I’m now in my second day of listening/studying/absorbing 6/22/73 and think this could be one of my all-timers. Love the vibe of this show. Hands down my favorite Bird Song, which I’ve been listening to as a stand alone for about a year. Excellent transition from He’s Gone > Truckin’. Savoring every moment. Keith is glorious on this.
Upon recommendation,I listened to most of 12/31/72 on the Archive last night.There are some really strange high points in there.
No. Best I can say about that song is it's totally forgettable. At least that's a step up from the awful Wave to the Wind. I can only imagine how horrified Dead showgoers were in the '90s when this new stuff started showing up. "Yeah, Wave to the Wind! Way to Go Home! Easy Answers! This band's going places! Maybe we'll get a Samba tonight!" Yeah, it's the '80s interviews where he was really gung-ho about how great the Dead were doing, how they were just starting to get somewhere. In the '90s he had fewer interviews -- there was a downbeat one after Brent died -- but still. Like he told Rolling Stone in 1993 about how well the band was doing, "Everybody's feeling very good. There's a kind of healthy glow through the whole Grateful Dead scene. We're gearing up for the millennium." OK, Jerry.
Just saw an email announcing the DaP 39. Another Spectrum show. Wahoo IWT. I see I’m late to that party. The Help Slip sets a land speed record. With that aid of the Peruvian marching powder no doubt.
For an official release, Dozin' At The Knick: it has all of the second set from 3/24/90 (essential late Brent era), which @uzn007 recommended, plus other goodies from the March Knickerbocker run.
I’d check out Without A Net and Dozin’ At The Knick for your Brent-era research. FYI 9/18/87 was released as part of the 30 Trips boxset.
Pigpen still played on Death Don't Have No Mercy that year....I guess the Dead decided TC was no good at playing the blues! Probably Pigpen showed TC what he played on other songs as well, but it's fun to imagine them switching around during shows.
Tremendous Dew too with some great Phil bombs. No sure that will come across on the recording but it was awesome in person.
I saw it at the Vegas show, and I listened to it at some point over the past week, and I have no idea how it goes EDIT: it might have been Childhood's End I listened to, but that doesn't really make any difference
Ha ha, that's really helpful. Maybe I didn't read the room, but I got the impression this isn't what he was looking for! But I knew it was coming, it was inevitable....
If I recall correctly the Maybe You Know on 4/26/83 has some static on it. At least the version I had downloaded of the SBD I had did.
Given your "Pop Punk Psych Prog" byline, I'd also recommend making a beeline in the other direction and checking out Anthem of the Sun ('68) and Live/Dead ('69), or even earlier shows from '67, for a younger & rawer Dead. But maybe you know that era already?
This interview from the Chicago Tribune in May '93 is similar. A bit heartbreaking in places: And from Garcia himself:
Same here! As we got within walk>jog>run>hike distance and encountered people that did hear the Soundcheck - it was already legendary - as those folks said it was great and they were in awe. Then the Dead played over 3+ 1/2 hours in the Sunshine.
I do know the earlier stuff, but thanks for the recs all the same! I'm very slowly exploring the catalog, and thought it was time to head into the more choppy waters of the 80s!
I found an old comment from LandHorses that said that at least "Day Job" was funny, and not mean-spirited. "Shoe Fits" was just nasty, and going back and re-listening to the one time I heard it, I now remember that at the time, I literally couldn't believe what I was hearing. I'd never heard the song before in any form, and I couldn't figure out what Phil was trying to say except "get bent, jerk." Even reading the lyrics now, I don't see any hint of irony or context or anything that would put the lyrics in the mouth of a "character," a la Richard Thompson's "Can't Win". It's just a bitter rant. And the sad thing is that even if you assume that it was intended to be helpful advice for those in the audience who needed to be told that they were on the road to nowhere, they're exactly the last people who would ever assume that the song was actually directed toward them. Again, "Day Job" accomplishes the same thing in a much less obnoxious fashion ("God save the child who's got his own stash..."). I can't even say that. While I had forgotten that I had seen it (as I've forgotten many details from the shows I saw in 1993-95), as soon as I read the lyrics, the horrifying memory of hearing those lyrics in concert came flooding back. I like to think of myself who as someone who tries to avoid the negativity that tends to surround a lot of the Dead's songs that weren't sung by Jerry, but I honestly think that "If the Shoe Fits" killed my buzz so badly the night I saw it that probably it ruined my enjoyment of the rest of the show. "Childhood's End," on the other hand, I found to be completely forgettable. Neither reading the lyrics nor listening to the song itself sparks any memory whatsoever.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯ I don't know, it was easier to whip up a list of shows than try to think about what one or two shows would be the "quintessential" 80s shows for a newbie. The list I gave are all pretty much quintessential shows IMO and a lot of them are what I was listening to when I got into the Dead in the mid-80s.
