Grateful Dead’s Playing in the Band Experience Uploads ‘Blues for Allah’ Tracks

On September 1, the Grateful Dead’s seminal eighth studio album, Blues for Allah, known for its experimental edge that sprinkled Middle Eastern influence into their songbook, reached its milestone 50th anniversary. In recognition of the release, features of the album have been added to the online and interactive Playing in the Band experience, such as “Franklin’s Tower,” “Help on the Way,” “Music Never Stopped” and “Slipknot!” 

Playing with the Band: Jam with the Grateful Dead offers interested fans and music connoisseurs a chance to manipulate the original recordings with a range of options, including muting or highlighting individual players’ contributions, such as Jerry Garcia, Bobby Weir, and Phil Lesh. Folks can also have a hand at playing with the individual instruments, to create their own imprint on the Dead’s most timeless material. 

In our 2024 interview with Rich Mahan, he spoke about the technology, “We’re able to get into individual songs because we have access to the stems of these studio recordings. So I came up with an idea for something that we now call Playing in the Band. Doran Tyson and I developed it. It’s an online mixing board for Grateful Dead music that allows you to go in and mute or solo different players. So if you want to study what Bob does rhythmically and get a great understanding of how he plays guitar, you can go in and solo Bob’s parts on these songs…I love playing along with it.”

He explains, “I’ll mute Jerry and be Jerry on ‘China Cat.’ Or I’ll go in and hear what each guy is doing separately. A lot of times, when you listen to each of those individually, you’re like, “How is this even part of the song?” But then you put all the parts together and, boom! So I encourage people to go to dead.net/playingintheband.”

Blues For Allah joins a bank of existing material that has already been uploaded to the Playing with the Band program, including Wake of the Flood favorites, “Mississippi Half Step (Uptown Toodleloo,” “Stella Blue,” “Eyes of the World,” as well as live tracks from the band’s Veneta, Ore. gig on August 27, 1972, and features select songs from 1974’s From the Mars Hotel. 

Learn more by watching the explanatory video below. And, start mixing here. 

Read: “We Are Everywhere”: Rich Mahan’s Musical Journey from Sweetwater to the ‘Good Ol’ Grateful Deadcast’