We’ve got some outstanding music for you this week, covering a rather limited span in the Grateful Dead’s performing history, but it’s a span that includes some of the best years.

First up in our mid-September journey is Paris in 1974, where the Grateful Dead closed out their short tour of the continent. From 9/20/74, we have this very good Weather Report Suite>Stella Blue, and from the next night, 9/21/74, we have the second set jam featuring Seastones>Playing In The Band. It was rather rare for the band to join Phil and Ned during Seastones, but this jam works very well, and hits some remarkably deep spaces. One quick digression: while going through the Grateful Dead Movie’s outtakes in preparation for the DVD production, we came across some footage of the band getting together in a dressing room before the show on 10/16/74, the first night at Winterland. Evidently, they hadn’t seen each other since the end of the Europe tour, and while talking about the excellent music on that tour, Billy begins raving about the high quality of the recordings from the Europe tour, to which the rest of the band responds that they found the recordings equally impressive. Certainly some of Kidd’s best 2-track work.

Going back a few years, we are pleased to play a couple of jams from 9/21/68. This material is drawn from a very interesting tape, in that it features Phil, Jerry and Mickey, plus a couple of guest musicians, in a studio jam right in the midst of the period in which the Mickey and the Hartbeats shows were being performed without Bobby and Pigpen. From this studio session, we have a nice Clementine Jam and another very interesting Jam.

We’re going to take a detour away from our featured week and head off to May, 1973, specifically 5/13/73 in Des Moines, Iowa. From that excellent, long show (the first of three consecutive long shows in May, with 5/20 in Santa Barbara and 5/26 in San Francisco being the others), we have Here Comes Sunshine and a nice, long and spacey Playing In The Band from the second set, and from the first set we have the rocking combination of Don’t Ease Me In>Around and Around.

Finally this week, and in memory of Corinne Crawford from Berkeley and Vermont, is the mournful Death Don’t Have No Mercy from 2/28/69.

As always, we welcome your comments and questions. Feel free to write about anything. And be sure to check back in next week when we’ll have some stellar music from 1972, 1976 and 1981.

David Lemieux
vault [at] dead.net