Home town shows for me (lived a couple miles away in La Cienega). It was the Best and the Worst of times....

Best was 3 Red Rocks shows, then coming home for this, and even better, the night off in between was Zozobra night, the kickoff of Santa Fe's Fiesta weekend...ten thousand plus gathered to burn Old Man Gloom, a 50' puppet, groaning and waving his arms in full ritual glory, letting go all our glooms from the year. So fun to share that with a friend from back east and a couple new show-friends who tagged along as we came south!

Also Best was the aforementioned weather magic, lightning in the foothills behind the stage as the first set ended, and the rainbow as they cranked it up for set 2 with Help on the Way. Classic!

The Worst, I'm afraid, reared its head in both concrete and creative realms....The Downs was set up for these shows (as in the previous fall) with the stage facing the grandstand from across the track's oval. This created some awful echoes for those in the middle; of course, you could solve that by moving up close enough to the speakers to overwhelm the echo....or by being way back in the stands....but not ideal for those who like to wander! (a later Lyle Lovett show I saw there rectified this by setting up parallel to the stands).

Sadly, this show featured what I felt at the time to be my clearest experience of Jerry's issues in these years. The way I heard the Help/Slip/Franklins sequence, Bobby was doing something really fun and creative at one point (I'm a "Bobby Fans are People, Too" guy), and ol' Jer just totally fell off the side of the train at just the point we were primed for him to ante up and raise the stakes. Just lost it. Happens to the best of us, I know....but it was pretty striking at the time.

The next summer, my compilation of the few(ish) highlights of that year's set of Red Rocks shows was called "Are We Having Fun Yet?" It was a rough stretch for sure.

Ah, well, not griping about the release or the band or the challenges Jerry was grappling with. Just my memories of these shows.... Which of course were still way fun in the moment despite the transient reminders of the deeper troubles lurking within.

Butch - I agree with most of your post - I'm not sure I'd go along with remixing a show and dropping a musician that was there out of the mix ( Brent) however irksome his contributions became.

I enjoyed a lot of live music in the 1980's that doesn't stand up to close scrutiny now. I saw Hawkwind loads of time in the 80's and always enjoyed it - but I wouldn't recommend any of their live albums from that era. You really had to have been there - and I suspect it's the same with Dead shows. Maybe they will concentrate on souvenir shows from now on - ones that the greatest number of people attended, which would necessarily mean concentrating on 1980s-1990s.
Not good. This could be the first year when I haven't wanted any of the Daves Picks shows that have come out.

Yes, September 11, Dennis.

Yes, it has been a different couple of years for Dave's Picks, but put me in the camp of wanting more variety, not less. There are tons of great shows out there from all eras. But, not everybody will be happy.

For me, the Frost shows were my favorite so far and that was a surprise to me, but I really like them and keep listening to them.

Based on sales, #49 is the only one that is actually sold out. You still have three from last year that are still available. Maybe they should cut it back a few thousand. Not sure that will happen.

My least favorite of the year was #51, sound quality is not very good.

I haven't heard the Santa Fe show yet, looking forward to it.

Could not agree more with Butch's comment about how poor these releases have gotten, and this is coming from a huge fan of the Brent years. David, why do you continue to keep so many of the great, classic shows bottled up and give us this bull instead? Holding it all for the inevitable $5-600 GD60 Box?

Even worse than the choice of show for Vol 52 - how could anyone confidently expect a quality product from these clowns when the FOTD set was such a flaming pile of trash?

At my last count nearly 40 tracks in the set are totally unplayable, with no solution from Lemiuex and the crew but a refund - if you take the time to reach out and ask. No one from Dead.net coming out and saying, "hey - don't buy this it doesn't work properly." Very shady if you asked me but oh well, on to the next release of "top notch Grateful Dead music," so who cares! I wonder if/when enough of us heads will realize that these "archivists" are really just grifters ripping us all off.

My recommendation to anyone reading; buy a cheap external hard drive and fill it with free, high quality FLAC for less $ than you're spending on one or two of these bogus releases. Stop giving David Lemieux your money for nothing of value in return.

I see 11 & 40 on the birds,,, I assume the 40 is mick's birthday. Is 11 the date?

I'm done subscribing. There is so much good 60s and 70s material in the vault, and half the releases these days are the band on the decline. Doesn't matter how many people were buying tickets for the shows (thus is always the argument for the 80s), the recordings suck. I don't how people can stand listening to that keyboard player's bar band vocals. Sure the concerts were great live and in person, but so were the Stones this year but I am not listening to a recording of them in 2024. It's no secret why sales are down. There used to be so many subscriptions that these things would sell out in less than 24 hours. It goes to show hiw few people want a subscription where they're getting two Brent shows a year, usually with bad audio. I would remix Spring 90 without his vocals or most of his keyboards. Dude, learn when to stop playing. Oh, but he made Jerry smile onstage. Never mind. Keep them coming.

We had 1 show from before the hiatus in 2024, including the box set. Dave, Rhino, and Pinkus don't deserve my money when they're holding back great material from 68-74. There won't be 25K Dave's Picks per release next year. They got cocky and tried to mix in too much after hiatus music. The Dave's Picks titanic is sinking. Shame.

For my money, the best tour between the end of 1978 and the Summer of 1987.

LOVE the cover art!

A fun release! Wish I could of seen these two shows cause its NM (an adopted state - work there, all over the state, on a regular basis) and Santa Fe (beautiful fascinating town with deep history - famous for good reasons), and yeah, they're smoking outdoor shows with awesome high desert weather. Really love the racing roadrunners!! NM state bird - always happy with a roadrunner sighting!

Always love the anticipation of a new release. Hope we have it by the end of next week.

Dave teased #53, which we will know soon, as an era they don't hit much and it was between two shows. Okay, that is interesting. What era could it be?

I want both dates

But

I will take what theyre givin'

Very glad for the three tracks from 9 10 83

Love the Jimi reference, DMCVT