Grateful Dead

I really liked this one. Part of that may have been a good focused late night listen. Mix was slightly different with more Bob, maybe less Keith? That highlighted by Bob's interesting work in China>Rider too. They attempted to slow the tempo in the Rider part but not everyone caught the drift there. Maybe I liked it for the set list and song order again which I found appealing in more than one of the tour so far. It does seem to be the difference some times in what I perceive as a good show. Highlights: Loser, Big Boss Man, TOO which was extended and very spacey (one part had the cat looking at me like WTF?) in the first go, then a little jazzy Keith, then a lengthy somewhat quiet interlude before >Bobby McGee>TOO again. Maybe the best Sing Me Back Home so far of the tour. And a sweet but shorter Sugar Mag> NFA> GDTRFB> NFA again to end. Again DeadbaseX way off with setlist out of order and missing songs. Not really counting on that being right anymore. Still plugging away with Rotterdam next but may get stalled Mon. - Tue. with a trip to the Four Corners region. Need us some slickrock and petroglyphs before the weather starts turning.
Cheers
Edit: 5-11-72 Rotterdam. Jeez- Louise! I can see why Oro said this might be his favorite EU72. The whole 1st set is at that slow, let's get this perfect pace and is another killer set that starts with a Playin' so you know it's going to be good. Then this 2nd set starts with a Dew and is monumental with the best DS so far and one that is now in my top 5 of all time and the 2nd set jammed portion runs like 75 minutes! The final Caution/Who Do You Love is a great way to end that song's run. I googled best show of EU72 and this one came up often and is in the top 3 or 4 in most lists. Just a wowzer.

Crumbs...sorry, I wasn't expecting that for an answer. Thanks for the heads up - nice that them upstairs read these posts.

The September GD Bulletin came out yesterday in an email.
At the end there is a section Community Bits that briefly summarizes what it being discussed on these boards.

It says:

In the Pick of the Day, With Discussion thread, Daverock raises the interesting point that for Europe ’72, there weren’t so many Dead Heads in the audience — and that affected the band’s playing. Maybe for the better? What do you think?

Sorry - I'm not sure what that means!

Daverock gets the call out.

1stshow -no, I have never heard Hawkwind's set at Bickershaw. Curiously, I have never read anything about it either, not from the band or from people who were there. Simonrob was there - maybe he knows something.
1972 was the year it all came together for Hawkwind, culminating in the Space Ritual tour in December. In fact - a timely thought - the 11 cd special deluxe edition of Space Ritual is out next Friday. Probably not good value for money unless you are really into it - they basically played the same set on that tour wherever they played - this new set features three of them. I'll be getting it - but the original album may be better value overall.

Going back to The Dead's repetitive - or otherwise - song lists - they would have played to a different audience every night, for the most part, during E72, so maybe it mattered less than later on if they played the same songs a lot. Maybe that was the case for American gigs at first, too. It wasn't common practice in England in the 1970's to see the same band twice on the run, so I wouldn't think it was in America at first. As teenager, apart from anything else, I wouldn't have been able to afford it.

With the exception of Copenhagen and London, they hit these cities just once and my guess is most locals had not had any real exposure to the touring Grateful Dead. Copenhagen is the real outlier, two hits at the same venue and similar second set setlists.

I always assumed they wanted to make a presence in Europe and knowing people were not as exposed in the US, wanted to paint a strong picture for each city.

So 51 years later listening to the whole tour, there is lots of repetition. But if you were there then, it was all brand new. That's how I digested it. They wanted to hit Europe with a cohesive picture of what they were doing then not knowing when or if they would return.

Yeah they always went heavy on what was new. Guessing partly for their own sanity/interest, and partly for the crowds.
Not unlike Taylor Swift etc: make an album, go on the road to support it, rinse and repeat…of course like most things, they weren’t that formulaic, thank goodness lol. Plus, they were smart enough to figure out that it’s better to work stuff out on the road BEFORE you go into the studio to record it, especially when you do constantly tweak and re-invent them. So this tour was perhaps a bit of both lol.
Also, (think we’ve discussed before?) folks didn’t tour so much back then, probably not at all in 1972 Europe?
So they didn’t have to worry about that like they did later on.
Sometimes I think they, or someone, just really enjoyed certain songs, so played en more.
I’d say they played less repetitive in some ways as the years passed and they had more and more songs to choose from.
Ok, maybe not Bob, he seemed to need to play everything to death lol. Speaking of, why Me&My Uncle every night! I mean they just put it out on the last live album only a year before! With so much new stuff as the Dead, and from WM and AB, AND both Bob and Jers recent solo albums, why Bob, why LOL ; ) Perhaps trying to bring more American “culture”?
As far as reinterpreting songs, I think they always did that, though some more than others and with various results.
I guess that’s yet another thing dependent on the listeners taste and chever way yer pleasure tends…
But I’d bet the biggest factor on this tour was trying to get at least one good useable version of all the new material since they purposely chose this methodology to get the new songs out on a new album. That and mix in some familiar stuff as you never want to do all unknown songs. I could tell ya a story about doing that lol

Finishing up as I write.
Highlights: Dark Star, The Other One, Lovelight (Jerry!).
The line-up for this festival is astounding. Woodstock level of mud too.
DR, guessing you've heard Hawkwind's performance. Good?
Cheers

Is that true, though, that there was more repetition of songs during the E72 tour than others in the late 60's and 70's?
I haven't checked it out, but listening to shows, I always get a sense that they had a core group of songs that they leaned on during specific tours. It was the same listening to the 1973 box that has just come out. There weren't any shows that were wildly different from any other - possibly 6/10/73. That has a different feel than the earlier ones.

That's not a criticism - the more they played specific songs - especially the ones incorporating jams, the better they got to know them and the more they were able to re-interpret them. Part of the ongoing mystery - especially from late 1971-1974. Maybe.