Bob Weir

Reviews of Grateful Dead records are invariably written by those who've been touched by
that mysterious and–to me–incomprehensible power-to-enchant that exists somewhere in
the Dead's galaxy. I half-fidgeted, half-slept through the one Dead marathon-set I attended.
Their records, with the exception of a couple of tunes on American Beauty and "Dark Star"
on Live Dead, don't get to me. As a rock & roll band and at their best (for example,... More >

Weir can be preachy and screechy, but Robert Hunter's homiletics ("Playing in the Band") make up for John Barlow's post-hippie know-nothingisms ("Walk in the Sunshine"), and "One More Saturday Night" isn't any less a rockabilly epiphany because it strains Bobby's vocal chords--that just adds a note of authenticity. With Barlow redeeming himself on the elegiac pre-hippie fable "Cassidy" and Keith Godchaux sounding like a cross between Chick Corea and Little Richard, this is the third in a series that began with Workingman's Dead and American Beauty. (Grade: A-)