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!
Gotta say this lil community has been super fun to be a part of. Here’s to a safe and enjoyable holiday weekend.
Cheers
Very interesting idea, the combined list would be really interesting to listen to but I'm not 100% there yet. With that said back in 2010, Furthur played a series of show up in Angels Camp Ca. Each night for three nights they played a full album which was a blast. We camped out and caught the full series after driving out from near Chicago. So I must say the theme idea is a good one.
Because the clues are already flying.
Enjoy it while it lasts!
Cheers
As much as I find this fun to see what great or not so great live gem of the Dead is going to be issued each day through the month of November, I have an idea. Rather than releasing numerous versions of the same Dead tunes over the course of 30 days next year why not have a theme?
Maybe pick a few Dead albums and release songs from the album in order as they appear on the record (or as close to it as they can be). It would be cool when the 30 days is over to have a set of songs that all have a similar theme, in this case, they are all from one record but the catch would be that they are from different periods in the Dead's live repertoire.
If I am not mistaken, all the tunes from several of the Dead's recorded output have been played live and even the deep cuts from the records were played live at least a few times before being dropped.
I think this could work. Who's with me?
Queuing up the show ... yesterday I meandered to the last Halloween show at the Marin Civic Center. We were outside and didn't get in. At some point, some heads were popping open door so folks could run in. I wished I had hung around as that was the last St. Stephen.
Today I ran across the 3-29-84 Shakedown in Marin, give that a listen for the opening Phil bombs.