Completely Conspicuous 503: Workingman's Dead

I'm joined by guest Phil Stacey as we discuss the Grateful Dead's 1970 album Workingman's Dead.

Show notes:

- Recorded at CompCon world HQ

- First show of the new year

- Workingman's Dead is the band's 4th studio album

- First of two releases in '70

- Recorded in nine days

- Stripped down sound, less psychedelic

- Garcia and Robert Hunter wrote the whole album

- Folk, country, Americana elements

- Rock was moving away from psychedelia, toward singer-songwriters and acoustic sounds

- Bookended by two of the band's biggest songs

- More of an emphasis on vocals like Crosby, Stills and Nash

- "Suite Judy Blue Eyes" as a torture device

- Phil: Prefer live Dead, but still break out the studio albums on occasion

- Warm sounding record

- "New Speedway Boogie" is about Altamont

- Recently covered by Courtney Barnett

- Hunter's solo releases are all over the place

- Jay: Only heard two songs before

- Fairly concise album; not much jamming

- Moved away from acid blues into a new direction

- "Easy Wind," sung by Pigpen, was the outlier

- Like the Entwistle song on a Who album

- "Casey Jones" evolved in an interesting way over the years

- Talking about cocaine

- Next up: American Beauty

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The opening and closing theme of Completely Conspicuous is "Theme to Big F'in Pants" by Jay Breitling. Voiceover work is courtesy of James Gralian.