Grateful Dead

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thanks so much for adding.. makes me want to go grab a pint at Jack Straws castle. Interesting stuff.

Peachy still gets my vote for the most intriguing and engaging posts thus far. While everyone else is tirelessly treading the same old tired ground of 70s vs 80s vs Blah-Blah vs Wah-Wah, the Peach is busy hammering out steady-flow prose that would make Willam S. Burroughs one proud papa.

Yes icecreamconekid, I acquired a steamer trunk for the E72 set I pieced together, one show at a time (at first). I was into the Dead when E72 came out, but I wasn't the rabid fiend I am now, and I didn't buy it. After the bug hit me, I ordered them one at a time off of dead.net (before they were all sold out) for about two weeks, and then 2-3 at a time. Once I had all of the shows, I tried to make my own "steamer trunk" by purchasing one of those CD holder brief case thingies, and affixing Dead stickers all over it. That almost worked. The stickers kept peeling off, so I bought fabric glue to prevent that from happening; but the deal breaker was that those CD brief cases still scratch the CDs when you remove / replace them a lot. Plus, I NEEDED the steamer trunk and books. I have it all now, except for the sticker - wasn't there a rainbow foot sticker that came with it? I have to say - as exciting as it must have been to unpack that entire steamer truck, I had a great time ordering them piecemeal and checking the mailbox once a week for a new Grateful Dead Europe '72 CD shipment (especially if it was "Dark Star" week). But I don't keep the actual CDs in the trunk, only the CD cases. Because we all know the cases scratch the CDs, and even if they didn't, they get worn out and ripped if you take the CDs out frequently. So I also bought a bunch of 30 Trips crates to use as CD holders (probably off of the record store guy who posted). I put all of my individual Dead CDs in those white paper CD sleeves, and store those in the 30 Trips crates. I store each crate on it's own shelf in the entertainment center, which conveniently has these cubby-like shelves that are just big enough to put a 30 Trips crate, either length-wise or width-wise. This allows me to arrange them so that I can see all 4 pictures and all band member names. And I have a big dog to protect them, a home alarm system, and some guns;-)

I always understood the term of derision to be directed toward those that latched on to the scene when the band’s popularity exploded, came for the party and only the party, drunkenly stumbled around, and shouted for Touch of Grey at the top of their lungs, only to be disappointed when it wasn’t played. I don’t think it’s directed at those who were introduced to the Dead because of their top 10 hit and who came to love the band and it’s music. These fans generally integrated themselves well, and added to the subculture. Regarding the break up of the box; I’m ambivalent. As a collector and Deadhead, it causes me physical pain to imagine the beautiful set being ripped apart. On the other hand, this is America, and you’re entitled to do what you want to with your purchase; even light it on fire. Just don’t expect people around here to sympathize with you.

None of you are real fans unless you've seen Pigpen in concertAccept that and just start following Umphrey's Mcgee and the world will be a better place.

I can't resist taking the era bait.... 80's fan - you wrote: "I can't understand the folks who completely rule out any era. Lots of good stuff over 30 years...expand your horizons!" OK.... who "completely ruled out any era"? Assuming that people here 1) don't like the 80's at all, or 2) haven't even tried the 80's is just kinda funny - and smacks of "deader-than-thou". I hope for mostly-70's releases, but that didn't keep me from heavily digging an Alpine Valley '89 show earlier this week, or recently acquiring some '82-'83 shows. I agree with fellow-80's-advocate Spacebro that the vast majority generally "love it all" - it's just that some eras are MUCH more loved than others, as dreading's post re: 30 Trips sell-thru clarifies. Re: Dreading: I agree that mass-reselling releases seems ticket-scalper-unsavory and that a 5~ unit limit should be set, HOWEVER the underlying business model (limited run, ship all-at-once, no capital tied up in shelves full of inventory - eezy peezy) works well, as the success of this series proves. But this model REQUIRES a secondary market for those who missed the window = eBay. Thousands wanted to buy the individual 30-trips shows, and Dreading and others fulfilled that demand. No one's purchase was blocked and no puppies were harmed by his buying multiple units (was available for weeks), and he provided a distribution service to hundreds of people looking for individual shows. When you build a business that relies eBay, that type of behavior is par for the course. BUT I agree a 5-unit limit would help to keep a healthier relationship between sales and actual end-demand. (And how do we know you're one of us, Mr Reading, and not just doing market research for your CD-scalping... er "reselling" business? Your post was all business with no indication of any GD knowledge or passion.... sorry, wouldn't be a GD scene without a little paranoia... ;)

