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

s/d 1972 "Dark Star"s.

s: 8-27-1972 @ Veneta Fairground. My favorite Dead show period. The "Dark Star" -> "El Paso" -> "Sing Me Back Home" is the sequence that made me a Dead fan.

d: Dick's Picks #11, 9-27-1972 @ Jersey City. It never takes off. The last 3 minutes or so are nice, but otherwise it's meandering. The rest of that show is great though, not too far from what the Band were doing at that point.

destroy that "Dark Star" is way too strong, actually. But it's not at present one that I favor over others. The context is great, though; it's the only spacey moment of the set, so when the band erupts again on "Cumberland Blues" it's exciting. But I can't help feeling that on this one, it was a dope break for most of the band. And that's not always true on epic "Dark Star"s.

Man, thanks for link to Dead Listening Ward. I will be spending some time there.

re: 1990s dead - check for shows during the last year or so before Brent died (Dozin' at the Knick is the one CD set I can think of). He was really coming into his own as a member of the band. Also, the year after he died, Bruce Hornsby's enthusiasm and input did a lot for their playing.

When I got to see the boys in 1994 and 1995, they sucked. It was just plain bad.

Am I right in assuming that the Dick's Picks CD sets are all available from the Deadnet store?:
http://www.deadnetstore.com/Commerce/ProductCategory.aspx?CategoryGuid=a7b282e6-dfd4-42a2-b62b-d33057e65c42&ViewAll=true

It's just that they are so expensive on other online outlets, I'd sort of assume they were out of print.

I may consider getting a couple of them.

i should answer my own question: some of them are only available as downloads (e.g. Dicks Picks 36). Others still available as CD.

wanna stress again what I wrote last summer:

"s: 8-27-1972 @ Veneta Fairground. My favorite Dead show period. The "Dark Star" -> "El Paso" -> "Sing Me Back Home" is the sequence that made me a Dead fan."

I'm inside this sequence again, & I wanted to say again how magical it is. "Dark Star" tessellates out, with shards of color everywhere, & "El Paso" brings it back together, down to earth...but then "Sing Me Back Home" takes it into the earth, six feet down, with lots & lots of mercy shown.

I have THE DEAD: THE DEFINITIVE GRATEFUL DEAD ENCYCLOPEDIA sitting right by my computer. There is a blurb for every song. I've always wanted to hear some of the 'recommended concert performances' for my favorite songs. Some songs have tons of recommended concert performances (26 suggestions for 'Dark Star'. Old Renaissance Faire Grounds, Veneta, Oregon 8/27/72 is one of them). I can't help but be overwhelmed with the amount of live recordings (finding the best live version of every song would be an impossible task - but I wouldn't be surprised if some hardcore deadheads have claimed to have done this). I would listen to those mixes made by hardcore tapeheads (hoping that they weren't too stoned to put a lot of effort into this mix).

man, I just noticed that I wrote a very similar post 1 year ago in this thread

can you link me that performance Euler?

http://www.archive.org/details/gd72-08-27.sbd.orf.3328.sbeok.shnf

Will check this out.

Right, that's the one.

I thought about doing a Dead live mix for the ILM Fan-Made Anthology series, as I put a fair amount of time a few years back into finding definitive/legendary/etc. live version of Dead tunes. But it'd be difficult to fit onto two discs - a Dark Star, Scarlet->Fire, Eyes of the World and China->Rider and you've already filled up one disc.

Interesting:

http://weblogs.baltimoresun.com/entertainment/midnight_sun/blog/2010/11/free_grateful_dead_downloads_a.html

Dicks Picks vol 4 is amazing.

i see it's been recommended above, but i'm listening to this for the first time http://www.archive.org/details/gd72-08-27.sbd.orf.3328.sbeok.shnf
dangggg. so good.

The sound is incredible. Thanks for reminding us of this one.
My birthday is 8/27!

It's the wrong time of the year for that set for me, but yeah, it's the greatest.

Can someone give me a recommendation as to the Dick's Pick (or easily available bootleg) with best Help>Slipknot>Franklin's Tower?

Thanks.

And that Renaissance Faire grounds set is great.

RE: best Help>Slipknot>Franklin's Tower?

5/9/77 buffalo. Not sure if it ever became a Dick's Pick, but it wins the prize and disagreeers are crazy!

My second favorite is 6/3/76 in Portland OR. Not a big fan of that year, but there's a matrix version of the show on archive.org that is one of the best sounding Dead recordings I've ever heard. It's a long, slow, spacey version Slipknot in particular (realize those adjectives could bs applied to most of the lads' music!). Enjoy.

thanks for the recommendation. love hearing these shows, but whenever i go to the archive, i'm overwhelmed. i knew this deadhead girl with thousands of tapes, and i asked her which one is the absolute best, and she just said: "wow, man ... wow."

ha. she was completely otm btw

whle we're here, anyone have any garcia band bootleg recommendations?

5/9/77 buffalo. Not sure if it ever became a Dick's Pick, but it wins the prize and disagreeers are crazy!

^wow, never heard it, but if true, they had a great May in upstate New York that year.

Thanks tobo!

