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Posted

For the Deadheads. This is sort of like a cross-post. I posted the U.S. Blues from 6/26/74 in the “What are you listening to right now?” thread. But this one is from the previous show, at the Jai-Alai Fronton in Miami on 6/23/74. That’s an all-timer of a show. And this rules.

 

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Posted (edited)

I've posted this before, but 33 years ago tonight the Grateful Dead shut down JFK Stadium in Philly.  The stadium had been condemned and this was the very last event at the venue.  It's worth the viewing just for the Blow Away that Brent does to close the first set.  I've never been a huge fan of Brent songs, but he is a phenomenal vocalists.  He has the crowd in the palm of his hand for this version.  The Loser in the first set is sublime as well. The second set has a great Box of Rain, Scarlet>Fire>Estimated Prophet. The Standing on the Moon may be the best ever and The Other One>Wharf Rat is off the fucking chart good.  Brent and Jerry take you to church during the "I'll get up and fly away" refrain.  The Knocking on Heaven's Door encore is the perfect way to finish an all time great show.  

 

Edited by Hate
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Posted
  On 7/8/2022 at 3:14 AM, Hate said:

I've posted this before, but 33 years ago tonight the Grateful Dead shut down JFK Stadium in Philly.  The stadium had been condemned and this was the very last event at the venue.  It's worth the viewing just for the Blow Away that Brent does to close the second set.  I've never been a huge fan of Brent songs, but he is a phenomenal vocalists.  He has the crowd in the palm of his hand for this version.  The Loser in the first set is sublime as well. The second set has a great Box of Rain, Scarlet>Fire>Estimated Prophet. The Standing on the Moon may be the best ever and The Other One>Wharf Rat is off the fucking chart good.  Brent and Jerry take you to church during the "I'll get up and fly away" refrain.  The Knocking on Heaven's Door encore is the perfect way to finish an all time great show.  

 

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My all-time favorite show

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Posted

Yeah, the Althea had an early 80's feel to it.  This has been a great show so far.  That was such a wonderful year for them.  You can tell how much they were having every show. 

Posted

Tonight is 7/9/89 from Giants Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey. It's a solid show.  It isn't as good as the 3 prior shows, but to me that  is only due to the set list.  There are quite a few songs I either don't like or am somewhat indifferent to.  Fist set Shakedown is solid as are the Jack Straw and Bird Song.  China Cat/Rider from this era are always great...even though this is one jam that is pretty great regardless of the era. I'm looking forward to the NFA>Brokedown Palace finale.

 

Posted

I'm checking out 7/14/84 tonight.  It's Bastille Day in Paris and some other national holiday week for Egypt, so pretty much half of my project team is out tomorrow too.  There isn't going to be a great deal done tomorrow, so I can stay up a little later and enjoy a show.

 

Posted

The sound on this isn't all that great, but the show is pretty solid.  I love the jam on Mississippi Half Step after the last chorus and before the "lay river" refrain.

 

Posted

What's up fellow Dead heads?  I'm up finishing off One More Saturday Night with some drinks and the Grateful Dead.  I'm on a Wharf Rat kick at the moment, so I am listening to my two favorites 7/7/89 and 5/26/77.  Wharf Rat is probably a top 5 song for me.  I love it during any era,  Lyrically and musically it is perfect to me.  A lot of my love for this song is that its easy to transition to from another song.  The two shows I posted above are The Other One>Wharf Rat and Not Fade Away>Wharf Rat and the transitions are beautiful! What are your favorite ones? 

Posted

I'm checking out this early 80's show from Manor Downs.  I've listened a little bit before, but I don't remember the sound being this good.  I'll have to finish this one tomorrow or the next day, but it's a damn fine show so far.

 

Posted

Rainy nights are absolutely the best.  I've been sitting on my porch with some bourbon and my one hitter listening to LL Rain and watching the storms.  It's wonderful.  I've been listening to my favorite version (WTB de damned) 5/26/77.  It's at the 46:45 mark if any of you want to enjoy it as it appears we may have a few rainy nights in the next week or so. 

 

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Posted
  On 8/7/2022 at 3:41 AM, Hate said:

What's up fellow Dead heads?  I'm up finishing off One More Saturday Night with some drinks and the Grateful Dead.  I'm on a Wharf Rat kick at the moment, so I am listening to my two favorites 7/7/89 and 5/26/77.  Wharf Rat is probably a top 5 song for me.  I love it during any era,  Lyrically and musically it is perfect to me.  A lot of my love for this song is that its easy to transition to from another song.  The two shows I posted above are The Other One>Wharf Rat and Not Fade Away>Wharf Rat and the transitions are beautiful! What are your favorite ones? 

