Notes
The Music Never Stopped: Grateful Dead's Blues for Allah Marks a Return to the Band's Collaborative Roots and the Reappearance of Percussionist Mickey HartMeticulously Mastered from the Original Master Tapes: Limited to 2,500 Numbered Copies, Mobile Fidelity Hybrid SACD Features Sublime Dynamics, Clarity, Detail, and Presence Soul-Nourishing 1975 Album Includes 'Help on the Way/Slipknot!' and 'Franklin's Tower': Prayerful Title Track Remains a Vital Plea for Peace and Call to Harmony 'If you get confused, listen to the music play,' counsels Grateful Dead leader Jerry Garcia on Blues for Allah. Surely, better advice has never been given. The band's only release during a self-imposed hiatus that lasted nearly 20 months, and the effort that witnessed the welcome return of percussionist Mickey Hart, the 1975 album marks the rebirth of a signature naturalism, spiritualism, and energy that had begun to fray because of ceaseless touring and financial pressures. And as experienced on this audiophile-caliber reissue, such inspired élan and elevated performance facets - embraced literally and figuratively on Bob Weir's hallmark 'The Music Never Stopped' anthem - achieve transcendent heights.Mastered from the original master tapes and strictly limited to 2,500 numbered copies, Mobile Fidelity's hybrid SACD possesses seemingly limitless dynamics, reference-grade presence, expansive soundstages, crystalline transparency, and a wealth of previously obscured information. Strongly informed by jazz themes and organic progressions, the album's arrangements unfold as a series of interlocking puzzle pieces that, together, comprise an adventurous landscape informed by compound structures, angelic harmonies, chiming tones, and brilliant colors. Every member's vocals resound with tube-like clarity and remain entirely free of artificial ceilings or unintended blurring.The peerless transparency is reinforced by the chirping crickets on the title track, reggae-flecked crispness of 'Crazy Fingers,' and spinning-plate-on-a-stick rhythmic voodoo cast throughout by drummer Bill Kreutzmann. Recorded at Weir's intimate Ace Studios, Blues for Allah depicts The Grateful Dead returning to it's collaborative roots: Entering the sessions with no preconceived ideas and letting inspiration move them brightly, resulting in improvised-meets-rehearsed compositions replete with varying time signatures, Middle Eastern motifs, and elegant scales. More than any other Grateful Dead studio record, Blues for Allah combines the ensemble's trademark exuberance with exacting precision and instrumental luster.
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