Dave's Picks Volume 3
REPLACEMENT SHIPPING UPDATE (October 22, 2012): The replacement units for Dave's Picks: Volume 3 have begun to ship out to those that reported their order missing. We again apologize for the delay and inconvenience, and we thank you for your patience. Sincerely, The Dead.net Team
DAVE’S PICKS VOL.3 FEATURES SHOWS FROM KEITH’S FIRST TOUR!
This product is officially SOLD OUT. Stay tuned for news on Dave's Picks Volume 4.
In all the years that archival Grateful Dead recordings have been coming out, there have been just three from the red-hot fall of 1971, Keith Godchaux’s landmark first tour with the band. Those would be Dick’s Picks Vol. 2, a rippin’ single-disc release of the second set of the group’s Halloween show at the Ohio Theatre in Columbus, Download Series Vol. 3 from the 10/26 Rochester show and Road Trips Vol. 3 No. 2 from November 15, 1971 in Austin, Texas. Now there is a fourth: Dave’s Picks Vol. 3 features the complete October 22, 1971 concert from the beautiful Auditorium Theatre in Chicago on two discs, with a third disc culled from the previous night’s scorcher at the same venue.
Keith came into the band in mid-September ’71, at a time when Pigpen was desperately ill and the band was hungering for something new to help fill out their sound. A sparkling pianist, Keith was a complete unknown at the time, yet, miraculously it seemed, fit in with the Dead immediately. The live “Skull & Roses” double-album (recorded in the winter-spring of ’71) had just come out, and the band was still enjoying a surge of unprecedented popularity since Workingman’s Dead and American Beauty were released the previous year. They were on a roll!
Never ones to rest on their laurels, however, the band continued their torrid pace of introducing new songs: “Sugaree” and “Brown-Eyed Women” first appeared in the summer of ’71, and that fall, when the band with Keith hit the road, starting out in Minneapolis (10/19) and then moving on to Chicago (10/21-22), they had a whole bunch of other freshly minted tunes waiting to be born—“Tennessee Jed,” “Jack Straw,” “Mexicali Blues,” “Ramble On Rose,” “Comes A Time” and “One More Saturday Night,” all of which appear on this set.
The sparkle and verve that Keith brought to the band is immediately apparent, as he tears through rockers and bouncy mid-tempo numbers with the confidence of someone who had been playing this music forever. If the quiet keyboardist was nervous or unsure of himself on this first jaunt, it certainly wasn’t apparent. And you can feel the electricity in the rest of the band, as Jerry, Phil, Bob and Bill absorb and play off of the amazingly inventive musings of their new recruit. Of course Pigpen’s absence was deeply felt (and the band acknowledged it at every stop), but Keith’s entrance was so seamless and the energy he injected into the music so impressive, the group didn’t appear to lose any of the momentum they had been building tour after tour.
The songs are a blend of old, still-recent (from Workingman’s Dead on) and brand-new. One forgets that crowd-pleasers such as “Bertha,” “Deal” and “Playing in the Band” had come into the repertoire only eight months earlier, and “Truckin’” and “Sugar Magnolia” were just over a year old. Even a bunch of the cover tunes were relatively recent additions—“Big Railroad Blues,” “Me & Bobby McGee” and “Johnny B. Goode.” Keith handles all of those (and earlier chestnuts like “Cold Rain and Snow” and “Beat It On Down the Line”) with his characteristic aplomb, but perhaps most impressive is how he fares on the Dead’s big jamming numbers. On Disc Two, you’ll hear his thoughtful and inventive contributions to a truly stellar, 29-minute version of “That’s It for the Other One.” And on Disc Three (from 10/21), listen to him as he navigates through a spectacular “Dark Star,” which is split by a spirited romp through “Sitting on Top of the World.” The encore of 10/21 also features the first of only three “old school” (pre-hiatus) versions of “St. Stephen” Keith played on.
Most of the 12,000 limited edition copies of Dave’s Picks Vol. 3 are already spoken for by subscribers to the series, but there are a still a few thousand available through Dead.net only. These will definitely sell out—and fast—so if you want make sure you get your copy, order today! As always, the 3-CD set has been lovingly mastered to HDCD specs by Jeffrey Norman from the original vault reels, and the eco-friendly Digipak includes a booklet with an essay about the show and, in this case, some very cool photos of the interior of Chicago’s historic Auditorium Theatre. For the complete song lists and ordering info, click here.