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10/7/77 is a great Wharf Rat

https://archive.org/details/gd77-10-07.pset2-sbd.kiefe-fiske.1191.sbefixed.shnf/gd77-10-07d1t2-fixed.shn

 

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Posted

I'm not great at identifying voices, so pardon what might be a pretty elementary question for others. Who would occasionally announce the set breaks by saying, "we're gonna take a short break, and you can too."?

I can't think of any specific show, but I feel like it was kind of a regular thing for a while. 

Every time someone in my daily life mentions taking a break (regardless of the speaker or context) it reminds me of that. 

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Posted
  On 8/13/2022 at 1:40 AM, Prepuce of Doom said:

I'm not great at identifying voices, so pardon what might be a pretty elementary question for others. Who would occasionally announce the set breaks by saying, "we're gonna take a short break, and you can too."?

I can't think of any specific show, but I feel like it was kind of a regular thing for a while. 

Every time someone in my daily life mentions taking a break (regardless of the speaker or context) it reminds me of that. 

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Probably Bobby. 

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Posted
  On 8/7/2022 at 3:41 AM, Hate said:

What's up fellow Dead heads?  I'm up finishing off One More Saturday Night with some drinks and the Grateful Dead.  I'm on a Wharf Rat kick at the moment, so I am listening to my two favorites 7/7/89 and 5/26/77.  Wharf Rat is probably a top 5 song for me.  I love it during any era,  Lyrically and musically it is perfect to me.  A lot of my love for this song is that its easy to transition to from another song.  The two shows I posted above are The Other One>Wharf Rat and Not Fade Away>Wharf Rat and the transitions are beautiful! What are your favorite ones? 

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4/22/78

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Posted

That turned out to be a damned fine show.  The LL Rain was stellar and Sugar Magnolia is always a great second set closer.  The NFA into Wharf Rat was just awesome.  Thanks for the rec!

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Posted

This is pretty cool. Everyone who sat in with the Dead, 1966-1995. I’m not crazy about how the tracks are ordered but what a compilation and what an effort.

https://archive.org/details/AllGratefulDeadGuestSit-ins66To95

Be forewarned, this is a long list:

  Reveal hidden contents

 

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Posted

Today is the 50th Anniversary of one of the more legendary shows...8/27/72 from Veneta, Oregon.  It was later released as "Sunshine Daydream".

 

Posted

Here’s a sample from Mickey Hart & Planet Drum’s new album. Heard it on the GD Hour last week. Not bad. His original Planet Drum book and CD were really cool. And back around that time they had items from Mickey’s collection of percussive instruments from around the world on display in the San Francisco airport. If you’re interested, the Planet Drum book is worth a read. It’s not heavy at all. But it’s kind of deep. It’s like a coffee table book that isn’t a coffee table book. If I knew a young person starting out on drums, I’d give them my copy.

 

  • 2 weeks later...
Posted

I had an early day and a late afternoon.  I managed to squeeze in 18 holes of golf and some bourbon and weed.  I've defaulted to my favorite show tonight 7/4/89. The best Bertha, Cold Rain and Snow, Masterpiece, Deal, Women are Smarter, and Morning Dew ever...imo.

Posted

I had the Dead Sirius XM channel on my Dish TV last night, and they played a very disco-y, almost "gritty" version of Feel Like a Stranger where the bassline was just absurdly low and funky - the best way I can describe it is like the strings were so loose as to be "raggedy," kind of like the fluttery thrum of flicking a long rubber band right next to your ear.

Unfortunately, the Dish version doesn't always give the date of the recording. 

