Grayfolded is a two-CD album produced by John Oswald featuring the Grateful Dead song “Dark Star”. Using over a hundred different performances of the song, recorded live between 1968 and 1993, Oswald, using a process he calls “plunderphonics”, built, layered, and “folded” all of them to produce two large, recomposed versions, each about one hour long. The two discs were released together in 1996. Grayfolded was re-released by Snapper Music in 1999, and by Fony in 2004. It was released as a three-disc vinyl LP on August 12, 2014, on the Important Records label. Grayfolded is one of only two Grateful Dead albums that features the participation of every musician who was ever in the group, the other one being the box set So Many Roads (1965–1995). (More from Wikipedia)
Talking about “death” in the name is a good way to make it clear your band means business, and there have been several over the years. The Grateful Dead is the best known of course; even today, when you mention “the Dead”, I think most everyone knows who you mean. No Dead concert is quite the same as any other; I once saw an advertisement for an album consisting of an amalgamation of dozens of live versions of a single song (“Dark Star”) into an extended set that went on for something like 90 minutes. (I finally looked it up: It is 110 minutes long, and the two-CD album is called Grayfolded).
(July 2012)
