Grateful Dead live, Dick's Picks etc - S&D

lonngggggg nyer dead article: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2012/11/26/121126fa_fact_paumgarten?currentPage=all

Guys, dead.net is doing their 30 Days of Dead thing again this week. Each day a free high-quality live song for download. Nice way to get a daily Dead fix.

again this "month", that should read

That NYer article is a fantastic read.

yeah, i think even if you're not a deadhead, it's just an interesting look at the whole phenomenon.

It addresses what I think is the most interesting aspect of the Dead, for sure.

Thanks for posting that, tylerw. As good an overview of the Dead and their periphery as I've come across.

it has set me off on a big 1973 kick

yeah! listening to this 73 "betty board" right now. http://archive.org/details/gd1973-05-26.sbd.cantor.diebert.83438.sbeok.flac16
[that may be the most deadhead thing i have ever written]

are you streaming it from archive or do you use a workaround? I hate listening in-browser.

http://fuckyesgratefuldead.tumblr.com/post/20881414507/kezar-stadium-may-26th-1973-another-great-show

you are the best

first set is killlller.

A whole section of the vault housed the sixteen-track fourteen-inch reels from the Dead’s tour of Europe in 1972. Last year, the Dead released the entire tour: a seventy-three-disk boxed set containing all twenty-two concerts and more than seventy hours of music. It came in a small steamer trunk and cost four hundred and fifty dollars. A run of twelve thousand two hundred sold out in four days. It is a pinnacle of completism, by the standards of any genre, and even a diehard might find it a test of patience to work through twenty-one versions of “Sugar Magnolia.” I got bogged down somewhere around Luxembourg.

wild

i liked the nyer piece but i'm so sick of people picking on the studio albums. very few memorable studio albums my eye! but i've always kinda listened to the studio albums more than live stuff so i guess i'm the oddball.

That article is incredible, really well-written and researched. I'm not anything like a Dead fan but the whole mechanism of the band & the tapers has always fascinated me.

Yeah I consider myself pretty diehard but never knew anything about how the tapes made it from the Vault or Betty's collection into circulation before archive.org.

also loved the anecdote abt The Edge visiting the vault and running into Weir. What a meeting of the minds that must have been.

And, of course, had a very easy time relating to the writer's tales of obsessing over certain tapes with high school bros. love it!

The bird song on the 30 days site today -vs- the bird song on Spring 1990 site -- holy cow -- discuss?

listening to that right now. is it 72? don't think i've met a bird song i didn't like.

otmfm

i liked the nyer piece but i'm so sick of people picking on the studio albums. very few memorable studio albums my eye! but i've always kinda listened to the studio albums more than live stuff so i guess i'm the oddball.

I agree, I think Aoxomoxoa especially has some really wild recording techniques to be appreciated, and of course Workingman's Dead and American Beauty are stone cold classics. Also the studio version of Terrapin Station is so well constructed.

Would it kill the dudes over at dead.net to slap some metadata on those songs though?

i just feel like so many people - even desdheads like the new yorker writer - downplay how amazing the songs are. he wonders what to shoot into space? how about really faithful renditions of great songs? i realize that the live thing is its own world but it still bugs me. lesh has the right attitude. people singing the songs a hundred years from now on their porch. they are great modern folk/americana songs! (the paragraph where he plays devil's advocate and lists all the negatives like the "fruity" lyrics, etc...)

Listening to Dusseldorf '72 today, "Loser" and "Deal" stuck out for me, in a good way, in the "how amazing the songs are" way.

listening to the Ace album last week, man, what a great record. maybe the studio naysayers just need better pressings or something. i have this beautiful german copy of jerry's reflections album and it makes me want to weep it sounds so beautiful. two unforgettable records right there. though not strictly speaking dead records.

