#43 - Aoxomoxoa: Grateful Dead (1969)

I went to a couple of concerts, had a number of their albums, but was never the Deadhead that some of my friends were. That said, American Beauty and Workingman’s Dead are two of my favorite albums of all time.

The Dead were the leaders in that trippy, psychedelic, paisley-and-patchouli Northern California style of graphic design. The artist for this one was Rick Griffin. 

Quite an interesting guy, he would go from surfing, to underground comics, to being a born-again Christian, to dying at the age of 47 in a motorcycle accident.

He has some 70 album credits, not all in that inimitable psychedelic style.

That last one was for his own Christian rock band

Aoxomoxoa (did I spell that right?), apart from being a meaningless palindrome, was also the Dead’s third album. No real hits on this one, though “St. Stephen” is good, and “China Cat Sunflower” would be on their playlist for years to come. Probably most importantly, this is the album where the band would first team up with lyricist Robert Hunter.

Bob and friend

Supposedly, if you hold the album the right way, the title “Grateful Dead” will look like “We ate the acid.” While that’s certainly true of the band, you might have to be on acid yourself to actually see it.

There’s an interesting story about the back cover:

Courtney Love claimed that the little girl in the lower left corner was her. Though her dad was a hanger-on with the band, it’s actually Stacy Kreutzmann, daughter of drummer Bill Kreutzmann.

Here's probably my fave pic of the band:

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