The Latest

November 23 - November 29, 2009

ccasal — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 10:57:07 -0600

Greetings, and welcome back to the Tapers’ Section. This week we’re going to check out music from 1973, 1979 and 1980, a good selection from three very good years in Grateful Dead music.

Our first stop this week is in El Paso, TX, on 11/23/73, when the Grateful Dead were about the midway point of one of the finest stretches in their performing history, October 19, 1973 to December 19, 1973. The exceptional shows around this period are many, and this one had some good music throughout, including this tasty batch o’ Dead, featuring China Cat Sunflower>I Know You Rider, El Paso, Tennessee Jed, Big River, Row Jimmy, Weather Report Suite. This show is one of those underrated shows, mainly owing to the fact that it's surrounded by such great nights of music, specifically the Denver shows that preceded it, and the Boston shows a week later (aka Dick's Picks 14).

Next we'll jump forward six years to 11/29/79 in Cleveland, where the band was starting the second Eastern leg of their fall tour of 1979. From that show, we have the end of the first set, consisting of Easy To Love You, Brown-Eyed Women>Looks Like Rain>Don't Ease Me In. This entire stretch from late October to mid-December, 1979 had some really great shows.

From a shade under a year later, on 11/26/80 in Pembroke Pines, FL, the band was starting out a very short run of shows in Florida and Atlanta. These were the first concerts since the final night of Warfield-Radio City shows on 10/31/80, and they picked up right where they left off, with good, inspired Grateful Dead music. No acoustic sets, but they had brought in a few of the acoustic songs into the electric sets after Radio City (On The Road Again, Race Is On, Bird Song). From the first set at the Sportatorium, we have On The Road Again, Jack A Roe, Minglewood Blues, It Must Have Been The Roses, Race Is On, Althea>Lost Sailor>Saint of Circumstance>Deal. These shows at the end of November were mostly exceptional.

And speaking of the four shows to end the month, we have music from the final night, on 11/30/80 in Atlanta. We've played some of the second set here, but this week we're going to play you some excellent first set material, specifically Bird Song, Me and My Uncle>Big River, It Must Have Been The Roses, Lost Sailor>Saint of Circumstance.

Be sure to stop by next week when we end November and start December with music from 1973, 1979 and 1981. There's some good stuff coming up. The e-mail address below is always welcoming of your comments and questions, so feel free to write anytime.

David Lemieux
vault@dead.net

Furthur Winter 2010 Tour Announced

frogstorm — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 19:37:38 -0600

For on-sale dates and ticket information, go to furthur.net.

Fri-Feb-05
Miami, FL
Bayfront Park Amphitheatre
Doors 6 PM / Showtime 7 PM

Sat-Feb-06
Orlando, FL
Hard Rock Live
Doors 6 PM / Showtime 7:30 PM

Mon-Feb-08
Atlanta, GA
The Tabernacle
Doors 6 PM / Showtime 7 PM

Tue-Feb-09
Asheville, NC
Thomas Wolfe Auditorium
Doors 6:30 PM / Showtime 7:30 PM

Wed-Feb-10
Charlotte, NC
Bojangles Coliseum
Doors 6 PM / Showtime 7 PM

Fri-Feb-12
Hampton, VA
Hampton Coliseum
Doors 6 PM / Showtime 7 PM

Sat-Feb-13
Fairfax, VA
Patriot Ctr @ George Mason Univ.
Doors 7 PM / Showtime 8 PM

Sun-Feb-14
Ithaca, NY
Barton Hall @ Cornell Univ.
Doors 6 PM / Showtime 7 PM

Mon-Feb-15
Bethlehem, PA
Stabler Arena @ Lehigh Univ.
Doors 6 PM / Showtime 7 PM

Wed-Feb-17
Buffalo, NY
Shea's Performing Arts Center
Doors 6:30 PM / Showtime 7:30 PM

Thu-Feb-18
Manchester, NH
Verizon Wireless Arena
Doors 6:30 PM / Showtime 7:30 PM

Fri-Feb-19
Amherst, MA
Mullins Center @ Univ of Mass
Doors 6:30 PM / Showtime 7:30 PM

Sat-Feb-20
Utica, NY
Utica Auditorium
Doors 5:30 PM / Showtime 7 PM

Mon-Feb-22
Newark, DE
Bob Carpenter Center @ Univ of DE
Doors 6:30 PM / Showtime 7:30 PM

Tue-Feb-23
New York, NY
Radio City Music Hall
Doors 6:30 PM / Showtime 7:30 PM

Wed-Feb-24
New York, NY
Radio City Music Hall
Doors 6:30 PM / Showtime 7:30 PM

Fri-Feb-26
Uncasville, CT
Mohegan Sun Arena
Doors 6:30 PM / Showtime 7:30 PM

Sat-Feb-27
Atlantic City, NJ
Trump Taj Mahal @ Estess Arena
Doors 7 PM / Showtime 8 PM

Tue-Mar-02
Chicago, IL
Auditorium Theatre
Doors 6:30 PM / Showtime 7:30 PM

Wed-Mar-03
Chicago, IL
Auditorium Theatre
Doors 6:30 PM / Showtime 7:30 PM

Mon-Mar-08
Portland, OR
Portland Memorial Coliseum
Doors 6:30 PM / Showtime 7:30 PM

Times local to venue. Please note all doors, showtimes subject to change. Backpacks, bags, subject to search.

For on-sale dates and ticket information, go to furthur.net.

Latest Show Schedule

frogstorm — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 18:00:29 -0600

On Grateful Dead Channel, exclusively on SIRIUS XM, you'll hear music spanning the band's career with unreleased concert recordings, original shows hosted by band members Bob Weir, Mickey Hart, Phil Lesh and Bill Kreutzmann, and even rare archival interviews with Jerry Garcia! The channel will also feature contributions from Grateful Dead expert David Gans and Dead archivist David Lemieux.

Regular Show Schedule:

Tales from the Golden Road
Sundays 4 pm ET
Rebroadcast: Mondays 9 am ET
Wanna talk Grateful Dead? Join an interactive on-air chat session called Tales from the Golden Road! Every Sunday, Dead experts David Gans and Gary Lambert host a show about a cool topic from the Dead’s history. There’ll be exclusive stories, great jams, and special guests including the band members themselves! To join the conversation, call 1-888-897-4748 or send an email to goldenroad@siriusxm.com.

Grateful Dead Concert Recordings
The Grateful Dead Channel brings you the experience of a full Grateful Dead concert – three times a day! Tune in at 12 noon ET, 9 pm ET and 3 am ET for a musical adventure, Grateful Dead style. You’ll hear their earliest shows in the 1960s to concerts by current Dead side projects; from pristinely mastered audio releases to legendary, sought-after audience recordings and everything in between

'head set: You Program the Grateful Dead Channel!
Mondays, Wednesdays & Fridays 5 pm ET
Ever wish you could choose the setlist for a Grateful Dead concert? Now you can! We’re giving you, the Deadheads, the chance to program and host an hour of the Grateful Dead Channel. You’ll play your favorite Dead tunes, and you can mix and match performances from any year, venue or piano player! Call in at 877-33-SIRIUS, or send an email to gratefuldead@sirius-radio.com for your chance create your own “dream setlist.” Tune in on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays at 5PM ET to hear sets from other Deadheads!

Grateful Dead Interviews
Saturdays 10 am ET and Sundays 8 pm ET
Hear different interviews with the members of Grateful Dead and the people who knew them best.

Today In Grateful Dead History
Daily 7 am, 11 am & 7 pm ET
Expand your mind and take in some amazing musical rarities as Grateful Dead Archivist David Lemieux chronicles the events and plays back the killer jams that happened on this date in Grateful Dead History. David will even dig into the vaults for some nuggets that have rarely, if ever, seen the light of day.

Grateful Dead Hour no. 33

ccasal — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 16:25:50 -0600

Week of April 17, 1989

Requested by one Jack O'Lantern, this program features Jerry Garcia and Robert Hunter talking about the writing of "Terrapin Station," one of the masterpieces of their collaboration. Later, Bob Weir adds a bit of color…

Grateful Dead 3/18/77 Winterland, San Francisco
ESTIMATED PROPHET

Grateful Dead - 1977 single
DANCIN' IN THE STREETS

Bob Weir, Heaven Help the Fool
EASY TO SLIP

Grateful Dead 2/26/77 Swing Auditorium, San Bernardino CA
TENNESSEE JED

Jerry Garcia on composing and writing 'Terrapin' (1981)
Robert Hunter on the inspiration for 'Terrapin' (1977)

Grateful Dead 3/18/77 Winterland, San Francisco
TERRAPIN->
AT A SIDING

Bob Weir re “that scraping noise.” (1977)

Grateful Dead 2/26/77 Swing Auditorium, San Bernardino CA DEAL

Every Wednesday, we post a program from the Grateful Dead Hour archives for your enjoyment and enlightenment. You can browse or search the playlists at gdhour.com or on the GD Hour Search page, and let me know what program(s) you'd like to hear by emailing me at gdhour@dead.net.

Thank you for listening!
- David Gans

Listen Now

Grateful Dead Hour no. 32

ccasal — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 16:21:06 -0600

Week of April 10, 1989

Bob Weir once told me of being harassed at the border on this trip - I can't recall if it was by the Canadian or American authorities, nor whether it was on the way into Canada or back to the States - over a bag of bee pollen in his baggage. I suspect that might have something to do with Phil Lesh's hilarious introduction of the band and entourage as members of the "Jones Gang." You can also hear Garcia saying, "Freshly deported from Canada" toward the end of the routine.

Grateful Dead 11/4/77 Colgate University, Hamilton NY
LET IT GROW

Press conference announcing In Concert Against AIDS Benefit, May, 1989, with Jerry Garcia, Bob Weir, Mickey Hart, Huey Lewis, Bill Graham and Tim McQuaid, the organizer of the event.

Jerry Garcia Acoustic Band, Almost Acoustic
SWING LOW, SWEET CHARIOT

Bobby "Blue" Bland
TURN ON YOUR LOVE LIGHT

Dylan & The Dead
SLOW TRAIN

Grateful Dead 11/4/77 Colgate University, Hamilton NY
"Jones Gang" intro by Phil Lesh
SAMSON AND DELILAH
COLD RAIN AND SNOW

Thank you for listening!
- David Gans

Listen Now

November 16 - November 22, 2009

ccasal — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 17:27:53 -0600

Welcome back to the Tapers' Section, where this week, like last week, we'll immerse ourselves in Grateful Dead music from 1971 and 1972. It's odd how it happens like this, where we'll have a few weeks of 1980s music, then a few weeks of 1970s music. Regardless, there's loads of good stuff in the vault, so we expect we'll keep hopping around forever like this.

Our first selection is from Austin, TX on 11/15/71. We have played you the big second set piece from this show before, which oddly consisted of NFA>GDTRFB>NFA, albeit one of the finest renditions of that medley in the band's history, but the really big jam from this concert occurred, equally oddly, in the first set, Dark Star>El Paso>Jam>Casey Jones. Definitely different to find a first set Dark Star, but it works well attached to a couple of first set tunes.

From a shade over a year later, on 11/17/72 in Wichita, we have the big second set sequence of Truckin'>Drums>The Other One, Brokedown Palace. This is one of the most powerful Other Ones in a year of many very fine Other Ones. They get deep without getting unfocused.

Lastly this week is another Fall 1972 second set jam centered around The Other One, this one from 11/22/72, also in Autsin, TX, like our first selection this week. This jam consists of He's Gone>Truckin'>The Other One>Bass Solo>Jam>The Other One>Stella Blue. . Yes, another Truckin'>Other One, but if you compare it to the previous jam from five nights earlier, you'll really hear how different Grateful Dead shows could be.

Next week we have music from 1973, 1979 and 1980, so be sure to stop back and check it out. As always, we encourage you to write with questions and comments about the Tapers' Section, or anything else. The e-mail address below should find me.

David Lemieux
vault@dead.net

Mickey In Indy for PASIC

frogstorm — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 19:53:22 -0600

Mickey Hart will be in Indianapolis for his induction into the Percussive Arts Society Hall of Fame, the society's most prestigious award. Mickey will also be signing autographs at Rhythm! Discovery Center on Friday, November 13 from 12:00pm to 1:00pm.

For more details, click here!

Grateful Dead Hour no. 910

ccasal — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 15:29:36 -0600

Week of February 27, 2006

Requested by John Hartz - "Need to hear that Ratdog Hard Rain." The excerpts from the Uptown Theater 1/31/78 ain't bad, either. Enjoy!

Grateful Dead 1/31/78 Uptown Theater, Chicago
TERRAPIN->
PLAYING IN THE BAND->
JAM
TRUCKIN'->
GOOD LOVIN'

Bob Weir and Ratdog 12/10/05 Wiltern Theater, Los Angeles CA
A HARD RAIN'S A-GONNA FALL

Every Wednesday, we post a program from the Grateful Dead Hour archives for your enjoyment and enlightenment. You can browse or search the playlists - by song title, show date, guest name, etc - at gdhour.com or on the GD Hour Search page, and let me know what program(s) you'd like to hear by emailing me at gdhour@dead.net.

Thank you for listening!
- David Gans

Listen Now

November 9 - November 15, 2009

ccasal — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 12:22:53 -0600

Welcome back to the Tapers’ Section, where every week we try to play you some cool selections from this week in the Grateful Dead’s recorded history. We’ve had quite a lot of 1980s material the last few weeks, and this week we’re going to head back in time to 1971 and 1972 exclusively.

Our first stop this week is at the Harding Theatre in San Francisco, where the Grateful Dead were wrapping up two nights at this cool little venue, a former church. Incidentally, these concerts were opened by the New Riders of the Purple Sage, and would be Jerry’s final concerts as the New Riders’ pedal steel player, with Buddy Cage taking that place after these shows, a replacement personally selected by Jerry. From the second set of 11/7/71, we have the big jam featuring Dark Star>Drums>The Other One>Me and My Uncle>The Other One.

From a bit more than a year later, we have Dark Star>Morning Dew from 11/13/72 in Kansas City, KS. There is a small gap in the fall tour of 1972 during which no reel-to-reel board tapes were made, so this selection is from one of the band’s own audience recordings, which sounds pretty good. Any limitations the audience source might have are made up for the in the quality of performance, which is a typically hot late 1972 jam.

Next up, from one night later on 11/14/72, we have the second set jam from Oklahoma City, featuring He's Gone>Truckin'>Jam>The Other One>Sing Me Back Home. It must have been a great time to see multiple shows, when virtually every night you were likely to see a Dark Star like the previous selection or an Other One like this.

Finally this week, from the next show in Oklahoma City on 11/15/72, we have Brokedown Palace, Playing In The Band, Big Railroad Blues. These fall tour 1972 Playing In the Bands are some of the best the band ever played, although from Europe ’72 through to October 1974, virtually every performance of this tune featured something interesting.

Be sure to come back next week for more great 1971 and 1972 Grateful Dead music. You know, more Dark Stars and Other Ones… Feel free to write to the email address below with questions or comments about the Tapers’ Section, or anything else.

David Lemieux
vault@dead.net

November 2 - November 8, 2009

ccasal — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 10:57:35 -0600

Welcome back to our first full November week of music here at the Tapers' Section, where this week we'll listen to music exclusively from 1984 and 1985.

Last week, we mentioned the Berkeley Community Theatre shows in the Fall of 1984, and from the six night run, we have the second set opening sequence from 11/2/84 featuring Help On The Way>Slipknot!>Franklin'sTower>Lost Sailor>Saint of Circumstance>Wharf Rat>Gimme Some Lovin'. This was the first ever live Grateful Dead version of Gimme Some Lovin', and although Phil had started singing a little bit earlier in the year, adding some vocals to Why Don't We Do It In The Road, this night featured what is widely considered Phil's return to active singing duties. Soon Tom Thumb Blues would be added to Phil's vocal repertoire, followed by Box of Rain 1986, and slowly but surely he would add songs, from covers such as Broken Arrow to originals such as Childhood's End and the return of Unbroken Chain, not to mention his very fine backup vocals on songs such as Built To Last.

From the very next show, the final night at BCT on 11/3/84, we have another remarkable second set sequence, featuring Feel Like A Stranger>Cumberland Blues, Gloria>Why Don't We Do It In The Road>Jam. The Fall of 1984 had some pretty darn good music at times.

Our next selection is from a year later on 11/7/85 at the Rochester War Memorial, where the Dead would continue a very good tour that included a few very good two night runs (Richmond, Worcester, Meadowlands, etc). For this first night in Rochester, we have the second set opening sequence of Touch of Grey>Samson and Delilah, High Time>Let It Grow, with this being a very rare second set Let It Grow.

Lastly this week, we have more music from Rochester, NY, on 11/8/85. This was very nearly my first show, as many of my friends' older brothers were going to these concerts and we almost tagged along, being huge Dead Heads already but a bit young for such a long road trip (or so the older brothers thought…). This night was my 15th birthday. Instead my friends and I got mugged this night. I think going to Rochester would have been the better choice. From the end of the show, we have The Other One>I Need A Miracle>She Belongs To Me>Sugar Magnolia, Satisfaction.

Just as this week featured music exclusively from the mid 1980s, next week we'll only be hearing material from 1971 and 1972. And it's reeeeeaaaallllly good. See you next week. And feel free to write the email address below with any questions or comments about the Tapers' Section

David Lemieux
vault@dead.net

Grateful Dead Hour no. 722

ccasal — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 11:17:53 -0600

Week of July 22, 2002

By request, the conclusion of a two-part program on the making of Steppin' Out with the Grateful Dead: England '72, with engineer/producer Jeffrey Norman explaining and illustrating how multitrack recordings are mixed.

Steppin' Out with the Grateful Dead: England '72
DARK STAR (excerpt)
RAMBLE ON ROSE
THE OTHER ONE (excerpt)
UNCLE JOHN'S BAND

Thank you for listening!
- David Gans

Listen Now

Bob Weir to Perform at Benefit for Global Security

frogstorm — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 10:05:58 -0500

AT THE TIPPING POINT:
NUCLEAR CHALLENGES AND OPPORTUNITIES
FACING OUR GLOBAL COMMUNITY

10th Anniversary Celebration of the
GLOBAL SECURITY INSTITUTE

NOVEMBER 1, 2009
AT THE NAPA VALLEY OPERA HOUSE

PUBLIC FORUM
4 PM- 5:30 PM
Chaired by Rt. Hon. Kim Campbell, former Canadian Prime Minister
Speakers: Ambassador Thomas Graham, Jr., America’s most experienced arms control negotiator and Jonathan Granoff, President of the Global Security Institute
Free admission

VIP FOOD & WINE RECEPTION
6:30- 7:30 PM
$250 per person (includes concert admission)

CONCERT
7:30 - 9 PM
featuring Bob Weir and Scaring the Children
and Lili Haydn and special guests
$75 per person
All proceeds benefit the work of the Global Security Institute, a non-profit organization founded by Senator Alan Cranston in the belief that nuclear weapons are unworthy of civilization

Sponsorships acknowledged in event program:
- $1,000 Friends
- $2,500 Silver Supporters
- $5,000 Gold Supporters
- $10,000 Platinum Supporters
- $25,000 Diamond Circle Supporters
All sponsors receive preferred seating and discounted bulk tickets

Tickets must be purchased at the Opera House Box Office, at

www.nvoh.org

by phone at (707) 226-7372, or by email: info@nvoh.org

For sponsorship opportunities, contact the Fund for Peace Initiatives:
Mr. Les Dewitt, Director: (650) 327-3053,
or Mr. Robert Vogt, tel: (707) 337-5275
Checks payable to: The Fund for Peace Initiatives

Grateful Dead Hour no. 721

ccasal — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 20:49:22 -0500

Week of July 15, 2002

By request, the first of a two-part program on the making of Steppin' Out with the Grateful Dead: England '72, with engineer/producer Jeffrey Norman explaining and illustrating how multitrack recordings are mixed.

Steppin' Out with the Grateful Dead: England '72
ROCKIN' PNEUMONIA
NOT FADE AWAY->
HEY BO DIDDLEY->
NOT FADE AWAY
SITTIN' ON TOP OF THE WORLD

Thank you for listening!
- David Gans

Listen Now

October 26 - November 1, 2009

ccasal — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 20:15:09 -0500

Welcome back to the Tapers' Section, where this week we'll be checking out music from throughout the 1980s, and a bit of 1973 for good measure.

First stop this week is on 10/27/73 in Indianapolis, where the Grateful Dead were in the midst of a great two month tour that featured some of the finest, most inspired, most consistently good playing of their history. From the end of the first set, we have El Paso, Brown Eyed Women, Greatest Story Ever Told, Loose Lucy, BIODTL, China Cat Sunflower>I Know You Rider. We've played so many big jams from Fall 1973 here at the Tapers' Section (and we'll continue to do so…) that we thought it'd be nice to highlight some of the shorter, first set material here occasionally.

Our next selection this week is from 10/31/84 at Berkeley Community Theatre, during the Grateful Dead six night run at BCT. These shows were the first concerts at which the Grateful Dead officially allowed taping, providing the tapers with a section of seats from which they could make their recordings. For that, we thank both the band for allowing it, and we thank the tapers for creating the world's greatest public archive of live concert recordings. From the end of the second set, we have Morning Dew>Around and Around>One More Halloween Night, Satisfaction.

From one year later, on 10/31/85 in Columbia, SC, we have the show opening sequence of Funiculi Funicula>Space>Werewolves of London>Music Never Stopped. Those sounds during Space were a downright scary way to open the concert. Weeeeeeeeird….

Finally this week, we have the show closing sequence from the final show on the band's amazing Fall Tour of 1989, from 10/26/89 in Miami. We've played the pre-Drums sequence here before, including that spooky Dark Star, but the post-Drums sequence is equally cool, featuring The Wheel>All Along The Watchower>Stella Blue>Not Fade Away, We Bid You Goodnight.

Don't forget to stop in next week for more great music. Feel free to write to the email address below with any questions or comments about the Tapers' Section, or anything else you might want to know.

David Lemieux
vault@dead.net

Grateful Dead Hour no.159

ccasal — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 18:35:29 -0500

Week of October 7, 1991

Interview: Planet Drum - Mickey Hart, Airto Moreira, Flora Purim, Babatunde Olatunji

Mickey Hart, Planet Drum
LOST RIVER
THE HUNT
JEWE (YOU ARE THE ONE)
TEMPLE CAVES
DANCING SORCEROR

Grateful Dead, Workingman's Dead
CUMBERLAND BLUES
Grateful Dead 12/19/69 New Old Fillmore, San Francisco
MASON'S CHILDREN
GOOD LOVIN'

Thanks for listening!
David Gans

Listen Now

Two New Releases

frogstorm — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 15:20:12 -0500

We're happy to announce the arrival of Road Trips Volume 3 Number 1 and Jerry Garcia Band: Keystone Berkeley.

To celebrate, we've been streaming select tracks - like this very special song from the latest Jerry Garcia Band release, Let It Rock.

Friend Of The Devil (Keystone Berkeley, 11/17/1975)

Click here to listen
(player takes a minute to load - but it's worth the wait!)

