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

"Hurricane force winds" can't keep archivist David Lemieux away from sharing all the details of the Europe '72 Lyceum shows, why they sound incredible enough to warrant a whopping 24-LP set, and all the shenanigans that went down this week 50 years ago.

I have a few vinyl sets from when I first started collecting the Dead and man it is extremely not an ideal way to listen to those shows.

Yeah, the last thing I want to do when zoning out to a live Dead show is keep flipping a disc every twenty minutes. I get why they are doing these vinyl pressings, they sell out almost immediately, but, uh, do not want. On the other hand, if the 24-LP is this year's Dead "big box" release, I'll save some money.

infuriatingly they seem to be using the format as a way to dodge the "limited time" rights of stuff they'd already put out before, ie they can't legally rerelease early Dave's Picks or long-OOP box sets like the Europe 72 steamer trunk on CD but it's a different story on vinyl. it's gonna be real annoying when they inevitably release Dave's 5 as a box and they have to split the big jam up over like three sides.

lol, yeah that one will be a mess. I saw they started with Dave's 1 on vinyl.

I'm just hoping Real Gone eventually reissues those early Dave's Picks on CD like they did with Dick's and Road Trips. Those really helped me fill in a few holes in my collection. The going rates for those Dave's Picks are absolutely insane. A local Half Price Books had a Dave's Picks 2 behind the counter for $350 and, according to the person working the register, it didn't even have the bonus disc.

LISTEN TO THE RIVER: ST. LOUIS '71 '72 '73 (20-CD)
$199.98 Also with some digital tracks to select from when order

What's Inside:

7 Previously Unreleased Complete Shows On 20 Discs

Fox Theatre, St. Louis, MO 12/09/71

Fox Theatre, St. Louis, MO 12/10/71

Fox Theatre, St. Louis, MO 10/17/72

Fox Theatre, St. Louis, MO 10/18/72

Fox Theatre, St. Louis, MO 10/19/72

Kiel Auditorium, St. Louis, MO 10/29/73

Kiel Auditorium, St. Louis, MO 10/30/73

Sourced from tapes recorded by Rex Jackson, Owsley "Bear" Stanley, and Kidd Candelario

Mastered in HDCD by Jeffrey Norman

Restoration and Speed Correction by Plangent Processes
Dead.net exclusive

20-CD custom boxed set

Limited to 13,000

Release date: October 1st

That came out last year, no? As an STL native head I’ve been strongly considering copping it for a while. $200 is a lot but the shows are absolutely top-shelf, especially the 72 and 73 dates. Dammit dow, I might have to actually go through with it now...

The 1971 STL that’s up on streaming is one of the rare sets I listened to without skipping a track or two. I recall Pigpen sounding particularly good.

Yeah, that STL box came out last year and I think it’s absolutely worth the money. The ‘72 and ‘73 shows are indeed killer, but I have to note that the 12/10/71 set included in the box completely opened me up to appreciating the latter half of that year. Previously I had struggled a bit with getting into latter ‘71 because the primal jam Dead had faded away and the whole ‘72 jam style had yet to emerge. But that 12/10 show is magical, especially Keith, and it helped me really start to appreciate that period.

I can’t get into early ‘71 — Three From The Vault is one of my least favorite shows — but by the 11/17/71 Albuquerque show (Dave’s 26) they’d really come a long way in terms of focus and intensity. The ‘71 shows on the St. Louis box are nearly as good as that Albuquerque show, but the real highlight is 10/17/72: you get the sense that they know exactly how great they are in the moment, and they take full advantage of that self-awareness.

I think it was listening to the 2nd s/t lp that had me giving 71 a revisit. Had thought that they had ceased stretching out as much possibly after losing Mickey hart. But that does rock or cook or whatever. Read something about them being the best bar band in the world at teh time and thought taht didn't sound too attractive. But do like the material from then now. Think I may prefer them when they are more likely to take off for the stratosphere a bit more which they do do by 72 .

