Truly Dreadful Film

It's the kind of movie you'll want to see a second time with someone who hasn't seen it yet, to remember what it was like to watch it for the first time.

An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.

The movie's neither hopeful in contrived ways, nor hopeless in different contrived ways. Somehow it manages to be wonderful

The Grateful Dead: Dead Ahead records the Dead's 1981 concert at Radio City Music Hall, providing a good sampler of their music. For someone who wasn't old enough to attend their shows when Jerry Garcia died, it offers a good introduction to their artistry and their appeal.The highlights of the concert are in the second half, with some excellent drum improvisation on "Rhythm Devils" by Mickey Hart and Billy Kreutzmann. Their performance takes on an almost jazz-like quality as two drummers riff off each other. There is also a great rendition of "Fire on the Mountain." The film also features a few comic bits by Al Franken, pre-SNL and Senate. All in all, well worth a watch.

Although I'm not a 'Dead-head' by any means (which goes without saying I was too young to go to a Dead show before Garcia passed on, and I haven't gone to the new simple "The Dead" shows yet), but a number of their early albums- the debut, American Beauty, Workingman's Dead- as well as others like Shakedown Street, are all quite accomplished rock and blues records, some great songs, classics from the radio, and cool (if sometimes repetitive) jams. This is the sort of form that goes with Dead Again, a concert filmed in 1980 at Radio City Music Hall in New York City. It's got an enthusiastic crowd always pumped- or as much as a dead-head crowd can get- for the hits, and the Dead themselves are in fine form for much of the concert. A lull might come here and there, even for the die-hard tie-dyed viewing, but there's nary a moment when it's ever too boring. The DVD also features some songs that are just as worthy as the rest of the concert.Another note of interest: Al Franken, who is a little surprisingly a dead-head himself, having playing more than a few Grateful Dead songs sometimes on his old show on Air America, appears here as the quasi-host along with another comic for the show. Sometimes in-between a song or two it will cut back to Franken (with a big natural head of hair) and the other guy backstage, and it's one of the best things (as a Franken fan at any rate) in checking out the DVD. He even does a Henry Kissinger imitation- as Kissinger trying to sneak in a tape recorder to bootleg the show!