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

from Rolling Stone---thanks Jon Blistein (I hope to catch up with the 50th Anniversary series this Fourth of July weekend):
The Grateful Dead will include a set of unreleased music taken from a handful of 1969 shows on the upcoming 50th anniversary reissue of Aoxomoxoa, out June 7th.

The set will feature two versions of Aoxomoxoa: A newly remastered version of the original 1969 LP and a remastered version of the band-produced mix the Dead released in 1971. The reissue’s bonus disc will boast live music recorded January 24th to 26th, 1969 at the Avalon Ballroom in San Francisco, California (the recordings were among the first live performances recorded to 16-track tape).

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“In 1969, for their third album, the Grateful Dead eschewed outside producers and created Aoxomoxoa themselves, beginning a run of self-produced albums that would continue until 1977,” said Grateful Dead archivist Dave Lemieux in a statement. “Scrapping the first sessions, which were recorded to eight-track tape, the Dead now had 16 tracks with which to experiment their psychedelic sound, with an album that included entirely Robert Hunter-penned lyrics for the first time.”

The bonus disc of live material includes several gems, including two early versions of Aoxomoxoa tracks, “Durpee’s Diamond Blues” and “Doin’ That Rag,” as well as the final live performance of “Clementine,” a song the Dead began playing in 1968 but never released on a studio album. The Dead lineup at the time of the Avalon shows was Jerry Garcia, Bob Weir, Ron “Pigpen” McKernan, Phil Lesh, Tom Constanten, Mickey Hart, and Bill Kreutzmann.

The 50th anniversary version of Aoxomoxoa is available to pre-order and will be released as a two-disc CD set and a limited edition vinyl picture disc.

In This Article: The Grateful Dead

https://open.spotify.com/track/1LL1dvOe6Y0Pd5pRgKGJKq?si=Fs7FpQNcTga7G_bj3_bbzw

“Beautiful Jam” from ‘71 on the So Many Roads comp

^^^ all-time great

“Durpee’s Diamond Blues”

Also enjoying Watkins glen rehearsal from that same album, which goes from spacey to hippie funk until jerry introduces a major key

yesterday i went through and listened to all of the top-rated performances of the first album songs on headyversion. well, i didn't actually get through pigpen doing "good morning little schoolgirl" for 16 fucking minutes, the album version was excruciating enough, but i did run across this ten minute jam on "cream puff war" from '66 that i liked a lot, actually. i have a hard time thinking of the dead as a genuinely "psychedelic" band, at least not in a way i'm into, but this sounded like it in a way jerry's playing usually doesn't for me.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZLV-73VF6Tg

Just Bob.

Bob Weir - Isolated Jorts

^ love that

Dick's Picks #8 -- Harpur College, 5/02/70 -- Three-Quarters of this is impeccable; good form, nice song selection - one disc acoustic, one disc electric, and one disc rave-ups (i don't much care for their R&B covers like "Dancing in the Streets" and "It's A Man's Man's Man's World"). 8.5

Listened to a lot of this on my commute this morning and it's great! I don't think I had ever heard live acoustic dead from that era before. A highlight of the electric portion for me is Viola Lee Blues

I've been trying to spend some time with Cornell 77, but I still struggle with how almost supernaturally clean it sounds. Maybe that's part of the appeal, but I still prefer the grit of the earlier shows. 70-74 is my sweet spot. Obviously some of the performances on Cornell 77 are very good and the sound quality is great, but I still find something about it a little offputting.

Meanwhile, been really enjoying Dicks Picks 28 - Lincoln NE and Salt Lake City UT 1973, and also Roosevelt Stadium 1974.

I love Playing in the Band so much.

DiP 28 is so great. That was the first "Eyes" I heard, and it's got one of my fave "Dark Star"s, where Kreutzman just keeps the momentum going through the whole thing (akin to the 8/27/72 Veneta, OR "Dark Star").

I think 77 is a bit over-celebrated due to the number of good recordings that have been circulating for a long time, way before the internet. Cornell is definitely over-hyped but there's no denying they were playing clean and tight that year. quite possibly their cleanest and tightest year, maybe alongside 72. Recordings from 78 are also super clean but they begin to slow things down and the cleanliness begins to approach a really thin sound (lack of reverb maybe?) that I find grating.

hmm that's an interesting sort of historiographical (if that's the right word) point. I wonder if there were some significant advances in portable taping tech around that time.

Fwiw I’ve read that once Dan Healy took over (not sure exactly when that was), he didn’t pay a ton of attn to the soundboard mix. That’s why the soundboards from 82 and 83 and 84 haven’t been released much. He is also blamed for turning Bobby’s guitar way down in the mix.

