Boxed and Ready to Go!
Sound the imperial trumpets! Bang the drum! Pop that champagne! Another Grateful Dead box set is comin’ your way! Yes, in the grand tradition of the beloved Fillmore West 1969 and Winterland 1973 boxes, comes Winterland June 1977: The Complete Recordings, a 9-CD box set that is sure to knock your tie-dyed socks off.
At this point, we probably don’t need to hype you on the glories of ’77 Dead. It was a magical time for the band, which was reinvigorated by a plethora of great new material—“Terrapin,” “Estimated Prophet,” “Passenger,” “Fire on the Mountain”—and really hitting its stride again following the October ’74 to June ’76 performing hiatus. The group spent much of the first three months of 1977 recording their Terrapin Station album with producer Keith Olsen, and Garcia also managed to find time to complete the much-anticipated Grateful Dead movie (which opened June 1, 1977). The third week of April, the band embarked on what most Dead Heads agree was one of the greatest tours ever: 26 concerts in the East and Midwest in a little over a month—an awesome stretch that produced so many great shows, a few of them already released in the Dick’s Picks series and subsequently (and more, no doubt, destined to come out down the road.)
So when the Dead returned to San Francisco’s Winterland for shows on June 7, 8, 9, they were pumped up and feeling good! They treated their hometown fans to three superb concerts that included excellent versions of much of their current repertoire, from the new combo of “Scarlet Begonias” > “Fire on the Mountain,” to a truly colossal, more than 30-minute “Help on the Way” > “Slipknot!” > “Franklin’s Tower,” “Saint Stephen,” “Terrapin,” “Good Lovin’,” “Not Fade Away,” “The Other One”… too many favorites to mention (you can see the complete song lists here). Winterland June 1977: The Complete Recordings contains every note recorded from the three shows, more than nine hours of prime Dead, all taken from the master analog tapes, restored using the Plangent Processes, and mastered in HDCD by that inimitable sonic tweakster, Jeffrey Norman.
The nine discs are packaged in a beautifully designed box that includes artwork by Emek (you loved his crazy Winterland ’73 phantasmagoria); a 28-page booklet featuring a wonderful and illuminating new essay by Rolling Stone senior music editor David Fricke (who dubs this a “box of paradise and circus… six complete sets of inspired risk and collective explosion”); lots of great Winterland action shots by noted GD shutterbugs Ed Perlstein and Bruce Polonsky; and a couple of little pieces of period memorabilia we won’t reveal here.
—Blair Jackson
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This isn't political...
... but it may be in the wrong forum. With the discussion and responses as to what type of speakers we like, and the tube amps vs. solid state amplifiers discussion, I wonder if there is a topic already on Deadnet for our home systems, and if not, would it be worthwhile to start one? That way it would get the Hi-Fi / stereo system posts out of the Winterland 1977 Box set forum topic. Who knows, we may even discuss the merits of vinyl over the CD format, or even the old moving magnet cartridge vs. the moving coil cartridge cause célèbre.
Enough interest has already been shown...
to warrant a separate forum about systems - what people have, why they have what they have, even the reasons behind the systems they have. All those old arguments - oops, I mean discussions - about what is best, surely it would be better if all this was in one deadicated (sorry!) place. Already a number of interesting posts are spread throught this forum and are thus hard to follow and reply to. Personally I have no idea if a forum for this already exists, but I really haven't searched for one myself.. Does anybody know?
Thanks Marye
I just asked about such a forum on the "What Else Should We Be Talking About?" forum, but you seem to have reacted even before I did that. Some things work just perfectly on this site and Marye is one of them.
Order received - correct product, someone else's invoice
So I received my boxset this morning, much earlier than I expected. It made it to Australia in only 12 days. I got what I ordered (just the boxset, with the bonus disc) but the invoice is for someone else. This person lives in Philadelphia.
From my point of view it's fine - I got what I paid for - but I'm worried about the other person whose order appears to have been mixed up with mine. If we both get what each other ordered then we both should be fine as the invoice is also for just the boxset. However if I've received the other person's order, they have not necessarily received their order.
mary-e, do you think this should be followed up? I'm not going to post the person's details in the forum but please let me know if you would like details of the order to check what's happened.
