Suvarna Garge (Editor)

In the Dark (Grateful Dead album)

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Recorded
  
January 6–13, 1987

Artist
  
Grateful Dead

Producer
  
Jerry Garcia

Genres
  
Rock music, Country rock

Length
  
40:37

Release date
  
6 July 1987

Label
  
Arista Records

In the Dark (Grateful Dead album) httpsuploadwikimediaorgwikipediaenthumbb

Released
  
July 6, 1987 (1987-07-06)

In the Dark (1987)
  
Dead Zone The Grateful Dead CD Collection (1977–1987) (1987)

Similar
  
Go to Heaven, Built to Last, Wake of the Flood, Dead Set, Reckoning

In the Dark is the 12th studio album by the Grateful Dead. It was recorded in one week in January 1987, and originally released on July 6, 1987.

Contents

In the Dark was the band's first album in six years, and its first studio album since 1980's Go to Heaven. It became unexpectedly popular, achieving double platinum certification in the U.S. It reached #6 on the Billboard 200 chart, the Grateful Dead's only top ten album. The peppy "Touch of Grey" peaked at #9 on the Billboard Hot 100, the band's only top forty single; it also became a frequently played music video on MTV. "Hell in a Bucket" and "Throwing Stones" (for which videos were also made) also achieved significant album-oriented rock radio airplay.

Grateful dead touch of gray studio version


Production

Most of the songs had been played by the Dead since 1982 or 1983, which gave them a five-year edge on perfecting them for the album. After the critically panned Go to Heaven, which contained songs that were mostly under a year old, the maturity of In the Dark was significantly more appreciated.

The album title represents how the band compiled the album. The Dead are well known for their striving for that "perfect" sound (e.g. the Wall of Sound) as well as their experimental episodes. Since live music is their forte, they decided to try to capture a "hybrid" live sound for this album.

Since the band had been playing the songs for some time, they decided to record the baseline tracks for the album in a darkened theater ("In the Dark") that was empty (no audience), on a stage with the same lighting as they would use on tour (just to have the band perform in a more comfortable, familiar setting). The idea was to capture the "feel" they had for the songs as if they were playing them to a live audience. This was done at Marin Veterans Memorial Auditorium in San Rafael, California.

Drummer Bill Kreutzmann reminisced, "We ran all the electric instruments through amplifiers in the basement, in isolation rooms, and kept the drums bright and loud on stage. Everything was fed to a recording truck parked outside the venue. Everybody played their parts in real time, together. When we took breaks, we'd go into the wings by the stage door and sit there and talk about what we'd just done. Talking about the music, then going right out to play the music, then talking about it some more was something that we really should've done more often — the analysis served the songs and the camaraderie served the band. It really put us in a good spot."

They then brought these recorded tracks to the studio and, if needed, "cleaned" them up, overdubbing them or redoing a guitar, vocal, keyboard, or drum track in the studio using the same "riffs" they used on the stage recording.

Garcia spoke about the recording in an interview; "Marin Vets turns out to be an incredibly nice room to record in. There's something about the formal atmosphere in there that makes us work. When we set up at Front Street to work, a lot of times we just sort of dissolve into hanging out. Going in Marin Vets without an audience and playing just to ourselves was in the nature of an experiment...".

In the Dark was released on CD in 1987 by Arista Records before being re-released in 2000 by BMG International. It was then remastered, expanded, and released with new cover art as part of the Beyond Description (1973–1989) 12-CD box set in October 2004. The remastered version was later released separately on CD, on April 11, 2006, by Rhino Records.

Cover art

The cover art for the album was designed by Randy Tuten. The lettering forms the shape of an eye. Inside the lettering are photos of the band members' eyes. On the original LP, the photos were right side up, but when the album was released on CD in 1987, the photos were upside down. Though the band joked that the extra eye belonged to the Ayatollah Khomeini, it actually belonged to their long-time promoter, Bill Graham.

Original release

Note: "My Brother Esau" was omitted from the LP and CD releases of In the Dark, but was included on the cassette and on international releases, as well as the 2004 reissue.

Charts

Album - Billboard

Singles - Billboard

Songs

1Touch of Grey5:49
2Hell in a Bucket5:37
3When Push Comes to Shove4:07

References

In the Dark (Grateful Dead album) Wikipedia