Anyone with a better timeline in their head than mine have ideas on what date or range of dates that could be from? 

~~~~~

Trying to find the answer myself, I ended up down the rabbit hole of this Reddit thread:

That thread features these two quotes that I'm sure we've all heard before:

Screenshot_20220917-132530_Reddit.thumb.jpg.0cee181086bd78d0e5a0434146cb7743.jpg

 

I think both are pithy and accurate, but I would also add that getting into the Grateful Dead is kind of like smoking cigarettes - you probably won't like it very much the first few times you try it, and you'll likely wonder what all the fuss is about, but if you are dedicated enough and/or want to like it enough to stick with it, it'll click before you know it, and then you're hooked... 

Posted

Oh, thanks for reminding me that I wanted to add more to this. It’s daunting because I could blab and blab and blab about it. It’s hard to be concise. It’s sort of like when you’re dosed and your thoughts are moving faster than your mouth can speak them  

No idea how to identify that Stranger. Just listen to a bunch of them. Just the fact that it was played narrows the range of possible dates. They first played it on 3/31/80 so you know that show wasn’t from before then.

I love that song but it took me a little bit to get it. They opened my first show (Pittsburgh, 7/6/87) with Stranger > Franklin’s. And boy, was that appropriate because I totally felt like a stranger. That was a different world. I barely knew any of their music. We didn’t have very good seats, way in the back of the arena and way up high. (Pun intended, I guess, because we were tripping balls.) As soon as they launched into the song, the whole audience started dancing. They were just this huge swirling mass of people wriggling and shaking as I sat there awash in that sensory assault. That’s not a song that was similar to other songs I knew. My first love was the Beatles. My first concerts were Rush and REO Speedwagon and Styx and Journey and Billy Joel. I grew up listening to Top 40 radio. The Dead are decidedly not that.

As a matter of fact, I caught a Stranger > Franklin’s three times in my first four shows. They opened with it at my third show, at Buckeye Lake on 6/25/88 (with Bruce Hornsby and the Range opening; we also got Bruce sitting in on accordion for Sugaree and Memphis Blues). And then at my fourth show, in Landover, MD on 9/3/88, after opening with Let The Good Times Roll, I got another Stranger > Franklin’s. By then I was much more familiar. (It also helped that Go to Heaven was one of the first two albums I bought, along with Shakedown, after my first show.) We were fortunate enough to catch the last electric Ripple, the first since 4/29/71, at that show, performed at the request of a sick young person by way of the Make A Wish Foundation. Also, I’ve found that when they open with LTGTR then that’s usually a sign that you’re in for a good show.

But anyway, yeah, Stranger is a great song. Sort of gritty and raunchy and so unlike anything I grew up hearing on the radio. A lot of the Dead’s music is like that. (But they also covered a lot of music that was stuff I already knew from tv and radio and the county fair).

I’m not the biggest or most experienced Deadhead in the world by far. But I have a respectable resume. I remember being a newb and getting lost in a jam in like, say, Throwing Stones, and forgetting what song they were playing. And then they’d come back to the song and I’d be like, “Whoa!” Several years ago I was relaxing on a friend’s patio while we were smoking ribs and drinking beer and I was playing some Dead show. I pointed out in the jam that they just went back into The Other One, or maybe it was Playin’. Whatever it was was a big song sandwich that included Uncle John’s Band. Anyway, he was oblivious. I backed up the disc and sure enough, the track number changed right where I called it.

I’ve known (and benefitted from) people with nearly complete collections of bootlegs. They’re better at identifying songs/shows than I am. But I’m not bad. I recently tuned into the GD Hour on NPR on a Sunday night, in the middle of a jam, and successfully guessed that it was probably Throwing Stones circa 1982. It was Throwing Stones on 11/25/82. (Montego Bay in Jamaica. The Dead played from very very late night until sunrise. Parts were included over two episodes of the GD Hour, host David Gans said he was there and it was awesome. Stranger wasn’t performed.)

Anyway, there are cues to guessing when a song or show might have been played. What song(s) they’re playing, first of all. And who’s playing keyboard. And what the keyboard sounds like. The sound of Brent’s keys in ‘84 and ‘85 are pretty distinguishable, for example. There’s a huge difference between Brent and Vince. Another is the sound of Jerry’s voice. He had his ups and downs along with his health and his demons. (RIP)

As far as people who don’t get it, who cares? It’s not a religion. I’m not trying to convert anyone. I totally understand why some people don’t get it. There are a lot of different ways that people like to consume music. Music plays a different role in different people’s lives. Some people just want background music. Some just want a simple beat in a simple time in a familiar chord that they can dance to. Some people want to go to a concert and hear the hits played just exactly like they were played on the album. I don’t care if they don’t like the Dead. In the late 80’s and early 90’s, it would’ve been better if a lot fewer people “liked” the Dead or at least had stayed home instead of just coming to the show for the party.