$19.98
Jerry Garcia Band
Keystone Berkeley
11/17 and 11/18/1975

Bob Bralove and Henry Kaiser: Space Is the Place on Ultraviolet Licorice

frogstorm — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 00:38:25 -0500

Way back in 1991, Bob Bralove produced one of the more interesting discs in the entire Grateful Dead canon: Infrared Roses is a fantastic and trippy CD of “Drums” and “Space,” tailored by Bralove, who was one of the Dead’s primary electronics gurus from the late ’80s until the end. It was Bralove who eased the band, one by one, into the modern marvel of MIDI sounds, and who, in the their last several years, often participated in creating some of the sonic landscapes of the “Drums” and “Space” segments from his offstage perch near Mickey and Bill’s Drum World. In his post-Dead career, Bralove has continued to deeply explore improvisational music, both alone (as on his last CD, Stories in Black and White) and with other musicians (his best-known collaboration is probably his long-time association with former GD keyboardist Tom Constanten in a duo they call Dose Hermanos (psychedelic pun fully intended).

Bralove’s latest, Ultraviolet Licorice, is a collaboration with avant-guitarist Henry Kaiser, the Berkeley-based wonder who knows a thing or two about freeform music himself (and is also responsible for co-producing two of my all-time favorite albums of African music—A World Out of Time: Henry Kaiser and David Lindley in Madagascar, volumes I and II). Bralove and Kaiser have known each other for years, and played together on occasion (including the excellent mid-’90s album Second Sight, spearheaded by Bralove), but the new CD marks their first as duo. The title, you have perhaps deduced, is a play on Infrared Roses, and those of you who know your Garcia quotes will know the Grateful Dead derivation of the second word in the title—in a 1981 interview with Geraldo Rivera, Garcia famously noted, “Our audience is like people who like licorice. Not everybody likes licorice, but the people who like licorice really like licorice.”

Ultraviolet Licorice consists of a 14 live-in-the-studio improvisations by Bralove and Kaiser, nearly all of them played on top of synthesizer pieces Bralove made years ago as transitional material between “Drums” and “Space” at Dead shows, or as film music cues for other projects. Bralove played grand piano, Kaiser electric and acoustic guitars, depending on the track. For the electric work, he told me, “I used different fuzz boxes on every track. A few years ago, I decided, ‘No more new guitars,' so I decided to get more fuzz boxes instead.” The duo spent a day at Fantasy Studios in Berkeley—“We recorded all the tunes, we had lunch, then we mixed all the tunes,” Henry says with a chuckle. There’s tremendous variety in the improvisations, from sharp, abstract pieces to more sonorous and mellifluous jaunts. Adventurous Heads will definitely want to pick this one up.

What follows are highlights of a recent interview I did with Bob Bralove about the project.

So, how did this project come about?
Well, I had this material I’d been sitting on for a while, as DATs [from the Grateful Dead days], and there were also a few things there that are from film scores that I’ve done; some of them rejected cues that I thought were much better than the ones that were approved.

What do they know!
Eaxctly! [Laughs] But those things are jobs, and you do the best you can and you’re trying to please both yourself and whoever you’re working for. So I had them as DATs and hadn’t really focused on what needed to be done with them, and Henry and I were talking about them and it came up that maybe there was something for us to do around these DATs. So I sent him a CD of the material and he really liked it, and he said, “OK, we’ll find a time to go into Fantasy and record. We’ll throw these over to two tracks of the multitrack and then play live to it.” I said, “Sure, great!”

Henry gets excited…
Yes, he does! [Laughs]

Were some of these piano sketches?
No, it was all synthesizer and samples. Everything from bird whistles to synthesizers to the Cracker Jack stuff—there’s a whole section I did with things I got out of Cracker Jack boxes.

I said to Henry, “You know I haven’t really listened to these in a long time,” and then, in his inimitable style, he said, “Good, promise me you won’t listen to them again until we record,” so we’d both be approaching it with fresh ears.

Well, as someone who has always liked spontaneity, that sounds like an idea you could get behind.
Absolutely! The whole idea was that the material was going to inspire free improvisation, and that’s how it worked out. I’ve been playing piano more than anything else recently, like on my solo record [Stories in Black and White] so Henry said “Let’s use the piano at Fantasy,” which is a Steinway, and then he played electric and acoustic guitars. He also played a ukulele on a track but that didn’t make the CD. It was really a blast.

You must have to concentrate so hard when you do this kind of spontaneous creation…
It was really an intense recording session. It was intense because you’re listening to the track and you’re listening to Henry and it’s a bit of a feeling of not being there—you’re present and you’re trying to respond and let the music through you, but somehow your ego’s not involved. By the end of the session I had no idea what we had. I knew what the material was, but I had no idea whether it was strong or not, and it wasn’t until days later that I began to hear how powerful I think it is.

There are times when we really soar and times when we get very quiet. We have a connection that is undeniable. I feel that all the time with Henry, but it really seems strong on this record.

So all 14 tracks on this album started out as some kind of synthesizer piece or sketch?
Not every one, no. A few we did just the two of us right there; like “Red Queen.” But the overall premise was we would have these sketches, which are very open, and then we would play on top of them. The sketches, if you want to call them that, set the mood and gave us a sense of direction of places to go. But it was very walk-in-and-play; respond immediately. For me, it was so much about being present, I couldn’t really judge what was going on.

How much discussion would you have before you would do a take?
We didn’t really have any discussion [Laughs] Our mentors in this world—the Grateful Dead—didn’t discuss it much. I was part of that. They’d just go out and play.

Even something like “Red Queen,” which has a chord progression and song-like elements?
Actually, that one there was a discussion and that was Henry said, “I have an idea; just follow it.”

Are these one-take performances? Or did you take multiple stabs at each one? There are some overdubs.
Henry did some overdubbing [on two tracks], and there were some things we prepared, like where I put my keys and other things on the strings of the piano, and Henry wired his guitar up to do different things—clipping things on to the strings.

Infrared Roses was heavily edited by you and John Cutler. How much editing is there here? Are some of these from longer jams where you carved out the best couple or few minutes from it?
There’s barely any editing at all. This is pretty much how these actually went down.

All that Pro Tools editing capability going to waste!
But all that wonderful energy of interaction not going to waste! [Laughs] Of course Infrared Roses wasn’t done on Pro Tools. It was tape multitrack and it was quite a struggle to edit that.

Were there times when you tried an improvisation along a certain line based on what you were hearing and then abandoned it: “Nah, let’s try some other approach”? Because, you can’t be expected to nail it every time.
There may have been one or two. But that’s the impressive thing about this project. We did it in a day. And we had more material than is on the record. Of course there are going to be ones that didn’t make it for us, and the ones where we felt we did better are obviously the ones we included.

How about some of the sound effects on there—like the thunder on one track? Were those in place already from your sketches?
Yes. There was a track of thunder that I created in the studio. I grabbed come commercial samples of thunder that I chopped up because I liked the crack of this sample, but the rumble of this other one. But I had also done a lot of sampling when I was on the road. There was this amazing night when the Grateful Dead was in Cleveland where there was a thunderstorm that was terrifying. We were in this hotel that was sort of V-shaped and the reverb and echo in this V was amazing. So I stuck a stereo DAT out my hotel room window and recorded that. It was incredible. So I cut those up and used some of that; actually I used some of that material in a couple of Grateful Dead shows, too.

How did you come up with the song titles? On Infrared Roses you turned that task over to Robert Hunter. I presume “March of the Wind Potatoes” is yours?
[Laughs] I’ve been titling tracks on my own for a while, of course—or with Tom [Constanten]. I think in this case I came up with a list of titles and e-mailed them to Henry. He responded immediately with some alternate titles and some of them were just changing a word. That then went back and forth a couple of times. And sometimes it’s a question of somebody doesn’t like this, and then the other guy will say, “Well, I’m trying to reference X, Y and Z” “Oh, OK, in that case…,” or, “Let’s try a Mark Rothko quote”—which is where “Silence is So Accurate” comes from.

You might even call those discussions you have with Henry “Conversational Algorhythms,” which is another cool title.
Or the music itself! By the end of the process you don’t know whose is whose, and that’s perfect.

Tell me about how your and Henry’s styles mesh. I think of him as being an abstract thinker who’s not tied down by conventional rules and likes to go his own way. And I think of you in much the same way.
Yes. I think of myself as being a little more rooted in traditions—not only song traditions, but classical tradition. Henry is also rooted in traditions, but they tend to be Asian or…

Madagascarian…
Exactly! Some of our connection, of course, comes through the Grateful Dead, and that music had that quality—there was ethnomusicology going on with the Grateful Dead. Phil had all those classical references going on. Everybody was coming from a different place and found this meeting point where they could reference it, but make something original. That’s what Henry and I try to do. I certainly have avant-garde listening in my listening repertoire. I think I came at it from more of a Stockhausen kind of place at first, and then I got turned onto it through jazz, through the kind of free improvisation that happens in the ’60s and ’70s.

Ornette; the Art Ensemble of Chicago, maybe.
Definitely. I remember an Art Ensemble concert in college that totally blew my mind.

Getting back to your question, though, one way our styles mesh is that Henry pushes me to an edgier side in a really wonderful way, and I push him the other way, and that’s a very interesting mesh. Sometimes, playing-wise, it can feel like a struggle, in that we’re going different directions, but the end result of that the struggle is often wonderful to listen to. Sometimes I’ll feel like, ‘Boy, if I had my way, I would’ve gone in this direction,” and then I listen back to it and I think, “Jeez, it would’ve been awfully boring if I’d done it the way I originally wanted to.” [Laughs] I’m hoping people feel the surprise we had in the moment. That’s really what we were aiming for: To surprise each other, and, hopefully, the people who listen to it.

* * *

You can learn more Ultraviolet Licorice and also order it by going to bobbralove.com.

October 19- October 25, 2009

ccasal — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 17:31:55 -0500

Welcome back to the Tapers' Section as we continue our run through October, where this week we'll listen to the music from throughout the 1980s, and a taste of 1973 to start things out.

Our first stop this week is on 10/25/73 in Madison, WI, where the Grateful Dead would be playing their second magnificent show in this cool city in 1973 (the previous show was 2/15/73). From the end of the first set, we have this great sequence of Tennessee Jed, LL Rain, Deal, El Paso, Row Jimmy, Playing In The Band. The entire tour, and really the whole October 19-December 19, 1973 span, features some of the deepest, most inspired playing by the Grateful Dead ever, up there with Europe '72, September-December '72, and April-June '77.

Next up is going to be music from the second of two shows at the Saenger Performing Arts Center in New Orleans, on 10/19/80. As we mentioned last week here, the band took a brief “break” from the giant runs of shows at the Warfield and Radio City by stopping in New Orleans for two of these terrific three-set affairs, complete with acoustic sets. From 10/19/80, we have the start of the third set, featuring Scarlet Begonias>Fire On The Mountains, Samson and Delilah, Terrapin Station .After this, they'd head to New York for their eight shows at Radio City October 22-31, 1980.

From four years plus a day later, on 10/20/84 at the Carrierdome in Syracuse, NY, we have the second set opener of Shakedown Street>Samson, He's Gone>Smokestack Lightning>Jam. This was one of the first live concert tapes I was given, just weeks after the concert (thanks, Terry…), and although I still have my old XLII-S, it is worn down after being played so many times. Thankfully the vault has a master Beta PCM of this concert, from which this jam was drawn.

Lastly this week, from 10/23/89 in Charlotte, NC, we have a very good chunk of the first set, including a couple of cool things to note: California Earthquake, Feel Like A Stranger, Loser, Walkin' Blues, Bertha, When I Paint My Masterpiece. This is the second and final live version of California Earthquake by the Grateful Dead. As some of you may recall, the band was on the east coast playing one of their most highly regarded tours in years, when the Loma Prieta earthquake struck on October 17, 1989, on a night off for the band, during the pre-game show of the Bay Bridge World Series. A couple of nights earlier in Philadelphia, the band played this song for the first time, followed by the Charlotte version. Also worth noting is the sort-of-rare mid-set Bertha.

Be sure to stop by next week for more great music, when we'll stick mostly within the 1980s, but, like this week, we'll take a detour into 1973. As always, we welcome and encourage you to write with comments or questions about the Tapers' Section. The email address below will get to me, and I try to respond to all correspondence.

David Lemieux
vault@dead.net

Furthur NYE Show Announced

frogstorm — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 14:17:05 -0500

FURTHUR
PHIL LESH * BOB WEIR
Jeff Chimenti * John Kadlecik
Jay Lane * Joe Russo

December 8 & 9
Hammerstein Ballroom
New York City, NY
Doors: 6:30 / Showtime: 8:00 PM

December 11
Chevrolet Theater @ Oakdale
Wallingford, CT
Doors: 6:30 / Showtime: 8:00 PM

December 12 & 13
Asbury Park Convention Hall
Asbury Park, NJ
Doors: 6:30 / Showtime: 8:00 PM

December 30 & 31
Bill Graham Civic Auditorium
San Francisco, CA
Doors: 6:00 / Showtime: 7:30 PM
All Tickets General Admission
**12.31 Will Be A Special Three Set Show**

GDTSToo MailOrder Presale - 1st Postmark 10.17 Thru 10.19

MusicToday Presale 10.19 @ 9AM PT -> 10.23 @ 3PM PT

Presale Tix Above Available While Supplies Last

Outlet Onsale Starts 10.25 @ 10 AM PT

Please note all onsale, doors, showtimes subject to change!
Backpacks, bags, subject to search

Grateful Dead Hour no. 550

ccasal — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 10:36:58 -0500

Week of April 5, 1999

Featured: some highlights of the presentation Dick Latvala and I made at a Dick's Picks vol. 13 release party in Worcester, Mass on March 13, 1999.

Ever wondered where the American Beauty studio version of "Truckin'" went after the fade-out?

Enjoy!

Grateful Dead 10/9/84 Centrum, Worcester MA
DANCIN' IN THE STREETS

Mutilaudio by David Gans
SALUTE TO DICK LATVALA

TRUCKIN' (American Beauty rough mix)

Grateful Dead 4/15/71 Allegheny College, Meadville PA
NOT FADE AWAY->
GOIN' DOWN THE ROAD FEELIN' BAD->
NOT FADE AWAY
CASEY JONES

Grateful Dead 7/21/74 Hollywood Bowl
CHINA CAT SUNFLOWER->
I KNOW YOU RIDER

Thank you for listening!
David Gans

Listen Now

October 12 - October 18, 2009

ccasal — Mon, 12 Oct 2009 10:30:08 -0500

Welcome back to your weekly dose of this-week-in-Grateful Dead-history here at the Tapers' Section. As we mentioned last week, this week we'll be sticking to the 1980s again.

Our first selection this week is from the final night of the Grateful Dead's three weeks at the Warfield Theatre in San Francisco on 10/14/80. From the start of the third set (these concerts, of course, featured three sets of music: an acoustic set and two electric sets), we have Scarlet Begonias>Fire On The Mountain.

From just a few nights later in New Orleans, we have the start of the second set from 10/18/80 at Saenger Performing Arts Center, where the Grateful Dead were playing the first of two nights on a quick stop between the massive runs of shows at the Warfield and Radio City. From this show in New Orleans, we have China Cat Sunflower>I Know You Rider, Feel Like A Stranger, Ship of Fools, Estimated Prophet>Eyes of the World, a terrific sequence in any year. I love these early versions of Stranger. Great stuff.

From about a year later, on 10/12/81 in Munich, West Germany, we have more music from the short but sweet European tour of 1981. From just before Drums, we have this cool trio of tunes, Estimated Prophet>GDTRFB>Never Trust A Woman. This is a stellar Estimated, one of my favourites. The band would play another show in West Germany before canceling two poorly-selling concerts in France and playing the two Amsterdam shows on 10/15&16/81.

Lastly this week, from the Fall Tour of 1989 that featured all sorts of great music, we have material from 10/15/89 at the Meadowlands Arena in New Jersey, specifically the start of the second set, featuring Samson and Delilah, Just A Little Light, Crazy Fingers>Estimated Prophet>Eyes of the World. The next show, on 10/16/89, would be one of the more famous concerts of the latter half of the 1980s, and would be immortalized on the Nightfall of Diamonds album.

That's three versions of Estimated Prophet this week. We hope you don't mind.

We'll take this opportunity to wish Bobby a giant Happy Birthday. Be sure to check in next week for more great material from the 1980s, and some 1973 stuff to balance it all out. Feel free to email the address below with questions and comments.

David Lemieux
vault@dead.net

Grateful Dead Hour no. 549

ccasal — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 16:15:54 -0500

Week of March 29, 1999

This week's archival GD Hour podcast announced the 1999 release of a 1964 live performance by Mother McCree's Uptown Jug Champions, a good-time band that included future Grateful Dead members Jerry Garcia, Bob Weir and Ron "Pigpen" McKernan. The CD was produced by Michael Wanger, a high-school pal of Bob Weir, who was involved in the original broadcast and who had the tape in his stash all those years.

We begin with a couple of songs from the Grateful Dead's 1981 acoustic album Reckoning, "The Monkey and the Engineer" and "She's On the Road Again." Both these songs go back to the Dead's jug band incarnation.

For more on the jug band phenomenon of the early '60s, check out GD Hour #1012, discussing an excellent documentary titled Chasin' Gus' Ghost. Bob Weir appears in the film, along with Geoff and Maria Muldaur, Jim Kweskin, John Sebastian, Fritz Richmond, and others. Interestingly, both Muldaurs recently released new CDs in the jug band vein: Geoff Muldaur and the Texas Sheiks, and Maria Muldaur and Her Garden of Joy - which includes a delightful two-song duet with the great Dan Hicks.

Enjoy!

Grateful Dead, Reckoning
THE MONKEY AND THE ENGINEER
SHE'S ON THE ROAD AGAIN

Mother McCree's Uptown Jug Champions
OVERSEAS STOMP
AIN'T IT CRAZY
BIG FAT WOMAN
BEAT IT ON DOWN THE LINE
BEEDLE UM BUM

Jim Kweskin and the Jug Band
MY GAL

Mother McCree's Uptown Jug Champions
MY GAL
BORNEO
BAND INTERVIEW

Jim Kweskin and the Jug Band
WASHINGTON AT VALLEY FORGE

Mother McCree's Uptown Jug Champions
IN THE JAILHOUSE NOW

Thank you for listening!
- David Gans

Listen Now

NEW East Coast Furthur Shows Announced

frogstorm — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 12:42:31 -0500

FURTHUR

PHIL LESH * BOB WEIR
Jeff Chimenti * John Kadlecik
Jay Lane * Joe Russo

December 8 & 9 (SORRY,BOTH SHOWS SOLD OUT)
Hammerstein Ballroom
New York City, NY
Doors: 6:30 / Showtime: 8:00 PM

December 11 (SORRY, SOLD OUT)
Chevrolet Theater @ Oakdale
Wallingford, CT
Doors: 6:30 / Showtime: 8:00 PM

December 12 & 13 (SORRY, BOTH SHOWS SOLD OUT)
Asbury Park Convention Hall
Asbury Park, NJ
Doors: 6:30 / Showtime: 8:00 PM

Please note all onsale, doors, showtimes subject to change!

Backpacks, bags, subject to search!

October 5 - October 11, 2009

ccasal — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 10:31:11 -0500

Greetings and welcome back to the Tapers' Section, where this week we'll be excusively checking out music from the 1980s, with a good selection from throughout the decade.

Our first selection is from 10/10/81 in Bremen, West Germany. This little tour of Europe was the Grateful Dead's last trip overseas until the tour in 1990, and there was plenty of great music played on this 1981 tour. Most of you are likely familiar with the shows in Amsterdam a few days later, but this one also had some good stuff. From the opening of the second set in Bremen, we have Women Are Smarter>Suragee>Lost Sailor>Saint of Circumstance>Eyes of the World.

From three years later on 10/5/84 in Charlotte, NC, we have the post-Drums sequence of the concert featuring The Other One>Black Peter>Sugar Magnolia>Johnny B. Goode, with the added coolness of something rocking coming out of Sugar Magnolia, a usual set-closer. There was loads of great music on this tour, including stops in Augusta, ME and Syracuse, NY that are excellent.

From five years after the above selection, we return to the Warlocks concerts from Hampton, VA, with music from the first night, 10/8/89, featuring the post-Drums sequence of I Need A Miracle>The Wheel>Gimme Some Lovin'>Morning Dew, We Bid You Goodnight. These two concerts are justifiably legendary amongst Dead Heads, partly due to what happened at this show, but mainly due to what happened the next night.

Speaking of the next night, from 10/9/89 in Hampton, we have the pre-Drums sequence of Playing In The Band>Uncle John's Band>Playing In the Band>Dark Star. Yes, the first Dark Star in more than five years. The crowd's reaction just about blew the roof off of the building.

Join us back here next week, when we'll again stick with music from 1980s. As always, we encourage you to write to the email address below with any questions or comments. We try to respond to most every email, so feel free to write in.

David Lemieux
vault@dead.net

Grateful Dead Hour no.509

ccasal — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 17:44:33 -0500

Week of June 22, 1998

Got a request to revisit the wonderful "Weather Report Suite" from Missoula '74. I like this one so much I've played it on the GD Hour twice, in 1994 and 1998. Definitely worth hearing again and again!

Jerry Garcia and David Grisman, Not for Kids Only
A HORSE NAMED BILL

Grateful Dead 5/14/74 Adams Fieldhouse, U of MT, Missoula
PRELUDE->
WEATHER REPORT pt. 1->
LET IT GROW->
DARK STAR->
CHINA DOLL

Thanks for listening!
David Gans

Listen Now

Bill Kreutzmann at the Austin City Limits Festival

frogstorm — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 15:46:00 -0500

Bill Kreutzmann will be performing with Papa Mali at the Austin City Limits Music Festival on Oct. 3, 2009. This will be Papa Mali's second appearance at the event which drew a crowd of over 218,000 fans last year and was ranked #5 on Billboard’s top festivals of 2008. Performing alongside Papa and Bill will be longtime Papa Mali drummer Robb Kidd (look for some double kit action), Matt Perrine (Bonerama) on sousaphone and Matt Hubbard (Willie Nelson and Friends) on keyboards, harmonica and trombone. A surprise guest wouldn’t be out of the realm of possibilities. This year’s ACL fest will also feature Pearl Jam, Dave Matthews Band, Beastie Boys, Kings of Leon and numerous other monsters of the scene.

Papa Mali, Bill Kreutzmann and Matt Hubbard will then head directly into the studio to record their new CD along with Reed Mathis (Tea Leaf Green) on bass. The sessions will be made up almost entirely of new material that has been co-written by Robert Hunter (Grateful Dead and Bob Dylan lyricist) and Papa Mali. The new CD is expected to be released in early 2010. Papa Mali featuring Bill Kreutzmann’s next gig will be October 31 and November 1 at the Las Tortugas Festival in Yosemite National Park. If you are looking for something to do on Halloween, come get your freak on in one of the most striking locations in the country.

Bill Kreutzmann at Las Tortugas

frogstorm — Mon, 28 Sep 2009 16:33:29 -0500

Bill will be the Honored Guest for the 4th annual installment of Las Tortugas – Dance of the Dead, taking place October 29th – November 1st in Yosemite, CA. After honoring the Dead's legacy the past two year's with sizzling performances from Melvin Seals & JGB, Las Tortugas will continue the festival's warm embrace of the roots of the jam-centric scene at the heart of this intimate, exciting festival. Bill's innovative approach to drumming combined with his deep understanding of the power of rock 'n' roll & improvisation will be on display as he guests with Papa Mali at Las Tortugas.

