Their POLLS are built of cannon balls: Workingman’s Dead

no wrong answers here but “cumberland” has long been a personal fav

make good money five dollars a day! make any more and i’d move awayyyyyyyyyy

All these songs rule so hard.

Well, I can narrow it down to Uncle John's Band / Dire Wolf / New Speedway Boogie, but what the hell am I supposed to do next?

It really is a no-skips album. I'm going to be obvious and vote for "Uncle John's Band" because it's one of their best songs and in particular one of Hunter's best lyrics imo. Dire Wolf a very close 2nd.

Also trying to choose between "Uncle John's Band" and "Dire Wolf." "Uncle John's Band" is my instinctive choice, but I only discovered this album recently and there is a part of me that feels like "Dire Wolf" might have more staying power.

Voting for "Cumberland Blues" seemed appropriate on Labor Day

Every song is great but Uncle John’s Band is a hymn to the ages, a tonic for the soul.

Black Peter.

Can we do this one again when ranked-choice voting is available?

There are probably live versions of these songs that I prefer to the studio cuts - the Cumberland Blues that opens Europe 72 is seriously smokin - but they never improved on the version of Dire Wolf here, so that.

Casey Jones was the biggest/only real radio hit here, at least in my experience. (It has more than twice as many Spotify streams as anything else on the album.) It and Truckin' are the only two Dead songs I remember from rock radio in the '80s. Even people who didn't know any other Dead could sing "Drivin' that train/High on cocaine." It's a great track obviously, but I'm guessing it won't finish too high in this.

It's the only song on the album I don't like because the chorus repeats at the end go on way too long.

Hard not to vote for Uncle John’s Band, a song guaranteed to lower your blood pressure and make your troubles go a bit farther away for the duration

I revisited this album over the summer for the first time since my mid-90’s tweenage Dead phase.

My dad grew up in Baghdad and Tehran, found hippies annoying and for the most part, he was never a fan of my choice of tunes. But he used to tolerate what I wanted to play on car trips in between the hourly traffic reports. So there was a year or so where he heard a lot of Dead, and Jack Straw became the keystone of his grand theory of pop: that every band has one (and only one) undeniably great song, and that’s all it takes to sustain an entire career.

The big hole in his theory was, he also called Uncle John’s Band “Jack Straw”, LOL. He couldn’t help love but those two songs tho. I mean he marveled at them and (correctly) thought they were masterful. He just couldn’t square that any other way with his unflinching indifference to everything else he’d heard by them. Subsequently, whoever I played in the car, he would usually find one song that really grabbed him. When he heard it he would point out, you know, how this was the moment where it all came together, and all the rest was basically just worthless byproduct.

Fwiw, those were also my 2 favorite Grateful Dead songs then, for sure. Uncle John’s band probably isn’t my current fave but it’s the perennial one and made the biggest impact

Posting this for added Uncle John’s Band love (thanks to Shasta for hipping me to it originally):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I-cPyW0o8sQ

Love those stories, Deflatormouse.

I think Uncle John's Band was the first Dead song I ever loved. My brother played them around the house for a few weeks (or months?) before I got on board. Something about "come on along or go alone, he's come to take his children home" hit me even at age ... what would it've been, ten or eleven I guess...

"Uncle John's Band" (which I first came to via the Skeletons compilation--still my favourite when I bought the album years later).

Not saying this is my final answer, because I revisited the album earlier this year when Weir passed and there was a lot that stuck out to me that didn't before. But the bridge to Black Peter has long been one of my favorite Dead passages.

Really feeling New Speedway Boogie — one way or another, this darkness got to give.

Voted Black Peter, but almost went with Easy Wind. Love Hunter writing for Pigpen.

probably going "Uncle John's Band" for the main fact I was in a big WD/AB phase around the time my actual Uncle John was diagnosed with late stage prostate cancer and died shortly after. My mother was and still is very saddened by his sudden, and preventable, passing. I remember sending her a card that quoted part of the song in it, can't remember exactly what part but I hope it was this:

it's the same story the crow told me
it's the only one he know
like the morning sun, you come
and like the wind, you go

Uncle John because it is the perfect song for sitting around a campfire.

UJB was one of the first Dead songs I really liked, but just as quickly, it became the Dead song I heard WAY too much of. That's one of the songs I started hearing with new ears on my revisit last winter.

My favorite version of "Easy Wind": 1970-06-24. It has a wild energy that other versions just can't match for me.

Whoops, should be: https://archive.org/details/gd_nrps70-06-24.aud.pcrp5.23062.sbeok.flacf

it became the Dead song I heard WAY too much of--that would be "Truckin'" for me, which accounted for almost all of the (negligible) airplay the Grateful Dead got on Toronto's classic-rock station.

I think the first side is perfect. Could vote any of those four.

“no skips” otmfm. there might be a handful of songs from other studio records I like better than what’s on offering here (and I’m a freak who actually likes a lot of their 60-70s studio records), but this one stands alone with nary a stitch of filler or draggy moments imo

Dire Wolf for me this time around. The brief harmony vocal during the guitar solo sealed the deal.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Gave my vote to Dire Wolf because I think Uncle John's Band is going to carry this, and the lyrics of Dire Wolf are such a delight. Really appreciating the lyrics of New Speedway Boogie on this listen as well.

