The dawn of the seventies marked the Golden Age of tie-dye. From the free festival to the freak-out tent emanated the sounds of Workingman’s Dead and American Beauty, both stone classics by the Grateful Dead, who were at the absolute top of their game. As if that weren’t enough, Bob Weir also went off to record a solo album, 1972’s Ace, that was pretty damn good too, even if it was a solo record in name only, as its players included all of the members of the Grateful Dead except Ron “Pigpen” McKernan.
What made it different from your standard Dead album, really, were two things. First, Weir handled all the lead vocals. And second, the bulk of the songs listed John Barlow, rather than Robert Hunter, as lyricist. It was this utilization of the Grateful Dead, rather than a studio full of big names or even small names, that led the critic Robert Christgau to call Ace “the third in a series that began with Workingman’s Dead and American Beauty.”
But is it really THAT good? Not by my reckoning, it isn’t. It has its share of songs that would later become live Dead staples, but it has one great drawback, and that’s Bob Weir’s voice. He invariably sounds like your high school’s class president. Indeed, Weir may be the whitest vocalist this side of Karen Carpenter, and he makes James Taylor sound like James Brown. And while his vocals work on some tunes they spell, if not the ruination, then the near ruination of opener “The Greatest Story Ever Told,” a scorcher featuring some fine piano by Keith Godchaux, fierce guitar work by Garcia, and funky backing vocals by Donna Jean Godchaux.
Amidst all that, his vocals are out of place by wit of being too damn bright, like a pair of perfect white choppers on a nutria. That said, he manages, I’m not quite sure how, to pull off, if just barely, the similarly fast-paced “One More Saturday Night,” which boasts some hot honky-tonk piano, one crisp guitar solo, and some happening horns. Why, he even lets loose a scream that doesn’t sound anything as stiff or girly as the one I emitted, decades ago, when that hand came out of the earth at the end of Carrie.
As for the subsequent live Dead staple “Playing in the Band,” which features a lovely opening and some great piano work that redeems Godchaux’s entire existence on this planet, it moves at a stately enough pace, and doesn’t test Weir’s chops. Garcia is great, Donna Godchaux tosses in some funky wailing, and “Playing in the Band” is as close as the band comes on Ace to going into improvisational mode. Me, I’ll happily sit back and let the song blow, like a summer breeze, through the jasmine in my mind. (Just made that up!)
Meanwhile, on “Walk in the Sunshine,” Weir and Barlow let their hippy-dippy side-show, and trouble ensues. It’s a nice lope of a tune, bright and cheery, but after Weir introduces the tune by announcing, “Look out, cause here comes some free advice” he proceeds to blather on about, I don’t know, the state of the world? His own confusion? “You got to make a revolution,” he sings, but that’s obviously not him talking. Is he calling for quietism, activism, or another bong hit? I can’t tell and I call bullshit, but if you ignore the words, it’s an okay tune.
I fell in love with “Mexicali Blues,” with its cheesy mariachi horns and local color, decades ago, and wish I could tell you how many times I listened to it stoned out of my mind. And all because it appeared on the best-of Dead collection, Skeletons From the Closet, despite the fact that it wasn’t even a proper Grateful Dead song. Garcia’s guitar is great, the song has a draw as fast as Wyatt Earp, and Weir’s vocals work just fine, and you almost have to kick the dust of Mexicali off your boots after listening to this one. “Black-Throated Wind” is the song on the LP that sounds most like a classic Grateful Dead number, what with its meandering and shambolic pace and wonderful Garcia guitar playing. The horns—by Snooky Flowers, Luis Gasca and The Space Rangers, whoever they are—work well too, and I love the way the song goes out, picking up momentum (go, Jerry, go!) as it comes to a close.
“Looks Like Rain” is a sluggardly bummer of a song, beautiful I suppose in its way, what with its intimations of a broken heart and Garcia sweetening the pot with some wonderful pedal steel guitar. But it has a hokum factor that is only increased by the string arrangement by the suspiciously named Ed Bogus. And what strikes me most about “Looks Like Rain” is that doesn’t sound like anything else ever recorded by the Dead or any member of the Dead, and whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing is up to you to decide. Which leaves us with the undeniably lovely “Cassidy,” which is about both a child of the extended Grateful Dead family and Neal Cassady, legendary muse of Jack Kerouac and later driver of the bus that took Ken Kesey’s Merry Pranksters across country, spreading the psychedelic word all the while. And while I love “Mexicali Blues” and “Playing in the Band,” “Cassidy” alone seems to me to be up to the par of the tunes on American Beauty and Workingman’s Dead, what with its sweet as tupelo honey melody, great chiming guitar work (it’s some of Garcia’s best), and wonderful country-rock feel.
Ace is undoubtedly an essential LP in any half-serious Dead fan’s record collection. And as I mentioned before, the Grateful Dead went on to make many of its tunes concert staples, beloved by many. But I can’t hear “The Greatest Story Ever Told” without thinking Huey Lewis, why I don’t know. In the song Weir and Godchaux sing, “The last thing we need is a left hand monkey wrench,” and to that I would add a Grateful Dead album on which Jerry Garcia does none of the singing. God knows he didn’t have much of a voice. But he provided essential relief from the ever-chipper vocals of Bob Weir, that perpetual boy-man who can’t sing a song without adding a tinge of cheerfulness to it, warranted or not.
GRADED ON A CURVE:
B+
