The Wheel is Turning — An Introduction

OK, here we go.  The goal of this journal is to record some thoughts and general information on the wealth of unnofficial concert recordings that circulate on and off the internet, particularly those of the Grateful Dead.  The initiial area of focus as I get this journal off the ground will be audience recordings of the Grateful Dead available on the Live Music Archive (LMA), particularly for those shows where no soundboard recording circulates.  There’s certainly much debate as to the merits of audience recordings compared to soundboard recordings when both sources are available from a single show for comparison. A soundboard recording provides crisp definition to the instruments, but can somtimes come up short in terms of ambience and mix. Audience recordings on the other hand present the sound of the show captured by one set of “ears” in the room, allowing the listener to hear the show as it was in the room where it was played. Audience recordings can suffer from any number of deficiencies resultant from concert hall acoustics, chatty or obnoxious concert attendees near the taper, a bad PA, substandard taping equipment, or poor microphone placement, but when they nail a recording, LOOK OUT!

I tend to prefer a well mixed soundboard recording, but some audience recordings are too fantastic to be ignored. The agreement between the Archive and the Dead effectively bars download of soundboard recordings from their site, causing the collector to seek out soundboards of their favorite shows from various bit torrent trackers.  However, there are dozens of shows where spectacular, highly unusual music went down, but the magic is only available to us (to date) in recordings captured from the audience.  These shows can be enjoyed through streaming listening on the LMA, or may be freely downloaded from the LMA in a number of compressed formats for non-streaming enjoyment.

I’m a big believer in losslessly compressed audio files which can be decoded to full .wav files for playback.  I like to play music at high volume on the home, car, and work stereos, and mp3 compression really degrades the fidelity available from an audience recording.   You don’t need bat ears to detect this.  Of course, the reader/listener is free to do what they’d like, but here are a couple resources for those interested in enjoying their music in the best quality available:

Etree has links and directions to aid in installation of mkwACT, which will aid in decompression of Shortern (.shn) files.  Shorten is one of the two primary lossless compression schemes that we’ll deal with here, the other being the FLAC (.flac) format.  Some useful directions on the use of the FLAC format are posted on Phish’s commercial download site. I’m not great on tech support, but there are plenty of other knowledgable and helpful resources out there and I’ll do my best to direct those with questions to them.

So, that’s an introduction.  Please feel welcome to leave comments, stories, memories, corrections, etc. if the spirit moves you.

Grateful Dead, 10.1.76, Market Square Arena, Indianapolis, IN

The merit of the Grateful Dead’s performances from 1976 is one of the running debates among Deadheads who compulsively collect and listen to the band’s large output of live shows. Something about the band’s austere sound and dialed-back intensity from ‘76 really turns off some Heads, sometimes leading them to jokingly question the character and fortitude of those who enjoy shows from that period. However, for those who can dig that year’s laid back groove, there’s a wealth of shows with inventive playing and unusual setlist twists. What’s more, shows from 1976 also provide an opportunity to listen to the development of many important pieces of the Dead’s repertoire that would carry through the next two decades of their career – Cassidy, Help on the Way > Slipknot! > Franklin’s Tower, Might as Well, The Wheel, and Samson & Delilah, among others, all began to see regular performance in ‘76. Fortunately for interested listeners, there are many fine soundboard recordings available in the realm of commercial releases as well as in trading circles. In keeping with the theme of this site, however, it’s worth taking a listen to one of the shows that only circulates among traders in the form of an audience recording: the October 1, 1976 concert at Market Square Arena in Indianapolis.

Collectors know that a soundboard recording exists for this show, as Dead Vault archivist David Lemieux has posted part of the second set jam for streaming listening in his weekly Taper’s Section feature at Dead.net. Nonetheless, a complete, higher fidelity soundboard recording from this show still remains elusive for collectors. Thankfully, taper Jerry Moore and his microphones were in the audience in Indianapolis on that date. Mr. Moore made a great room tape that can be heard and downloaded here:

http://www.archive.org/details/gd1976-10-01.sonyECM33p.moore.berger-tallmadge.84358.flac16

Highlights from the first set include a spot-on performance of Cassidy, and the recording wonderfully features the interlocking guitar lines of Weir and Garcia in high relief, particularly as the first solo takes off. Later in the set, there’s a Weir-led cover of Bobby Womack’s It’s All Over Now, a song that provided the Rolling Stones with their first #1 hit, and which was brought to the Dead’s rotation in ‘76. Extended jamming in the first set is limited to Scarlet Begonias, but what a jam it is. At this point in the Dead’s career, Scarlet Begonias was not yet married to Fire on the Mountain (introduced in ‘77), with the jam instead building to a tremendous climax that released its energy back to a reprise of the theme.

Set two opens with two more 1976 additions to the Dead’s songbook, the Garcia/Hunter song Might as Well (a celebration of the Dead’s 1970 trans-Canadian train tour) and Bob Weir’s arrangement of the Rev. Gary Davis’ Samson & Delilah. Next up is a marathon half-hour performance of the Help on the Way > Slipknot! > Franklin’s Tower suite. These pieces had been introduced to Deadheads on the Blues For Allah album in 1975, but the jams in Slipknot! and Franklin’s Tower would really be fleshed out in the live performances of 1976.

