Ever wonder what the Creative Loafing music team listens to on Mondays to get us through the post-weekend tedium? Heres this weeks selections.

Shawn Grateful Dead, Europe ’72

I never understood why this album is perceived as such a disappointment, even by most Dead fans. Whether this is actually true or believed by myself for some unknown reason — perhaps a perverted misdirection of memory — is unimportant, because this live release is a vast improvement over Live 1969, which I never really enjoyed aside from the “St. Stephen,” yet which many adore to an astonishing degree. Europe ’72 is long, too; it’s three LPs, and although the adjective used to describe the album is “bloated,” it’s really easy to move the needle arm and skip a song. But that might not be necessary, as the majority of tracks exemplify precisely the distinct bluegrass and folk stylings of classic Dead. You’re either already on the team, or you’re not.

Gabe Various Artists, Junior High Rocks!!

I’ve been digging a compilation I created over the weekend of the stuff my friend Elke and I used to rock out to in 8th grade, circa 1980. This disc is chock full of AC/DC, Journey, Van Halen, Rush, etc. This was the stuff she and I were heavily into at the time (…until we discovered U2 a couple of years later, which totally blew our minds and changed our lives forever). This disc is sort of an homage to where we were musically at that impressionable age. Takes me right back to days of band logos scrawled on folders, tight jeans with massive combs sticking out of back pockets and 98Rock t-shirts….

This article appears in Jul 8-14, 2010.