Jerry Garcia - The Very Best of Jerry Garcia

This special 2-CD collection salutes one of the most legendary figures in all of rock n' roll, beloved Grateful Dead lead guitarist, vocalist and eternal good will ambassador Jerry Garcia. Outsie the realm of the Grateful Dead, Jerry pursued a broad array of folk, bluegrass, blues, and roots rock side projects throughout his storied career. His solo albums capture the heart & soul as well as the rich talents of this incomparable music icon. Disc 1 - studio tracks, Disc 2 - live tracks. Album Description

Greatest Hits? Like Trying to Hit a Moving Target

Compiling something called "The Very Best of Jerry Garcia" must have been a Herculean task, if not a Sisyphean one; how can you possibly cull thousands of hours of recordings down to 140 minutes? It's either heroic, or it's impossible. The answer lies squarely in the middle. This is a nice collection, and very representative of Garcia's solo career, but any true fan would recognize anything called "The Very Best of Jerry Garcia" to be an oxymoron. His solo work was incredibly erratic and uneven, soaring from the unequivocal genius of his first album, "Garcia," but sinking to the confusing morass entitled "Run for the Roses." Strictly speaking, a greatest hits collection would encompass all of the former while (more or less) ignoring the latter, but that is not what a career retrospective disk ought to do, and that is what this really is. To be truly representative, it must gloss over highlights while lingering a bit too long on weaker efforts.
The layout itself is quite intelligent, dedicating one disk to the studio recordings, while dedicating the second to live highlights. The "Garcia" album does have five representative tracks, including the magnificent "Deal," "Bird Song," and "Sugaree," but overlooks "To Lay Me Down" and the totally weird spacey psychedelia of "Late for Supper/Spidergawd/Eep Hour." Meanwhile the thoroughly unremarkable "...Roses" album is represented three times. Garcia's take on "Knockin' On Heaven's Door" is an aural sedative, and "Without Love" is a decidedly non-climactic ending to an otherwise satisfying disk.
Fortunately, the live disk compensates nicely. Here, the combination of cover songs and originals compliments Garcia's abilities, and the track selections are more...umm, selective. "Dear Prudence" totally reinvents the Beatles song, and while it may not be an improvement, it at least shows Garcia's penchant for inhabiting his material. "Senor" is a much more inspired song selection than "...Heaven's Door" (as is "Positively 4th Street," marking three Dylan tunes on Garcia's compilation), while "The Harder They Come" is a tried and true take on the reggae classic. Plus, it's always great to hear something from Garcia's traditional folk outfit, Old and In the Way. A better, or more honest, album title for this collection would be "A Brief Synopsis of Garcia's Solo Work." It is a great place to start if you are wondering which part of his career to investigate; either that, or you could pick up his first solo album and take it from there. B+ Tom Ryan November 29, 2006

Almost Perfect

I'm one of those folks who bought this strictly for CD 2, because I already have everything that's on CD 1. Regarding CD 1, all in all, I have to say they did an "almost perfect" job in the song selection. The "Garcia" album is well represented in that you get the good songs without those scary instrumentals. From "Compliments," I agree with selecting Let It Rock, but I would not have selected Russian Lullaby. I would have selected that mysterious and wonderful song Mississippi Moon or that fantastic song, Turn on the Bright Lights. I think that "Reflections" is well represented. From "Cats Under the Stars," I love the title track of course, but I would not have selected Rubin and Cherise or Rhapsody in Red. The selections from "Run for the Roses" are good selections. All in all, CD 1 is very very good, even with my minor quibbles.
CD 2, the live material, is "better than good." Of the three acoustic tracks that begin CD 2, I like the first track, Catfish John, because it really does capture that "high lonesome sound" a-la Bill Monroe. The Positively 4th Street is very good. The reggae tune The Harder They Come is excellent, mostly because of the bass, they really thump that bass like a fine dub tune. Gamorrah is a very good live version, though I think I prefer the studio version on Cats Under the Stars. Dear Prudence is EXCELLENT. Senor (Tales of Yankee Power) is fantastic, although you probably already have that track on those "Jerry Garcia Band" CDs. The inclusion of Evengeline is unfortunate, in my opinion. So many better tracks than that could have been chosen. The final track, Deal, is very good...it has a sort of mellowness to it that is nice, rather than the harder, rock-out Deals we're used to.
So I would give the whole package 5 stars. Try using CD 1 in your car, it seems to work well that way for me. September 27, 2006

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