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

I was sorta just hoping that with the release of the series on vinyl, the price / value of the CDs I'm missing will go waaaay down.

and yeah, these vinyl reissues, too expensive. Huge Deadhead here but not one of those 1% Deadheads. The bummer about stuff like this is that if I ever do decide to hop on board and buy this series on vinyl, the first few will already be sold out (limited to 2000?? That's crazy) and I'll spend a lot of time (and money) trying to track them down to 'complete the collection' (which I haven't even done with the DP CDs yet).

Still, DP1 (73, Tampa) is way underrated and one of my favorites.

I restrained myself from buying the Spring 1990 box set and I'll restrain myself again now.

"Still, DP1 (73, Tampa) is way underrated and one of my favorites."

took me a long, long time to realize it but this is so true

these are two of my favorites! garcia solos in top form on tampa/73 and on columbus/71 song selection & pacing rule, dark star ->rockout

Aside from the lovely 'Sunshine' that kicks things off, the best thing abt DP1 = no Donna!

Aside from the lovely 'Sunshine' that kicks things off, the best thing abt DP1 = no Donna!

No! Best thing is major Phil bombs during Space. A big part of why I love Nov and Dec of 73 so much.

The Space is frightening, the Truckin' sounds like Loaded-era Velvets, and Nobody's Fault But Mine! The whole second set of this is incredible.

just listened to 12/18/73 and it is another A+ Space gem (am sure my kids appreciated it as bedtime background music).

Such a rich and tasty era for the lads.

This is the wrong forum for this, but I couldn't quickly find a good Music Book thread... Can someone recommend a good book about the Dead?? I'm really in the mood for a GD biog, if there is such a thing.

I was wondering the same thing. Every Dead bio I've come across seems to be written by an uncritical insider.

thought the mcnally book was great, though yes, it is insidery (not wholly uncritical).

Good to know. I can only imagine a Dead bio being insidery ("dude, everything they did, was...like...magic...wait...what was I talking about?") or outsidery ("everything they did pales in comparison to the overwhelming genius of everybody else"). So it's nice that there's a somewhat critical Dead voice out there.

best/worst rock biographies

is probably the most active thread for books on bands.

Cheers for the McNally tip. I can get it secondhand for less than a Euro on Amazon marketplace.

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.