More unique jamming comes later in the set, using the disco arrangment of Dancing in the Street as the point of departure. Garcia’s solo trails off mid-song as the drummers take time for a duet which eventually transforms into the thumping introduction of The Wheel. The jam after The Wheel has hints of a reprise to Dancing in the Street, but instead the music takes another left turn to Ship of Fools. The use of Ship of Fools as Garcia’s ballad in one of the Dead’s jamming sequences is rather unusual and its efficacy here makes one wonder why the song wasn’t used in this role more often. After the last notes of Ship of Fools fade away, Garcia re-applies the envelope filter to his guitar and the band leaps into the disco Dancin’ breakdown and reprise. The use of musical sandwiches with Dancing in the Street as the bread (a role that otherwise often went to Playing in the Band, St. Stephen, or The Other One) was common in the Dead’s October ‘76 shows, but not so much afterwards. After the Dancing reprise here, the set closes out with satisfying performances of Going Down the Road Feeling Bad and One More Saturday Night.

Thanks to the efforts of taper Mr. Moore, the digitization efforts of Rob Berger and John Tallmadge, and the generous agreement between the Dead and the LMA, this show can be downloaded in lossless FLAC format, decompressed, and later enjoyed at full volume and dynamics. It’s well worth the listener’s time and effort to check out this gem of a show and recording.

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Wish to apologize to folks who check this site regularly for the lack of posts here lately. Busy with work changes and a few other things on my mind, but it looks as though there’ll be more time to write about the Dead soon enough.

Now, some miscellany related to the 10.1.76 show:

David Gans, host of the Grateful Dead Hour radio show, interviewed taper Jerry Moore (along with fellow taper legends Rob Bertrando and Barry Glassberg) in between sets at a Dead show in 1990 and the proceedings can be heard here.

Market Square Arena was demolished in 2001 – check out some of the cool photos.

The Dead played another great show at Market Square Arena on February 3, 1979 that also only circulates from audience recordings. That show features the comeback of China Cat Sunflower > I Know You Rider, the first that they’d played in over a year and only the second performance of the pairing since the Dead’s break from touring in 1974. China > Rider would stay in the repertoire for the rest of the band’s career. The second set has a fantastic Scarlet > Fire that shouldn’t be missed! Listen and download from the LMA.

Slipknot! is unusual within the Dead’s repertoire in that it’s one of the few dedicated instrumental numbers that they recorded in the studio. Though the piece wasn’t played in full until 1975, the theme popped up in a number of performances in 1974, showing up in the middle of Playin’ in the Band, The Other One, Eyes of the World, and Dark Star. David Dodd’s Annotated Grateful Dead Lyrics site has some interesting information on possible lyrics to Slipknot! that were penned by Robert Hunter, as well as Hunter’s comments on those lyrics.

Tie a slip knot!

Grateful Dead, 9.12.81, Greek Theatre, University of California, Berkeley, CA

After Bill Graham closed down his Winterland Arena in 1979, the Grateful Dead found themselves in search of new venues to play for their hometown fans in the Bay Area, but San Francisco venues were no longer regularly able to accommodate the size of the Dead’s fanbase. After a 14 night stand at the Warfield Theatre in 1980 while celebrating their 15th year and recording the Reckoning and Dead Set albums, the Dead played fewer than 20 shows in San Francisco through the rest of the 1980’s and 90’s, compared to the hundreds of shows played there in the ’60’s and ’70’s. In the early 1980’s, indoor shows moved in many cases to the Oakland Auditorium, while the Greek Theatre on U.C. Berkeley’s campus received an annual run of outdoor shows from 1981 to 1989. Shows at the Greek are regularly celebrated on tape and in the memories of Deadheads, but the Dead’s first run there in 1981 provided one particularly fantastic show for which, due to reasons lost to time, we have no soundboard recording to enjoy. Fortunately, a number of tapers were able to record from the audience on September 12, 1981, thereby preserving one of the definitive Grateful Dead concerts from the early ’80’s. My favorite of the recordings is credited to Mark Severson, Jaime Poris, and an anonymous taper. This tape can be heard and downloaded here:

http://www.archive.org/details/gd1981-09-12.nak700.anon-poris-severson.LMPP.95391.flac16

As far as early ’80’s Grateful Dead is concerned, this show has it all. There’s the 14 minute show opener of Shakedown Street, with Jerry Garcia coaxing fat tones out of the Tiger while the band creates a wide pocket for him to work with. On the next number, Phil Lesh’s bass rumbles through the intro to a rollcking Greatest Story Ever Told, where the energy established with the opener just doesn’t let up. Midway through the first set, the band launches into a standout performance of Bird Song with Garcia maintaining incredible focus through the jazz-inflected jam. This is followed by another piece with a self-contained jam, the Weir/Barlow composition Cassidy, which highlights the interaction of the band’s two guitarists . As if these weren’t enough treats in one set, we get China Cat Sunflower > I Know You Rider to cap off the first half of the show.

Set two has the prototypical setlist for ’80’s Dead, with pairings of Scarlet Begonias > Fire on the Mountain and Estimated Prophet > Eyes of the World. Both are played to near perfect execution, with Eyes in particular getting an exploratory 19 minute treatment that goes pretty far out before giving way to the drummers. A 10 minute jam on Not Fade Away comes out of drums and has some of the best slide guitar work by Weir that this listener’s ever heard. To top off the fine evening, fans were treated to not just one, but two encores – Bob Dylan’s It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue first, then the Dead’s rendition of Good Lovin’ to close.

