It had been many years, but a couple of weeks back upon (re)hearing the ‘jam’ section, i.e. the latter 3/4, of the Dead’s 1971 live interpretation of Otis Redding’s infallible R&B staple “Hard To Handle“, my reaction was something akin to ‘fucckkkk‘ or ‘holy shit!‘ Eloquent? No, but emotion rarely is in my experience. And that’s music for you.

Anyway, speaking of the Dead, I just partnered with Rhino Records — in short I’m going to be contributing weekly to their Spotify project, Rhinofy. It’s been fun — as of right now it’s myself Fred Armisen and Henry Rollins and I believe they will be adding some others. Kicking off, I based my first playlist on the oft-neglected world of the Grateful Dead’s studio output. And yeah, I cheated a little and included Europe ’72, but with all the studio overdubs the band added post-tour I thought it could slide. Also, I nixed the the first four albums from the list as the material was much, much better served in a live format than on any record. But not to worry, I plan on doing a follow-up GD entry concerning strictly live cuts so those tracks will get theirs in due time. Next week’s entry is going to focus on post-post punk — whatever I deem that to mean. Stay tuned.

If you do the whole Spotify thing, go hit up my selections at Rhinofy, here.

MP3: Grateful Dead :: Hard To Handle

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