But in general do love them up to the initial retirement and a bit less after or maybe that's generally less so. & I do ten dto concentrate on that first few years. Have heard a lot of that era and not so much of the later stuff. They do seem to return to some power in around 1980. I'd rather not listen to Disco Dead stuff which other people seem to see as a peak. 77-78 so may be missing some stuff from then that I would enjoy. There is a vast amount of recorded stuff by the band so can't listen to everything. Can't really listen to everything from my wider chosen era as it is. So concentrate more on August 68, some of 69, may of 70 and bits of 72-74 all of which seem to have different flavour. Aug 68 and May 70 seem to be the most tripped out though.

xps I'm totally with you on the greatness of fall 71. The early/mid 71 saloon vibe is still there, and the addition of Keith opens up a realm of new possibilities (and to my ears his playing was more high-energy and animated in the last three months of 1971 than it would ever be after that). Also arguably the peak of the "jam vehicle -> cowboy song -> jam vehicle" sequence.

I would urge anyone who digs that era and hasn't heard 11/7/71 (Harding Theater, San Francisco) to check it out on the Archive (nice SBD from an FM radio broadcast): https://archive.org/details/gd71-11-07.prefm.kaplan.9570.sbeok.shnf

Keith plays an actual honky-tonk piano for the whole show, so it's about as "saloon" as it gets. Great show front to back, but the set 2 Dark Star -> Drums -> The Other One -> Me And My Uncle -> The Other One is AMAZiNG (especially the "Me And My Uncle", no joke).

finally getting around to some more in depth 77-78 shows. it’s probably because I wasn’t paying attention during what I’d heard during this period but I’ll be damned if Donna is pretty on point during this period. Not sure if it’s setup or just through the years finding her groove.

I thought I heard something about better stage monitors at some point. Not sure how good representation of sound pumped out by wall of sound was onstage.
Like she was a professional backing singer with other artists beforehand wasn't she?

Yeah she was a legit session singer before she joined the Dead, most notably singing on Elvis "Suspicious Minds" and Percy Sledge "When A Man Loves A Woman". The Dead's monitor situation was majorly improved post-1975 hiatus; listen to any show from June 76, Donna sounds amazing.

Not sure how good representation of sound pumped out by wall of sound was onstage.

Supposedly one of the main reasons it was designed was to better hear themselves on stage. I haven't dug into a ton of interviews or anything, but I remember Donna saying she rarely heard herself properly onstage until they brought in wedge monitors in '76.

(fun fact: wedge monitors were invented by the Who's soundman Bob Pridden)

I remember Donna saying she rarely heard herself properly

So that was her excuse huh

in seriousness I will give that a chance

for real the dead in concert circa '77 sound _professional_ in a way that i just don't expect from them, and i'm starting to come around to it

xxp the idea that she can’t hear during their wall of sound phase seems a little weak.

http://image.email.dead.net/lib/fe93127176650d7b77/m/2/c210f64a-6b25-4bf1-9220-c3c9cc1b53db.jpg

won't let me paste text, but it's ltd.ed. 81-82-83 shows, 2 nights each year, at Madison Square Garden---newly restored, speed correction, notes by David Fricke etc etc--announcement w links:
http://view.email.dead.net/?qs=ca58f8dc75e7affe5e21421196900c0643c26e4b96b3b068e70ac2cf5aba3044e7581b0c5934727f1a4a419d25095ee47d5293fdb18e2ac598eaf4ddfb7299bc42f8f1cce4595c1bff47fcd62271653c

Dave's Picks 43 was also announced, one of the most exciting in ages: San Francisco 11/2/69 and Dallas 12/26/69 (post-Live/Dead, pre-Workingman's). Two Dark Stars, first full acoustic set.

https://store.dead.net/dave-s-picks-vol-43.html

I just checked out the "Listening Party." 60s Dead is not really my jam so take my opinion fwiw, but for as much flack as Donna often gets she was a quantum-leap improvement over the harmonies the band are attempting on "High Time." Those are really painful.

