Franklin's Tower - Grateful Dead Song Review

...if you get confused listen to the music play!

It's kind of weird to review this song prior to reviewing Help on the Way and Slipknot. Franklin's Tower was the final piece of the "Help/Slip/Frank" medley that kicked off many great shows. The proper context for this super upbeat jam is after a dizzying solo by Garcia during Slipknot. After a good 10+ minutes of minor key tension (starting off with the edgy Help on the Way), nothing sounds quite as nice as the beginning of Franklin's Tower.

Franklin's Tower is a great tune that features Jerry singing and soloing a ton.  I think its simplicity made it a really consistently delivered song (especially after warming up through the complex gauntlet of Help/Slip).  I never got to see this song (although I really wanted to hear it at every show I went to and told everyone so). I can only imagine what a party it must have felt like dancing to Franklin's Tower. I am sure that this song really got the crowd going whenever it was played.

Robert Hunter Gets Historical?

The lyrics seem lighthearted but have some of those deep lessons that you got occasionally from Robert via Jerry.

Some come to laugh their past away
Some come to make it just one more day
Whichever way your pleasure tends
if you plant ice you're gonna harvest wind

I actually thought this song's lyrics had something to do with colonial America and maybe even that Franklin referred to Ben Franklin, but upon closer review of the Annotated Grateful Dead lyrics site, it appears I was way off.

One poignant memory I have is the issue of Rolling Stone that came out after Jerry died, Levi's took out a full page ad that simply read: May the four winds blow you safely home.  This one meant a lot to me (pictured, right).

Cool Franklin's Tower Trivia

In Blair Jackson's book Garcia: An American Life, he shares with us a cool revelation that one source for inspiration for the chords in Franklin's Tower was the  Lou Reed song Take a Walk on the Wild Side.  Specifically, the part where the female background singers sing: "Doo doo doo doo doo... " If you sing this part over Franklin's Tower it fits perfectly.

Franklin's With no Help/Slip?

Just like Fire on the Mountain without Scarlet, I have heard versions of Franklin's Tower without Help/Slip and I must say I am not a fan of hearing it by itself.  It's like skipping dinner to eat dessert.

Franklin's Tower Song Rating on a Scale of 1-10: 9.1

Disclaimer: This is part of my blog that reviews all things Grateful Dead for fun. Music is a beautiful thing because it is so personal and subjective, so keep in mind that this is one man's opinion.

Crazy Fingers - Grateful Dead Song Review

My favorite Grateful Dead song. I've contemplated making a list and it would definitely evolve over time but this one would always be number 1. It actually is so great I've been stalling on writing about it because, I just don't know if you can do the song justice. But I try....

First of all, Crazy Fingers wasn't my favorite song at first. It took years to really appreciate it. I did see it at my first show on May 15th, 1993 (Sam Boyd Silver Bowl, Las Vegas - Saturday night show) and the melody of the verse really was great and memorable, but the song requires a fine appreciation for the Dead to really absorb how unique and original it is.

Crazy Fingers is a slow, middling tune that was pretty inconsistent in it's delivery over the years. The studio version from Blues for Allah is extremely tight and well executed and just creates an aura of a really good mellow, mature, psychedelic reggae song (psychedelic reggae - not a genre you often hear about and maybe still not that accurate for this song but that shows how original this song really is).

The early live versions of this song held pretty true to the form on Blues for Allah (most notably from One for the Vault) including the guitar flanger effect. Naturally, I prefer the song the way it evolved into the nineties - but probably not the very last couple of years because I really like my Crazy Fingers to be crisply delivered and it did get really loose in the last couple of years. An absolutely phenomenal version of the song is on youtube from Dean Smith Center, North Carolina in 1993. That version has such a great solo on it with just the right amount of sparkling reverb and delay and Jerry taking the lyrical soaring leads seemingly in slow motion. The solo in Crazy Fingers is always a highlight for me, and is always delivered with just the right amount of effects. While it outlines the verse melody, it is still always thoughtfully and lyrically delivered in a unique and improvisational way - no two Crazy Fingers solos are the same (after the first few bars).

Before I even get into the words I must point out that Crazy Fingers is SO UNIQUE in its composition. From the slow haunting intro Jerry would play to the almost dissonant bridge section Life may be sweeter for this, I don't know.... to the bass heavy jam outro it is just like nothing else out there (and please do tell if there is other music you know of similar to this I would love to hear it).

The first hundred or so times I heard Crazy Fingers I think the melody on the bridge section (ie where they sing Gone are the days... we stopped to decide...) might have just rubbed my ears the wrong way, but now I can really appreciate the harmonic quality of the change and know that it is non traditional and therefore unfamiliar. It pushes the boundaries of the beautiful harmony that is established in the verses and is congruent with the dual nature of the lyrics that are joyous and beautiful but also about sadness and loss. The bridge really works with the song and breaks it up perfectly because while the verse melody is extremely pretty, it is a bit simple.

