I'm joined by guest Phil Stacey as we discuss the Grateful Dead's 1970 album Workingman's Dead.
Show notes:
- Recorded at CompCon world HQ
- First show of the new year
- Workingman's Dead is the band's 4th studio album
- First of two releases in '70
- Recorded in nine days
- Stripped down sound, less psychedelic
- Garcia and Robert Hunter wrote the whole album
- Folk, country, Americana elements
- Rock was moving away from psychedelia, toward singer-songwriters and acoustic sounds
- Bookended by two of the band's biggest songs
- More of an emphasis on vocals like Crosby, Stills and Nash
- "Suite Judy Blue Eyes" as a torture device
- Phil: Prefer live Dead, but still break out the studio albums on occasion
- Warm sounding record
- "New Speedway Boogie" is about Altamont
- Recently covered by Courtney Barnett
- Hunter's solo releases are all over the place
- Jay: Only heard two songs before
- Fairly concise album; not much jamming
- Moved away from acid blues into a new direction
- "Easy Wind," sung by Pigpen, was the outlier
- Like the Entwistle song on a Who album
- "Casey Jones" evolved in an interesting way over the years
- Talking about cocaine
- Next up: American Beauty
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The opening and closing theme of Completely Conspicuous is "Theme to Big F'in Pants" by Jay Breitling. Voiceover work is courtesy of James Gralian.