Those 77s tend to be credited to Betty Cantor, who maybe was more careful about mixing the soundboard for the purposes of replay at home.

I’ve always wondered about how they mix the drums in the 80s and beyond. The hi-hats are way too loud and the snares sounds like crap. Heard the 91 RFK show on Sirius yesterday and it sounds like the snares are on another stage. I don’t have the technical expertise to say why that is.

That’s why the soundboards from 82 and 83 and 84 haven’t been released much.

Also, they stopped using reel-to-reel tapes around 1979, so the majority of early/mid-'80s soundboard recordings were made on hissy cassettes.

weren't they also mostly playing bigger venues in the 80s or at least in the 90s? That could impact sound a lot.

the mixing itself on Cornell 77 is admittedly kind of incredible. Can't think of another live recording that sounds like that.

Yes to your point about larger venues.

They made lots of great recordings in 89/90 for Without a Net. I assume they were using better equipment and being more careful about it. I love the way those sound and the best may be Hamilton Ontario in March 90. The Scarlet/Fire from that show made it to the big retrospective box set they released a few years ago.

that isolated bob video is awesome

This is most likely a long shot, but are there any recordings out there that have a particular atmosphere from the floor that give you an idea of the sound/power of the crazy wall-of-sound PA system?

I've not heard these myself, but some wall-centric suggestions from the ever-enthusiastic Grateful Dead Listening Guide: Call of the Wall.

getting pretty into '78 & '79 right now. playing-wise they're in a relaxed zone a lot of the time (even though I gather that these are heavy cocaine years, and certainly Bob's vocals get pretty excitable on e.g. "Samson & Delilah") and Jerry's starting to mess with his filters in a way that lots of people hate but that I dig. The new Dave's Picks (Chicago '79) is pretty great until they get to Drums/Space which is pretty uninspired but Fire/Samson/Terrapin/Playin' form an amazing arc on this show

I saw them only once:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I6HNV7AqFvs

My friends halfheartedly tried to get tickets for the second day but we ended up riding the good vibes of day 1 into the next day relaxing... We weren't deadheads but were seeing 5+ live music shows a week at this point so it was nice to have a baseline of Jerry-era Dead to compare to all the more avant/sophisto/anti/absurdist things that were going on.

thought the bump would be about robert hunter

ok, the soundboard "seastones" that i've heard have always sounded like just the most awful crap, but i'm listening to the 1974-06-23 aud and i'm actually feeling the wall of sound from this. any other AUD tapes from this year that have some good "seastones"?

9/11/74

'phil and ned' into seastones is quite bonkers. some of the most far out stuff i've heard from them

https://archive.org/details/gd1974-09-11.sbd.unknown.4647.shnf

xxp Yes, the lack of mention here about Robert Hunter's passing is surprising. His lyrics were the source of most Dead epigrams. RIP, RH.

We've been talking about it in the Robert Hunter thread.

OPO: Robert Hunter lyric

ah, thanks!

man i tried that 1974-09-11 phil and ned -> seastones and it didn't grab me, either atonal wank or just bad space.

liked the eyes->dirt->space after it though, not a big eyes fan but thought that was a good one

next i think i'll start going through headyversion and exploring some wharf rats

5/28/77 is THE Wharf Rat imo, and 77 is far from my favorite year

Was just listening to Dicks Picks 20, September 25, 1976 at the Capital Centre. That's a nice laid back little show, at least until Lazy Lightning, which I can't get through.

I've always thought Lazy Lightning sounds like the theme song to a mid-60s sit-com

hartford 1977-05-28 is nice (also not a '77 head), i didn't know donna could sing! also liking red rocks 1978-07-08.

I listened to the first disc of Three from the Vault thinking about Robert Hunter last night. It's from the Capitol Theatre in Feb 1971. One of these days I need to check out the New Riders of the Purple Sage recording with Jerry on pedal steel from the same shows.

GRATEFUL DEAD: READY OR NOT

New Live Collection Features Nine Unreleased Performances From The Early ‘90s,

Presenting What The Next Grateful Dead Studio Album May Have Been

Available On CD, Double-LP, And Digitally On November 22;

Limited Edition, Colored Vinyl Version Available Exclusively At Dead.net

Unreleased Live Version Of “Lazy River Road” Available Now Digitally

The Grateful Dead may have released the band’s final studio album – Built to Last – on Halloween 1989, but that didn’t stop them from writing new songs for the following years, adding several new tracks to their live repertoire in the early ‘90s. Sadly, the group was unable to ever complete them in a studio before the death of singer/guitarist Jerry Garcia in 1995.