Alternatively if anyone on the forum thinks the order is probably for them, PM me and we can just check that we both got what we were supposed to.
Delivery issues aside, I haven't investigated the box beyond checking that it contained the bonus disc, booklet and the three shows. When I get home from work I'll check it out for skips, repeated discs, etc. It looks great and I'm sure it sounds great. It's going to have to perform well to live up the Winterland 73 boxset though.
Back on Sept 30 I said this...
"By the way, the sound quality is superb; you will not be disappointed! I hope your systems are up to the task of playing this at near concert levels. You will be very pleased."
I am glad to see the reports from the many who have the big speakers to enjoy these incredible recordings!
got it yesterday
Nice!!!! Got to be the best Rhino released box set so far....but of course I have always been partial to 1977. Went to my 1st shows that tour. Had a great mesc-shroom combo going may 7 boston.
Finally
So I finally got through to customer service. The 201 number that was "not in service" last week was answered by a charming Indian woman, who, while it took a few minutes, was able to straighten out my order and confirm that I would get a refund in the next few days.
So I've taken a chance, and re-ordered the set using postal mail.
on a more positive note..
got a copy of DP#26 in just 8 days with UPS and no other additional expenses, no shipped order confirmation though.
The store seems to work just fine when not over burdened with simoultaneous orders.....
:))))))
Complete Fillmore 1969
Any chance of a future re release of this historic document?
Cost of it all
I live in England and got charged £21 by ups, on top of the £72 charged by rhino. It's a lot of money, but the box arrived a week ago. However, if I'd bought the box through Spin cds (the only music shop in the UK to sell new Dead releases) it would have cost £111 and would not be sent out until tomorrow.
Boring, but true.
Still waiting ...
I have recieved the refund for the latest Road Trips + Jerry Garcia Band but I haven't heard from Meggan again about my order of the Winterland box. So I'm still waiting for that or the actual package.
I hope I'll finally get it, with the bonus disc, because 1977 is one of my favorite years with the Dead. I prefer 1967 to 1978, 1980 to 1984 and to some degree 1989-90. The worst year is 1988, because of all the short versions of about every song.
What would be interesting is to have 10 CD's boxes of the Grateful Dead in progress. Not complete shows but exceptional versions of songs (and pairings) and some good jamming. The first box should run from 1964 to 1966, or perhaps early 1967. A second box from 1967 to 1968, or perhaps early 1969. A third box should concist of electric and acoustic material from 1969 to 1970. You get the idea.
Micke Östlund,
Växjö, Sweden
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My record collection:
jazzmicke
box set here
It is raining, cold, and miserable here, but put disc 8 in the car CD player, and went for a ride. Whew! That Help Slip Franklin is just the best. I'll have to work my way through the rest, but that one is the centerpiece. Sounds great.
Greg SC
man cave
Once my basement/man cave is finished I'm gonna get some speakers with ALL consonants in the name!! I'll turn it up real loud so I can't hear my wife ask me why I need 50 versions of Dark Star. (lol, you know how it is sometimes...) I got all the Dead on vinyl plus several vinyl bootlegs, so that's the only feather in my cap. Thank you to all who added to the HiFi stream of posts. I will be stealing all of your stereo ideas!!!
Bonus Disc
Still no word. Called number last week, posted a message here, can I get a bonus disc that actually plays sent to me? For the price of this set, and the BS order early bonus disc scam, I should be able to enjoy this entire set without scratches and skips. Say a prayer and buyer beware???????Its completely laughable to see people making suggestions for the next box set when they haven't received this one and the entire store is a complete mess. How bout not releasing anything until any kind of service can be provided to the customer? Instead of just preying off our insatiable need for more live music from The Grateful Dead. What a drag....
KRIYAS
MaryE - as ever so helpful - emailed me straight away when I reported to customer service my skipping scratched bonus disc (about a week ago) and assured me that a replacement was on its way. I hae not yet received it, but I have just got an email from customer service asking me to return the faulty disc. From the UK - with no suggestion as to how I should do this without incurring further costs....You're dead right, dealing with this lot (MaryE excluded) is indeed a drag.
