March 10 - March 16, 2008
This week we're going to jump around a bit and play a few things that recently passed by our ears and that we felt you'd dig hearing.
Our first piece of music is from 6/24/73 at the Memorial Coliseum in Portland, Oregon. Anyone who has driven past the Northeast corner of downtown Portland has seen the square structure that is the Coliseum. While no longer home to the Trail Blazers, who play next door at the Rose Garden, the funky old Coliseum still hosts plenty of concerts and is home to the WHL's Portland Winterhawks team. Oh, and in addition to this sports history of the venue, it also has quite a history for the Grateful Dead. From the first of five shows the band played at the Memorial Coliseum, we have the show-closing Sugar Magnolia, One More Saturday Night combination, the latter being the encore. There was plenty of great music played at this show, and we'll try to get to more of it later in the year.
While we're hanging out in the Pacific Northwest, we might as well jump north a few hours to Vancouver, BC, to the final Grateful Dead show played in this beautiful city, on 5/17/74. This was on the first big Wall of Sound tour, and the sound of the tapes matches the sound in the halls on this tour, which is to say full and clear. This tour would go on to Portland, Seattle and Santa Barbara, before some stellar June, July and August shows, with the Wall of the Sound era wrapping up with the short Europe tour in September and the five nights at Winterland in October. From Vancouver on 5/17/74, we're very happy to bring you this exploratory Playing In The Band. Although not quite the 45 minute version played a few nights later in Seattle, it does hit some great spaces.
Next up we've finally got some date-specific material for you, after getting away from that format for the past few weeks. From 3/10/81 at Madison Square Garden, we have the show-opening trio of Mississippi Half-Step>Franklin's Tower>Me and My Uncle. We played some of this show last year, and if you check back in a year from now, we expect we'll play a bit more from this night and the previous show.
Because we're in the mood for some 1971, we're going to visit Winterland and check out some music from 5/29/71, specifically the set-closing Not Fade Away>GDTRFB>Not Fade Away, complete with a little Bill Graham rap at the end. He certainly was a hands-on concert producer.
Finally this week, from 7/1/70 in Winnipeg, Manitoba, we have this raw but right China Cat Sunflower>I Know You Rider from the famous Festival Express trip across Canada. It's too bad the Montreal show (political unrest) and the Vancouver show (lack of funds) were cancelled, as we can only wonder what other great music would have been played at two more shows.
Check back next week for more great music from the vault. As always, we welcome you to write the email address below with questions, suggestions and comments. Please put “Grateful Dead” in your subject to make sure you don't get lumped with the spam. Thanks.
David Lemieux
vault [at] dead.net
I've been lovin' the Tapers Section for a few weeks now! Can't express how much in words!! Love it all, week after week. Thanks David
I'm all over the Mississippi Half-step. Beautiful! Thanks, David
You suck. Stop taking down sites that let us trade shows. You really don't understand your customer here.
Thanks David. Love the early 70's stuff. Nice suprise for me with the 3/10/81 Garden as I was there and it was my 18th birthday. All I want to know is what the hell was that huge crash near the beginning of Mississippi? I kinda remember it, but not really. Hmmm, wonder why.
I agree - great choice on the 5-17!!
www.gdradio.net
Streaming Grateful Dead and more
How wonderful to be able to kick off a dreary week with a beautiful '74 Playing. As always, David, thank you for bringing this great stuff to us week after week!
hey david,great choice on the 5-17,most of us have 5-19 so thanks for playing something a little less circulated.how about the bruce heavy jack straw from michigan 92 next week?
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i was just listening to this show on the internet archive, heard a strange crash (sounded pretty cool) and had to go back to check out the reviews (somebody was always there ya'know) and found out that a reverb box had fallen.
aahhh mondays are grate
Tx always david