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!
Another easy one today. Like the sound of Phil up front at the beginning of Cold Rain... Started out with same cut as on the source I found for today.
I thought yesterday was easy. Even the "hint" which I usually ignore did give the first year to try right away. I thought I would 'zero in' rather than take that so called hint as a call to search a full 15 year span. As soon as I heard the guitar, lead vocals and keyboard sound/tones I thought, Hmmm that sounds an awful lot like the 1980-81 sound and it does state "second half of career etc". I will just try looking at 1980 first. Sometimes simplifying helps. Bingo, answer popped up right away.
Today’s CR&S is so THICK with those chugging notes and chords laid down by Phil- you can feel his bass. Truly the only hint needed- if you listened to every version of that song you could pick today’s right out…
ON THE ROAD AGAIN and THE RACE IS ON were played in the same show (and set) 11 times- ten of these were acoustic sets. The 11/26/80 show was the only time both were played in an all-electric show. What a treat for those Floridians who didn’t get to a show opening with an acoustic set! Forty-four years after the fact and I still regret not getting to Radio City for one of those shows…
@thismikebenz The drop outs are definitely in the source file, but the sbd copy of the show I have does not have any drop outs.
It is.
...before I ran my song lists checks with my sources. I can't say more without giving away too much info, but suffice to say that I was at this show, and so many around this time, that I recall dreaming I was at shows in my sleep. Drop outs are unfortunate, maybe they can be fixed, but even if they can't, there are other good sources out there. We were taping off our masters every morning after the shows, comparing different mic set-ups, getting all techno-geeky in the aural landscape.