Thanks to the efforts of tapers and the work of the folks at the Live Music Preservation Project, as well as the generous agreement between the Dead and the LMA, this show can be downloaded in lossless FLAC format, decompressed, and later enjoyed at full volume and dynamics. It’s well worth the listener’s time and effort to check out this gem of a show and recording.

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The number of really cool shows that went down at the Greek is truly impressive, with something special happening there almost every year. Some samples:

The 5.23.82 show, like the 9.12.81 show, has fine performances of Shakedown, Scarlet > Fire, and Estimated > Eyes, but check out the drums segment from this show. The Hells Angels made a strong showing at this gig and someone’s got his bike revving on stage with the drummers, really cool to hear. Also dig the Casey Jones closer! A nice soundboard recording circulates.

The 5.15.83 show only circulates form audience recordings, but taper Rango Keshavan made a stellar tape that night. Some cool things to enjoy here– an early performance of Hell in a Bucket (debuted two nights before at the Greek); the crowd and band singing happy birthday to Dead soundman Dan Healy; a fine Help on the Way > Slipknot! > Franklin’s Tower (revived in 1983 after being shelved in late 1977); Flora Purim and Airto Moreira joining the drums/space segment; former Quicksilver Messenger Service guitarist John Cippolina sitting in on Not Fade Away.

The Friday the 13th show on 7.13.84 saw a one-time-only encore of Dark Star, just after a shooting star passed overhead. This was second Star played during Brent Mydland’s tenure as keyboardist. It had been last played in the third set of the New Year’s 1981/82 show and wouldn’t be played again until October 1989 when the Dead were famously billed as “Formerly the Warlocks” at the Hampton Coliseum in Virginia. The second set of this show also has an interesting twist on the Scarlet > Fire combo, with Touch of Grey thrown in between the pairing. A nice soundboard of 7.13.84 circulates.

The Dead’s 20th anniversary was celebrated at the Greek in 1985 and for the 6.16.85 show, the band resurrected the complete That’s It For the Other One suite. The band had dropped the Cryptical Envelopment portion from The Other One in 1972 and the revival in 1985 was well received by the crowd. A nice soundboard recording circulates for this show as well.

For any Stanford alums who may read The Flask, don’t worry, I’m sure there will be a piece on shows at the Frost sooner or later.

Finally, it’s the 40th anniversary today of the Dead’s enduring masterpiece, the Live/Dead Dark Star played at the 2.27.69 show at the Fillmore West. Play it loud!

Grateful Dead, 6.4.77, The Forum, Inglewood, CA

The concerts played by the Grateful Dead in May and June of 1977 are deservedly legendary among Deadheads for the precision and power of the band’s playing. This impression is aided by the wide availability of high fidelity soundboard recordings for most of the shows from this tour. However, one show that often falls through the cracks when discussing this era is the Dead’s June 4, 1977 show at The Forum in Inglewood, CA, where the Dead played a marathon second set with a couple unusual twists on familiar song sequences. As regular readers of this journal can surmise, the relative lack of recognition accorded this show can be attributed at least in part to the lack of a soundboard recording in circulation among collectors. Fortunately for the contemporary listener, tapers Rob Bertrando and Bob Menke made a fine room recording from the 18th row that night, which can be heard and downloaded from the Live Music Archive through this link:

http://www.archive.org/details/gd1977-06-04.fob.menke.motb-0096.97183.flac16

The June 4, 1977 show (see the promo poster here) was a one night stand for fans in Southern California, sandwiched between the famed April/May tour of the east coast and their celebratory return to their unofficial homebase at Winterland in San Francisco a few nights later. Patient listeners will find the first set picking up steam starting from Peggy-O, performed to typical beautiful perfection throughout 1977. For the rest of the set, the band dips into Jerry Garcia’s early ’70’s songbook (Friend of the Devil, Candyman, and Brown-Eyed Women), while Bob Weir’s selections tend toward his relatively recent songwriting & arrangement efforts (Lazy Lightning > Supplication, New Minglewood Blues, and The Music Never Stopped). The variety makes for a well paced set.

The second set is particularly lengthy for the period and comprises two extended jams which showcase the centerpieces of the upcoming Terrapin Station album. The first of the jamming segments features Estimated Prophet, powered by Garcia’s use of a Mutron envelope filter, segued into Eyes of the World. This pairing would become standard fare at Dead shows throughout the rest of the band’s career, but at this point the transition between the two was still under development. Eyes falls into a brief drum duet that gives way in turn to Good Lovin’, which caps off the sequence on a rollicking note.

The next sequence starts off from another classic Dead couplet, Terrapin Station > Playing in the Band. Terrapin receives a strong reading and as the last last notes of its signature break fade, Weir can be heard counting off the 10/4 time of Playing’s intro before the band leaps in. The subsequent jam is satisfactorily spacey, but takes an unfamiliar turn into Franklin’s Tower; this pairing was played only one other time, nearly a decade later. The end of Franklin’s Tower drops into more spacey playing, unusual for this period when the song was normally the finale to the Help On the Way > Slipknot! suite. An achingly delicate China Doll emerges from the void and serves to provide balance to the spacey guitar runs and exuberant rock n’ roll of the set. On the heels of the lullaby, we’re treated to another conspicuous transition, this time into what must be the most fast-paced Not Fade Away played by the Dead in the late seventies. The fiery jamming here eventually turns back to finish the sequence with a triumphant reprise of Playing in the Band. An encore of One More Saturday Night appropriately caps off this Saturday night in Inglewood.

