Robert Hunter: Mississippi Nights, St. Louis- 2/16/80 The night following the crazy Blizzard show at KU we followed the plows to St. Louis and where greeted with this fine show by the master of tales. Enjoying his energy...
Pulling into the home stretch. So do you have like a ritual to get through this porch crusher? Like do you fire up a new show and a fresh jammer at a certain time? You’ve probably explained this earlier but I missed it. Was off the board for quite awhile.
Started off just trying to make it through Boxzilla chronologically. When I was on 1975 I decided to add another show each year ... whatever fancied my boat. That was sidetracked a little by the arrival (finally) of June 1976 and Miles Complete OTC sessions. And of course I don’t listen to all Dead all the time.
Hey all, when did the Weir twang sound start? You can hear it on Row Jimmy on the first View From The Vault. It's like a metallic low twang-howl. Man, thank God for Jerry because stuff Weir does just drives me up the wall sometimes. I never listen to the Dead and say "Ugh, I don't like that sound Jerry's making." I never listen and say, "WTF is Lesh doing?" Or at least not in a bad way. Even Jerry's midi sounds--they don't bother me, I don't find them distracting. But sometimes I think Bob should have never stopped taking intensive and compulsory guitar lessons. And there's that scene in, I think, Festival Express, where Phil is all over Bob's case about how to sing harmonies. I'm not saying Phil can't be command and control because he totally can be, but I actually sympathize with him having to deal with Weir. I'm not saying Bob isn't talented, of course he is. But he's probably also one of the luckiest MFs in rock history. Consumate second banana, Bob Weir. Edit: And then Jerry's midi solo on Mexicali negates a substantial portion of my thesis. I may not be in a 1990 mood. I'm having a tough first set.
of all the stadium shows I saw, that one probably had the best sound. I was down near the taper's section. The almost circular nature of that place was maybe unusual, and the sound just kind of swirled around inside (or did it just seem that way?). The Eyes was special. That super clear and bright video of the first set with the sun reflecting off of Weir's sunglasses.....and maybe the filler of Garcia's hands sliding up and down the neck on the 7/6/90 Standing On the Moon - the extreme closeups - probably two of my favorite pieces of GD video.
Another fine show from fall 1977. Excellent uptempo Jerry solo in Dire Wolf just to point out something. Lloyd Noble Center - University of Oklahoma 1977-10-11 Set 1 Help On The Way -> Slipknot! -> Franklin's Tower Jack Straw Peggy-O El Paso Sunrise Deal Let It Grow Set 2 Dancing In The Street Dire Wolf Estimated Prophet -> Eyes Of The World -> Drums -> Not Fade Away -> Wharf Rat -> Around And Around
A damn fine show indeed. Love the Hamza part! I don't think that anything has been released from late '78 between the October Winterland compilation and the NYE show. Surely there are something in the vault!? 11/24 probably. But Jerry's voice is gone so we'll maybe never see that one...
I've only heard the songs from this show on Dick's Picks #29 and Road Trips Vol. 1 No. 2: October '77 — great stuff, I should check out the whole show!
There is video of that show, not releasing this rare, archival footage is a crime. Donna & the Boys in late '78 is far more interesting than yet another stadium show from the late 80's or early 90's.
Bobby’s always had a bit of a jangle, so I can’t really say when the twang happened. I’ve had a couple friends get to listen to their in ear monitor mixes and it’s safe to say Bobby and Mickey aren’t hearing certain frequencies at all now. Their volumes are cranked. It’s part of Weir’s “buzzsaw” effect, in that he doesn’t hear it! Someone should be tuning his guitar and telling him to leave it alone. I make a cameo in that bonus footage from Cardinal Stadium. Just a crowd shot. What’s funny is we started out 5th row dead center and ended up 20-30 once the seats were stacked and everyone swarmed.
Speaking of video, was there video at the Wembley Stadium shows, Europe ‘90? I’ve always assumed so...cuz it was Wembley, but you don’t hear much about those shows.
Actually was able to finish 5/11/77 last night as well - got in a lot of listening yesterday somehow. Another really good show in this early May run, but I will say that I think I prefer the three shows immediately before this one. It's a little like splitting hairs though because they were all great listens. Highlight for me had to be the encore Brokedown Palace. And not to start another Donna debate, but is there a particular reason for why she sounds noticeably better in '77? Did something happen? As I've said before, I have no issues with her or her singing from any year/era, but it's apparent on every '77 show I've listened to recently that she sounds better. At any rate, on to 5/13/77 today!
The band desired for her to sound less honky-tonk Alabama and more smooth and breezy California. She obliged.
Listening to FOTD on this video, having this thought. If I could go back in time on a mission it would be to Summer 90 and Brent Mydland's hotel room on 7/26. "Brent!" I'd say. "Take it easy man. Have some water, have some weed. You realize that if you overdo it the band's gonna hire Bruce Hornsby, right? He plays the accordion man!" I'd like to think he'd put the pipe down.
Seastones and some of those '74 bass solos? Phil got a little weird with his tone in 91 too, the August Shoreline shows have some WTF moments.
There's probably a gear page somewhere that goes into it, and I don't know a ton of specifics, but my ear and eye can discern a lot. I'm not sure I'd call it a 'twang' really. Not to split hairs but I think of a twang as something like a jangly Telecaster Thinline clean through a Twin Reverb - country / chicken pickin' kind of stuff. Bob seems to have started a quest in earnest to seek out unoccupied frequencies and tones in the band's soundscape in 77 or so. You'll find a lot of extremely scooped out eq's. Like he put a high pass filter on at times. A lot of it is also in his technique, which is quite unique in terms of his strumming / picking attack. But much of that 90's tone is a continued evolution of his odd application of effects, compression, eq, and midi. He layered a lot of effects in the 80s and 90s - kind of a mirror to Jerry's highly customized tones on board Tiger and its successors. Like a guitar effects arms race. I think that kind of weird sustained digitized scream he gets in the 90s is a combo of the above, with a heavy emphasis on compression, dramatic eq, and midi. It's definitely not a sound that I find all that endearing, particularly when taken to extremes. All that said, I'm pretty sure he's just straight up deaf nowadays. The quest that started in the 70s to stand out from the rest of the instruments via treble has ended in the necessity to crank the treble and nothing else so he can even hear what he's playing.
I would bet the farm it was a reaction to the massive success of Fleetwood Mac. You can hear it in things like Sunrise and definitely Rain from Cats Under The Stars. Jerry wanted commercial success. He was swinging for the fences on Cats in particular and its commercial flopping I think is what led to him withdrawing from putting in a ton of effort in the studio forever after. Rain is transparently an attempt at a Fleetwood Mac Christine McVie style radio ballad. All of that I'm sure creeped into the band in the late 70s. And all that said, until the drugs and alcohol really started taking hold in 78 and the vocals started becoming really unhinged for her and the whole band really (don't ya let that DEEEEAAALLLL go down!), she sounded really good, sometimes even great, and added a lot to those 76 and 77 shows.
