Playing sequence from 10/20/74 one of the most undervalued sequences in all of Grateful Dead history. Great Wharf Rat within plus the refrain/re-emergence of the Playing theme is sublime.
Playing In The Band premiered at the Capitol Theater, Port Chester, NY, on 18 February, 1971. As it turned out this was the last show featuring Mickey Hart until 20 October 1974. Mickey was once again Playing In The Band, and Bobby had the wisdom to honor the moment. At the end of the second drum duet listen for Mickey asking Billy "Alligator?"
The best thing is when I care home from my little additional food shopping trip that my wife had put it on our little boom box we like to play tunes on in our apartment/condo. Who would have thunk it?!?!
Wow! 1/22/78's Tennessee Jed may be the best one I have ever heard, and that's saying a lot. I hate the song.
"Rene Descartes was a drunken old fart, I drink therefore I am." As you can see from my blurry avatar, I most likely have a fondness of sorts for him.
New on the Archive this week. The previous night to the link above had a sit-in with Jonathan Wilson, from Roger Waters' band. This is a full-blown version of Money with Wilson on vocals. The whole show is $. Joe Russo's Almost Dead Live at The Teragram Ballroom on 2017-11-09 : Free Download & Streaming : Internet Archive
Best one I’ve ever heard as well. First set is bonkers - the Jack Straw that follows is also amazing. All the tunes are played at a very high level of intensity. Fwiw I like Jed and always have - even when the Jerry solo and hopeful peak at tut bridge doesn’t peak.
I was just up in Novato earlier this afternoon, not far from Olompali State Park where they hung out in a commune/ranch setting at the time in '68-69 I think. Many of the photos in the booklet (the barn with the flag and the horseback riding shots among others) from that set and the complete 1969 FW come from there. These days, you can hike a long winding trail up from their old hangout in Olompali to the top of Mt. Burdell open space looking down on Novato on the other side, or trek up Burdell from the north Novato side. I've done both. Between that and nearby San Rafael with Phil's Terrapin Crossroads roadhouse, it's one of my favorite places in the Bay Area. Not the utmost in sheer unbridled beauty, but one of the most relaxing, pastoral, peaceful places you can imagine so close to the chaos of SF. I guess the GD's energy still pervades north Marin, and casts its glow on me. I've tried to match the few barns that still stand there with the photos from the FW 69 booklet, but somehow they don't seem to be identical. Maybe the one in the photos is gone now. Many of the old oak trees look like the one on the back of the Aoxamaxoa cover too, but not sure if it's at that location. There are so many oaks like that all over northern Cal. Giving a listen to DiP 19 at the moment, 10/1973, discs 2 and 3. One of my favorite 1973s. Latest obsession to be honest though has been collecting old Johnny Smith CDs from the 50s and 60s. Along with Philip Catherine, he's one of the better under-appreciated jazz guitarists IMO. Both have such pure, sweet, melodic tones while ripping out the complex fast riffs and jazz chordings.
The most unusual but also one of the worst (excepting Boreal) times I saw Garcia was in the mid 80s at the Dunsmuir House in Oakland. It's an old mansion in a beautiful setting in the woods with a big lawn where they stood and set up a few simple mics. That house was in one of the James Bond movies with Roger Moore once upon a time too. Garcia was doing an acoustic duet with John Kahn. He was in his very large body days then. We used to call him Bighouse Garcia, though affectionately. That day, he was wearing one of his deep red t-shirts and maybe a pair of shorts though I don't recall that, but I've never seen anyone look so pale. None of his nice Spanish side tan that day. His voice was just awful, and the wind screwed up that and the hardly amplified acoustic guitar and bass even worse. It was not a good performance, unfortunately. Between that and too many shows at the Kaiser that seemed formulaic around that time, it kept me running back to the 60s and 70s recordings for more serious listening.
