Grateful Dead
Dead To The Core Project
Noteworthy Aiko Aikos (A Collection)

This is a collection of noteworthy versions of Aiko Aiko performed by
the Grateful Dead. It appears to be quite difficult to say much about
exactly where the song comes from. New Orleans \"obviously\", but then
there are claims that it was actually a Haitian folk song dating back
into the early parts of the 20th century. A song called \"Jock-A-Mo\"
was written by James Crawford in New Orleans -- it sounds remarkably
like Aiko Aiko. The Dixie Cups, a singing group consisting of two
sisters and their cousin, first recorded it as Aiko Aiko: their
version went to #20 on the charts. The song is a story of two \"tribes\"
of Mardi Gras Indians on parade: they collide on the parade route, and
boy golly do the threats and boasts flow thick.

The lyrics actually go \"Hey now, hey now, Aiko! Aiko! an de\'. Jackomo
fe no a na nae\', Jackomo fe na ne\'.\" The phrase \"Aiko Aiko\" is said to
be derived from the languages of Gambia: in those languages, Ago!
means \"listen!\" or \"attention!\". My ear tells me that the Grateful
Dead often sang it \"Aiko Aiko all day\", but, they were not known to be
particularly careful in the lyric way.

The collection is closely based on a list put together by Eric Wybenga
and published in his book _Dead To The Core: An Almanac of the
Grateful Dead_. Eric picked mostly later versions of Aiko Aiko (the
band first played it in 1977), so with one exception (80-09-02) we can
offer SBD versions of the songs here. Both \'86 versions in this
collection are played with the Neville Brothers. Eric suggests a Sept
10, 1991 version of Aiko with Branford that I do not believe actually
happened in this time-line, I have replaced it with a 10-27-91 version
of Aiko with Carlos Santana and Gary Duncan.

The track names are self-explanatory: they list the date of the
performance, the SHNID of the source, and shortened names of the songs
included in the track. Most of these Aiko Aikos are standalone. I
found echos of the Aikos to come in the Drums or Space that preceeded
them, so I sometimes left those attached to the song. When I could not
split the Aiko from its neighbors, I included a larger jam. And of
course I had to leave Woman Smarter in there (the difference? it\'s up
two steps in key...). I decoded the wav\'s with flac or shorten as
appropriate to the source, joined the wav\'s with shntool, edited them
(in the edges and fades way) with Wavelab, fixed the bad headers with
shntool, and then compressed things with flac. I used flac v1.2.1,
shorten v3.6.0, shntool v3.0.2, ane Wavelab V6.

First shared via bitTorrent at bt.eTree.org, Febuary 2009, by SteveSw.


    length     expanded size    cdr  WAVE problems  fmt   ratio  filename
    30:49.29      326231852 B   ---   --   ---xx   flac  0.6148  gd80-09-02.26094.Space-AikoAiko-MorningDew-SugarMag.flac
    17:37.44      186558332 B   ---   --   ---xx   flac  0.5954  gd82-08-10.12453.Space-AikoAiko.flac
    16:05.21      170275436 B   ---   --   ---xx   flac  0.6110  gd85-03-31.14671.AikoAiko-Samson.flac
    16:54.55      178999004 B   ---   --   ---xx   flac  0.6837  gd85-06-24.25315.AikoAiko-Samson.flac
    14:57.54      158357852 B   ---   --   ---xx   flac  0.6236  gd86-02-11.11716.Drums-AikoAiko.flac
    28:34.09      302370812 B   ---   --   ---xx   flac  0.5235  gd86-12-30.77446.Drums-AikoAiko-WomanSmarter.flac
     8:12.12       86817068 B   ---   --   ---xx   flac  0.6285  gd90-03-18.90486.AikoAiko.flac
    27:44.13      293560220 B   ---   --   ---xx   flac  0.5996  gd91-10-27.81199.AikoAiko-Mona.flac
    10:36.13      112221020 B   ---   --   ---xx   flac  0.6481  gd95-03-18.32055.AikoAiko.flac
    11:37.21      123000236 B   ---   --   ---xx   flac  0.6381  gd95-03-27.03194.AikoAiko.flac
   183:08.46     1938391832 B                            0.6072  (10 files)
