Your 5 favorite Grateful Dead Europe '72 shows

According to my notes, it was a really good performance, but honestly I haven't listened to it in a long time.

 

*** Dark Star wandering disorganized bore?

It’s Another fabulous Dark Star that gets way out there. Bobby feels the need to reel it in and basically pastes the intro to Sugar Magnolia over Dark Star so Jerry has no choice but to sort of abruptly stop the deep space and join in. Then right after the sunshine daydream coda Phil abruptly switches to Caution and off they go.

Those are my notes from when I first heard it. I’ll revisit

 

I've just listened to the "Dark Star" in question (my first GD listening in months). Very strong performance, I wouldn't rank it among the best renditions of the song during the tour, but it's still quite terrific, it's the 1972 European tour, for Christ's sake!

 

4/29 is a weaker performance among giants. Which Crispy Rob adequately portrayed just a while ago.

Meanwhile, I can't change my vote (which doesn't really matter), and my vote for best show really is for show with the most stand-out highlights. In any case, when voting was open, I voted for:

4/8
4/24
4/26
5/11
5/26 (and this might be their best show evah).

If I could change my vote, I'd replace 5/11 with 4/16 from Aarhus. Again, because the stunning moments are so stunning. Not because the "show" is better, per se. I don't understand the full show concept and why anyone cares about it. I've never heard a Me and My Uncle or Tennessee Jed or Sugaree from a first set have any connectivity to a second set improv segment.

 

Looks like I said 4-8, 4-16, 4-24, 5-24, 5-26...kind of arbitrary

 

I only picked 4: 4/26, 5/10, 5/11, and 5/26. That was all after one run through the box. If I did it now, two runs and sporadic individual listens later, 5/10 would not be in the running (although still probably top 10), 4/8 would be in for sure, and 5/11 would be in serious competition with 4/16 and 4/24, and possibly other shows in the Lyceum run.

 

I never voted and I still think I can't narrow it down to five concerts, it's a remarkably consistent tour. I could give it a try at choosing ten, maybe.

 

One of my favourites is the Danish University show. What a party that was if you were there!

Are there any interesting tales as to how they ended up in a college canteen? Did one of them lose a bet? Did someone get his feet and metres mixed up?

 

Well, the short essay included in the CD package tells some of the story, but there's also what appears to be an expanded version of that in article form (though in Danish):

https://auhist.au.dk/fileadmin/www.auhist.au.dk/filer/GratefulDead-stiften-2012-binder_02.pdf

I ran it through Google Translate, and there are some definite nuggets there:

A few days [before the concert], a newspaper columnist under the headline: "The drug-glorifying beat music" had warned the parent generation against letting their offspring watch the performance of the already legendary group at the time, fearing that these veterans of Ken Kesey's acid tests in San Francisco in 1965 could influence the audience in an unfortunate direction. But accusing this, Jerry Garcia, the group's lead guitarist and informal leader, declared, "I do not give LSD to anyone!"

Interesting detail about the whereabouts of Hunter during the concert:

But where was the well-known non-performing member of the group, the songwriter / lyricist Robert Hunter? Did this man who wrote the lyrics to the most famous Grateful Dead songs - including 'Dark Star' - sit in a hotel room and watch the clock during the concert? "No, he stayed in the locker room all evening," remembers Kresten Lassen Wegener. It must be added that there was no changing room per se, but - as Tom Persen explains - just behind the stage there was (and is) a door, which led out to a narrow corridor towards the administration building, and this time it worked as a dressing room for the musicians when there were concerts in Stakladen.

Did Hunter typically not watch the shows on the tour?

 

Oh, and I forgot this little gem:

In his review in Aarhus Stiftstidende the following day, he characterizes parts of the concert as an art country & western, but without horse manure.

I don't know if anyone was lost in translation here... Are they basically saying it was non-crappy country & western?

 

I don't know, but this piece had some quotes from him about how he apparently didn't enjoy the tour. Grateful Dead Guide: The Brotherhood vs. the Dead Machine

 

Ok I revisited the 4/29 Dark Star. It definitely kind of hangs out on the runway the whole time. I do enjoy the couple segments where Keith steps up prominently . But Jerry seems to want to keep it all quite dissonant. To the point where he attacks the strings so hard his tuning kind of goes a bit off to notes in between the notes. Still an interesting foray into darkness. But I do see why the original poster came to his conclusion regarding this affair.

 

Can't go wrong with 72.

I have Donna's break out of the Playin In The Band jam Hamburg 72 as the ringtone for my ex.

 

That's hilarious. Good thing I wasn't sipping my coffee when I read that.

 

It's a pretty sad picture to imagine: Hunter secluding himself in a makeshift dressing room while the band is playing one of their most unique shows during one of their greatest - if not the greatest - tours.

Was this also the show where Donna was hiding under the piano? Must have been some weird energy during this show, both on-stage and off-stage, though it certainly only comes out in a positive way on the tape.

 

IIRC, one of the Paris shows is the one where Donna got so high she spent a lot of it lying under the piano.

 

Right, I mixed that up... But she was not at the Stakladen show, anyhow.

 

Yeah, I'm not sure what the story is why she did not make the trip there from Copenhagen...

 

What do you think of 14 April?

 

Top 10-12 of the tour probably, but nothing really reaches out and grabs me. Some observations:

• Playing in the Band features an uncommon descending/atonal chromatic thing from Phil starting at 4:22.
• The melt in Dark Star (such as it is) comes after Feelin' Groovy, which is something of a departure from the norm, but they did this on 5/25/72 also.
• The high point in the show is the transition from Dark Star to Sugar Magnolia. On 4/8/72, the Sugar Mag bled backwards into the last few minutes of Dark Star whereas on 4/14/72, Jerry's not ready to let go of Dark Star just yet as Bob starts the intro to Sugar Mag, so Jerry's spaced-out wailing wah bleeds forward for the first 18 seconds of Sugar Mag.
• Nice China Cat jam in NFA prior to --> GDTRFB.

Overall, I think I prefer the 4/17/72 Copenhagen show. Phil goes bonkers on Truckin' and the proto-Let it Grow jam from 25:18-26:39 of Dark Star is one of the more hauntingly beautiful things they ever did.

 

It's rather sad that the video of 17 April doesn't include Dark Star...but it's rather lovely to have any video of any show from that tour.

I must dig back into these. There's just too much to listen to and not enough time...

 

Hello! First-time poster here. I signed up just to comment on this topic, because last spring I finally went through the trunk in its entirety, in order, on the anniversary dates, complete with a beer or wine from that city in hand. Fun trip, but I wouldn't do it that intensely again. As Notes mentioned, the first sets almost become a chore, even though they're well-played. Next time I will choose a few of the best first sets, then stick to the highlights from the second sets.

 

Welcome aboard. I like your beer/wine paring. I felt a bit the same about repetitive first sets at times, especially, oddly enough, on the first pass through the box. I've gone through the box in order three times, but on the second two passes I spaced it out a bit more, so that it took 3-4 months to go through in order, and that helped reduce the first set fatigue considerably. I never got sick of the big second set jams, though.

 

Those takes of Truckin’ and Dew are so good, they made the cut for Europe 72. And, Pigpen did play one more show 6/17/72 but didn’t sing.

 

They apparently also considered "Sing Me Back Home" for the album, as they redid the vocals in the studio.