Grateful Dead

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Ace: "Playing In The Band" is my pick for a studio recording that most closely resembles a quality live performance. Just splendid! Jerry's nothing less than a savant on this one.

Garcia: "The Wheel" is sublime, my favorite version across any spectrum. The way that frantic opening just dissolves into a vat of honey-dripping pedal steel goodness is soul-cleansing. And Eep Hour - wish it went on for another 20 minutes. So calming and transportive, then handing the baton off to that ethereal "To Lay Me Down." Just what I needed yesterday.

I've been out for a bit - just needed to take a bit of a break from the computer, as that is now all that I do during the work-week. That being said, I grilled some brats and veggies on Friday, which was hot and sunny here in Bmore, and listened to all three discs of 5/15/70 - what a release. I was planning on skipping it, as I had listened to it quite recently, but I am glad that I thought better of it and dug in. I agree with all here - those acoustic tracks may be the best acoustic 70 released. Love it!

I didn't do the solo albums yesterday, as I was away from the house and I do listen to them on a regular basis - well, Garcia a lot, Weir a bunch, and Rolling Thunder here-and there... I will at least try to give Rolling Thunder a relisten soon.

Yesterday and today I've listened to Greek 8/13/83, and today I have gone through 8/14 and 8/15... loving it!

I think that today is 7/13/84? Perhaps I will put that on if I ever get out of this Greek Theater 83 groove. Talk about a box set that is crying to be let out!

Peace

Presented in three segments, an evening with the Grateful Dead featuring the New Riders Of The Purple Sage falls more into the category of a music experience than a concert. - Jeff from Variety May 27 1970

I spent the weekend having that music experience, Friday for the Early Show & Saturday for the late show. And it all lined up on the 50th anniversary.

It was an epic revisit of some beloved shows. Throughout this revisit, I couldn’t help thinking as I listened to the amazing quality & completeness of this material that I would’ve killed to have these tapes in high school. It was unattainable for me then. But I used to dream of it…
Well, we’ve got them now!

These two shows represent the first “an Evening with the Grateful Dead” at the Fillmore East and the last time they did Early and Late Shows there. By this point the NY heads had learned that the early shows were kept short & the true magic happened in the late shows.

There’s magic in both of these shows, but the “true” magic definitely happens in the late show.

I decided to do the full meal deal on these two and grabbed the NRPS sets as well, which are both nicely recorded by the patched in Fillmore East crew, I believe.

Early Show -
Acoustic 9 songs = 46 minutes
NRPS 8 songs = 30 minutes
Electric 7 songs = 1 hour
Over 2 hours of music

Late Show -
Acoustic 10 songs = 51 minutes
NRPS 13 songs = 1 hour 13 minutes
Electric 14 songs = 2 hours
Over 4 hours of music!

TOTAL BOTH SHOWS = Over 6 hours of music!

The Acoustic set for the Late Show is one of the best ever, as previously mentioned here on this thread. Pigpen teases Good Lovin’ in the early show a couple of times, and throughout both shows, they didn’t play it until like 5 hours later and boy when they did, it is Hot. The Dark Star > St. Stephen, incredible! Throughout it all you can feel the Fillmore East vibe, especially apparent during the closing Turn On Your Lovelight rave up after about 6 hours of melting minds.

What it must’ve been like in the Fillmore East that night! The Dead lit that place on FIRE. While listening, I sat there shaking my head so many times, amazing amazing stuff here folks, just amazing.

The only real flaw in the music we have here is the omission of the late show Candyman*, which suffers from a reel flip on the FE crew tapes & was left off the official Vault release. That makes me curious to compare the uncirculated Vault version of the Bob Matthews recording to the FE crew version and see if there’s some patch material. It is an amazing version of Candyman! Very similar to Calebration version from 8/30/70, but earlier and more intimate, somehow. Jerry’s voice is just amazing on both of these shows and in 1970 in general.

I’ve always had some issues with this release due to the tracking of the songs being cut up and spread out on various CDs. I’ve had them in the right order for years in my music player, but the in’s & out’s weren’t working for me, causing my completist OCD to flair every time I listened and therefore avoid repeated plays. I understand the reasoning behind these edits and am not complaining, just saying. But this weekend I found myself with the time and finally re-tracked the songs, especially the late show, added the NRPS and was able to fully immerse myself in the music in it’s original order at this high level of quality.

At the time of these shows, Workingman’s Dead was done and pressed and would be released shortly after this show (the exact date seems to be in question, but in my research it drops about 10 days later.) This show represents the new material as good as any shows from this time. You get every song that would be on Workingman’s Dead except High Time (played quite well the night before) and you get the three songs that they’d already written and were performing from American Beauty: FOTD, Attics & Candyman.

Cool point of interest.. Robert Hunter would be writing 3 more new tunes very soon after this, all in one day, when the band headed to England for the Hollywood Music Festival on 5/24/70: Ripple, To Lay Me Down, Brokedown Palace.

