Grateful Dead

My UPS tracking ends on 1st May when the package was transferred to the post office and assigned a different (USPS) tracking number. This confirms receipt and processing of the package on 1st May at the USPS Los Angeles Distribution Center. Then nothing until it arrived in LA on 20th May and departed from LA Airport to the destination two hours later. Not sure where it was for the missing 20 days (in lockdown??) but hopefully be with me in the next few days.

My discs also look pristine. Since we are in a similar boat, let's compare our limited edition numbers and see what happens.

For DaP 1 I Have Number: 9920/12K
DaP 2: 2295/12K
DaP 3: 233/12K
DaP 4: 10195/12K

Listen carefully, sometimes the scratchy static plays underneath the music. Also, I have radial shreddings or shavings dropping off the edges of the discs.

In my experience, (as I think, Seth first mentioned) the first and last tracks seem to be the most affected. Also it has been my experience, the worst case scenario (which happens with 2 of my discs) is the disc won't be recognized by the player.

The USPS system told me it was out for delivery on 1st May and then again on 20th May. Since we are both five days behind SIMONROB let us hope that we hear that his copy has arrived soon. No worries yet. An earlier DaP arrived and left L.A. three times before eventually arriving in the UK. The three departures were within days of each other but they were simpler times.
I got quite excited when a package of the correct size was delivered this morning but that was a delivery from the Another Timbre label in Sheffield. Still It means I’ve got five albums of interesting music to listen to while I wait for #34. Stay safe, listen to music and as Lady of Tarot (she might have been removed by now) said read.

EDIT: The package has left California. I’ve just had a USPS update telling me it has left Salt Lake City at around 9:30 this morning. I’m not that good on geography but I assume that means it is moving slowly eastwards.

Talking to my buddy in Jersey last night and we got talking about disc rot. When hurricane Sandy left 6 foot of water in his house, his dvd/cd collection was submerged. He said they all delaminated! I was shocked, I would have thought a piece of plastic would be watertight, maybe not.

Reminded me of Springsteen -

…. Sandy, that sea water you left on my cd's last night,
Cause them all to turn to shit, in their cases that night.

Willy T - Radical Shreddings, isn't that what JoAnne Chesimard does with her old bills?

Dave's Picks #1, 4625 #2, 4042 #3, 8979 #4, 1895. When I say this is no big deal in my previous post, I'm saying that relating it to my own personal experiences in life, some bad and extremely sad stuff has happened to me and everybody else on this forum I'm sure, so when I compare those things to this, it's no big deal. I don't for a second think that this was done with the record company thinking that this was an outcome that would occur. Hopefully, this was something related to the manufacturing of only the first 4 and this problem won't happen to the rest of the Dave's Picks. It seems like most people on here who have played theirs back have no problems, so that's good!

If someone has bad discs, I can mail some lossless copies or assist with a Dropbox share. Thankfully my first four DaP seem to be in fine shape.

VGuy (and others)--You should pick up the new stereo mastering of Sgt. Pepper's (and The White Album, Abbey Road, and Let It Be). Many remasterings make you say, "Yeah, that's incrementally better . . . " The semi-recent Pepper's makes one slack-jawed, and gives one that ooey-gooey feeling in the pit of the musical soul.

Rhino--a great company, in my opinion. They sometimes take a beating on this board, but please go take a look at their catalog. All they do is go the extra mile to locate the master tapes of fantastic, long-neglected niche albums that won't sell a ton of copies, then spiff those tapes up with good remastering and packaging. Rhino is a company of music lovers, selling to music lovers. Very few companies in an age of streaming/downloading/pirating would step up to the plate and say, "Yeah, let's put out lavish BOXED SETS of CDs that have 15-80 discs inside! Cool."

Be kind. Rewind.

I'd have to agree with you about Rhino providing access to niche albums we might otherwise only dream of. If only Rhino followed through with proactive, responsive customer service, we'd probably spend more time around here talking about Rhino's glass being more than half full (and the music, of course!). Onward.

Agree with all points.. we are a passionate bunch when it comes to the music we love.

Was looking for something this morning to listen to and stumbled on this by accident. A nice palate cleanse and an excellent bluegrass cover of Loser.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hbhe8Aw_FnU&list=RDocOeF1KOMM4&index=2

Thanks for the positive perspective Jeff and DHBrewer.

Nice Loser, looking for show on archive now.

“Ooey gooey felling in the pit of my musical soul” ...YEAH, that’s what I’m talking about!
You sir, are a wordsmith!

