All Good Things: Jerry Garcia Studio Sessions
Jerry Garcia fed an insatiable appetite for music in the '70s, a decade when theGrateful Deadreleased seven studio albums and three live collections. Simultaneously, he embarked on a solo career that, like the Dead's '70s records, alternately attempted to harness and indulge Garcia's free-flowing inspiration.All Good Thingscollects the five studio albums he recorded between 1972 and 1982 in one thoroughly annotated, generously enhanced box set. Garcia as a solo artist was most inspired when indulging his eclectic whims--the entirety of his almost-all-alone debut, 1972'sGarcia, a then-revelatory acoustic-swing version of Irvin Berlin's "Russian Lullaby," and any number of easy-flowing jams)--and least interesting when in the sway of contemporaneous rock and R&B.; Garcia wasn't so much a guy who honed albums as he was a musician who loved to play, whether the tapes were rolling or not. The producers ofAll Good Thingstake full advantage of his prolificacy, fleshing out each of the individual titles with bonus material and capping the box with a richly rewarding 12-song CD of outtakes and alternate versions.--Steven Stolder