Beat It On Down The Line by the Grateful Dead ~ RockBand DLC 05/18, Expert Drums/Bass 99/99 SR

DLC Release 05/18/2010 ~ Grateful Dead Pack 03

Beat It On Down The Line is the 2nd track from The Grateful Dead, the debut album of the Grateful Dead. It was recorded by Warner Bros. Records, and was released in March 1967.

The album was recorded primarily at Studio A in Los Angeles in only four days. The band had wanted to record the album in their hometown of San Francisco, but no good recording studios existed in the area at the time. Demands by Warner Bros. resulted in four of the tracks, originally longer, being cut short. Phil Lesh comments in his autobiography that "to my ear, the only track that sounds at all like we did at the time is Viola Lee Blues. ... None of us had any experience with performing for recording ... although the whole process felt a bit rushed."

The album was seen as "a big deal in San Francisco." Even though this was true, it did not see much air play on AM radio stations outside San Francisco. It would be a couple of months before free-form FM radio stations began to take shape. Warner Bros. threw the band a release party at the Fugazi Hall in North Beach. Joe Smith is noted for saying he is "proud that Warner Bros. is introducing the Grateful Dead to the world."

A remastered version with the full versions of five album tracks, plus six bonus tracks, was released by Rhino in as part of the box set The Golden Road (1965-1973) in 2001, and as a separate album in 2003.

The disc was made of a thick vinyl similar to old 78 rpm records, which was uncommon at the time.

In the original design for the album cover, the cryptic writing at the top read, "In the land of the dark, the ship of the sun is driven by the Grateful Dead", with the phrase "Grateful Dead" in large letters. At the band's request, the writing, except for "Grateful Dead", was changed by artist Stanley Mouse to be unreadable. According to fan legend, the saying is from Egyptian Book of the Dead.

The band used the collected pseudonymn McGannahan Skjellyfetti for their group-written originals and arrangements. The name derived from a corruption of a character name in the Kenneth Patchen work The Memoirs of a Shy Pornographer.''

Genre: Classic Rock

●●●●○ Band
●●●●○ Guitar
●●●●○ Drums
●●●●○ Vocals
●●●●○ Bass

Drums: ProffessorJoe
Pretty challenging, lots of notes and interesting patterns. Overall very enjoyable to play.

Bass: RJUCPU
Awesome. Can't say much about the tiering, I personally didn't find any of these difficult (and much easier than the first pack) but they were all fun to play and definitely no boring bass songs here. Definitely a must have. This third pack lives up to the earlier releases in every aspect in my opinion. Beat It On Down The Line probably my favorite one of the pack as far as playability but they were all great.

• Category

  Gaming

[cicabeot1]

So much Grateful Dead. Soon the only songs I will remember are Hell in a Bucket, Alabama Getaway, and Franklin's Tower.

[Alonso Rafael Corvera Burciaga]

good SR!! #FTW