I had originally written it for the Grateful Dead in 1983 or 1984. I write a snatch of a chorus and then I showed that to my friend Gerrit Graham and we talked about it a little bit, and then he fleshed it out lyrically, and I fleshed out the music as well. When I originally brought it around to the band, the way I wrote it and the way it came together, it's a very complicated piece and it didn't get a whole lot of attention because there was a lot of other material we were working on at the time. So I did it a little bit with the Midnites, then did it solo, and then brought it around again a few months ago to a warmer response. So at that point we started putting it together as a Grateful Dead song.Victim Or The Crime is based on a passage by Bela Bartok. Weir stated in an interview, "I didn't really pirate it, I just paraphrased it."
Garcia also spoke to Blair Jackson about the song;
It's a hideous song. It's very angular and unattractive sounding. It's not an accessible song. It doesn't make itself easy to like. It just doesn't sound good, or rather, it sounds strange. It has strange steps in it, but that's part of what makes it interesting to play. Bob's songs sometimes don't make sense in a direct, traditional way.Victim Or The Crime was performed just under 100 times by the Grateful Dead between 1988 and 1995.
|
Grateful Dead
Bob Weir
Furthur
|
Ratdog live
|