Even though the added reverb is a bit heavy-handed, to put it mildly, I don't mind that and this sequence may be the best from this fine set. The intro to NFA may be as good as the Alexandra Palace version from the previous month. It's got more groovy swagger, if nothing else. And this isn't a pitch issue; I checked both on my trusty '67 Guild Starfire V and they are both at essentially the exact same pitch and the October 20 version clips along very quickly relative to the Palace version.
I think the barn is from Mickey’s ranch, also in Novato, which he bought shortly after the Olompali days and still owns if I’m not mistaken.
Adding Mickey adds energy and pace. I just listened to that sequence, the reverb is big in the recording, and may have been used to get the drums to sound right. Mickey essentially showed up at Winterland with his kit, the crew may have been lucky to find mics to run on his kit, and who knows how the drums were mixed for that set. I suspect we're fortunate to have such a fine recording, zits and all.
Well, there's much reverb on the whole release. Is there more on 10/20 than on the rest? I'd have to get back to you. But I need a 5/25/72 UJB Phil fix before I get to that...
I applaud your decision to get a 25 May 1972 fix, that'll fix most anything. There is a lot of reverb on those Winterland recordings, on both the 2 tracks and the multi's. There are older versions of the multi's in circulation (likely mixed by Healy) that confirm this. Norman likely used the reverb to hide other deficiencies, as I mentioned above, and possibly others besides. And if your system can resolve all the spatial information on the recordings it's like being at Winterland...
Well, according to some folks who have never heard it (they, actually; I have three in this domicile) but have larger balls and wallets than ears, it can't. According to me, it's proper. I know what concerts sound like. If you wouldn't mind, dear Mr. Blues, can you bin those from 2-track and those from multi-track on that release? Mucho obligato or something like that.
I love that trail and obviously Phil's place also. Disc 3 of DiP 19 is a long time favorite of mine, that set really cemented my love for the Dead. I have heard and have some Johnny Smith but have never heard of Phillip Catherine. Will check him out. Thanks.
Forgive me, but it's Philip; no biggie. He did a couple of albums with Larry Coryell in the latter '70s that really stand out.
Ah, no wonder I couldn't match the barn. Just always assumed it was at Olompali because it looks so similar there, but never had proof. Haven't read any of the books that might discuss that sort of thing. Funny though, a few barns standing at Olompali do look quite similar, and it drove me nuts that I couldn't match them exactly to the photo like I wanted to!
Check out Philip Catherine with Coryell and Stephane Grapelli on Young Django - a really hot version of Swing Guitars on that one (two others with Coryell are Twin House and Splendid), and several discs with Kenny Drew on piano, Neil Henning Orsted Pedersen on bass, and sometimes Chet Baker on trumpet. He also has some excellent classic jazz video duets on youtube with Bireli Lagrene. His solo albums can be hit and miss, and I tend to like when he's doing the classics over the fusion stuff he did in the 1970s or so.
That's not surprising. I haven't been paying strict attention at all times, especially to the first set. I'll have to go back and check whether he sings on all of them in between, but when I heard it last night my impression was he hadn't been. I'm listening to 11-19-66, now, which so far is the first recorded show where everything has absolutely clicked, in my books at least. It's neat to hear them refining their sound through 66. I know Garcia didn't pick up the Les Paul until sometime in mid-67, but he must have had a change of amps or something, because his tone here is much heavier than the surf-rock sound he has even back on 7-29/30-66 in Vancouver. Blues jams still rule over pure psychedelic madness, but there's a lot more jamming and segue in this set than was seen earlier in the year. Yes, that flag picture is in front of Mickey's barn. I don't know when he got the place up there exactly, but the GD stay at Olompali was in early 66. They moved there after moving out of the house Bear rented for them in LA, and stayed a couple of months or so. May, maybe into June. Then they moved to a former summer camp in Lagunitas that was nearby to Big Brother and Quicksilver.
This is a more a proof of concept with the pics, and also an opportunity to review it for anything wildly off base. If this passes muster than I'll get a separate thread started.
My only slight quibble is in bracket 1 you have 2 78s facing off to face off again with a 78 in the next round. I know there are a lot of 78s, so that may be unavoidable or even by design, just an observation in case it wasn't