Click here for ticket info (Heads up: Dead.net doesn't handle ticket sales so this link will take you to another site with all the details. For questions about tickets, your best bet is to contact the vendors directly.).

Also - there's a cool new way to try and keep up with Bill Kreutzmann. He's launched a completely redesigned website at www.billkreutzmann.com where you can get all the latest updates on Bill, watch some great videos and best of all (we think) - check out "The Sounds" section with a generous supply of streaming music!

Click here to see what it's all about.

September 28 - October 4, 2009

ccasal — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 20:34:34 -0500

Welcome back to the Tapers' Section as we close out September and head into October. This week we're going to listen mostly to music, and goooood music, from 1976, with a touch of 1989 mixed at.

The fall tour of 1976 featured some exceptional concerts, and some intriguing and inspired set lists and song combinations. After an entire tour now under their belts after their nearly two-year hiatus, the Grateful Dead settled into a touring schedule that would be the norm for the next 19 years, with each year generally featuring three tours, plus several short batches of shows in a region or a bunch of California shows. Our first stop in 1976 this week is in Syracuse, NY, with music that is part of the stellar Dick's Picks Vol. 20, the second 4-CD Dick's Pick, after the outstanding Vol. 14. From the second set of 9/28/76, we have Jam>Comes A Time>Drums>Eyes of the World>Orange Tango Jam>Dancing In The Street>Playing in the Band, Johnny B. Goode. the orange tango jam is unlike anything i've ever heard the grateful dead do.

From the very next show, on 9/30/76 in Columbus, OH, we have another big 1976 second set jam, featuring St. Stephen>Not Fade Away>Drums>Wharf Rat>Not Fade Away>St. Stephen>Around and Around. The coolest thing about these fall tour of 1976 second sets is that each one is completely different and unique. They did things at these shows that they'd never do again, nor before.

To prove that point, here's another massive 1976 second set jam, from 10/2/76 in Cincinnati, with the incredible segment of Dancing In The Street>Drums>The Other One>Stella Blue>The Other One>Sugar Magnolia. Every show featured something interesting. The first sets on this tour were very good, but the second sets were stunning for the most part.

Our last selection, from 20 years ago this week, is the return of Death Don't Have No Mercy, from 9/29/89 at Shoreline. As a famous Dead Head once said, this was the last time he truly saw Jerry blow his mind with a guitar solo. It is exquisite, and very deserving of its inclusion on the exceptional 5-CD boxed set So Many Roads.

Be sure to make your way back to this site next week for more great music from the Grateful Dead's recorded history. As always, we welcome and encourage you to write to the email address below my name with any questions or comments

David Lemieux
vault@dead.net

Shakedown Street - Giant's Stadium 7/9/89

frogstorm — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 13:47:40 -0500

We're happy to present a clip from "Shakedown Street" at Giants Stadium, 7/9/89. It's one of the performances featured on the 95-minute DVD inside the new Grateful Dead Scrapbook: Deluxe Edition. The DVD also includes a rare video from 1968, plus more live footage of the band between 1972 and 1989.

The albums are individually numbered and include never-before-published photos, interactive features like backstage passes and fold-out posters, plus a CD with never-before-heard interviews!

This exclusive edition is only available at Dead.net.

Grateful Dead Hour no.267

ccasal — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 16:01:33 -0500

Week of November 1, 1993

This week's archival GD Hour was originally broadcast the week of November 1, 1997 and introduced the Dick's Picks series of live concert releases. Latvala, who had been the Dead's vault archivist for eight years, was so excited that the organization was finally starting to release music from the archive.

Enjoy!

Interview: Dick Latvala (transcript)

Grateful Dead, Dick's Picks Vol. 1
STELLA BLUE
BIG RAILROAD BLUES (12/19/73 Tampa FL)

DIXPIX OVERTURE

Thanks for listening!
David Gans

Listen Now

Night Three: Furthur Finale at the Fox

frogstorm — Mon, 21 Sep 2009 18:53:56 -0500

And on the Third Night they really became a band.

I’m underslept, my head is still buzzing and my feet ache from three nights of non-stop dancing (first time I’ve hit three consecutive shows since ’95), but I still have the ecstatic glow of last night’s show to keep me going (until I crash… later).

The Sunday Furthur concert was one of those shows you hit every once in while where it’s clear from the first second that it’s going to be a great night: sound in the hall is fantastic, the parts are all fitting together smoothly—the band balancing itself, like a great orchestra—everyone looks happy and relaxed onstage and in the crowd, and any and all doubts fall away in the face of undisputable evidence that this music—this band—is really happenin’.

It all started with drums— Joe and Jay, all smiles, Jay jumping around his setup like he was on springs— and it was a minute or so before it became clear that, no, this was not going to be an actual drum solo, as it soon headed into that old Sunday favorite, “Samson and Delilah.”

Joe, Bob, Jay and John - Playing in the new band
Photo: Bob Minkin/minkindesign.com © 2009

The band was totally on from the get-go, Phil and Bob perfectly in sync, John firing short bursts of notes, Jeff adding organ sustain as a bed beneath. (Yes, I could finally hear Jeff—all night!) We all sang along lustily on the choruses, even though none of us wants to tear that old building down! The party had begun. “Casey Jones” was next—a total surprise to me—with John handling the lead vocals very well. This seemed like a pretty normal version until the “driving that train” chorus kept going on and on, getting faster and faster, until it was practically a blur (one of my old Dead Head pals, who hadn’t seen any post-GD lineup in several years, noted that he’d never heard the Grateful Dead play that fast!)

It was on the third song of the night, though, that I had my own personal epiphany about this group. I mean, I’d been digging it from the outset, for sure, but on this particular “Mississippi Half-Step,” John Kadlecik’s solo on the closing jam was so amazing, passionate, inspired, so… throw in your own adjective here, and the band had to keep going higher and higher just to keep up with him; it was truly that old familiar feeling in a new guise. That may have been my favorite tune of the whole three-night run.

Bob and John traded vocals on “Sugaree,” which started out slowly but picked up steam when Jeff took a huge solo that began deliberately, like climbing a tall spiral staircase, and just built and built until it crashed to a satisfying climax before the next verse. John later added his own marvelous solo construction on the tune, and before the final verse there was a great musical group-grope, as everyone played parts that interlocked like a giant mechanical wheel threatening to spin off its axel.

Furthur in action (L to R): Jeff, Phil, Joe, Bob, Jay and John.
Photo: Dave Clark/daveclarklive.net © 2009

“Pride of Cucamonga” was one of two or three songs this weekend that let John put his toe into pedal steel territory (Saturday, "Friend of the Devil" was another)—it's uncanny how much he is able to capture that sound on a regular electric guitar, and it was perfect for this tune, of course. The verse parts of the song were as perky and bouncy as the crowd’s “up” mood, and the bluesy middle passage went into some unexpected realms. But one of the most interesting jams of the night came directly after that song. While I was listening to it last night, there was a part of my brain that was saying, “Remember what they’re doing here so you can describe how cool it is,” but needless to say I had lost that thought in the next second and now I have no memory at all of what was great about it—except that it was great. I’ll be anxious to hear that again when I have a moment. Somehow, though, the jam ended up at “Throwing Stones,” which shocked the hell out of me. I hadn’t heard it in a coon’s age, and it was a truly powerful version—again, as he had on “Half-Step,” John took the jam toward the end of the song so far and with so much energy, it was a joy to behold. This guy is extremely impressive. He really speaks this language well; like a native! I thought “Passenger” was a great choice as the set closer. Bob and Jay did the vocals together and the whole band was cookin’. John didn’t go as far on his slide solo as I’d hoped he might (three nights, and I’m already gettin’ greedy on the guy!), but it was still rip-roaring fun. What a set. And you could feel it in the hall that almost everyone agreed. Sometimes it’s that obvious. You can’t miss it.

Set Two jumped out of the gate with a terrific “Viola Lee Blues” (verses one and two, to start), then went into another giant jam—John, Bob and Phil tearing it up on the front line—and eventually that moved quite naturally into “Cumberland Blues,” a song that is always great (really, I’ve never seen a bad one). At the conclusion of that speedy ride (it’s kind of like Thunder Mountain Railroad at Disneyland), Phil led the charge right back to “Viola Lee Blues” and we got the final verse (though no big second jam). Phil’s fabulous but very rarely played instrumental opus, “King’s Solomon’s Marbles” (from Blues for Allah), followed, and that was another personal highlight. The band seemed to have no trouble at all negotiating the song’s myriad twists and turns and rhythmic shifts—indeed, it sounded like they’d been playing it their whole lives.

I now remember that when the aforementioned “Pride of Cucamonga” ended and the big jam after it began, I initially thought that it was going to go right into “Cassidy.” Wrong again! But they did play “Cassidy” in this second set, and it was a warm and heartfelt version with yet another astonishing jam.

A bona fide “space” jam followed, with strong hints of “Dark Star” and then “Dark Star” itself—another test for the new kids, and they passed with flying colors. Jay and Joe really threw themselves into this, mixing power-drumming with delicate shadings as the moment required (Jay had the shaker goin’), and needless to say, John was totally in his element on this tune, stretching out easily, driving the jam to this odd place and that.

And then… What the?... Out of the deep recesses of space, a chord sequence starts to appear, a melody, and all of a sudden we’re in a new song! Now, that was unexpected! Titled “Welcome to the Dance,” words and music by Phil, it was kind of hard to grasp on first listen. I couldn’t make out the words at all, and you know how those Phil tunes are with their unusual chords and rhythm changes… But I liked it, and the band seemed confident playing it, and its easy to imagine it becoming a real powerhouse tune, because the jam near the end was spectacular—sort of one part “Uncle John’s,” one part “Good Lovin’,” a dash of that almost waltz-time lead-in to “The Eleven” (on Live Dead), blended and stirred and mixed in with some other new secret ingredients. Pretty cool. Always fun to hear new stuff!

That drifted back to “Dark Star”—short but sweet flowing into the second verse—and then it was “Uncle John’s” and a sing-along for 3,500 very happy people. That could’ve ended the show and I would’ve been totally satisfied, but Bob tossed in a dynamite “Sugar Magnolia” to close. Wow, that place was jumpin’!

They had one more curve ball for us: A “Cosmic Charlie” encore, played as a rubbery shuffle; a neat way to end a fantastic set of shows.

Whew. This band is for real. Keep an open mind. And don’t miss ’em if they come to your town!

9/20/09, Fox Theatre, Oakland
Samson and Delilah, Casey Jones, Mississippi Half-Step, Sugaree, Pride of Cucamonga > jam> Throwing Stones > Passenger

Viola Lee Blues (v 1 and 2) > Cumberland Blues > Volia Lee Blues (v 3), King Solomon’s Marbles, Cassidy > space > Dark Star (v 1) > Welcome to the Dance > Dark Star (v 2) . Uncle John’s Band > Sugar Magnolia / Cosmic Charlie

Furthur at the Fox, Night Two

frogstorm — Sun, 20 Sep 2009 22:01:08 -0500

I realized when I got to my spot on the first tier for Saturday night’s show and I looked around the still-nearly-empty place, that I had not adequately described the grandeur of the Fox. What I neglected to mention in yesterday’s report is that the overall architectural style is kind of faux Moorish/Spanish Churrigueresque—there’s lots of intricate tapestry-like design (actually painted plaster) on the walls and all around the proscenium and above it, too, and fake window alcoves on the walls at the balcony level that look like they would go out to some enchanted Arabian Nights garden. The ceiling consists of an elaborate pattern of squares that resembles a giant Persian carpet but is stenciled plaster, with each square having a 13-pointed star design and angular cut-out lines; very trippy. Still not sure what to make of the giant statues/idols I mentioned yesterday. They don’t really fit in with the Islamic architectural feel of the rest of the place; it seems more Hindu, or something. But hey, it was the ’20s when the place was designed and the architects were probably just makin’ shit up. I love it!

Last night had an early start time (6:15) because, unlike the other two shows, there was a first act on the bill—a group called Vice. Who? Why? A quick Internet search the other day revealed the answer to both: It’s a band that includes Phil Lesh’s son Grahame on electric guitar and backup vocals, so the ol’ man was giving the group a shot to play before a Dead Head audience; a good gig if you can get it! There were probably about 300 or so folks in the place when the quintet sauntered onto the stage. Grahame, keyboardist Jesse Engreitz, bassist Mac Parish and drummer Eric Saar are really the backup band for singer/acoustic guitarist Brodie Jenkins, who is completely the focal point of every song. An attractive and charismatic woman, Jenkins has a commanding alto voice that reminded me in places of Linda Ronstadt (and Bonnie Raitt less so), and she moved easily from a mild growl to brief soprano/falsetto passages, but mostly stayed in a pleasing midrange. Their songs were mostly a semi-generic “classic rock” style—kinda countryish at times, kinda bluesy, kinda rockin’—but never committing too much in any one direction. Unfortunately, the Fox was not the venue for them—even in my excellent spot, I couldn’t make out one word of what Jenkins was singing (and I was trying hard)—the words just got eaten up in the cavernous, echo-y place. This is obviously a band best seen in a club, where the nuances of Jenkins’ singing (not to mention the content of the lyrics) could stand out more. The instrumental accompaniment was solid, especially bassist Parish, who seemed to me the most creative of the lot.

Now, I’m going to don my “I’ve been writing about music for 40 years, seen thousands of bands come and go, and know a bit about the industry” hat and give these fresh-faced kids some advice: 1) Play a solo occasionally! There was no solo more than a minute long, I’m pretty sure. A good solo bolsters a song immeasurably and gives the singer a momentary rest (and the audience a change in foreground). Using the Bonnie and Linda comparison (I don’t want to overdo that, ’cause Jenkins doesn’t sound that much like either), Linda had Andrew Gold and other great players firing off solos here and there and coming up with intricate arrangements; Bonnie has Bonnie, layin’ it down on slide (and often other soloists, too.) 2) Get rid of the name. Vice? Sorry, not happenin’; maybe if you’re a metal band. But there is nothing about this group that says “Vice.” You’re going to confuse people. Trust me on this. 3) Nashville. Get out of Stanford and the Bay Area and go someplace where soulful singer-songwriters still get respect (and gigs). L.A. could work, but it’s a tougher slog. Nashville is a friendly town filled with creative people. Even though Vice is not a “country” band, Nashville is no longer strictly a country music town. And while you’re there, after you land that deal (certainly a possibility given the type of material the group plays and Jenkins’ strong voice) bring in a fiddle player for a song or two, maybe some dobro—in other words, expand the instrumental palette, which is, as currently constructed, a little dull. Good luck, kids!

Critic hat doffed, we’re on to the main event! In speaking with the friends/DSO partisans we’d been with on Friday (and happily found ourselves with again on Saturday), I was quite surprised to hear that to a person none of them had particularly liked the first set Friday, but had loved the second set. I really enjoyed both sets, but maybe because they were seeing it more through the John Kadlecik lens, they were looking for/at different things than I was. Different strokes for different folks (oo-sha-shaaa).

Saturday night, the opening jam involved the full group but never really focused itself in any direction particularly before jumping into an exciting version of “Bertha,” with John and Bob trading off on the vocals. It seemed like the sound was better balanced from the get-go—I could hear Jeff fine on “Bertha”—though strangely enough, as the evening progressed I felt the sound got worse. We lost Jeff again for most of the night (what is the deal with that?) and the vocals weren’t turned up as much, so they frequently got lost in the instrumental wash (OK, sometimes that’s a good thing). But I also felt that the mix was a little less clear and less distinct in general. I was in virtually the same spot both nights, so I don’t think it was me…though ya never know. As “Bertha” crashed to a close the band immediately picked up the old-school (i.e. ’69-’72) intro of “Good Lovin’”—another classic combo brought to life again! It, too, was nicely executed, though when Bob tried to bring the vocals back up again at the end, after a meaty jam had already taken the band elsewhere, it felt a little strained and forced.

“Estimated” came next, and this was the first sign I’d had in two nights that maybe the high energy and best intentions of the newcomers in the band was not always going to be enough to keep the band’s tempos consistently bright. Because, frankly, I thought this version dragged. I still enjoyed hearing it, but I felt a little like my legs were trapped in taffy trying to dance to the lumbering beat. Bob’s timing seemed a little “off” much of the night, more in the first set than the second, for sure. The post-“Estimated” jam was varied and interesting, though. “Friend of the Devil” was peppy and upbeat (again John and Bob traded off on the vocals effectively) and the solo passages by Jeff, then Bob, then John, really cooked—it was almost “Cumberland” fast! “Feel Like a Stranger” was also too slow for my taste… Let me see if I can articulate this better. It’s not like the tempo is “wrong,” because it’s totally the singer’s choice, right? And it wasn’t that much slower than a regular version. But to me it sounds a little like a tape that’s running a tad slow—you do a micro-pitch adjustment up and all of you sudden the sparkle is there! Well, for me the sparkle was not there on this “Stranger” (and Bob even seemed a little lost on the ending vocal interplay), though again the last jam was really fascinating and John and Bob together brilliantly led it all back to the melodic denouement—nicely done, lads!

“Brown-Eyed Women” returned to the upbeat side of things and was beautifully played, John building his solo brightly as he shifted through different tonal colors. The set then ended on real high note with a spankin’ version of “Hell in a Bucket,” a tune I hadn’t heard in a long time and always enjoy live. Bob’s repeated falsetto refrain of “at least I’m enjoyin’ the ride” filled the old place from floor to ceiling, echoing through the hall, maybe even putting a smile on the stern faces of the seated gold-painted idols. My overall impression of the set was that it was very uneven, with more mistakes than either of the Friday sets, but on balance still pretty good.

What is it about Saturday shows that they always seem more crowded than other nights? Friday and Saturday were both sold-out (as is tonight’s) but it felt like there were a thousand more people packed into the place. That then usually leads to more people wandering about during the first set trying to find a decent place to dance and watch, which leads to a more diffused crowd energy in general. That was certainly the case in our little corner of the world during the first half of the first set, but by “Brown-Eyed Women” and “Hell in a Bucket”—not coincidentally two of the best songs of the set—people seemed to finally find their spots and focus on the music more, and it was smooth sailing around us the whole second set.

The jam opening Night Two, Set Two was tremendous and, I thought, had “Help on the Way” written all over it. You know how, as a fan, you lock into an idea about where a jam is going and you start to intuit how they’re going to get to a song from the jam? Well, in my twisted brain I could see exactly how this was going to fall into the majestic opening riff of “Help on the Way”! But I was completely wrong! What followed was one of those earthquake-inducing explosions into “Shakedown,” and you’re sure as hell not gonna hear me bitchin’ about that! It was phat and phunky, nicely sung by JK, with expansive jams between the second and third verse, and of course after the final verse. That eventually found its way to the ominous rumble of “New Speedway Boogie” (with more traded verses) which I thought was one of the best numbers of the night. I especially dug the jam after it when John switched on his octave divider and uncorked this deep but piercing line—good stuff!

But that tune was topped by the magnificent “China Cat”> “I Know You Rider” that followed. This one totally delivered the goods, going to all the places you want it to go, and then some. The jam between the two songs was a marvel, with John and Bob interlocking effortlessly on the unison passages, and in “I Know You Rider,” Jeff shined on a long passage before handing the solo to John, who leaped in with metaphorical guns blazing and took it higher still.

Sheesh, after that opening quartet of songs, I was sated and practically ready to call it a night. The group had other ideas, however! It started with “Playing in the Band,” always a pleasure, and well-performed, though it didn’t really go “deep” before it veered off into a lovely version of “Eyes” (with shared vocals). Again, Jeff had a wonderful solo passage (this tune lets him get his jazz on), and John’s playing was filled with imaginative flourishes.

A rare stop between tunes and then bubbling up out of the ether came “Unbroken Chain,” which has been so solid in recent years. I couldn’t really hear Phil’s lead vocal for some reason, but the playing was superb, the middle jam really taking off and flying away before eventually coming back to the song. Very nice. And then… I got my “Help on the Way”! Yay! Maybe I wasn’t crazy when I “heard” it earlier. Anyway, I was a happy man and I dug this version a lot, but things really got hot when (after a minor stumble) they flipped the switch on “Slipknot!” Here’s something I observed: Right as “Slipknot!” was getting started, Phil leaned over to the drummers and gave them a signal to kick it up a notch, and man, they did! Which brings me to a slight digression—I hadn’t been noticing the drummers as much Saturday as Friday. It could have been a sound issue, but methinks that they were playing less intensely Saturday, too, so it was great to see them really get into the “Slipknot!” with gusto. There were some transitional problems getting out of this particular “knot,” but then the “Franklin’s” closer was really action-packed; the last group of solos was particularly amazing.

You just knew what the encore would be, but that’s cool… it’s Saturday night! And it was a rockin’ version from the first notes all the way through the false-ending (!) followed by another round of “Hey, another a Saturday night…”

Finally, some props to the lighting designer—Groove by name; he works with RatDog. I’ve really enjoyed the subtle, slowly shifting shapes that are projected on the screen (everything from things that look like bubbles, to discs and other things) and the way what’s on the screen is offset by the colored stage lighting. It’s surprisingly psychedelic, without looking like a ’60s light show. (Though at points it reminded me of some of the more abstract moments of the old Joshua Light Show at the Fillmore East…. That’s good). And I really liked it when these slowly rotating pinwheel designs were projected above the proscenium, which is covered with incredibly intricate designs. Gorgeous!

Two down, one to go!

7/19/09, Fox Theatre, Oakland
Jam> Bertha> Good Lovin', Estimated Prophet, Friend of the Devil, Feel Like A Stranger, Brown-Eyed Women, Hell in a Bucket

Shakedown street> New Speedway Boogie> China Cat Sunflower> I Know You Rider>
Eyes of the World, Unbroken Chain, Help on the Way > Slipknot!” > Franklin’s Tower / One More Saturday Night

Furthur Rocks the Fox, Night One

frogstorm — Sat, 19 Sep 2009 18:31:31 -0500

I was as surprised as everyone else when these gigs by a new entity known as Furthur suddenly materialized a couple of months ago, with no warning. After all, Phil’s camp had been talking about him possibly taking the rest of the year off, and Bob was about to hit the road again with RatDog. And why was there a new band at all, when everyone was seemingly so pleased with the spring Dead tour? Where were Mickey and Bill? Too many questions, Grasshopper. Things change. Go with the flow…

OK, I can do that—and what better place to do it than at the newly restored Fox Theater in Oakland? The Fox, built in 1928, had been in crumbling disrepair literally for decades—a once grand showplace that had become another eyesore in a neighborhood that was in steep decline. But a miraculous thing happened: former Oakland mayor Jerry Brown committed to redeveloping the area around the Fox so the city built hundreds of new housing units in the vicinity, and then, over the last few years, the theater itself finally got a multimillion dollar makeover. The new Fox, which opened earlier this year is now a truly stunning venue—sort of like a cross between it’s beautiful art deco neighbor a few blocks north—the Paramount Theater—and San Francisco’s Warfield (which was also once part of the Fox chain) across the bay. Like the Warfield, it has a tiered general admission downstairs, but it’s wider and deeper; same with the mezzanine and balcony, which have plush, comfortable seats beneath the intricately patterned deco ceiling that is lit in a steely blue tint at all times. Capacity is around 3,500, considerably larger than the Warfield. On either side of the stage, out a-ways on the side walls, are massive gold-painted statues of these weird, slightly angry-looking idols sitting cross-legged in front of what look a little like drums, their eyes beaming white light—we joked that it was Mickey and Bill looking down on the proceedings. It’s a weird touch—like something out of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom—but very cool. I had been there once before, to see the Allman Brothers a few months back, and though I didn’t think the sound was great for that show, I certainly loved the venue—and its proximity to my house, which is less than ten minutes away, on the other side of Lake Merritt.

