The Grateful Dead Aren't That Scary

A lot of people are frightened by the Grateful Dead. Apparently their spooky name, coupled with the fact that most of the artwork associated with the band contains skeletons and/or colorful dancing bears (you decide which is more frightening), has caused many to associate the band with death and other discomforting concepts. Worse yet, the band has essentially become the figurehead of a movement/era that encouraged the rampant use of mind-altering drugs. If that's not scary, I don't know what is!

In fact, before I first heard the Grateful Dead, I too had concocted an image in my head of them as a group of evil, devil-worshiping, psychotic, violent criminals; I could only imagine what kinds of terrible music they'd have to their name.

The first time I heard a Grateful Dead song, however (it was "Friend of the Devil", still one of my favorite songs to this day), I immediately knew my preconceptions about the band were entirely wrong. The song was recorded with all acoustic instruments and it made me feel like I had gone back in time about a hundred and fifty years, not because it sounded old but because it sounded pure. I soon confirmed that in fact the Grateful Dead was not a death metal band, that they didn't (as far as I know) worship the devil, and that they didn't wear make-up or kill animals on stage. Quite the opposite, in fact -- the band seems to have been a strong proponent of love and peace and purity. And most importantly, they crafted what I consider to be great music that took elements of older music styles (particularly blues, bluegrass, and folk) and molded it into something unique and new. So, throw out any negative ideas you may have about what the band stands for, and give their music a chance. I think you'll find it's quite enjoyable.

The reason I've featured the Grateful Dead in this post is that I'm going to see the The Dead (which features the surviving members of the Grateful Dead plus Warren Haynes on guitar and Jeff Chimenti on keyboard) in concert tomorrow night. I've never had the chance to see them, so I'm excited. I've also created a lala playlist of some of their more user-friendly songs. If you like the playlist, check out the album American Beauty in its entirety.

Grateful Dead

Lala Just Keeps Getting Better

Lala announced this week that they've made a minor but important improvement to the functionality of their site by allowing users to rate songs. Lala has always been a great vehicle for discovering music, mostly because (a) you can see what your friends are listening to, and (b) you can listen for free to a full-length version of any of the 6 million+ songs in their catalog. Until now, however, Lala wasn't particularly attractive as a music player because it didn't allow you to easily separate good songs from bad ones. Whereas previously you had to manually create a playlist if you wished to continuously listen to only "good" songs from multiple artists/albums/genres, you can now simply exclude from your play queue songs that are below a certain rating. This feature allows for a more hands-off listening experience, and makes the site much more attractive as a music player.

The song ratings are also nice because they enable you to see not only what songs your friends are listening to, but which ones they like. If you trust your Lala friends' music tastes -- and the assumption is that you do, since you voluntarily subject yourself to a live feed of everything they listen to on the site -- you now have the option of avoiding songs that they don't give a favorable rating to.

In a recent conversation with Lala co-founder Billy Alvarado, I was told that the company will continue to add functionality to their site every few weeks. We also talked about the mobile application they're developing for the iPhone (and other devices, as well), which he says will be out "soon." They're still working out how to best make money from the app, and I imagine they're having to contend with other issues as well. It's hard to believe that Apple will simply approve an application that would take business away from the iTunes Store. And a mobile application that allows users to stream music from the cloud would fundamentally change the landscape of digital music distribution and consumption, so there are likely a lot of other people that will need to sign off on the idea, too. Regardless, Lala is doing great things, and look for them to continue to roll out new features every few weeks (check the company's blog for the latest changes they've made to the site). Below is a TechCruch video demo of the iPhone app.

Four Tet & Burial Collaborate on 12" Vinyl Release

Four Tet and Burial have teamed up to release a two-track LP on vinyl. It isn't clear at this point whether it'll be released officially online, but the tracks -- "Moth" and "Wolf Cub" -- are embedded below, and you shouldn't have too much trouble finding somewhere to download them if you're interested. It seems the hard copy is sold out in a lot of places, but I went ahead and ordered one from this site that's shipping it to me from England. I've listened to the tracks several times, and I enjoyed both of them.

Kieran Hebden (a.k.a. Four Tet) has previously worked with jazz drummer Steve Reid, and I find the duo to be a bit awkward, with the drums often seemingly overpowered by Hebden's glitchy electronic tinkerings. Though it's not clear what each artist contributed to the Burial/Four Tet tracks, I'd say they're strong both melodically and rhythmically. Hopefully we'll hear more from this duo (or at least from Four Tet) soon! I'll keep you posted if the tracks become officially available online.