Welcome back to the Tapers' Section, where this week have music from 1972, 1980 and 1989, with the first and last selections from Bay Area iconic Grateful Dead venues, and the middle selection from Des Moines.
First up is music from 12/11/72 at Winterland, where the Dead were playing their return to the Bay Area after almost four months of excellence elsewhere in the country. Since their last Bay Area show before this three night Winterland run, the Dead had played Veneta through the end of November, and had played some of their best shows ever in that span. From Winterland, we have Truckin'>China Cat Sunflower>I Know You Rider, Box Of Rain, He's Gone.
Next is the post-Drums sequence from a very good show on 5/29/80 in Des Moines, with a cool batch of tunes featuring Truckin'>Space>Lost Sailor>Saint Of Circumstance>Comes A Time>Around and Around>Johnny B. Goode. Sailor>Saint would have been new to a lot of these folks, having appeared on their new record Go To Heaven just a month earlier.
Lastly this week is music from the Grateful Dead's penultimate concert at the Henry J. Kaiser Convention Center, formerly known as the Oakland Auditorium Arena, on 2/6/89. From this show, we have the entire second set featuring Truckin'>Hell In A Bucket > Scarlet Begonias > Looks Like Rain > Terrapin Station ; Drums > Space > The Other One > Stella Blue > Turn On Your Lovelight. These were the only Kaiser shows I saw, and I still vividly recall the joy of seeing the Dead in such a small venue. I'd see them in smaller venues in Europe a year later, but for this Dead Head who started seeing the Dead in 1987, the Kaiser was a treat.
Be sure to join us here next week for more tunes, and please feel free to write to me with questions or comments, sent to the email address below.
David Lemieux
vault@dead.net