AOXOMOXOA is the
Grateful Dead's third album, which was released in
1969. The title was the idea of the cover artist, which the band agreed to.
The cover consists of a skeleton made out of the letters (brought to you by the letters?) 'A','X', and 'M' who connects to a beetle who is part of the title. The skeleton is also holding two eggs. There are various babies, trees, and mushrooms planted in the area surrounding the skeleton. All of this is below a large sun that can also be interpreted as an ova surrounded by red, glowing sperm.
The tracks are as follows:
1. St. Stephen 4:25
2. Dupree's Diamond Blues 3:40
3. Rosemary 2:02
4. Doing That Rag 5:15 | 4:40
5. Mountains of The Moon 4:15
6. China Cat Sunflower 4:15 | 3:35
7. What's Become Of The Baby 8:30
8. Cosmic Charlie 5:45
The tracks with two times listed have both the time on the back of the CD lists and the actual time.
The reason for these differences is the fact that the Grateful Dead changed the album when it was put on CD. The changes that I know of are:
* The ending of Doing that Rag, originally barber shop quartet like, was cut and now the song just fades out.
* The female backround vocals for Mountains of The Moon were completely taken out.
* China Cat Sunflower was shortened.
As far as I know there are no copies of the original versions on CD, so unless you own the original record, you can't hear them, sadly.
AOXOMOXOA is an interesting album; it contains several songs that the Grateful Dead went on to use regularly in concert, yet was not very popular at the time. (Their next studio album, Workingman's Dead would be much, much more popular, and so would American Beauty. Live Dead is their fourth release, it consists of all live material, hence the name.) St. Stephen, for example, is one of the Dead's more commonly used songs for concerts (it's on Live Dead) appears here, although it is the original version. Most live versions (at least that I have heard) of St. Stephen are significantly different, notibly, in the original, a piano plays a larger role in the song.
The album also features the more experimental songs Rosemary and What's Become Of The Baby. Both songs use filters for the vocals making them surreal and haunting, and in the case of What's Become..., annoying and unlistenable.