Description
Eight months after the release of Wake Of The Flood, the GRATEFUL DEAD followed up that masterpiece with the second album on their Grateful Dead Records label, From The Mars Hotel. To this day, most of the songs on From The Mars Hotel are played frequently by the band members as they continue to bring the music to the people, and during the GRATEFUL DEADS touring career, more than half of the songs were important parts of their live repertoire. Scarlet Begonias, Ship Of Fools, and U.S Blues arrived on the scene in 1974, with China Doll and Loose Lucy coming a year earlier, and they all quickly became staples of GRATEFUL DEAD live sets for decades, although Loose Lucy had a 15 year hiatus 19751989. Phil039s two songs on the album are often played live these days when Phil performs with his rotating cast of Friends, and these songs, Pride Of Cucamonga and Unbroken Chain are elicit ecstatic responses. These would be the final two Phil sung songs on a GRATEFUL DEAD studio album. Peaking at 16 on the Billboard Top 200 chart in 1974, the album039s terrific batch of new songs and exceptional production had Dead Heads scooping up the album 50 years ago upon its release.