Now, I didn’t really know what to expect musically going into these shows. I had seen Dark Star Orchestra just once, at the Fillmore a year or so ago, and though I was certainly impressed with the skill of all the players—particularly lead guitarist John Kadlecik—I wasn’t knocked out by the whole presentation, for some reason. It seemed a bit too much like an amazing simulation of what the Dead sounded like, but lacking in that feeling of transmission that was so much a part of the Dead’s thing—I mean, when Jerry played, you were hearing his soul and spirit and skill and everything in him that had led him to that moment. Hearing a good approximation of that is just that—a good approximation. And since Jerry’s demise, I think all of us have debated how much we want the guy who is filling the guitar slot in whatever post-GD band we were watching to sound like Jerry (knowing that he will never fully measure up to him), versus having his own style and approach to soloing.

Really, a lot of the evolution of Phil & Friends has been an experiment in finding what sorts of styles and timbres work with this incredible body of work that is the Grateful Dead repertoire. Some felt, for instance, that the classic PLQ, with Herring and Haynes, achieved its magical alchemy because neither player was based in the Dead tradition, so the repertoire went in some really fascinating and unexpected directions. But for every fan who loved the sheer unpredictability of that band, there were others who never had their Garcia Jones satisfied—who missed his melodic brilliance, the logic of his solos, the way he constructed his lines, etc. What’s interesting about Herring is that he took on more of Garcia’s playing personality as the years went on, and the same could be said of Haynes, if you’re comparing his work in the 2004 Dead and the 2009 Dead. One reason I always liked Barry Sless playing with Phil’s band is he was clearly from what I would call the “Garcia School,” but he still had a distinctive style. I think the same could be said for RatDog’s Mark Karan, who clearly “gets” Jerry, but also draws from so many more influences. (Steve Kimock, from those early P&F lineups—and the first Other Ones tour—is an example of a guy who seemed to have internalized a certain approach to playing that was reminiscent of Garcia at times.)

Which is all a long-winded way of saying I wasn’t sure if having the “Jerry” from a Dead cover band—John Kadlecik—would work. Would he just parrot this Jerry solo from ’77 or this one from ’69, as if he was reproducing some classic show with DSO. And what of the drummers? I’d never heard of Joe Russo, and I wondered if Jay Lane of RatDog—a band occasionally weighed down by sluggish tempos—would add the necessary rhythmic spark that Mickey clearly does. But hey, let’s keep an open mind… and I did. Our little group landed a great spot on the first tier, right behind some old friends who are serious DSO partisans. They were way psyched, as you can imagine, and their enthusiasm rubbed off on me.

In an interesting move, the opening jam this time ’round was a duet played by just Bob and Phil as the other members of the group watched—a neat touch, I thought. It sort of felt to me like they were re-connecting musically, asserting themselves at the leaders of the band (true), offering a little prologue to the proceedings. I heard some definite “Wheel” teases, and the jamlet went to some other interesting spaces, as well, but it was quite a surprise to me when the duet then exploded into a full-band version of “The Other One.” Oh, I see—these guys aren’t messing around! Although that was quickly replaced with an unfounded paranoid concern by yours truly: During the first few minutes the band was getting into the “Other One” jam, John was so tentative—really barely playing anything at all—that I had this worried flash: “Oh shit, he’s the wrong guy. He can’t keep up. His playbook of thousands of Dead shows stored in his brain has shorted out and he has no idea what he’s doing. Why did I get tickets for all three nights?” (Hey, I’m just bein’ honest here!)

Needless to say, after Bob sang the first verse and the jam picked up again, this time John was right on it, carefully building his solo, darting in and out of Phil’s bass punctuation and the slashing chords Bob was laying down. Behind him, the dreadlocked Jay Lane was hurling himself around the semi-circle of drums and percussion instruments before him, sometimes using just one stick while hitting other drums and cymbals with his hand, or using a shaker in one hand, a stick in the other. (Jay also offered vocal support on many songs; usually not that distinguishable, but always on-pitch!) It took me a while to figure out exactly what Joe Russo was adding on his traps set, but soon it became clear that he was in the steadier Kreutzmann role to Jay’s more Mickey-esque ornamentation. Together they worked up a solid beat behind the front line—the music never dragged at all, the tempos seemed brisk.

In general there was an appealing airiness to the arrangements that leant a real feeling of clarity to everything they played. I’m going to take a moment here to also praise keys man Jeff Chimenti (you know I’m a huge fan)—although in all honesty I could not hear him that well where I was, dead-even with John on the right side facing the stage. (I had the same problem with the stereo spread at the Allmans show I saw there. I sure hope that folks on the left side could hear John’s guitar OK; it was crystalline and loud where I was. But I wanted more keyboard in my mix.) Anyway, Jeff continues play with great sensitivity and power, when called upon.

“The Other One” got better and better as it went along and John settled in more—he started using more different tones as he’d expand his solos, and you could just sort of feel him warming to the whole proposition. (When I talked to my DSO buddies at the break and said that I thought John seemed nervous at first, they dismissed that completely—“No way!” I say, the guy has never played a concert with Bob and Phil in a new band before a true Dead crowd—not a DSO crowd; plenty of reason for nerves.) Following “The Other One,” the teased “Wheel” came rolling out and it was a good ’un that had everyone smiling and singing along. “Jack Straw” came next and that marked one of the first songs where John “went off” (as they say)—the jam in the middle was electric and he definitely brought his own flair and ideas to it. Phil was positively beaming (as he was often last night) and Bob was at his inventive best.

When “The Music Never Stopped” reared its head, I was wondering if we were going to get a Bob Weir’s Greatest Hits show—three of his best in the first four songs! This one was well done, too (OK, I think there might have been a couple of minor blips in there—John has to learn that Bob’s cues do not always make logical sense, but are rather subject to his whim of the moment, for both better and worse). The long jam before the final instrumental coda was one of the best of the night, with John really asserting himself in ways he hadn’t before, and taking some bold chances with tonalities and solo construction. I was really impressed!

That tune then flowed into a “Bird Song” jam, followed by the song itself. And that’s when a cool thing that happened: When John stepped up to the microphone to sing the first verse (his first lead vocal of the night), there was a great roar from the crowd that must have made him feel really good—“Yes, you are among friends; we’re with you, Mr. K!” Next came another highlight—“Born Cross-Eyed” done just about perfectly, John providing the essential guitar screams, ’68-style, before the verses. See, this is where it’s great that we’ve got a Dead-savvy player in the guitar slot—he knows the elements that should be there and he clearly has no trouble accessing them.

The first set ended with a killer “Let It Grow” that traveled miles away from the song’s usual course on the final jam, and ended up… jeez, I have no idea, really…before the concluding flutter of butterflies or birds or whatever it conjures in your mind magically materialized to bring the curtain down on the set (figuratively). Wow, quite a start. What a song list!

Set two wasted no time in getting right into “Lost Sailor” and “Saint of Circumstance,” two more of my favorite Bob tunes. It had been a while since I’d heard this played by anyone (actually, as fate would, the last time I heard it live was by DSO!), so I was thrilled, and it was a fine version, especially the “Saint.” The familiar opening of “Althea” came bubbling up after, and I wondered who would sing it, since Bob, Phil and John all tackle it in their respective bands. And the nod goes to… John! He acquitted himself very well on the song (again, the roar when he started singing!)—I give him extra points for sticking to Jerry’s impeccable phrasing and for not trying to blatantly imitate him. That said, his is not a particularly strong or memorable voice, and he lacks the authority and gravitas that someone like Warren Haynes brings so naturally to Jerry’s songs. (Needless to say, YMMV). But sincerity goes far in my book, and he’s got that for sure. The jam toward the end of “Althea” provided another highlight—smokin’!

“Scarlet” > “Fire” continued the Cavalcade of Great Song Choices, and it was pretty much a dream version, with John singing lead on both and nailing every solo—he was in full flower there, for sure. Here’s yet another example where its neat to have a guy who knows the Dead vocabulary so well: After the final vocals on the chorus—“Fire … Fire on the Mountain”—John launched into a note-perfect re-creation of that wonderful ’77-’78 Jerry line (which JG played only sporadically later)… heavenly!

Seems like every show I go to features “Saint Stephen”—not that I’m complainin’! It was big and beefy and the middle jam was masterfully constructed, then moved away from the song, then coalesced again on cue. The jam that came immediately after “What would be the answer to the answer man” was clearly pre-arranged, as they instantly switched gears and went into a different key and tempo which, it became obvious after a certain point, was still going to move us eventually to “The Eleven.” (John missed the first cue going into that jam, but quickly recovered and then sent it soaring.). There was a very brief “Foxy Lady” quotation after “The Eleven” concluded (not nearly as pronounced as the versions by The Dead with Warren in the spring), but mostly the jam went other places before ending up at “Terrapin,” where the "Lady with a Fan" section was sung by John and the "Inspiration..." part by Bob; it was all very heart-felt and well-played, especially the ending cascade.

John did some really interesting things during his solos on the concluding “Not Fade Away”—some great tonal shifts and jagged flurries followed by sustained notes. It was a short but hot version. A nice way to end a pretty awesome set.

The encore, “Touch of Gray,” was steady and sparkling, rising to the anthemic heights as you’d expect. I loved the way Phil, Bob and John all sang the “Oh, well, a touch of Gray” couplet together. Beautiful.

All in all, quite an impressive debut. A couple of minor fender-benders here and there, a few missed cues and blown words—nothin’ out of the ordinary or too serious. There were a number of times I wished John was a little less leisurely in building his solos and would instead just dive in and go for it; sometimes the energy dragged a bit as he went through his meticulous constructions (he was rather reminiscent of Steve Kimock in that regard). In fairness, though, there was always a big payoff at the end of his slow escalations. But he’ll undoubtedly become more self-assured with each show, and the band as a whole will get more comfortable. And I loved the youthful energy that John, Jay and Joe brought to the evening. (Why, they could almost keep up with Phil!)

I guess the ultimate question you want to know is, does having a true “Jerry” stylist in that slot make this group sound more like Grateful Dead than, say, The Dead? Yep. Whether that’s a good thing or not is for you to decide. Personally, I dug it a lot more than I thought I would.

The set list:

9/18/09, Fox Theatre, Oakland
Bob and Phil jam > The Other One > The Wheel > Jack Straw, The Music Never Stopped> Bird Song> Born Cross-Eyed> Let It Grow

Lost Sailor > Saint of Circumstance, Althea, Scarlet begonias > Fire on the Mountain, Saint Stephen> The Eleven> jam > Terrapin> Not Fade Away / Touch of Gray

September 21 - September 27, 2009

ccasal — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 20:18:45 -0500

This week, the Tapers' Section is the place for you if you like Grateful Dead music from September 1972, which we expect you do. If not, you're welcome to come along for the ride and we're sure you'll hear something you dig.

Our first selection this week is from 9/21/72 in Philadelphia, music that is part of the final Pick of the Dick's Picks series, Vol. 36. We have a couple of the mid-sized jams from that show, Playing In The Band, He's Gone>Truckin. When this second jam didn't go into a monstrous Other One, where a He's Gone>Truckin' of the era usually went, you knew something was in store for later, and the Dark Star>Dew that came later sure proves that true.

Our next selection from 9/23/72 in Waterbury, CT, is a cool little sequence featuring a couple of rarities. The music, Baby Blue, Cryptical Envelopment>Drums>The Other One>Wharf Rat, features one of only three versions of Baby Blue played between 1970 and 1981 (the others were on 9/26/72 in Jersey City and 2/24/74 at Winterland), and the only Cryptical of 1972, and the final version until its return in 1985. As you know, we like to play not only historical anomalies here, but we try to give you as much historical background on these anomalies as we can. If you'd ever like clarification on any of our selections, feel free to write to the email address under my name, below.

Our final selection this week is also from Waterbury, CT, on 9/24/72, and features a bit of a unique sequence, Dark Star>China Cat Sunflower>I Know You Rider. There's a cut on the master reels at the end of the jam, so our apologies for that. But, the part that IS there sure is good.

Please stop by again next week, when we'll have loads of music from 1976, plus a little taste of 1989. Email address below, which you're encouraged to write to with questions or comments.

David Lemieux
vault@dead.net

Grateful Dead Hour no.340

ccasal — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 10:58:37 -0500

Week of March 27, 1995

I was on my way out to Salt Lake City last month when I hit a little detour. All is well now - I am on my way to a full recovery! And I can't wait to reschedule my trip to Utah; Zion, Capitol Reef, Canyonlands, and all the roads and rocks in between!

I was bringing a copy of this week's show along for my host in Salt Lake. The GD played Bob Weir's song "Salt Lake City" for the first and last time in that town on 2/21/95. There were some other interesting moments in the show, excerpted here.

"Salt Lake City," written by Weir and John Barlow, appeared on Bobby's 1978 solo album Heaven Help the Fool; I included the title track and Bob's fine cover of Lowell George's "Easy to Slip" in the show, too.

Enjoy!

Grateful Dead 2/21/95 Delta Center, Salt Lake City
SALT LAKE CITY
TRUCKIN' JAM->
I JUST WANT TO MAKE LOVE TO YOU

Bob Weir, Heaven Help the Fool
HEAVEN HELP THE FOOL

Grateful Dead 2/21/95 Delta Center, Salt Lake City
JAM->
VISIONS OF JOHANNA

Bob Weir, Heaven Help the Fool
EASY TO SLIP

Thanks for listening!
David Gans

Listen Now

September 14 - September 20, 2009

ccasal — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 10:38:31 -0500

As we roll through the middle of September here at the Tapers' Section, we have some excellent music from 1972 and 1990 for you.

As we may have mentioned previously here at the Tapers' Section, the Grateful Dead were scheduled to perform two concerts at the Saratoga Performing Arts Center in upstate New York on September 15 and 16, 1972. However, local authorities, worried about the large rock and roll crowd that would swarm their little hamlet, prevented the shows from happening, and it would be more than a decade before the band was finally allowed to play this super cool little amphitheatre. Luckily, the band had enough time to reschedule the shows, and booked two nights at the Boston Music Hall, and from the first night, on 9/15/72, we have Promised Land, Sugaree, Greatest Story Ever Told, China Cat Sunflower>I Know You Rider, Black Throated Wind. This is a magnificent tour, and there really isn't much not to like about 1972 Grateful Dead.

From the second show in Boston, on 9/16/72, we have more great material, featuring Big River, Bird Song, Mexicali Blues, Stella Blue, Jack Straw, Big Railroad Blues, Playing In The Band. Stunning stuff throughout.

From the very next night, on 9/17/72 in beautiful Charm City, USA, Baltimore, MD, we have the centerpiece of the second set, one of the finest and most intricately dynamic versions of The Other One ever performed, clocking in at nearly 40 minutes. This is part of Dick's Picks Vol. 23, a typically hot September, 1972 concert.

Lastly this week, from Madison Square Garden on 9/18/90, featuring the two keyboardist lineup of Vince and Bruce, we have second set music consisting of Eyes of the World>Estimated Prophet>Foolish Heart>Jam. This was part of the Bonus CD that was included with Road Trips Vol. 2 No. 1, so if you missed out on that, here it is. Plenty of stunning music on that release.

Be sure to stop by next week as head toward the end of September with music from the September 1972 tour that was featured so prominently this week. See you then, and in the meantime, feel free to write with questions or comments about the Tapers' Section to the address below.

David Lemieux
vault@dead.net

SIRIUS/XM Grateful Dead Channel Seeking Student Interns

frogstorm — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 00:08:24 -0500

If you are a student (or know one) who might be interested in an internship with Sirius/XM Radio's Grateful Dead and JamOn channels, recruitment is now underway!

Requirements for internship:

Must be at least 18 years old. Must be enrolled in a college or university and be receiving academic credit for the internship (all internships are UNPAID). Must work a minimum of 20 hours per week; no more than 40.

SIRIUS XM Radio Music Programming Interns receive hands-on experience with the day-to-day operations needed to successfully program a radio station. Interns are asked to load, edit and properly mark intros and cross fades on all audio in automation system (Nex Gen Prophet/Dalet). Segue talent voice breaks; monitor audio levels and report issues. Gain an understanding of music scheduling software (Music Master/Powergold) and assist with database maintenance; adding music and non-music elements into rotation, research back-fill information (label, composer, etc.), if not supplied. Review various types of audio and isolate pieces for on-air use through Adobe Audition; listener phone calls, artist interviews, liners, or IDs. Assist with maintenance of CD Music Library; includes database up-keep, labeling and filing new music CDs, interviews and live performances. Other responsibilities are included.

Specifically, the Grateful Dead/Jam On intern must be available on Sunday afternoons to assist with the broadcast of our live talk show, “Tales from the Golden Road,” and would have a working knowledge of the music and culture of the Grateful Dead.

Please contact jamon@siriusxm.com with your resume details with FALL INTERNSHIP in the subject line so we can easily spot your email.

Mickey Hart Performs at Walter Cronkite Tribute

frogstorm — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 15:18:03 -0500

Last night (September 9, 2009), Mickey Hart performed in the Walter Cronkite Tribute at Lincoln Center. Hart first performed with Jimmy Buffett and then with Zakir Hussain and Sikiru Adepoju. Hart, Hussain and Adepoju (3/4 of The Global Drum Project) were also joined by saxophonist Paul Winter.

Hart reminisced about drumming with Walter . Walter turned and asked, "Mickey when do we know we have the groove?" Mickey replied, "Walter you'll know." A short time later, Cronkite exclaimed, "Mickey, I got it!"

Check out the links below for more details about the tribute:

Click to see the entire performance on YouTube.

Read about it on CNN.com

Read about it at the NY TIMES site.

Read about it at WashingtonPost.com.

September 7 - September 13, 2009

ccasal — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 15:12:25 -0500

Greetings, and welcome back to the Tapers' Section, where this week we have loads of great music from 1974, 1982 and 1990.

Our first selection this week is from the Alexandra Palace in London, England on 9/9/74, a show that started the short but excellent European tour of 1974. This would be the final tour by the Grateful Dead until June of 1976, and the music was not only outstanding, but the tapes sounded great as well. Kudos to Kidd on his recording. From this show, we have Truckin>Jam>Wharf Rat, all played so well. this is part of the amazing dick's picks vol. 7, one of my favourites of the entire series of 36 picks.

Next we'll stop in to the second show on the fall tour of 1982, on 9/11/82 in West Palm Beach, FL, a show that took place on Mickey's 39th birthday. Happy birthday, Mickey! From this show, we have the start of the second set, which included Scarlet Begonias>Fire On The Mountain>Lost Sailor>Saint of Circumstance>Terrapin Station. This a very good tour, with some extremely inspired playing at a few of the shows.

We'll now take a listen to Vince Welnick's first-ever concert as the keyboardist and vocalist for the Grateful Dead, which took place on 9/7/90 at the Richfield Coliseum near Cleveland. Nobody in attendance knew what to expect, as not much was known of Vince, although anticipation was extremely high. From the beginning, from the first song, he fit in nicely, and although there were some growing pains, he filled in the hot seat nicely. Brent was very well-loved and missed by all, but the show must go on. We're pleased to play the entire first set from 9/7/90, featuring Cold Rain and Snow>Walkin' Blues, Ramble On Rose, Me and My Uncle>Big River, Althea, Masterpiece, Bird Song, Picasso Moon, US Blues. Midway through Cold Rain and Snow, Vince drops a little organ flourish, his first really audible moment as a member of the Grateful Dead, and the crowd welcomes him to the family with a giant roar of approval.

Lastly this week, we have the start of the second set of Vince's second show, on 9/8/90 in Richfield, featuring Eyes of the World>Estimated Prophet>Terrapin Station>Jam. Again, Vince fit right in from that start. Plenty more good music would follow in the near future, with four of the six Madison Square Garden shows a week later already represented by official releases (Dick's Picks Vol. 9 and Road Trips Vol. 2 No. 1).

Be sure to come back next week for more great music, with selections from 1972 and 1990 coming up in a week. As always, feel free to write with questions or comments about the Tapers Section to the email address below. Thanks for stopping by.

David Lemieux
vault@dead.net

Winterland June 1977: The Complete Recordings

frogstorm — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 11:34:50 -0500

$99.98
Winterland June 1977
The Complete Recordings

The Shows

June 7, 1977
June 8, 1977
June 9, 1977

Boxed and Ready to Go!

Sound the imperial trumpets! Bang the drum! Pop that champagne! Another Grateful Dead box set is comin’ your way! Yes, in the grand tradition of the beloved Fillmore West 1969 and Winterland 1973 boxes, comes Winterland June 1977: The Complete Recordings, a 9-CD box set that is sure to knock your tie-dyed socks off.

At this point, we probably don’t need to hype you on the glories of ’77 Dead. It was a magical time for the band, which was reinvigorated by a plethora of great new material—“Terrapin,” “Estimated Prophet,” “Passenger,” “Fire on the Mountain”—and really hitting its stride again following the October ’74 to June ’76 performing hiatus. The group spent much of the first three months of 1977 recording their Terrapin Station album with producer Keith Olsen, and Garcia also managed to find time to complete the much-anticipated Grateful Dead movie (which opened June 1, 1977). The third week of April, the band embarked on what most Dead Heads agree was one of the greatest tours ever: 26 concerts in the East and Midwest in a little over a month—an awesome stretch that produced so many great shows, a few of them already released in the Dick’s Picks series and subsequently (and more, no doubt, destined to come out down the road.)

So when the Dead returned to San Francisco’s Winterland for shows on June 7, 8, 9, they were pumped up and feeling good! They treated their hometown fans to three superb concerts that included excellent versions of much of their current repertoire, from the new combo of “Scarlet Begonias” > “Fire on the Mountain,” to a truly colossal, more than 30-minute “Help on the Way” > “Slipknot!” > “Franklin’s Tower,” “Saint Stephen,” “Terrapin,” “Good Lovin’,” “Not Fade Away,” “The Other One”… too many favorites to mention (you can see the complete song lists here). Winterland June 1977: The Complete Recordings contains every note recorded from the three shows, more than nine hours of prime Dead, all taken from the master analog tapes, restored using the Plangent Processes, and mastered in HDCD by that inimitable sonic tweakster, Jeffrey Norman.

The nine discs are packaged in a beautifully designed box that includes artwork by Emek (you loved his crazy Winterland ’73 phantasmagoria); a 28-page booklet featuring a wonderful and illuminating new essay by Rolling Stone senior music editor David Fricke (who dubs this a “box of paradise and circus… six complete sets of inspired risk and collective explosion”); lots of great Winterland action shots by noted GD shutterbugs Ed Perlstein and Bruce Polonsky; and a couple of little pieces of period memorabilia we won’t reveal here.

