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!
Loved the sound of yesterday's show with little twists in the sound that I don't recall hearing anywhere else. I was lucky today, relisten doesn't work for me. Is anyone else have that problem? It creates a whole different kind of hunt.
Thanks for these stats! Very interesting. Not that I know very many specifics about GD performance from 1967-1970 but I never would have guessed TC played 200+ shows with them. That's whole musical career for some! Peace!
and a rocking Black Peter! That intense Jerry jamming at the end is enough to raise poor Peter up from his death bed and dance a jig right out the front door.
On a different topic, all the archive versions of Black Peter I listened to from this show have some serious sound degradation about 40 sec from the end. But the version David has offered us here today is as clean as the cleanest soundboard recording. Thanks!
And finally, just for fun, if you're into Dr. John, check out a May 1981 broadcast of the SCTV comedy show where he performs a pretty cool solo version of Iko Iko.
17 days in and Dave has almost hit 6 hours of free live Dead. Thank you Dave, Rhino and the Band for such generosity. The jams are long and beautiful this year. All eras being represented. Most of us have plenty pig and various covers in our library so I am always stoked for what they can give us for free. Damn how good is That 8/30 /69 St. Stephen>The Eleven>Drums>High time that marked my 12th Birthday! Always loved those Great Highway Shows!
Love to you all.
Peace be with you. (search that statement and then live it.)
More on this later, watch this space.
Hey Now!