I'm joined by guest Phil Stacey as we discuss the Grateful Dead's 1970 album Workingman's Dead.

Show notes:

• Recorded at CompCon world HQ

• First show of the new year

• Workingman's Dead is the band's 4th studio album

• First of two releases in '70

• Recorded in nine days

• Stripped down sound, less psychedelic

• Garcia and Robert Hunter wrote the whole album

• Folk, country, Americana elements

• Rock was moving away from psychedelia, toward singer-songwriters and acoustic sounds

• Bookended by two of the band's biggest songs

• More of an emphasis on vocals like Crosby, Stills and Nash

• "Suite Judy Blue Eyes" as a torture device

• Phil: Prefer live Dead, but still break out the studio albums on occasion

• Warm sounding record

• "New Speedway Boogie" is about Altamont

• Recently covered by Courtney Barnett

• Hunter's solo releases are all over the place

• Jay: Only heard two songs before

• Fairly concise album; not much jamming

• Moved away from acid blues into a new direction

• "Easy Wind," sung by Pigpen, was the outlier

• Like the Entwistle song on a Who album

• "Casey Jones" evolved in an interesting way over the years

• Talking about cocaine

• Next up: American Beauty

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The opening and closing theme of Completely Conspicuous is "Theme to Big F'in Pants" by Jay Breitling. Voiceover work is courtesy of James Gralian.