Your 5 favorite Grateful Dead Europe '72 shows

They played a decent "Dark Star" at Woodstock, but it couldn't have been easy to play a set with the guitarists getting electric shocks all through it.

 

Have any of you ripped the entire box set onto a server? I'm about to, and may have to re-do all the tags (to make each show appear as one big cd/album) so that I don't end up with 60-something cd's showing up in the Album view of my player. 22 is bad enough

 

I found the results of a Europe '72 tourney they had a couple of years ago on dead.net:

the Top 3 shows are: 4/26 - Jahrhundert Halle, Frankfurt, 5/10 - Concertgebouw, Amsterdam, and 5/26 - Strand Lyceum, London.

Interesting. 5/10 is not fairing as well here.

 

Wow, this is very hard... And I'm not sure there's another GD tour I'd have trouble picking my 5 favorites from!

 

I have the album titles tagged as "1972-MM-DD Venue - City, Country". For my music library, I usually have all of the album titles tagged as "Release Year - Album Title" so that for any given artist the albums are displayed in chronological order. In this case, I wanted the shows to pop up in my library under 1972 and not 2012.

 

I didn't realize until now just how many times they performed "Sing Me Back Home" on this tour - 8 times, starting with 5/3. I like the Munich version (5/18) the best, especially the solo.

I'm just starting set two of 5/24 - only two and a half shows to go!

 

I like both the Denmark shows (4/14, 17), the Paris shows (5/3, 4), the Luxembourg show (5/16) and all of the London shows at the end of the tour.

 

Stakladen is the most underrated one - that's for sure.

 

Was just listening to the Truckin - Other One sequence from that show a month ago. Weird version where they can't seem to agree on when to start Other One.

 

I think the 5-25-72 show is the most under-rated of this transformative tour. It was unavailable for so long and then when part of it surfaced it was very hissy. I was very happy to see this show released. The UJB>Wharf Rat>Dark Star>Sugar Mags is a unique sequence and sublimely played. As magical as anything on this tour.

 

bumping this as the 20% plus free shipping sale over Labor Day is on at dead.net

 

Excellent, thank you. Just grabbed 5/10 and 5/11.

 

I have 4/8, 4/26, 5/10 & 5/26. I want to take advantage of this sale. Definitely going to go with 5/11 any other suggestions?

 

4/24 has the slowest Playing in the Band of the tour and it turns out to morph into a swirling monster. Best Playin' of the tour in my book (but you've got to listen to it for how it grows; it really creeps up on you). The Dark Star--> Me and My Uncle--> Dark Star is excellent, with the second half of Dark Star containing some really unusual and lovely playing. A very strong show, but most of it is on Rockin' the Rhein if you already have that.

A couple of dark horses are Aarhus, 4/16 and Radio Luxembourg, 5/16. 5/16 is lighter on the jams and more of a "mainstream" show, but the playing is great and the recording is nice. 4/7 has some fine playing as well, especially Phil on China Cat (he's all over it) and Bobby and Pig have a good call and response at the end of NFA--> GDTRFB--> NFA. Really, you can't go wrong with any of the shows, although 4/11, 4/29 and 5/18 don't stand out to me.

 

While I agree with the leaders, I'd like to put in a shout for 29 April and 18 May as wonderful "lesser" (that is, shorter) shows. 29 April's Dark Star is exhaustingly good.

I'd add 29 April to my current favourites: 14 April, 24 April, 26 April and 3 May.

 

May 26th! Best "One More Saturday Night" ever due to Keith's inspired and almost over-the-top playing. Weir must have pulled him aside after the show and said, "Hey, don't do that again--you're making the rest of us look bad."

Such a stupendous tour, I could pull four more dates from it randomly out of a hat to round out my five and I'd be "correct."

 

On some tracks of the box set they used parts rerecorded in the studio, presumably because the original performances were erased from the multitrack. Keith's piano on "One More Saturday Night" from May 26 is one of those.

 

Bumping this hoping to get fresh input into the poll results.

 

I haven't heard that many yet but 72-04-24 is my favorite so far

 

This would be my order, based on the discs that best suck me into the proceedings more than anything.
April 16 – Stakladen, Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark
April 26 – Jahrhundert Halle, Frankfurt, West Germany
May 11 – Grote Zaal De Doelen, Rotterdam, Netherlands
April 24 – Rheinhalle, Düsseldorf, West Germany
May 3 – L'Olympia Theatre, Paris, France
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May 18 - Kongressall, Deutsches Museum, Munich, West Germany

 

My picks are constantly changing (and I haven't heard the entire tour), but if I had to choose today, I'd say:

4/14 Tivoli
4/17 Tivoli
4/26 Jarhundert Halle
5/10 Amsterdam
5/26 Strand Lyceum

Really, though, why pick 5? They are all fantastic.

 

I asked this in another thread and wasn't able to get a response, so I'll ask here...when ordering individual Europe '72 live shows from dead.net, what is the packaging like? Are there liner notes?

 

Each individual show is shrink-wrapped and has a triple or quadrupule-gatefold format. There are no booklets, but there is show-related text on two-three panels of the gatefold, plus some photos. The commentary is somewhat show-specific, but is also designed to highlight various band members - for example, one of the shows has commentary that focuses on Keith's contribution to the band, which was a nightly contribution, so the choice of which show to use may or may not be your personal favorite "Keith show" of the tour, if you see what I mean. Another commentary focused on the interaction of a member of the entourage with Eric Burdon's Mother at the show. The CDs have no poly liners and are housed in the cardboard gatefold format.

 

Thanks!