Blues for Allah by The Grateful Dead

Blues for Allah, the Grateful Dead's eighth studio album, came out on the band's own Grateful Dead Records on September 1, 1975, and it's the sound of a road band that parked the bus and wandered down the rabbit hole. With touring on ice, they holed up in Bob Weir's home studio from February to May and let the jazz fusion streak of their previous two records run further out, bending the melodies around Middle Eastern scales and letting that exotic flavor seep into the words as well.

Jerry Garcia, Weir, Phil Lesh and Bill Kreutzmann had Mickey Hart back on the second drum kit, with Keith Godchaux on keyboards and Donna Godchaux singing, and the whole crew sounds like it's listening hard to itself. "The Music Never Stopped" and "Franklin's Tower" went out as singles, the latter a loose, sunny roll. The first reviews were lukewarm; later ears came around to its jams and its nerve.

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