Grateful Dead

Great stuff here people

Propelled me to grilling excellence that day! Always enjoyed this show. It has long been one of the cleanest bootlegs in circulation and this one should be just spectacular.

This was certainly one of the top five Dead shows I was ever at out of 300 I've been to. the following month they returned to Red Rocks for two more shows in Aug. and even though they broke out new tunes in the Aug shows they were weak compared to July 7th and especially July 8th. So very long ago.

Sure wish we could see a video of this, if there is one.

Unexpected. THANK YOU for the REAL GRATE time WE are ALL gonna have!!!!!

When I burned my CDs of 7/8/78 I put Jack Straw, Peggy-O, Music Never, Cold Rain, BIODTL, Scarlet>Fire from 7/7 on the third disc after the encores. I ordered the full box so it doesn't really matter to me, but it did make a very nice addition to an otherwise terribly short disc.

I'll buy it retail at my local record store, in person.However that 3rd disc is very short, as wadeocu made the same comment earlier. He added some filler from the previous night's show.

Disc 3 triple encore and a little filler would have spiced things up an extra notch. The copy I have of 7.8.78 is filled with 1st set Material from 8.25.72 - BCT run - it fits perfectly A few years ago Rhino released these back to back - Sunshine Daydream (8.27.72) and Dave's Picks 7 (4.24.78). The CD-R third disc of 7.8.78 came in handy and was very clutch. Perfect to quench my thirst for primetime stuff from both eras without the changing the disc Lol The cover art for this is fantastic, great images and colors, very reminiscent of the Stanley Mouse 1981 European tour poster,, Bravo Paul Pope

This version of Deal. Bobby and Donna scream at each other for what seems like an eternity. Rest of show is killer!

Glad to see that this show will be available as a stand-alone album!

Red Rocks '78 were my first 4 shows and the contrast between July and August was remarkable. The band was so impressed with Red Rocks that they came back in August after recording Shakedown Street and treated us to the first performances (or new versions) of 6 songs. Everyone loves the fierce high energy of the July shows but the perfection of the almost studio quality of August shows was just as good. August was virtually unannounced and didn't even fill Red Rocks hence the lack of good tapes all these years. I had a tough time finding these boards in the day and didn't get a good copy until the Red Robin bootleg CD from Italy came out in the mid-90's. Thanks Betty!

I'm already getting the box set, but since this was my only attended birthday show I gotta snag this one too. Mighty swell!

More on the Betty Boards in my latest blog piece http://gratefulseconds.blogspot.com/2016/03/new-betty-boards-we-never-h…

Funny, the day before they announced this box I was thinking to myself, "I can't believe 7/8/78 hasn't been released yet. Maybe they're planning the 7th and 8th together as a box. Boy, wouldn't that be nice!" Little did I know...

Glad this is being offered as a stand alone. Truly worthy!

I wasn't there, but I have a distinct memory of first hearing this show. Back when there was no internet archive and really few live releases I heard this on a cassette tape while on a road trip in a car full of friends. I was just getting into the Dead, but I could tell this was an amazing show. I can still see that 7-8-78 Red Rocks sharpie marking burned into my memory, and although I never saw a picture my friends told me Bob wore a wolf man mask and I have an image of that as well. I also remember when I asked if I could borrow it I was told "NO!!!!l" it was years before I heard it again. Stoked to finally get my own copy!!!

I got this tape in the mid to late eighties. I was never a big El Paso fan until I heard this. Jerry plays these ridiculously fast runs. A true mind boggler, and now I am a seeker of all El Paso's! A great show, as is the one from Arrowhead Stadium

8/27/72 out of Dark Star2/9/73 8/1/73 out of Dark Star 8/31/78 out a sublime 0.5step 4/28/71 all of the slow ones from 71

Funny as hell! I had a female roommate who had never heard of the GD and I played a DAT copy of 7-8 1978. When we got to the end of "Deal", she sat bolt upright and asked the perennial question: "wtF is WRONG with her?" The ending of that "Deal" is like getting stabbed in the ear with a knitting needle.

Excellent! One of my first tapes, excited to see it get a proper release.

