It’s good that a few things in this world are clear to all of us.”Īnd, from an interview with David Gans, in his Conversations with the Dead: People seem to know exactly what I’m talking about. “Nobody ever asked me the meaning of this song. Hunter’s statements about the song include this, from his lyric anthology, A Box of Rain: That said, actually having the words didn’t do that much to clarify anything, and I think that’s just exactly what Robert Hunter would have wanted. It wasn’t until David Gans published an interview with Robert Hunter in BAM magazine, which included the lyrics to “China Cat Sunflower,” that I had any real inkling what was being sung. My transcription didn’t get very far using this method. I couldn’t believe the intricacy! I couldn’t fathom how it was being done.Īnd I don’t think I actually understood very many of the words-they were more like part of the instrumentation, like the poetry of HD Moe that I later came to love because he used words in this way to create a stained-glass verbal image.įirst, I started in the time-honored method of lifting the needle from the groove and setting it back just a bit to try to catch the words. I lay on the floor of their living room, and stared at the cottage-cheese ceiling, and watched the patterns form and re-form there, to the music that was playing-such a delicate constellation of intertwined guitar notes. And that night, I put it on my parents’ record player-an old Magnavox console-when they were somewhere out and about, and listened. She told me I should buy the triple Europe ’72 album, so I did. She was a huge Deadhead, and I was a neophyte. I was home for Christmas break from college, and a friend and I went shopping for records. I relish each new dive into this song.Īnd I’m not sure why this is. I don’t tire of the interplay between the words and the music. I don’t tire of it musically, or lyrically. And I have spent many hours with it over the years, never getting tired of it. This song opened my ears to the band in a big way.
And in particular the Europe ’72 recording. I mean, if I had to whittle it all down to just one song I could bring with me, this would be it.
Celebrating the start of a new year seems like an appropriate occasion, so let’s look at what is probably my number one desert-island song. I wasn’t sure exactly why, but I had been saving “China Cat Sunflower” for a special occasion. (I’ll consider requests for particular songs-just private message me!)
#CHINA CAT SUNFLOWER GRATEFUL DEAD FREE#
Therefore, the best part, I would hope, would not be anything in particular that I might have to say, but rather, the conversation that may happen via the comments over the course of time-and since all the posts will stay up, you can feel free to weigh in any time on any of the songs! With Grateful Dead lyrics, there’s always a new and different take on what they bring up for each listener, it seems. Regardless, it’s still fun to listen back on how the band developed some of their earliest song pairings which would go on to become fan favorites as the band continued to grow out of their 1960s infancy and into their prime years of the 1970s.Here’s the plan-each week, I will blog about a different song, focusing, usually, on the lyrics, but also on some other aspects of the song, including its overall impact-a truly subjective thing. The show that night was taped, but similar to many of the band’s pre-1970 performances, the audio quality isn’t very strong compared to the library of high-definition audio from the later years. The show that night also included performances of “Alligator” and “The Other One” but is remembered fondly as the first-ever pairing of “China” > “Rider”, which boosts the performance into significant territory within the carefully cataloged history of the Dead. The performance of “China Cat Sunflower” into “I Know You Rider” opened up the band’s brief gig at the Greenwich Village nightclub. Related: Listen To Bob Weir’s Isolated Guitar Parts From Grateful Dead’s Final Show At Berkeley’s Greek Theatre In 1989 It makes it that much more special to note that the “China” > “Rider” combination made its first appearance at the legendary Cafe au Go Go in New York City on September 30th, 1969-53 years ago today, and less than a month before the venue closed its doors in October of that year. The Grateful Dead performed the two-song combination over 500 times throughout their 30-year run, making it one of the more dependable mid-set segues capable of launching a show into orbit at any moment thanks to its dance-friendly tempo and lengthy jams transition jams. In the Grateful Dead universe, few song pairings stick out with such adoration and favoritism among the band’s legion of fans more than “China Cat Sunflower” > “I Know You Rider”.
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