I will take you home (Grateful Dead) (LP 1011 - 1013)

Grateful Dead  Go To Heaven (Vinyl, Arista Records, 1980) ***  

Grateful Dead  In The Dark (Vinyl, Grateful Dead Records, 1987) ***  

Grateful Dead  Built To Last (Vinyl, Arista Records, 1989) ***  

Genre: San Franciscan pop rock 

Places I remember: Marbecks Records (one of those ones I bought while working there during my varsity holidays)

Fab, and all the other pimply hyperboles: Althea (Go To Heaven)

Gear costume: Throwing Stones, Black Muddy River (In The Dark)

Active compensatory factors: I'm pretty naive - it was only while reading the Wikipedia entry on Go To Heaven that I saw the negative 1980 reception of the cover. At the time, I just put the white suits down to a desire to reflect the album title as angels - not disco John Travolta wannabees.

I liked the album then, and I like the album now. The sound has little of the eighties about it. It's a punchy kind of production but sounds exactly like the Dead. Brent Mydland had joined the band, replacing Donna and Keith Godchaux, and he contributed a couple of okay songs but nothing of the Hunter/Garcia or Barlow/Weir quality.

Seven years later (and thereby avoiding many of the eighties production excesses) came In The Dark and that unlikely hit single Touch Of Grey. I couldn't believe it when the video came on via MTV. What the...?

But yes, there they were - playing on my TV set. In truth it was a bit of a fluke. The song is catchy but so is Alabama Getaway or Uncle John's Band or any number of their equally catchy back catalogue songs - but Touch Of Grey somehow made it onto the Top 40 countdown in 1987. Remarkable.

The rest of In The Dark is good solid Grateful Dead - not a million miles from Go To Heaven, but was also a big success on the back of Touch Of Grey (terrible cover though - with seven sets of eyes featuring - 6 for band members and in a nice touch - Bill Graham's are the 7th).

Built To Last, with a slightly better cover, was ironically their last studio album - Garcia's death in 1995 effectively drew a line under the band's continuing under that name. It tends to get a bad press but I think it's under-rated.

Okay the album has four Mydland/Barlow songs which are underwhelming but there are three decent Garcia/Hunter efforts. Plus, there is a clear highlight with the Bob Weir sung Victim Or The Crime. It's like Throwing Stones - the longest and most interesting song on the album.

Where do they all belong? That's it for the time being. I keep being drawn back to the band and its offshoots so I doubt this is the end of their appearances in the collection. The live catalogue keeps expanding on a regular basis after all.