April 9 - April 15, 2012
Welcome back to the Tapers' Section, where this week we have music from 1969, 1979 and 1980.
Our first selection this week is from the Fillmore Auditorium on 12/20/69, where we have classic batch of 1969 Dead: Mason's Children, China>Rider, High Time. please note that the head and the of the first song and tail of the last are cut, just an occupational hazard of working with the older recordings, where the tape was often paused between songs.
Next is the first set from 12/9/79 in St. Louis, featuring Alabama Getaway > The Promised Land ; Brown Eyed Women ; Cassidy ; Row Jimmy ; New Minglewood Blues ; Candyman; Lazy Lightning> Supplication ; Deal. This was drawn from the cassette master, recorded from the PA board mix.
Lastly this week is the third set closing sequence of I Need A Miracle>Bertha>Johnny B. Goode, Casey Jones on 10/27/80 at Radio City Music Hall. I've always been a huge fan of the post-Drums Bertha, such a rocking way to keep people dancing in the slot usually reserved for the night's ballad.
Join us next week for more tunes from the vault.
David Lemieux
vault@dead.net
I could hang if a time machine could take me back to late October
'79 and "re-catch" that tour thru early December. That would be some
time well spent! It was awesome enough the first time around ...
also...a shout-out to Brent.
His keys in GD83 are so good. Listen to 10/11/83 St. Stephen. He added so much during that era.
Later his keys tended to jar me, and his vo-vo-vo-vo-cal stylings were a bit over the top.
But...
I dig his GD83 keys.
I also like him during GD79.
I keep loving these picks from approximately the 70-80 era. To me, it is most of the band's best work.
Fans of this era know that before the band clicked into it's mature form of two sets with a drums>space sequence (the last show w/o drums being in Jan. '79), there really was no seriously predictable ballad in among the 4 last songs of any show.
Nor were there any first set and second set songs. The band was much more spontaneous from 1970 to 1980. The songs that crossed the Rubicon of the set break were very few in the 80s -- Looks Like Rain, High Time, It Must Have Been The Roses, Franklin's Tower were the only regular ones that I can remember. Of course, there were many more that made it a few times or less.
The 70s were truly a time of inspired playing for the band and while 95% of the shows I saw were in the 80s, and I thought many were very worthy, I sure would like to step into a time machine and go back to more than few, in retrospect...
Perhaps that would be a good topic for Blair Jackson's Golden Road. If you could, which 5 that you missed would you go back to see?
Locations
I'm trying not to get too excited by all these Fall 1980 Warfield / Radio City clips, but golly... wouldn't it be cool if this means they've been putting together a Dave's Picks 3 from those shows? Or Saenger? Maybe there is more usable stuff hiding in the Vault than I thought (?)
My original "prediction" (read: hope) was for DaP 2, 3, and 4 to be from: 1974, 1984, and 1967. But, if the 1984 is replaced by a complete Warfield show with a bunch of "filler" I won't complain :-)