Grateful Dead – Aoxomoxoa (LP Vinyl)

Read more about Grateful Dead's Aoxomoxoa in our featured coverage from July 2019 on jambands.com.

Released in June 1969, Aoxomoxoa marked the Grateful Dead's most ambitious and expensive studio experiment—a psychedelic masterpiece that nearly bankrupted them with its elaborate 16-track recording sessions at Pacific High Recording in San Francisco. Garcia and Lesh spent months crafting intricate overdubs and sonic layers, running up studio costs that Warner Bros. reluctantly covered, creating an album that sounds like acid feels: kaleidoscopic, unpredictable, and transformative. This LP pressing preserves the 1971 remix that Garcia and Lesh completed, taming some of the original's more extreme experimental flourishes while maintaining the album's visionary scope.

The album opens with "St. Stephen," which would become a live staple, and moves through "Dupree's Diamond Blues," "Rosemary," "Doin' That Rag," and "Mountains of the Moon"—each song a miniature soundscape featuring backwards tapes, studio effects, and Garcia's multi-layered guitar harmonies. Hunter's lyrics reach their most poetic and surreal, matching the sonic experimentation with imagery that shifts from cosmic to earthly and back again. "China Cat Sunflower" introduces one of the Dead's most enduring songs, though it wouldn't be paired with "I Know You Rider" until later live performances.

Aoxomoxoa's iconic Rick Griffin cover art—featuring skeletons, embryos, and the palindromic title hidden in elaborate lettering—became as legendary as the music itself. While the album's production nearly sank the band financially, it stands as proof that the Dead were never content to simply play blues and folk-rock. They were always reaching for something bigger, stranger, and more transformative. This pressing captures that ambition in all its glory.