Thanks to the efforts of tapers Bertrando and Menke, the digitization by folks at the Mouth of the Beast project, and the generous agreement between the Dead and the LMA, this show can be downloaded in lossless FLAC format, decompressed, and later enjoyed at full volume and dynamics. It’s well worth the listener’s time and effort to check out this gem of a show and recording.

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Regarding Peggy-O (as well as Dire Wolf) – Where is Fennario, anyway?

As The Forum was then the home of the Los Angeles Lakers, here’s a cool photo from 1977 of one of the great hoops rivalries – noted Deadhead Bill Walton battling with the Lakers’ Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, from Kareem’s blog.

Grateful Dead, 8.18.70, Fillmore West, San Francisco, CA

The summer of 1970 saw the Grateful Dead at their folk-rock peak, riding the wave of the recently issued Workingman’s Dead album and working on their upcoming masterpiece, American Beauty. On stage, they were perfecting their live show model of “An Evening With The Grateful Dead and The New Riders of the Purple Sage,” which comprised acoustic and electric sets by the Dead with a set in between by the New Riders, whose line-up at that time featured Jerry Garcia and Mickey Hart on pedal steel guitar and drums, respectively. Unfortunately for Deadheads, the contents of the Grateful Dead’s Vault are spotty when it comes to shows from the 1970, as mentioned in this 2001 interview with Dead Vault archivist David Lemieux. The lack of soundboard recordings can be attributed in part to the temporary departure of the Dead’s soundman and benefactor, The Bear, in the summer of 1970. Bear had habitually recorded the band’s shows up to that point, but was diverted to Terminal Island FCI for a couple years. The group managed to soldier on in spite of this development, but as a result, we have only audience recordings to document many fine shows where the Dead developed some of the most revered chestnuts in their songbook.

Such is the case for the Dead’s August 1970 run at Bill Graham’s Fillmore West in San Francisco, a series of shows that saw significant coverage from Rolling Stone and resulted in the Dead’s appearance on the cover of the magazine. Only a fragment circulates from the first night of the run, but a more complete audience recording circulates for the next show on August 18, 1970. That show, which features the first documented performances of a number of Dead classics, can be heard and downloaded here:

http://www.archive.org/details/gd70-08-18.aud.yerys.1346.sbeok.shnf

The first set showcases the acoustic Grateful Dead and opens with a special gem, the earliest available rendition of Truckin’. The tempo of the tune is closer to the track on American Beauty than what would be performed on-stage in subsequent years. There’s no extended jam attached to the piece yet, as the song draws to a close shortly after the last chorus. Also noteworthy is the prominence of a piano (presumably played by Pigpen?) on-stage. Later in the set, the listener is treated to the earliest available performances of three other songs that would appear on American Beauty – Ripple, Brokedown Palace, and Operator. The last of these is a particular delight as only a handful of live performances of Pigpen’s ditty circulate among collectors. The rest of the set is filled out with standard 1970 Grateful Dead acoustic material, including a closing couplet of revival tunes, Cold Jordan and Swing Low, Sweet Chariot.

The New Riders’ set is unavailable at the LMA, but the recording picks back up with the electric set by the Dead. The set gets off to a strong start with a 14 minute rendition of Dancing in the Streets, highlighted by the repeated tension and release of Garcia’s extended solo. This is followed by the Next Time You See Me, which like other 1970 versions features dual vocals from Garcia and Pigpen; later performances would have only Pigpen’s lead vocal. That’s It For the Other One gets a solid workout later in the set, with the Cryptical Envelopment reprise giving way to an early performance of Sugar Magnolia, which had joined the Dead’s repertoire in June of ‘70. The tape has a splice here and the band has yet to work out all of the kinks in Sugar Magnolia’s arrangement, but the onstage development of a Dead staple makes for an interesting listen. Attics of My Life, another American Beauty song, follows and provides evidence of the band’s attention to their vocal harmonies during this period.

Also noteworthy in the electric set is Pig’s reading of the James Brown classic It’s a Man’s Man’s Man’s World, which was played by the Dead only about a dozen or so times, and is a relatively rare example of the Dead playing in 6/8 time. Garcia’s playing on this piece gets a bit spacier than some of the versions from earlier in the year, like the version on Dick’s Picks, Vol. 8. A standalone Not Fade Away provides the remainder of the jamming in the set, with a quote from And We Bid You Goodnight tucked in there. The show closing duo of Casey Jones and Uncle John’s Band is worth checking out as well.

Thanks to the efforts of the uncredited taper and those of Miles Garret, Jared Minkoff, and Ben Yerys to digitize the tape, as well as the generous arrangement between the Live Music Archive and the Grateful Dead, this great artifact from the Fillmore West can be downloaded in lossless Shorten format, decompressed, and later enjoyed at full volume and dynamics. It’s well worth the listener’s time and effort to check out this gem of a show and recording.

