Grateful Dead General Thread

[High Plains Drifter 11,054]

I'm not a deadhead, but I can appreciate good music. Anyway,

On 4/16/2018 at 10:26 AM, Horn_Spanker said:

July 1982, Manor Downs.  Crazed dude running, screaming through the crowd.  Makes his way to us, grabs by buddy, screams "COBOL SUCKS" and runs off.  

I think I was at that show. I wasn't even in high school yet. I  went with my big brother and some of his friends. First time I puked from drinking was that day. Also the first time I got high. Don't remember much, just that it was fucking hot.

 

I also saw them in June of 94 at some outdoor stadium outside Las Vegas. That entire weekend was like something out of a Hunter Thompson novel.

[Hate 20,153]

Damn, this is going to take some time.   Does each song have to be era-appropriate or can we have the '73 Dead playing Terrapin Station? 

Hmm....hadn’t really thought about that because I prefer the Brent era when all the songs were old. But for the purpose of this exercise, you can have any era you want play any song you want.

[Sleepygrad 1,029]

All right fellow Deadheads, what is your perfect set list and which "era" plays it?  You get 19 songs to choose for your perfect show.  
The "Brent Era" Dead (particularly 88-90) would play this set list at my show:
 
First Set
Bertha
Mississippi Half Step
Looks Like Rain
Women Are Smarter
Walking Blues
Eyes of the World (Branford Marsalis sits in on this)
He's Gone
Help on the Way>Slipknot>Franklin's Tower
Cold Rain and Snow
 
Second Set
Estimated Prophet
Loser
Row Jimmy
Ramble on Rose
Bird Song
Althea
Wharf Rat
China Cat>I Know You RIder
Knocking on Heaven's Door
Encore
Shakedown Street
 
 

Damn, great set right there. Throw in a West LA Fadeaway and that’s pretty perfect

[Hate 20,153]

On 5/18/2018 at 3:32 PM, Mojo Hand said:

Damn, this is going to take some time.   Does each song have to be era-appropriate or can we have the '73 Dead playing Terrapin Station? 

[Hate 20,153]

[Onboard 2.0 9,083]

Raliegh in a little over a week. Yeeeeeee fucking haaaaaa !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Mojo Hand 4,580]

Sorry, this took much thought.  I am, in fact, going with 1973, the heart of my favorite era of 1971-1974, which still has the rawness of the really early years but with the developing virtuosity that was fully-formed by 1977.  And 1977 is my pick if I don't get to cheat by borrowing later songs. 

First set 

Playing in the Band

Cumberland Blues 

Friend of the Devil (fast) 

Mississippi Half Step 

The Other One 

High Time 

China/Rider

Jack Straw 

Weather Report Suite (through Let it Grow) 

Second set 

Eyes of the World

Morning Dew 

Althea 

Cassidy 

Box of Rain 

Help/Slipknot/Franklin 

Terrapin Station

Estimated Prophet

Scarlet/Fire

Encore

Unbroken Chain

Edited May 30, 2018 by Mojo Hand

[Hate 20,153]

I believe I just might be able to enjoy that show.  High Time is a very underrated song, IMO.  I think that your last 4 songs played in that combination might just melt my brain is the best way possible.  

[heinhorn 16]

For those trying to chase the Grateful Dead dragon, JRAD is a great option.  Saw them in NOLA during Jazz fest and they sounded incredible.  They add their own stamp on the music imo, not just a pure cover band trying to copy the songs note for note like DSO.  Check them out if they come to your town.

This is a great show:  https://archive.org/details/jrad2017-08-31.cmc621.cmc64.sbd.matrix.flac24

[Mojo Hand 4,580]

This may have already been mentioned, but there are 3-4 concert videos on Amazon prime streaming. 

[Hate 20,153]

Anyone else got a  dream setlist?

[Sleepygrad 1,029]

Sorry, Ive been absent lately. THis was tough for me, my favorite era of the dead is 71-74, but since Mojo already covered that, I'll do '77....I feel like i left out so many good songs too....this was tougher than I thought

Sugaree

New Minglewood

Tennessee Jed

deal 

Peggy O

Mississippi Half Step

Althea

Looks LIke Rain

Ramble On Rose

Brown Eyed Women

 

Scarlet

Fire

Loser (slow)

Terrapin

Ship of Fools

Help/Slip/Franklins

Big River

Morning Dew

jack Straw

Box of Rain

 

E: Wharf Rat, Sugar Magnolia

[Mojo Hand 4,580]

Eternity has really grown on me among their late songs. 

[Austinvines 318]

Bob's walking rhythm guitar on Eternity is nice. I am trying to remember any Bobby song that could transport me with his lyrical rendition and I am coming up a little blank. Cassidy is a great song with epic jamming capabilities but it doesn't hit me anything like hearing Jerry on Days Between. That song is so freaking poignant and it was the last Jerry ballad I heard 5.21.95 at the Silver Bowl. 

