No, I haven't lost my mind and/or become a hippie!
Seems as though very few people know that the Dead recorded one of THE greatest west coast acid-punk 45's, right up there (and similar in feel) to "7 & & Is" by Love.
While they went on a completely different path, at least there's this blazing piece of evidence that these guys could really kick it out.
from 1967...
THE GRATEFUL DEAD - CREAM PUFF WAR
2 comments:
Hot damn, wotta treat! Thanks, Derek! Mind you, I already have this track on my copy of the first Dead album, but, still, what an awesome surprise!
I've been a tie-dyed-in-the-wool Deadhead since the late '70s, and a longtime member of the Dead tapers' underground; I have several hundred hours of footage, including many hours which I taped myself. I usually prefer the arty, jazzy, drippy, dreamy jamming style of later years, but my collection of bootlegs and albums goes back to '66, just for historical completeness.
Still, while I prefer the later stuff, I have a special place in my heart for Cream Puff War from the Dead's debut LP; I totally agree that it's a masterpiece of classic three-minute garage psych. In fact, the only difference between this and a lot of the raw garage psych going around at the time is production values; if you were to take any of the garage psych bands of the day and record them with major-label production values -- like the Dead on WB -- you'd basically have the sound of the first Dead album, a sound not that different from, say, the 13th Floor Elevators or The Seeds.
I often listen to a lot of the garage psych posted here and other 45 collectors' blogs and, like yourself, find myself wondering what would've happened if the Dead hadn't gotten all artsy and jammy, and instead stayed a trashy, speedy garage psych band. Would they have still gone on to become legends, or would they have faded away after eight or ten singles, to be rediscovered decades later by old 45 collectors/bloggers?
(BTW: If you should happen to come across a couple of singles recorded by the Dead under the name of "The Warlocks" circa 1965 or '66 -- on the Scorpio label, as I recall -- it'd be awesome if you could post them here. I've been dying to hear what they sounded like back when they were still young and savage.)
Quite a few of the great psych/ garage singles came out on big labels.
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