Lately it occurs to me
What a long strange trip it’s been
A Grateful Dead song in the 2 OR 3 LINES “GOLDEN DECADE” ALBUM TRACKS HALL OF FAME?
Believe me, I’m just as surprised as you are.
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Have you heard this old joke about the Grateful Dead?
Q: What does a Deadhead say when the drugs wear off?
A: “This music sucks!”
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Druggie humor isn’t funny. (Are Cheech and Chong funny? Are Dude, Where’s My Car? and Half Baked funny? Or The Big Lebowski?)
Likewise, druggie music usually isn’t good music.
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But even a blind pig finds an acorn every once in a while, and the Grateful Dead wrote so many songs that it’s almost a statistical certainty that a few of them would turn out to be good songs.
“Truckin’” (which was released on American Beauty in 1970) is probably the best of the Dead’s songs. The 12/8 time signature gives the song a lot more rhythmic drive than the typical Dead song, and the lyrics reflect the zeitgeist as well as any song of that era.
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Did you know that the Grateful Dead performed “Truckin’” in concert a total of 520 times – making it the eighth-most performed Dead song ever?
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If you want to better understand what “Truckin’” is all about, click here and you’ll be taken to a webpage that provides an exhaustive (not to mention exhausting) prolegomenon to that song’s lyrics.
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Click here to listen to “Truckin’.”
Click here to buy the recording from Amazon.
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