(this isn't it but it is good nevertheless)

Days Between 7.24.94

[Hate 20,153]

I heard Eternity on St. Patrick’s Day of 94 in Chicago and it just seemed to last an eternity. Days Between I heard in Buffalo in June of 93 and it was fucking terrific. My favorite of the “new” songs was Lazy River Road.

[Guest]

I’m a hotel in hawtfyoid, Connecticut for work next door to the concert venue and nothing but 60-70 year old character with eccentric clothes and cheap beer in the hotel laundry bags they give you for dirty clothes. Apparently Dead and Co., are playing and you people are a hoot. Never grow up!

[Blanton 170]

I don't know if any of you guys have been checking out Dead and Company, but this guy's show reviews are pretty damn funny. 

His takes about Kreutzmann's red hat being an indicator whether or not a show is gonna be good is fucking hilarious IMO. 

 

[Mojo Hand 4,580]

Lost Sailor and Saint of Circumstance are such fucking good songs. 

[Hate 20,153]

Goddamn! There has never been a song played better than Eyes of the World when Branford sits in. You cannot convince me otherwise!

[stc 1,466]

https://www-sfgate-com.cdn.ampproject.org/v/s/www.sfgate.com/music/amp/New-book-buries-the-Grateful-Dead-and-Phil-Lesh-13007586.php?amp_js_v=0.1#amp_tf=From %1%24s&ampshare=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.sfgate.com%2Fmusic%2Farticle%2FNew-book-buries-the-Grateful-Dead-and-Phil-Lesh-13007586.php

 

Quote

The devil has a friend. His name is Phil Lesh.

This is the controversial undercurrent of Joel Selvin’s new history, “Fare Thee Well: The Final Chapter of the Grateful Dead’s Long, Strange Trip,” ($27; Da Capo Press). The book follows the San Francisco band’s “Core Four” of Lesh, Bob Weir, Mickey Hart and Bill Kreutzmann as they dealt with the sudden death of father figure and frontman Jerry Garcia while he was in rehab in 1995. The first response was to disband the Grateful Dead. The second response was to spend 20 years patching it back together, leading to the final concert series in 2015, which gave the book its title.

The subplot is that during his research, Selvin, a former music critic for The Chronicle, learned of the deep rifts within the Core Four, particularly between bassist Lesh — along with his wife, Jill — and the other members.

“It turned out that Phil and his wife were Macbeth and Lady Macbeth,” Selvin recently said in his basement record library, with “Friend of the Devil,” from the Dead’s “American Beauty,” playing on the turntable. “Their heads were turned by power.”

The book was released Tuesday, June 19, and Selvin makes his first appearance Wednesday night, June 20, at Book Passage in Corte Madera, a few freeway exits from the music club Terrapin Crossroads, owned by the Leshes.

“This is going to be interesting meeting the public on this one,” Selvin said. “There already seems to be a wide disparity of views on the book, and it hasn’t even been published yet.”

Though Selvin conducted extensive interviews with Weir, the guitarist and singer who along with percussionist Hart became the marquee star after the death of Garcia, Kreutzmann, the other drummer, agreed at first to be interviewed by Selvin but eventually declined. Selvin says Lesh was the only band member who did not respond to email entreaties or interview requests that Selvin submitted via intermediaries.

Selvin was not waiting by the phone. Lesh has not spoken to him since he described him in a 1997 concert review as looking “like Ichabod Crane.”

“This story that Joel has done is entirely new,” said Dennis McNally, author of “A Long Strange Trip,” the only authorized biography of the Grateful Dead. McNally, the band’s longtime publicist, said the book is “99 percent accurate. There certainly are details about the inner workings of the band that have never been put in print before.”

Upon seeing these inner workings in print, two leading Grateful Dead journalists, Blair Jackson and David Gans, withdrew their offers to blurb the book.

“This is a valid story, and Joel is within his rights to be telling it,” said Gans , co-host of a talk show on the SiriusXM Grateful Dead channel. “But it is going to upset people. It is going to reopen old wounds.”

Photographer Jay Blakesberg sold Selvin images of the band, then abruptly canceled the deal and sent back the check.

“I decided on my own that I couldn’t sleep at night if I participated in this book,” said Blakesberg, just back from photographing Dead & Co. in concert in New York. “The Grateful Dead are at a high point in all places, and I want my work to be associated only with good things.”

Selvin can understand the resistance of all these sources. Rock is often a small and vindictive world with new money and old grudges. In their position, Selvin would have turned him down too, he said.