Nice post, agreed, but it’s such a travesty to cheese out on materials that cost pennies in bulk, BECAUSE they did all those groovy things you mention! They do all the hard stuff top notch...discs should be the easy part.

disc rot beats dics rot

....is doing an Ask Me Anything tomorrow on Reddit. 7PM pacific time.

the previous two post, one about disc that don't last an hour. The other about tapes, caught in a FLOOD, stored like shit and still working!

Maybe we should have kept all those old Maxell's :-)

:)))

Haven't picked up the 50th Anniversary mix of Abbey Road yet, but I do have the 50th Anniversary remixes of Sgt. Pepper's and of The White Album and they sound fantastic. The music is the same, the remix is faithful to the original mix, but cleaner with more clarity and separation of each sound. The documentary Soundbreaking has a great episode (Episode 2) that covers the recording of Sgt. Pepper's and how they would record the various sounds and then combine them onto a single track so that multiple individually recorded sounds would be placed on a single track which would subsequently be combined with other tracks and distilled down again into a single track. For the 50th Anniversary remixes they went back to the original source tapes for the various sounds and made use of modern multi-track capabilities to remix the album without compressing everything into one track so things that were combined onto a single track are now spread across multiple tracks using the original source material. You can really hear the impact of this on the tracks with lots of different sounds mixed in. My description is a little sparse, but if anyone is interested the Soundbreaking documentary is really cool, particularly the episode that covers the making of Sgt. Pepper in detail, and there is a lot of other information out there on the process that Giles Martin used for the 50th anniversary remixes.

Stolzfus.. too funny.

I still have a box of tapes too. I have no idea where they are though...

My car even has a cassette function

Very cool

I listen to cds 99% of the time

Stoltzie.. can you help us find the missing reels? Start with the barn in California but be cautious.. the owner might just be a greedy and grumpy butt munch.

Perhaps we can ask Betty if she knows the address of the infamous barn tomorrow on the meet and greet on Redit.

I believe there is one more stash of tapes that needs to find it's way home.

After processing at an LA Distribution Center (May 1-May 21), CD has departed LAX on May 21, 8:16 pm.
Airborne right now, good News.
G.

Oops , sorry Folks!

...hello again I have to say , we(the Fans & The Dead Org. are all very blessed to see these recordings back home in the vault where they belong. IMO. And more importantly being made available and released to the fans by the Grateful Dead! Dead / Dave, didn’t wait long to start releasing’Bettys reels& others.
Have a grateful day everybody as well as this holiday weekend! peace be with you all my brothers and sisters God bless! and rock on!
💀🌹
...starting my day first with the Grateful Dead’s release, ‘Dick's Picks Volume 19’ The album contains the complete concert recorded on October 19, 1973 at the Fairgrounds Arena in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.
***Each volume of Dick's Picks has its own "caveat emptor" label, advising the listener of the sound quality of the recording. The one for Volume 19 reads:

"Despite a rather skeevy ouverture, the sound quality of this release quickly settles into a nice, warm groove. Listen closely, however, for you may just find that your mind will be blown by the music contained herein."

... I have to Concur, this performance will most likely , “Steal Your Face Right Off your Head!”
A+ Recording by ‘Kid’ and a Primo set-list to boot!
The ‘third’Disc(3 Disc release)
Is one of my favorite music recordings from the Fall of 1973! PRIMO the band is on fire! 💀🌹

and be a better example for the kids, who I'm encouraging to get rid of some things . . .

But just could NOT toss out the two Foreigner cassettes (Double Vision and Head Games) I found last night! They are Columbia House editions, complete with the double-pink-line spines and poorly-rendered tiny cover art. I enjoyed the tape clubs much more when they switched to sending "real" copies of cassettes and CDs.

GRATEFULGERD
It might be in flight, but how far will it get? As I said yesterday mine flew out of L.A. on 20th then departed from Salt Lake City on 21st. No further updates yet. It looks like it will continue to take a long strange trip.

Colin Gould,
I assumed it'll be on a direct flight to Frankfurt.
Tracking now says: Departure LAX 11:25 pm, before it stated 8:16 pm.
A bit of a strange trip.

Other Wordly.. The DS>MLB>MDew is one for the ages.

We should add that to the show of the day thread as a suggestion.

While I like the remix of the White Album, I wasn't impressed with the Abbey Road remix; but really, why did anyone feel that these albums had to be remixed? They were already perfect when they first came out, George Martin knew what he was doing when he produced them. Glad they left Rubber Soul and Revolver alone...

..sounds great, a grateful show indeed, with a lot to talk about.
Where do we begin JimMD? ?...

Roguedeadguy - Check your PM for some headphone recommendations

I have been eyeballing The Beatles Super Deluxe editions of Sgt. Pepper, White Album and Abbey Road.

