A sealed, unlabeled box sat undisturbed for decades on a shelf in the Grateful Dead’s San Rafael tape vault on Front Street, its contents an enduring mystery, even to those few with access to the vault. All David Lemieux knew about that box when he became the Dead’s archivist was that it contained tapes belonging to Bear—Owsley Stanley, the Dead’s first soundman and architect of the Wall of Sound. Even in the Dead Heads’ Holy of Holies, the taped-up box was tantalizing. But this was Bear’s personal property, and so he didn’t touch the box out of an abiding respect for the elder luminary of sound. Bear’s archive of Sonic Journal recordings had been kept safe for him for years within the Grateful Dead’s vault—over 1,300 reels of tape stored in heavy-duty cartons like old banana boxes. At any time, David could have popped the tops and explored them to his archivist heart's content. But they were off-limits without the nod from Bear. - Starfinder Stanley, Hawk, and Pete Bell, Owsley Stanley Foundation
With a wink and a nod from Bear, we've peeled back those banana boxes to find some of the oldest and rarest of all recordings of the Dead including the double dose of shows that make up DAVE’S PICKS VOLUME 43. The two virtually complete performances from San Francisco 11/2/69, Live At Family Dog At The Great Highway, and from Dallas 12/26/69, McFarlin Auditorium, are complementary in their clarity and consistency thanks to Bear himself, and in their ability to foreshadow where the Dead were headed in the years to come. If the two killer 20-minute+ "Dark Stars" don't get ya, how about the Pigpen-centric sets featuring "Midnight Hour," "Next Time You See Me," "Big Boss Man," "Good Lovin'," and the once-lost-now-found complete rendition of "Dancing In The Streets," or the first full acoustic set ever performed? And we're certain you'll be fascinated to uncover the "Mystery Of Bear's Banana Boxes" as told by Starfinder Stanley, Hawk, and Pete Bell in the liners.
Limited to 25,000 numbered copies, DAVE’S PICKS VOLUME 43 was recorded by Owlsey "Bear" Stanley and has been mastered to HDCD specs by Jeffrey Norman at Mockingbird Mastering. Grab a copy while you can.
*2 per order. Very limited quantity available.
Baseball Playoffs Are Here!
Us Toronto Blue Jays fans wish good luck to the imperialist lackey running dog Seattle Mariners, starting today.
October is such a great sports month - NHL is starting, baseball playoffs are starting, NFL is in high gear (except for last night’s Colts-Broncos “game”), NBA starting soon, World Cup coming…
On the music front, SO many new releases out, and on the Dead front, it appears that the new MSG box is two thumbs up from pretty well everyone, there is a new DaP coming shortly (get those bets and votes in for what shows it may be), there is a new re-issue of Ace for order, Jerry has another release coming…whew!
All this, and another cancer free MRI scan for me this week. All this as we enjoy our Thanksgiving weekend here in the colonies. One. Lucky. Man.
It is to weep.
That Mike
Congrats on the MRI. Went through 11 years of that watch and wait stuff myself and it's no fun getting checked every 6 months, or even more often the first 2 years. Never had treatment, touch wood, and hopefully your results stay good. Those were CTs for me mostly and even with insurance each one cost me a grand. Kept me almost bankrupt the whole time but some cancers are simply mysteries to the docs. Best wishes!
Cheers
Oh happy day!
Happy, happy, joy, joy, yes Mike, it’s Rocktober, “it’s Friday and I’m in love again”
Or, I’m so glad, I’m glad, I’m glad, I’m glad.
Glad to hear things are well, (for 1stshow too!), sounds like it’s truly a time to be thankful.
So big holiday wishes this WE to our friends across the border! Gobble, gobble 🦃
Can’t imagine going through all that, even after going through it with pops, I’m sure it’s way different when it’s you!
Big WE, the Other One has to work so imma gonna get busy with this shinny new box of goodness, well, right after I get down to the miiiiiiiinnnnneeeeee!
Hopefully Dave isn’t in a sports coma and gets us his next installment of slipping and sliding and dodging eagles on the beach!
Happy Fri Day Folks!
