The Grateful Dead - Anthem of the Sun (1968)

The Grateful Dead was an American rock band formed in 1965 in Palo Alto, California.[Ranging from quintet to septet, the band is known for its eclectic style, which fused elements of rock, folk, country, bluegrass, blues, gospel, modal jazz, reggae, experimental music, psychedelia, and space rock,for live performances of lengthy instrumental jams, and for their devoted fan base, known as "Deadheads". "Their music", writes Lenny Kaye, "touches on ground that most other groups don't even know exists". These various influences were distilled into a diverse and psychedelic whole that made the Grateful Dead "the pioneering Godfathers of the jam band world". The band was ranked 57th by Rolling Stone magazine in its The Greatest Artists of All Time issue.The band was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1994[10] and a recording of their May 8, 1977, performance at Cornell University's Barton Hall was added to the National Recording Registry of the Library of Congressin 2012.[11] The Grateful Dead have sold more than 35 million albums worldwide.


Anthem of the Sun is the second album by rock band the Grateful Dead. Released in 1968, it is the first album to feature second drummer Mickey Hart, who joined the band in September 1967. Currently ranked number 288 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the 500 greatest albums of all time.

The mix of the album combines multiple studio and live recordings of each song. The result is an experimental amalgam that is neither a studio album nor a live album, but both at the same time (though it is usually classified as a studio album).

Drummer Bill Kreutzmann's description of the production process describes the listening experience of the album as well: "...Jerry [Garcia] and Phil [Lesh] went into the studio with [Dan] Healy and, like mad scientists, they started splicing all the versions together, creating hybrids that contained the studio tracks and various live parts, stitched together from different shows, all in the same song — one rendition would dissolve into another and sometimes they were even stacked on top of each other... It was easily our most experimental record, it was groundbreaking in its time, and it remains a psychedelic listening experience to this day.
Track listing

Side one
No.TitleLength
1. "That's It for the Other One" (Jerry Garcia, Bill Kreutzmann, Phil Lesh, Ron McKernan, Bob Weir, Tom Constanten)
I. Cryptical Envelopment (Garcia)
II. Quadlibet for Tenderfeet (Garcia, Kreutzmann, Lesh, McKernan, Weir)
III. The Faster We Go, the Rounder We Get (Kreutzmann, Weir)
IV. We Leave the Castle (Constanten) 7:40
2. "New Potato Caboose" (Lesh, Robert Petersen) 8:26
3. "Born Cross-Eyed" (Weir) 2:04

Side two
No.TitleLength
4. "Alligator" (Lesh, McKernan, Robert Hunter) 11:20
5. "Caution (Do Not Stop on Tracks)" (Garcia, Kreutzmann, Lesh, McKernan, Weir) 9:37

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