listening to early dead this song's jams get crazy, why'd they decide to stop playin it?
ronster wrote:They must have been high. Makes no sense to me. DSO does a great version of Viola Lee and also the eleven which are great to hear as the Dead had all but stopped playing those tunes by 1977 when I got on the bus.Actually they had stopped playing both of those songs by the end of 1970.
BuddhaG wrote:listened to the last viola lee a few weeks ago. i would dig it up for you guys but i am too lazy to search the depths of the archive from 1970. it was last played during the second set of one of those electric/acoustic shows with NRPS that they were doin at that time...I agree
in any case, not the best version by far. they slowed it down and it was not as exploratory and crazy as it was before. i guess they were moving in a different direction at this point anyway. that song was played at break neck speed when they did it the best (67.68 i think). they were going in a more mellow and spaced out direction by 1970.
but really if you care, listen the last version - i found it uninspired.
strumminsix wrote: Viola is a tough song to play and requires a certain rigidity that the GD seemed to have some disdain for while preferring looser feeling more jammy songs.That's for sure. For one thing, its an eleven bar blues! (It's in G, 2 beats are chopped off the first C and 2 beats chopped off the last G). I remember being very confused while first trying to learn this song, the changes just seemed to come too quickly.
Rev_Roach wrote:Bingo! Here's a little something I saved from 5/21/2006 from GearHeads on this very topic...strumminsix wrote: Viola is a tough song to play and requires a certain rigidity that the GD seemed to have some disdain for while preferring looser feeling more jammy songs.That's for sure. For one thing, its an eleven bar blues! (It's in G, 2 beats are chopped off the first C and 2 beats chopped off the last G). I remember being very confused while first trying to learn this song, the changes just seemed to come too quickly.
||: G / / / | G / / / | G / / / | G / / / |
| C / / / | C / | G / / / | G / / / |
| F / / / | C / / / | G / / / | G / / / :||