Never really understood why 5/8/77 is such a big deal. I think it was just widely available in the tape era and got a rep as best-ever. Like I said, I'm not a huge fan of this era but the band was as tight as ever and lots of good-sounding recordings exist.

this is weird. I just put on Dick's Picks no.16 -- the first Dead I've listened to in a long time, and now this thread. I normally listen to GD in the summer, but I'm in the mood right now.

^LOOOVE vol 16.

haha http://www.rollingstone.com/music/blogs/alternate-take/the-grateful-dead-unveil-giant-box-set-europe-72-20110119
60 CDs!

Ridiculous. Awesome.

"There were so many reasons to do this," says producer David Lemieux. "There isn't a bad night. There isn't even a bad set. Every song was played so well."

Straining credulity here...

Yeah...this tour was def. a peak though.

ha yeah was lolling about the lemieux quote. i mean, i'm sure a lot of it is good, but saying the Dead played *every* song well is not really describing the Grateful Dead I know and love.

We weren't sure how what we did would travel. It is a uniquely American experience. But there are some great memories: riding the ferry from Newcastle to Copenhagen; the double rainbow we saw while riding in the bus through Switzerland.

weir confusing youtube vids he's watched w/ actual memories again

60 cds! But really, that's the way to do it, because it's a selling point this way; o/w we all dl'd the soundboard mp3s off the archive back before the band withdrew them---the ~~music~~ never stopped therefore, the packaging remains a horizon.

here's a trick:

save the the streaming .m3u playlist to your desktop
open it in a text editor
turn the mp3 urls into links
save file as dead.html
open dead.html in web browser
right-click on the mp3 links, save mp3s to hard drive

friend of the devil is a friend of mine

Q: Is Dark Star Orchestra as good as they were 8-10 years ago?

ehh, I'm not sure if I want to go. John Kadlecik has joined Further. He did a great Jerry Garcia voice. And another founding member, keyboardist Scott Larned, had a heart attack in 2005.

This isn't making me want to shell out $25

Now they have Jeff Mattson from The Donna Jean Godchaux Band
http://www.archive.org/details/dso2010-05-29.flac16

According to the current DSO keyboardist Rob Barraco:
"The one thing that Jeff has above everybody else is that he really understands the earlier bend on the Dead. The late '60s, early '70s. He does it so well and that's something that we really haven't concentrated on in this band until now. Jeff brings just a little more grease, that psychedelic greasy element that was missing in John's playing. Not to demean John's playing, because he's brilliant. That's just what Jeff brings that is different."

I haven't formed a good enough opinion on Jeff Mattson's voice but that link to him playing with DSO up above really highlights his guitar playing (from what I heard of it so far). I think I want to go again.

When I saw DSO for the first time they did this show (I'll link the Dead version):
http://www.archive.org/details/gd1984-06-12.nakcm304-mikeg-suraci.suraci.78162.flac16

People who want to hear The Dead freak out should listen to this show. I particularly remember having no clue that the Dead had music like this. Lots of psychedelic stuff on speed

I went to the site to read about this Europe '72 box, and it says that all 7,200 copies were sold at $450 each in four days. 7,200 x 450 = $3,240,000. I find that just astounding.

lol that is nuts

That is 432,000 units

well Dark Star Orchestra was really impressive at Atlanta tonight. Interesting that this show had a crazy amount of hits compared to all the streaming shows I've seen at archive.org. Like 'friend of the devil' into 'new minglewood' and 'truckin' into 'sugar magnolia' into 'bertha'(I believe). They did stuff like 'alabama getaway' and 'johnny b. goode'; and 'friend of the devil' and 'passenger'; 'wharf rat' and 'morning dew' (I believe). 'ripple' was right near the beginning of the night along with the countryish songs.

we left when the encore started and they started doing 'casey jones'. lol, the guy in the bathroom was talking out loud and he said the two songs he really hates is 'casey' and either 'drums' or 'space'. and yeah they did those ones as well. some of my favorite songs of the night were the ones I didn't recognize after 'space' and 'drums' because they obviously went into heavy psych/"jam band" territory at that point - although none of the freak out sort of psych like in the "dead version" link I put upthread.

huh, i'm always kind of tempted to go see these guys (they play in colorado constantly it seems). kind of afraid of the "scene" but maybe i should just suck it up and go. it's probably be fun.

I thought Dark Star recreated specific shows?

Was just going to mention the 60cd box but obviously been beaten to it by some way. Apparently sold out in 4 days & the band's store is selling the music without the extras for the same price. Shame you miss the box.

Not seen if there's been talk of Veneta and Sunshine Daydream the movie. But that set has to be one of their peaks 28/7/72 I think

& May '70 seemed to largely be a peak too as did august '68.

I'm mainly into them up to the '74 retirement but there are peaks after that.

My guess is that Sunshine Daydream will be the centerpiece of a future Dead box -- it is great!

here's a trick:

save the the streaming .m3u playlist to your desktop
open it in a text editor
turn the mp3 urls into links
save file as dead.html
open dead.html in web browser
right-click on the mp3 links, save mp3s to hard drive

friend of the devil is a friend of mine

― Mangrove Earthshoe (herb albert), Wednesday, January 19, 2011 7:15 PM

ha awesome