the book of the dead, 4

If Aoxomoxoa is my favorite GD record, then Mountains of the Moon is my favorite song on my favorite record. Garcia’s singing is poignant and expressive without being at all overdone. I think you can say that this is the song where his voice comes into its own as a distinct new dimension added into the Grateful Dead’s mix of elements.  And, of course, the emotional impact of the singing is inseparable from the words Robert Hunter puts in Garcia’s mouth. It’s surreal poetry, fragmented, hallucinatory, solipsistic. The song’s literal meaning is impossible to glean, but it matters little, and with its repeated (self-?) references to folderol, one suspects that the words were freely associated, less about their meaning than the way they sound together. In other words, you’re free to attach your own narrative or to simply let the words and music conjure up pictures in your mind’s eye. Twenty degrees of solitude, twenty degrees in all / All along the dancing kings and wives assembled in the hall / Lost is the long and loneliest town, fairly Sybil flying / All along the all along the mountains of the moon. (I think that’s how it goes)... I’ve never been a big T.C. fan.  Too often his keyboards sound clumsy and superfluous, but his harpsichord flourishes on Mountains of the Moon are just perfect, turning the song into a dream that’s neither a pleasant reverie nor a nightmare, but rather somewhere in between, though no less vivid in this ambiguity. Ambiguity is good in this case, though there's nothing ambiguous about the chills I get when I watch this performance...