Archive Review: Grateful Dead’s Rocking the Cradle: Egypt 1978 (2008)

Let’s be as honest as churchmice here, shall we? The corpse that once was the Grateful Dead has long since been flayed, flogged, and laid to rest along with the hopes and dreams of so many ‘60s-era flower children. With better than fifty – count ‘em! – fifty live albums on the shelf (many consisting of two or three discs, or more), even the Dead’s long-standing reputation as a great performing outfit that typically underperformed in the studio is questionable in light of the growing body of evidence.

In the annals of hardcore Grateful Dead fans (a/k/a “Deadheads,” which the Reverend’s dictionary defines as “one who has smoked so many flowers as to make their musical judgment suspect), no live performance by the band is more legendary that the Dead’s journey to the sands of Egypt during late 1978 to play three nights in front of the Great Pyramid. Outside of the historical significance of the performances, there’s little here to recommend, however. A two-CD and one-DVD set in a nifty fold-out pop-up package with images of the pyramids, Rocking the Cradle: Egypt 1978 is a document of the band’s experience, but offers little else.

With audio culled from two of the Egyptian nights for the CDs, and video from one night’s concert on the DVD, the band sleepwalks through performances of songs from the upcoming Shakedown Street album along with a few older chestnuts. The usual spark of the Dead’s free-form live performances seems to be missing here, however, and highlights are few and far between. The band gets behind a cover of the New Orleans Cajun classic “Iko Iko,” slowing down the pace to that of a strutting fly-by with a loping groove and a couple of solos full of rich tones. “I Need A Miracle” offers a few hot licks threaded throughout the longform jam, but an obligatory performance of “Truckin’” suffers from a too-mellow vibe, reducing the song’s innate anarchic spirit to a hearty bassline and rushed vocals. Sadly, much of the rest of the album’s 18 tracks (and their DVD doppelgangers) are entirely somnambulant.   

Don’t get me wrong here folks, and please don’t deluge Blurt editor Fred with barrels of hate mail – the Reverend simply adores GD albums like Workingman’s Dead, American Beauty, Blues For Allah, even In the Dark – but methinks that you should spend your lunch money on one of those stellar efforts rather than waste your hard-earned coin on this snoozefest. You’ll thank me later… (Rhino Records, released September 30th, 2008)

Review originally published by Blurt magazine...