.
http://www.rollingstone.com/assets/images/album_review/saunde-merl-keystonec-101b-1352149516.jpg Keystone Companions: The Complete 1973 Fantasy Recordings

Merl Saunders and Jerry Garcia

Keystone Companions: The Complete 1973 Fantasy Recordings

Fantasy
Rolling Stone: star rating
Community: star rating
5 4 0
November 9, 2012

Beginning in 1970, Jerry Garcia played low-key weekly gigs with jazz organist Merl Saunders, bassist John Kahn and drummer Bill Vitt when the Grateful Dead weren't touring. What's most remarkable about this four-disc set, which compiles two 1973 dates, is the range: They jam on Rodgers and Hart as well as Jimmy Cliff, and turn out the Funkadelic-like instrumental "Keepers"; Garcia also croons an unexpectedly sweet version of "Positively 4th Street" amid soaring, melodic guitar solos. There are no rules – just four luminaries testing their own boundaries. 

Listen to 'Keystone Companions: The Complete 1973 Fantasy Recordings'

prev
Album Review Main Next

ADD A COMMENT

Community Guidelines »
loading comments

loading comments...

COMMENTS

Sort by:
    Read More

    Music Reviews

    more Reviews »
    Daily Newsletter

    Get the latest RS news in your inbox.

    Sign up to receive the Rolling Stone newsletter and special offers from RS and its
    marketing partners.

    X

    We may use your e-mail address to send you the newsletter and offers that may interest you, on behalf of Rolling Stone and its partners. For more information please read our Privacy Policy.

    Song Stories

    “Everything in Its Right Place”

    Radiohead | 2000

    Thom Yorke hit rock bottom the moment he walked offstage after a 1997 concert in Birmingham, England, which initially left him unable to speak and later led him to write the eerie, discombobulated “Everything.” “Lots of people say that song is gibberish,” he told Rolling Stone. “It’s not. It’s totally about that” – the mute paralysis that had swept over Yorke after the Birmingham show, which stayed with him through the simultaneous recording of Kid A and Amnesiac. Quoting the song’s repeated line, “Yesterday I woke up sucking a lemon,” Yorke twisted his face into a ferocious grimace, explaining, “That’s the face I had for three years.”

    More Song Stories entries »