6/9/76 is great. Jerry's solo in "Looks Like Rain" is breathtaking. The set 2 opener of St. Stephen>Eyes>Let It Grow is killer too.
The 6/9 Stephen-Eyes is great as are some versions of Help-Slipknot-Frank, Playing and Mission In The Rain from June 76, but a fair amount of the month was tedious.
June 9th is fantastic, and I thought June 10 was 90% as good. Unfortunately 6/11 and 6/12 were pure sleepers..... I think June is a little bit underrated though as there are as many highpoints as there are numerous low points. Here's what my notepad tells me I thought of the month when I listened to most of it 2 months ago: 6/9 - awesome 6/10 - almost as awesome 6/11 - sleep 6/12 - sleep 6/17 - kickass 6/18 - kickass, except it is super chill 6/19 - Perfect blend of previous two shows 6/21 - Another killer show. Most perfect Help>Slip ever 6/22 - Just as good as previous gig 6/24 - sleep 6/26 - Mixed bag of good and bad 6/27 - sleep 6/28 - Another killer 6/29 - skip set one, get set two at all costs So, as you can see, for me at least, the month exceeds expectations for the most part. If you can tolerate a close setlist from gig to gig, there is a ton to love. I was surprised.
Just checked the stash. I got no '76 within easy reach in my collection. In a likely related matter (guitarists and their "habits"), live Stones also sucked in '76. But I'm open to '76 suggestions (as seen above!).
Those are the quick gist of my notes for the month - if you want any detailed notes on the gigs, let me know and I'll post what I wrote. That being said, outside of June, I can reccommend Fall '76. The New Years Eve gig at the Cow Palace is fantastic. The two shows on Dick's Picks 33 are excellent as well.
My FTW box showed up today. Decent little box that comes with a photo book contains essays from Shapiro, Justin kreutzman and Bill Walton. The book the CDs and DVDs are in is pretty nice as well. One disc per page with large photos across each two page spread. Also there are 4 CDs per show, the 4th contains all of the Neal Casal stuff from that night. There's also a bonus video called "Rainbows Are Real" - which is pretty great given the $50,000 rainbow non-troversy I'm halfway through the 7/3 show on cd. The sound is fantastic. Mixed by Wiz at sky walker sound and Jeffrey Norman mastered. It's so nice to be able to hear everyone, Bruuuuce and the drummers sound great. Bass and drums have some punch. Imaging is tight. Soundstage is pretty wide - hard to judge depth without moving the ottoman so I'l leave that for someone else. I wish there was a touch more crowd at certain points but that is a minor complaint. Dead & CO is about 30 minutes from my house tonight but I'm feeling pretty good about staying in with this box
There are numerous reasons for the pacing of '76 shows: re-forming the band; bringing Mickey back; "expanding" the JGB (Jerry, Keith & Donna) into the Grateful Dead; heroin, etc. Plus the band made conscious decisions about the direction they wanted to take the music. In a sense they re-invented themselves for a new time and place.
I'm definitely not ignoring 1989/1990! In fact, the only reason why I ended up getting into latter day Dead was because I ended up getting the Spring 1990 compilation and Go to Nassau on a whim after going years without listening to the Dead at all. And then I got the MSG '90 Road Trips a couple months later and realized that not only had I failed to realize previously how great the Brent years were, but there might actually be some music of value in the post-Brent era as well! But the 1989/1990 period is widely acknowledged by many Deadheads as a golden era (usually it's considered the last one), and the post-Brent years (1991 excluded) often get unfairly dismissed. My point is just that even in those final years, there's a lot more good material than people usually acknowledge. And, as always, beauty is in the eye of the beholder. So some of us may like Wave to the Wind and Corinna, while others see them as being beyond the pale in terms of what's tolerable. But just for the record, I personally would find a lot of shows in 1992-95 more listenable than what I've heard of the Fare Thee Well and Dead & Company shows. And that's just my honest opinion.
