Week of March 13, 2006
Two requests in one show!
John Jensen wrote: "Could you post the Dead Hour where you were shuffling through your iPod and found a cool version of 'Blues for Allah'?"
It's the 8/13/75 debut performance of "Blues for Allah," and it's pretty damn cool!
Shortly after the Grateful Dead played their "final shows" at Winterland in October 1974 (brilliantly documented in The Grateful Dead Movie), the band convened in Bob Weir's brand new home studio and began developing new material in a highly collaborative manner. In addition to the challenging and unconventional title track and Phil Lesh's instrumental "King Solomon's Marbles," Blues for Allah also includes "The Music Never Stopped," a consistently wonderful live show-stopper, and the beautiful "Crazy Fingers." The remastered edition includes several jams and work tapes from these sessions. One from the Vault is the complete concert of 8/13/75 in a tiny San Francisco venue, The Great American Music Hall, where the band premiered the new album; Dan Healy mixed the multitrack tapes in the early '90s, kicking off the band's program of releasing concert material from their archive.
Other treats from my iPod adventure included two non-Dead songs: a track from Rodney Crowell's powerful CD The Outsider, and a wonderful, soulful song from Georgia singer-songwriter Ralph Roddenbery.
This GD Hour also includes some unreleased live Grateful Dead, natch: three songs from the spring tour of 1989, which allows me to satisfy Jim Ackerman's request for "Standing on the Moon" in the bargain.
Enjoy!
Grateful Dead 3/31/89 Greensboro NC
LOSER
VICTIM OR THE CRIME
STANDING ON THE MOON
Grateful Dead, One from the Vault
BLUES FOR ALLAH
Rodney Crowell, The Outsider
DON'T GET ME STARTED
Ralph Roddenbery Band, Let It In
THAT'S GONNA LEAVE A MARK
Take a look at the GD Hour program logs and let us know what you'd like to hear. Feel free to post requests and comments here or by email to gdhour@dead.net
Thanks for listening!
David Gans
gdhour@dead.net