(Grateful Dead allusion)
Lyrics: Bobby Petersen
Music: Phil Lesh
“Out on the edge of the empty highway
Howling at the blood on the moon
Big diesel Mack rolling down my way
Can’t hit that border too soon”
(Grateful Dead from the Mars Hotel)
I’ve got to use that someplace. That song’s been trailing me for years. I finally found a used CD with an intact cover – and there were no new CDs to be had. But the cover art isn’t nearly as good, not shot down in size for a jewel case.
But the music?
Now, if I can only figure out what they mean by the opening lines to “Unbroken Chain.”
“Looking for familiar faces/In an empty window-pane.”
Guess I’m not old enough to understand the “hippie jam bands.” Huh.
The musical references get back to another point, and I’m trying to figure out how to work that into work. It’s the point where a band tours in order to “support” a recent release. In personal consultations, I call it the “punk tour,” after a really good article in some magazine. The writer toured with an “up and coming” band. Wasn’t really all that, ahem, joyful. The open road ain’t always the greatest.
When I was researching (means I plugged it into a search engine) this album, in the myriad of Grateful Dead links, I stumbled across one bit of purple prose, which suggested the 1974 Grateful Dead from the Mars Hotel was the best of the Dead’s studio albums, produced at a time when the music was at its creative peak. No wonder I like it.
