The Grateful Dead inspired a legion of devoted fans – a community of sorts – spurred by the band’s wholeheartedly emotional music. Playing music for hours on end, the band would regularly need to tune their instruments, leaving time for idle conversation and amusing anecdotes.
These tuning moments are the focus of a new, unique compilation from Deadhead Michael David Murray, who isolated all of the band’s tuning tracks from 1977, and merged them into one long, continuous audio file.
Here it is:
The result is unsettling, as each tuning session is supposed to lead into a song, but instead just segues into another tuning session from another show. Murray explained his idea, saying “It’s them talking as a band, actually tuning up, playing little teases of songs, often their equipment is breaking and they’re running around fixing things… there are some interesting things that pop up in the audio in the hour and a half.”
Murphy continued, saying, “it’s a conceptual art piece. It’s an audio piece that is really about the idea of what does sound sound like when no music is happening. It will frustrate listeners, and other listeners find it really amusing and fun.”
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