Like Licorice
5
By BSP73
Jerry Garcia once said that the Grateful Dead are like licorice -- not everybody likes licorice, but the ones who do, REALLY like licorice! And one deadhead to another, some of their concert recordings just didn't have the same special sauce as others. This album is special -- every cherry-picked live song rocks. Every recording is beautiful, and all in honor of that amazing bard and frequent stage-sharer, Bobby Dylan. When Dylan and the Dead played together, it was incredible, but to me, the really superb work was in 88'-92, when Dylan's influence and song-writing was seen in virtually every show, but the boys had absorbed his vibrations and made them their own. The majority of the tracks are from that special era, with a few thrown in from the early-mid '80's and a terrific '73 It Takes a Train to Cry. When I first picked up the album, I was blown away to see that my own first show was represented here -- and I can clearly remember the taste of that ice cold beer during Tom Thumb's Blues at RFK Stadium in Washington, DC on 7/12/89. For the ex-tourers, this album will take you back wonderfully to your shows of the period, and for the yet-to-be-indoctrinated deadheads out there -- the ubiquity of Dylan's structures will pull you in and connect you to the phenomenal musical interplay between the members of the Dead. When Dylan satirically wrote "they're selling postcards of the hanging", it wasn't supposed to be a good thing… but rest assured, The Dead's Postcards of the Hanging is a very, very, very good thing.