Sound quality
I have received the boxed set and while it is enjoyable I don't find that the sound quality is all that great. Some of the other recordings, such as The Closing of Winterland and some others are superior. I also find that a number of the songs drag rather than being exciting, which they can be and are on a number of other venues.
I have almost recieved the box ...
That is, today I got an letter from the Swedish Customs who have my package and are now asking for the content and some proof of whats inside, since Rhino this time around have forgot to put a declaration stamp on the package.
I have forwarded my confirmation mail as of September 25th and hope they will accept that even though Rhino isn't mentioned in the actual mail. We'll have to see ... and if they don't accept my comfirmation mail, then I don't know what to do ...
Micke Östlund,
Växjö, Sweden
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My record collection:
jazzmicke
Jamato: sound quality
Jamato,
Do you ever set up your equalizer for custom settings? I find that depending on how an analog is mixed digitally, will determine the equalizer settings. For this one, I had to change a few of the settings in my car stereo, and this mix now sounds excellent.
It is just a soundboard, though. I myself like the matrix mixes so to get the full acoustics in the sound. But I'm not complaining. I've been hoping for a 6/9/77 release for a long time now, and it is far better than I ever expected the sound to be.
Greg SC
Lousy customer service
I've been in the process of listening to the new Winterland Set. Tonight, while picking up my kids from football practice, I put on Disc 6 in my car's CD player. I tried several times, each time it read error. When I got home, I tried it again in my CD player with the same result. I called customer service, the woman I spoke to needed my account number. As an aside, I had a problem with the Egypt 78 set last year, and have spoken to customer service throughout the 10+ years I've been a customer. Each time the person I spoke to was very friendly and cheerful. This woman was business like, not rude, at least not yet, but not friendly. The tip off that dead.net changed their homegrown customer service was when I was put on hold and I didn't hear the Dead playing in the background as I've always had in the past.
When the woman came back on after checking my order status, she gave me a reference order for me to send back my disc. I told her that when my Egypt set was messed up, I was just sent replacement discs. I asked her why I had to pay for shipping and packaging costs when it was Rhino's fault the CD was defective. She hung up on me. I didn't yell at the woman, swear at her, but this was her response. I'm going to e-mail customer service tomorrow. If I get the same answer, I'll send it back, but that will be it with me ordering anything more from dead.net. I've easily spent a couple of thousand on their cds, shirts, posters for the past 15 years or so, and when they screw up, I have to pay for it? This year alone I've spend over $200 just for their CD's. Maybe they should take a lesson from amazon.com. They pay for your packaging and shipping when they mess up or send defective merchandise. I'm really disgusted by the entire event.
steampunk
That is certainly odd. Typically a retail company which charges shipping, will send a prepaid envelope to the house for shipping the defective item back.
I guess Rhino either knows that the Dead fans are a group to be taken for granted, or it has not so competitive business practices (competition is the best way to correct a bad business).
All I can say is if enough people stop doing business with them, they will find other ways to do the business (i.e., downloads on new items, free shipping, etc.)
Greg SC
Good luck on getting an
Good luck on getting an email response, Steampunk. They just don't bother.
I am still waiting for the box to be delivered, and, since the promised despatch notifications are not sent out, I have no way of even knowing if it is on the way.
This is the all-round worst retail site I have ever dealt with, by a considerable margin.
Happy Trails
Happy ending
A quick follow up to my earlier post about trying to get my order. I GOT IT on Monday and have been groovin since. I also got an email and phone call confirming a refund of my overnight delivery charge of $9.96. I see MaryE following up with problems and all I can say is that its Jekyll and Hyde - customer service, by email and phone, ranges from pleasant but unhelpful to outright rude while MaryE jumps in and deals with the sh**t and gets results. Don't ever leave MaryE.
thanks for the kind words
but whereas I bring the problems to the attention of those who can fix 'em, the actual work is done by others. Especially Meggan this week, bless her.