New Speedway Boogie got my vote in the end, yeah.

I don't know, but I been told
if the horse don't pull, you got to carry the load...
I don't know whose back's that strong...
maybe find out before too long.

Am I really the first to make any mention of “High Time?” As a recent semi-convert to the Dead, listening to live concerts and avoiding studio albums as I was instructed by Heads, I was taken by its quietly odd melody, matched with the wounded romantic opening couplet:

You told me goodbye, how was I to know
You didn't mean goodbye, you meant please don't let me go?

Unfortunately in many live versions Jerry and Donna struggled vocally. Imagine my joy then at first hearing the stripped down, fragile and absolutely lovely studio track.

I can’t claim it’s the best on the album, Uncle John will likely and rightly take this, but I’m voting for it anyway.

Beautiful song, yeah. Opening lines are heartbreaking and Jerry really makes them felt.

First time I heard the whole album. More than a few friends have tried to get me into the Dead over the years. I just don't connect with the vocals. Voted "Casey Jones," whose vocals I do like a lot.

"Black Peter" for me. Maybe my favorite song of theirs, and - interestingly, to me at least - one that didn't get better or more evolved live.

I'm torn between "Uncle John's Band", a cryptic story full of details that could easily be expanded into a movie, and "Black Peter", a completely plain-spoken lyric that might be the best song written from the point of view of imminent death.

"Cumberland Blues" is fast and good but suffers a little from the feeling that Garcia and Lesh decided to toss in a bunch of unmotivated chord changes throughout, maybe as a clue that it isn't an actual traditional composition.

It really is a no-skips album

I can't listen to "Easy Wind", an incompetently written and performed blues celebrating drinking oneself to death, featuring a singer well on his way to doing so.

"Truckin'" accounted for almost all of the (negligible) airplay the Grateful Dead got on Toronto's classic-rock station.

I heard the two "hits" from this on Q107, plus "Sugar Magnolia", but I only really listened to the station on Psychedelic Psunday, when you'd expect to hear those.

Really appreciating the lyrics of New Speedway Boogie on this listen as well.

They get points for the philosophical approach to the cultural vicissitudes of the era but lose points for shrugging off any actual responsibility for Altamont.

Re their vocals, and Jerry’s in particular, I think I came around to his voice by way of first really feeling his guitar playing. Like you can hear him using (or trying to use) his voice in the same way he plays guitar — the gap between the two is large, as he was well aware, but they’re still in sync, arising from the same feelings. If that makes sense.

Courtney Barnett’s cover of “New Speedway Boogie” has a wonderful laconic drawl. Between the original and her regular style, it lands somewhere like 00s Bloodshot records.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XdaAQlmExmI

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

no love for a stone jack baller

went with Black Peter but 2nd was Speedsy

Pretty close to how I'd rank them, probably bump up "High Time" a few notches.

*way

The first two verses of Uncle John's Band drive me absolutely crazy. Are you kind? How does the song go? Shut up and get to the chorus! And that beautiful 3rd verse (thank you for the story above). Anyways, I voted for it best dead song damn the contrarians

I love the version of Uncle John's Band from the Live Rarities collection (10/04/1970) available here:

https://relisten.net/grateful-dead/1970/10/04/uncle-johns-band?source=3876434

The last run through with the a cappella chorus that teeters on the edge and then explodes is wonderful.

The Good Ol' Grateful Deadcast podcast has been doing deep-dives on the albums when each hits their 50th Anniversary, starting with Workingman's Dead 6 years ago. These are absolutely worth listening to if you want to get more granular on a particular song.

cosign that podcast, at least for the albums. definitely don't know if i have the stomach listening to the entirety of all the various live show episodes, especially after getting burned listening to the one with Elvis Costello on the Bickershaw 72 episode.

Never in my wildest dreams would I have imagined that Costello is a deadhead.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9j-ELeWqFfo

I prefer the one he released on his great Costello & Nieve live EP set, and appropriately enough it's taken from the San Francisco stop of that tour:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ATE0WRAWdhw

(starts at 48:45)

And EC has talked about his love for the Dead, which pre-dates his own professional career. He even picked four of their albums for his list of 500 favorites commissioned by Vanity Fair. They were (with recommended picks for newcomers and skeptics):

Workingman's Dead (1970) - "Dire Wolf"
American Beauty (1970) - "Box Of Rain"
Europe '72 (1972) - "Tennessee Jed"
Wake Of The Flood (1973) - "Stella Blue"

Great convo between Garcia and Costello from Musician magazine, 1991:

https://www.elviscostello.info/wiki/index.php/Jerry_Garcia

I don't follow ILM but something is wrong with my Zing and it shows me all threads even though I don't have ILM selected, and for once I'm appreciative because I put on this whole album while baking on a rainy day without turning any lights on and it's so great and this moment is vv cool and perfect.

My college roommate had WD on CD and it was the only Dead I had ever heard and probably still is to this day. Perfect album.

<3

Now that’s how to wake and bake.