That must have been in reference to Steal Your Face not to the Grateful Dead Movie Soundtrack which didn’t come out until the mid ‘00s. SYF was a notoriously bad sounding release - partially because of the quality of the recordings and partially because of the mixing choices Phil and Bear made. The recent reissue of SYF is much improved but even so, it’s not going to win any prizes for sound quality
I will admit, having listened to more Dead shows since last I listened to the TGDMS, and having offered positive comments about it before, the snare drums on TGDMS do sometimes sound like they're being played to an empty hall, but I do like Jerry's guitar, and I like Donna's overdubbed vocals. In a way, it's like if they decided (and was allowed) to release a ~20LP set in 1976 documenting the October '74 run, what would it be like? Probably something like TGDMS. Full shows would be best, of course.
Now listening to 12/4/71[Felt Forum NYC]on TIGDH on SiriusXM's Grateful Dead channel via the webstream now playing Truckin'.
I don't think The Soundtrack sounds any good either. I would love to see the whole October 74 Winterland run get some attention.
The Grateful Dead Movie DVD had a bonus feature about Jeffrey Norman remixing the tapes. It's been a while since I saw it but I remember it was evident there were problems with the original engineering.
Any time I come across a Dead related gif I've never seen before, it's something to do with Bobby and a microphone. When's this from?
• 43 S. Fifth St., San Jose: One of the world’s most historic rock-‘n’-roll sites. On Dec. 4, 1965, the Grateful Dead played its first gig here at an “acid test” organized by author and LSD advocate Ken Kesey. The Rolling Stones played a concert at San Jose Civic Auditorium earlier in the evening, and Kesey’s followers handed out fliers inviting concertgoers to the DayGlo party at a large house near San Jose State University. A band from Palo Alto formerly known as the Warlocks provided the entertainment after changing its name to the Grateful Dead a few weeks earlier. The entire episode is documented in Tom Wolfe’s book “The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test.” In former Rolling Stone Bill Wyman’s autobiography, he writes that Keith Richards and Brian Jones also dropped by the party. Later, the place served as local headquarters for the radical Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). The house was moved when San Jose’s new City Hall was constructed. • 635 St. James St., San Jose: New location of the acid test/Grateful Dead house. The San Jose Redevelopment Agency moved it here when a buyer offered to renovate the 1895 Victorian if it were moved to this lot. The interior renovation is under way, but the exterior has been redone spectacularly. Bill Ekern, the agency’s director of project management, had no clue of the structure’s past while he supervised the move. “I’ll have to go back and read Wolfe’s book,” Ekern said. “We made a decision to save as many of the homes on the City Hall site as possible, and I’m glad.” Another former resident of the house, Ron Cook, says it later was the home for his band, Throckmorton. Cook and his pals filled the basement walls with sand to create a soundproof rehearsal space, and it became a virtual open house for many musicians, including Moby Grape member Skip Spence, the future Doobie Brothers and Stevie Nicks, then a San Jose State student.
Discussing Winterland October 74… I’m thinking the big box for 2024 should just be called “1974”. Give us the whole freaking (amazing) year!
Happy 51st to me. Felt forum 12/5/71. A fun night with the new riders. And the only version of muddy water.
They used my equipment, but I didn't do [the recording]. They thought I didn't want to do it because I had just had my kid... they took all my gear and Billy Wolfe [sic], who had been on the Rowan Brothers project with which Jerry was involved, recorded it, and it came out very strange. The tapes were pretty awful. He used a lot of audience in t.he mix; I don't know why or how he recorded so much leakage -Betty Cantor-Jackson, Taping Compendium Vol 2 "[Steal Your Face] was made from totally screwed-up master tapes recorded on a 24-track machine, except that the nitwit who was given the job to put Donna Godchaux's vocal on an onboard Nagra along with a SMPTE sync track driven so hard [saturated] that the vocal was wiped by the leakage. At the same time, on the 24-track, there was one channel used for an "audience/ambience" mike! Believe it or not, this continued for the whole run of shows. Weir's guitar mike fell over and the signal was lost during the first set of the first night, and this, too, continued -- not only through the second set, but through the entire run!" -Bear, Taping Compendium Vol 1 Some other collected details here: deadthinking: Oct 1974 Winterland revisited
It's still amazes me how Bobby, despite his age then, still looks like a young man there, and Jerry looks like he could be his grandpa.
The main issue I have with the Soundtrack is too much reverb on everything, especially the big boomey drums. Some less significant issues (but things I would fix with a remix nonetheless): the crowd noise is a bit much; and Jerry & Phil need to be turned up a bit. I could imagine a complete redo costing a lot more money to engineer than a standard multi-track release, based on what I've read about the condition of the masters to start with. A re-release could conceivably mean starting from a point earlier in the engineering process than the finished product that we already have. If they were to put any more work into it for re-release, I would say, do all five shows and throw me the higher price tag. Call it a special edition or something - and for f***sake include a bonus disc to give it some pop (not Seastones ). Maybe include stuff from Chicago '74 and get that last 1974 Dark Star pressed.
While that would be great, the currently released version of the Soundtrack required re-running Jerry's guitar through an amplifier and re-recording it among whatever other magic (bordering on necromancy) that Norman had to perform to get it to sound as good as it does. Going back to square one and doing that kind of treatment that for all 5 shows and probably other players as well... that's a tall order.
I don’t know where I got this impression, but I had the idea that TGDMS sounded the way that it did because it had to sound that way. Something about the way it was recorded. I’m not sure if that’s true, or if I’m misremembering/misunderstanding something. I don’t know if better technology changes the possibilities or not. It does seem like some people think it sounds great, and others think it sounds awful. I picked up a used copy of it a while back, but I’ve not heard it yet (which is insane, I know). ‘73-‘74 is my favorite era of the Dead, so maybe over Christmas break, I’ll crack into it! On a reissue/expansion of the run as complete shows… I’m generally sort of unenthusiastic about them doing a ton of revisiting previously released stuff, like complete versions of Dick’s Picks, etc. But I’d probably be onboard for any ‘74 run they wanted to put out. I’m not hardline on not revisiting… but I’d hate for that to become too much of a focus when there are more unreleased shows in the vault that are worth hearing. That being said, I’d happily sign up for reissues of any of the box sets I missed out on, but again, that’s for selfish reasons. If I had it all, I’d hate for reissues to become a major focus, if it took away from the new releases. But we all have our favorites, and I’d certainly cave for a Dick’s 14 expansion, so include all three complete shows from that Boston run. I’d cave for a multitrack version of Englishtown. Or for this Movie Soundtrack run. I’m weak!