What was the first album the Grateful Dead released on their own record label?
The discussions about enigmatic musicians and bands will always be ongoing, but it’s difficult to find any entity as truly mysterious as the Grateful Dead. This wasn’t just a band that came with a heady dose of indescribable and inexplicable qualities. They also entered the realm of cultish appeal pretty quickly, which is difficult to understand or describe unless you’ve experienced the community firsthand.
Most of what makes this particular band so eternally enticing is that their proven appeal can venture far beyond sonic intrigue, not just reaching band dynamics and personal resonance and identification but fun and enjoyment rooted in improvisation and spontaneity. Calling something a lifestyle in this day and age seems a trope reserved for social media circles, but the Grateful Dead really were just that.
This incredibly complex story is chronicled and documented through their discography, which narrates the kind of trajectory only a band dedicated to the art of evolving could journey through. For more than three decades, the band reflected both their unique appeal with improvisation and the magic of live music alongside the eras they emerged from, weaving in the fundamental aspects of counterculture with their personal experiences.
Releasing their debut at the peak of the counterculture movement, the band immediately burst onto the scene with efficacious energy, continuing the monumental impact of their live performances with music that knew exactly what it wanted to be, even if it sounded like a million things that came before. This, and a handful of follow-up works, would be released under the guidance of Warner Bros, which helped them to establish themselves as an entity capable of long-term commercial success.
From the beginning, however, the Dead’s emphasis on expansive improvised instrumental pieces didn’t really align with the label’s vision of such longer-term success. The band joined many other musicians and outfits fighting for greater freedom against the restraints of commercial demands, which caused a strain between the band and the label, marking their final release with Warner Bros the remarkable Workingman’s Dead.
What was the first album released on Grateful Dead Records?
After involving themselves in the counterculture movement and holding strong principles about what an artist should and shouldn’t do with their own creative vision, the Dead felt it was time to release their next album with complete liberty, and in 1973, they founded their own label—Grateful Dead Records.
The first release on the new label was 1973’s Wake of the Flood, which showcased the band’s need for greater freedom with complex arrangements that borrowed from an array of genres. Though the Dead had executed this kind of approach before, this album served as a powerful statement of their newfound confidence and intentions to be completely self-sufficient in an industry that was moving towards commercialism more than ever before.
However, the band likely didn’t anticipate the severity of the issues they would encounter establishing their own label. While they gained full creative control of their material, they also experienced distribution issues, and Wake of the Flood struggled at first to gain as much popularity and credibility as their previous albums.
Still, the move signified one thing that many bands become too fearful of venturing into, and that’s risk-taking in the face of adversity. Dead could have stayed with Warner Bros and continued to release album after album with little issues regarding status and success. However, their views on the industry pushed them to step out on their own and shape their future without a hefty label breathing down their necks.
Warner Bros didn’t take the move lightly, however, and released the compilation album Skeletons from the Closet: The Best of Grateful Dead in 1974 as a final means to capitalise on their music even after they moved on to a new label. Incidentally, the record became the band’s best-selling album of all time, but they were likely more concerned with their new direction rather than digging up old graves.
