the book of the dead, 2

My favorite Grateful Dead era is 1967 - 1969, the period during which, in my opinion, their music was at its most primal. Garcia's guitar playing in the late 60s was still quite raw, as if he were still discovering the range of what was possible when you plugged a guitar into an amplifier. I like hearing the process of discovery unfold. I hear it in his outrageously unhinged vibrato, which makes me feel like I'm receiving electro-shock therapy, where the threshold separating pleasure and pain is blurred... Reverend Gary Davis' Death Don't Have No Mercy is a blues tune and I feel about the blues the same way I feel about country music:  For the most part I only like it if it's fused with rock and performed by stoned hippies. I dig Humble Pie, for example, and Savoy Brown, Led Zeppelin and early Fleetwood Mac much more than the poor Delta blues guys they all supposedly stole from.  Add the Dead's cover of Death Don't Have No Mercy to the short list of blues I can tolerate.  I more than tolerate it. The version on Live/Dead posted here might not be their best ever performance of the song, but it's pretty damn good, especially in the way it slowly builds up a head of steam.  Usually by the seventh minute of a song, I've already been checked out for five minutes, but not here. Garcia's singing is still weedy as he hasn't yet learned to use his voice as a subtly expressive instrument, but his emotional intensity more than compensates and makes the tune swing like a motherfucker...