4/24/72. Serious business. Such a polite audience. China Cat>Rider, PITB, Good Lovin', Dark Star>MAMU>Dark Star, Wharf Rat>Sugar Mags I like the 11 minute long Playin' rather than something 20+. This one does everything it needs to. It wasn't quite the transition I was hoping for going from Dark Star into Me And My Uncle but the jam on the back side more than compensated.
Do the flac16 files usually come in later than the 24? Don't need the 24bit but I don't see the 16 on LL.
Back in 2013 when I got back on the bus after basically 20 years off, I was surprised by the number of official releases. When it comes to E'72, my take was: well, how great can '72 be? I'm an idiot. I bought the E'72 box piecemeal and yes, it's far more expensive that way. If you dig on '72 Dead, don't hesitate; buy the all music edition and never look back. Sure there's some first set (and second set, for that matter) repetition, but the improvs are all quite unique and among the best improvs in the history of music (and I'm tossing Coltrane, Mingus and Monk in there, folks).
Real good advice from the Noth Showah (North Shore). I second the notion that repetition is not an issue here. And if you kinda sorta like "Black-Throated Wind," you're really going to all-out like, maybe even love, these BTWs. And that song is hardly the highlight in these shows. Each night is overall stupendous, as well as the one recorded for TV.
A couple of nights ago I heard 1-22-71, which is just a fragment of a show from Lane Community College in Eugene Oregon (in which it was revealed that all these years Ken Babbs thought Pigpen's last name was 'McKeown.' Nothing much of great interest survives, Hard to Handle and China Cat>I Know you Rider portend a good night, but 9 numbers is all that we have from what the papers said was a 2 1/2 hour show. I can think of a couple of shows when Babbs got involved that were pretty good, so I'll keep hoping the rest of this turns up somewhere. Then it was on to 3-31-73, continuing the Spring 73 tour of the Northeast, this time in Buffalo. This was a typically great show from this tour. I am really enjoying the first sets this time around. I usually don't have a problem with the E72 first sets, which are a bit even more repetitive than what you get in 73. (I just did a quick comparison of 3-31 and 4-2-73, only Mexicali Blues, Box of Rain, Jack Straw, Row Jimmy, Looks like Rain, and Playin in the Band are first set repeats (they did Half Step in set 1 in Buffalo, and set 2 in Boston. Greatest Story, Promised Land, El Paso, Sugar Magnolia, and Casey Jones all appear in both shows. I Know You Rider also appears twice, kind of a special case. So that's 13 repeats out of 55 tunes played overall across the two nights, which is not at all bad. And they were averaging about 15 songs per set in the first set on this tour, so with a repertoire of about 75 tunes on the outside at the the time, they were bound to have some repeats, mostly new tunes from Garcia, Weir's old war-horses, and that one song that Phil sang. Just to show how not sick of all this repetition, and how into 73 I've gotten, I decided to play the last show of the tour, Dave's 21, 4-2-73 at the Boston Garden back to back with 3-31. But I am getting ahead of myself, because before I even mention that I should talk about the jam from 3-31, which the Archive version has tracked as He's Gone>Truckin'>Nobody's Jam>Other One>Spanish Jam>Other One>I know you rider. It was only about a month before this show that the band began playing the 'Feeling Groovy' jam in between China Cat and I Know You Rider, before that it showed up randomly in jams, as most of you know, though it was more common in Dark Star than the Other One. When I saw the setlist I was quite excited thinking 'how will they pull off this transition,' but once I heard the Feeling Groovy jam it actually wasn't all that surprising, more like 'will they go all the way with this.' Still, yet another unique jam among the handful they did in March (and early April.) I presume most have heard Dave's 21, yet another gem and that jam is a keeper. I liked that one so well that although yesterday I did check out 9-13-83 (a more rockin' show not quite as good as the two Santa Fe shows that preceded it,) and 5-11-91 (which, for the record, has the same number of songs in the entire show as set 1 of 4-2-73, if you count Drums and Space as a song each,) today it was right back to 73 with 5-13-73, a 3 set monster that's required 4 sittings to hear all the way through. So I'm sitting right here, glued to this spot for the rest of set 3. Right now in the middle of deep space.
