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!
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Man that was brutal in the best way possible, it was a deep dive fer sure. Maybe I don't need to hear that song for a week or so haha.
That's all I got to say about that.
After seeing the 28th at Family Dog on archive in which the notes said Casey Jones was one of the uncirculated tunes that night, I threw down the search in Deadnet and it popped right up. I have a DVD on this show somewhere but wasn't set up to check it. Yet, when the tune ends Jerry clearly says Haa haaa woo hoo and that left doubt. That must have been a satisfying end of a long trip!
Edit: I did see late last night that a You Tube version has a mislabeled / "mis-dated" Family Dog February date up masquerading as 2/28. That threw me off too...
Hi, 2/27/1970 is not mislabeled in the Archive - that version of Casey Jones on 2/27 in the Archive is different from yesterday's answer. The guitar solos, while similar in the first couple notes, are different (as is the wait time/tuning after the end with that laugh, comment, tuning a string etc...). Like others, I nailed it down to the Jan-Feb 1970 era where there's no Bobby solo and they jump right into a Jerry solo that has different beginning phrasing from the recorded version and most live versions after mid 1970. Jerry starts it like a "tightrope walker getting his balance" a bit in these early 1970 versions. But the 2/27 version is different on the solo in that he goes up to some higher pitch notes after a similar bit of phrasing he was doing in Jan-Feb. The answer from yesterday's version, the "missing Casey" from 2/28 tapes, has him stay in the same range of notes for a bit longer.
A streaming version of 2/28/1970 with Casey Jones actually on it just does not show up on the usual sources. I tried to find a 2/28/1970 elsewhere and could not after I found out about the "missing" Casey Jones on some reported tapes. I thought I found one but again that guitar solo did not match. I wonder where it is....
Basically did process of elimination yesterday. Knew it was February 70 because I didn’t hear TC’s organ, but by Port Chester in March the guitar solo had disappeared. Having heard all samples that didn’t match (including a YouTube video of the 3/1 version that doesn’t circulate) and the 2/28 version on YouTube being a mismarked 2/27, I had to guess it was the one version that I didn’t hear, and darned if I wasn’t right. Today is a 50/50 shot if you determine the era and know that one of the songs took a long hiatus.