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Wilfred Langmaid

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The Grateful Dead - Rocking The Cradle: Egypt 1978 - Rhino/Warner

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The Grateful Dead - Rocking The Cradle: Egypt 1978 is a piece of history in the broadest and deepest sense. Just past the half-way point of their 30-year run, the Dead navigated a seeming chasm. Relations between the western world and all of the Middle East were rocky. Nothing was more unsettled than the relationship between the United States and Egypt, but the Dead managed to get permission to play three mid-September shows at the foot of the Great Pyramid in Gizah in the ultimate cultural exchange.

That history is deepened by the fact that secret meetings were taking place at Camp David at that very time. The agreement forged half a world away brought peace between Egypt and Israel.

This two-CD/1-DVD set is from the extant material able to be unleashed by the Dead's link to Rhino. Part of show two and all of show three are included.

Granted, the video footage is not always ideal - almost seeming like a home movie of the day by times. However, the sound quality is superb throughout. The Dead/Rhino folks do the two things that they do well: they give what exists in the vault the best showing possible and they augment it all with a great booklet and a neat product design.

There is one other caveat. For the Grateful Dead, 1978 was no highlight. Keith Godchaux was stumbling with addictions, and his once rich and inventive piano voicings were gone - replaced by unimaginative thumps made worse by their prominence in the sound mix. He and his vocalist wife Donna had only half a year left in the band. He would die in a car accident a year after that.

Drummers Bill Kreutzmann and Mickey Hart were easing their way into what would be a far-richer, more diverse four-armed drumming after Hart's re-entry two years previous. However, here in 1978, they offer atypically repetitive and relatively bland rhythms; the problem is amplified by the fact that Kreutzmann had a cast at the time and was playing with only his right hand.

Most alarmingly, band leader Jerry Garcia was in the first throes of his own struggle with addictions; this marked parts of the rest of his career until he died in 1995. What we see and hear here from 1978 is a relative low point.

However, this is still the Dead. Bassist Phil Lesh is in full throttle. Rhythm guitarist/co-vocalist Bob Weir has some halting moments on slide guitar, but his rhythm work is just dandy. And Garcia is still Garcia; lots of his breaks are virtuosic, inventive, and tuneful in his signature manner.

As the band runs through well-known tracks, some are pretty tepid (Bertha, Row Jimmy, Jack Straw), while others are plain but solid (Candyman, Truckin'). There are some stumbling new moments, too, such as the nascent I Need A Miracle and the then-newly-crafted cover of Good Lovin'.

However, there are also treasures for even the most discriminating Dead fans. The then-new Shakedown Street comes out fully developed in the second live version ever. Meanwhile, Garcia's intense vocal of Stagger Lee, while only the third version ever, ranks it in the all-time pantheon of the 146 live versions of that song between 1978 and 1995.

As well, Donna Godchaux's background singing has some nice moments, particularly as she backs Weir in Looks Like Rain and Garcia on Deal. Husband Keith, meanwhile, gives a performance that recalls his more inventive early days as he adds his filigrees to the then-brand-new Garcia showstopper Fire On The Mountain.

Finally, the Dead's bridge across the cultures is given a perfect snapshot form the ages on the collaboration with Hamza El-Din and the Nubian Youth Choir on Ollin Arageed.

In short, this is a treasure - warts and all.

Fredericton-based freelance writer Wilfred Langmaid has reviewed albums in The Daily Gleaner since 1981, and is a past judge for both the Junos and the East Coast Music Awards.