... just because it's one of my fav's, too. I don't have time to do proper research on this right now, but a few observations: Regarding @hseamons's point about the Woodstock video (which I haven't seen in ages): My memory is that when Garcia (or whoever) uses the term "jackstraws", he's talking not about the people there, but about the cars scattered on and alongside the roads leading to the site. "Jackstraws" is another name for Pick Up Stix, so he's looking at the traffic / parking disaster from a helicopter flying over, and seeing that random arrangement of "parked" vehicles, crowds, and detritus reminds him of the mayhem of the dropped sticks at the start of the game. But it's interesting that he'd use the term "jackstraws" for the game--it was always "PickUpStix" to me (and my older family members) on the East Coast growing up, but maybe different for Garcia's (and Hunter's) generation out west(?). Anyway, my earlier guess about Robert Hunter having a pint in Jack Straw's Castle during his 1970 trip to London is just my speculation, although I think not entirely impossible. We'd have to check with him to find out (if he remembers). Dodd of course has lots of info in the Annotated Lyrics book, and also a blog entry right here: http://www.dead.net/features/greatest-stories-ever-told/greatest-storie… . The Steinbeck suggestion he makes seems a false lead to me, in terms of the composition (if not the performances) of the song. I've never seen the movie of Of Mice and Men, but I've read the book, and the pair of men in the book are hardly the ne'er do wells of the song. So the Steinbeck thing seems Depression-era context for Weir, provided after he was making the song his own in performance, but not something that would've shaped Hunter's creation of the song's characters. Dodd's book does something really useful in pointing to a folk ballad (the Child ballad "Edward") for a lyrical source. That ballad doesn't mention Jack Straw at all, but with a very little bit of digging I learned there were some old ballads that refer to the historical Jack Straw who rebelled with Wat Tyler and others against Richard II in the late 1300s. At least one of these old ballads seems to have been preserved, in the "Garland of Delights." That is a collection of ballads attributed to the 16th-century balladeer Thomas Delone (or Deloney). The earliest print copy I see listed anywhere is a duodecimo from 1681, allegedly the 30th edition, that is part of the Pepys library at Cambridge University. To me, this is really interesting, because I think it would make the folk heritage of "Jack Straw" possibly more ancient even than those of "Terrapin Station," "Cold Rain and Snow," "Peggy-O," and "Jack-a-Roe." Anyway, our old friend the Internet Archive has a copy of Deloney's collected works. You can see the ballad in question starting on page 413, here: https://archive.org/stream/worksofthomasdel04delouoft#page/412/mode/2up . Too much, man, too much.

A lot of interesting stuff percolating here. I am pleased that for the most part, All Things remain civil and it seems that respect is being handed around fairly. The Sandbox can accommodate! The 30 Trips situation being discussed is clearly a hot topic. I can see it both ways, man. Part of me hurts to see/hear these treasure chests broken up; on the flip side as other have noted - it was a lot of coin on the spot so I can also see the inherent, but perhaps obscured altruism in there which allows others who may not have had the means to still be able to participate in the history of acquisition, one by one. Jimbo is ALWAYS on "the good guys side", whomever that may entail. Not a bad or mean bone in his geeky plasma sack of a body. And i completely concur with the appreciative labeling of geeks with spreadsheets. As Kyle smartly declared, we definitely need to put more emphasis on mathematics, because....engineering! Smart stuff! Problem solving! all of this is spot on. And also coming from a self-declared math-struggler...during AP calculus I was so slow that my teacher used to let me come in after school to finish my quizzes and exams. She also tutored me for the AP exam - which I thankfully scraped by with a barely passing grade of '3' - which, incidentally, made it so I NEVER HAD TO TAKE MATH AGAIN, even while at UVM and getting a Biology degree...so yeah, math = important! But, so is listening to your favorite band and gaining an entirely new perspective on life, the cosmos, love, sharing, and how to groove. Sixtus

Once we had Boxilla some people who would generally avoid the 80/90’s commented how surprised they were at how good the 90’s shows were. And the 89 show too, which is one I had previously on cassette and was waiting for in Full Norman glory.

Thanks Thin. My comment was directed at the folks who won't give the time of day to shows from the 80s and 90s which in my opinion is more prevalent on this board than among old heads. I know a lot of heads too and so I think it might be an age/generation thing - the people I know listen to it all because the band was still around and evolving in real-time as they were seeing shows. Those shows and that era are tied to real life memory and experiences. Newcomers have the luxury(?) of having the entire history of the band at their fingertips and seem more likely to just listen to what they feel is best era.