If they're going to do a May 77 thing, it should be to partner with Apple and drop a copy of Barton Hall into everyone's iTunes account a la Bono. 'Today a large percentage of the worlds population was simultaneously issued a copy of the most storied Grateful Dead concerts. Tune in, turn on, far out..."
I ****in' love it when Jerry gets really into it at the 4:00 mark! ...plus there's some great footage of Keith using the Polymoog's ribbon controller (used for wild pitch slides/bends) at 6:08. The Polymoog is a thin, limited-sounding synth compared to the great polysynths of the late 70's/early 80's (Brent's Prophet 5 blows it out of the water), but it's still cool that Keith was willing to expand beyond the piano.
Wow - Jerry's Tele tone is killer!! It makes me wish that he would've alternated "Wolf" with a Tele during this era's Dead shows.
I come from a family with at least two well-read preachers from the deep southeastern USA. So, I feel a sense of duty to write a sermon about your deliverance, those of you who can't *yet* appreciate Spring 1990. Your soul will be saved. Today I have had 3/14/90 on repeat. It's the first of the Spring 1990 shows. "In the beginning, there was light." Third time through today, as I sit here typing. "Crazy Fingers" to begin the second set.
Performance is good, but what the heck is up with the drums on this recording? The bass drum makes a weird 'pop' sound....anyone noticed this?
Hey puffyrock: I had the exact same impression as you - are you listening on headphones? I do much of my listening on headphones and Penn State/Cornell suffers badly from this bass drum popping syndrome. It's not so bad on room speakers, though. But it's a strong release in terms of playing, just not so good on headphones. I wonder where this came in; too much compression on the bass drums during mastering? Or is it a source issue? Go To Nassau is from just a week later and it has nothing of this issue (and it's among the best sounding CDs they've released from this or any era; plus, the playing is pretty hot).
Speaking if May '77, I've just finished the boxset from last year, or whenever it was, that I downloaded after much deliberation. It's really quite good. If I had to take it or the Winterland June '77 box, I'd take the latter every time but 17 May really is outstanding and, I suspect, ought to have been released on its own. I think it and the final night of the June run are easily top tier shows for the year, possibly ever. 11 and 12 May are damn good too. The other two nights...possibly not all that amazing. Certainly very good but they're no match for 30 April or 28 May as far as official releases go. Nevertheless they definitely put into perspective some other years when a standard show was nowhere near this quality.
Jerry on a Tele. Is this '74? The only either time I've seen (moving) pictures of him on a Tele is in Festival Express when he's on George Harrison's rosewood Tele during the CC Rider jam.
Go To Nassau was a multitrack recording made for King Biscuit Flower Hour. The Road Trips is from a two track reel or cassette and I've gathered they were not as carefully recorded in the early 80's.
I remember specifically pointing this out on one of my blog posts. It jumped out to me because I remember hearing David Lemieux comment about that annoying kick drum in a different context and then when I listened closely to this one on headphones it was right there. Never really noticed it through other speakers, so I think that comment was spot on.
Funny, that was my only show that summer, too. It was solid, not as good as the Spring '90 shows I caught, and I remember Brent looked pretty hoary on the video screen during I Will Take You Home. Really sweaty and disheveled, I remember my friends and I joking that we didn't want him to take us home. Little did we know how messed up he must have been at that point. I have never gone back and listened to that one, will need to make a point of it soon.
Just found this on the Interwebs. Garcia, Santana, Hart, Olatunji, Bobby Vega, Hamza El-Din, Sikiru Adepoju doing Fire on the Mountain at a benefit in Petaluma, 2/15/87. Surprisingly good video quality:
I'm pretty sure that was the last "I'll Take You Home" he ever played. I was listening to the free streams of the Spring '90 sets last night. I might purchase the ALAC version of at least one of them at some point. They do sound fantastic from a technical perspective, and I'm assuming the stream wasn't lossless. Or maybe it is.
The second box sounds fantastic. The first, not as good as it could have because they didn't use the multi-tracks, just Cutler's on the fly mixes. Garcia's guitar is often lower in the mix than it should be, and the soundstage is much better on the new box. That said, there are a lot of great shows in that first box.
Good info. Yeah I watched Dave's video for the second box last night and I was wondering why the difference in approach. I saw all the Knick shows but for some reason I'm not particularly wedded to this tour. Although as soon as time travel is commercialized I'm hitting the Branford shows after I come back from E '72.
I think for the first box they used the two-tracks on the theory that they met "good enough" quality standards and saved a lot of time/money in mixing, but they got enough criticism for it that they wisely changed tack for the second box. I thought that tour was excellent, my big regret is not going to the Branford show (I went to the second 2 nights of Landover and the Hartford and Albany runs), so I'm with you on including it in the time travel itinerary, except that I am hitting Spring Tour '77 first, the '69 Live/Dead run, and then Europe '72 first. (Europe '72 is high priority, but I'm saving it for desert so as not to spoil the rest).
OK, well, if I download one of these Spring '90 babies it will be the second. I'm transitioning to post-packaging media collection whenever possible.
Too bad you have to pick one set of shows or the other, rather than being able to mix and match and download a few shows from each. 3-30-90 is one of my favorites, and it's in the first box.
Eh, it's not really an issue for me. If I really wanted all that 90s music I'd own both sets already. I guess I'm mostly an early Dead fan, although I do enjoy all of it. It really is all good, except for some early 80s and I suppose the '95 tour whrn Jerry lost sensation in his left hand. But yeah, when do we get to the point that all the shows Rhino has released become individually downloadable?
It would be great to at least release the out-of-print dates. I really can't understand the motivation not to. I'm currently working my way through the Feb 1974 Winterland run. This is my first time through these. 2/22 was solid with a few really nice moments. I was impressed with the high energy all the way through. Barely a slow song in the whole show. Roses and Ship of Fools were both at a much faster pace than I was used to. I always preferred the up-tempo version of They Love Each Other.
I've always been a fan of uptempo They Love Each Other. I don't know exactly when they went back to uptempo Friend Of The Devil, but I saw it at Fovboro Summer '89 and was ecstatic.
I hadn't thought they ever went back to the fast Friend Of The Devil. Listening to that Foxboro version now, and it is in the middle, nowhere near as fast as American Beauty but not as slow as Dead Set or 1977 versions. Also the drummers are playing in double time so it sounds faster.
Count me in for the uptempo Friend of the Devil as well. I love it as an acoustic folk song and don't really care for it as a drawn out ballad.