Grateful Dead, 1.10.79, Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum, Uniondale, NY

The Flask once again dips into the deep pool of fine audience recordings of from the Grateful Dead’s January 1979 mini-tour. The first show post for this site took a look at the January 20, 1979 concert in Buffalo, when fans were treated to the last Dark Star played during keyboardist Keith Godchaux’s tenure. Ten days earlier at the Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum on Long Island, the Dead played a more expansive Dark Star, the longest version that was played during the song’s brief 1979 revival, along with another special surprise in the second set. As is the case with the Buffalo show, there is no soundboard recording of the January 10, 1979 show in Uniondale, but fortunately for Deadheads, taper Keith Gatto made a stellar recording of the concert from the audience. The show can be heard and downloaded here:

http://www.archive.org/details/gd79-01-10.gatto.kempka.307.sbeok.shnf

Patient listeners will find the first set of that night to be an enjoyable listen, especially toward the end with ripping performances of Passenger, Loser, and The Music Never Stopped. However, the most special music of the evening occurs in set two, which starts out with an upbeat, jammed-out Shakedown Street, showcasing fine backing vocals from Donna Jean Godchaux and some of the better keyboard work by her husband Keith during their last tour with the band. Keith’s role in the Dead’s sound had decreased steadily throughout the late ’70’s, and the energy that he brought to the stage, as can be seen in The Closing of Winterland video, paled in comparison to the rest of band. Nonetheless, tapes like this offer evidence that his playing hadn’t decayed completely and that the band’s renewed focus as a guitar-driven ensemble made for some excellent jams.

The second set continues with a rocking triple shot of I Need a Miracle > Bertha > Good Lovin’ that keeps the set’s energy flowing before the band busts into Dark Star. Unplayed since the band’s “retirement” in 1974, Dark Star had been famously dusted off a week and a half earlier for the New Year’s Eve gala which was the final concert at Bill Graham’s Winterland in San Francisco. On this night, the Long Island crowd receives the distinctive opening notes of the first east coast Dark Star since ‘74 with great excitement. The 18 minute Dark Star here runs a little longer than the New Year’s version, but operates at a similar pace, with plenty of floating, spacey playing from Jerry Garcia and company before the jam gives way to the drummers. A strong Wharf Rat follows a brief jam that comes out of the drum segment. (The recording here has a couple pops that the listener may wish to avoid.)

The last notes of Garcia’s solo out of Wharf Rat lead into the familiar territory of another song that was briefly revived for The Closing of Winterland concert, fan favorite and Dead classic St. Stephen. This song was one of the centerpieces of the Dead’s act in the late ’60’s, but the band dropped it in 1971 after tiring of it and forgetting the changes. The tune would re-appear in the Dead’s repertoire when they returned to the road in 1976, but the song vanished again for most of 1978 before the New Year’s run. The 1.10.79 version is last of the three performances of the tune from the December ‘78 – January ‘79 time period and is the final one by the Godchaux line-up of the Dead. (In this 1987 interview with Mary Eisenhart, Garcia discusses why the band dropped St. Stephen and Dark Star from the band’s song rotation.) This St. Stephen gets a strong reading, with the “What would be the answer to the answer man?” line dropping into the introductory lick of a spirited Around & Around, which closes this historic set.

Thanks to the efforts of the taper Dr. Gatto, the digitization by Jim Wise and Jeff Kempka, as well as the generous agreement between the Dead and the LMA, this show can be downloaded in lossless Shorten format, decompressed, and later enjoyed at full volume and dynamics. It’s well worth the listener’s time and effort to check out this fine recording and show.

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There’s an another audience recording available of this show made by taper Bob Wagner and digitized by David Minches that’s well worth checking out.

The first of the three performances of St. Stephen from this time period came at a UCLA show played the night before the closing of Winterland. The setlist for the second set reads like a “greatest hits” of the era, and the music makes for an engaging listen, available from both soundboard reels and a superb audience source.

St. Stephen would be played only three more times by the Grateful Dead, with all performances coming in the Fall of 1983.

Grateful Dead, 2.27.77, Robertson Gym, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA

The library of Grateful Dead concert recordings make up a substantial continuum of work that exists intertwined with the band’s more official discography. When considering the band’s work as a unified whole, the albums stand out as markers on a line or like trees along a road. Within any subset of shows that fall between album markers, there is a show that could be considered the root for the next album, as the Dead would often debut a batch of new songs at once. The Dead’s show at the Swing Auditorium in San Ber’dino on February 26, 1977 was the show that debuted the centerpieces for Terrapin Station, Estimated Prophet and the title track. Though that show circulates in excellent soundboard fidelity, for reasons muffled by the fog of time, there is no soundboard recording available to Deadheads of the next night’s show in Santa Barbara, where the new songs would get their second workout. Fortunately for Deadheads, taper Rob Bertrando made a fine recording from the seats at the Robertson Gym at UCSB on February 27, 1977. This show full of blazing guitar work can be download and heard here:

http://www.archive.org/details/gd77-02-27.bertrando.vernon.10378.sbeok.shnf

The show gets off on solid footing, with a burning New Minglewood Blues followed by a well-measured Loser. Later, the set features the second-ever performance of Estimated Prophet, a song that would become a second set staple and jam springboard for their concerts. A beaded string of unconnected songs follows, all standout versions – Good Lovin’, Mississippi Half-Step Uptown Toodeloo, The Music Never Stopped, and Scarlet Begonias. This is only the fourth performance of the Weir-sung Good Lovin’, a song which had been previously conducted by Pigpen until the band dropped the number in 1972 when Pig stopped touring. Also noteworthy is the second-to-last performance of Scarlet Begonias before the introduction of Fire On the Mountain, to which it would be tied for most of the band’s subsequent touring career. The last few times Scarlet was played before Fire came into the repertoire, the band had worked out a segment where the jam reaches a wild crescendo, as can be heard on this version and others from the period.