So why wait? Order your copy of the Box’n’Bonus today by clicking here. We know you’re gonna dig it! And rest assured, there’s plenty more where this came from: We know you love the box sets; well, we do, too!

—Blair Jackson

Grateful Dead Hour no.1089

ccasal — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 14:43:14 -0500

Week of August 3, 2009

The conclusion of an exclusive performance by Ratdog lead guitarist Mark Karan's other band, Jemimah Puddleduck, recorded June 30, 2009 at keyboardist JT Thomas's studio in southern California.

Jemimah Puddleduck exclusive studio concert 6/30/09
HALLELUJAH I LOVE HER SO
BAIT THE HOOK
WALK THROUGH THE FIRE
DON'T LET GO
MEMPHIS RADIO
OUT IN THE WOODS
I THINK IT'S GONNA RAIN TODAY
FOOLS IN LOVE

Thank you for listening!
- David Gans

Listen Now

Grateful Dead Hour no.1088

ccasal — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 14:30:41 -0500

Week of July 27, 2009

A recent show, featuring an interview with Ratdog guitarist Mark Karan and tracks from his new solo CD Walk Through the Fire, followed by part 1 of an exclusive performance by Mark's band Jemimah Puddleduck recorded June 30, 2009 at keyboardist JT Thomas's studio in southern California.

Mark Karan, Walk Through the Fire
ROCK YOUR PAPA
LOVE IN VAIN
LOVE SONG
LEAVE A LIGHT ON
TIME WILL TELL

Jemimah Puddleduck exclusive studio concert 6/30/09
EASY WIND
ANNIE DON'T LIE

Thank you for listening!
- David Gans

Listen Now

August 31 - September 6, 2009

ccasal — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 20:25:58 -0500

Welcome back to the Tapers' Section as we end out August and start September with music from 1969, 1977 and 1980.

Our first selection this week is a bit of a straggler from last week based on its date, and features a bit of an odd ending to an otherwise typical jam from 1969, specifically Dark Star>St. Stephen>The Eleven>Drums>High Time. This is from 8/30/69 at the Family Dog at the Great Highway in San Francisco, where they always seemed to play something a bit unique when they played at Chet's venue. See last week's selection for further proof.

Next up is music from the famous Englishtown, NJ, show on 9/3/77, enshrined as the wonderful Dick's Picks Vol. 15. From the end of the concert, we have He's Gone>NFA>Truckin', Terrapin Station, each and every one of which are played superbly. This was the first Grateful Dead concert since 6/9/77, and to return after three months off, with a fresh new album in the can (Terrapin Station) and playing in front of 100,000 New York City area fans obviously pumped the band up. A truly remarkable show.

We'll now head down to the Capital Center in Landover, MD on 8/31/80, where the Grateful Dead were in the midst of a terrific late-summer tour, which included many outstanding concerts. From the Cap Center, we have the end of the first set, featuring Tennessee Jed, Far From Me, Lazy Lightning>Supplication, Deal. They came out playing hard at this show, and never really let up. One of the band members once asked the vault for a copy of Lazy Lightning>Supplication, and when he was played this version, asked “didn't we used to play it a bit slower than this?” He was then played a 1977 version and said “ah, that's the one.”

Also from this tour, on 9/2/80 in Rochester, NY, we have the end of the concert, featuring Space>Iko Iko>Morning Dew>Sugar Magnolia, which is included as part of Dick's Picks 21, the only 1985 Dick's Pick.

Be sure to stop by next week for music from 1974, 1982 and 1990, including music from Vince Welnick's first concerts as a member of the Grateful Dead.

David Lemieux
vault@dead.net

Rex Foundation: Black Tie Ball with Dark Star Orchestra

frogstorm — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 22:51:47 -0500

The Rex Foundation presented the first Black Tie-Dye Ball in Chicago in March 2004 with Dark Star Orchestra. Since then, there have been Black Tie-Dye Balls in New York City, Washington, D.C., Denver, Colorado, Los Angeles and San Francisco. These festive occasions provide the opportunity to collaborate with gifted performers that care about the Rex Foundation.

On September 25th enjoy a unique musical experience, while also celebrating the Portland area’s talent, enterprise and community spirit. Proceeds help support local area non-profit programs.

The September 25th Black Tie-Dye Ball also helps celebrate the 3rd month-long DSO Rex Caravan Tour, where every show along the way includes $1 per ticket as a contribution to the Rex Foundation.

Friday, September 25, 2009
Crystal Ballroom
1332 W. Burnside
Portland, OR 97209
503-225-0047

6:00 – 7:30 pm Drinks, Food & Reception with Artists in Lola’s Room

(For Ages 21 and Over)

7:00 pm General Admission Doors open

8:00pm Show

(All Ages)

Enjoy a pre-concert, festive party in Lola’s Room, mingling with the artists and other kindred spirits, as well as first access to the Ballroom to enjoy the concert.

RECEPTION and CONCERT TICKETS

(all but $70 is tax-deductible)

American Beauty $200
The party with food & drinks, a goody bag, plus special roped off area stage left for concert + collectible poster

Scarlet Begonia $100
The party with food & drinks, a goody bag, plus first entry into Ballroom

Reception Upgrade
For those who have previously purchased concert tickets. $75 for Scarlet Begonia tickets & $175 American Beauty tickets.

To order Reception and Concert Tickets call 415-561-3135 or download the Ticket Order Form with this link and fax to 415-561-3136, or mail to Rex Foundation, P.O. Box 29608, San Francisco, CA 94129-0608 with your order.

CONCERT TICKETS ONLY: $26 in advance available online or through Ticketmaster.

Call Ticketmaster: 1-800-745-3000
Online: Click here to order online through Ticketmaster
In Person: Tickets available at the Crystal Ballroom and the Aladdin Theater

Bob Weir to Play Benefit for Blue Bear School of Music

frogstorm — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 21:05:29 -0500

The Blue Bear School of Music has announced a special benefit concert on September 12 at the intimate Throckmorton Theatre in Mill Valley. Headlining the show is Scaring the Children, featuring Bob Weir, Rob Wasserman on bass, and Blue Bear alumnus Jay Lane on drums. The event will also feature special guest Jackie Greene and others.

Proceeds will help Blue Bear School of Music continue to develop and deliver innovative music education programs serving students throughout the San Francisco Bay Area.

Scaring the Children
Featuring Bob Weir,
Rob Wasserman, Jay Lane
With Special Guest Appearances by
Jackie Greene and Others

Saturday, September 12, 2009
Throckmorton Theatre
142 Throckmorton Ave. in Mill Valley, CA

VIP Pre-show Reception at 6:45pm
Doors: 7:30pm • Show: 8:00pm

Proceeds support Blue Bear School of Music

General Admission Tickets: $50
VIP Tickets: $100

Click here to buy Tickets Online or by call 415-673-3600 during business hours, and save on any service charges.

For more info on the Blue Bear School of Music, click here to visit the official site at www.bluebearmusic.org

Grateful Dead Hour no.171

ccasal — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 14:57:50 -0500

Week of December 30, 1991

More from the 8/16/91 show at Shoreline, plus a feature on the rockabilly classic "Don't Let Go."

This was the seven-man GD, with Bruce Hornsby on grand piano and Vince Welnick on various other keyboards. As the band took off into the "Scarlet Begonias" jam to open set 2, Hornsby began to insinuate melodic bits of "Victim or the Crime" and led the charge into that song. Exciting stuff.

Enjoy!

Grateful Dead 8/16/91 Shoreline Amphitheatre, Mtn View CA
SCARLET BEGONIAS->
VICTIM OR THE CRIME->
FIRE ON THE MOUNTAIN

Elvis Costello, from Deadicated
SHIP OF FOOLS

Jerry Garcia & Scott Muni, Jerry Garcia Band, Roy Hamilton, Commander Cody & His Lost Planet Airmen
DON'T LET GO

Thanks for listening!
David Gans

Listen Now

August 24 - August 30, 2009

ccasal — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 20:19:57 -0500

Welcome back to the Tapers' Section as we make our way toward the end of August, 2009, with plenty of great music coming along for the ride, with selections this week from 1969, 1972 and 1980.

Our first stop this week is at the Family Dog at the Great Highway in San Francisco on 8/29/69, featuring one of the odder groupings of songs from 1969, consisting of New Orleans>Searchin'>Good Lovin', Dire Wolf, King Bee, Lovelight. The first two songs in the jam were quite rare, and ending with a Pigpen twofer like this not common either, so plenty of neat stuff to enjoy here.

Next up, from 8/25/72 at Berkeley Community Theatre, we have music from both the first set and second set. From the former we have Jack Straw, FOTD, Promised Land, Bird Song, Playing, Bertha and from the latter we have Truckin'>Jam>Bass>Other One>Jam. This was the last show before the big Veneta, Oregon event on 8/27/72, and this show was a pretty darn good warm-up, as was the whole week at BCT.

Lastly this week, from Pine Knob Music Theatre just outside of Detroit on 8/27/80, we have the end of the first set, featuring Althea, Looks Like Rain, Big RR Blues, Feel Like A Stranger.

Be sure to stop back in next week when we roll (into the semis…) into September with some music from 1969, 1977 and more of the excellent 1980 music you heard in our last selection this week. Feel free to write with questions or comments about the Tapers' Section to the email address below

David Lemieux
vault@dead.net

Tune In To Our Great 'Golden Road' Moments

lilgoldie — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 19:17:34 -0500

Our friends at Sirius XM have kindly provided some clips from their roundtable discussion program, Tales From The Golden Road, featuring expert hosts David Gans and Gary Lambert.

Click here to listen in.

Grateful Dead Hour no.163

ccasal — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 13:45:42 -0500

Week of November 4, 1991

By request, the first of two programs featuring highlights of an excellent show recorded 8/16/91 at Shoreline. The first includes a first-set Dark Star! Most unusual for the time. Next week's post will include another very cool musical moment form this show.

Also included here is a "short edit" of "Deal" from the eponymous 1991 double live album by the Jerry Garcia Band.

Enjoy!

Grateful Dead 8/16/91 Shoreline Amphitheatre, Mtn View CA
JACK STRAW->
BERTHA
IT'S ALL OVER NOW

Jerry Garcia Band promotional CD single
DEAL (Short Edit)

Grateful Dead 8/16/91 Shoreline Amphitheatre, Mtn View CA
DESOLATION ROW
DARK STAR->
PROMISED LAND

Thank you for listening!
- David Gans

Listen Now

August 17- August 23, 2009

ccasal — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 11:42:40 -0500

Welcome back to the Tapers' Section, where we examine the Grateful Dead's recorded history. This week we have music from 1968 and some excellent June, 1990 Grateful Dead.

First stop this week is at the Fillmore West in San Francisco, where the Grateful Dead were playing a three night run. From the middle night, 8/21/68, we have the Pigpen show closing sequence of Lovelight, Midnight Hour. You may be familiar with the 8/24/68 show in LA, Two From The Vault, which took place just a few days later.

Speaking of LA, from the first night on 8/23/68, we have one of the strongest jams of a great jamming year, Alligator>Caution>Feedback. Just a big old bolt of electricity. There isn't a lot of 1968 material in the vault, but what is there is stellar for the most.

We're now going to step a little bit outside of our date-specific focus here at the Tapers' Section, going back to the excellent Cal Expo shows in June of 1990. From the first night, on 6/8/90, we have this kickass (can we say that here?) sequence from the second set, Uncle John's Band>China>Rider, Estimated>Foolish Heart. Very unique, with the Uncle John's into China>Rider, and the Estimated>Foolish wasn't all that common a combination.

From the same run of shows, from the third night on 6/10/90, we have another magnificent pre-Drums sequence of Box of Rain>Eyes>Playing>Crazy Fingers>Playing. They were on fire in June of 1990!

Stop by next week as we close out August with music from 1969, 1972 and 1980. Feel free to write to the email address below with questions and comments.

david lemieux
vault@dead.net

Phil and Bob Announce September Shows

frogstorm — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 23:51:26 -0500

For FURTHUR info, click here!

SAINT MISBEHAVIN’: The Wavy Gravy Movie

frogstorm — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 16:29:28 -0500

“Saint Misbehavin’: The Wavy Gravy Movie” is a new documentary by director Michelle Esrick, revealing the true story of cultural phenomenon Wavy Gravy, a man whose commitment to making the world a better place has never wavered.

Wavy Gravy is known as the MC of the Woodstock Festival, a hippie icon, a clown and even a Ben & Jerry’s ice cream flavor. In Saint Misbehavin’ we meet a true servant to humanity, who carries his message through humor and compassion. The film weaves together intimate verite footage, reflections from an array of cultural and countercultural peers, and never-before-seen archival footage to tell a story that is bigger than the man himself.

The film features reflections on Wavy and his good works by members of the Grateful Dead, Jackson Browne, Bonnie Raitt and many other friends and associates.

Indiewire called “Saint Misbehavin’” “Perfectly executed and hugely entertaining;” Oscar-winning documentarian Michael Moore described the film as "Wonderful...a moving tribute to a man who today lives his life at the service of others. Everyone at my film festival loved this movie!"

“Saint Misbehavin’: The Wavy Gravy Movie” will be shown in week-long engagements in New York and Los Angeles beginning August 14th, as part of the “DocuWeeks” festival. In New York, the film will screen at the IFC Center; in Los Angeles, at the ArcLight Hollywood Cinemas.

For showtimes and ticket info, click on the theater links above.

August 10 - August 16, 2009

ccasal — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 15:25:07 -0500

Hello and welcome back to the Tapers’ Section, where this week we’ll tidily cover a decade of live Grateful Dead, from 1972 to 1982, with a little stop in 1979 along the way.

Our first stop this week is in Sacramento, CA, on 8/12/72, where the Grateful Dead would play one of their typically hot mid-1972 concerts (ah, heck, might as well scrap the “mid”…). From the second set, we have the big jam featuring He's Gone>The Other One>Black Peter>The Other One>Truckin', a little unique for both the split Other One (split by a Garcia ballad, that is) and the ending tune of Truckin’, which was usually a jumping off point for the big jams of 1972. Regardless, it’s still pretty darn cool.

Jumping ahead seven years plus one day, to 8/13/79 at McNichols Arena in Denver, we have the pre-Drums sequence from that mighty fine show, featuring I Need A Miracle>Bertha>Good Lovin', He's Gone>Other One. These were some of the final concerts Betty recorded, and they sure do sound great. As you may recall, the band was scheduled to play three nights at Red Rocks, but after the first show at Red Rocks, 8/12/79, the band had to move things indoors for the final two nights due to the weather.

Lastly this week, we’ll stop by the final show of the 1982 summer tour, on 8/10/82 in Iowa City, with the end of the second set, Iko Iko>Truckin'>Stella Blue>Sugar Magnolia. It’s always nice to hear these Iko Ikos out of space.

There were a few songs repeated in this week’s Tapers’ Section, but as they were within jams, we hope you don’t mind. We sure don’t.

Next week we have music from 1968 and 1990, so don’t miss it. Some great stuff coming up. We welcome and encourage your questions or comments to the Tapers’ Section, at the address below.

David Lemieux
vault@dead.net

SIRIUS XM to commemorate life and music of Jerry Garcia

frogstorm — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 11:49:05 -0500

SIRIUS XM Radio’s exclusive Grateful Dead Channel will feature
“Jerry Week” beginning on the anniversary of Jerry Garcia’s birth on August 1 Listeners to hear two never before released performances
by the Jerry Garcia Band broadcast for the first time

WHAT: SIRIUS XM’s Grateful Dead Channel will feature “Jerry Week” in honor of the legendary Grateful Dead frontman Jerry Garcia showcasing music, archival interviews, and rarely heard concerts. “Jerry Week,” a Grateful Dead Channel tradition, will launch on the anniversary of Garcia’s birthday, August 1, and will end on the anniversary of his death, August 9. The nine-day long special “week” will highlight Garcia’s music--Dead songs he sang and performed as well as songs from his various side projects, including Legion of Mary, Garcia/Grisman and Jerry Garcia Band.

As part of “Jerry Week,” listeners will hear two fan recordings of live performances by the Jerry Garcia Band that have never before been released. The two performances were recorded live in 1980 and 1990.

On August 9, listeners will hear the vigil held for Garcia four days after his death in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park, featuring tributes from Garcia’s family, bandmates and close friends.

Additionally, Garcia’s former wife and longtime companion, Carolyn “Mountain Girl” Garcia, has created a special program featuring her personal stories and memories of the legendary music icon for SIRIUS XM’s “Jerry Week”.

The Grateful Dead Channel’s regular shows, Today in Grateful Dead History and Tales From The Golden Road, will also feature programming devoted to Jerry Garcia.

WHERE: Grateful Dead Channel, SIRIUS channel 32 and XM channel 57

WHEN: Saturday, August 1 through Sunday, August 9

MORE: The Grateful Dead Channel is an exclusive channel that features music spanning the band's career with unreleased concert recordings and original shows hosted by band members Bob Weir, Mickey Hart and Bill Kreutzmann. The channel also features rare archival interviews with Jerry Garcia and contributions from Grateful Dead expert David Gans and Dead archivist David Lemieux.

For more information and to get a Free Online Trial, visit www.sirius.com/gratefuldead or www.xmradio.com/gratefuldead.

August 1-9 – Jerry Week on the Grateful Dead Channel (SIRIUS channel 32 & XM channel 57)

Join in the celebration of Jerry Garcia on the Grateful Dead Channel! We’re marking the “days between” August 1st and August 9th with concerts, archival interviews, music from Jerry’s side projects, and special contributions from those inside Jerry’s closest circle. It’s Jerry Week – and it’s only on Sirius 32 and XM 57, the Grateful Dead Channel!

August 1 at 4PM ET– Carolyn “Mountain Girl” Garcia Remembers Jerry

The Grateful Dead Channel's celebration of Jerry week continues with the woman who was by Jerry Garcia’s side during much of his long, strange trip on this earth…as his wife, companion and cherished friend. She’s Carolyn “Mountain Girl” Garcia, and she’s going to share her unique perspective on a different area of Jerry’s musical career, like his bluegrass, jug band and pedal steel guitar influences! Hear Mountain Girl’s stories, as well as her shared memories with some of Jerry’s closest friends, on this special feature.

Rebroadcast Tuesday Aug. 4 at 9AM ET, Wednesday Aug. 5 at 12 midnight ET, Friday Aug. 7 at 9AM ET, Saturday Aug. 8 at 4PM ET

August 1-9 at 8AM ET and 8PM ET – Archival Jerry Garcia Interviews

During Jerry Week, we’re celebrating all aspects of Jerry Garcia – his life, his music…AND his words. Hear what Jerry has to say in archival interviews throughout Jerry Week! Each day, you’ll hear an interview at 8AM and 8PM featuring Jerry from different eras of his career with the Grateful Dead. Don’t miss it!

August 1-9 – Share Your Jerry Memories!

All throughout Jerry Week, you’ll hear special memories from those who loved Jerry Garcia – whether they are his family, friends or fellow musicians. We want you to join in the celebration! Call us at 1-877-767-DEAD and share your thoughts about Jerry with the world.

August 2 at 4PM ET – Tales from the Golden Road

Listen to a special, Jerry Week edition of Tales From the Golden Road, as your hosts David Gans and Gary Lambert discuss the man that meant so much to so many…Jerry Garcia. They’ll share stories and take calls from Deadheads like you who want to remember Jerry!

Rebroadcast Monday Aug. 3 at 9AM ET

August 9 at 10AM ET – Jerry Garcia Vigil

On the anniversary of Jerry Garcia’s passing, remember his legacy with a recording of the 1995 vigil held in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park just four days after Jerry passed. This powerful and cathartic celebration featured music, stories and poems from Jerry’s friends, families, bandmates and collaborators.

Rebroadcast Sunday Aug. 9 at 6PM ET

Grateful Dead Hour no.997

ccasal — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 20:16:56 -0500

Week of October 29, 2007

Concluding the complete show of 6/27/84 Merriweather Post Pavilion, Columbia MD, plus three tracks from a terrific CD by Mickey Hart & Zakir Hussain, Global Drum Project.

Enjoy!

Grateful Dead 6/27/84 Merriweather Post Pav, Columbia MD
SPACE->
MORNING DEW->
THROWING STONES->
NOT FADE AWAY

Mickey Hart & Zakir Hussain, Global Drum Project
DANCES WITH WOOD
FUNKY ZENA
I CAN TELL YOU MORE

Grateful Dead 6/27/84 Merriweather Post Pav, Columbia MD
BROKEDOWN PALACE

Thank you for listening!
- David Gans

Listen Now

Grateful Dead Hour no.996

ccasal — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 18:59:15 -0500

Week of October 22, 2007

Continuing with the complete show of 6/27/84 Merriweather Post Pavilion, Columbia MD.

And as "filler," one of my favorite bands in the universe these last ten years or so: Donna the Buffalo, from upstate New York. A deep, deep groove, lots of spiritually positive songs by Tara Nevins and Jeb Puryear, and a warm and friendly following called "The Herd" that feels a lot like the ol' Deadhead crowd - what's not to love? These two tracks are from their then-new CD Life's a Ride; I still love Positive Friction (and particularly the songs "No Place Like the Right Time," "RIddle of the Universe," and "In Another World") best, but all their records are worth hearing and I highly recommend you hear 'em live!

Enjoy!

Grateful Dead 6/27/84 Merriweather Post Pavilion, Columbia MD
ESTIMATED PROPHET->
EYES OF THE WORLD->
WHY DON'T WE DO IT IN THE ROAD?
DRUMS->
SPACE

Donna the Buffalo, Life's a Ride
ROCK OF AGES
THESE ARE BETTER DAYS

Thank you for listening!
- David Gans

Listen Now

Paying Tribute To The Grateful Dead In Symphony

lilgoldie — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 13:01:48 -0500

The Cabrillo Festival Orchestra will pay tribute to the Grateful Dead by performing Dead Symphony no. 6.

To read the LA Times coverage complete with quotes from Blair Jackson, David Gans and Dennis McNally, click here.

Bill Kreutzmann and Phish at Red Rocks last night!

frogstorm — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 17:03:02 -0500

It was the final set of Phish's four-night stand at Morrison, CO's Red Rocks Amphitheatre and Bill Kreutzmann joined the band onstage during "You Enjoy Myself." Bill sat in for the rest of the set, which included “Undermind,” “Seven Below,” “2001" and more. For all the details on the performance, check out the links below:

http://www.relix.com/Features/Daily_News/Bill_Kreutzmann_Joins_Phish_Fin
ale_at_Red_Rocks_200908044097.html

http://phishandthedead.blogspot.com/2009/08/bill-kreutzman-of-grateful-d
eadjoin.html

Tonight (8/3) Bill will preform with Papa Mali, Reed Mathis and Matt Hubbard at Boulder, CO's Boulder Theatre. Click here for more info.

August 3 - August 9, 2009

ccasal — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 11:17:20 -0500

Greetings, and welcome back to the Tapers’ Section, where we explore music from this week in the Grateful Dead’s recorded history. This week we have a couple of bits from 1971 and one big jam from 1989.

Our first stop this week is at the Terminal Island Correction Facility near LA, where the Grateful Dead were performing for their friend and longtime sound genius, Owsley, on 8/4/71. From that concert we have the Lovelight from the end of the show.