After a recent post of a Terminal Island prison concert bootleg feat. proactive jailbird Flora Purim & cool visitors, some more have surfaced--- this 'un extra points for reviving thee classic vision of Owsley and Jerry:

Not sure how many Terminal Island bootlegs there, are but there is this one, too ... https://t.co/9YbTi9vplO

— Tyler Wilcox (@tywilc) July 12, 2022

‘77 Kreutzmann/Hart just had it together during “Peggy-O”

i stan late '69 dark star. for as much as people think of 1970 dark stars as happening in, well, 1970, a _lot_ of the things that make the 1970-02-13 dark star exceptional are elements that were developed throughout late 69 - space, soulful strut, feelin' groovy, all come out of the period between late august and december of '69.

my fave mind you are still the aud dark stars from '70...

my pick for most slept-on '69 dark star: 1969-07-07 piedmont park

A Closer Look At Lyceum '72: The Complete Recordings

Suspicions confirmed. That was what Phil Lesh thought when he stood outside of Stonehenge. It was April 1972, right after the Dead had played their first two concerts of the historic Europe ’72 tour, and Lesh, Jerry Garcia, and Alan Trist were taking in the sight of that storied landscape and monumental mystery. Scholars still debate its purpose, but for Lesh, the awe-inspiring arrangement of mammoth stones was proof that the kind of archaic wisdom that inspired the Dead was rooted in something deep, powerful, and very real, however mysterious and ineffable. Years later, Lesh recalled the experience as truly life-changing, one he still considered transformative. Salisbury Plain was impressive, an ancient landscape where the legendary Avalon was reputed to house King Arthur’s final resting place, but Stonehenge was myth made real, a site where “the whole concept of places of power” came to life, he told band historian Dennis McNally, with “so much consciousness poured into it that it still vibrates.” The lesson was personal, too: looking at those massive stones “clarified my whole idea of trying to put our music into a place, how it would change,” he explained. “How it could be different.”
It was a lesson that the rest of the tour reinforced, with every stop adding new insights, offering new ways to affirm Lesh’s epiphany. By the time they returned to London at the end of the tour, they were indeed changed, different—and they were eager to show that. The four concerts they played at the Lyceum gave proof of that transformation, something the band recognized when they chose a majority of the tracks for the album documenting the tour from those shows.
Fans could hear the full context of that for the first time with the 2011 release of the groundbreaking boxed set documenting the entire tour, but vinyl offers an analog warmth and presence that speaks to the sumptuous Old World elegance of the Lyceum, and that conveys all of the nuances and dynamics of the music they performed and the ambience that informed those four final nights of the band’s first sustained foreign tour. This set lets us hear that, in a format that harks back to that time, letting us revisit what those shows meant, at the end of a historic tour and a remarkable point in the band’s history. - Nicholas G. Meriwether

"Have a good time. And don't take anything too seriously, least of all music!" - Jerry, Book of The Dead
"Sam's done an incredible job co-ordinating this whole thing. All the musicians really have to do is play. We don't have to worry about technicalities, we just go where we're pointed and hope we're pointed right. We're told there's a bus at two, be on it. People can get that together by now. It's a matter of necessity. If you miss it - too bad. If you're on the bus, you're on the bus." - Pigpen, Book of The Dead

Happy birthday to Jerry Garcia, AND to the greatest "Dark Star" this band ever played:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5QsoDMEXFXM

Well that depends. Just how far in do you wanta go?

🌹After a yearslong development process, we're ecstatic to be able to share a project we've been keeping under wraps: AFTER ALL IS SAID AND DONE, a gorgeous dedication to the art, history, and vast community of Grateful Dead tapers.
Folks, it was well worth the wait. pic.twitter.com/CpcCH7hYxt

— Anthology (@Anthology_Recs) August 9, 2022

this actually interests me as a historian because what gets lost, i think, from a lot of taping history is what tapes people could _hear_ and when they could _hear_ them. people weren't trading '77 betty boards in '78. like there's a canon of dead tapes, a canon that started out as a tape trader canon and was later revised and reified by the official live releases, and i want to know the history of that canon, how it developed. it fascinates me that all of the early dead boots were '71 boots, that early dead fans were apparently _really_ into '71 shit. i mean i'm not into '71 shit mostly, haha.

rushomancy otm. I’ve always been curious about when Dead tape trading really became semi-established. Like you said, I don’t think the whole Betty Boards thing (and Cornell in particular) was a thing at the time, and maybe didn’t become one until the mid-‘80s.

my understanding of the betty boards... i think there's something about it that jesse jarnow has talked about, at least, and my understanding is that there were three batches, and the batch that contained cornell got into circulation around '77? there's a long and convoluted story that iirc basically comes back to the dead family not taking care of their own (not terribly surprising there).