Phil and Jill Lesh did not respond to requests for comment. In addition to a portrayal of Jill Lesh that would have made Yoko Ono look like the healer of the Beatles, Selvin goes after Phil Lesh’s musicianship. By Selvin’s telling, Lesh did the band a disservice by his insistence on singing songs that were once handled by Garcia and would thereafter have been handled better by just about anybody other than Lesh.

“Fare Thee Well” is Selvin’s 15th book on rock ’n’ roll and follows his 2016 bestseller “Altamont: The Rolling Stones, the Hells Angels and the Inside Story of Rock’s Darkest Day.” Sorting out the details of one homicide and three other deaths in a mob of 300,000 in 1969 was easy compared with sorting out the zigzagging plotlines of the Dead after Garcia.

To make sense of it, co-author Pamela Turley set up a whiteboard in Selvin’s Potrero Hill dining room — made available as an office/war room after Selvin’s most recent divorce. The board was crammed with details to map out the shifting of personal alliances and regroupings into the spinoff bands RatDog, the Other Ones, Phil Lesh and Friends, the Dead, Dead and Co., Furthur, 7 Walkers and so on.

The band and its offshoots have run through so many names that they did not bother to give a name to the band that played the Fare Thee Well series in Santa Clara and Chicago.

Though Selvin contributed liner notes to a Grateful Dead box set, he does not consider himself a Deadhead. In his 40 years as a rock music critic, he attended more Dead shows than any other band he reviewed, but he never attended shows on consecutive nights, which is the line of demarcation.
To make up for this, he read at least two dozen books on the Grateful Dead as background, and in order to make sure his would be different.

One thing Selvin seems assured of is that there will no follow-up to this book. As “American Beauty” nears its symbolic end with “Attics of My Life” on the turntable, Selvin opens “Fare Thee Well” to page 253 and reads aloud from the final line of the book. “Fare Thee Well was a genuine Grateful Dead concert. The last one.”

 

[Mojo Hand 4,580]

Interesting.   Well, he may be an asshole now, but, on the other hand, he wrote Box of Rain and Unbroken Chain.

[Hate 20,153]

Cross posting from the “High” thread. Sitting on the porch smoking bud, drinking bourbon, and listening to Wharf Rat.

[Sleepygrad 1,029]

If you haven’t read Phil’s book Searching for the Sound, it’s a great read. Highly recommend.

[Hate 20,153]

I have good news and I have bad news. The bad news is that some 18 year old kid rear ended my car yesterday. The good news is that the rental car has XM and I have the Grateful Dead channel.

[Mojo Hand 4,580]

I don't know what I'd do without the GD channel.   It's the only reason I have XM and the only thing I have on in the car every day. 

[Hate 20,153]

I had forgotten what a great song Crazy Fingers is.  Here is a good one from 7/2/89.

 

https://archive.org/details/gd89-07-02.nak.8243.sbefail.shnf/gd89-07-02Set1T03.shn

[Blanton 170]

Something nice and peaceful for a Sunday evening...man, this stuff just blows me away. 

[Mojo Hand 4,580]

Love that one 

[ShaggyBevo RIP 3,868]

On 7/4/2018 at 2:48 PM, Mojo Hand said:

I don't know what I'd do without the GD channel.   It's the only reason I have XM and the only thing I have on in the car every day. 

Recently heard parts of their John Mayer interview from last summer. Pretty interesting the influence doing the Dead shows had on him. One of the more interesting things Mayer talked about was learning to be a musician in a band of musicians instead of an THE entertainer leading 'his' band. 

Mayer also said that if Bob called him up with new Robert Hunter written songs he get on plane the next morning to wherever Bob wanted him to go to practice them with him. 

Edited July 18, 2018 by ShaggyBevo RIP

[Mojo Hand 4,580]

1 minute ago, ShaggyBevo RIP said:

Recently heard parts of their John Meyer interview from last summer. Pretty interesting the influence doing the Dead shows had on him. One of the more interesting things Meyer talked about was learning to be a musician in a band of musician instead of an THE entertainer leading 'his' band. 

Yeah, that was interesting.  He's clearly a thoughtful guy and gives a lot of insight into his experience.  Must be incredible to be a part of

[ShaggyBevo RIP 3,868]

On 6/28/2018 at 12:40 PM, stc said:

https://www-sfgate-com.cdn.ampproject.org/v/s/www.sfgate.com/music/amp/New-book-buries-the-Grateful-Dead-and-Phil-Lesh-13007586.php?amp_js_v=0.1#amp_tf=From %1%24s&ampshare=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.sfgate.com%2Fmusic%2Farticle%2FNew-book-buries-the-Grateful-Dead-and-Phil-Lesh-13007586.php

 

 

May be indicative of why Lesh isn't part of Dead & Company. 

