Grateful Dead 2018 Peggy-O Funiculi Funicula Four Tournament

It is GDAA tournament time again and this year it will be our pretty Peggy-O’s looking to cut down the nets. Why Peggy-O? Well it bubbled up as a suggestion in the Great-Full Thread, but the more I think about it, the more Peggy-O makes perfect sense to me as a tournament topic. In many ways it may be the truest of empty vessels; each of which wearing their simpler traditional arrangement and lyric, willing to demure behind the alpha songs, waiting to be filled with the emotions of its key player and his supporting cast. To me they can be made or broken with the slightest shade of nuance; the just-right tempo, nailing the emotion of the lyric, the lead guitarist’s lines rising elegantly on the occasion from a march to a soar and they can be real magic; somebody on stage has a head cold and you can hear it like there never was a place to hide in that song.

As for the mechanics of our tournament, we will go through each round, in any order you choose, with referees listening to each game and using any criteria they choose to determine a winner. Please post the winner here in this thread; it would help with tracking scores down to have a keyword to search, so if you could please say “Final Score” somewhere in each post announcing your result. Like our past tournament, we will tally up the results of each round and the best Peggy-O’s will ride on. Of course it is always fun to hear everyone's color commentary on the action, so let your inner Dickie V out.

We don’t have a set time structure for this a) because we don’t want to rush it, b) from our past tournament you do have to feel out the pace that works best and c) this will not turn into work. We will likely need to balance this with the fact that we can procrastinate with the best of them, so we may set some initial soft target dates, and then set a final deadline for a given round when the procrastinators needs some direction. Given we are dealing with 5-8 minute songs and not full shows, this should go a little easier; but still for our first round we have 10 games, so maybe thinking about it as 2-3 games a week max, we are talking maybe the 3rd-4th week in April as a soft target for the round with maybe a week or so added for a last mop up of scores. As always, input is important; it’s everyone’s tournament, I just tally up the results.

Finally, I suspect everyone here knows the drill for finding these songs, but I would certainly point out if anyone is new to the GOGD and wants to participate in this fun and easy tournament, post here or PM me and we will get you sorted out as all of these participants are easily streamable.

So here we go, tipoff time, and thanks to @ianuaditis for helping this get to just exactly perfect.

 

Final score / game 1: 3/21/81 Rainbow.
4/1/91 might have a better solo, but the team playing gives the nod to the Rainbow for me. Some nice Bobby/Brent work in the background, and the '91 sounds like too many players on the court at times imo.

 

Thank you for putting this together; really looking forward to participating in my first tournament.

As an aside my wife discovered and subsequently developed quite a fondness for Peggy-O via 5/5/77 when the GSTL box was in heavy rotation last year. Since then she always perks up when one comes on, and when I mentioned the concept of this tournament a while back she got interested in hearing all the versions. Her criteria is largely based on the emotion and expressiveness in Jerry’s vocals (which is an important aspect no doubt) but we’ll be doing a household version of this bracket as well.

 

Her vote counts here if you want to be her proxy and pass along her results.

 

Absolutely.

This contest will most likely come down to the guitar solos, it would be great to have someone concentrating on vocals!

 

It will be interesting to see if the number of solos in each rendition impacts the results.

 

Excellent job putting this together. I agree with your top four seeds completely and having just gone through contest #1, I found them to be just about a dead heat and I see they are 16 and 17-seeds.

Final score / game 1: 4/1/91 Rainbow. Two things made this one edge out the '81 show: 1) Jerry's inventive choices through the turnarounds at the end of the form during his solo helped to make it feel a bit like one long solo as opposed to several passes through the same form; and 2) I'm a sucker for Phil's Smith bass tone.

 

Sounds like fun - the UNLV Peggy-O should be 6/26/94 (I'm checking my sources before I get started).

 

Thanks for catching that. If you find any other errors let me know and I will ask a Gort to replace the brackets with a fixed version.

 

Philly should be 10/18/89. Everything else looked fine to me.

 

If buffalo doesn't win I'll have to post a stern talking-to.

 

Great job! Did you intentionally pair different eras against each other? Just wondering...

 

OK, 3/21/81 v. 4/1/91. Both nice versions, neither spectacular. Very nice singing on both versions, no major lyrical flubs (little stuff, of course). 3/21 is at a tempo I preferred at least initially, 4/1 is a little quick. Brent is to tinkly-winkly on 3/21, although it's not horrible, and I can even feel a little nostalgic love for the sound. The solo (3:23-5:25) starts out very promisingly with a little distortion balancing out a lightness of touch. It ends a bit anti-climactically with Bob getting a little too mixed into Jerry's range the last time through, and Jerry seeming to hold back a little, perhaps as a result.