'77, god, i mean '87, the cornell show got into circulation around '87, is my fallible memory.

yeah, that book could be good---I read about one taper, who taught himself and built or hacked his own equipment, with posted results being a circa-'69 Dead show outdoors, in the Bronx: quality very good-to-excellent, I thought. Seems like the band came to some kind of understanding with him, about taping East Coast performances whenever feasible---but when Pig was gone, so was he, forever! I've known several heads like that, but they didn't have his abilities. Hopefully he went on to other bands, beyond the purview of Dead chronicles.

(I don't know why some people have always blamed the Dead for his drinking himself past being able to perform, and then to death---according to Rolling Stone's obit, he was hitting the bottle pretty hard when he was 13. But maybe they didn't try to help him, or try as hard as they could.)

Sorry to sidetrack, carry on please.

(I don't know why some people have always blamed the Dead for his drinking himself past being able to perform, and then to death---according to Rolling Stone's obit, he was hitting the bottle pretty hard when he was 13. But maybe they didn't try to help him, or try as hard as they could.)

― dow

i'm deeply personally interested in the praxis of radical communities of the 1960s and their failures - i do see them as forerunners of a lot of the communities i'm involved in today. so when i talk about the failure of the dead family, it's not coming from a place of dismissal, but an appreciation for what they did, and a desire to take what was good from them and improve on what was bad.

my main feeling is that radical outsider communities such as the dead family have a _duty of care_ to one another. normative institutions hate us, despise us, do not care for us as people _within_ societal norms are cared for, and even though we are not _adequately resourced_ when it comes to caring for each other, even though we can and will fail, this does not mean that we do not have a duty of care - to ourselves above all, most of all, but part of self-care, for me, is caring for community, is being there for others in the hope, not the expectation, that they will be there for us.

my outsider observation is that the dead family failed to _strive towards_ caring for each other. they were, at the same time, inappropriately libertarian when it came to things like pig's drinking, and inappropriately coercive when it came to things like dosing people without their consent. they created toxic situations and refused to take accountability for the results of those toxic situations. big fucking example: altamont. jerry wasn't _to blame_ for what happened, but you know, as much as i hate to lapse into corporate speak a root cause analysis of what happened would have really fucking helped instead of what happened, which was everybody running away and living out fucking outer space fantasies where all the white people get to fly off on wooden spaceships loaded to the gills with cocaine, and everybody else? fuck 'em. the only way crosby was different from the other fucking boomer cishet dudes was that he spoke out loud the things the others put into practice while pretending they weren't. fuccccck, their great idea for a concert was to have an outlaw biker gang riddled with white supremacists be security for a free concert in a Black neighborhood because you can't fucking trust cops, maaaaaaan, so let's get the fucking proud boys to do security instead, and then everybody acts fucking shocked when they murder a Black man on camera. bullshit!

a root cause analysis of what happened would have really fucking helped instead of what happened, which was everybody running away and living out fucking outer space fantasies where all the white people get to fly off on wooden spaceships loaded to the gills with cocaine, and everybody else? fuck 'em.

And this led to the whole, "Oh man, let me get my head together out in the country, man" phenomenon (that was, from a musical standpoint, inspired by Music From Big Pink, but the Band shouldn't be blamed for the shitty, self-centered lifestyle choices that sometimes accompanied that back-to-the-land movement). So the Dead moved out to the country essentially to run away from the damage they were at least partly responsible for causing, but couched it in blameless "wow, man, things are getting heavy out there...we just need to remove ourselves from the situation and groove for a while." It's all laid out (with a complete lack of self-awareness) in Jefferson Airplane's "The Farm" (on which Jerry plays, appropriately enough).

