I keep returning to the 10-show run from summer '71. San Diego 8/7 on DiP 35 for some reason suddenly commanded my repeat attention over the weekend. I just hope Ron Bowman was able to get the message from the folks at the front door.
Brent is seriously underrated as a vocalist. I love his singing. I absolutely love this song. Classic performance, too!
Just listening to this Garcia interview from 84, among other topics he talks about how in 'Space' in that period they would give themselves a theme like 'Reagan in China,' or ' The Bongo Straits 1940' Probably meaningless to the listener out of context, but I guess I'll see if I can pick up on it. Pretty interesting to hear him expound on a variety of things, even in what's regarded as one of the low points in his health.
Brent often gets dissed for having more tunes on Built To Last than either Bobby or Jerry. Here's the thing- neither Jerry or Bobby could tap their creative juices to come up with new tunes, whereas Brent did. In much the same way that Keith & Donna get blamed for Jerry's decline due to opiates, or Phil's general disinterest in the late 70's, the keyboard player takes the heat for more than their share of the stilted dynamics of the band. Not that they were without fault, but it is common in groups for one person to be blamed for all the problems.
Well, Trey did fail to deliver, and in time they hired John Mayer instead of Justin Bieber, so there's that. And whatever happened to Gooney Birds for 2 bucks a pop?
I can understand the criticism regarding some of his songs, but can't understand people who hate his singing and playing. His keyboard playing and vocals were driving forces of Dead in 80s. He is like Pigpen, Donna and Keith combined into one total package, IMO. If he only played more natural sounding keyboards, I might have liked him even more than Keith...
He carried the entire band in Chicago, and would have in Santa Clara as well but he was holding back waiting for Bob to take charge. The Attics encore would have been an embarrassing failure if not for Trey picking up the slack and having vocal charts made since the band members wouldn’t actually rehearse. I don’t know how you can listen to 7/3/15 and honestly say that Trey, in any way, failed to deliver. Really the whole Chicago run was excellent but that was because Trey stepped in and drove the band. Hornsby was unprepared and completely superfluous to the entire affair.
I need to retract a few degrees some statements I made regarding the sound quality of this set. Listening to it HDCD proper, this particular shows reveals itself to have significant depth in soundstage, shimmering highs (full bodied sounding cymbals), and dynamic low end. A beautiful sounding recording.
6-20-83? Also, did we talk about 5-25-74 in the 'best China Cat>I Know You Rider' discussion? Probably we ought to.
My goodness. Come for the Playing in the Band and Here Comes Sunshine. Stay for the It Must Have Been the Roses. Amazing.
I wondered looking at it why they would use a picture of the GD that was 8 years old, (and included Pig who had just died a few months previously.)
Favorite Alligator. The way Bob’s vocals are off in the distance as he sings “Alligator, alligator come knocking around my door door door door” is chilling and hair standing stuff to me. I’d say around 22 years ago at an overnight at a friends house and sufficient amounts of mind alteration with this CD playing continuously on repeat while I laid in a dark room and too incapacitated to actually turn the stereo off, I subjected myself to probably what amounted to 15 continuous listens. I’ve been fubar’d ever since.
I personally, IMHO, to my ears, don't find Trey's playing to be all that interesting. Even in the context of music that is inextricably twined around my DNA. And from the sound of things FTW was doomed to failure before it happened, so there's that. But it was the first major event at the new stadium in Santa Clara, even before the Broncos won SB 50 in that same venue.
To be honest, I find Space to be pretty meaningless to the listener who wasn't in the room in pretty much all situations. One of those "you had to be there" things, AFAIC.
I am a Trey/Phish fan and based on the July 4 FTW show I saw it seemed like he wasn't taking charge of the jams as Jerry would have. Maybe there were band politics reasons for that, not sure.
Kidd Candelario hitting his stride. He gets overlooked with all the love heaped on Betty and Bear, but his '73 and '74 recordings are gorgeous. Jeff Norman said that if he had been more disciplined, he could have been a great studio engineer.
Yeah, this one here is definitely fake. Avalon Ballroom September 1966? Come on, Skull & Roses wouldn't even be released for another five years!
not fake; this was the first appearance of the Skull & Roses theme associated with the Grateful Dead even though it would not be used for an album cover until 1971. Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam - Wikipedia
