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I don't think I will be striking up controversy by positing that throughout their decades-spanning history, and even long past it, the Grateful Dead courted more than their share of snickers, from people otherwise so diverse they'd hardly recognize one another. Of course, one would have to be a raving Dead zealot not to admit that these snickers have been with at least some degree of justification. To their credit, however, it is often forgotten that as music fans the Grateful Dead's band members were probably among the most open-minded out there, and with the power of a marketable franchise behind them, they have both participated in and championed some admirably non-commercial music endeavors. Which brings us to this 1975 obscurity, probably the single, weirdest album ever to emerge from under the Grateful Dead aegis. Ned Lagin, a friend of Dead bassist Phil Lesh, had a solid musical pedigree from Berklee School of Music and also held degrees in the humanities and molecular biology at MIT. He composed this experimental ambient composition over the course of 4 years. It was recorded in just as many studios, mixed at a fifth, and mastered at a sixth-and that's not even counting the additional studios in 1990 where it was mixed and remastered further for CD release. Much of this album is comprised of traditional instruments (bass, guitar, and voice) and a cadre of synthesizers (the E Modular Synthesizer, various Arps, and the Buchla Modular System) processed through then-cutting-edge computer technology, with software and interfacing by Lagin. Said computer technology includes such esoterica as the Interdata 7/16 computer with high speed arithmetic logic unit, a bioelectronic microprocessor system, and the Altair 8800 (which had a whopping 256 bytes of RAM and BASIC by some guys named Bill Gates and Paul Allen; never heard of 'em...). Ha! And you thought Tom Scholz was a badass. But, anyway, how's the..."music"? Well, I don't have much in the way of references to offer, though electronic avant-garde afficionados could probably provide them. Let's just say it certainly holds its own against the more impenetrable entries of the countercultural era (Alan Sondheim's T'Other Little Tune on the ESP label is one title that comes to mind). There are certain moments early on in the composition reminding me of Fripp & Eno circa Evening Star, with breezy, distant melodic synthesizers. I hate to say, though, that for the most part this album is like enrolling in an academic course devoted to detailed readings of R2-D2's personal memoirs. Having read about it long before actually obtaining it, I was disappointed, hoping it would blow my mind a bit more. After digesting tens of minutes worth of bleeping, quadrophonic whirring, and processed vocals, I was quickly ready to move on. The CD contains the original February 1975 version of the piece in nine sections with guests from Jefferson Airplane/Starship (Grace Slick, David Freiberg, and Spencer Dryden), and also a previously unreleased edit in six sections made later on that year. Since I began with an understatement, I'll end with one, too: not for everyone. Take an audience in Germany, who booed Lagin and Lesh with whistling (cultural substitute) when they attempted to tour this music. So what did Lagin do? Made his computers whistle along with them, of course. review by Joe McGlinchey — 2-2-03 —