Lol, funny, I love '78 Deal for Donna's hitting that high note in the ending. I don't recall this one though, sounds like it's a Bob / Donna combo wreck.

I think this is an overpriced great show. One of the best for mid 1978.Why? Disc 3 is less than 30 minutes, (unless there's surprise filler hopefully from the night before, 7/7) so that should knock the price down. The domestic US online price is $29.98, or round it out to $30, add a domestic shipping charge of $5.45 which brings the total to $35.43 and if you live in a state that collects an online sales tax, mine is 6%, for total of $37.55 for me. Very overpriced in my opinion. I'll have to skip dead.net and try somewhere else online, or best yet, like my local "bricks-n-mortar" record store.

Cross-eyed, I mostly agree. I notice that Phish has box sets of 8 discs that sell for 37 bucks new, and of 7 discs that sell for the same price as this single Red Rocks show. Of course, to me the single Dead show is better :), but that aside, Phish also has the luxury of bringing in revenue through touring. But here's what I decided: Complete July 78 Box = 148.00 (with shipping and tax). But I'm buying that - and I'm not buying the stand-alone show, so I'll think of it as a "discount" - So really, the box is only costing me about 111.00 total. Bargain! I love (ir)rationalizations.

2nd disc looks sick. Cannot wait for this one! Just in time for Summer '16.

Was there hung with the band. Jerry and his Swiss Blade. Bill Walton and his crutches saying " right next to a NBA Championship these guys are right there." On the stage with the werewolf masks. Wakled around an empty red rocks at 1 am after the show, with Phil and the tank and mask he was carying saying to an empty ampitheather " listen it still sounds great." At the Marriot with the guys afterwards too. First time i met the guys. In the next six months got to see, sit and talk with Jerry a few times more. The more time I was with him the more I could tell he was getting lost with the "antidote " as he called it. By the end of 79 he was gone. Never was with him again. Went to many shows after 79 and after getting to know him a little during that period (mid 7/78 to sept 79) it was sad and still is to this very day to remember him and how "sweet" he was. The "antidote" took control of his life. At least we still have these great last shows. After this was Eygpt. The band held him up the next fifteen years. There were some flashes of that "sweetness". However to me they were never the same after 7/7&8/78. Just memories.

such a shame to hear of the 'burden' jerry carried around ....touching ...... on a completely different note .... cheers to everyone that is giving bobby his credit for going off the deep end on so many frickin' occasions it's hard to believe donna got ALL the credit for that.

This is obviously the standout show in the box, but how do the others stack up? 78 isn't my favorite year, so I'm on the fence.

got it on maxell tape.....

7/8 is on Amazon, so if you wait til it is released, there will be sellers selling it for around 20 bucks, plus shipping.

1978 isn't one of my favorite years either, but a fellow poster convinced me to listen to 7/8/78 on Archive.org about 6 weeks ago, and I was sold on that performance. Granted the rest of the shows in the box can be subpar compared to 7/8/78 but I'm willing to take the chance based on that 1 performance.

We need to start a campaign to make all vault shows available for individual purchase via digital download. Issuing limited availability CD's and box sets is bad for the environment and unaffordable for some Deadheads. There should be a library of shows from the archive available individually for download at a reasonable price. Phish has been doing this for years using Nugster and it works extremely well.

The band was on the cusp of rolling out good new material. I think a monster Shakedown from December '78 or early '79 would be cool.

Disc 3 is too short in my opinion, and as a standalone release for this price there should be filler from the previous night of July 7th.My filler pick: Scarlet> Fire, Dancing> Drums. A fade out at about the 3:00 minute mark.

Red Rocks 8/30/1978: Stagger Lee *, I need a Miracle *, drums> If I had the World to Give* # > (either fade it or into Iko Iko)* first time played and # World to Give only played twice. and/or Red Rocks 8/31/1978 Shakedown Street* > Good Lovin', From the Heart of Me * * first time played. While these songs were just 'being born', and they were not fully formed/realized, these songs would be a nice treat for those purchasing the set to include the 'break-outs' of new materal. 'The truth is realized in an instant, the act is practiced step by step.'

