And Kelly contributes some more decent harmonica ditto for K. Garcia plays some almost up-to-par guitar throughout, the drumming is solid, and the song has ballast, which is more than I can say about any other song on the album except “Fire on the Mountain,” which has other problems. Meanwhile, “All New Minglewood Blues” might well be the LP’s highlight, Weir’s smarmy vocals notwithstanding. And Bob Weir sounds smug and slick, just as he does on “I Need a Miracle” and “All New Minglewood Blues,” the last of which I bust out anytime anyone wants proof positive that white guys have no business singing the blues.Īs for “I Need a Miracle,” it features a nothing-special Garcia guitar riff, some annoyingly smarmy vocals by Weir (although he sure does project ‘em!), and two saving graces in the harmonica work of Kingfish’s Matthew Kelly and the natty piano playing of poor deceased Keith Godchaux. I’m not interested in said interesting percussion. We can dispose of “Good Lovin’” in the slops bucket in three sentences. The dissection of an abomination is ugly business, akin to those cinematic alien autopsies that always go horribly, terribly wrong. Disco Dead! The Apocalypse had come, not in the form of Four Horsemen, but in the guise of Seven Totally-Out-of-Ideas Hippies surrendering to the Zeitgeist! I had a particularly disturbing eureka moment when, after listening to the title track over and over, I realized it was a… a… disco song. I finally figured out that the Grateful Dead’s tenth studio LP was a piece of dreck, aside from its sometimes interesting drum work and percussion, which had much to do with the contributions of Jordan Amarantha and Mickey Hart’s return to the fold after a 4-year absence. Could the Donna Jean Godchaux tracks be for real? Was the band’s cover of that hoary old atrocity “Good Lovin’”-which isn’t quite the last refuge of a band in the grip of utter creative exhaustion that “Dancin’ in the Streets” is, but you couldn’t slide a needle into the mediocrity gap between the two of them-really coming from my turntable? And was it possible this sad excuse for a Dead album was actually produced by the great Lowell George? I considered myself a Deadhead back then, and remember dutifully purchasing and listening to Shakedown Street and thinking something was wrong with me. To say nothing of the abominable “Dancin’ in the Streets,” which is less song than generally acknowledged symptom of complete artistic defeat. The slide began with 1973’s Wake of the Flood, and went from slide to freefall with 1977’s Terrapin Station, with its slick prog-rock, album-side-length title track and awful dancing turtles. Shakedown Street hardly marked the beginning of the Dead’s slow decline from greatness. What the Grateful Dead needed was something more along the lines of a burning bush. No wonder Dead Cheerleader in Chief Robert Christgau was moved to write sadly, “I remember Robert Hunter when he was making up American myths.” And Bob Weir, whether he knew it or not, was speaking for the entire band on “I Need a Miracle.” Unfortunately, “I Need a Miracle” wasn’t the miracle the Grateful Dead needed. “France”? “If I Had the World to Give”? Didn’t anybody bother to inform the Grateful Dead you can’t smoke ‘em if you ain’t got ‘em? An album this lukewarm, piss-poor, and downright vapid required the collective efforts of a band of once-innovative musicians turned consummate studio hacks, deadicated to the lowest possible common denominator. Some albums are born to ignominy others have ignominy thrust upon them.
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