Set two provides straightforward jamming with a St. Stephen > Not Fade Away combination, but the highlight of the set comes in a pairing of Terrapin Station followed by Morning Dew. Terrapin Station was born fully developed as this version demonstrates. (For some information on the origins of Terrapin, see songwriter Robert Hunter’s comments.) The final guitar solo for Morning Dew regularly reached epic proportions in 1977, and Garcia’s work here features extended intense fanning that will blow the listener away.

Thanks to the efforts of taper Dr. Bertrando and the digitization by Matt Vernon, as well as the generous agreement between the Dead and the LMA, this show can be downloaded in lossless Shorten format, decompressed, and later enjoyed at full volume and dynamics. It’s well worth the listener’s time and effort to check out this gem of a show and recording.

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Where is Minglewood?

Here’s a handful of other great shows where bunches of new songs were debuted:

2.18.71 in Portchester, NY saw the debuts of Bertha, Playin’ in the Band, Loser, Greatest Story Ever Told, and Wharf Rat. That last one is sandwiched by one of the all-time great Dark Stars. This show was also Mickey Hart’s last with the band until October 1974.

10.19.71 in Minneapolis was pianist Keith Godchaux’s first show. The band marked the night by debuting a new batch of songs including Tennessee Jed, Jack Straw, Mexicali Blues, Comes a Time, One More Saturday Night, and Ramble On Rose.

2.9.73 in Palo Alto saw the debut of a new sound system for the band, coupled with concert debuts of Dead chestnuts Eyes of the World, Here Comes Sunshine, Row Jimmy, China Doll, Loose Lucy, They Love Each Other, and Wave That Flag, which was a pre-cursor of U.S. Blues.

Grateful Dead, 10.17.82, The Downs at Santa Fe, NM

The Grateful Dead played the state of New Mexico only three times in the 1980s, with a single performance at The Downs at Santa Fe in 1982 and a return trip for two shows there in 1983. (The band also played Albuquerque twice in the ’70’s.) At the time of this writing, there is unfortunately no soundboard recording in circulation among Deaheads to document the special music that was played at that first show in Santa Fe. Fortunately, tapes were made by fans in the audience at both shows that make for entertaining listening.

The October 17, 1982 concert has a varied song selection with passages of succinct jamming. The front-of-board recording comes to us through tape guru extraordinaire Charlie Miller and can be heard and downloaded here:

http://www.archive.org/details/gd82-10-17.fob-aud.miller.18108.sbeok.shnf

Fans that day were treated to an energetic first set with dynamic duos both opening (Mississippi Half-Step Uptown Toodeloo > Franklin’s Tower) and closing (Let it Grow > Deal) the set. In between, the band runs through their Weir-led version of Man Smart, Woman Smarter. Weir’s affinity for the song was such that he also played it at shows for Bobby & the Midnites. In the last decade of the Grateful Dead’s career, the calypso piece would be played routinely in the first half of the second set, but this relatively early performance finds the song used as a first set change-up.

The pre-drums portion of the second set from 10.17.82 has well-played versions of Dead warhorse pairings like Shakedown Street fused to Samson and Delilah, and Estimated Prophet rolling into He’s Gone. However, somewhat unusually, the set really takes off during the Space segment. Space, the amorphous music that followed the drum interlude in the second set of Dead shows in the 1980s, would take a more prominent role in shows as the decade wore on but is compact on this night, featuring some inspired guitar runs from Garcia.

The primordial clouds of music coalesce into an early performance of the Weir/Barlow composition Throwing Stones, which would go on to be one of the Dead’s mainstay late set numbers, as well as the signature piece for Weir’s live act apart from the Dead. (This 2005 interview with song co-author John Perry Barlow discusses the inspiration for the lyrics, outgoing Vice President Dick Cheney.) The early performances of Throwing Stones, as heard here, don’t have the structure to the instrumental bridge that would develop later as the band worked toward a studio recording for In the Dark; while this takes away some of the song’s anthematic punch, the ideas put forth in the early under-arranged performances make for engaging listening nonetheless. The rest of the set contains enough songs that one could construct two run of the mill post-Space segments from the parts there. Listeners will find plenty to like about the concise playing in this Throwing Stones > Goin’ Down the Road Feeling Bad > The Wheel > The Other One > Wharf Rat > Good Lovin’ sequence.

Thanks to the efforts of taper and the digitization by Charlie Miller, as well as the generous agreement between the Dead and the LMA, this show can be downloaded in lossless Shorten format, decompressed, and later enjoyed at full volume and dynamics. It’s well worth the listener’s time and effort to check out this gem of a show and recording.

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A bookmark appropriate to a show with a fine Space segment – NASA’s Astronomy Picture of the Day Archive

Eleven months later, the Dead and their fans would be back in Santa Fe at the same venue. There’s no soundboard recording available at the LMA of this show, either, but a number of fine audience recordings were made. There’s lots to love about that show — The Music Never Stopped to open; a couple of venue appropriate railroad songs; China > Rider to close the first set; a great Cumberland Blues in set two; spacey workouts of Playin’ in the Band and The Other One; and a highly unusual encore of Cold Rain & Snow.