I think the "studio/radio" Dead kind of hijacked their own career the way they got out of Warner Brothers with those final two live records and how those early solo records happened, which contained some of the best material they ever had. They had kind of built up a following and got radio play on Workingman's Dead/American Beauty and didn't really follow up on them for a few years. The live record Grateful Dead (aka Skullfxxk or Skull & Roses) seems to have been received as a let down going by a couple of reviews at the time. Then they did Europe 72 and Bear's Choice and then some of their most long standing tunes came out on Ace and the first Garcia album. I don't know if they would have had a bigger hit LP if the best tunes would have been done as a Grateful Dead album with high quality studio recordings, but you never know, timing is everything.

i just feel like so many people - even desdheads like the new yorker writer - downplay how amazing the songs are. he wonders what to shoot into space? how about really faithful renditions of great songs? i realize that the live thing is its own world but it still bugs me. lesh has the right attitude. people singing the songs a hundred years from now on their porch. they are great modern folk/americana songs! (the paragraph where he plays devil's advocate and lists all the negatives like the "fruity" lyrics, etc...)

Would it kill the dudes over at dead.net to slap some metadata on those songs though?

― HAPPY BDAY TOOTS (jon /via/ chi 2.0), Monday, November 19, 2012 10:40 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

^^^ otmfm

It's been taking me a long time to get through that article. Despite the Deadhead deep in my heart, I just haven't been in a Dead mood lately. But I just got up to the part where Lesh listens to Brad Paisley these days.

ha, yeah, hmmm.
the author of the nyer piece picks some of his fave recordings here: www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/culture/2012/11/nicks-picks-paumgarten-picks-his-thirteen-favorite-live-grateful-dead-recordings.html

Ward Fowler's above recommendation of Road Trips Vol. 2 No. 2 much appreciated! Finally got around to it today. Pretty sure it's only a matter of time now before I completely submerge myself in this band. Will probably do Two From The Vault next.

Well, this is one testifyin' pilgrim, not the last word. he aptly quotes Lesh on all these versions of the songs:"like fairy tales, they're all true." So yeah, I'd like him to feel the albums more, and the acoustic sets. Also, while Weir has his quirks, he could belt out the ol' roadhouse covers effectively enough; he's no Pigpen, but he sure fills some of the 'pen gap. Also, leave us not forget the Ace album, or some Other Ones songs he and Hart came up with (his suaver side, not so far from the "Weather Report Suite". which Paumgarten does favorably mention here). Phil Lesh and Friends (when they include Warren Haynes) and 7 Walkers, Kreutzmann and Papa Mali's band, are also robust, spacey and adventurous enough for me. But this is the single best Dead road trip map I've seen in quite a while.

conversations with the dead by david gans (the oral history book) is really interesting for audio/tech stuff. mostly cuz he interviewed people like bear who don't get interviewed a lot.

The Lesh part where he has no idea what the author is talking about when he mentions "Scar->Fire" is priceless

“Scar-Fire?” he repeated, unfamiliar with the shorthand.

Oh yeah. "The shorthand." As if anyone other than Paumgarten had ever abbreviated Scarlet Begonias > Fire on the Mountain that way.

ive heard it referred to "Scarlet>Fire" quite a bit

Yes! That! But not the other one.

ScarFire kind of sounds like the name of a lady you might meet in a Grateful Dead parking lot.

sorry. just makes me think of an angry dom passantino. doesn't do it for me.

30 days of free Dead downloads, starting today:
http://www.dead.net/30daysofdead/

^yes

This is weirdly hilarious: a seamless 90 minute edit of the Dead tuning up between songs, from 1977:

hxxp://archive.org/details/gd1977-12-31_505

I'm so far gone that I find that a really pleasant listen

I've actually been kind of enjoying it myself - it's like a super mellow counterpart to Neil Young's Arc.

haha, nice!

not quite tuning up, but archive.org also has the longest ever dark star here: http://archive.org/download/DarkStar-/1972-05-11DarkstarComplete.mp3
47 minutes!

things get nuts around 34 minutes.

This morning I was thinking I would really like to listen to a '73 show (haven't heard any from that year yet) and figured I'd come here for a recommendation and looking back through the thread there are plenty from that year. So now I'm kinda overwhelmed and don't know where to start!

The Denver Road Trips set is pretty good-to-great. The only one I've heard on Archive is Evanston, IL 11/1/73, which has its moments (particularly "Morning Dew").

i can recommend this one - Grateful Dead - Universal Amphitheatre, Los Angeles, CA, June 30, 1973 - http://archive.org/details/gd1973-06-30.aud.weiner.100346.flac16