That is an excellent sequence! It's a treat to hear a rare "Cryptical Envelopment" with both Pig's organ and Keith's piano. Very cool.
I just gave it a listen (Charlie Miller SBD) and it's certainly a strong candidate for top 10 but does not, to my subjective ears, come close to #1. It certainly lacks the abandon of the 6/16/74 version, which totally embodies what this band was all about (again, a very subjective point). And please, to be very sure, I don't mean to discredit your preference for the 5/17/74 version. I simply prefer others. We all love this band, just different aspects of them. For a "clean and mean" version, 12/1/79 cannot be topped. My intro to the bus ticket that I gladly dropped in the hopper on a cold, snowy afternoon in January, 1981 in Wormtown (Worcester), MA. I'll admit my bias, but that doesn't make the 12/1/79 version any less fantastic (well, if you can accept Brent's tinkling all over things, which I can).
Firing up disc 5 of the Grateful Dead Movie Soundtrack, aka 10/20/74. Figured I needed a good 80 minute block of music to do some work and might as well go with an anniversary show.
I had to listen to the 6/16 C>R that Arch is so fond of. That gets unhinged fer sure. But I write because during the tuning before Eyes, you can hear some guy in the crowd yelling ‘Me and My Uncle’. The Eyes must have disappointed him. My mind reels T the notion of being at a GD show in Seventy Four and the best request you can come up with is, well, Chopsticks.
Great tune. I'm also super fond of "West L.A. Fadeaway." Abusing a fairy tale forest metaphor, if one ventures out into the later Grateful Dead woods, while you won't encounter as many magical mushrooms, there is still tremendous lushness and beauty if you know where to look.
At Medline warehouse near Atlanta. Headibg to Manhattan (!!!) next. Lots of great shows from both to pick....
Great reccomendations from you and everyone else who responded. Thanks guys. I now have an official "early 80s Deadlist" to occupy my weekend. I think I'll try and listen to the recommendations in chronological order. Although I almost always get sidetracked by some other show at some point whenever I try to do one of these Deadicated listening exercises of multiple shows from a given period. Usually by some other recommendation from you fine folks in this very thread! I'd like to explore a bit more about what US Blues referred to above as this era being the Dead's "arena rock era" (or about as close to arena rock as the Dead would ever get). What do you guys think was the biggest motivating factor that brought about this stylistic change in their approach to playing during this time? Was it simply the natural evolution of a band that's been playing songs together for 15+ years? Or perhaps the venues being played dictated a change in approach to the music (i.e. no more small theater gigs with more intimate crowds, resulting in a 'louder' and more powerful delivery of songs)? Or something else altogether? Multiple band members have been quoted both in the past and present as feeling that the "group mind" so important to the delivery of GD music was very much not in play during the majority of this era. I recall specifically Phil saying that Garcia was simply not listening to other band members onstage on many occasions. Wasn't this actually put into a letter given to Jerry during the aforementioned Europe 81 tour? (I think maybe the Spring 81 European tour, which always confused me as this tour usually gets high recommendations, including in this very thread in response to my prior question regarding hot tours/shows during this era.) I also recall a comment Jerry supposedly made to Bill's son in 1986 during the first 'comeback' gigs post-coma where Jerry reportedly said to him something along the lines of "wow I forgot what a great band this is, I haven't actually listened to these guys play in years." If true I thought that was quite a revealing statement about Jerry's mindset during the 81-85 era. To me, based on what I've heard so far from this era, the performances are much more hit and miss. Especially with Jerry. However, the magic still shines through on MANY performances from this period. On many of these shows, it certainly sounds to me like a band that is in fact VERY in tune with each other onstage. Sorry for the rambling...
Spring 82 is pretty killer for the most part. Search for some of my recwnt reviews i did of the tour about a month ago.
20 October 1974- Winterland. The Last One. The first set was not filmed as the film crew had used up all the raw film stock in the Bay Area. A darn shame, since this set is tremendous. Highlights include Tennessee Jed, Brokedown Palace, & Cina Cat Sunflower > I Know You Rider. The latter deserves special mention, the band is off the chain, Jerry's solo in the transition spirals around the spinning disco ball on the Winterland's ceiling, spreading unimaginable joy through all the known Universes, in all directions and times. And naturally this show, which at the time was the last GD show, is tinged with a hint of melancholy that tugs the heartstrings. Go. Listen. The whole thing. PS- Keith's playing during this run is arguably his finest with the GD, better than E72.
