REVIEWS

This gem, recorded between June 1974 and January 1975, was shelved by Young for over four decades because it deals with a personal heartache and, at the time, Young wanted to move on from it. Seven of the album’s 12 tracks were previously unreleased. The album is a thing of beauty, sure to please Young’s legion of fans.

Young plays solo on some tracks (guitar, piano and harmonica), and is joined by friends on other songs, including Levon Helm (drums), Ben Keith (steel and slide guitar), Karl T. Himmel (drums), Tim Drummond (bass), Emmylou Harris (vocals), Stan Szelest (piano) and Robbie Robertson (guitar).

The album begins with the gorgeous, chilled-out “Separate Ways,” which is about the dissolution of a relationship and has a terrific vocal by Young. “Try” features Young pleading with his partner to work with him to make their relationship work. The lovely, quiet and brief “Mexico” features Young solo on piano and vocals. “Love Is A Rose” is a cautionary tale about not treating one’s partner as a possession. The somewhat off-kilter title track features some tasty guitar work. “Florida,” the wild card of the album, is a stream-of-consciousness spoken-word bit that is underpinned by distorted sounds. The intimate solo track “Kansas” features Young on vocals and acoustic guitar with a brief blast of harmonica at the end. The joyful country blues of “We Don’t Smoke It No More” has very brief bits of vocals but is largely instrumental. More than any other track on the album, it really shows off the chops of the talented crew of musicians. The easygoing alt-country-sounding “Star of Bethlehem,” which features Emmylou Harris on backing vocals, serves as a perfect close to the album.

—John Curley

The premise of (GDO) is that the early days of the band, how they formed and why, are largely unknown — or at the very least aren’t as well-known as their history from the 1970s and ’80s. That might be true, but having just watched the Bob Weir documentary, , I was reminded of how much I know of their early days, and the connection they all had to Dana Morgan’s Music Store in Palo Alto, CA. That said, a comic book is an interesting platform to use in telling their story — particularly since for most of his life Jerry Garcia was a very big fan of comic books. The original story was written by Chris Miskiewicz (Thomas Alsop series) and illustrated by Noah Van Sciver. The graphics and art direction seem to be largely tied to album artist Gilbert Shelton, a key figure in the underground comix movement. The characters are colorful, simply drawn without much definition. Like the album cover, the most striking pieces of art address city scenes and, of course, live performances. In those moments, Miskiewicz and Van Sciver wisely let the pictures tell the story and leave copy light.