Are they worth it?? Any opinions?

I would be getting the cds and not the vinyl becuase I do not have a turntable. Although I have thought about getting a turntable again when room and money allows for it.

To sell albums to people who already have them perhaps.

...I have both the “Peppers” & “The White Album” most recent release from the Band & Record Company.
I absolutely LOVE the ‘White Album’ release with the “rehearsal -demo”-recordings being issued for the first time , and are absolutely Primo unreleased recorded Audio before going head first into the studio so to speak.
I still preferred my Beatles “white Colored-vinyl” release from back in the day as my go to album for the white album. But the new release is great work! I really enjoy this new mix.
This is Promo!!! Oh yeah, 1989!🙏❤️💀🌹
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=VnCvS2A7REo

I had my doubts about the Sgt. Pepper's remix when I first heard about it but based on the positive comments and reviews I was curious enough to pick up the remix even though I had the original (1987?) CD and the 2009 remaster. I don't regret it nor can I say that I regret having 3 copies of one of the greatest albums of the 20th century. Well, four copies if you count my 1970's vinyl copy. The 50th anniversary remix just sounds like the original mix with a layer of gauze taken off your ears. But, I hear what you guys are saying, and Sgt. Pepper's is kind of an exception, I don't really pick up new copies of albums I already have when they've been remastered or remixed, and the remix idea does generally cause some trepidation. I usually end up picking up remasters when they have good bonus content, like the Rolling Stones deluxe Sticky Fingers release which includes a version of Brown Sugar with Eric Clapton, or Layla and Other Love Songs by Derek and the Dominoes deluxe release which has a second disc including appearances recorded on the Johnny Cash show that are fantastic. To relate it to the Dead, I don't need another copy of the studio albums, I have the original CD's plus the box set remasters, but there is no way I can miss the bonus content on the remaster packages, so soon I will have another copy of Workingman's Dead to go along with the three CD copies plus vinyl copy that I already have. I am also inclined to consider remasters for things that I got in the late '80s and early '90's as it seems there may have been some improvements in digital mastering since then. You can find endless debate on the merits of various remastering efforts on the SteveHoffman threads. By coincidence, I am currently spinning the 2014 Houses of the Holy remaster - not much better than No Quarter sometimes.

To be fair, I have bought quite a few albums three times-typically, the vinyl in the 1970s, then again first time it was released on cd. And the second time when it was released on cd after it had remastered. Now we are getting anniversary editions, and I am starting to think ...hang on a minute..If I buy this latest edition of Working Mans Dead, with its live carrot, it will be the 4th time for me.

I agree that Sergeant Pepper is different. I first got the album in 1974, then the original cd in the mid 1990s, then the remastered stereo one about 2009, then the mono box set with it in, then the 4cd blu ray/dvd box set for its own 50th anniversary. This includes the remix, the mono and outtakes. Its easily my favourite Beatles album. I didn't bother with the remixed White album, and I'm not fussed about Abbey Road or Let It Be.

.....glanced at Amazon in regards to Sgt. Peppers (my second favorite Beatles record after Rubber Soul). Holy cow!! I had no idea there were that many versions. I need to get out more. Which should I get? Help me dead.net-kenobi, you're my only hope.

they sell, so mix it up, baby!

...Don't think of it as buying Workingman's Dead for a fourth time, think of it as getting a free copy of Workingman's Dead when you buy the 2/21/71 Port Chester show.

Recently read that McCartney plays the snarling lead on booth the sergeant pepper opening track and the reprise. I was only surprised for a second. I remember reading that he modeled the aggression for Helter Skelter after the who's I Can See For Miles. I guess he plays the guitar on that too. They really mixed it up a lot when it came to who played what.

I think this Uncle John's Band on the new Dave's Picks is one of the best of 1973 1974. I'll have to go revisit Dijon. I'm also really into black throated wind, especially the outro. Jerry plays some really busy lead work, but it's mellow at the same time . Bobby sings this real well too at the end. He had a phase where he would..... over sing it a bit.

The Jam is really good too. The way I look at it, this dark star doesn't have the lyrics and the Dark star from the Philly 73 show is too short. So I just go Jam => Dark Star Jam => Philly '73 Dark Star.

