If you listen to a lot of jazz or R&B, the Grateful Dead sound primitive and sloppy, but if you listen to a lot of classic rock, the Dead sound dazzlingly original. I was listening to classic rock radio recently, and after a bunch of tedious songs by the Eagles and such, "Playing in the Band" came on. Its odd meter and structural unpredictability made it feel like an explosion of color in a sea of grey. Here's the version from Skull and Roses, which is a live recording, but with organ by Merl Saunders overdubbed in the studio.
The cliche about the Dead being better live holds true for this song; the (mostly) live Skull and Roses version is much better than the studio recording from Ace. After these two, every successive performance is sung worse than the previous one. That's the Dead! It's okay, there are plenty of other things to love about the song.
The Day of the Dead compilation includes a cover of PITB by Tunde Adebimpe and Lee Ranaldo. It's fine. Their version lacks the country flavor, but it's tight and well sung, and the textural jam section works very well.
PITB originates with a ten-beat groove that Mickey Hart came up with. During a jam in Mickey's barn, David Crosby created a guitar riff in D Mixolydian mode to go with it. The band nicknamed this groove the Main Ten, and sometimes played it during shows. The Grateful Dead guide gives examples. This is a good one:
There's another good Main Ten from 6/7/70, leading from the end of "Cryptical Envelopment" into the first-ever performance of "Sugar Magnolia". The first set of this show is an interesting one too; it's an acoustic set with (I think) David Nelson on mandolin.
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