Track 65: "Box of Rain" by The Grateful Dead

Maybe you'll find direction around some corner where it's been waiting to meet you

I re-discovered the Grateful Dead's masterpiece 1970 album "American Beauty" over the weekend. And just like the Beach Boy's "Pet Sounds" a week before, I fell in love with this record all over again.

I have no idea when or where I heard this album for the first time, but I'm sure I was mind-blown. For a band most known for extended psychedelic improvisational jams, "American Beauty" almost came as a shock to me when I first heard it. It's roosty, folky-Americana at its best and literally every song on the album is perfect in it's own way. I remember playing this album at a family beach trip in Charleston some time during the late 1990s, and even my parents enjoyed it!

It's also pretty cool that four different Dead members sing on the album--something you definitely don't see these days. Ron 'Pig Pen' McKernan's "Operator" is a great little ditty, of course Jerry Garcia's voice shines on tunes like "Ripple," "Friend of the Devil" and the gorgeous "Brokedown Palace." Bob Weir (the one Dead member I got to interview back in my music journalist days) contributes the classics "Truckin" and "Sugar Magnolia." But it's bassist Phil Lesh (who only does lead vocals on a just a few tunes in the Dead's vast catalog) who sings my favorite song on the album--and one of my favorites of all time. (And as a side note, David Grisman, who has popped up on the Playlist a couple of times now)

Longtime Dead lyricist Robert Hunter wrote some incredible lyrics to this album, and the band does some really beautiful harmonies throughout. Something about "Box of Rain"just instantly makes me happy--and if you ask any devoted Deadhead what the draw of the band was--and still is for that matter--I'm sure that phrase is likely to pop up.

It just makes me happy.



--Music is good