Word: anthem
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...melodic ideas of Anthem achieve lyrical fruition in "Dark Star." While Anthem bespeaks the darkest underbelly of the acid experience, "Dark Star" is a polished gem of intergalactic proportions. The Dead has clearly made a significant transition in their relationship with drugs. Merely in poetic terms, consider the relationship of the Sun in the Anthem album to the portrait of a "Dark Star." Contrast the frenetic percussion work of Hart and Kreutzmann on "Caution" and Anthem to the brilliantly subtle and suggestive use of gongs, bells, cymbals on the later effort. Try "Alligator", a piece of unabashed musical sarcasm complete...
...electrical sound and adding a second drummer into the group. The two drummers were to become a much initiated rock convention, most effectively exploited by Carlos Santana and the late Duane Allman. The Dead throbbed with a will to create and their second album was an endeavor unpretentiously titled Anthem of the Sun. And if you don't think that that work is a genuinely artistic statement--a portrait of the energy source of both nature's world and (excuse the philosophic indulgence) the world of the soul I'd advise you to listen to it again...
...none other than Donald Duck. Zappa and Co-Director Tony Palmer, shooting with video tape, overindulge in elaborate color effects that give the movie the touchingly antiquated look of a psychedelic record jacket. The craziness climaxes, fittingly enough, with full cast and chorus raising their voices in an irreverent anthem: "Lord, have mercy on the fate of this movie/ And God bless the mind of the man in the street." Mothers fans will be ecstatic, but the man in the street will need more than prayer to pull him through 200 Motels...
There is one cut that the Dead have recorded before: "The Other One," first released on Anthem of the Sun. The number merely demonstrates how much the Dead have been limited by the loss of Hart and Constanten. The opening drum solo shows that Bill Kreutzmann, in spite of his technical skill, is unable to fashion a solo with enough continuity and development to hold the listener's attention. Without Constanten's classically-influenced keyboard work to give the number structure, the remaining instrumental portion of the song degenerates into a rather aimless, formless guitar exhibition by Garcia and Weir...
...those of us who came to the Dead by way of Anthem of the Sun or Live Dead, this country nonsense was a little hard to take. We barely kept ourselves together the first time. When next we saw it, we were tolerant. By the third time, the New Riders were the most consistent "ups", as it were, of the show. Then the message came: these dudes were all right. We frequented the Coop--Discount Records, Sam Goody's Record Hunter and Dayton's Department Store--every two days, just to ask when the Riders album was coming...