First Show/Oro - Thank you!
FirstShow & Oro - Thanks for the kind words. I have dealt with it for 16+ years, surgeries, immuno treatments (awful), months in a physical rehab facility as I learned to walk again (it attacked my spine), and I’ve had SO many MRI & CTs in all these years, I should be able to shoot lightning from my wrists. (Would that ever be cool for when the neighborhood kids come by for Halloween…!) Went from Stage 4 in a wheelchair to being cancer free, regularly biking and going to the gym, and hikes with the dog.
So our Thanksgiving here is feeling pretty good this year. I’m glad you beat it too, FirstShow, great news. Thanks again both of you for your thoughts.
Five For A Dollar
Local library "Friends of the library" book sale today.
All LPs and CDs as many as 5/$1.00 so no sense in getting < 5.
CD - Mars Hotel, like new and oddly I didn't have that one.
CD - Workingman's Dead, also pristine and got the LP last year at the sale for $2.00 (reverse inflation!) also perfect.
CD - Byrds - Sweetheart Of The Rodeo, looks like a newer reissue. Yes, has the Gram Parson outtakes, etc.
CD - Vivaldi - The Four Seasons, one of my all time favs.
CD - Jackson Browne - Running On Empty, how is it I didn't have that?
Love helping the library by helping myself, LOL. Got lots of books too, $1. for paperbacks, $2. for hardbacks.
Splurged on a $5. rarity, Audubon's The Birds Of America, not the giant collectable but a big folio size from 1962.
Not a bad haul for 30 minutes work. Need another bookshelf. They're piling up. The wife's a former librarian in her youth and a firm believer that you cannot have too many books.
Cheers
Edit: No need to abbreviate your story Mike. You've had a tough row to hoe. My second C doc died during my watch & wait, of course of the big C. Really hurt. He was cool. We talked fly fishing a lot as I had worked for Scott Fly Rod making expensive rods here in Montrose at two different times. Let's just keep on truckin'!
Oh, that mike
Trash talkin' the Mariners?
I certainly ain't holding my breath. But Go Mariners!
Miscellaneous
1st Show - My doc is going through C now, and is closing his practice (he’s younger than me), so we spoke by phone yesterday and he really thanked me for inspiring his fight. Knocked me out at the knees. Thanks again. (I don’t want to downer everyone on a great music site.)
PS - Sweetheart of the Rodeo is a gem! To get the Parson’s cuts is great, because they had previously only been available on an out of print box set (which I have), and they sound really cool stacked up against the McGuinn originals. I have been a Byrds fan forever, and I still have a Byrds book I’ve never seen in print anywhere else that I “borrowed permanently” in my teen years from my local library. (To keep the karma at bay, I have donated dozens of decent books to the library, but not that Byrds book, it’s a keeper, still!)
Proudfoot - Oh yes, ‘tis the season for trash talk!
Keep up the fight
Cancer sucks.
The chemists that won the Chemistry Nobel Prize this week developed technology that can be used for many things, including cancer treatment and imaging.
Little Red Rooster
8/19/80
Bobby does some great vocals
The entire show is awesome
The C Word....
....not good in either context.
But then again, I'm not Irish.
For those out there on the terrain...
AAAPPPPPPLLLLLEEESSS
AAAAANNNNDDD
OOORRRRAAAAANNNNGGGEEESSS!!!!
you either get that or you don't
DaveRock et al
Thank you, my friend. Thanks to everyone who wished me well. I’ve said this before about this group here on this forum: a nicer group of people you will not find. :)
PS - Expecting the Wolf Brothers (Live In Colorado Volume 2) new release today. I know a lot of folks here that have seen them live say they can be a little low-key, and the first Volume was certainly that way, but I did like it, and I’m hoping this one is enjoyable, too. Saturday night is for playing Motorheadache (that name of that cover band playing here recently - from England - still makes me laugh, and the lead singer is a Lemmy faithful knockoff), and Sunday morning is for the Wolf Brothers.
