[Chicago Sandy]

It is absolutely NO secret that the most hardcore of the Deadheads slammed and dissed them when "In the Dark" was released PRECISELY because production values and being in tune finally mattered to the Dead. (I know because so many of my friends were traveling Deadheads who griped endlessly about their "selling out," and I read Rolling Stone magazine and Billboard cover-to-cover every week back then). Now I know that I don't have the best voice and I certainly will never be able to achieve the technical brilliance on guitar of many, many AGF members. It's just a particular idiosyncrasy of mine that very pitchy vocals---and especially badly out-of-tune instruments and out-of-sync timing between band members--ruin my enjoyment of the best compositional and performing artistry. I never "got" the Replacements live for the same reason that they seemed (and prided themselves on being) sloppy in the name of "spontaneity," but I liked their studio albums and love Westerberg's solo stuff. It's one thing to be a great writer and performer with less than stellar technical chops and a flawed voice: the passion, genius and entertainment still shines through. But when an act who are instrumental virtuosi don't bother to play in tune or in time to each other, that sloppiness conveys an impression that they just don't CARE enough. The band Soul Coughing's first single is like fingernails on a blackboard to me for that very reason (horribly out-of-tune, perhaps even deliberately so, guitar intro), though frontman Doty's later stuff is quite listenable; CSNY is one of my all-time favorite bands but I still cringe at many of the live cuts on "Four-Way Street." (It's one thing--and acceptable to me--in the context of a jam or party, but quite another at a concert for which audience members may have paid considerable money and traveled quite a distance to attend). I feel that I am being disrespected as an audience member--that the band just doesn't feel it's worth the effort to do justice to not only their fans but to their art and their G-d-given talent.

Can you listen to Beethoven's Ninth played live by a junior-high-school orchestra (assuming you don't have a kid or know a neighbor's or friend's kid playing in the concert) or an out-of-tune amateur orchestra and enjoy it as well as when you hear it at a live concert by the Philadelphia Orchestra, Chicago or Boston Symphony Orchestra or NY, or L.A. Philharmonic, St. Paul Symphony or professional-caliber community orchestra? Call me a snob, but I can't.

That being said, studio cuts of "Uncle John's Band," "Ripple," "Truckin'," "Scarlet Begonias,"etc.---recorded before the band sounded tight and with Garcia's shaky voice but still played in tune--are still quite enjoyable to me. I get the sense that the chief appeal of the pre-1987 recorded Dead and their concerts was the sense of community and the evocation of an era that brings pleasant memories of that time (which is why boomers will listen to other even older boomers, but only if they happened to be famous back in their youth and provided the "soundtrack of their lives"). Fine for some, but as a listener I need more than that.