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!
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....
Deadbase may be wrong on that only time BBM opener. My search shows that they opened 5 times with BBM ;
1966-07-17 [Sun], 1987-08-13 [Thu] , 1987-08-20 [Thu], 1987-11-06 [Fri] , 1988-04-09.
Today's China -Rider comes from my favorite era for those songs, great search, beautiful jam.
honestly, the bubbling up of phil's bass between "quadlibet" and "the faster we go. . ." does it to me every time.
Thought it was one, but then it was another. Good fun
I was going to not even hunt (overwhelmed), but knew the era and got lost noodling around. And there it was. An enjoyable ride listening to a lot of my faves. Song lengths and era were the key, and intro helps!