...and I love it. However, I also know we all would appreciate a little filler on these disc 3's. Come on, PTB! It's not like there is a shortage of great music!

One problem with the digital downloads as created and sold by the Grateful Dead is that, unlike the CDs, they insert a split second gap after each audio track so that it is impossible to listen to a seamless recording of a concert without a dropout after each song. When I first heard that on a download I purchased I thought the files were corrupted but when I asked about it Michael from dead.net investigated the complaint and wrote back: "I apologize, it looks like this is how the product was produced, we are not aware of a issue that we can correct. Thank you for contacting Dead.net customer service." In the case of that particular download I went through the tedious process of editing off the gap from the end of each track so I can listen to the music without dropouts but from now on I'm afraid it's CDs for me.

You are right on. There are more than enough heads out there that will purchase individual shows. Make it happen! We don't need artwork( by the way much of the artwork on the subscription series has been sloppy,juvenile and below previous standards). We sure don't need some other deadhead(that happens to work for the GD) choosing what we listen to and then charging us an ass load of our meager income for it. Let us choose what we listen to and then take the freeze off the archive. Sorry, but the sterilized soundboards are not what I heard.

7thWalker, I successfully downloaded the entire "Download Series" as they were released in 2005 & 2006 in the lossless FLAC format. Using Traders Little Helper to convert my FLAC files into .wav files and using RealPlayer to burn the .wav files to CD-R, I got a slightly better sound and no gaps between tracks as compared to the mp3 format. With mp3 you get a very minor fidelity issues and with my burning software, RealPlayer, there were gaps between the song tracks. I had also downloaded the 2 "Road Trips: Full Show" selections of 11/5/79 & 11/6/79. I believe you were describing mp3 to CD-R downloads and I, like you, don't like gaps between song tracks. One of the Download Series was purchased/downloaded in the mp3 format along with the FLAC counterpart of "Download Series Volume 8 - 12/10/73 Charlotte, N.C." All my other GD music is CD and DVD video.

@ 7thWalker Maybe it's your player? I D/L all the FLAC releases and playback the FLACS or whatever I covert them to, and playback on Foobar easily with no gaps as well as my iPod and USB flash drive for car, etc... always seemless.

MP3 is a term that actually refers to several data encoding methods. Some of them work in a way that results in a silence of maybe 1/10-1/3 of a second preceding the sound. This silence is composed of non-sound data (the "tag" info such as song title, etc.). With regular studio album tracks, this silence is a non-issue. In return for that silence, you get the song info displayed on your screen, sortability in iTunes, etc.For concert recordings, that micro-gap SUCKS! D/Ling FLAC will avoid that problem, due to different encoding methods. It also means that you are receiving audio that has not been comb-filtered to reduce the data package size. MP3 encoding uses a comb-filter to reduce the amount of data required to make the audio file. Great for D/L speed, search speed, etc, but not great for audio fidelity. I D/L lots of concert recordings and then edit the files on my computer before burning to CD. With the right software, those micro-silences are easy to visualize and snip. However, you still have sub-CD-quality ("lossy") audio. D/Ling FLAC means much longer D/L times and more Hard Drive space useage, but you get CD quality ("lossless") sound. Even if you feel (like I do) that 320k MP3s sound fine, if you burn them to CDR as audio files and then your buddy uses that CDr to make MP3s, he has double-filtered the audio and that definately degrades the sound... I D/L FLAC, edit that, burn CDrs, then convert some of the FLACs to MP3s for my iTunes. P.S. I have run into some FLAC D/Ls that do have the front-end micro-silences. It is my opinion that these files were made from MP3s. I also believe that some MP3 playback systems are smart enough to inaudibly skip over those front-end gaps.

anyone out there think dave stretched it just a little bit calling this show one of the best shows ever ?

Didn't anyone hand you a cup of Kool Ade?Didn't you drink it? DL2 is either too in love with TGD to have any trustworthy critical faculties, or he is a shill and a huckster. There is no available data to examine on the issue, so feel free to suppose what you will. I think the fact that he gets paid by an organization that seeks to profit from the sale of GD music points to the shill/huckster choice. YMMV.

that Dave L. is a deadhead first and foremost and that he truly is enthused about the releases that he works on. I also would assume that since Dave's Picks are his selections from the best stuff available then they should be worth the hype. HOWEVER, not everything released deserves to be labelled "among the best shows ever". Does anyone else think that phrase gets tossed around a lot?