Dave's Picks Vol. 22 • Felt Forum, New York, NY • 12/7/71 Like quite a few other folks have written here, I wasn't too stoked on this one the first time I played it as it was missing all the kind of stuff I thought I needed. However, I've been completely converted. This is going to be my third top to bottom listen of the 12/7/71 show (along with lots of times playing bits and pieces) and each time I've liked it more and more.
It was the bonus disc's big Other One jam that didn't do it for me the first time around. I really wanted to like it but it didn't grab me like the 10/26/71, 11/14/71, and 12/1/71 versions among others. There was a lack of focus maybe? I definitely need to revisit. Reading those of you who are finding new things upon your follow up listens has inspired me to listen again later today to mine further gold that I may have overlooked.
Thinking about the transition to more "straight rock" or whatever. Partly this may be because musically Jerry wasn't that far out. Phil was into the avant garde stuff, and Jerry was for a while in the 60s but by the early 70s he was suggesting they could maybe be a "normal band." And from what I can tell his listening in the 70s and 80s, to the extent we know anything about it and based on what we can glean from what JGB covered and how they played, was of stuff that, great as it was, was musically more conservative than the stuff you'd expect Phil to have around the house.
Right now I'm dipping back to the October of 40 years ago, when I was just a stumbling 14 month old. More specifically to Hofheinz Pavilion down in ol' Houston, on the 14th. At this very minute I'm seguing into the "Drums" after a surprisingly wide-ranging "PITB" that managed to be spacey and super melodic at various times. If nothing else, it's helping to wash out the taste of that terrible baseball game last night.
As I was listening to that 8-5-74 China Cat, I was thinking during the jam 'I don't know how anyone can even propose a post-hiatus version' in the 'best of conversation.' I'm checking yours out now, though Weir's annoying tone and tendency to pause his riff and do one of his patented wang bar sustain moves is almost causing me to call off the whole thing! Having finished, I'd say it's good, but it's definitely orders of magnitude different from 73-74 versions. It's kind of like Sugaree in reverse. I've come to realize that what the band says about their own performances doesn't jibe with what everyone else is hearing at least 50% of the time.
Yeah, this is something that both fascinates and frustrates me about the overall musical trajectory of the Dead, particularly in the post-hiatus years. You would think that for a band playing together continually for that long, that sort of improvisational "group mind" that's regularly on display during their early years would only have developed more. But IMO the last 15 years of the Dead's existence is their more conservative, less exploratory era. Yes, there are moments (that's part of the magic of the Dead, you never knew when that spark would be lit) but for the most part I tend to find those arena years less interesting. There's probably a lot that went in to this, drugs and health issues probably being the paramount thing. But they also made a conscious decision to pick a setlist formula that basically remained unchanged the over last 15 years. Maybe they thought this made for a better show for these huge venues, something more consistent and reliable as a general crowd pleaser. Maybe they were individually just less engaged with the Grateful Dead thing as a creative force (the drop off of new material and studio records would seem to bear this out) but had to keep it going for other reasons. I think a lot of this is covered in the documentary. While there's plenty of music to enjoy from 80-95, to me the Dead's music could have continued to grow in more interesting ways than it ended up doing. Just my opinion, I can understand why some people even prefer this era.
The funny thing is that when Phil had the chance to put together live albums (Steal Your Face, Without A Net) he chose mostly first set songs.
That's what has really confused me with Phil - his clear musical sensibilities and statements about the band say one thing, but his choices when it comes to official releases (Steal Your Face, Without A Net, Editorial decisions on early Dick's Picks, and Phil Zone) say another.
I'll let my avatar sort out the math for you. Well, now time passed and now it seems Everybody’s having them dreams Everybody sees themselves Walkin’ around with no one else Half of the people can be part right all of the time Some of the people can be all right part of the time But all of the people can’t be all right all of the time I think Abraham Lincoln said that “I’ll let you be in my dreams if I can be in yours” I said that Bob Dylan - Talkin' World War Three Blues
