Getting star damaged in Todos Santos, Mexico
A bit about me
I like music (a lot), museums, tennis, reading, and anything to do with the ocean
I have alarmingly strong and pointless convictions about the Grateful Dead* and ginger ale**
Spiders and winter are trash imho
* Speaking of which, I think Jerry’s tone may have hit its high-water mark in 1972, when he was playing Alligator, the 1957 franken-strat that Graham Nash gave him. Its brass saddle, nut, and tone block—along with plenty of other modifications—gave the instrument an especially glassy, bell-like tone, combined with a husky dose of Bakersfield country twang. To borrow a phrase from Dan Carlin, you could describe the overall sound as “strat-like, but moreso.” Europe ‘72 offers some nice examples of this effect, such as the fills and solos on Jack Straw. Jerry certainly found many other great tones to play with on his later, Doug Irwin-built guitars, but with Alligator in his hands and a tie-dyed Fender Twin behind him in the backline, he could convey a simple yet powerful sense of pathos and beauty that I’m not sure he ever surpassed, even with the million-dollar rigs typical of his later career. Of course, you can’t ever really consider one of his instruments’ tone in isolation. Context is important here, and part of the reason Alligator sounded so good—leaving aside Jerry’s technique—was the way it interacted not only with the rest of the band’s instrumentation during that era, but also with the musical direction in which the Dead were then heading. By 1970, they had clearly started moving beyond psychedelic blues toward a more country-and-western inspired milieu, as the releases of Workingman’s Dead and American Beauty exemplify ok I’ll stop sry 😭
** I know what you were thinking, so here are the Top 5 Ginger Ales, ranked (you’re welcome/don’t @ me):
Dr. Brown’s (the company has literally no web presence, fucking psychos. But their ginger ale is aces.)
Q