Live in Colorado Vol 2
My copy arrived yesterday and I fitted listening to it in between the ‘82 shows from the box set. The tempo is certainly slower but I did enjoy it. I particularly like the version of TOO and I’m a sucker for any versions of Brokedown Palace and Ripple. All in all it was worth the cost of purchase.
Thatsmike and 1stshow
Way to get back Truckin' ON!! These are magical times we live in, scientifically, as thirty years ago there was so little to be done about that 'C' word. Speaking of 'C' words, go get your ColonosCopies, people! I hit the big 5-oh a week after everything shut down in 2020, so didn't get around to my first until last fall, but how lucky are we to have good ways to detect certain 'C's? The procedure is easier than a teeth cleaning, and the prep is NOT as bad as people make it out to be. Just do it, folks! :)
It's difficult to find the chat these days, eh? Anybody ready for the MLS playoffs?
Be kind, rewind.
I'm not a robot, or else I wouldn't need colonoscopies.
Let’s Play Ball!
DH Brewer - Yes, absolutely ready for playoffs. I was chirping Proudfoot yesterday with some Seattle trash talk, but eating a slice of humble pie today. I texted my youngest just before the game to see if he had to leave work “for a dental appointment with Dr Cooperstown” - ie - watching the game - but he texted back and said he was actually at the game! He said it was like the power got switched off after the Imperialist Lackey Running Dog Mariners (sorry, Proudfoot) took the lead in the first inning. Oh well.
Colin - I’m glad to hear Wolf Vol 2 is a good one!
Not a lot of chatter about the Beach Boys on these pages, but they have a super deluxe box set coming in November (Hello, Dennis!) covering the Carl & The Passions/Holland albums (with Blondie Chaplin and Ricky Fataar), two decent BB albums. While I have those albums, there is a two disc live set as part of the package from 1972 (I think) that I’d like to get. We will see, because this package is expensive.
Thatsmike: MLS, not MLB :)
I used to LOVE baseball, and still keep up with it, but now my love is soccer, so I was checking if anyone were interested in Decision Day in MLS Sunday, then the ensuing playoffs. Mike, as you likely know, the Toronto MLS team loaded up this year, but were never quite able to put it all together. The Loons looked great for a spell mid-season, but now have been absolute garbage for almost two months, so even if they make the playoffs, they may not be long in them.
Perhaps the clocks in MLB next year will improve the pace of play in MLB like they have in the minors, and that will help my interest in baseball. And if Manfred orders a ball that isn't made of old socks, then perhaps we could start seeing singles and doubles again? :) I grew up on 2:30 games that had lots of base hits, so this slow-moving Three-True Outcome version of the game is tough on this old curmudgeon. :)
Bass ball
Bin Berry, Berry good to me.
When I was a kid I lived for baseball. Huge St Louis fan: Bob Gibson, Ted Simmons, Lou Brock. I wanted to be Lou Brock. I mean how many little kids used to practice stealing bases!
Then I watched the money ruin it. Sure it’s happened to all sports, but watching it go down as a kid in real time to my childhood love was crushing. Then they started the announcers who NEVER shut up BS, coinciding with my personal BB “career” being curtailed by narrow minded jocks/politics: basically redneck coach couldn’t abide having freaks on HIS team even though I was way better then many on the team.
That’s when I turned my back on sports or at least jocks, and fully embraced the R&R lifestyle. Like, I can waste my time and hang around these jocks and end up bummed out with nothing, or I can cut a bunch of lawns, buy a guitar and amp, and have fun!, and maybe get a girlfriend! Hhmmmm??? A job, money, guitar/amp, maybe a GF versus….?
But I still think Hunter S Thompson was on to something in his sports book Hey Rube. He says the two best ways to improve BB would be to limit each batter to five pitches, no matter what, and to be able to throw the ball at players like in kickball lol.
Cards BB
Oro, now yer talkin'! St. Louis born and I got to see Gibson ( the original "the Big Man") pitch a world series game before we left STL in Dec. '67. Such an imposing pitcher standing on that mound. Could scare you even before he pitched it at you. Not sure which series game, could have been in '66. Brock, Orlando(?) Cepeda, they were a dynasty then and still my BB team.
