The Grateful Dead - One From the Vault (1975)

Dan: 

My wife and I used to stop at an outlet mall on our trips to North Carolina, which gave me a chance to browse the CDs at Music for a Song. That's where I picked up The Grateful Dead's 2-CD set, One From the Vault, in the late 1990s. I was still new to the Dead and the price was right. Little did I know the depths to which I would later dive into their massive trove of live recordings. 

One From the Vault is one of the best live recordings of the Dead, and it signaled a change in the band's direction post-Pigpen. Blues rave-ups were replaced by more cerebral jazz-infected jams such as "Eyes of the World," "Franklin's Tower," "The Music Never Stopped," and "Help on the Way/Slipknot." I wouldn't say that they turned toward prog because the band did not follow trends. Instead, they set trends that few bands could emulate. 

However, their approach during the 1975-1978 period was genuinely progressive in the sense that they were moving forward compositionally into more complex material. For instance, the closing number on One from the Vault is the mysterious "Blues for Allah," drawn from the studio album of the same name. It's a spooky 21 minutes that is part social commentary and part pure experiment. The Dead never made anything like it afterwards. 

I ran a half marathon in 1999 and stuck One from the Vault into my fanny pack along with a portable CD player and headphones. It got me through to the finish line! I can't think of a better soundtrack for my only long-run experience. 

Steve:

I took even longer than Dan to get into the Grateful Dead. I always admired their musicianship, but I just couldn't get much of a handle on the songs. Fans always tell you that you've got to listen to them live to understand why they're so good. However, I only started to understand them once I tackled their studio albums - that way, I learned the songs, which gave me the tools to make sense of their live extrapolations. So if you've tried getting into the Dead by listening to 30-minute jams on "Truckin'/The Other One" and just didn't understand what was going on, may I suggest you try my approach instead. 

Once emboldened with a working knowledge of their songbook, particularly the Blues for Allah album (one of their best and most progressive), listening to One From the Vault achieved a whole new level of enjoyability. This concert was a great, albeit unusual choice for the inaugural "From the Vault" release in that it documents a show that I believe had never been circulated to fans prior to its release, and it is also an atypical show. The band had been off the road for quite a while prior to this show, and the Allah material was receiving its public debut. The show was not just a stop on a tour; it was a special event during a non-touring period for the band. This gave the show a "showcase" atmosphere and a sense of occasion. Indeed, the performance of "Blues for Allah" was a pretty unique event in itself. The band only performed this piece five times, all in 1975.

Apart from the Allah material, you get some great performances of recent favorites such as "Eyes of the World" and the Jerry Garcia solo number "Sugaree". The recording sounds great and the formal invitation graphics of the packaging is entirely appropriate given the special occasion documented on this CD. Again, though, I stress that if you're not already familiar with the Dead, this may not be a great place to start. It helps to digest it in context - both the band's situation at the time and its established repertoire, as documented on prior studio work. Contrary to popular belief, they were actually a pretty great studio band too.