Anthem Of The Sun

On 1968's ANTHEM OF THE SUN, the Grateful Dead stopped being just another band on the San Francisco scene and began initiating their own myth. Outgrowing the white-boy blues jamming of their debut and of their many SF contemporaries, the Dead graduated to an advanced, more lysergically influenced style--not just singing about Alice's adventures in that other world down the hole, but participating in them. Adventurous and grand, ANTHEM OF THE SUN was the first result of the muse that author Ken Kesey's infamous Acid Tests brought out in Grateful Dead music. mais...

The abstract chaos and freeform beauty that the Dead provided as the house band at the Acid Tests grew into a modernist polyrhythmic roar. The material now took on extended forms, and ANTHEM OF THE SUN was split between essentially two sections: the post-Hendrix electric clamor of "That's It For The Other One", and Pigpen's "Alligator", a hard-rocking, bluesy boogie powered by Garcia's liquid-grunge tone and the drummers' undeniable thrust--which segues into "Caution (Do Not Stop On The Tracks)"--a rollng bit of double-time chaos, over which Pigpen speed-raps Neal Casady-like improv tales.

Rolling Stone (9/28/68, p.28)
- "...The end product is one of the finest albums to come out of San Francisco, a personal statement of the rock aesthetic on a level with the Jefferson Airplane's AFTER BATHING AT BAXTERS..."

Down Beat (1/02, p.74)
- 4 stars out of 5 - "...Elongated performances, scorching feedback and complex instrumental arrangements....the Dead reached their experimental peak with this sound collage..."