Anyway, glad to know the dust is starting to settle on all this, and people are getting their tunes at last. If you're still having trouble let me know. Thanks.
Thanks to Meggan for her
Thanks to Meggan for her hard work in fixing some of the problems that have beseiged this release. I am totally satisfied with the efforts undertaken to fix things, and I urge anyone having problems to take a deep breathe and be patient, 'cause customer service is working to fix things. While we all wish our complaints will be heard and dealt with immediately, that isn't always the case....but they are working to please us, and in my case, they've done a bang up job on the follow up.
Cheers to Meggan and the rest of the folks working hard to satisfy us. And to those who still haven't had their problem fixed, I hope it gets done asap, and your hardship fades to a distant memory.
First show: July 4th 1986, Rich Stadium.
Last show: July 6th 1995, Riverport Amphitheatre
Thank you Marye
I just sent you a private e-mail about the defective disc from the 1977 Winterland Boxed Set. I second what other people have said here about you. You are an asset and a true gem for dead.net. They would be crazy to let you go. Thanks for offering your help to me. I not asking for much, just a replacement of a defective disc without having to pay money out of my own pocket for something I've already paid for. Have a nice night.
No problems at all
I figured since everyone who has had a problem is complaining so loudly, I should speak up and say my order went smoothly. I had no trouble placing my order, no trouble with shipping charges, I received my package in a timely fashion and all 10 disks play without any skipping or skating.
I encourage anyone else whose order went smoothly to speak up as well, because the impression one could draw from this thread is nobody's order went through properly, all the sets have defective disks and so on. Without knowing, I'm guessing the vast majority of the transactions went as smoothly as mine, so if you had a good experience speak up!
And a few words about the music... I'm thrilled to be able to work from home, because these 10 disks have been in continuous rotation all week and as I listen constantly, different things jump out at me: the crazy funky swinging intro to Jack A Roe that had me guessing until Jerry began to sing; the incredible lock-step exploration of Slipknot!; the gentle transition between Estimated and He's Gone from the first night and all of the third disk from the second night. This is good stuff, and it sounds great.
Disc 6
Finally received my Winterland 77 on 10-14, Bonus Disc & all & was very relieved. Took 19 days to Hawaii. Put on Disc #6 this morn for "The Other One" & got a "Bertha". Put in Disc #5 & sure enough got another "Bertha". Of course I deleted all my order info after I received so I don't have a order # & can't seem to recover my past order history. Anyway, I'm confident I'll get my Disc #6. By the way how bout a Manor Downs, Austin TX release. I remember some good ones in the early 80's.
Disc 7
Having enjoyed the first 6 discs last weekend, this weekend I finally got round to the last 3 discs, but disc 7 won't play right through to the end. I suspect that it does not lie flat when in the CD player. It plays just fine until 5 minutes into track 8 (of 9) where it skips, but it makes it through to the last track but there it skips again and finally gives up altogether. Not knowing what else to do, the player indicates it has finished playing. Tracks 8 and 9 are towards the outside of the disc - if it is not flat in the player the laser will find it harder and harder to focus on the disc until it is unable to read anything from the disc and the player will give up altogether. Visually the disc is fine with no visible marks or scratches - therefore it would seem to be a quality control problem. I have sent a nice polite mail to customer service and will wait (but not too long) to see what transpires. Fortunately I am old and wise enough that I do not delete order information until everything has been thoroughly checked out. Hopefully by now customer service have got there act together and I will not have to trouble Marye further. Time will tell.
suggestion
Due to the typical and costly errors that continue to crop up with these large box sets, it would be a real 21st century thought to send out inside the box, a thumb-drive (with a skull on it?), that has all the music files on it. That way, if there is a defective disk, or something, then the buyer can at least make a back up disc to hold him/her over until the defective disk issue is resolved. Hey, the buttons are nice, but if the discs don't work, I'll take the files, any day of the week.
DarkMacus, I think my discs are okay, but thought I heard an odd start to Scarlet 6/7/09; I'll run through it again tomorrow, but I thought it kind of jumped into the song. Even if it is a problem, however, I think I will just deal with it. Not sure it is that bad.