—Blair Jackson
If you haven't received your copy of Dave's Picks: Volume 3, please see our note at the top of the page.
DAVID LEMIEUX ON VOLUME 3 & MORE
David Lemieux sits down for a seaside chat about his favorite moments on Dave's Picks, Volume 3: Auditorium Theater, Chicago, IL - 10/22/71. Watch the video here:
Yes, we're aware of the UPS/customs issue and a solution is in the works. Stay tuned.
Simon1, regardless of your geographical location, Dr. Rhino's email, drrhino (at) rhino.com (swap in the @ sign), works fine, and he is indeed the one who is tracking this problem and getting in touch with the affected folks. I'd advise emailing him your details, but if you'd rather send them to me in a PM I'll pass them along.
Mary, I hope you can sort out the problem we have getting UPS sent to us here in Canada & elsewhere outside the USA & ensure we get the October shipments from USPS as we initially requested.
While the post office here may or may not charge a $5 charge plus sales tax for orders from the USA, the UPS extra charges on our end are always much, much higher & make the cost to us too exorbitant & not worth it. In effect, we will get hurt twice by your 3rd party's shipping ineptitude.
We will have to wait months longer for the order & then decide if it is even financially worth it to to accept the order & pay UPS's onerous extra charges on receipt. If this is not resolved well, I can honestly say that I wouldn't order again from Rhino/Grateful Dead & in the past I've ordered Euro '72 & other shows before that.
Here in the UK I am STILL waiting for DP3, and to be honest I am getting more than just a bit frustrated by what appears to be the sheer ineptitidue of those responsible for organising the shipping of this Order.
So far as I am concerned the responsibility for sorting this mess out lies with Dead.net, with whom my order was placed. I might add that Dead.net also have the benefit of being paid for this order! At the moment it seems to me that Dead.net blame everyone else for this fiasco, when the reality of the situation is that if they had bothered to send out the orders with tracking we might have some idea where the responsibility lies.
I have no contract with Rhino or USPS. My last exchange of emails with Dead.Net suggests I contact Rhino directly in the US, an inpractical suggestion if there ever was one.
Beyond that they appear to have no sensible suggestions to make, and I am now left to appeal through this Forum for some resolution to the non delivery of my DP3 apparently shipped like so many others on the 30th July.
I would suggest that all those who ordered that CD and who are fans of the Grateful Dead deserve better.
still waiting in hong kong
....
I have written a mail to Dr Rhino who has answered me my package was actually sent on July 30 and that he was going to get in touch again in a couple of days. That's five days ago and I'm still waiting for an update from Dr Rhino.
Perhaps I too will get a replacement sent out in mid-October?
Micke Östlund,
Växjö, Sweden
I don't know how the US postal service works but here in the UK there are a number of bulk despatch services available for business customers. So say if you were sending out 10,000 small boxes containing CDs you would pile them up on pallets and deliver them to the local sorting office with documentation listing the total amount and weight of the consignment. Alternatively you would have a despatch firm send a bulk item to various areas and then have the postal service do the "final mile" delivery. In all cases foreign orders would be kept apart as they would require different treatment ... And charges of course. I agree that it would be amazing if such a large number of items had just gone AWOL. More likely that either some pallets got left behind at the fulfilment centre or got separated at the sorting office and ended up sitting in a corner. Either way it should be possible to tie down what has happened with relative ease and locate the missing stock. The fact that no UK orders have turned up tends to confirm the above explanation rather than light-fingered posties or exceptional slowness, although it is August and I would have allowed 28 working days for US to UK deliveries anyway. If copies now start turning up people should let dead.net/rhino know as this will narrow the investigation down quite a bit and enable any compensation to be correctly paid
All sheer speculation, of course, but the official note clearly narrows in on the point when orders were "leaving our 3rd party fulfillment center." That hardly indicts USPS, to my mind. For its own sake, I hope that 3rd party fulfillment center keeps good documentation.
and anyone else who's in doubt, please send the details to Dr. Rhino, who is trying to find out who's still missing their DaP3. drrhino at rhino.com
WRT the UPS to non-us addresses, I'll mention this.
Mary,
I've sent you a PM.
I note from reading the entries here that others have done so, without it has to be said, much in the way of positive responses, but I live in hope.
Hindsight is a wonderful thing, but if you had bothered with tracking numbers for US and foreign orders you would have avoided all this, and perhaps there are lessons to be learned. In these times, getting people to part with their hard earned cash is difficult enough, without alienating them with less than brilliant service.