I remember a period 10 years ago, when it was questionable if we would even see future releases. With the Archive and file-sharing programs cutting into GD sales, the boys leased the Vault to Rhino, shut down the Archive (briefly), and there was a 14 month period with ZERO physical GD releases. From November 2005 (Fillmore West 1969) and January 2007 (Live at Cow Palace), there was nothing, not even a whisper. Then slowly, things started trickling out of the Vault. First we got single-show multitrack stuff (12/31/76 and 2/19/71), then DL2 convinced Rhino to try archival 2-track shows again. RT1.1 was hardly the best, but things got better as DL2 narrowed his focus. Eventually, we got back to the warts-and-all spirit and complete show of Dick's Picks with the later RTs and then with Dave's Picks. Now we're getting 4 complete shows a year, plus boxes and muti-trakc stuff, at a pace that rivals the CD heyday of the late 90s/early 2000s. I credit DL2 with selecting shows and presenting ideas to Rhino that preserved the Archival Series. Not only that, he slowly advanced box sets, showing that there is a market for even these behemoth 80-disc boxes. Those would never have happened without DL2. Call me crazy for thinking that he deserves our gratitude, rather than being called a shill.

Gotta say, I can't argue with anything you said there. All true and correct. But somehow none of it really works for me anymore. The last time it did was the Road Trips Vol2 -end years. Good balance of money and marketing to music in my opinion. After that there's much more flash in the mix, big dollar amounts, and hype/pressure ("best ever"/"limited limited limited"!). I guess that's what it takes to drive sales to levels that allow the funding of this volume of releases. But I can't make my peace with that. Can still get off on the music, but don't feel any warmer to DL2 and GDM than I do to, say, my bank. And I consistently find more pleasure in listening to D/Ls than my GDM purchases. Really hoping DaP18, much of which I have in poor-sounding D/Ls already, and the 7/78 box, of which I already have both RR shows in great quality, will rekindle the old flame. I am gonna be buying GDM releases whether I like it or not, so I'd really rather like it!

If you can't make your peace with the limited editions, even though they're required to drive sales to make this feasible, how does that make DL2 a shill? It sounds like he's doing the right thing. I don't care for pins and books and other accessories with my boxes either, but as long as the music is good and well priced (only Formerly the Warlocks was overpriced IMHO), why should I care about the marketing? If you can't enjoy great sounding shows because they're limited, that is your (unfortunate) issue. I haven't found DL2 to be that hyperbolic, and he's certainly less so than his predecessor. Latvala was the undisputed king of hyperbole. Usually, when Dave describes a show as "one of the best", it's "of that era", or "of that year". You're allowed to disagree of course, but that's not much of a stretch. When he talks about a show as "one of the best shows ever" it's usually regarding something like 8/27/72 or 7/8/78, where it is, again, a reasonable description.

for anything they put out. I have said that before and it bears repeating. We are SO lucky to still be getting these releases. If i'm not into a particular release or think it's too expensive I just won't buy it. Problem solved. DL and company are doing a fantastic job and I salute their efforts. I can't wait to get this box set. It was a no brainer for me. I have loved these 2 red rocks shows for a long time and will be super happy to have them in pristine condition along with the 3 returned Betty's. Keep up the good work Dave! Thanks for what you do for the fans!

I can understand some folks getting suspicious of "one of the best shows ever" but when maybe only 300-500 of 2,400 or so shows worthy to release, it's kinda fitting...

I don't have much desire for any Dead music releases. I already had at least 80% of everything they released, most of which have great sound.We desperately need live videos of shows throughout the years. They have been gone over 20 years and before we original heads literally die off, we deserve quality live shows. Would you know how I can access live recordings of Dead & Co.? Thanks, David

We need quality live shows on video.I have more music on CD of the Dead and subsequent off shoots, that I couldn't possibly listen to it all. We need videos. I am looking to download Dead & Co. Any help would be appreciated. David