The thing is it takes some time and investment to really get the most out of the Dead. It’s not really meant for the casual listener. Sure, those people exist. But it’s easy to understand how someone might not embrace them right off the bat. Their music is different, it’s not radio friendly. They’re a live band and their live catalog is enormous and almost every individual performance of a song includes a flub or two, or more. Some people hear one performance of a song, hear a mistake in a line or a riff and think, “These guys suck!” We hear a dozen versions of the same song, all different, with different approaches and different moods every time, and edit out the little mistakes. The concept of the song is an amalgam in our heads and when I play Sugaree in my head it’s very different from the Sugaree you play in your head. By contrast, every Rush fan plays the exact same version of Tom Sawyer in their head as every other Rush fan plays in their head. And they all play that drum part in exactly the same way. And they all expect to hear the band perform the song in exactly that same way in concert. And they think that makes Rush a really great band because they can precisely recreate their studio performance live on stage. (I confess I was once one of those people.)

So fuck ‘em if they don’t get it. Who cares? What do I care if they don’t get the joy I feel when listening for the first time to that GD Hour show I tuned into a few weeks ago, in the middle of a Throwing Stones jam, which went into NFA > Black Peter > Good Lovin’ which are all songs I know and have heard a hundred times but it was still like new? I don’t owe them an explanation.

Btw, that was a really sweet Good Lovin’ and I mentioned this on the old board that it was when they launched into that song at my first show that I was thrown involuntarily to my feet in dance out of pure joy. There was no thought. It just happened. They’re the best dance band in the world. 

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Posted

Another thing. The Dead played a lot of songs. People will be playing their songs for years to come. They also covered a lot of other songs ranging over a wide variety of artists and styles. They opened me up to a lot of other music. They helped me out at my first show by playing covers of songs I already knew. Like Good Lovin’ and Johnny B. Goode. Like Mama Tried and Big River. With members of the Neville Brothers as special guests they played Day-O (aka the Banana Boat song) which I’d heard Harry Belafonte perform on the Flip Wilson show as a child. They also played Man Smart (Woman Smarter) which I knew from an episode of I Love Lucy (and was also part of Belafonte’s repertoire.) I didn’t know there was such a thing as New Orleans music at the time, let alone Caribbean music or world music or a wealth of other styles. They were influenced by those as well as every other style of American music from folk and blues and bluegrass and country (and Western) and jazz and R&B and disco and so on and so also influenced me. And you’d hear a mix of it at any given show. I have them to thank for turning me on to so much other music.

The Dead wrote a lot of great original songs that other artists will be covering for years. But what really set them apart was what they played when they weren’t playing the songs. The improvisational stuff. The stuff they played inside and outside and in between the songs. That’s really what they were (and are) all about. The songs are just a vehicle to get there, to a certain extent. I mean, sure, not every song is Dark Star. But that’s really what sets them apart and a whole lot of people don’t get that.

Bill Graham said it best:

76853CBB-799B-4CE6-BA42-8CBBDED4987C.jpeg.8d04a35ad690c8652ece99708924aac8.jpeg

Posted

Just because I had the inclination, here’s Jamaica 11/25/82. It’s cued up for Good Lovin’ because I was talking about that but it doesn’t mean you can’t listen to the whole show.

It’s not the best version of the song. It’s just one version. It’s unique. It’s not what I would play if I wanted to turn someone on to the Dead. “Oh, you gotta hear this!” Nope. It’s just that time when they played it at around 4:30 in the morning in Jamaica back in ‘82. I’ll bet it was fun to be there.

I love it whenever Bobby screams.

 

Posted

Damn…I’ll have to find a show to go to since they won’t come to Texas in the summer.

For tonight, I’m sitting on the shores of Lake Buchanan listening to some Good Ol’ Grateful Dead!

Posted

I think I’d rather see Bob Weir & Wolf Bros. I see Phil & Friends have a stand coming up at the Capitol Theatre in Port Chester, NY. A lot of Dead history there. They book a lot of interesting acts. Nick Mason’s Saucerful of Secrets is playing on Monday. Phil’s stand has a couple of breaks, one for ZZ Top, another for Steve Vai. Other acts on the schedule are Jeff Beck and Johnny Depp, The Last Waltz, Lindsey Buckingham, and Hot Tuna (acoustic and electric — that would be a worthwhile trip).

https://www.thecapitoltheatre.com/events/venue/the-capitol-theatre/all

The venue is now owned by Peter Shapiro, the guy used to own Wetlands in NYC. I only made it there once, to see KVHW in, I think, 1999. Maybe 2000 but I’m guessing 1999. It was right after a Phish show in Cincinnati. I made the drive straight to NYC from Cincinnati. I was supposed to crash that night after the Phish show at the home of moe. guitarist Chuck Garvey but his girlfriend got pissed at me because I wouldn’t give my extra to her fat friend and invited some hot co-worker from the bar she worked at and she ditched me downtown. I had to take a cab back to Chuck and Amy’s place to get my car.

But I digress. (Nothing against Chuck. He’s a cool dude.) I don’t remember when Wetlands closed but I’m thinking it was sometime lot too long after 9/11. Anyway, they named the bar/lounge area at the Capitol Theatre “Garcia’s” and they book acts there too.

AD1BD8FD-520B-4B6F-A6BA-E19E4C43B3DB.thumb.png.e5c42ff2ee3a01845b6cd6dc29a70994.png

I’ve heard ads for upcoming acts at the theatre and Garcia’s when I’ve tuned in to the GD Hour recently. I heard that Oteil & Friends were booked at Garcia’s. I hadn’t heard about them. They have John Kadlicek, former front man (playing the part of Jerry) in Dark Star Orchestra (saw them a few times, they were pretty good), and they’ve got Kimock’s kid.

The members of the Dead aren’t getting any younger but the music will never die. (2018? Seriously? I’ve got to try to keep up.)

 

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