Cheers
Got those Infinity speakers going in the bedroom system. They absolutely ROCK! Tested them with something I know the sound of, DP18 disc 3 that starts with that raging Sampson where Jer has to improvise awhile when Bob's mike was dead. And he certainly didn't use it all up as the later solos are powerful as well. Someone described the part where Jerry is filling in the beginning and goes into one of his rapid fire single note riffs as him aiming his guitar neck at the roadies and making like a machine gun firing at them to get the damn mike fixed.
Yes PF, not even a lot of posts on the 17CD thread either. Haven't fired up the 3CD yet. No comment.
Hey Proudfoot
(In best Maxwell Smart voice) Hey Proudfoot! About that “Imperialist Lackey Running Dog Mariner” nonsense….
Mike
That was rough.
I don’t usually watch baseball that much anymore, but I had the game on while I was making dinner. Yikes.
Been a difficult year for Toronto sports fans.
Here’s my comment about the MSG box. DaP 43 is an immaculate release. Both the sound and the playing. So glad I own it.
Steal Your Faceoff starts Tuesday....
....so quit yer chirping.
Going to the home opener Thursday against Chicago.
$70. I sneak whiskey in a plastic flask in my sock. Not because I'm cheap, but because I'm not stupid. Cokes are $8 ffs.
Golden Knights are looking decent.
Game On!!
Sports Recap
Jack - The TO teams just fold under the pressure. I’m like you, I don’t watch much baseball anymore - that FOUR HOUR PLUS game is a perfect example why - but that was a tough one to watch.
Proudfoot - Good luck to the ILRDMs in Houston.
VGuy - Now you are talking my sport! I’m pretty pumped the season is starting. Smart move on the flask, they soak you crazy for refreshments at sports venues. I gave up the firewater a few years ago, but I know even then it would be $12 for a pony piss beer in a cup. Nah.
My Miami Dolphins....
....first Tua. Now Bridgewater out. Starting rookie Skylar John Thompson. Dude shares my middle and last names so he can't be all that bad.
You can't go wrong
With the money I saved by not buying the MSG box I bought the Mosaic box "The Complete Dial Modern Jazz Sessions". Which is amazing - a trip to another musical universe for me.
But daverock....
....you realize what site you are on though, right? Lol.
What I bought instead
Like Dave Rock with the money I saved by not buying, in my case, the 24LP box I have, so far, bought a number of items I hadn’t planned on buying anyway. Bill Evans - Live at the Village Vanguard’ , Keith Jarrett - ‘at the Blue Note’ box and 28 albums on the Discus label based in Sheffield. All are excellent and I still haven’t spent up. I think I’ll buy some more Discus albums.
Just to stay on topic - The Bills are doing well so far tonight aren’t they :))
MSG Box
The money I spent for the MSG Box is more than the money I spent on the Little Feat Box ($85 with free shipping), although the MSG Box has 17 CD’s of live concert recordings and the LF Box has 6 CD’s of live concert recordings, and 2 CD’s of greatest hits.
The MSG Box was $5 more than the Real Gone 10-09,10-76 vinyl (note: it’s the anniversary).
I received all of them over the past few weeks and have enjoyed them all and will continue to do so.
Bring on DaP44, JGB, Hendrix, and RSD.
MSG Cover Art
I'm not sure everybody can still find MSG Comments, so excuse me for reposting this here just in case:
Finally caught up with my MSG box and had a chance to scan and work on Dave Van Patten’s cover art. It’s definitely a trip. Way more out there than the first image we kept seeing on the website showing a hand reaching down for shrooms. . . First, I combined the art from all four sides of the box (front, back, flap & spine) into a long horizontal panorama. Be careful – it’s a face-melter. It’s also a big file, so there’s a HI-res and MED-res version.
The official artwork for the six individual shows was derived from the box’s cover, but they simplified it. The full-tilt art on the box is so insane, I couldn’t resist making alternate covers for each show that include more of the crazy, complex context that was edited out (they’re listed in Dropbox as “BOX Art”). For any purists who may prefer the simpler, but official artwork that’s actually on the CD’s, they’re included too (“CD Art”). Check ‘em out and share ‘em around while listening to some well-recorded and potent Dead from the early 80s!