Greg SC
Glue problem
On the Past Masters disc 1...the sleeve delaminated, the disc slid into the "glue zone" and transferred onto the playing side.
Hold on, that's the Beatles, not the Grateful Dead. Sorry about that...seems like the glue issue is NOT confined to Rhino.
Winterland 77 discs, no problems found...
Whats next
Ready for something new.How about some 80s like 85 84 83 And leave the drums and space in.Enough with 77.
WTF Dudes!
You guys are going to put yourselves out of business!You should be reaching out to new listeners, being cool and get your customer service together!
Why are the order numbers so long? A string of 18 numbers and letters that I have to read over the phone to someone in India and then they have to confirm the number and then I have to repeat it etc until we get it right???? WTF No 1 !!!
Fire some upper management! Cut their fat paychecks and invest the money in some logical solutions. These people are bleeding you dry! Cutting all costs to minimum so they can have more money! SHAME! WTF no 2 !!!
Put some time and money into advertising to new listeners you dolts! When Jerry was alive, it worked to be unconventional in marketing because of the shows!!! Not anymore! You guys are sitting on a potential gold mine and you are too cheap to realize those possibilities! SHAME AGAIN!!! WTF no 3 !!!!!
Why leave your customer service helpless, unarmed and in the line of fire? The folks answering phones in Bangalore are not connected to the US directly, there is a lag of information transfer that is unnacceptable in the 21st century!!! And they and people like MaryE have to take abuse from dissatisfied customers while the management are shielded from it. SHAAAME! WTF no 4 !!!!!!
If you guys are doing ok business-wise it is an indication that you could be doing WAAAY better because if you can make money being SO MESSED UP, imagine if you had someone who knew what they were doing in charge.
Of course I dont know who is specifically to blame for this but I guarantee you if I was at your head offices for a month, I would find out! I hereby offer my services, FOR FREE, to come down there and sort out your problems. Don't want to? Are you worried you will be fired?? This issue is bigger than your paycheck! The Grateful Dead's music should be around LONG aftyer you are gone so stop being shortsighted and greedy and WAKE THE F### UP!
Love,
RG
WTF no 4
Hey, I don't think anyone has given MaryE any abuse. People have complained about the process - as you are - and she's been trying to clean up the mess, but no one's been anything but pleased with MaryE's work here.
For the rest of the points, though, you're spot on.
Marye & Meggan
Not sure exactly who Marye & Meggan are but they sure respond quickly. Marye sent me an email on Sunday minutes after I posted my problem of no disc 6. It supposed to go out tomorrow. I'm pretty sure the other 8 discs plus the bonus will be sufficient till I receive it. Thanks Mary & Meggan.I notice Phil is only credited with bass & not vocals. I know he doesn't sing lead on any of the songs & I guess not at all.
Got Mine
hi all...
Back in the US after some months in Canada, and the box set was waiting patiently for me...
Had no probs with Discs, packaging, or whatsoever...really great.
The music is just AWESOME..now I do wish they could release a Europe 72 box set, or maybe Veneta 72 on DVD..wouldnt that be heavenly!!!
Peace and love
Oddleif
I agree Oddleif...
Veneta 72 on DVD or a 1972 boxset would be most heavenly! 1970 or 1971 would be nice as well, and while your at it, please re-release the "Fillmore West 1969: Complete Recordings" for all of us who missed it the first time around.
Val
I second that emotion, Val
Those of us that missed that offering the first time around would love a chance to remedy our error.
The Truth is realized in an instant, the act is practiced step by step.
....don't forget the 80's box
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.........and of course PERSIAN SOUNDZ!
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Fillmore 69
It's odd about that set - they released it as a limited edition, 10,000 copies, because they probably didn't think it would sell well. Technically, they can't re-release it, because if they said it was limited, a reissue would be a breach of contract with purchasers. I think that's why the subsequent releases (73 and 77 Winterland) are not limited; because they realize they're selling more than expected.
I got my Fillmore box, though, and I'm stunned to see the prices it goes for!