Technically, I listened to all four hours of Closing of Winterland just now. I was asleep on the couch for about 3 of those hours - that's what happens when you only sleep about 3 hours the night before. I remember years ago before I was On the Bus, my brother tried to get me into the band using this movie. At the time, I remember being bored out of my mind and constantly wondering when it was going to end. Just more proof of my theory that if the time's not right, no GD will work. And when the time is right, any GD will get you onto the bus. The music finds you.
Well, I more than “kinda sorta like” “Black-Throated Wind,” so this bodes well. The repetition thing has been a stumbling block, but I do genuinely like 95 percent of the ‘72 repertoire, so there’s that. Next AME I spot that I can justify is getting snapped up. I will eventually run out of official ‘71-‘77 releases. Must keep telling myself that.
Second set repetition for sure, all those long versions of The Other One and Dark Star. They had to write Eyes of the World so they wouldn't get bored.
This is probably heresy, but the thing that prevents the Europe 72 tour from being just perfect for me are the Good Lovin' and Lovelight raps. For some reason I don't mind them as much in the pre-1970 years, but they just seem, I don't know, 'beneath' (that's the wrong word but all I can come up with right now) the band at this point. It probably doesn't help that my <10 y/o kids are almost always around when I am playing music, and so I don't really care to have them hear Pig describing his need to jump on the saddle or the olafactory peculiarities of the deed. This is a shame, because the musical explorations during these songs can be utterly free-wheeling and fascinating. I'll take all the Chinatown Shuffle, Big Boss Man, and Mr. Charlie I can get though! Oh, and I say all this but still wish that Good Morning Little Schoolgirl was still around in 1972. I know, I know, contradictions abound in the above, but that's my story, man!
For what it's worth, I agree. Give me "Two Souls in Communion" any day. And to be contradictory in my own way (not to mention anachronistic), I don't mind "Money Money."
I think definitely the Lovelights are a step below a lot of the 69/70 versions. I like the ‘72 Good Lovins a lot though, I think they’re the best versions the band performed.
Money Money is the worst pre-1990s GD song...hands down. It makes Keep Your Day Job look like a masterpiece.
I don’t mind Lost Sailor, it was just overplayed. I may have listened to France once or twice, I can’t even recall what it sounds like.
It's definitely not good... but I like how they play with those opening notes from the Barrett Strong hit. Sort of fun. But it's definitely one of the few songs of theirs where I'm happy to just tune out the lyrics entirely. And I truly don't mind that they played it only a handful of times. Oh god, "France." Seriously embarrassing.
Slightly off schedule, but yay! https://www.jambase.com/article/grateful-dead-announces-anthem-sun-50th-anniversary-deluxe-edition
I think I read somewhere that the Dead wanted Wicked Messenger included on the album, but Dylan said no, and that was that. Anyone know anything about that?
Listening to RFK 7/13/89 right now. I like it enough but what's the deal with Brent during "Little Red Rooster"? A bit angry?
The album was mixed by Jerry Garcia and John Cutler with some input from Dylan. Garcia commented on Dylan’s contribution in an interview with Rolling Stone: “When you’re collaborating with Dylan and he says ‘Hey, I think that my voice is too out front,’ what am I going to do? Punch him? I’ll say ‘okay’ against my own instincts.” Bob Dylan seems to be entirely responsible for the final running order of this album. Jerry Garcia and the band had several different performances lined up that they wanted to release, but Dylan inexplicably rejected them. “Wicked Messenger” and “Ballad of Frankie Lee and Judas Priest” were replaced (at Dylan’s behest) with tired, sloppy versions of “Knocking on Heaven’s Door” and “All Along the Watchtower”, both of which had appeared more than once on a live Dylan album. DYLAN & THE DEAD
