also consider song flow and try to start and end each side with the stronger songs.

I then export the tracks to dump onto my MP3 player or burn to a disc so I can evaluate the finished product. I usually need to go back and make adjustments until I consider it done. Song transitions usually need the most attention, especially with live albums.

Some time during all of this I make a cover if needed. I’m not very good with Photoshop or Gimp so I actually make all of my covers in MS Word. I have a template with a preformatted, one row, two column table for front and back covers. I insert pictures text boxes and word art then tweak until I’m happy. The results can be printed, or I take a screenshot and save it into the project folder.

Then the whole project is saved, tagged and added to the library for easy access from all my devices. Occasionally I’ll upload then them to a file sharing site so others can enjoy them.

Now, about those live albums. At the time the Dead treated live albums with the same care and attention as studio albums. They tried to include as much unique and new material as possible while keeping songs that appeared on previous albums to a minimum. This means that even though we removed all the new originals there is still a lot of previously unreleased songs left. Of course, those songs are all cover songs that would never make it on to a studio album. So, I took the leftovers and looked them over and to my surprise there was enough to save each album.

Each set was reduced by one disc, so Skull and Roses becomes a single disc of all covers with the exception of The Other One and Europe ’72 becomes a two disc set with a mix of covers and originals but no new originals. I did have to find one song to fill up side one of Europe’72. I used Beat it on Down the Line from the Bremen Beat Club session taken from the Europe ‘72 The Complete Recordings mega box set. I sequenced them as follows:

Skull and Roses
Side One
"Mama Tried" (Merle Haggard) 2:42
"Big Railroad Blues" (Noah Lewis) 3:34
"Me and My Uncle" (John Phillips) 3:06
"The Other One" (Bill Kreutzmann and Weir) 13:28
Side Two
"Big Boss Man" (Luther Dixon and Al Smith) 5:12
"Me and Bobby McGee" (Fred Foster and Kris Kristofferson) 5:43
"Johnny B. Goode" (Chuck Berry) 3:42
"Not Fade Away/Goin' Down the Road Feeling Bad" (Buddy Holly and Norman Petty/traditional) 9:14

In order to make side one fit I had to edit the Drums section in front of The Other One. Yea, I know, sacrilege. But if I didn’t then the side would have exceeded the limit by almost five minutes! I hate drum solos anyway so I don’t feel too bad about it. The edit works well and there is still a brief drum bit there for you drum heads to enjoy.

Europe '72
Side One
"Cumberland Blues" (Jerry Garcia, Robert Hunter, and Phil Lesh) 5:47
"China Cat Sunflower" (Garcia and Hunter) 5:33
"I Know You Rider" (trad., arr. The Grateful Dead) 4:55
“Beat it on Down the Line” 3:03
Side Two
"Sugar Magnolia" (Hunter and Weir) 7:04
"Hurts Me Too" (Elmore James) 7:18
"You Win Again" (Hank Williams) 3:54
Side Three
"Truckin'" (Garcia, Hunter, Lesh, and Weir) 13:08
"Epilogue" (Garcia, Donna Jean Godchaux, Keith Godchaux, Bill Kreutzmann, Lesh, McKernan, and Weir) 4:33
Side Four
"Prelude" (Garcia, Donna Jean Godchaux, Keith Godchaux, Kreutzmann, Lesh, McKernan, and Weir) 8:08
"Morning Dew" (Bonnie Dobson and Tim Rose) 10:35

Each side is between 18 and 19 minutes. Which matches the official release.

As you can see the process can take some time. It would be interesting to hear from others and their process. Just leave a comment if you want to share. If you have a similar blog or site, leave a link and I'll add it to the list on the right.

Sources
Skull and Roses - Released October 24, 1971
Garcia [Jerry Garcia] Recorded July 1971 – Released Jan 1972
Ace [Bob Weir] Recorded January–March 1972 – Released May 1972
Europe '72 - Released: November 5, 1972
Europe ‘72 The Complete Recordings
Reflections [Jerry Garcia] - February 1976
Reflections is Jerry Garcia's third solo album, released in 1976. Partway through production, Garcia stopped recording with his solo band and brought in the members of the Grateful Dead, who performed on four songs, plus a bonus jam from 2004 release. Three of the four Grateful Dead-performed songs had earlier live debuts: "Comes a Time" (1971), "They Love Each Other" (1973) and "It Must Have Been the Roses" (1974); "Might as Well" entered their rotation in 1976. Most of the songs entered the live rotation of the new Jerry Garcia Band as well. (Wiki)