Track Listing
POSTCARDS OF THE HANGING:
1. When I Paint My Masterpiece
2. She Belongs to Me
3. Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues
4. Maggie's Farm
5. Stuck Inside of Mobile With the Memphis Blues Again
6. It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry - (with Dickey Betts/Butch Trucks)
7. Ballad of a Thin Man
8. Desolation Row
9. All Along the Watchtower
10. It's All Over Now Baby Blue
11. Man of Peace - (rehearsal, bonus track, with Bob Dylan)
| Details | | Contributing Artists: | Bob Dylan, Butch Trucks, Dickey Betts, Dicky Betts | | Producer: | David Gans (Compilation) | | Distributor: | WEA (Distributor) | | Recording Type: | Live | | Recording Mode: | Stereo | | SPAR Code: | n/a |
Album Notes
Grateful Dead: Jerry Garcia, Bob Weir (vocals, guitar); Brent Mydland (vocals, keyboards); Phil Lesh (vocals, bass); Bill Kreutzmann, Mickey Hart (drums).
Additional personnel: Bob Dylan (vocals, acoustic guitar); Dickey Betts (guitar); Keith Godchaux (piano); Butch Trucks (drums).
Includes liner notes by Mikal Gilmore.
All tracks have been digitally remastered using HDCD technology.
The Grateful Dead and Bob Dylan, two counter-cultural '60s icons, were always a natural match. This was made clearest when the Dead became Dylan's backing band for a time in the mid-'80s. This decades-spanning collection features the Dead performing Dylan's songs on their own, and while the majority of songs hail from the years after they'd assimilated so much of his catalogue for the aforementioned collaboration, other cuts reach all the way back to the early '70s. The Dead always had a soft spot for Dylan, relating to the way he combining American roots music with mesmerizing cosmic vistas.
Commonalities are highlighted when we notice that the opening of "Maggie's Farm" is suggestive of the Dead's own "Cumberland Blues," and Jerry's voice brings a slightly pained poignance to the bittersweet lyrics of the ballad "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue," which graced many a Dead show back in the day. There has never been a greater musical expression of bemused, slightly psychedelic, existential angst than "Stuck Inside of Mobile With the Memphis Blues Again," and Bob Weir takes obvious pleasure in spotlighting the most surreal aspects of the tune. Dylan himself pops up on "Man of Peace," but POSTCARDS OF THE HANGING is the Dead's show, even if Dylan remains the man behind the curtain.
Editorial Reviews
...This collection of Dylan covers is so obviously the work of true fans that it's hard not to enjoy hearing the band enjoying themselves play them... - Rating: B
Entertainment Weekly (03/22/2002)
3.5 stars out of 5 - ...If the Dead were not the boldest of Dylan-cover bands... they were the purest: swinging through the songbook like real fans, finding working-man's poetry in Dylan's most elusive parables...
Rolling Stone (03/28/2002)
3.5 stars out of 5 - ...If the Dead were not the boldest of Dylan-cover bands... they were the purest: swinging through the songbook like real fans, finding working-man's poetry in Dylan's most elusive parables...Entertainment Weekly (3/22/02, pp.110-1) - ...This collection of Dylan covers is so obviously the work of true fans that it's hard not to enjoy hearing the band enjoying themselves play them... - Rating: B
Rolling Stone (03/28/2002)
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