Next up, from the first night at the Hollywood Palladium, on 8/5/71, we have the big jam (plus two shorter song), which oddly was in the first set this night, consisting of That’s It For The Other One>Wharf Rat, Me and Bobby McGee, Casey Jones. The next night, 8/6/71, is a little more famous due to this stunning Hard To Handle, which is one of the finest versions of this song ever played.

Our last stop this week is to Cal Expo, for the start of the second set on 8/4/89, the first night of a three night run at this fine little venue in Sacramento. From that show, we have the very unique sequence of Truckin'>Wang Dang Doodle>Crazy Fingers>Cumberland>Eyes of the World. This really was a terrific run of shows, something that was quite common at Cal Expo.

Be sure to stop in next week for music from 1972, 1979 and 1982. It’s always great to see you here, and feel free to write with questions or comments to the email address below.

David Lemieux
vault@dead.net

Jerry Garcia Band: Bay Area 1978

frogstorm — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 16:15:40 -0500

$19.98
Jerry Garcia Band: Bay Area '78

Let Me Roll It to You…

Just in time to celebrate Jerry’s 67th birthday (August 1, of course) comes a new installment in the Pure Jerry series, this one an especially hot selection from 1978. This was a particularly exciting period for the Jerry Garcia Band, which at that time included his perennial bass buddy John Kahn (of course), Buzz Buchanan on drums (who’d played with Jerry since the fall of ’77), his partners in the Dead, Keith Godchaux on piano and Donna Godchaux on vocals, and, at many shows that year, second singer Maria Muldaur, who blended so nicely with Donna.

We’ve drawn together the listenable/usable/releasable parts of four Northern California shows from the first half of ’78 to create this stellar compilation. Much of the material was culled from consecutive shows in February of 1978, shortly after Jerry, Keith and Donna had returned from fine, high-energy Midwest tour by the Dead (documented wonderfully on Dick Picks Vol. 18). Songs from the 2/18/78 JGB show at the 2,000-seat Marin County Veteran’s Auditorium include a barn-burning “Mystery Train,” the loping “Catfish John,” and, best of all, a spectacular “Lonesome and a Long Way Home” that ambles through all sorts of fascinating moods and spaces over the course of more than 20 minutes. The next night, the JGB landed at the Santa Cruz Civic—a similar-sized venue—and this time the fans (and now, you!) were treated to such tunes as the Motown classics “Second That Emotion” and “The Way You Do the Things You Do” (a great version!), “Mission in the Rain,” Dylan’s “Simple Twist of Fate,” and, the piece de resistance, a 30-minute “Don’t Let Go” featuring generous solos all around and ultra-soulful guitar-and-vocals from Jerry on the “Hold me tight and don’t let go…” passage towards the end. Wild!

Rounding out this exceptional package are four tunes from June 1978: The 6/10 show at the tiny Keystone Berkeley gives us the bouncy, rockin’ “Tore Up Over You” that opens Disc Two; then, after a couple more tunes, we move to 6/18 at the Keystone Palo Alto—a favorite JGB haunt for many years—for what is arguably the greatest version of Paul McCartney’s “Let Me Roll It” that the group ever played (and there weren’t many), and then superb versions of the still-new “Gomorrah” and the gospel tune “I’ll Be With Thee”—the latter always a fine showcase for Donna and Maria.

If you loved the ’78 Pure Jerry from the Warner Theatre (3/18/78), this one should be right up your alley, too—it’s definitely primo JG! You can see the full track listing below, and order your copy here!

—Blair Jackson

Track List

DISC ONE

1. Mystery Train (2/18/78, Veterans Memorial Auditorium)
2. Catfish John (2/18/78, Veterans Memorial Auditorium)
3. I Second That Emotion (2/19/78, Santa Cruz Civic Auditorium)
4. Mission In The Rain (2/19/78, Santa Cruz Civic Auditorium)
5. Don't Let Go (2/19/78, Santa Cruz Civic Auditorium)

DISC TWO

1. Tore Up Over You (6/10/78, Keystone Berkeley)
2. Simple Twist Of Fate (2/19/78, Santa Cruz Civic Auditorium)
3. The Way You Do The Things You Do (2/19/78, Santa Cruz Civic Auditorium)
4. Let Me Roll It (6/18/78, Keystone Palo Alto)
5. Gomorrah (6/18/78, Keystone Palo Alto)
6. I'll Be With Thee (6/18/78, Keystone Palo Alto)
7. Lonesome And A Long Way From Home (2/18/78, Veterans Memorial Auditorium)

Grateful Dead Hour no.995

ccasal — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 11:18:15 -0500

Week of October 15, 2007

Continuing with the complete show of 6/27/84 Merriweather Post Pavilion, Columbia MD.

Enjoy!

Grateful Dead 6/27/84 Merriweather Post Pavilion, Columbia MD
LOSER
LET IT GROW

Grateful Dead, Three from the Vault
BIRD SONG

Grateful Dead 6/27/84 Merriweather Post Pavilion, Columbia MD
HELP ON THE WAY->
SLIPKNOT!->
FRANKLIN'S TOWER

Thank you for listening!
- David Gans

Listen Now

July 27 - August 2, 2009

ccasal — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 16:42:03 -0500

Welcome back to the Tapers' Section, where this week we have 22 years of Grateful Dead history to cover, from 1966 to 1988, with a few cool things in between.

Our first stop this week is in Vancouver, BC, Canada, the first ever Grateful Dead concerts outside of the state of California. From the second show in Vancouver, on 7/30/66, we have a good batch of the music from the PNE Hall, Standing On The Corner, I Know You Rider, Next Time You See Me, Sitting On Top Of The World, You Don't Have To Ask, Big Boss Man, Stealin', Cardboard Cowboy, Baby Blue, Cream Puff, Viola Lee Blues, which covers most of the cool stuff that was part of the band's repertoire at the time.

Next up, from 7/27/73, we have the Watkins Glen Soundcheck Jam. The day before the big Grateful Dead-Allman Brothers-The Band concert on 7/28/73, the Dead played an entire show as a “soundcheck” for those who'd arrived early, and they tossed in this stunning piece of pure improvisational magic.

We'll next head over to Red Rocks near Denver, where the band would be playing the second night of a three night run on 7/28/82, and from that show's second set we have Althea, Let It Grow>He's Gone>Truckin', a bit of a unique sequence with the second set versions of Althea and Let It Grow.

Lastly this week, we have music from Laguna Seca, CA on 7/29/88, one of the most unique and intriguing sequences of music from 1988, consisting of China Cat Sunflower>Crazy Fingers>I Know You Rider, Playing In The Band. The two things to note are the split China>Rider (VERY rare) and the complete Playing In The Band, including the song’s reprise with nothing in between, something that was common in 1972-1974, but exceedingly rare after 1974. Cool stuff.

Be sure to stop by next week for, yes, more excellent Grateful Dead music. Thanks for listening, and feel free to write with questions or comments about the Tapers’ Section to the address below.

David Lemieux
vault@dead.net

Grateful Dead Hour no.994

ccasal — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 14:33:43 -0500

Week of October 8, 2007

By request, the complete show of 6/27/84 Merriweather Post Pavilion, Columbia MD over four weeks, with other treats along the way.

We begin this week with the first half of set 6/27/84 1, plus a taste of America's most successful GD tribute band, Dark Star Orchestra.

DSO started out in Chicago but soon hit the national circuit, most often choosing a Grateful Dead setlist from DeadBase and playing it - not note for note, as some hecklers have suggested, but very much in the spirit of the era they're evoking. All the musicians are quite skilled and diligent in their preparations, and they do a very good job of evoking the sound and feel of the era they're addressing. Rhythm guitarist Rob Eaton, for example, carries two rigs on the road, mirroring Bob Weir's configurations in the pre- (up to October 1974) and post-"retirement" eras. For set lists from 1971 through 1974, they use only one drummer, and vocalist Lisa Mackey covers the Donna Jean parts. For set lists dating from April 1979 on, keyboardist Rob Barraco covers the Brent Mydland vocals - and Barraco uses the appropriate keyboard configurations for the period, and so on.

Ithaca, 30 Years Later was recorded on May 8, 2007 in the same city but not the same hall as the GD's legendary 5/8/77 performance at Barton Hall. The city of Ithaca, New York recognized both the Grateful Dead and DSO on that day, and the band was sufficiently pleased with their re-creation of the 5/8/77 vibe that they released it on DVD and CD.

Enjoy!

Grateful Dead 6/27/84 Merriweather Post Pavilion, Columbia MD
JACK STRAW
FRIEND OF THE DEVIL
LITTLE RED ROOSTER

Interview: Rob Koritz of Dark Star Orchestra
Dark Star Orchestra, Ithaca, 30 Years Later
LAZY LIGHTNING->
SUPPLICATION
Grateful Dead 6/27/84 Merriweather Post Pavilion, Columbia MD
CUMBERLAND BLUES
MY BROTHER ESAU

Thank you for listening!
- David Gans

Listen Now

Farewell to Marmaduke: John Dawson (1945-2009)

frogstorm — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 10:21:45 -0500

Marmaduke at Capitol Theater, Port Chester, NY in 1970. Photo: Marcia Cohen

The extended Grateful Dead family and Dead Head community lost a great talent and a dear friend on July 21, when John “Marmaduke” Dawson, longtime singer, songwriter and guitarist with New Riders of the Purple Sage, passed away peacefully after a long period of failing health. He was 64 and had been living in retirement in Mexico.

One of the best-loved and longest-running entries in the country-rock field, New Riders of the Purple Sage came into being in 1969, when John Dawson, looking for an outlet for his original songs, conspired with Jerry Garcia, who had started playing pedal steel guitar, to form a little country-tinged bar band. They recruited David Nelson, a musical associate and friend of Garcia’s going back to the thriving Palo Alto folk scene of the early 60s, to play lead guitar. Grateful Dead audio engineer/producer Bob Matthews was the original bassist (later replaced by Phil Lesh and then, more permanently Dave Torbert); Mickey Hart played drums for the band’s first year, after which he was replaced by Jefferson Airplane alum Spencer Dryden.

After gigging for a while in the Bay Area whenever gaps in the Grateful Dead’s schedule allowed, the New Riders began to obtain a higher profile when they began to tour as featured support act with the Dead. Especially memorable were the marathon “Evening with the Grateful Dead” shows during much of 1970, which opened with an acoustic Dead set (with occasional guest appearances by NRPS members), followed by a full set by the Riders and closing with electric GD. John Dawson emerged as an energetic and engaging front man, singing songs from his own rapidly growing body of original work, as well as country standards (“Together Again,” “Truck Drivin’ Man”), and some classic rockers thrown in for good measure (“Lodi,” “Honky Tonk Woman”).

Marmaduke with David Nelson in 2007. Photo: Bob Minkin/minkindesign.com c. 2009

Dawson’s songwriting skills were impressively displayed on NRPS’ eponymous debut album, released in 1971. He was the sole composer of all ten of the records tracks, which included such perennial favorites as “I Don’t Know You,” “Portland Woman,” “Glendale Train,” “Henry” and “Last Lonely Eagle.” Those last two songs, in particular, illuminated a unique aspect of John’s talent: an ability to infuse country songwriting with a distinctly hippie-flavored POV (“Henry” was a rollicking breakdown about a pot smuggler’s Mexican exploits, while “Eagle” was a socially and environmentally conscious lament for endangered nature and lost values). In addition to his notable body of work for NRPS, John has another indelible songwriting credit: as co-writer, with Jerry Garcia and Robert Hunter, of one of the most enduring songs in the Grateful Dead canon, “Friend of the Devil.”

When Jerry Garcia, stretched a bit thin by his multiple musical endeavors, left NRPS in late 1971, the band didn’t miss a step: with the addition of pedal steel ace Buddy Cage, they were able to emerge from the Grateful Dead’s shadow, adding such excellent albums as “Powerglide,” “Gypsy Cowboy” and “The Adventures of Panama Red” to their catalog, and becoming a popular national touring act in their own right.

John continued touring and recording with the Riders, through various personnel departures and returns, into the 1990s. While his health problems prevented him from joining in on various NRPS reincarnations in recent years, he remained close friends with his old bandmates, and did reunite with David Nelson and Buddy Cage for one final performance together in 2001, at a birthday bash for longtime NRPS friend and archivist Rob Bleetstein.

Thanks for a great ride, McDuke.

July 20 - July 26, 2009

ccasal — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 10:46:17 -0500

Greetings, and welcome back to the Tapers’ Section, where we’ve got some excellent Grateful Dead music for from 1974 and 1987 this week.

Our first selection this week is from 7/24/87 at Oakland Stadium in beautiful Oakland, CA, with the end of the Grateful Dead’s portion of the show featuring Uncle John's Band>Dear Mr. Fantasy>I Need A Miracle>Bertha>Sugar Magnolia. I say “the end of the Grateful Dead’s portion of the show” because the band would then play an entire 3rd set as Bob Dylan’s backing band. The 1987 Grateful Dead was a high-energy band, and although they might have lacked a bit of the exploratory sensibility of the 1973 band, or even the 1989-1990 band that would again stretch out on certain songs, they definitely came ready to play, and completely inspired.

Next up is music from the very next show on 7/26/87 in Anaheim, another Dylan and the Dead affairs, the finale of the six shows featuring this pairing. From the end of that mighty fine concert, we have The Other One>Stella Blue>Throwing Stones>Not Fade Away. Again, it is perhaps not the most jammed out material, but it was incredibly powerful nonetheless. This jam and the one above can be heard and seen on the DVD/CD View from the Vault, which contains two entire Grateful Dead concerts (in 5.1 on the DVD).

Finally this week, from Chicago on 7/25/74, we have the big second set jam of Dark Star>Stella Blue. Between the two songs, you’ll hear a very early jam of Slipknot!, which would be recorded in early 1975 and attached to Help On The Way and Franklin’s Tower from then onward with very few exceptions. It’s always fun to hear the beginnings of a song that would become such a big part of the band’s repertoire.

Be sure to stop back next week for music from 1966, 1973, 1982 and 1988, a good mix of old and, well, not so old. And feel free to email the address below if you have any comments or questions about the Tapers’ Section.

David Lemieux
vault@dead.net

Grateful Dead Hour no.588

ccasal — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 15:19:56 -0500

Week of December 27, 1999

By request, a rare performance from December 1968.Enjoy!

Grateful Dead 12/7/68 Bellarmine College, Louisville KY
DARK STAR->
ST. STEPHEN->
ELEVEN JAM
THAT'S IT FOR THE OTHER ONE->
NEW POTATO CABOOSE

Thanks for listening!
David Gans

Listen Now

Mark Karan: RatDog Guitarist Walks Through the Fire to Put Out First Solo Album

lilgoldie — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 13:40:04 -0500

It might have taken Mark Karan 30 years, give or take a few, to put out his first solo album, but that’s OK—it was definitely worth the wait for his many fans.

Walk Through the Fire, on the Dig Music label (run by Jackie Greene’s manager), is a wonderful and uplifting slice of rock and soul music that reveals much about Karan as both a supremely talented musician and a remarkable human being. The emotional title track, for instance, was written in the hospital when he was undergoing treatments for the aggressive throat cancer that could well have taken him from us when he was stricken in the summer of 2007. Other originals touch on different aspects of his life and career, and there’s also a slew of great cover tunes, including Alex Call’s wonderful “Annie Don’t Lie,” Robert Johnson’s “Love In Vain,” Joe Jackson’s “Fools In Love,” Robert Hunter/The Dead’s “Easy Wind,” and more.

Throughout, Karan’s strong and soulful lead vocals and varied guitar textures carry the day, but he is also very ably assisted by a gaggle of excellent players and singers—besides cohorts from his part-time solo band Jemimah Puddleduck, he also enlisted friends/colleagues such as keyboardists Bill Payne (of Little Feat fame) and Mike Finnigan, long-time Bonnie Raitt bassist Hutch Hutchinson, percussionist extraordinaire (and fellow cancer survivor) Wally Ingram, and some amazing singers, including Delaney Bramlett, Chris and Lorin Rowan, The Persuasions, ex-JGB singers Gloria Jones and Jackie LaBranch, and several others. The songs range from gospel-tinged rock to heavy blues to R&B-flavored workouts, and there isn’t a weak track in the bunch. Ever the band player, the tracks are notable for the solid interaction of the musicians, and for being surprisingly “wank-free” for a so-called solo album. With Karan’s illness and amazing recovery as a catalyst, and his enforced “vacation” from RatDog because of this spring’s tour by The Dead offering a window to complete the album, this labor of love by this warm and compassionate lover of life finally came to fruition.

We’ve talked to Mark about his career and his life with RatDog in previous interviews, so this time around we focused on the making of Walk Through the Fire. We hope you all support Mark by purchasing this excellent CD!

When I put the CD on for the first time and “Annie Don’t Lie” came on, I immediately thought of ’70s Ry Cooder. With the accordion on there and The Persuasions doing the backups, it had the warm and friendly vibe of albums like Ry’s Paradise and Lunch and Chicken Skin Music…
Sure, that’s my favorite Ry period. I’ll take that as a compliment…

But it’s also kind of Little Feat-ish, too, as are a couple of other tunes. Who are some of the other influences on this album?

Oh, God, everything! I don’t know where to start. On the tune “Love Song,” for example, that was originally an acoustic guitar thing, sort of my attempt at a James Taylor song, and I hadn’t done it in years. I even played it for my wife at our wedding. More recently I sort of re-connected with it, but I didn’t want to do it the old, corny James Taylor way, so on that song I tried to evoke elements of what I dug about The Beatles and some of Eric Clapton’s more pop stuff, and also some of the kind of stomp-walk Stax/Memphis type of R&B from back in the day. I wanted to see if I could smush those two worlds together and treat it like that kind of love song, instead of the pretty white-boy love song. [Laughs] So there’s the influence of old soul and Beatles music.

You said you wrote that a number of years ago. What’s the timing on the other original songs? Obviously “Walk Through the Fire” is post-recovery.
The record is a pretty good time-line actually. Half the record is tunes that I wrote, and you could almost say that my life is in the arc of those songs. I’m not a prolific writer. I’ve gone through prolific periods when I’ve had some place to put songs as I’d write them, but when I don’t have any place to put them—and there’s not much room for my contributions in RatDog, for example, because that’s Bob’s baby—I haven’t had that much drive to write. So this record was sort of gathering up all the little nuggets I’d written over the years that had never made it to any kind of a record. I wanted to give those songs an opportunity to exist so I could say, “Well, here’s me up until now, and from here on, who knows what’s gonna happen? Should the unthinkable happen and I check out early, or whatever the story might be, here’s me.”

Who’s Susan Sheller, who wrote “Memphis Radio”? I really like that song.
I love that song. She’s an old friend of mine from Southern California. We did it with her in her band down there, way pre-RatDog. This was predominantly a cover band, but we did some original songs. This is when I was still living down there and eking out a living doing everything from playing blues gigs, to cover bar gigs, to whatever sessions were around; whatever it took to pay the rent. And Susan was one of the blessings of that era, because she was a really cool singer and writer. When we first threw Jemimah Puddleduck together, the first time we did the gig in Ventura—which we’re actually coming up on the ten-year anniversary of—we needed material, and I asked Susan if she minded if we did that song, because I loved it so much.

I also really like your reggae re-invention of “Fools in Love,” the Joe Jackson tune. How did that come to you?
I don’t really remember, other than it was a really good song and not something that everybody and their brother had already covered. I mean, I love the classics, but everybody does ‘em. [Laughs] One of the things I like to do is take songs and present them sort of out of context. With a song like “Fools in Love,” I was a freak in the ’80s for Elvis Costello and Joe Jackson and Graham Parker—the intelligent punk-pop thing. The Jam—I loved a bunch of those bands. So I wanted to find something out of that era to bring into the music I was doing today, and that song—actually that whole album [Look Sharp!]—was always one of my favorites.

You mention taking things out of a context, and I think you do that a bit within the song “Time Will Tell,” which seems like its going to be a fairly conventional blues, but when you get to the big solo at the end it turns into this weird, angular thing that doesn’t go where you expect it to go. It’s a cool juxtaposition of approaches.
Thanks. That song actually started back in the ’90s. I was working as a writer and producer at a studio in L.A. and that’s one of the tunes I came up with. When I initially wrote it, it was kind of a Stevie Ray Vaughan mid- to uptempo blues, but I think it works better this way.

And your “Love in Vain” with Delaney Bramlett—is that more from the Stones version than from Robert Johnson? I feel like I hear the Mick Jagger pronunciation on the word “vain.”
[Laughs] Right. For me, it’s definitely more Stones-derived than Robert Johnson, and I think for Delaney it was probably more Robert Johnson-derived than Stones. Since I produced the track, I’d say the track is probably more Stones than Robert Johnson, too, but in truth, a lot of the production on that track was more influenced by the later British blues stuff—the psychedelic part of Cream—where I start layering in all the electric guitars and all the counter-lines and all.

How about that great Randy Newman song, “Think It’s Gonna Rain”? That’s been covered by a lot of people over the years…
I was familiar with the Randy Newman version, and I think I’d heard Nina Simone’s version a couple of times, but actually that song is one of the few that didn’t originate with me, in terms of suggesting we do it. We showed up for a couple of days rehearsal at J.T.’s house [that’s Puddleduck and Bruce Hornsby keyboardist John Thomas] and I don’t know where he’d heard it, but he fell in love with the chords and the string arrangement, and he’d transposed the string arrangement to ensemble rock ’n’ roll quartet. And the fact that he did that and the fact that I’ve always loved Randy Newman, and we’re always looking for new material with Puddleduck, it was like, “Hell yeah, let’s dive in and do this!” And since we were rehearsing at his house, and he’s got a studio there where we were going to be doing some recording, we recorded that track. The version of that song that’s on the record is probably only the second or third time we’d ever played that song, and there’s no overdubbing at all on that track, and the vocal is the one I cut at the end of that day as a scratch [temp] vocal.

Did most of these tracks start out as small band productions and then get expanded in the overdubbing process?
Yes. They all started out as guitar, bass, drums and keys [Mark, John Molo or Jimmy Sanchez on drums, J.T. on keys, Bob Gross or Hutch Hutchinson on bass], and then we built from there. Some of the songs lent themselves to being mostly that—a quartet—with maybe the addition of an acoustic guitar to flesh things out, or perhaps some backing vocals we couldn’t pull off live.

I’m impressed with how much space you’ve given to the keyboards particularly…
Well, my vibe is more of a band thing, always. I’m not really into the “Look at me, check me out, aren’t I a badass guitarist” thing. [Laughs]

Still, I like how in-your-face the guitars are. They’re not drenched in reverb or anything and the parts are tasteful but still hot.
Well, frankly I modeled this record after a lot of my own favorite records that were cut in the late ’60s and early to mid-’70s—Crosby, Stills & Nash records, Van Morrison records, old Allman Brothers records, Workingman’s Dead; that kind of stuff. Immediate, honest, authentic, emotionally connected records.

Tell me about writing “Walk Through the Fire.” Obviously that’s the most blatantly autobiographical song on there, and it sort of brings us up to date, as it were, from when you were first diagnosed with throat cancer. Was it tough to write, or did it come easily?
It came ridiculously easily.

