Grateful Dead

Is it possible you misheard what was sung? Brown Eyed Woman has this recurring lyric:

The bottle was dusty but the liquor was clean

HI! brand new to the forum and happy to be a part of it. Finally a place where I can talk to other DeadHeads and no longer be a "closet" deadhead!

What song has this repeated lyric ? ..."RIVER FLOWS FREE" ... Heard it on "spotify" in a store DURING spring/summer 2022. Garcia was on vocal and incredibly beautiful guitar solo. Store clerk said it was listed as being "Brown Eyed Woman", but that does not seem to match. I sure would like to find this incredibly magical song, it sounded like a studio recording, not a live recording, but who knows, perhaps it could have been a very sterile soundboard.

Thank You so much for the new feature on GD.net:
Jam With The Grateful Dead. I hope this stays around
for a while, and I'd love to see some selections added too.
I've often thought that after artists' albums are re-packaged so many times,
what would be left to offer. I've always hoped that some day, maybe they
could repackage a release in muli-track to listen to on your computer.
Listen/mix it however you want. It would keep me entertained for hours!
Imagine having multi-track recordings of albums like Mars Hotel,
Are You Experienced, Dark Side of the Moon, Srgt Pepper etc.
The possibilities are endless!
Hopefully "Jam With The Grateful Dead" gives someone important
that idea, and maybe someday in the future we can see this happen!

Thanks again!

Jack Straw83:

I have both an early (likely original) pressing and printing of the genuine Grateful Dead Records Wake of the Flood LP and a counterfeit that I bought at a used-records store in the 1970s.

The most readily noticeable difference between the two (which was pointed out by the band at the time, if I remember correctly) is the price marking “0598” (meaning $5.98) printed toward the bottom of the spine of the cover; on the genuine (original, if not later) release, that’s orange-colored; on the counterfeit it is white.

The cardboard album cover of the genuine album release has a matte, not slick, surface finish and feel (like the first American Rolling Stones album, or Jefferson Airplane’s Bless Its Pointed Little Head), and the cover stock is a bit thick and sturdy; doesn’t seem to me cheap but rather an alternative to the more common slick surface of the time.
The counterfeit’s cover finish and feel is a bit slick (not very), not matte; its card stock is similar to the genuine, maybe a bit thinner and less sturdy.

What does seem “cheap” is the counterfeit’s printing of the cover art, whose inferior quality could be missed if seen by itself, but which looks especially poorer when compared side-by-side with the genuine: it’s an evident lower-quality photo reproduction from the genuine original. The lower image quality’s especially apparent on the front cover, and in the small lettering at the bottom of the back cover (“GRATEFUL DEAD RECORDS SAN RAFAEL, CA. 94902 ℗ © 1973 GRATEFUL DEAD RECORDS PRINTED IN USA”). The front-cover art of the counterfeit is less sharp, less “present” and a bit washed-out, and the small lettering on the back cover is fuzzy, not clear and sharp as on the genuine (that’s as quick a giveaway of the album being counterfeit as the white “0598” price marking). And the painted color field encircling the sides and upper area of the front-cover illustration is, on the genuine album, a rich, dark maroon; that field on the counterfeit that I have is a dull brown (but does have the faint brushstroke figurations of the original).

The LPs themselves are both not especially thick and are fairly flexible, but really not unlike most other LPs of the time; I wouldn’t say either is “a lot thinner and lighter than a normal LP,” but they are not like the heavy, rather inflexible 180-gram vinyl you find from most? LP releases nowadays. The counterfeit has perhaps a bit more flex to it than the genuine.

The labels on the LP discs appear nearly identical, but the counterfeit’s printing quality is poorer, again like a photo reproduction of the original (less noticeably so than with the cover art, but the letters of Rick Griffin’s signature by the raven are rather illegibly run-together on the counterfeit); curiously, the “©” symbol of the counterfeit’s LP labels appears different from the genuine’s labels, with a rather hand-drawn “c” inside the circle.

It may not be useful to compare the engravings on the runouts of the vinyl between the grooves and the disc labels, as those could change, I think, depending on where (and when?) an LP was pressed, even for a genuine release. For what it’s worth, though, my genuine LP’s sides are engraved “GD-01-A” and “GD•01•B” (small dots rather than hyphens for the B-side), with an “X” on the A-side about an inch away from the other engraving, and both sides also have a masterer’s? or presser’s? mark in the runout, that looks like an oval (or an LP as viewed from an angle) with a dot in its center and two legs as from an inverted “V” pointing outward from the bottom part of the oval; I don’t know who that might represent, but it may be a well-known mark. My counterfeit’s runouts are engraved this way: on A-side, “GD-01-A—MI8” (I think that’s an “8” rather than a “B”) and "A18342-(2)" (that “A” might instead be a delta symbol); on B-side, “GD-01-B—MI9” and "A18342-X" (again, that “A” might instead be a delta symbol).

Those are the details I have to give! I haven’t played either of these LPs in years, and can’t remember readily what differences in aural quality there seemed to me back in the day between the genuine release and the counterfeit; though I tended to not ever play the counterfeit after a first listen or few. (And no listening-test report update from me likely forthcoming soon, either.)

Oh, that slot cut out on the corner of your album’s cover sleeve is probably indeed a so-called “cutout” mark meaning that the album was cut out from inventory meant for regular retail, I think by a wholesale distributor, when sales of product had diminished and excess inventory would be unloaded at a lower price and sold cut-price at retailers.

I am curious about whether my Wake of the Flood LP is authentic or not. I understand the phony copies resemble the original very well, so well it pissed the band off so bad they ended up working with the FBI to get the issue resolved. I own it on CD as well, but I'm just not sure about the LP. The texture of the cover feels kinda rough...well not rough, but not smooth either. It doesn't feel like a normal album cover sleeve. It feels kinda cheap. At first I figured it was the band cutting costs being it was the first album to be released by GD records which took a nose dive not long after. There is also a weird lookin slot cut out on the corner of the cover sleeve. I'm no LP expert but this is driving me nuts. The record looks normal but is a lot thinner and lighter than a normal LP as well. It feels like it's too easy to snap it in two if you were to bend it even slightly. It sounds okay I guess. Not sure because I would have to have copies of both the bootleg and the original in order to tell the difference. It's an older pressing of the album, assuming it's the real deal. Definitely not a reissue. If it was I wouldn't be having this problem that arose in late 1973 not long after it's release lol. Any help from you fellow Dead heads is much appreciated.

Aus Ameri nailed it. Keep the political bs out! These people have no idea what fascism looks like. I do, as well as my parents who thankfully escaped Castro's communist Cuba before they had me and my siblings.

One of my favorites. The band wrote that song in memory of their friend Janis Joplin. The cover of Me and Bobby Mcgee was another, as she would never get to see the song become a hit or the album it appears on Pearl.

Is anyone else having trouble with "change of address" - maybe it's just my old-time internet-proof soul, but I can't find a phone number or any way to reach Dead.net for a simple address change. The "customer service" click gets me nowhere, any help? Repoman

Nice site.