Just here to say '71 dead shit is awesome. The 2/18/71 show on the 50th anniversary Workingman's Dead is really interesting:

Ooops, meant to say:

First "Bertha" - First "Greatest" - First "Loser" - First "Playin" - First "Wharf Rat" - Mickey's last show until 10-20-74 - E.S.P. show - also: NRPS - this run was recorded for "Skull Fuck"; none of it was used.

You can hear all these songs that became staples in 71-74 being tentatively worked on - all the later possibilities are there but hadn't yet occurred.

Maybe a better way to say it is they hadn't figured everything out yet so you can sort of hear other possible roads they could have taken.

Also 71 is really interesting to me because it's the last year of the OG Dead - by 1972 things have changed and they lost some of the early roughness (gaining a lot obv). You still have the faint remnants of pre-1969 acid test Dead, the folky stuff from the 1970 studio albums is still fresh, and you have the beginnings of a lot of live staples from 72-74.

It's all laid out (with a complete lack of self-awareness) in Jefferson Airplane's "The Farm"

??
Disagree

Maybe I'm being a bit harsh, but "The Farm" always struck me as the perfect expression of the hippies who had the means and privilege to live out the stoner fantasy of, "What if, like, we could just not have to deal with the hassles and responsibilities of the world, man, and just lay back and groove out in the country?" That said, I actually like the song (and that album) a lot, having only discovered it relatively recently.

I mean yeah, the song's "about" that, but I don't think it lacks self-awareness -- I think of it as a gentle (good-natured?) nose-tweak of that particular slice of the counterculture.

(fwiw, I think the same is also true of, say, the song that pairs "up against the wall, motherfuckers!" with "we are very proud of ourselves...". I think the Airplane were steeped in straight-faced irony)

Speaking of 60s etc. communities in San Francisco, Jay Babcock has created a Wordpress about the Diggers, with lots of research, incl. interviews he conducted---here's a deep 'n' wide one with a couple about life before, during, after Diggers (they are not happy to report that Emmett Grogan, one of the relatively best-known Diggers, called them up, looking for volunteers to work security at Altamont, but they already had dibs on a big work party for a house raising, so that was one reason Grogan or somebody got the Angels to do it)
https://diggersdocs.home.blog/2022/03/05/we-had-a-far-more-profound-effect/

(also: Christopher Hill's The World Turned Upside Down is a great read on the original (17th century) Diggers (and Levellers and Ranters and etc.)― papal hotwife (milo z))

And here's the article about Pigpen I mentioned, which doesn't say he was drinking at 13, specifically, but his buddy from way back does remember them hitting it pretty hard from then on, in Pig's case---also shows some attitudes, and mention of "the orphan of the Haight"---quite a time lens, possibly triggering for some, re alcohol abuse:
https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/pigpen-mckernan-dead-at-27-46215/

I wonder if the tape of his songs mentioned in that article has surfaced, is posted somewhere---?

I mean yeah, the song's "about" that, but I don't think it lacks self-awareness -- I think of it as a gentle (good-natured?) nose-tweak of that particular slice of the counterculture.

― Disarm u with a SMiLE (morrisp), Wednesday, August 10, 2022 1:03 PM (twenty-four minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

(fwiw, I think the same is also true of, say, the song that pairs "up against the wall, motherfuckers!" with "we are very proud of ourselves...". I think the Airplane were steeped in straight-faced irony)

― Disarm u with a SMiLE (morrisp), Wednesday, August 10, 2022 1:07 PM (twenty-one minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Yeah, I can almost see that (the irony, that is). I rarely associate '60s SF bands with irony, straight-faced or otherwise, and Ian MacDonald's assertion that '60s US bands lacked irony entirely is often stuck in the back of my head. I don't think he's completely correct, but I think there's more examples that prove his point than refute it.

And "we are forces of chaos and anarchy, everything they say we are we are, and we are very proud of ourselves" feels less like slight tweaking of their contemporaries/audience, and more like "this is what the establishment is saying about us, so fuck 'em, we'll embrace those labels, true or not."

Here's a thing about Pigpen as songwriter:
https://faroutmagazine.co.uk/the-only-self-penned-pigpen-track-on-a-grateful-dead-album/ (title is misleading, since it mentions several things, incl. on the expanded Europe '72