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American Beauty | 
 enlarge | Manufacturer: Rhino/Warner Bros.
Category: Digital Music Album
Buy New: $7.99
Rating:  69 reviews
Sales Rank: 1087
Genre: pop-music
Media: Music Download
Running Time: 0 Minutes
ASIN: B0012ELLB0
Release Date: April 10, 2007
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Customer Reviews: Read 64 more reviews...
Beauty Is A Real Gem August 7, 2008
R. Webb (u.s.a.)
What makes this masterpiece speak for itself is the main ingredient none other than the tight harmonies flowing throughout this entire recording,infested with strong lyrics,a prime example,Attics Of My Life,flowing like a fine wine remenisant of the classic Beatles,Sun King,and classic is Jerry Garcia's signature tune,Ripple,and movin' on down the road with,Truckin',the instrumentation is subdued on this album leaving the vocals standing out painting a visual in the listeners mind,which is basically the idea anyway. This Grateful Dead remastered classic contains sixteen tracks,ten of the original 1970 album,the last six are live versions of,Truckin,Friend Of The Devil,Til The Morning Comes,including a single version of Truckin',this is an American Beauty.
American Classic July 27, 2008
Tim Brough (Springfield, PA United States)
2 out of 3 found this review helpful
The Grateful Dead were a band in transition at the beginning of the 1970's. The San Francisco dream was pretty much dead and over with. The Summer of Love had spun into Altamont. The bikers the Dead had fashioned themselves after had turned a Stones concert into the close of an era. When the Dead released Workingman's Dead, it was a tighter album compositional than the earlier albums, and showed the band's (particularly Jerry Garcia) love for roots and bluegress. Gone were the psychedelic jams, in were discipline and a subdued recognitiion of how much was different. "Workingman's Dead" was a great album by a band that struggled to translate their ideas to tape.
But the follow-up, released the same year, was a masterstroke. Opening with Phil Lesh (and longtime Dead-writer Robert Hunter's) composition "Box of Rain" and closing with a statement of purpose "Truckin'," this was the Grateful Dead saying goodbye to California and hello to American Roots music. Augmenting the band with members of The New Riders of the Purple Sage, "American Beauty" features nary a Garcia guitar lead, but plenty of his Pedal Steel. It also contains two more Dead classics, Gracia's philosophical "Ripple" and Bob Weir's "Sugar Magnolia."
It's not just for those classic songs that "American Beauty: became a classic, but for the fact that The Dead were folding all sorts of styles into the mix. There's gospel, harmonies they'd picked up from their friends Crosby, Stills & Nash, David Grisman's mandolins, and the immortal line "What a long strange trip it's been." It helped to make the album a mixed metaphor: the trip was far from over, yet the path from 1967's Grateful Dead to now was indeed wide ranging. If one looks closely at the etched glass of the cover art, you can read it both as "American Beauty" or "American Reality." The Dead had arrived at a crossroads, and as Garcia sang on "Ripple":
"If my words did glow with the gold of sunshine
And my tunes were played on the harp unstrung,
Would you hear my voice come through the music,
Would you hold it near as it were your own?"
The band made it plain on "Workingman's Dead" and "American Beauty." They'd left the 60's behind, even if the spirit would stay with them in a beautiful reality. The music would never be as spaced as side long blues-workouts of Chuck Berry, but from this moment on, they were masters of their own reality.
A genuine American classic July 11, 2008
Dave Deubler (Pennsylvania)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
One of the most aptly titled recordings in the rock canon, this is the Dead's studio masterpiece. Inspired by American folk and country music and by the sophisticated vocal harmonies that Crosby, Stills and Nash were producing at the time, Garcia and company crafted 10 tracks that are polished, warmly engaging, and uniquely American. This isn't their most progressive work, or their most explosive, but it's probably their most accessible. From the exquisite melancholy of Phil Lesh's "Box of Rain", the bluegrassy "Friend of the Devil", and the exuberant "Sugar Magnolia", to the beautifully harmonized "Attics of My Life" and the traveling beat of Bob Weir's "Truckin'" the Dead staked claim to a sound that remained uniquely theirs for the rest of their career. A genuine American classic.
Ripple May 21, 2008
Joseph C. Helton
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
"American Beauty" is one of the definitive Grateful Dead albums, of that there can be no question. Following "Workingman's Dead", this album continues the direction the band took with blues, country, and folk-styled original songs. To say the album is good is to say that air is essential for life. It's a fantastic milestone in American music. Most of the album will grab you, with tracks like "Operator" and arguably "Candy Man" being the weakest. The strongest track on this album in my opinion is "Ripple", as I understand it, a song that more or less became Jerry Garcia's theme song. It's a deeply spiritual track, and one that I love dearly. You'll almost certainly have heard "Friend of the Devil", "Sugar Magnolia", and "Truckin'" on any good rock radio station, so there should be some familiar territory to cover on this album. Consider this album essential Grateful Dead.
A Rose by Any Other Scent Would Smell Like Patchouli: American Beauty is Definitive Dead. April 17, 2008
G. Merritt (Boulder, CO)
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
Named after a French perpetual rose (depicted on the album's classic cover), the Grateful Dead's fifth album American Beauty (1970) is Definitive Dead, and essential to any serious rock collection. (If you could only own one Dead album, this is The One to own.) It is a landmark fusion of rock, folk, blues, bluegrass, country, and improvisational jam. If this Rose had a scent, it would smell more like patchouli. The album includes the impossible-to-escape-in-the-70's radio single, "Truckin'" (the song that first introduced me to the Dead). The album features Garcia on vocals, guitar and pedal steel guitar, Weir on vocals and guitar, Lesh on bass and vocals, Ron "Pigpen" McKernan on harmonica and vocals, and Kreutzmann and Hart on percussion. I first experienced this album on vinyl. The remastered CD is worth the upgrade from vinyl, featuring the following setlist:
1. Box Of Rain
2. Friend Of the Devil
3. Sugar Magnolia
4. Operator
5. Candyman
6. Ripple
7. Brokedown Palace
8. Till the Morning Comes
9. Attics Of My Life
10. Truckin'
11. Truckin' (single edit)
12. Friend Of the Devil (recorded live at the Filmore East on 5/15/1970)
13. Candyman (recorded live at Winterland on 4/15/1970)
14. Till the Morning Comes (recorded live at Winterland on 10/4/1970)
15. Attics Of My Life (recorded live at the Filmore West on 6/6/1970)
16. Truckin' (recorded live at Legion Stadium on 12/26/1970)
17. Ripple (Single Version) (Unlisted Bonus Track)
18. American Beauty Promo (Unlisted Bonus Track)
G. Merritt
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