I would put 6/22/73 and 5/21/74 ahead of 5/19/74 as far as being "famous," but that's just my opinion.
Having listened to this box a great deal since last fall, I have decide those are my three favourite shows from the box. Vancouver '73 is a monster and is my favourite, but that Seattle '74 show is the most underrated thing here. Having never heard any of these shows before I decided for kicks I'd listen to it originally in reverse chronological order. That Seattle show blew me completely away and set the tone so nicely. Judging by the 3cd sampler I thought the Seattle '74 show must be considered the weakest of the six, so I couldn't wait for what was to come after that. After the other four shows, I was surprised Seattle '74 was still my top show, but the Vancouver '73 show was just on another level. As for the vinyl, yes I think Portland was chosen because it was the "famous" show so to speak and it is a pretty solid show, in addition it is a "Wall of Sound" show which gives it a little more cachet than the '73 shows. Dave L said it was between Portland '74 and Vancouver '73 for the vinyl. Beyond just the fame factor of Portland, it probably won out because the Vancouver show is one hell of a long show, it would probably need at least another vinyl record in the box if not two, and that would make the price point which is already fairly high just that much more outside of most peoples reach...as usual in the world I think fame and economics trumped artistic quality.
Received mine this weekend. I have yet to listen but 2 discs scuffed up badly and a third disc has 2 large smudges that won’t rub out. What happened to quality control?
Re: Vinyl - Without getting into the quality of the sonics, I gotta believe using such a limited storage medium in terms of available duration (i.e. 20+ minutes) for each side is much more difficult, and necessitates multiple breaks/interruptions in the music flow that are not a concern for CD, mp3/flac and other data storage mediums. For a Grateful Dead show, that would many annoying breaks in the music given their propensity to play at great lengths.
I’d have to look back in this thread to remember the details but mine had several damaged discs that I got replacements for. My box lid was a bit damaged too; I was told it would also be replaced but that never happened. I didn’t press that because it wasn’t that important.
Reading back through all 170 pages of this thread you'll find a number of people who had similar trouble with discs in this set. At that time Rhino was replacing them, hopefully for you that is still the case. Email to [email protected] worked for me in getting replacements for 4 discs in my set that had scratches.
Not really any issues of "cutting the jam" when flipping sides that I can see other than a possible fade-out/in between "jam" and NFA. Yeah, a lot of standing up and flipping sides, but the jams getting cut thing is not much different than with the CD releases. The Grateful Dead - Portland Memorial Coliseum 5/19/1974 G1 Weather Report Suite 18:24 H1 Wharf Rat 11:01 H2 Big River 5:11 I1 Peggy-O 6:38 J1 Truckin'> 10:43 J2 Jam 10:07 K1 Not Fade Away> 7:03 K2 Goin' Down The Road Feeling Bad 6:58 K3 One More Saturday Night 4:50 L1 U.S. Blues 6:10
With all those sides approx. 20 minutes or less the maximum sonic quality of vinyl is possible too without compression or bass roll off utilized as well.
Say what you will but retail CDs (with very very rare exceptions) are the sound quality Gold Standard.
Just started listening to this box all the way through again. The Bird Song on the first show is perfect for this heatwave we are having
