30 Days of Dead
It's a Dead Head's most wonderful time of the year! Welcome to another 30 days of unreleased Grateful Dead tracks from the vault, one for every day of the month, selected by archivist and producer David Lemieux. The tracks are yours, 100% free gua-ran-teed, but the real fun is taking part in the challenge for the chance to win some sweet swag from the Dead.
Those of you who know what to do, feel free to skip right on ahead. For those of you who need a refresher, here's the drill:
You know your Ables from your Bakers from your C's, but can your finely tuned ears differentiate the cosmic "comeback" tour from a spacey 70s show? Each day we'll post a song from one of the Dead's coveted shows. Will it be from that magical night at Madison Square Garden in '93 or from way back when they were just starting to warm it up at Winterland? Is that Pigpen's harmonica we hear? Brent on keys? If you think you know, lob your answer in and you just might find yourself taking home our daily prize of a 2025 Grateful Dead wall calendar or the grand prize – a copy of limited, numbered, FRIEND OF THE DEVILS: APRIL '78 boxed set!
I listen to the whole cut once or twice to zero in on the year, but it's the details in the first 20 seconds that I use to compare the archive versions to the 30days version. this one I kept stumbling into commercial releases, so I had to glance at my shelf to make sure I wasn't wasting time listening to a for-sure no go. I keep my cds in chronological order, so the dicks and daves and road trips and other archival releases are all comingled. It looks sloppy, but I like the chronological order. How do y'all store yours?
The tonality was so different on the source on Archives I passed it by the first time but circled back around and made it through the piano part and I went, ding.
It took me 22 versions to find the answer. If this is work, I've never worked a day in my life. Play Dead, indeed.
It's cool how several of us are focusing in on different parts of the song, but because each band member varied they're playing every night, no single part of the song ever really repeats itself as you go through different versions. At the same time, there were certain licks in the part I was listening to that were very similar across the era. Truly amazing how they could mix it up like that show to show! Good to have a tough one every once in a while...thanks for the challenge DL!
Who is singing, who isn't, how does JG voice sound, how tight is the fingering, gives you a year range, but then it's grunt work. Amazing how the lead-ins change in 3 months. In the end the first 20 seconds is all you need....