Try this: dropbox dot com/scl/fo/dxzr09qeqy5er7xlnoq64/h?dl=0&rlkey=5uz42d6yp5i7eby44rcg0ln9u
or PM me with an email address and I'll send you the linque.
AND glad to hear many of you are patiently facing down serious health issues with a healthy dose of humor. An inspiration to us all. Onward!
Thanks Jeff
I was sort of meh on the cover art from what I initially saw in the early dead.net reveals. I didn't give it much thought.. but it did little for me.
When I opened it I immediately got it and I think it's great. The colors, context, the swirling carnival atmosphere.. add in a touch of benevolent weirdos and what have here is what it feels and looks like when you are walking through the crowd dosed out of your mind.
I immediately saw and liked it for what it is.
Edit: Ooops, posted on the wrong page. Sharing again elsewhere.. sorry for the duplicate.
Anniversary show 10/9/82 Frost Ampitheatre
40 years ago today, I was at the Frost Ampitheatre for an absolutely far out fun day with the Good Old Grateful Dead. My friends and I were lit and the Grateful Dead didnt disapoint. I'm sure a lot of other people who post on the this forum were there and know what a special day it was. It was the first appearance for the Dead at the Frost, Kingfish opened for Eric Clapton in 1975, and Garcia played a show there in 1971. A great time for the Grateful Dead in the Bay Area.
Football sucks balls....
....but thats just the fan in me complaining.
Stupid Lions didn't even put a dent into the Patriots. Sorry Bob Lopes, but I have a long time distain regarding NE. Guess why??
Edit. I tend to cuss when it comes to sports. I signed a waiver though saying it was OK many years ago.
My son and I....
used to use the term "Lions" as a put-down when something lame presented itself
Yeah, football tends to suck balls
In a round about way
So going off Colin's post - on top of my mine - it just goes to show that even if you don't buy a deadnet box, the release of one can lead to the purchase of great music.
Anniversary show 10/10/82 Frost Ampitheatre
40 years ago today, I was at the Frost Ampitheatre for another great show with the Grateful Dead. I bought a nice t shirt that said Stanford Dead on the front, I wore it out. They didn't sell anything inside the Frost that I remember, they didn't sell beer at the Frost or the Greek,. They sold beer down in Ventura and I sure bought alot.
Anniversary show 10/10/80 Warfield Theatre
42 years ago tonight, you know where I was at, man those 1980 Warfield Theatre shows were a blast ! I think that there is a possibility for a Warfiield 80 box set. I assume they have some backup cassette masters, so even though some of the master reels got erased they would still have backups on cssettes. So let's get that 1980 Warfield box set cooking.
Last 5
1. DiP - 18, disc 3, 2-5-78 Cedar Falls
2. Steely Dan - Aja: According to wiki the band is named after a sex toy in a Burroughs novel?
3. Steely Dan - Can't Buy A Thrill: I like the David Palmer vocals on some of the songs. Fagan was uncomfortable with his vocal skills? By their second album their producer convinced him to take the lead.
4. Joe Cocker - Best Of
5. Joe Cocker - Sheffield Steel: Maybe my favorite of his studio albums. Has guest spots for Adrian Belew, Jimmy Cliff (album recorded in Jamaica), and Robert Palmer.
Got a whole new catalog of tunes now that a cassette deck is back. Old favs!
Cheers
Last 10
Neil Young Archives Volume Two 1972-1976. Funny how the studio discs sound more 'live' than the live discs.
I've been a bit off Neil for a few years but the recent release of Time Fades Away on cd has got me back in in a big way. God that's a great record.
Last 5
Cheap Trick-At Budokan-Complete
Brand X-Nuclear Burn-Disc 3
Windham Hill Electronic Sampler-Soul Of The Machine
David Crosby-If I Could Only Remember My Name-Disc 1 of Re-issue
Traffic-Mr. Fantasy-Remaster
Dave!! Please head over to the beach so we can hear what #44 is all about!!
Music is the Best!!