Blues for Allah 1975 Album

Grateful Dead

This is a step up from the low-brow Mars Hotel record, but that doesn't mean it's any more entertaining. In fact, it's arguably less so. The Dead had soured on live performances and became strictly a studio band around this time. Their own overzealousness (and many other factors) played into this, but they didn't exactly have the best track record with studio LP's to this point. This particular effort veers in a jazz-fusion direction with strong echoes of their live show (naturally), which doesn't really translate very well. The lone exception was "Franklin's Tower", a feathery-lite slice of hippie-pop which immediately stands out. As usual, the best material comes from Garcia, but other than the aforementioned "Tower" it's not very robust. Elsewhere, Weir's "The Music Never Stopped" somehow scraped the bottom of the charts, which I have to attribute to blind luck. Fairly certain they hit the road again soon after this, and for good reason, even though the record charted pretty high.