I have tried listening to some of the shows on the Archive, but they honestly don't sound that great to me. My opinion is that the remaining members of the Dead have all done much better work in their own side projects than in either the Fare Thee Well or Dead & Company incarnations. I don't think that the drummers play together as well as they used to (especially with the way that Mickey's style has evolved), but generally my problem with Dead & Company so far is John Mayer. I liked what I heard of his guest spots with Phil & Friends earlier in the year, but listening to Dead & Company his playing just sounds overly busy - even if he does play some pretty impressive solos. He just doesn't seem to get the soul of it, or what Jerry said once about the spaces in between the notes being more important than what's actually played. Trey Anastasio did a much better job at the Fare Thee Well shows in my opinion, even though I didn't think that those shows were all that great either from what I heard. Overall, nothing I've heard from either of these groups has come close to how great Ratdog was last year. John Mayer is definitely no Steve Kimock (or Mark Karan), in my opinion at least.
Well, now there's one. I had been thinking about picking this one up, so it's on it's way. Now all I need is 24, 27, 31, and 33 and I will have them all. I have no hope of collecting all the Dave's Picks unless they reissue them as well. Time to fire up 10/31/71.
Digging into the dusty corners tonight, about 90 min from 9/3/80 Springfield, part of #7 in the defunct Download Series. I bought 7-8 of these when they came out; for some reason it's really easy to forget they're there with the steady stream of physical product / "bigger" releases. My favorite keyboard sound in the Dead canon is Brent's B3, and my least favorite is Brent's plinky "digital piano" (as opposed to a digital piano) sound. So it's a little bit feast or famine. On "Althea", he's chosen the dark side ...
For some reason the "plinky piano" sound has never bothered me. I know a lot of people dislike it, but you can't deny that it's distinctive. I actually tend to like it more than the other piano sound that Brent tended toward in the late '80s. It has more punch to it. Still, neither of them are a match for Keith's "real" piano playing in the pre-hiatus era. And I'll take Brent's "plinky piano" over whatever synthesizer it was that Keith played in the late '70s, but even that's grown on me over time, even if it can still ruin Lazy Lightnin'>Supplication or Estimated Prophet for me from time to time.
Yeah, I realized this past Saturday that Dead & Company was in town THAT NIGHT and I had never thought to check the tour dates, try to get tickets, etc. It may not have been sold out, but I had other things to do that would have been tough to get out of at the last minute, plus I did not have the money. So it's probably just as well. Still, if I had known about it in advance I probably would have thought seriously about trying to get tickets - even despite my previously-stated reservations about the band. But if Ratdog ever gets out again (playing venues smaller than the Target Center, I hope), I will have my tickets in hand for sure.
Also, regarding 1976 and the hiatus, it's really not surprising in retrospect why they would want to re-invent themselves - because as amazing as they were in 1974, it's easy to hear in a lot of those shows that they couldn't really go much further with the music at that point. The post-Truckin' Mind Left Body and Spanish Jams from 7/31/74 are a case in point - Bob's comments about their music being very "inbred" at the time are brought into very clear focus when you listen to that. They were getting into some pretty obscure musical territory. It seems that interpersonal relations within the band were also at an all-time low in 1974. Add the logistical nightmare of the Wall of Sound to all that, and it's easy to see why "retirement" seemed like the way to go at that point - and why when they came out of retirement almost two years later, they needed to completely re-orient themselves musically in order to go on.
The show here is in a great 6500 seat arena. Furthur played it a bunch, phish has played there as well. Tickets were $120, which I found absurd. No Phil, expensive tickets - no way. I went to FTW and had one of the best weekends of my life. Listening back tonight to the box set, the actual music is better than I remembered. Being able to hear everyone so clearly you can tell they were more hooked up than I realized. Trey is my guy though, right behind Jerry, so I guess I'm a little biased If John Mayer has done anything close to the Playing in the Band->Let it Grow from 7/3 someone point me to it.
I see Dead and Co on Saturday night. I am very excited. And I saw both Santa Clara shows, several Further shows , a solo Bobby acoustic, several versions of Phil and Friends, and the real thing 4 times back in 93-94.
I pretty much like the ones you highlighted as well. And if we move ahead to July - 7/18 has a killer second set
Fare thee well on Spotify. I really miss Jerry's attack and crispy sound on Shakedown and China cat> rider. It's also played pretty slow. I never liked Bobby as a singer much but he holds up very well. It's sounds most dead like when he's on the mic
I also passed on Broomfield, for many of the same reasons. Back in 2012 when Bobby was in rehab the first time we got Phil & Friends at 1st Bank (the weekend was already reserved) with Phil, Joe Russo, Jeff Chimenti, Jackie Greene, Warren Haynes & John Scofield. That 3 night stand was one of the finest post-Dead experiences I've witnessed. I miss the Mickey Hart Band.