The good ones often do.
That’s exactly right. They checked me into UCSF [hospital] for the first week of treatment—I was going on chemo 24 hours a day for a full week and the first time around they wanted to keep me in the hospital so they could monitor what was going on. So we moved the whole damn house in—“Bring down guitars, bring laptops, bring everything you got!” They got me all settled in the bed, and I asked [my wife] Maile to hand me my guitar, and I started noodling around for ten or 15 minutes and I started playing this chord progression. Then I said, “Honey, can you pass me that pad and pen?” She did, and about 15 minutes later I had that whole song. I didn’t write that song; it came through me. And now I’m giving it back! [Laughs]

That must be somewhat emotional for you.
Absolutely. I did it for the first time in public ever when RatDog went down to Jamaica [in January 2009]. The first night we were down there [1/28] they threw a little welcome soiree and I played a couple of songs solo and then one by one Robin and Jay and Jeff came up, and so on. So I pulled out “Walk Through the Fire.” I stood up with just an electric guitar, feeling extremely naked, and played it. I was busting up. Somebody shot some video that night and…well, it’s cool, but it’s also a little embarrassing because I’m choking back tears and I’m having a hard time singing it.

I was thinking you should get a copy of that song to Bonnie Raitt. I can totally picture her singing that.
It’s interesting you should mention that, because Hutch [Hutchinson] being the bass player on a lot of this record, and Bonnie’s bass player for so long, is planning to give her a copy of the record.

How did you know when the album was finished? With technology being what it is and no deadline looming, it seems like you could fool around with parts forever. But nothing seems overdone to me, and I like the way you’ve maintained a nice balance between the guitars and the keyboards.
I like to have it so that each part sort of stands on its own—you could maybe mute the other part and the song would still work. And I like to have parts that interlock, so they’re not just going at the same time, but instead there’s more contrapuntal and counter-melodic stuff going on. For my ear, the only way you can successfully achieve that is if you keep things simple: Fewer instruments, or if you’re going to use more instruments, instruments that are supporting a part in kind. So for me, it’s constantly listening to make sure that it still sounds kind of open. If it starts to sound too dense, I know I’m getting too precious and too clever.

You’ve got some great folks helping out on background vocals, from The Persuasions to Jackie and Gloria. Were these all tracks that were essentially done and then you “cast” them by song?
It wasn’t really that they were done and then the backing vocals were an afterthought. In fact, in all those cases, the background vocals were highly present in my mind early on. Really, in some cases, the backup vocals were more important to me than the parts, so once I had the idea of what the backup vocals were going to be doing, then I could put together what the rhythm parts were going to be doing. In terms of who and why… Well, I chose the Rowans [for “Leave A Light On”] because I wanted something that was Beatles/Crosby, Stills, Nash, so who could be better than them? With The Persuasions, we had the connection of them having toured with RatDog and riding with us a bunch. Both “Annie Don’t Lie” and “Rock Your Papa” had always had these wonderful old soul/doo-wop vocals in my mind’s eye, so The Persuasions were obvious candidates there. I grew up with The Persuasions, from KSAN and KMPX days.

I see you have Bill Payne of Little Feat on here. Have you known him long?
Yeah. I’ve played with Little Feat several times; they’re great guys. Little Feat is one of my all-time favorite bands; always have been.

Obviously you’re making a strong personal statement by coming out with this album now. You must have a tremendous sense of accomplishment just for having made this.
It’s a huge sense of accomplishment, because the idea of making my own record has been rolling around in my head for probably 30 years, and it started to get real sexy to me in about the mid-’80s, when they came up with things like sequencers and home multitracks. Yet, I still didn’t do it. Even this record first started coming together about four years ago and it was not making any giant headway toward completion. So the catalyst for me was, quite frankly, the cancer. At the end of the cancer I felt like, “I’ve got these tunes in the can, and there are at least four of them I can build on, and that gives me a foot in the door, and at this point I’m just not willing to wait.” In fact the first post-cancer batch of sessions was one did up here, and those are the ones Jimmy Sanchez played on because John [Molo] wasn’t available. That was chapter one in Mark and Maile saying, “OK, we love Jemimah Puddleduck, but post-cancer we can’t wait on anybody anymore.”

Having come through the cancer, I won’t say that I walk around with the specter of death over my shoulder, or anything silly and dramatic like that, but I do walk around with a brand new sense that I’m not entitled to be here. That I could split at any time, whether I want to or not, and so I thought, “I’m not leaving this planet not having laid these down and left them behind for everybody.”

With what’s going on in the record business and the economy, to any kind of conventional wisdom this is probably a really dumb time to be releasing a record, but for me this was the perfect time. We probably spent more on it than we might have if we’d been more budget-conscious, but we didn’t care. We wanted to get the job done whatever it took this time. We can be more budget conscious on the next record. This was the opportunity of lifetime for me—literally. And the culmination of a life’s work. So whatever happens from here is a mystery. Obviously, we hope the record will be a success, but at the same time we don’t want to be overly attached to the notion of financial success, because really, the success is in the making of it.

For more, go to www.markkaran.com.

The New Riders Return with a Fine New Album

lilgoldie — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 11:42:36 -0500

One of the most satisfying comebacks of recent years is the righteous return of the New Riders of the Purple Sage. Of course, the New Riders (or NRPS…many even pronounce that “Nerps”) have a long lineage with the Grateful Dead—in fact one of the group’s early lineups consisted of John “Marmaduke” Dawson as lead singer/songwriter and rhythm guitarist, David Nelson on lead guitar, Garcia on pedal steel guitar (an instrument he was still learning), Phil Lesh on bass and Mickey Hart on drums.

NRPS(L to R): Buddy Cage, Michael Falzarano,
Johnny Markowski,David Nelson, Ronnie Penque.
Photo: Bob Minkin/minkindesign.com © 2009

Phil was replaced by David Torbert in mid-1970, and by the end of that year, ex-Airplane drummer Spencer Dryden had replaced Mickey. Garcia stuck with the Riders until the fall of 1971, when Buddy Cage took over on pedal steel. The NRPS opened many Dead shows in the early ’70s, but also managed to establish a large following apart from their Dead connection. Still, they’ve always been “family.”

The New Riders’ history through the late ’70s and early ’80s is spotty, as there were many personnel changes and the group clearly lost its early momentum for stretches. By ’82, Nelson had split and John Dawson later picked up the mantle without his former partner. Nelson eventually went on to play for a spell in the Jerry Garcia Acoustic Band and then formed one of the best jam bands in the Bay Area, the David Nelson Band (who continue to play amazing music to this day).

Marmaduke had been limited by health issues for a number of years and, sad to say, passed away on July 21 in Mexico. (This story was completed long before that.) A new version of the New Riders—with Nelson and Buddy Cage from the old band, joined by bassist Ronnie Penque, drummer Johnny Markowski and longtime Hot Tuna associate Michael Falzarano on guitar and vocals—took its first steps back into the limelight in late 2005, and has been picking up steam ever since. Just recently, however, the group put out its first album of new material in two decades, Where I Come From, and it’s a gem: The disc contains seven strong new originals co-written by David Nelson and Grateful Dead lyricist Robert Hunter (including the propulsive title track), plus excellent tunes by the other members—in keeping with Riders tradition, there’s even a doper song, Markowski and Bobby Driscoll’s grower’s anthem, “Higher.” The album was cut mostly live in the studio, and the playing is hot—Cage and Nelson play together beautifully, and they’re not afraid to stretch out and jam a bit, either. Indeed, this incarnation of the Riders is more in the jam band mold than the original country-rock “cosmic cowboys” of four decades ago. It’s a NRPS for a new day, still with a rich catalog of great songs, but also a group pointed forward, eager to create a modern legacy, as well.

Recently, I sat down with David Nelson in a diner near his Petaluma home to talk a bit about Where I Come From and the current state of the New Riders. We kicked off the conversation talking about the decision to revive the group four years ago…

What made that the right time to bring the New Riders back?
Buddy Cage had been playing occasionally with these guys in Stir Fry, doing session work and stuff. Johnny Markowski and Ron Penque were both in it, and they’d have both Vassar [Clements, the great fiddler] and Buddy play with them on certain gigs and on some sessions. One time they were talkin’ and the idea came up—“What would you think of getting the New Riders back together?” and Cage said, “Well, you’d have to talk to Nelson about that.” They called me and that was the beginning of this new thing.

When had you last played with Cage?
He’d sat in with the David Nelson Band a few times, so we’d kept up a bit. Anyway, those guys booked the first shows—we did four or five shows as a trial thing and they went great. People seemed to be really excited about it.

Did you rehearse a lot?
No, and that turned out to be a good thing. [Laughs] I’m the only West Coaster—they were all in the New York area—and we went to Johnny’s house in Orangeburg and somehow we thought that in one night we’d be able to rehearse 40 songs!

I don’t know what we were thinking there. [Laughs] Of course that didn’t quite happen, and even though they already knew a lot of the songs, we had train wrecks on nearly every song. “Do we do it like the record, or do it the live way?” Also, John Dawson sang most of the songs [in the original group], so I had to have my lyric book handy, and we had to figure out who would sing what. Because we couldn’t arrange everything, it caused us to play it more on the fly at those first gigs and that turned out to make it all sound really fresh. Every time we played, it was a little bit different and new ideas came up and so we thought, “Yeah, let’s keep doing this.” We got more gigs and then we got a booking agency involved—when a booking agency is interested, that makes it feel a little more solid.

What had also happened during the many years the Riders weren’t playing was the jam band movement got started, and certainly you’re in one of the best jam bands ever [the DNB]. So you’re more geared that way than you were in the earlier New Riders days, and so are so many of the fans in the scene who follow all these jam bands in different styles. It was cool seeing some of the old New Riders songs suddenly opening up in ways they hadn’t before.
That’s true. It is different now. A lot of it was John [Dawson]—he didn’t really care for the jam stuff as much. When Garcia was with us it was a matter of course—you had to jam a bit. He’d look at you like, “Well”? [Laughs] We limited it to a couple of songs, though—“Portland Woman,” Garden of Eden” and “Dirty Business.”

Don’t forget “I Don’t Need No Doctor” and “Willie and the Hand Jive.”
That’s true. The jamming would make little cameos.

But it never got to 18 minutes, like some of your tunes now.
Our sets can go like that. But it can also wear on an audience when you have long song after long song, so we have these packages that are neat little songs—like “Sutter’s Mill” and “Sing Me A Rainbow” and a lot of others and we still do straight.

From the beginning of this latest revival, too, you’ve brought in fresh material.
That’s part of what makes it fun to do and not just a thing where you’re playing old songs.

Like a nostalgia act…
Right. I brought in one of my songs, “Any Naked Eye,” and we started doing that, and Falzarano brought in a couple, and Ron and Johnny, too.

How did Falzarano get involved?
I don’t know, but it sure is a good thing because he’s more or less the Wise Man. He’s really got his head on his shoulders and he’s connected in New York with all sorts of people in our community, so it turns out to be perfect, because the rest of us—me included—tend to get a little scatter-brained: “Oops, I forgot to do that!” [Laughs] But Falz is always on top of everything.

Also, we go back to a lot of the same roots—we’re from the same schools of music.

How has the process of taking on more of the lead guitar role been for you? In the DNB, you’ve got Barry Sless as a foil. In the Riders you have Cage, obviously, but that’s a little different.
It’s made me come alive to have the job put on me. Like you said, there’s no Barry there, who can just play endlessly like a fountain. So I had to jump in and start playing more, and I’m really liking it. It was kind of rough and ragged at the beginning, but you get used to it and you get a flow going. In the old days sometimes I used to just clam up and say, “Oh, I can’t think of anything,” and Garcia would say, “I can’t either!” So if he feels that way, you feel better and then you can relax, and that’s the whole thing to getting it flowing.

So then the notion of making a new album with new material comes up. Do you approach Robert Hunter or does he approach you?
We actually had started on that idea before I hooked up with Hunter on this. “Any Naked Eye” was being considered, and I had a couple of others, and Johnny had “Higher” and another song. And Ronnie had a couple, and Falzarano had a couple, so we were planning to go up there and rehearse at Turkey Trot Acres, which is a spread in upstate New York which is run by a Vietnam Vet family and a community of guys who are into hunting. They have a lodge where people can pay to stay and hunt wild turkeys. They have a lodge and lunch room that’s like a log cabin and it has really good sound and we played a gig there one time. In fact we made our live DVD there.

So we were planning to go there and hole up and rehearse some new material, and right then—Hunter didn’t know anything about it—he happened to be on one of his [writing] rolls and he went up to his cabin on the Russian River and he sent me an email. “I’m up at the cabin and doing some writing. What do you think of this?” It was the lyrics to something called “Eagle Breeder’s Waltz.” I read over it and I realized that it was a thing between him and me: “Let’s do the Eagle Breeder’s Waltz, like we did in ‘65/ Revive our spirits with smelling salts and act like we’re still alive.” I thought it was pretty cool, so I went to work printing out things and trying to record something. I made it a waltz and tried all these other things, but I couldn’t quite get it. Then he starts sending lyrics just about every other day: “Hey, it’s your turn! How about this one?” The first ones to come in were ‘Where I Come From” and “Ghost Train Blues.”

I think “Where I Come From” is one of his best lyrics in years.
I agree. That was one where the music just came right off the paper. You don’t want to force them. So I might read the words a few times, just say them, not try to put music to them, and then go do the dishes or something. In the middle of doing dishes is one of the best times for ideas to come to me. You shut off the water, dry your hands and go into the other room and work on it. But that was one where I quickly thought, “Oh yeah, it’s that kind of tune.”

There’s a line that jumped out at me from another song Hunter wrote, “Barracuda Moon”: “First mistake we made was coming on too proud/ Next mistake we made was not being proud enough / It’s always all or nothing/ If you don’t like it, tough.” For some reason I got a flash about that being about the San Francisco scene 40 years ago.
I know; I can see that. Me and Falz have been going through the lyrics and saying, “You know what he’s talking about there?” “Barracuda Moon” definitely seems like the idea of starting out in ’65—there’s even that line about August 1964, “Pick up your cards and bet/ Careful what you ask for, it might be what you get.”

“Down the Middle” is pretty obvious about being on the road. There are also seem to be a lot of images that seem to be related to or pointing to the Grateful Dead, though I haven’t actually talked to him about any of this.

I wondered about that myself.
“Last thing I see as light doth fade/ Skull and crossbones on my grave.” [From “Down the Middle”]

That was the first thing I thought of when I heard it—that it was about Hunter’s own legacy.
I think “Ghost Train Blues” is about Garcia’s guitar: “Listen to that wolf wail/ Thunderclap and black hail/ Enough to make my nerve fail, all night long.” ’Cause Garcia used to pester him for songs and Hunter’d be saying, “C’mon leave me alone. I’m doing the best I can!” [Laughs] I don’t know… That’s just another idea.

Well, this begs the question, how do you feel about being a vehicle or a conduit for his ideas about that stuff?
It’s great! I love these songs. Also, I have no idea if any of those notions are right or what he had in mind. I could be completely off-base. And I’m sure other people will have other interpretations, as it should be. His lyrics are so totally artistic and expressive, and he tends to stay away from clichés. Though he does have his own set of symbols and vocabulary. And he has all these different sides of him. He can write the most beautiful and poetic things and do more straightforward rock ’n’ roll songs.

Like “Rockin’ with Nona” on the new album…
Yeah, that’s a really fun song

Jerry used to say the Hunter wrote “him” into songs occasionally; that’s he’d be singing a song and suddenly it would dawn on him, “Shit, this is about me!”
Right! [Laughs] I’ve had those moments, too, but I think I’ve suppressed them so far, because you don’t want to start feeling self-conscious about what you’re singing. What’s great is that so much of what he writes is so open-ended and you can bring what you want or what you imagine to them. In fact they encourage that…Then you get the cosmic idiot moment: “Duh!” [Laughs]

“Where I Come From,” “Big Six” and “Barracuda Moon” were sort of like my symphony that’s been coming out of me for years. They have similar melodic tonalities and harmony structures to some other stuff I’ve written—like “Snakebit”—but they also go in some new directions.

In the past you’ve written some good songs for the DNB with Hunter, like “Long Gone Sam” and “John Hardy’s Wedding.”
Those were done in the reverse of this fashion, and actually it was before I got the [DNB] together. I told him, “I’ve got nothing to do and I’m writing some songs,” so he lent me a 4-track tape recorder and I started making little songs—putting on overdubs with a fake bass part and all. I sent him the music and it had a little melody on the guitar and he thought it sounded like [the traditional song] “John Hardy,” and I guess it does, so he wrote the lyrics that way. So on those earlier ones, they were sent to him as music.

Where did you record this new New Riders album? There are no credits…
We would be on the road and we’d have a day off, or if we were lucky, two days off, and we’d just find a studio, because Falzarano knows different places. There was one near Johnny’s house and we did a couple of days of tracks there, and then we’d take that on a Pro Tools hard drive and then the next place was in Pennsylvania, and the next was in Sacramento. So those were where we did the basics and then we mixed it. Most of them are virtually live studio cuts. Our attitude was like, “If we don’t get it in three tries, we’ll move on.” Most of them ended up being take one or take two. “Barracuda Moon” was only played one time all the way through and it was the one song we hadn’t played in front of an audience. I think we’d worked out an arrangement at Turkey Trot, so we had the concept, but then we didn’t think it was ready for an audience, but we tried it in the studio and blam—one take!

Do you feel the lineage to the older band when you play the new material in the midst of the old material?
Oh yeah, because of the way me and Cage play together. We have all that stuff in our systems.

It’s in your DNA.
It is. And so far the audiences seem to really like the new stuff…

Are you getting young people at the shows?
We are, which is really satisfying, of course. From the beginning of this four-year stretch we’ve seen a lot of young kids—“Oh, my dad used to go see you guys!” [Laughs]

There’s more of these songs coming. Hunter has sent at least four more and I’m working on two of them now. One of them is a beautiful thing called “Five-eo.” This is the first he’s sent along with a chord progression. He said he’d had it lying around for a while and I might as well have it. [Laughs] So I tried his chord progression and there was one spot where I thought it wasn’t quite working right, so I changed it a little and now it works great. It’s really sweet—it’s a walking-home song: “I’m going to Five-eo.”

I know there’s a tradition of “Five-eo” songs, like “Peggy-o” songs.
I think if you wanted a four-syllable word for a place in traditional songs you took “Fennario.” If you wanted three syllables, you took “Five-io.” [Laughs]

This is basically the 40th anniversary of the band. Are you making hay of it?
Not yet, but we probably will!

NRPS basically started because John Dawson had a bunch of songs and Jerry wanted to learn how to play pedal steel…
That’s right, and the next thing we knew we were in a band together. I remember going up to Jerry’s house in Larkspur with John and we had [Grateful Dead sound engineer]
Bob Matthews fill in on bass and we practiced John’s tunes, and then we thought, “Hey, let’s get a gig! We can get Mickey to play drums!” So we played two or three nights there at the Bear’s Lair student union [on the UC Berkeley campus] and they said, “What do you call the band?” and Jerry blurts out, “The Murdering Punks!” Which was very timely, because right around then the Manson killings happened. [Laughs] So the guy wanted to call it Jerry Garcia & Friends, which Jerry hated, of course. “I’m a sideman!” he’d say. So we got down to thinking in earnest about a name, which is really hard, because once someone starts going funny then it gets crazier and crazier. It’s hopeless! Fortunately we had Hunter there, because he was living with Jerry in Larkspur at the time, and he’s down to earth and serious. Or at least he can be, unlike the rest of us. [Laughs] He said, “How about the Riders of the Purple Sage?” [after the Zane Grey novel]? And I said, “There’s already a Riders of the Purple Sage band.” So we became the New Riders of the Purple Sage.

* * *

For lots more on the New Riders, and to buy their fantastic new album (or the Turkey Trot DVD), check out the band’s very cool website at www.nrpsmusic.com.

Ongoing RatDog Summer Tour Setlists!

frogstorm — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 22:01:40 -0500

Getting mostly great reports from the RatDog tour. For those who like to keep track of the tour from afar, we’ll be providing regular setlist updates. For more details, fan commentary on the shows and photos as they become available, bookmark the fabulous fan site www.ratdog.org!

