Nah, 8-27-72 is only like 31 minutes. 5-4-72, 5-25-72, 9-10-72, 9-21-72, 9-24-72, 11-13-72, 12-11-72, 3-28-73, plus the aforementioned are all longer. There are quite a few others that are also 31 minutes.
Yeah I see. I was only thinking of the ones that aren't split-up though. The one on 5/11/72 has Drums in between, for instance.
Right, that's a tracking decision that's created controversy, I believe there's a corollary floating around for which 5-11 is the case study. Personally I'd put something like 4-1-91, which goes Dark Star>Drums>Space>Dark Star over the course of ~34 minutes into the same category of '30 minute + Dark Stars,' but that's not conventionally counted, whereas 5-11-72's Dark Star>Drums>Dark Star counts as a contiguous Dark Star because Dark Star in that era was basically a variety of jams (including at times other passages featuring a single non-percussion instrument) and once it starts it should be assumed to be ongoing until something else definitive starts, etc. You're getting into the hard core Dead nerd discussions now though.
What do you use to decode them? Xact misses some sometimes, I've never had something not convert with XLD though... ...except SHN files, half the time it won't do those at all
dark star document This hasn’t been updated in some time but I always found it a handy reference as I collected them all to compare for myself
McNally...he kind of ran out of steam, if he was going to be exhaustive in the beginning, he zoomed through post-75...and he didn't have anything very insightful to say about the music itself after about 1969. Still, one of the better efforts over all.
A couple times, I've had an error message just because the file name had a dash or period in it. Like, "Dead-Avalon" wouldn't convert, but "Dead Avalon" was fine. So, check for any extraneous punctuation. Otherwise, I don't know.
I taped my first GD show Nov 1985 with borrowed equipment, then taped every show I attended (about 70) from April 1987 (Irvine Meadows) until May 1995 (Las Vegas Silver Bowl). I went through several iterations of gear, but from '92 to '95 ended up just patching my Sony DAT into a friend's AKG shotgun rig for best results. Doing Dead shows got me in to taping, but I taped tons of other acts as well, a few open, but mostly "stealth" (all gear/mic hidden on body as opposed to mics up on a stand openly at a Dead show.) I continue to be a taper today, though very few shows anymore, mostly just my own performances.
I haven't looked at McNally's book in a while but I remember thinking he seemed to believe that after Pigpen died the Grateful Dead joylessly trudged through the rest of its life. Maybe true to a degree, but kind of a bummer idea.
I don't think that's entirely accurate, for one thing the "interludes" from the 80s were often pretty gung ho...
Anyone know what guitar Jerry was playing on the 2 from the Vault shows (Shrine Auditorium 8/23,24 '68)? That tone
Listening to 2/11/69 right now while watching football. So far great show. I've heard that Hey Jude is "interesting".
McNally worked with the Dead from 1984 onwards, and he'd started researching the book for several years before that. So he knew the band in their last decade as well as anybody. He certainly does zoom through that period in a hurry in the book, maybe because he felt he had to leave out a lot of the grim details of the joyless trudge! Or maybe the publisher was demanding a shorter book and McNally just decided to chop up the second half. But I think he was far more interested in their early years and how the Dead related to '60s culture...maybe he wasn't so excited about writing about the years he witnessed. For a more balanced bio that pays attention to the music throughout, Blair Jackson's Garcia book is the one to read.
Second show from the PNW box — Portland 24/06/73 . . . Not as good as Vancouver from two days earlier, nowhere near, in fact. It's a solid, if unspectacular show. Good, not great. I really love the fast They Love Each Other and China Cat Sunflower > I Know You Rider (is always good) from the 1st set. The 2nd set with that superb Dark Star > Eyes Of The World > China Doll is the undisputed highlight of the show though. Overall the show seems to lack something — it seems quite pedestrian, I don't know. What are everyone else's thoughts? Anyway, onto the next show — Seattle 26/03/73.
