Music blogGrateful Dead This article is more than 8 years oldIs the Grateful Dead's new 80-disc box set the ultimate musical endurance test?
This article is more than 8 years oldSurely nobody can sit through a four-day, 24-hour psychedelic jam session? Then again, there are worse things out there to listen to. Here are other trainspotter-ish recordings to test your musical mettle
Well at least it answers the question: “Just what on earth am I going to buy Auntie Edna for Christmas?”
The Grateful Dead, no doubt fresh from an intensive session in an editing studio, are due to release an 80-disc box set.
Thirty Trips Around the Sun – a snip at just $699.95 – will feature 30 complete, previously unissued shows, one from each year of the band’s touring life, including their legendary 1979 shows at the Cape Cod Coliseum, in Massachusetts.
“They are on fire,” the group’s archivist David Lemieux told Rolling Stone. “There was always something about the Dead in New England – they were pretty darn spectacular. But some of the jams in this one are incredible.”
Not to do down the alluring pull of those New England jam sessions, but you have to wonder who – other than Auntie Edna – is going to want this? Most Grateful Dead albums feel like they last four days as it is; this one actually will.
Yet a little digging around reveals that there are far more trainspotter-ish recordings out there are more endurance tests than music. Here’s how to put yourself through sonic hell while saving yourself $699.95.
The Grateful Dead tuning their guitars for 92 minutes
For those who find the idea of an 80-disc compilation of the Grateful Dead a bit mainstream – a little too focused on that done-to-death 1979 New England jam workout period, for instance – then this could be the recording for you. It contains no music whatsoever (arguably, you could say this about most Grateful Dead releases), and is simply a compilation of the band’s musicians tuning up. Think of them as the godfathers of ambient – if ambient made you tense and angry.
73 minutes of Thin Lizzy guitar solos
Scott Gorham and John Sykes liked to solo, and they liked to solo fast. They never liked to solo really fast for 72 minutes non-stop, though – partly because it would have been physically impossible and partly because, after about 1min 51sec, it becomes painfully unlistenable. Still, compared to the tuning up compilation, this sounds like Abba Gold.
Paul Stanley’s between song banter … for 45 minutes
“Alriiiiight! Torrronnnno! You feeeeaahhhhl gooood?!!”
It certainly gets you in the mood for … something. Sadly, that something is not another 44min and 40 sec of the Kiss frontman shrieking about making the place hotter. As the top comment on Soundcloud puts it: “Great for ruining parties.”
Every single time James Hetfield has said “yeah”
This one is less than four minutes long. Yet, as you proceed from Kill ’Em All through to Beyond Magnetic, listening to Hetfield “yeah”, “yuuurrr” and “yeeeaaaiiigghhhh”, it feels like several lifetimes have passed. All of which were spent chained to a radiator at a Metallica soundcheck.
The complete recordings of Herbert von Karajan
Ok, so this one isn’t free. In fact, the Deutsche Grammophon release is $3,300 away from being free. But the celebration of the Austrian conductor – with its recordings of rehearsals, wooden presentation box and 200-page book (in Japanese) – is a reminder that, when it comes to extravagant endurance box sets, the Grateful Dead have some way to go yet.
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