4/1 again seems a little too quick at first, and there is a lot of pianer. Jerry is further up in the mix, and his rhythm playing is nicely choppy and emphatic--in fact, throughout his playing seems on the verge between playfully deft and perfunctory. The solo (2:30--4:25) is served well by the tempo, which gives it a breezy feel; some nice fills by Hornsby around 3:38-ish which don't step on Jerry too much. This one finishes a little stronger.

I give a slight edge t

 

Dude.

 

I admit it hurts me somewhat seeing 10/1/77's competition.

 

Oops, to 4/1/91. Sorry, first I accidentally closed the window, then my power went out. I thought I'd pasted everything back in, but it was an earlier (and obviously incomplete) version.

The solo is better on 4/1, the tempo on 3/21 is initially more pleasing but the brisker tempo works well on the solo break which puts 4/1 over the top, by a little. Just going by solos it has to be 4/1. I'm not saying I'm just going by solos, but the other differences aren't enough to make the difference back up.

 

Some seedings made sense at the top and bottom and that made up 60% of it probably , the other 40% seemed to get jumbled together, and in the end for that portion there was indeed a little bit of spreading out eras involved-- but that was more to avoid things being jumbled up rather than pitting specific eras against each other. It was a weird bracket for seeding as well given the odd number; I am still not so sure it makes as much sense as the seeding for a flat out 16 or 32 team bracket.

 

Spoken like a true fan! That one turned out the toughest bracket I think so I feel for you.

 

Thanks for the help I asked a Gort to replace with a corrected bracket.

 

I hope this isn't an intrusion, as people have tournament versions to listen to, but for those who don't know, the tune is an Americanized version of the Scots ballad "the Bonnie Lass o Fyvie," who of course is named Peggy-O.

There are many versions of it, by the Corries, Irish Rovers, etc. This unaccompanied version by Jean Redpath is one of my favorites (besides Garcia's of course!)

 

Then there's this one:

 

I've been looking forward to this contest for a while. I'm on record as being very much a "moments" listener and that is not at all inaccurate. I've also stated my thoughts about 1977, but note well that my take is that first set tunes benefited from their new approach in '77 and '78. Peggy-O transcends all of this; it's the perfect object for a tourney.

Portland '74 stands no chance against Starlight '82. For round 2, Final Score is Starlight '82 over Portland '74.

 

Agreed on all counts: Final score/game 1: 3/21/81 Rainbow

 

Game 1 Summary:

3/21/1981: Charlie Miller SBD (compared with Streeter-Miller-Clugston AUD)
4/1/91: Charlie Miller SBD

In assessing these, I am looking at three main factors: Jerry's vocals, the guitar solo, and general band performance.

Vocals: For 3/21/81, Jerry's vocals sound great and there are no noticeable flubs. Jerry's voice on 4/1/91 sounds much older (more than 10 years so honestly), which is a both helps and hurts in this competition with Peggy-O. It lends a bit more character, but does sound a little more rough around the edges. I prefer the vocals on 3/21 by a decent margin.

Guitar Solo: Around 3:22 to 5:24, the solo on 3/21/81 kicks in. Like Brent's keys, this is an almost delicate solo, hitting some nice notes but nothing too smoking. Really fits the feel of the song and I like the tone a lot. The solo comes earlier in 4/1 at 2:28 and last until about 4:20, it is a bit more interactive with Bruce's keys than the 3/21 one is with Brent. It has a nice feel to it, as @bzfgt said, it sounds breezy. This one is super close, but a slight edge to 4/1.

Band: For 3/21/81, Brent's work is notable - delicate but adds character to the song. Bobby adds some nice touches here as well. The rest of the band keeps things at a nice pace. On 4/1/91, Bruce's piano is quite prominent and this song really comes off as a duet between Jerry and Bruce - I don't really get much distinguishing from the rest of the boys on this one other than the occasional flourish that breaks through the clutter. 3/21 feels like more of a band effort and 4/1 feels too cluttered. 3/21 wins this category by a decent margin.

Verdict: Got to go with 3/21/81 here. While 4/1's solo was a hair better, everything else on 3/21 was significantly better and more well-rounded. These were fairly well seeded though.

 

Game 1 Final: 4/1/91