Suggested homage to an always celebratory Anniversary Show in Dick's Picks 3.
One of the Best Ever, if I had to choose.
I'm happy the full deal is always available especially on days like today in New England.

https://archive.org/details/gd1977-05-22.140278.sbd.miller.flac2496

Be Well People.
Sixtus

:)))

Thanks Keithfan very interesting you mention that

Recorded in several separate sessions in studios across two continents, the recording of "I Can See for Miles" exemplifies the increasingly sophisticated studio techniques of rock bands in the late 1960s, such as those used for the Beatles and the Beach Boys. The backing tracks were recorded at CBS Studios in London, the vocals and overdubbing were performed at Talentmasters Studios in New York, and the single was mixed and mastered at Gold Star Studios in London.[6] The initial UK mono pressing (Track Records) and the US Decca single has an overdubbed second bass line mixed upfront, whilst the drums are mixed slightly lower.

It reached number 10 in the UK and number 9 in the US. Though these figures would seem successful to most bands, Townshend was disappointed. He had written the song in 1966 but had held it back as an "ace in the hole", believing it would be The Who's first number-one single.[7] He is quoted as saying, "To me it was the ultimate Who record, yet it didn't sell. I spat on the British record buyer."

The song may have inspired the Beatles' "Helter Skelter". Paul McCartney recalls writing "Helter Skelter" after reading a review of The Who Sell Out in which the critic claimed that "I Can See for Miles" was the "heaviest" song he had ever heard. McCartney had not heard the song but wrote: "Helter Skelter" in an attempt to make an even "heavier" song than the one praised in the review.

... for ill or will. Look at Mustaine and Metallica. Or Axl Rose and everyone else. Lol.

:)))

Went back and listened to 6/14/76 again today and man is that an awesome show, perfect to go along with a sunny afternoon. Still haven't had my fill of that box, and 6/14/76 just hits the spot for me.

Currently listening to Khruangbin's Hasta El Cielo album and that is working well for a chill vibe later in the evening - mellow, psychedelic ambient dub flowing along nicely. I've also been having this tune Hell n Back by Bakar running through my head lately since I heard it on the local radio - sort of a retro soul kind of sound with a nice updated vibe.

Nice reframing of Working Mans 50th. As a package, led by the studio album, I'm not sure it works - a live show with the studio as a bonus readjusts the balance favourably.

Going back to Paul McCartney - it was he who played the coruscating guitar solo on Taxman, too.

Are any other UK subscribers still waiting for 34 to arrive? Obviously these are unusual circumstances, but I'm now wondering where it might be.

Don’t panic yet. I don’t think any European commenter has mentioned getting #34 yet. It will be slower because UPS handed the package over to USPS in LA and despite USPS saying that they dispatched the item on 1st May they didn’t send it far. It has been reported being dispatched from LA again on either 15th or 20th May by various people. I wouldn’t start to worry for another couple of weeks unless lots of Europeans start reporting the arrival.

Thanks! Hard to tell what's happening

...if it’s “new” , I’m interested. After that notion I start with Art Production & Produced & engineered by; to help me make my decision for rebuying an Album. Also reviews play a big role, Both Negative & positive thoughts!
And the must haves, For example, any Elvis release, lol ha ha...”thank you thank you very much!” That’s my best Elvis voice! Lmao

I see some people's tracking updates indicate some activity around 15/16 May, even 20 May.

However, mine on UPS has nothing since 30 April, which was an update stating "package transferred to post office", while USPS similarly has the latest tracking status on 30 April.....but theirs states "awaiting item".

Are other UK customers' DP34s apparently still stuck between UPS and USPS three weeks after despatch?

The liner notes state that Ned Lagin plays on some of the 2nd set...I've heard this release several times now and I'm not hearing it. Maybe I'm just spacing out at the exact right/wrong time. Can someone point out when and where Ned shows up?

-Remixes-
Jerry basically says in this interview -- about 8 minutes in www.youtube.com/watch?v=8JOhtcJCjXA --going back and changing a performance that already exists is strange....and is kinda like going to a museum and painting over a picture. And I agree that it is usually strange. Beatles Revolver got remixed somewhere along the line...the version that is on Spotify is weird, and I find it jarring. An original vinyl is the best way to listen to that album (The UK Version). As we all probably know, the Dead did go back and change Anthem of the Sun and Aoxomoxoa. The differences on Anthem of the Sun seem pretty minimal to me. I gave both a hard listen when the 50th aniv. set came out and I wasn't able to pick a winner. I've listened to both mixes of Aoxomoxoa a lot and I do prefer the 2nd mix of that album, but that's one of the 1st Dead albums I ever bought and I was turned on by that mix. Grew up with it. So, it must be tattoo'd in my soul, or whatever. I do like the original mix of What's Become of the Baby. All of the extra sounds make it a little more digestable, I'm sure a lot of you are the exact opposite. If I was around and was a fan when they first release Aoxomoxoa, I assume I would like the 1st mix better.