Now I have to talk about the words. I just can't do these lyrics justice. I've read them described as a haiku before (I think even by Robert Hunter's own description) but they are not the kind of (5-7-5) Haiku that I remember learning to create in elementary school.

The entire song is just perfect but a couple of favorite sections:

Cloud hands, reaching from a rainbow,
tapping at your window
touch your hair

So swift and bright,
strange figures of light
float in air

So this is just psychedelia at its finest. This sounds like the best LSD experience of all time. Those lines always make me picture the most beautiful imagery and fill me with a sense of wonder at what beauty exists in nature that we may not comprehend until a moment when we are "opened up" to the beauty surrounding us.

Hang your heart on a laughing willow
stray down to the water
deep sea of love...

Beneath the sweet calm face of the sea
swift undertow

Deep stuff. This reminds me of the uneasy feeling that comes along with tripping when you contemplate that loving others and having relationships with them carries with it a risk of being disappointed in a way that can wound you more than any physical injury. Also, how could this line not require a mention of the fact that Jerry Garcia's father drowned when Jerry was just a young boy.

This song is mostly joyous but there is also a dark duality to it that reminds of the temporal fleeting nature of this life which is endlessly slipping by.

Finally, the best line of all:

Midnight on a carousel ride
reaching for the gold ring down inside

Never couldd reach it...
just slips away...
but I try...

So you take the man Jerry Garcia (and include his writing partner Robert Hunter) and you have artists who continually evolved and kept pushing the envelope for almost thirty years - never playing it safe or going for the easy home run but continually searching for another hidden musical gem, another magical combination of songs, another performance to bring audience and performer to a higher level of consciousness. In my opinion this is the highest calling someone can hope to fulfill in this life and Jerry and Robert were able to inspire people with their music and words for decades to the point that I am still chronicling it fourteen years after it came to an end in August 1995 (keep in mind I only really knew the Dead for two years at that point and consider what an impact it must have made on me).

So they never reached the gold ring? Maybe. But they helped inspired us to reach for ours within ourselves- it is the greatest gift you can give. I think that this is the effect that the wizards, shamans, and holy men who've been chronicled throughout the ages have had on people. This is the true magic, and this song is a spell.


Crazy Fingers Song Rating on a Scale of 1-10: 10.0

Disclaimer: This is part of my review of every Grateful Dead song from A-Z. Music is a beautiful thing because it is so personal and subjective, so keep in mind that this is one man's opinion (and be sure to read my blog manifesto to understand a little more about where I'm coming from).

Blues For Allah - Grateful Dead Song Review

Blues for Allah is a really unique and powerful song that is possibly the song that is the furthest departure from "American rock" that the Dead were to make (as far as incorporating world sounds).

Blues for Allah is an eerie middle eastern tune based on a middle eastern scale and set in a non traditional meter. It is also the name of the album on which it originally appears - released in 1975. The lyrics are really great with lines like:

Arabian wind, The needle's eye is thin, The ships of state sail on mirage,
And drown in sand, Out in no-man's land where Allah does command.

When I think of the period of time in which this album was released I picture Garcia with his long dark hair, long dark beard, and apparent fondness for persian heroin. I really like the entire album with the same name but I will say that it is inconsistent. At least the Dead were very ambitious with this album and pushing the envelope of traditional American rock albums by putting several lengthy instrumental songs on it.

The Kezar Stadium show in San Francisco on 3/23/1975 is always the main live version of this song that I can refer to. This show is notable to me because it is very close to the day I was born and is notable also because it was largely an instrumental show without lyrics (at least until the Johnny B. Goode encore). I would recommend hearing this show on archive.org but I can see that it is not posted because the show has been commercially released.

Blues for Allah only was played a few times in 1975. I am kind of surprised now that I look at the Egypt shows (recently released and obtained by yours truly) that this song didn't make the setlists in what would seem to be it's most natural setting - an Egyptian desert. Perhaps Blues for Allah might have been a bit too much of a departure musically to work into the rest of the set, or perhaps the song wasn't very accessible to the Dead's audience at the time. I can only guess at the reasons that Blues for Allah didn't have more of a run in the Dead's setlists but one thing that I do know for sure is that I really wish there were more live verisons of it out there - I would love to hear Jerry and co. use this very unique sounding song as a vehicle for experimentation.

Blues for Allah Song Rating on a Scale of 1-10: 8.5

Disclaimer: This is part of my review of every Grateful Dead song from A-Z. Music is a beautiful thing because it is so personal and subjective, so keep in mind that this is one man's opinion (and be sure to read my blog manifesto to understand a little more about where I'm coming from).