* The Late Show Acoustic set group of Black Peter, FOTD, Uncle John’s Band, Candyman is a must hear in it’s original order, even with the reel flip. It’s some of the finest representations of these songs at this point in the Dead’s recorded history. Also of note the missing banter after Candyman leading up to Pigpen’s performance is fun and worth a listen. Jerry announces that they’ll finish off the Wooden Section with a gospel tune with some NRPS, Pigpen says wait a minute don’t I get to play a song before you do that fuckin’ religious song? And Bob hops on the mic asking the crowd if they wanna hear Pigpen, and does his Dog Suckin-ist man in showbiz rap. Then you get to hear the rare set up & crowd situation of Fillmore East, somebody does a Tarzan Yell, and Pigpen says “Heard You’re Fired!” (Sonny Heard), another Tarzan Yell, “You’re fired twice” and then a female audience member does it too, it just makes you feel like you’re there. And then you get Pig’s two fine acoustic tunes from the release.

That brings me to wonder if David Lemieux has ever posted the 5/15/70 late show Candyman from the Vault anywhere? I’d sure love to see if we can patch this FE crew Candyman with the Vault version. It’s worth an ask as the version is sublime.

David Lemieux may we request a 5/15/70 Late Show Candyman please? Thank you very much!

Well if you made it this far… thank you very much!

I wonder how many people actually saw both shows from that night and lived to tell about it.. if you’re out there, I would love to hear your stories.

To wrap it up, when I first heard “rumors” of these legendary shows the Dead would do in 1970, with an Acoustic Set, the NRPS and The Electric Dead and they’d call them An Evening with the Grateful Dead, I would drift off and think how amazing it would be to hear that!

Well some 35 years later, it’s as amazing as I’d always dreamed it would be.

PS - Yesterday’s pick of Garcia, Bob Weir “Ace” & Mickey Hart “Rolling Thunder” was the perfect music to come down from this here wild trip through 5/15/70.

Thanks Bolo!

PPS - Strider88: Thanks for that great story!
Everyone Else Here: Thanks for picking shows to listen to everyday and for your wonderful input and insights.
BobT: 7/13/84 you say, I’ll listen to that.

Be Well

....Main Ten = PITB.
That's how things work. Eep Hour.
Dead Horns are under represented.

....that show will be a Daves at some point. Just biding our time. And yes. And it was released. 36 years ago.
Rolling Thunder is the shit. My neighbors are firing off fireworks in celebration!

I know it's not released but it will be something different, and I could go for the Scarlet>Touch>Fire second set opener and was as Dark Star encore.... bob t

First impressions. What a gem. I can't believe I'm just hearing it for the first time now. Thanks to Wiki for the album notes and credits.
* Two jams with Jerry, Mickey and Zakir Hussein! I love Zakir and have been lucky to see him live a few times. I knew he worked with the Dead and Mickey before but didn't realize they went all the way back to 71/72. Top shelf stuff.
*"Deep Wide and Frequent" - a major highlight. A guitar blizzard with Jerry, Cippolina, and two other cats I haven't heard of before. The guitars are all great here, but the only one I can recognize for sure is Jerry (maybe Cippolina)
*David Freiberg does some nice vocals. Freiberg seems to get lost in the shuffle of fine San Francisco musicians and it's nice to hear him here. "Fletcher Carnaby" is an oddity- a menacing song with Hunter lyrics.
*The arrangements of Playin' in the Band ("Main Ten") and Greatest Story ("Pump Song") are interesting and the expert horns are a nice touch. Garcia playing "Insect Fear"? Well I don't know what Garcia is playing exactly, but it's unmistakably Jerry.

[Vguy- yes, alas, "Walk in the Sunshine", the poor thing. at least the Dead identified it as a turkey early on]

"Garcia" is a favorite album. LP Side 1 introducing 4 classic Hunter-Garcia songs. LP Side 2 is a brilliant, sublime suite of music and sonic weirdness. One of the songs at the core of my GD "universe" is The Wheel, and Jerry's pedal steel here is out-of-this world beautiful!

Not sure if everyone here knows it - there was an expanded version of the album released by Garcia Family/Rhino ca. 2005. 1 CD, OOP, pricey nowadays on the secondary market but to my mind very much worth tracking down. Very cool liner notes by Hunter, he was in the studio - he describes lyrics for The Wheel coming together as he listened to Jerry's pedal steel. A fascinating bonus track is the Late for Supper/Spidergawd/Eep Hour alternate take. Jerry begins by playing a series of crashing chords on the piano, letting them hang and fade to nothing. I love listening to each banging chord in its fullness. At the start of the track, Jerry's telling Billy K. what he's about to do re the chords, and then he says - "I'll do some weirdness - it'll be weirdness, weirdness, weirdness." Ha!

....plus two "Whooo's!!!" to start.
Forgot how beautiful The Wheel is on Garcia. Pretty darn good trio here. Grate album covers as well. Rolling Thunder's is stellar. Agreed.