Santa Feans recall the joys of the Dead’s 1982 and 1983 visits in this piece from SantaFe.com

Grateful Dead, 1.12.79, The Spectrum, Philadelphia, PA

January of this new year provides listeners with the opportunity to celebrate the 30th birthday of many fine recordings of the Grateful Dead’s January 1979 tour. Most were made by intrepid audience members equipped with tape decks, microphones, and sundry specialty items. That these tapes circulate freely among Deadhead collectors has been a fortunate development, for, as noted in previous posts here, soundboard tapes from this exciting tour are generally not available to provide aural documentation of the great music played. While no soundboard circulates for the Grateful Dead’s January 12, 1979 show at the Philadelphia Spectrum, we can hear the expansive jams from that night thanks to a recording made by taper Eddie Claridge with Sony ECM-280 microphones split 30′ apart on the balcony. The show can be heard and downloaded here:

http://www.archive.org/details/gd79-01-12.claridge.kempka.309.sbeok.shnf

As the thirtieth anniversary of this show at the arena colloquially known by some as the “Philly Rectum” passes, times find the arena scheduled for demolition, the former primary residents having moved across the street to the Wachovia Center. The Dead played the Spectrum 53 times and were honored by locals with a banner hung from the rafters on the night of their 50th show there (a show that also circulates only as an audience recording, but, alas, not a very good show). When the wrecking ball smashes the building that housed some of Philadelphia’s greatest sports triumphs, it will also free the last notes still haunting the venue of some of the Grateful Dead’s finest heroics. The hour long jam from the January 12, 1979 contains some of that playing.

The show, originally scheduled for November 28, 1978 but cancelled then due to laryngitis contracted by Garcia, takes a while to get going. The first set is unusually short for the period and doesn’t feature any extended jams, though the performances of Jack Straw, Peggy-O, and Deal are all worth checking out. Set two has the night’s main event, starting out from a briskly paced Dancing in the Street. Garcia churns out furious lines through the ensuing jam, perhaps making an extra effort to perform with his guitar to make up for his weakened vocal chords, while the drummers are unrelenting in their disco pulse. After the vocal reprise fades out, Garcia again steps up with an extended spotlight run backed by the drummers. His playing goes further out this time, pushing the drummers to a more elastic space and continues on uninterrupted for 7 minutes of lightning fast runs punctuated by thematic statements. This solo ranks with the fabled 1.22.78 “Close Encounters” jam for Pure Garcia content and shouldn’t be missed. The second half of the second set is focused around a lengthy late ’70’s treatment of the Not Fade Away > Goin’ Down the Road combo that also has some interesting playing.

Thanks to the efforts of the taper Mr. Claridge, the digitization by Jim Wise and Jeff Kempka, as well as the generous agreement between the Dead and the LMA, this show can be downloaded in lossless Shorten format, decompressed, and later enjoyed at full volume and dynamics. It’s well worth the listener’s time and effort to check out this unique second set jam some of the finest playing Garcia laid down in Philadelphia.

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Curiously, the Dead had played the Spectrum a week earlier on January 5, 1979, another show for which there’s no soundboard recording in circulation among collectors. That show is worth hearing for extended treatments of Sugaree, Eyes of the World, and a post-Space Truckin’ > Nobody’s Fault But Mine. After that show, the Dead ’s itinerary carried them to New York and Long Island before returning to Philly, as the 76ers needed the Spectrum’s floor for their overtime loss to the Phoenix Suns on January 6th.

No post on the Rectum is complete without references to two of the great landmarks for meeting up with friends: The Rocky Statue and Kate Smith’s Statue

In light of the current state of Philly sports, Fly Eagles Fly!

Grateful Dead, 6.28.76, Auditorium Theatre, Chicago, IL

There were a number of fine audience recordings made on the Grateful Dead’s comeback tour of June 1976, but my favorite comes from the June 28, 1976 show at Chicago’s Auditorium Theatre. There’s no soundboard recording in circulation among traders for this show, though one clearly exists, as High Time from the first set was commercially released as filler on Vol. 4 of the Dead’s download series. Until the rest of the soundboard recording surfaces, this interesting show with a unique jam in the second set can be heard thanks to an audience recording made by Bob Wagner with Shure 545s microphones. Download or listen to the music here:

http://www.archive.org/details/gd76-06-28.shure.minches.18388.sbeok.shnf

The first set shows some of the marked changes in the band since their last tour in 1974 (The Dead played four casual shows in 1975, but they were scattered throughout the year). Most obvious is the return of drummer Mickey Hart, who had taken a three and a half year break from touring with the band starting in February of 1971. The reassembled two percussionist format of the Dead provided a heavier bottom end to the music, which propelled jams with greater momentum at the cost of not being able to change direction quite as sharply. Other new developments can be seen and heard in the setlist, with the addition of the Weir/Barlow songs Cassidy, Lazy Lightnin’ > Supplication, and The Music Never Stopped to the band’s rotation. Cassidy was originally recorded in 1972 for Weir’s Ace album, but was played live by the Dead only once before 1976. (John Perry Barlow has written an interesting piece regarding the song’s origins.) Weir had worked up Lazy Lightnin’ > Supplication with Kingfish while the Dead were on hiatus and the pairing would be a staple of the Dead’s first set jamming until Lazy Lightnin’ was dropped in ‘84. The Music Never Stopped carried over from the band’s 1975 work, but would become a regular set closer from 1976 onward. Garcia’s numbers also offered new twists– They Love Each Other has a slowed down arrangement compared to the sprightly 1973 performances; Scarlet Begonias bounces less buts rocks harder (and longer) in the two-drummer band; and High Time returned to the rotation after a six year absence.

