Biography
Dylan & The Dead was a collaborative live album by Bob Dylan and The Grateful Dead. The album was released in 1988 by Columbia Records. It was recorded in 1987, during a successful stadium tour of the same name. The album was produced by Jerry Garcia and John Cutler, and unites two undisputed American pop cultural icons, both widely regarded globally.
The album sold well, reaching #37 on the Billboard charts in the U.S., #38 in the UK, finally earning gold status in the United States. Still, most critics panned it as an extremely poor live document, and one of the low-points of both Dylan and the Grateful Dead's discographies, a fact which is, for all intents and purposes, irrelevant to the success, or 'importance' of the album as an historical document.
Columbia saw the benefit of not only the initial release, but a re-release in cassette format, in early 1989. And, as was always the case with the Grateful Dead, (with or without Mr. Dylan) their extensive live touring, and sold out shows, world-wide, contributed the bulk of the band's extensive revenues.
After the passing of Jerry Garcia, the band continued as The Other Ones, and continue to play to extremely well-attended live shows, with Bob Dylan, on nearly-annual, large outdoor venue mini-tours with the band, despite continuing (and, apparently irrelevant, as far as the group's and Dylan's fans are concerned) critical 'panning.'
Unlike the actual tour, no Grateful Dead songs are featured, just seven Dylan tunes. This fact could reflect that there are literally hundreds of band-sanctioned Grateful Dead live recordings available, but relatively few which include Bob Dylan, himself widely regarded as one of the most influential American song-writers in US history, and widely regarded as a cultural icon in many other parts of the World. Whether the recordings should be evaluated as artistic, critical 'successes', or extremely valid, perhaps even treasured historical douments of these two widely-respected artists, is an academic question, at best, and an extremely subjective one, at least.
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, with editing to 'balance' the distorted tone regarding the relevance, or impact, of critics' opinions on the actual subjects of the article, as initially written up in the sparse wikiPedia note on the band biography.
Artist descriptions on Last.fm are editable by everyone. Feel free to contribute!
All user-contributed text on this page is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License; additional terms may apply.
