Arguably the acme of the Grateful Dead’s early psychedelic era, Aoxomoxoa was one of the first rock albums to be recorded using 16-track technology. And while the title of the record may be termed a meaningless palindrome–a word, number, phrase, or other sequence of symbols that reads the same backward as forwards– it is hardly without significance in the multi-dimensional context of the music (and the cover art for the LP), especially with the hindsight of over a half-century.
The Grateful Dead’s embrace of serendipity often extended beyond the improvisational journeys they embarked upon while inhabiting the concert stage. Witness the conception and execution of the “Wall of Sound,” the pinnacle of the band’s pursuit of optimum audio in a live setting, or their initiation of an independent record label, by which they could maintain quality standards in manufacturing and distributing as high as those to which they aspired in writing and recording.
Long before the debut of that enterprise, however, the band discovered the multifaceted creative tool that was the recording studio. Now, in retrospect, some of the earliest results of their exploration(s) prove prescient in the form of Aoxomoxoa.
“St. Stephen,” plus the perennial “China Cat Sunflower,” foreshadow Jerry Garcia and Robert Hunter’s status as the Grateful Dead’s chief source of original compositions. The duo also composed ”Dupree’s Diamond Blues” and “Doin’ That Rag,” the prevalent old-timey feel of that pair making for an especially effective contrast to the randy persona Ron “Pigpen” McKernan exudes on “Alligator.”
With a snappy percussion interlude there courtesy of Mickey Hart and Bill Kreutzmann, not to mention the adventurous likes of “Caution (Do Not Stop On Tracks)” and “Feedback,” the nonchalance emanating from these performances belies the tension permeating the band late in 1968. Yet the friction did not adversely affect the results of laborious studio sessions either, the most protracted such endeavors in Grateful Dead history to that point.
Both the original 1969 mix and one overseen by Garcia two years later are enclosed in the Aoxomoxoa 50th Anniversary Deluxe Edition. The double-CD format contains multiple mixes of the studio album plus previously unreleased live recordings completed around that same time. As with the studio work, these culls from three shows at the Avalon Ballroom in San Francisco in January 1969 are among the first live performances ever to be recorded to 16-track.
On the former, vocals are little more prominent than subtleties such as the harpsichord on “Mountains of the Moon,” while the subsequent one does little to erase how dated sounds “What’s Become of the Baby.” Nevertheless, the extra volume and presence of the latter sublimates much of the fey quality that pervades the album’s material, rendering this subsequent mix a legitimate alternative to its predecessor. It is worth noting that less than six months after this third Grateful Dead studio effort came out, the first of what turned out to be a multitude of the psychedelic warriors’ concert collections was released. In keeping with its title, November 1969’s Live/Dead complements its studio counterpart and simultaneously brings to a close and initiates a variety of creative cycles for this deservedly iconic band. The evolutionary process thereof is all the more clear from a fifty year-plus perspective.
