Your 5 favorite Grateful Dead Europe '72 shows

For full time nutter GoGD Heads, all 22 E'72 shows are worth owning for one reason or another.

 

True. It's a must for the nutters. However, one would do quite well to buy: E72, E72 Vol. 2, Steppin' Out England '72, Hundred Year Hall, Rockin' the Rhein, and then cherry pick two or three full shows. For <$150, they'd have a very nice taste of the tour. About a 20-hour taste, if my math hasn't let me down.

20 hours of listening to prime E72 Grateful Dead music is 20 well-spent hours.

 

But the whole tour if at all possible. Even stuff like the 5/25/72 Big Boss Man is on a whole ‘nother level.

 

Radio Luxembourg is awesome!
I am going to put it on right now

 

These are the shows I listen to most frequently (most frequent at the top of the list):

1. April 26 – Jahrhundert Halle, Frankfurt, West Germany
2. April 8 – Wembley Empire Pool, London, England
3. May 26 – Lyceum Theatre, London, England
4. April 16 – Stakladen, Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark
5. May 11 – Grote Zaal De Doelen, Rotterdam, Netherlands
6. May 3 – L'Olympia Theatre, Paris, France
7. May 7 – Bickershaw Festival, Wigan, England
8. May 16 – La Grande Salle Du Grand Theatre, Luxembourg, Luxembourg

 

You really need the whole tour.

 

I've been sloooowly getting individual shows at nugs(dot)net (Apple Lossless). So far, I have eight shows (4/07, 4/08, 4/11, 4/14, 4/16, 4/17, 4/24 (as "Rockin' the Rhein..."), and 5/13. I came in late to the Dead's music and am absolutely in love with this period of their career. "Europe '72" was my gateway album. I would love to have the box set, but that's not happening with the physical version being OOP and fetching prices I cannot afford.

Nugs doesn't have everything, but I did notice that iTunes has the entire series (so does Amazon Music for streaming, but there's a tiny gap between tracks that drives me bonkers). I'm not a fan of purchasing lossy files, but I've done it when it's one of the few options (or only option). I also noticed that the Nugs version of "Hundred Year Hall" is the original release and not the box set version.

Can anyone comment on the quality from iTunes? Apologies if this is the wrong thread for this question.

 

I listen to these shows on Apple Music, and they sound fantastic. I would imagine these are the same files on iTunes.

 

Most of the conversation here seems to gravitate towards the second set, specifically The Other One and Dark Star.

I’m curious to hear which shows folks think have the strongest first set performances.

 

4/26 & 5/3.

 

Yes, both are fantastic first sets. I also really like the first one: 4/7. However, nothing beats the massive 19-track first set of 5/26, IMO.

I remember the first sets of the Danish gigs all being quite good as well (4/14, 4/16, 4/17).

 

Yes, Denmark has good first sets all around. First ones that came to mind for me too.

 

Munich is the one I've most recently listened to, and I think sticking up for it is appropriate. PITB has some really great parts where Jerry leaves the wah-wah at certain positions and jams for a bit before moving it again and then jamming some more. Dark Star has him channeling Roy Buchanan while Phil drops bombs, and it leading into a Dew doesn't disappoint. Plus that Sing Me Back Home encore.

 

4/26 actually has a 20 track first set!

 

I was going to vote after finishing my first full run through the tour last year, but it's just too hard to choose. I need to do another full run through the tour before I vote.

 

I'm going to try to do that this summer.

 

Dusseldorf

 

First, I'm bumping this thread because I'm going through the tour in order for the first time. I've had the steamer for years but have always tended to jump around between shows.

Second, the 5/26 show absolutely has the best opening set. Plus it has my favorite second set sequence from the tour:

1. "Truckin'" > – 18:57
2. "The Other One" > – 9:09
3. "Drums" > – 2:17
4. "The Other One" > – 12:19
5. "Morning Dew" > – 11:47
6. "The Other One" > – 5:47
7. "Sing Me Back Home" – 10:58

That's 72 minutes of ooey gooey goodness.

May 26 is my favorite GOGD show period. Some may consider that blasphemy since they didn't play dark star but I don't miss it here. I guess Tom C put it best:

"Dark Star is going on all the time. It's going on right now. You don't begin it so much as enter it. You don't end it so much as leave it."

And the dead were definitely in the dark star zone for the tour ender and their final show with the mighty Pigpen.

 

Nice way to spend my time while social distancing.

Anyone else following along this spring? If so, thoughts..... first time through.... if not, how many?

Also my first time reading the book, cover to cover. Would love a full fledged 500 page time accounting of this trip!!!

 

I would get burned out on those first sets if I tried to follow the tour in real time. It took me almost a year to get through the tour sequentially the one time I did it.

 

Just dropped in to say hi, I have enjoyed this entire set of shows since I first came across the soundboards on Archive.org, then later when Rhino released them all in HDCD. Tonight I'm listening to 4/29/72 Hamburg and it's OK for the most part BUT with some glaring gaffes. Dark Star is a wandering disorganized bore and the whole show sounds like they couldn't get off the ground. Maybe one or more of the band members be trippin' too hard? Who knows. Maybe next time it will sound great and I'll wonder why I felt the need to check in here and comment.

 

My take is that it's good overall, but still one of the bottom few shows of the tour.

 

I know of no bottom on this tour....

 

Well, it's a great tour through and through. But if I were to rank the shows, there'd have to be a bottom. That's still pretty, pretty, pretty, pretty, pretty good, as Larry David might put it.