![]() Weir's "Picasso Moon" is spacey rock-and-soul surrealism much like his "Hell in a Bucket" on the previous effort. Bob Weir's "Victim or the Crime" is a seven-minute commentary on contemporary society, very much like his "Throwing Stones" on the last. The title tune, with its sweet melody and philosophical approach to growing old, is a transparent attempt to replicate the band's one and only hit single, 1987's "Touch of Grey." Garcia's "Foolish Heart" on the new album is a jaunty up-tempo tune full of witty romantic advice, much like "When Push Comes to Shove" on the last one. ![]() The Grateful Dead: 'Built to Last' The Grateful Dead's 1987 album "In the Dark" was their biggest seller ever, and "Built to Last" (Arista) suffers from an all-too-obvious attempt to imitate its predecessor. For all their obvious weaknesses, they have created a style so distinctive and enduring that the Grateful Dead became a rock-and-roll sub-genre unto themselves - and how many bands can claim that? Like the other late-'60s Bay Area acts whose music has survived - Santana, Janis Joplin and Creedence - the Dead outlasted the rest by maintaining strong ties to the roots of American music, in their case folk and country. The Grateful Dead, by contrast, were "built to last." Four of the band's five original members have been along for the whole 24-year ride. ![]() Most of the psychedelic acid-rock that sounded so experimental and mind-expanding 20 years ago sounds gimmicky and pretentious today. ![]() It's not just that groups like Jefferson Airplane, Country Joe & the Fish, the Steve Miller Band, Quicksilver Messenger Service, Moby Grape and It's a Beautiful Day disbanded long ago, it's that their music has ceased to matter. "Built to Last," the title song from the new Grateful Dead album, is a laid-back space-country rumination that finds Jerry Garcia crooning, "One more star sinks in the past/ Show me something built to last." He can afford to ask, for all the other stars who rose in 1967's Summer of Love - all the other bands that represented the ballyhooed San Francisco Sound - have sunk. ![]()
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