The second set features the highlight of the show, starting out from Eyes of the World, which in June of ‘76 had been also been rearrangec, with the minor key jam that previously came after the final chorus transplanted to the song’s introduction. Eyes breaks down into a bass lead for Lesh, which the drummers gradually take into the one-time-only performance of Happiness is Drumming. This jam, which appeared on Hart’s Diga album, is essentially an instrumental version of Fire on the Mountain and provides a fascinating snapshot of the band’s onstage development of their future repertoire. Rehearsal recordings of Fire on the Mountain/Happiness is Drumming date to as far back as 1971, but the song wouldn’t appear in the Dead’s sets until March of 1977, paired with Scarlet Begonias. The rest of the second set continues to showcase new wrinkles in the Dead’s 1976 live act, like the disco arrangement of Dancing in the Streets, which would be used for the rest of the 1970’s. This leads into The Wheel, which closed out Garcia’s first solo album but wasn’t played by the Dead until the June ‘76 tour. A long encore of Not Fade Away, now separated from Goin’ Down the Road Feeling Bad, also reveals changes to the band’s tempo and approach to that tune.

Thanks to the efforts of the taper Dr. Wagner and the digitization of the reels by David Minches, as well as the generous agreement between the Dead and the LMA, this show can be downloaded in lossless FLAC format, decompressed, and later enjoyed at full volume and dynamics. It’s well worth the listener’s time and effort to check out this unique show.

Holiday Double Feature! Pt. 2 – Grateful Dead, 1.15.79, Civic Center Arena, Springfield, MA

Welcome to the second half of the Flask’s Holiday Double Feature! After celebrating the wonders of the audience recording of the Grateful Dead’s August 6, 1971 show yesterday, today we jump to the other end of the 1970’s to look at a show and audience recording of similar merit. The Dead’s show at the Springfield (MA) Civic Center Arena on January 15, 1979 is held in near-universal high regard among collectors for both the recording quality and performance. While such knowledge may be commonplace among regular collectors of Dead tapes, I figure that the holiday season is a great time to turn on anyone who’s unfamiliar with this show to its virtues. So, grab a glass of cheer and turn up the stereo!

As was mentioned in an earlier post, soundboard tapes of the Dead’s mini-tour of the northeast U.S. in January 1979 have been lost in the backroads of Time. This unfortunate happenstance has helped to propagate the notion that the band wasn’t playing well at the end of Keith and Donna Godchaux’s tenure with the band, though the audience tapes from the period bear out that the band was breaking out some of the most exploratory jams of their post-retirement period. (Donna Jean discusses the last days that she and Keith spent with the band in this 1998 interview with David Gans.) Such was the case on the night of January 15th, when taper Steve Rolfe made a fantastic FOB recording of the band which can be heard and downloaded here:

http://www.archive.org/details/gd1979-01-15.nak300.rolfe.miller.90095.sbeok.flac16

The opening Jack Straw sets the tone for the first set, with Jerry laying down some speedy fretwork in his solo before bringing it home with powerful chording. This version demonstrates how the heavier rhythmic approach of the Dead’s two drummer line-up transformed Jack Straw into an arena-energizer compared to more succinct treatment used in the early ’70’s. Other moments of interest in set one include the Dead’s arrangement of the traditional Jack-a-Roe, reappearing as a regular part of the song rotation after disappearing for much of 1978, and the one-two punch of Passenger and Deal to close the set.

The lead-up to the second set contains a bit of interesting stage banter from Weir, paging the curiously absent Phil Lesh, last seen consorting with aliens. After recovering their bass player, the band launches into three tunes from their recently released Shakedown Street album. The opening pairing of I Need a Miracle > Shakedown Street sees both songs performed with intensity, but it’s the especially smooth transition between the two that will surprise the listener. This combo was interestingly only played one other time, on the same tour, which is surprising given how well it worked.

After Donna’s From the Heart of Me, the band launches into the centerpiece jam of the night, leaping off from the stalwart sequence of Terrapin Station > Playin’ in the Band. Playin’ covers a lot of ground in the 18 minutes before the drummers take over, but it’s the jam coming out of the drum segment that’s particularly memorable. The playing here transports the listener along a tropical current, with the guitarists playing a melodic figure over the island-inflected rhythms generated by the drummers. The band takes their time bringing this excursion successfully back Playin’ reprise. Then we get another unusual twist, no Garcia ballad or or Weir set-closing rocker this night, as the band instead leaps into a joyous Casey Jones to close a concise but ultimately highly satisfying set. Chuck Berry’s birthday is observed with the Johnny B. Goode encore, which sends the crowd home on a strong note.

Thanks to the efforts of taper Mr. Rolfe, the transfer of tape hero Charlie Miller, as well as the generous agreement between the Dead and the LMA, this show can be downloaded in lossless FLAC format, decompressed, and later enjoyed at full volume and dynamics. It’s well worth the listener’s time and effort to check out this gem of a show and recording.

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Can’t let this post go without a tangent of Simpsons trivia, asking that question to which there’s no definitive answer, “Where is Springfield?”

Have a Jerry Christmas, y’all! We’re gonna take a short break and be back in a little bit.