[Sleepygrad 1,029]

The crowds Meyer was used to playing to can’t be more polar opposite to the crowds he’s been playing for with the Dead. I’d imagine it’s a nice change of pace for him to play with other musicians in front of a crowd that appreciates good music rather than a bunch of teeny boppers screaming for your body is a wonderland

[WhatTheBuck 28,817]

18 hours ago, ShaggyBevo RIP said:

May be indicative of why Lesh isn't part of Dead & Company. 

It's not. 

[Hate 20,153]

Here’s a great show I’ve been listening to tonight. Jerry and Brent kill it during Dr Mr. Fantasy.

[Hate 20,153]

Did anyone else see this? I’m thinking about going. This is one of my favorite shows. Has anyone else ever been to one?

[Sleepygrad 1,029]

Doubtful, i can just put that dvd on at my house or my buddies house and smoke/drink in peace

[Blanton 170]

If this is playing at an Austin Drafthouse I'd be willing to get drunk and/or ripped beforehand...

I fucking love this show

Edited July 28, 2018 by Blanton

[Hate 20,153]

It’s a great show! I’ve listened to it many times over the last few months. It has my favorite Wharf Rat and Loser. The Ramble on Rose is stellar. Brent goes off during the jam of Blow Away. The Let it Grow and Scarlet/Fire are both outstanding. And is there a better encore than Knocking on Heaven’s Door? The only song I’m not crazy about is SIMWTMB. This and the Buffalo show from 3 days earlier are probably my favorites shows from what IMO is them at their best.

[Guest Lobo]

Bob Weir and the Wolf Bros. announced a late summer/Autumn tour.  No dates in Texas.  So earliest we'll see Dead & Co., or any incarnation, here in Texas will be Winter of 2019.  And that's probably way too optimistic.  

[Mojo Hand 4,580]

I missed pre-sale signup, but I'm definitely getting tickets for the DC show. 

[Blanton 170]

Here's a nice Phil number from '90

Love Brent's work on the keys

 

[Onboard 2.0 9,083]

On 8/8/2018 at 12:02 PM, Lobo said:

Bob Weir and the Wolf Bros. announced a late summer/Autumn tour.  No dates in Texas.  So earliest we'll see Dead & Co., or any incarnation, here in Texas will be Winter of 2019.  And that's probably way too optimistic.  

They have this little venue in Boulder, CO. ..... just sayin'

[Hate 20,153]

I must be doing something right. Yesterday I had my 10 year old in tow and “I Need A Miracle” came on. He said, “Dad, I like this song. Can we hear it again?”. Of course I obliged.

[Hate 20,153]

So i'm listening to the infamous 5/7/77 Cornell show and I can't stop listening to the "They Love Each Other".....fucking amazing!!  It's at the 20:50 mark, but as you all know, you could listen to this whole show over and over again.

 

 

[Hate 20,153]

There is something satisfying about watching that blue line fill in on a 17:38 Franklin’s Tower!

[dcbc 14,551]

34 minutes ago, Hate said:

There is something satisfying about watching that blue line fill in on a 17:38 Franklin’s Tower!

Yes, it is.  What's equally as satisfying is the little valleys before that Franklin's Tower peak and thereafter.  Gots to have that tension before the release, and so forth.  

Definitely want to listen to that show again soon.  The list looks great.

Edited August 25, 2018 by dcbc

[Hate 20,153]

A couple of months ago I discovered headyversion.com and I’ve been on endless rabbit holes since. What’s the best LLR? What’s the best Eyes? And then to read all of the arguments for or against that vote. It’s gotten me on a late 70’s kick and I’m an unabashed Brent fan. I’m currently listening to the Wharf Rat from 7/7/89. The wife went to sleep just now and I’m 5 drinks and several one hits into the evening. It’s a full moon and imma about to get my groove on.

[Blanton 170]

headyversion.com is an awesome resource, especially when trying to find the best version for a particular era. I think it’s kinda like comparing apples to oranges with late 70’s, early 80’s, late 80’s, etc. I know you’ve got your “purists,” but fuck, there’s just a substantial difference in sound with technology and personnel IMO. 

I love listening to the the Grateful Dead channel on Sirius XM cuz I’ll hear a banger for a particular date and then later check out the full concert on the archive. 

[Sleepygrad 1,029]

So i'm listening to the infamous 5/7/77 Cornell show and I can't stop listening to the "They Love Each Other".....fucking amazing!!  It's at the 20:50 mark, but as you all know, you could listen to this whole show over and over again.

 

 

 

Such an epic run of shows. The Morning Dew from the next night is one of my all time favorites! Really that whole show from 5/8/77 is just incredible

[Hate 20,153]

I just can’t stop listening to that song and especially from that show. It’s perfect.