![]() In his memoir, Lesh noted, “Jerry … had started using again” during the Built to Last sessions, which he called “a brier patch of egotistical contention.” But Garcia, working from a sensitive Hunter lyric about a homesick space traveler, transcended - or utilized - those troubles to sing with heartbreaking poignancy. The best, most affecting song from what proved to be the Dead’s final studio album, this gentle ballad features perhaps Garcia’s finest latter-day vocal. “Standing on the Moon,” ‘Built to Last’ (1989).(The Dead must have thought so too, since the song was a frequent encore.) Garcia paired Hunter’s lyrics about letting go with a dollop of Southern gospel, heightened by the Dead’s woodsy harmonies, and on the studio recording Garcia played some of his most subtle, coolly flowing guitar - using an approach that heightens the tune’s lyrics about wanting to “listen to the river sing sweet songs to rock my soul.” Lesh considered this proudly old-fashioned ballad “among the finest products of Garcia’s collaborations with Hunter,” and it’s hard to disagree. Image Credit: Robert Altman/Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images “Brokedown Palace,” ‘American Beauty’ (1970).“I wrote that on the train, to the rhythm of the train as it was moving.” That utopian glow had dimmed by the mid-Seventies, when it was recorded, but Garcia brought the energy back to life. “It was everything that Sixties or Seventies rock promised, delivered to us on that trip, with a giant bottle of whiskey!” says Hunter, who wrote the lyrics. This jaunty Garcia solo track immortalizes the Dead’s time on the Festival Express tour, the legendary rail trek through Canada during which they shared stages, alcohol and train cars with Janis Joplin, the Band, Delaney and Bonnie, and others. But like a few other songs on Aoxomoxoa, he may have felt it was a bit overbaked the band dropped it from its live repertoire not long after the album was released. It’s a sterling instance of the way Garcia could merge different eras into a coherent whole. On which Garcia reinvents the past: When he was in the pre-Dead jug band Mother McCree’s Uptown Jug Champions, Garcia played the Memphis Jug Band’s 1928 “Lindberg Hop (Overseas Stomp),” whose central chord progression he mutated into this woozy tribute to the ragtime sound (with free-associative lyrics by Hunter). Image Credit: Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images The words were just so right that it was immediately apparent, just bam! It came out right. Garcia called the crackling finished track “one of those miracle songs. Debuted just two weeks later, “New Speedway Boogie” was Hunter’s indictment of journalist Ralph Gleason’s take on the festival. ![]() The disastrously violent Altamont Speedway Free Festival of December 1969 deeply affected the Dead, who helped organize the event but ended up not taking the stage after the chaos turned decidedly ugly. Image Credit: Michael Putland/Getty Images
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