The world will never know what that album would have sounded like, but we do have a tantalizing idea thanks to a new collection curated by the band’s archivist David Lemieux. READY OR NOT features nine unreleased live versions of late-period Grateful Dead songs that debuted in 1992 and 1993. The collection’s tracklist reflects what might have been the band’s next official studio album following Built to Last.

READY OR NOT will be released on November 22 on CD, digital download, streaming, and as a 180-gram 2-LP set, limited to 10,000 copies. Dead.net will offer an exclusive coloured vinyl version of the 2-LP set with one red LP and one blue LP, limited to 2,000 copies. “Lazy River Road” live from Chapel Hill, North Carolina on March 25, 1993, is available now digitally.

“Ready Or Not has been a long time coming. It’s an album we've been working on for many, many years. This batch of ‘new’ Grateful Dead songs has never been compiled in one place and given its proper due as a huge part of the Dead's late-era legacy,” says Lemieux. “Many of these songs can easily stand alongside some of the Dead's oldest, most-loved songs as bona fide classics despite their short tenure in the repertoire. We've dug deep into the archive and listened to countless live versions of these songs to find the best, most definitive live performances. When the Grateful Dead were ‘on’ in their later years, their live concerts were as good as any era in their history. The nine songs on Ready Or Not exemplify how good the Dead could be in their later years of touring.”

The collection focuses on the best unreleased live versions of these late-period gems, all mastered from the original digital soundboard tapes. Recorded live between 1992 and 1995, READY OR NOT spotlights performance by the final Grateful Dead lineup: Jerry Garcia, Mickey Hart, Bill Kreutzmann, Phil Lesh, Bob Weir, and new keyboardist Vince Welnick.

Four of the album’s nine tracks originally debuted during a two-day period in February 1993, including “Lazy River Road,” “Liberty,” and “Eternity,” a song that Weir wrote with Rob Wasserman and blues legend Willie Dixon. Another was “Days Between.” This grand and achingly nostalgic Robert Hunter and Garcia composition closes the album with a version that was recorded in December 1994 at the Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum.

Hunter – who worked mainly with Garcia – began writing with Weir again during this period. Two of their collaborations are featured on READY OR NOT: “Corinna” and “Easy Answers.” The album also includes “Samba In the Rain,” a song by Welnick that features Hunter’s lyrics. The album’s two remaining songs – “Way To Go Home” and “So Many Roads” – made their live debut in February 1992, just a few months before the live versions included on READY OR NOT.

READY OR NOT

CD Track Listing

“Liberty” – Madison Square Garden, New York, NY (10/14/94)

“Eternity” – The Pyramid, Memphis, TN (4/2/95)

“Lazy River Road” – Dean Smith Center, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC (3/25/93)

“Samba In The Rain” – The Omni, Atlanta, GA (3/30/95)

“So Many Roads” – Star Lake Amphitheatre, Burgettstown, PA (6/23/92)

“Way To Go Home” – Deer Creek Music Center, Noblesville, IN (6/28/92)

“Corrina” – Madison Square Garden, New York, NY (10/14/94)

“Easy Answers” – Spectrum, Philadelphia, PA (9/13/93)

“Days Between” – Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum, Oakland, CA (12/11/94)

Interesting concept, but I'm now on Archive listening to "Samba" (a song no one ever liked) in the echoey Omni and it's dreadful, sorry.

In slightly more exciting news (and far better artwork), Dave's Picks 32 will be 3/24/73 at The Spectrum.

I don’t get why anyone would spend $$ on that collection of new songs. If you really need to hear them they are widely available online. And several of those songs are undeniably terrible. I guess it’s cheap to produce and see who bites?

aside from "days between" (and maybe "so many roads") this stuff isn't very good ... and sometimes it's very bad!

In slightly more exciting news (and far better artwork), Dave's Picks 32 will be 3/24/73 at The Spectrum.

― soaring skrrrtpeggios (jon /via/ chi 2.0), Tuesday, October 8, 2019 1:14 PM (two hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

Oh HELL yeah, this show has my favorite version of He's Gone, among numerous early 73 highlights

its a stone cold classic, for the Phil solo alone

that ready or not album art... yikes

https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/61Fjq0-8DUL.jpg

hahaha

https://i.imgur.com/jTSYC5q.jpg

That's much better.

yeah reminds me of the other DP with the aliens. the one with the 'close encounters' intro to st stephen. still love that one

i didn't know donna could sing!

I once mistook her for Kate Bush when a housemate was playing a Dead show