Grateful Dead

....i love roller coasters. I love getting strapped in to prep for the ride. I also love The Grateful Dead. I love getting strapped in to prep for the ride. Sometimes one needs to strap in mid-song. You know. When your ear catches a certain tone. All part of the plan....

An impossible question to answer.. If there were no changes in keyboardist.. no doubt these threads would disintegrate into vitriol about personnel changes behind the skins. I liked Mickey's contributions.. I always viewed him as the mad professor w/ sticks, strings and large clubs. I like the soundtrack from Apocalypse now and his use of The Beast in the second set. Sure.. they sounded like ill-timed popcorn poppers at times and had their good and off nights. But when they were on, especially in the later years.. the drums space segment was its own show inside the show. When it worked, it worked well.. when it didn't, perhaps Jerry or Phil were having a good night so I would focus on them. One Edit: Keep in mind.. Mickey was in the band from 9/67 through 2/71. There were some mind blowing performances in those years. I guess my take is take it for what it's worth. Second Edit: I do like the 72 through 74 a whole lot too. Billy had a great perspective on this in his book.

....in my inbox like a Spanish lady's rose. Spanish ladies are spicyhttps://youtu.be/2KGLXtYx_mw See that freak in the wife beater? Name is Hart....

It's in the mix. I'm sure it's in there. Cracked me up.

Wonder if the release will have Billy's Holy FS in it!

The Grateful Dead releases I have listened to are mastered in HDCD but don't actually use any of the HDCD advantages. No Peak Extension is used. I am also fine with most CDs. So for the less easily satisfied we we could wish for DSD in addition to lossless 192/24 downloads. Devices like your OPPO would have no problem playing DSD downloads. BTW: I am will be getting the 192/24 downloads. I would really like to see CD + lossless file download at a priced reduced from the cost of buying them separately. Old Stereo owner in the later group of folks.

....The Grateful Dead would not exist without Jerome John Garcia. Fact. I don't look at The Dead as a science experiment. I look at them as a celebration.... edit....been a while since I've gone primal. Been in a 77, 78, 82 mode lately. Went through a Thelma phase a month ago. Figured it's time to go through the DP 16 Fillmore Aud 11.8.69 wormhole. I hear this guy named Hart does some percussion....i like making my bed to this era

You are correct, the addition of Mickey Hart narrowed the drumming significantly. Billy went from a one man rock / jazz / prog virtuoso, who had room to add his fills and actually steer the band during improv pieces, to a one-two, one-two, one-two layer down of the back beet, while Mickey would throw tom-tom rolls down on top of it (or cowbells). It's just what Jerry wanted or Phil or whoever (certainly not Keith, because this slowly encroached on his musical space within the band). Bob Weir too. He ended up moving toward that thin high end part of the spectrum, just to be heard (his words). Bad move in my opinion. They never should have touched that '74 sound, cuz it was gold. Butterfly effect. People will defend the move and cite a song or two here or there, and sure, Samson and Delilah required two drummers, and b the Let It Grow section sounded awesome in 1977, but by and large, they moved forward with a legacy of old songs that lost their precision with Mickey there. Compare Uncle Johns Band in Winterland 77 to the delicate nuanced touch of Winterland 73, and you hear exactly what the band lost. Sugar Magnolia. Greatest Story Ever Told. It goes on and on, but this is what the decision makers in the band wanted. Even Phil commented that they'd lost the magic after the hiatus. And then by the last 15th years of their career, they were into electronic drums and triggered sounds and the like. I don't get the impression from his book that Bill had any choice. And clearly Keith had no choice what kind of keyboard he was going to play, because he quit the band over it. I would love to know who decided Mickey's return was necessary and why (rom the decision makers, not the opinion columnists).

Maybe people here will think I'm being negative here, but I'm simply being earnest about my impressions below, and not trying to stir up anyone's ire. I'm not much of a musician myself, and so am particularly curious about what others, particularly the more 'musically-sophisticated' think about these (musical) matters. So here goes:Saw this new box set and, unfamiliar with the shows, immediately went to check them out at the Archive for potential purchase. Out of impulsive curiosity I clicked first on the second night's Other One, a piece I consider a more demanding test of the Dead's playing in the later era. Immediately I had a common response to late 80's and 90s recordings- disappointment with the drumming- particularly with Hart's, from what I could tell from my laptop (for casual show reviewing)- which sounded under-powered and sloppy in its timing/synching with the rest of the band, which made it hard for me to lose myself in the band's playing. This brings up two issues I have with shows during the band's later years- that after '86 or so, the drumming sorta fell off the map for me with most shows, and that after the 70s, Hart's contribution to the band more obviously becomes a liability to my ears. To preface this- I understand that advancing age may make a drummer's job physically harder than a keyboardist's or string player's, and that later on the other band members had their weaknesses as well, compared with the earlier years- and that substance abuse, changing lifestyles, ambivalence about touring by a certain member etc. certainly impacted the band's onstage creative dynamic, particularly Jerry's towards the end. That being said, when I listen to later-era Dead, the decline in the drumming tends to jump out at me first and be much more often problematic- it's usually less creative, less nuanced, and much less energetic than the earlier years. Were they just not able to keep up their stamina like they used to? Part of this I also attribute to there being two drummers. While I recognize Hart's contributions to Kreutzmann's early drumming development, plus the excitement and raw energy possible with two drummers, plus the many interesting drum portions of later concerts, I've always felt that Hart's return to the band subtracted from the more articulate, jazzy, and nuanced playing of the solo-Kreutzmann era, particularly as time went on. While it's impossible for me to imagine the Dead's instrumental excellence being possible without Lesh or Weir (and obviously Garcia was beyond crucial), many Heads' favorite era (and mine as well) is the one that also happened to be sans Hart, particularly '72 to '74. Part of that is obviously due to where the band members were in their overall creative and life trajectories, plus the addition of Keith on keys, but part of it I believe is that the sound balance was better with just one drummer, and Kreutzmann could fully develop his strengths as a player. With Hart's return, and after the initial flush of the first few years back in action, to my ears the decline in the drumming becomes more obvious, even clearly 'dumbed down,' partly due to Kreutzmann's having to reasonably synch with someone else playing in his domain- he just couldn't 'stretch out' as much. While the drummers still had many strong nights, the drumming just didn't compare to the early 70s, and by the late 80s it was (on the instrumental side of things) most often the band's weakest link. Maybe just my biases (and for what it's worth, any 'Mickey problem' doesn't begin to compare in my mind with the 'Vince problem'). What do other people here think?

For those experiencing the same problem: Using Firefox browser on a Mac OS X system. The problemsolving tactic was to go into my Firefox preferences and allow "3rd party cookies" to be accepted. Doing so allowed the transfer of my shopping cart info from GDM proper to the Warner system. $77 later I am enrolled to receive this release in November! Not a great price and not a great selection of shows IMO, but 80s getting represented! I want 80s releases, so my money goes where my mouth is! Let's do some more 80s in 2018!