7/5/09, LC Pavilion, Columbus, OH
Jam> Jack Straw> Easy to Slip> Dark Star> Little Red Rooster, Mississippi Half-Step> Samson and Delilah> Milestones> stuff, Dear Prudence*> Dark Star+ > Touch of Grey+

* with Chris Robinson (vocals)
+ with Jackie Greene (guitar/vocals);

7/9/09, Snagajob.com Pavilion, Glen Allen, VA
Jam> Feel Like a Stranger> Easy Answers, It’s All Over Now Baby Blue, Odessa, Ramble On Rose, Playing in the Band> The Other One> stuff> Standing on the Moon, Quinn the Eskimo*> GDTRFB*

* with Al Schnier (guitar)

7/10/09, All Good Festival, Marvin’s Mountaintop, Masontown, WV
Jam> Truckin’> Tomorrow Never Knows> Lucky Enough, Big Boss Man, Money for Gasoline> Maggie's Farm, Loose Lucy, Eyes of the World> stuff*> Tomorrow Never Knows*> Morning Dew, China Cat Sunflower+> I Know You Rider+

* with Les Claypool (bass)
+ with Al Schnier (guitar)

7/11/09, Mark G. Etess Arena, Atlantic City NJ
Jam> Help on the Way> Slipknot!> Cassidy> Bird Song> All Along the Watchtower> Lazy River Road> Big Railroad Blues, A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall #, She Says> Two Djinn> stuff, Days Between> Bird Song (reprise)> Cassidy (reprise)> Slipknot!> Franklin's Tower / E: One More Saturday Night

7/12/09, Highland Bowl Amphitheatre, Rochester, NY
Jam> The Music Never Stopped> Big River, Senor> Loser> New Speedway Boogie> Even So> October Queen> The Deep End> Samson and Delilah> stuff> Black Peter, St. Stephen*> William Tell Bridge*> The Eleven*> Lovelight* / E: Ripple

* with Jackie Greene (guitar/vocals)

7/14/09 Penn’s Peak, Jim Thorpe, PA

Viola Lee Blues> New Minglewood Blues> Queen Jane Approximately> Walkin’ Blues, Tennessee Jed, Shade of Grey> Hell in a Bucket

Stealin@*, Oh Boy @*> Not Fade Away@*> Iko Iko*> stuff, Come Together> Sugar Magnolia / E: Gloria

@acoustic

*with Jackie Greene (guitar/harmonica/vocals)

7/15/09, Penn’s Peak, Jim Thorpe, PA

Jam> Here Comes Sunshine> Casey Jones, Mission in the Rain> Crazy Fingers> Brown-Eyed Women> Dark Star

Blackbird@, When I Paint My Masterpiece@, Black-Throated Wind@, Lady with a Fan > Terrapin> stuff, Stella Blue> Dark Star> Johnny B. Goode / E: At a Siding> Terrapin Flyer

@ acoustic

7/17/09, Masquerade Park, Atlanta, GA

Jam> Dancing in the Streets> The Golden Road> Wang Dang Doodle* > Milestones*, Picasso Moon, Weather Report Suite

You Win Again@, Jackaroe@, Friend of the Devil@, West L.A. Fadeaway* > Scarlet Begonias* > stuff* > Knockin’ on Heaven's Door, Not Fade Away

* with Bryan Lopes on sax

7/18/09, Masquerade Music Park, Atlanta, GA

Jam> Shakedown Street> Maggie's Farm, They Love Each Other> Easy to Slip> Bird Song> Lazy River Road

Me and My Uncle@, Corrina, He's Gone@ > The Other One*+ > Stuff*+ > Sugaree* > Bird Song* > One More Saturday Night*+

@acoustic

* with Bryan Lopes on sax

+ with Al Schnier on guitar

7/19/09, St. Augustine Amphitheatre, St. Augustine, FL

Jam> Playing in the Band> Cold Rain and Snow, Silvio> Tequila, Althea, Lost Sailor> Saint of Circumstance, A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall@, Looks Like Rain@, Mississippi Half-Step*> stuff > Dear Prudence*> Throwing Stones> Johnny B. Goode

@ acoustic

* with Chuck Garvey on guitar

7/21/09, Greenfield Amphitheater, Wilmington, NC

Jam> Feel Like a Stranger> Mama Tried, She Belongs to Me> Youngblood, Row Jimmy, Cream Puff War, It's All Over Now> Liberty

Catfish John@, Me and Bobby McGee@, The Weight@, Uncle John's Band> The Wheel > stuff, Death Don't Have No Mercy> Corrina / E: Brokedown Palace

@ acoustic

7/23/09, Casino Ballroom, Hampton Beach, NH

Jam> Casey Jones> All Along the Watchtower> Dire Wolf> Little Red Rooster, Odessa, Ship of Fools, Money for Gasoline> Eyes of the World

K.C. Moan@, Mexicali Blues@, Victim or the Crime@, Two Djinn> stuff, Wharf Rat > China Cat Sunflower> I Know You Rider / E: Touch of Grey

@acoustic

7/24/09, Casino Ballroom, Hampton.Beach, NH

Jam> I Need a Miracle> Truckin’> I Need a Miracle> Jus' Like Mama Said> Big Boss Man> Even So> October Queen> The Deep End> Dark Star> Big Railroad Blues

Me and My Uncle@, Desolation Row@>, Estimated Prophet> The Other One> stuff, Dark Star jam> Come Together> Dark Star> Goin’ Down the Road / E: Attics of My Life

@acoustic

7/25/09, Gathering of the Vibes, Seaside Park, Bridgeport, CT

Jam> Festival> Jack Straw, Lazy River Road, Bird Song> Bertha*, Silvio> Tequila> Scarlet Begonias*, Ashes and Glass> Iko Iko> stuff> Days Between> Bird Song, One More Saturday Night* /E: Ripple*

* with Donna Jean Godchaux-MacKay on vocals

8/21/09, Britt Pavilion, Jacksonville, OR

Jam> Shakedown Street> Mama Tried> She Belongs to Me, Jus' Like Mama Said, Playing in the Band> Festival> Terrapin, Blackbird@, When I Paint My Masterpiece@, Mississippi Half-Step> stuff, Morning Dew> GDTRFB*

@ acoustic

* with Jackie Greene on guitar,harmonica and vocals

8/22/09, Cuthbert Amphitheatre, Eugene, OR

Jam> Jack Straw> Easy to Slip> Lazy River Road> Dark Star> It's All Over Now> She Says> Liberty, Two Djinn, Me and My Uncle@, A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall@, Ashes and Glass> stuff> Dear Prudence> Dark Star*+ > One More Saturday Night*+

@ acoustic

* with Jackie Greene on guitar and vocals

+with Barry Flast on keyboards

8/23/09, Paramount Theatre, Seattle, WA

Jam> Dancing in the Streets> Hell in a Bucket, Even So> October Queen> The Deep End> Milestones, Lost Sailor> Saint of Circumstance

Victim or the Crime@> Black-Throated Wind@, Shade of Grey> The Other One> Samson and Delilah> stuff> Sugaree> Sugar Magnolia / E: Ripple

8/25/09, Martin Woldson Theater at the Fox, Spokane, WA

New Speedway Boogie*+ > Smokestack Lightnin*+ > The Music Never Stopped*> Maggie's Farm, Mission in the Rain, Walkin Blues> Crazy Fingers, Lucky Enough> Tomorrow Never Knows

You Win Again@, El Paso@, Silvio>Tequila> Silvio> Althea> Iko-Iko> stuff> Wharf Rat> Touch of Grey / E: Johnny B. Goode

@ acoustic

*with Jackie Greene on guitar/harmonica/vocals);

+with members of Jackie's band

8/26/09, Wilma Theatre, Missoula, MT

Don't Let Go, Rock Your Papa, Walk through the Fire, Easy Wind> Feel Like a Stranger> Minglewood Blues, Bird Song> Big Railroad Blues

K.C. Moan@*, Fever@*, Friend of the Devil@5*, Good Morning Little Schoolgirl*, Tennessee Jed* > stuff > Come Together* > China Cat Sunflower* > I Know You Rider* / E: U.S. Blues*

@ acoustic

* with Huey Lewis on harmonica and/or vocals;

"Don't Let Go" through most of "Easy Wind" without Bob

8/27/09, The Knitting Factory, Boise, ID

Jam> Truckin’> Loose Lucy> Row Jimmy, Bury Me Standing> Greatest Story Ever Told, Salt Lake City> Truckin’ jam> Deal

Jack-A-Roe@, When I Paint My Masterpiece@, Ramble On Rose> Estimated Prophet> The Wheel> stuff, Ship of Fools> GDTRFB / E: Brokedown Palace

@ acoustic

8/29/09, The Depot, Salt Lake City, UT

Jam> Help on the Way> Slipknot!> Loser, Money for Gasoline, Cassidy> Book of Rules> Little Red Rooster, Odessa> At a Siding> Terrapin Flyer

Me and Bobby McGee@, Catfish John@, Looks Like Rain@, He's Gone> The Other One> stuff* > Death Don't Have No Mercy> Slipknot!> Franklin's Tower / E: One More Saturday Night

@ acoustic

* with Matt Butler on washboard

8/30/09, Chautauqua Auditorium, Boulder, CO

Jam> Casey Jones, Easy to Slip> Stagger Lee> Dire Wolf, Candyman@, Corrina@, I Need a Miracle> Playing in the Band> Mississippi Half-Step> Samson and Delilah> stuff, Black Peter> Touch of Grey

@ acoustic

8/31/09, Denver Botanic Gardens, Denver, CO

Here Comes Sunshine> Easy Answers, Queen Jane Approximately, Lazy River Road, Jack Straw, Peggy-O@, The Weight@, Lady with a Fan> Terrapin> stuff> Standing on the Moon> Playing in the Band (reprise)> Johnny B. Goode / Ripple

@ acoustic

July 13 - July 19, 2009

ccasal — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 15:19:31 -0500

Greetings, and welcome back to the Tapers’ Section for a stop in the middle of July. This week we’re going to be sticking to the late-Brent period of Grateful Dead music, with stops in 1989 and 1990.

Our first stop this week is to RFK Stadium in Washington, DC, where the Grateful Dead would end the stadium portion of their summer tour of 1989 with two nights at the then-home of the Redskins (who have since moved to Landover, MD, whose former tenants the Bullets/Wizards of the NBA and the Capitals of the NHL have moved into the city). After this concert, the band’s 7th stadium concert of the tour, they would wrap things up with four amphitheatre shows, at Deer Creek and Alpine. From 7/13/89, we are pleased to play the end of the concert, featuring I Will Take You Home>The Other One>Wharf Rat>Throwing Stones>Good Lovin'. It was all good and fun to see the band play well at stadiums, but moving on to the next show at Deer Creek was a real treat. After almost two weeks in stadiums, Deer Creek was like seeing the band in your backyard.

From the aforementioned Deer Creek show on 7/15/89, the band’s first ever appearance at this fine little venue in Noblesville, Indiana, we have the end of the second set, featuring featuring Space>China Doll>All Along The Watchtower>Stella Blue>Sugar Magnolia, with the Space including a bit of Close Encounters tease. This show was by no means perfect, but it sure was fun.

Lastly this week, from the Buffalo, NY show on 7/16/90, we have the end of the first set, featuring Loose Lucy, All Over Now, High Time, Let It Grow>Don't Ease Me InThis was a very good tour, with a few really great shows in the mix. It’s hard to believe that just 10 days after this show Brent would be gone, but thankfully we have the tapes to remind us of how great this band was.

Check in next week for music from 1974 and 1987. Lots of great material coming up. As always, we welcome and encourage your questions and comments to the email address below.

David Lemieux
vault@dead.net

Grateful Dead Hour no.189

ccasal — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 10:19:07 -0500

Week of May 4, 1992

A salute to Brent Mydland, the Grateful Dead's keyboardist from April 1979 until his death in July 1990.

Also: a sprightly reading of "Rider," known in GD circles as "I Know You Rider," from a 1992 Rhino compilation titled Troubadours of the Folk Era, vol. 1. The band is The Big Three, one of whom was Cass Elliott - who went on to fame as one of The Mamas and The Papas. )One of Elliott's partners in this trio was Tim Rose, who is credited as a co-writer of another important Grateful Dead cover song, "Morning Dew." But that credit is controversial; Dobson wrote the song, and then Fred Neil made it popular. According to the All Music Guide, "In a 1993 interview with Randy Jackson, Dobson said, 'If anyone is going to be credited as co-writer or co-lyricist it should have been Fred Neil because all Tim Rose did was take Freddie Neil's changes.'" The Europe '72 "Morning Dew" is just one of many peak Grateful Dead performances of the song, and that live album also includes a terrific reading of "I Know You Rider.")

Enjoy!

Grateful Dead 3/28/90 Nassau Coliseum, Uniondale
HEY POCKY WAY

Grateful Dead 3/25/90 Knickerbocker Arena, Albany NY
GOOD TIME BLUES

Grateful Dead 4/1/90 Omni, Atlanta
JUST A LITTLE LIGHT

The Big Three, from Troubadours of the Folk Era, vol. 1
RIDER

Grateful Dead 3/26/90 Knickerbocker Arena, Albany NY
DEAR MR. FANTASY->
GIMME SOME LOVIN'
BLOW AWAY

Thank you for listening!
- David Gans

Listen Now

July 6 - July 12, 2009

ccasal — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 09:27:04 -0500

Greetings, and big welcome back to the Tapers' Section, where this week we'll check in on the Grateful Dead's recorded history with stops in 1984 and 1989.

First up this week is the entire first set from Alpine Valley on 7/6/84, and includes Iko Iko, Jack Straw>Big RR Blues, Little Red Rooster, Candyman, Me and My Uncle>Mexicali Blues, Bird Song, Let It Grow. These two Alpine ‘84 shows were very strong, and we'll get to more music from them later in the year we hope.

We're now going to start up with a run of music from the excellent summer tour of 1989. Our first selection is from one of my favourite shows of 1989, 7/7/89 at JFK Stadium in Philadelphia. From the start of the second set, we have Box of Rain>Scarlet Begonias>Fire On The Mountain, Estimated Prophet>Standing On The Moon. This concert, start-to-finish, is stellar, and hopefully we'll see its release some day similar to the Buffalo 89 DVD/CD set.

From the next concert on the tour, at Giants Stadium on 7/9/89, we have the post-Drums sequence of Gimme Some Lovin'>Goin' Down The Road Feeling Bad>Throwing Stones>Not Fade Away. Of note at this concert is that it was a rare instance from this era that there was no Garcia ballad played post-Drums, just a long string of rocking tunes.

The very next night also featured some great material, on 7/10/89 at Giants. From this concert we have the opening of the second set, featuring Uncle John's Band. The two songs that opened the set were yet-to-be recorded for the Built To Last album, but both were already strong additions to the live repertoire.

Be sure to stop by next week for more great music. It's always good to see you, and to hear from you at the email address below.

David Lemieux
vault@dead.net

Grateful Dead Hour no.254

ccasal — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 09:52:28 -0500

Week of August 2, 1993

Featured: an interview with David Grisman and three unreleased live Garcia-Grisman performances from May of 1992.

Jerry Garcia & David Grisman 5/92 Warfield Theater, SF
SITTING IN LIMBO

David Grisman Quintet, Dawgwood
JAZZIN' WITH JOE BOB
Jerry Garcia & David Grisman 5/92
DAWG'S WALTZ

Enrique Coria
SONS DE CARRILOES

Old and In the Way
OLD AND IN THE WAY

David Grisman, Mondo Mando
MONDO MANDO

Jerry Garcia & David Grisman 5/92
SHE BELONGS TO ME

Thank you for listening!
- David Gans

Listen Now

June 29 - July 5, 2009

ccasal — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 10:06:23 -0500

Welcome back to the Tapers Section as we close out June and start out July with some terrific Grateful Dead music from 1970, 1987 and 1989.

Our first stop this week is in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, former home of Neil Young, Randy Bachman and Dale Hawerchuk. If you’re ever driving along the Trans Canada Highway, be sure to make a stop into Winnipeg. From the Festival Express concert on 7/1/70, we have a batch of songs, some acoustic and some electric, including Candyman, Dire Wolf, Uncle John's Band, Me and My Uncle, China Cat Sunflower>I Know You Rider. There was plenty of good music played on this short tour, which unfortunately was two shows shorter than planned to due cancellations in Montreal (political unrest) and Vancouver (lack of funds).

Next up, also from Canada, on 6/30/87 at Kingswood Music Theatre just a bit north of Toronto, we have the end of the concert, featuring Spanish Jam>The Other One>China Doll>Dear Mr. Fantasy>Around and Around>Good Lovin', Box of Rain. This was such a magical night of music, and although most of the songs were rather short, the energy the band brought over the border was stunning. Truly one of the most interesting and well-received Grateful Dead concerts I ever attended. This music was drawn from the matrix tape (audience-soundboard audio blend) that is common of this era’s Grateful Dead recordings, but the music certainly does shine through.

Lastly this week, from just over the Canadian border on the US side, on 7/4/89 at Rich Stadium near Buffalo, NY, we have the end of the first set and start of the second set, specifically Stagger Lee, Looks Like Rain>Deal, Touch of Grey>Women Are Smarter. This music is part of the wonderful DVD release Truckin’ Up To Buffalo, which features some of the most inspired and enthusiastic Grateful Dead music captured on video, all produced into a wonderful 5.1 surround sound mix.

Next week we’ll have exceptional Grateful Dead music from 1984 and 1989. Don’t miss it if you can help it. And we encourage you to write to the email address below with any questions or comments.

David Lemieux
vault@dead.net

June 22 - June 28, 2009

ccasal — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 11:57:34 -0500

Welcome back to the Tapers Section, where this week we’ll begin our summer proceedings with some tasty Grateful Dead music from 1973, 1990 and 1991.

Our first stop on this week’s journey is at the Memorial Coliseum on 6/24/73 in beautiful Portland, OR, a venue that is the former home of the Trail Blazers (they’ve since moved to the bigger Rose Garden across the plaza in Portland’s Rose Quarter) and current home of the WHL’s Winter Hawks hockey team. This is the second show on a short six show tour in the Summer of 1973, and this week we’ll feature Mississippi Half-Step, You Ain't Woman Enough, El Paso, Stella Blue, Greatest Story Ever Told, Bertha, all of which are played extremely well.

Heading north on I-5 for a stop on 6/26/73 in Seattle ( a bit of odd scheduling, as the show before Portland was on 6/22/73 in Vancouver, Canada), we have music from the Seattle Center Arena with a nice batch of music featuring The Race Is One, Cumberland, China Cat Sunflower>I Know You Rider, BIODTL, Loser, Playing In The Band. As usual for this era, Playing In The Band is a nice springboard to some outstanding improvisational music, with a terrific mix that prominently displays the talents of Bobby, Jerry, Phil and Billy, with Keith occasionally popping up with some interesting stuff.

Jumping ahead 17 years, but staying in the Pacific Northwest, we have music from the first of two night’s at Eugene, OR’s Autzen Stadium, on 6/23/90. These two concerts were scheduled quite late, as the weekend was originally scheduled elsewhere in California, but fire dangers prevented those shows happening, so Eugene was booked. The shows started at noon on beautiful summer days, with Little Feat opening from 12 to 1, then the Grateful Dead from about 2 to 5. After the shows, there was plenty of time to take a canoe ride down the river beside the stadium, grab a nice meal, see a movie, and be back at the hotel by 11 PM. And the shows were terrific. From the opening of the second set on the first night, we have Eyes of the World>Looks Like Rain>Crazy Fingers>Playing In The Band>Uncle John’s Band>Playing In The Band. This is one of the longest pre-Drums sequences of the era, clocking in at around 55 minutes. Even those of us using 110 minute cassettes to record the concerts were sweating it at the time.

Finally this week, from an amazing Grateful Dead show on 6/22/91 in Chicago, we have the opening trio of songs, featuring Hell In A Bucket>Shakedown Street>Wang Dang Doodle. There really was some great music played at these concerts

We’ll look forward to seeing you here next week for more great music from 1970, 1987 and 1989. Thanks for stopping in, and feel free to write with questions or comments about the Tapers Section to the email address below.

David Lemieux
vault@dead.net

Join Mickey Hart, Bob Weir and Jeff Chimenti at Fundraiser for Senator Boxer

frogstorm — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 19:50:10 -0500

On Saturday, June 20th, Mickey Hart, Bob Weir and Jeff Chimenti will perform at a fundraiser for Senator Barbara Boxer in Marin County, California. They plan on playing for a full hour, and since the venue only holds 150 people, it'll be an intimate group!

The organizers are offering a special price of $75 to Dead.net members who would like to attend the event. There will be delicious food catered by Beautifull! as well as an open bar with beer and wine included in the price of admission. There's also a VIP level of $1000 which includes entry to the VIP photo reception with Mickey, Bob, Jeff and Senator Boxer.

If you'd like to be a part of this very special event, click here to visit Senator Boxer's online RSVP page. You may also email BOXERRSVP@gmail.com with any questions, comments or concerns, or with RSVPs if you'd prefer to mail a check.

Here's the website with all the details:

https://secure.ga6.org/08/ross_june09_facebook?source=deadnet

Grateful Dead Hour no.778

ccasal — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 12:16:59 -0500

Week of August 18, 2003

Concluding the second set of 6/25/85, which we started in last week's podcast. Also in this week's post, a couple of excerpts from the then-new Dick's Picks Picks volume 29, a 6-CD set with two shows from the band's amazing Spring 1977 tour.

"Samson and Delilah" is preceded by a hilarious comedy bit: as the band prepared to begin the second set at the Fox Theater in Atlanta on May 19, guitarist Bob Weir announced to the audience: "Before we get started, maybe we should all take part in an exercise - a simple exercise: I want every one of you out there to stand up real slow, put your hands in the air, and turn around real slow. And don't try anything funny 'cause I've got you covered. Thank you."

As the crowd laughs and cheers, drummer Bill Kreutzmann is heard to say, "That wasn't good enough!"

One wonders what backstage discussion gave rise to this great moment in Grateful Dead history. It was one of my favorite bootleg tapes for years, and I had played it on the GD Hour twice before, so I was very happy when it showed up in an official release.

Enjoy!
- David Gans

Grateful Dead 6/25/85 Blossom Music Ctr, Cuyahoga Falls OH
SPACE->
THE WHEEL->
PLAYING IN THE BAND->
CHINA DOLL->
SUGAR MAGNOLIA
TOUCH OF GREY

Grateful Dead, Dick's Picks vol. 29 (May 19 & 21, 1977)
SAMSON AND DELILAH
TENNESSEE JED

Every Wednesday, we post a program from the >Grateful Dead Hour archives for your enjoyment and enlightenment. You can browse or search the playlists - by song title, show date, guest name, etc - at >gdhour.com or on the >GD Hour Search page, and let me know what program(s) you'd like to hear by emailing me at gdhour@dead.net.

Thanks for listening!
David Gans

Listen Now

Grateful Dead Hour no.777

ccasal — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 12:10:50 -0500

Week of August 11, 2003

By request, this week and next we'll hear some unreleased Grateful Dead music: the complete second set of 6/25/85. Also in this week's post, some music from the soundtrack of Bob Dylan's weird and wonderful movie Masked and Anonymous. Bob starred in the film along with an all-star cast that included Jeff Bridges, Penelope Cruz, John Goodman, Jessica Lange, Luke Wilson, and many more. And tons of great music.

"Diamond Joe," featured here, is also heard (sung by David Nelson) on the Jerry Garcia Acoustic Band album Almost Acoustic; I've always loved that song - and the rest of the CD, too.

Enjoy!
- David Gans

Grateful Dead 6/25/85 Blossom Music Ctr, Cuyahoga Falls OH
GIMME SOME LOVIN'->
CHINA CAT SUNFLOWER->
I KNOW YOU RIDER->
PLAYING IN THE BAND->
DRUMS

From the Masked and Anonymous Soundtrack CD
DIAMOND JOE - Bob Dylan
ON A NIGHT LIKE THIS - Los Lobos
DOWN IN THE FLOOD - Bob Dylan

Thank you for listening!
- David Gans

Listen Now

ROTHBURY 2009!

frogstorm — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 18:25:57 -0500

ROTHBURY returns to the Double JJ Ranch in Rothbury, Michigan July 2- 5, 2009. Last year ROTHBURY celebrated its inaugural year and went down in the books as one of the best festivals ever. We can’t wait to be part of the experience this year and hope you’ll join us! Check out www.rothburyfestival.com for the full scoop.

GET TICKETS NOW

http://www.rothburyfestival.com/tickets/

ROTHBURY
2009 ARTIST LINE UP:

THE DEAD
BOB DYLAN AND HIS BAND,
THE STRING CHEESE INCIDENT,
WILLIE NELSON & FAMILY,
THE BLACK CROWES,

DAMIAN “JR. GONG” MARLEY AND NAS, STS9,
G. LOVE & SPECIAL SAUCE, GOV’T MULE, BROKEN SOCIAL SCENE,
COLD WAR KIDS, MATISYAHU, GUSTER, LES CLAYPOOL, CHROMEO,
GIRL TALK, THE HOLD STEADY, ANI DI FRANCO
AND MANY OTHERS

THE FOUR DAY CAMPING FESTIVAL ON 4th of JULY WEEKEND
PROMISES EXPANDED VIP EXPERIENCES, UNPRECEDENTED SUSTAINABILITY
INITIATIVES, AND MUCH MORE

HERE'S THE TICKET LINK
AT WWW.ROTHBURYFESTIVAL.COM

The Dead (their ONLY summer appearance!), Bob Dylan, The String Cheese Incident, Willie Nelson & Family, and The Black Crowes will top the bill of over 60 diverse and stellar artists at the second annual ROTHBURY Festival at the Double JJ Ranch in Michigan on July 2-3-4-5, 2009.

Also on the bill are Damian “Jr. Gong” Marley & Nas, STS9 (2 shows: full band/Live PA Set), G. Love & Special Sauce, Gov't Mule, Broken Social Scene, Cold War Kids, Matisyahu, Guster, Les Claypool, Chromeo, Girl Talk, The Hold Steady, Ani DiFranco and many others. A complete list of confirmed artists follows, and many others will be announced in the coming months.

ROTHBURY emerged last year as a new Fourth of July celebration. With The Dead performing their only summer show and The String Cheese Incident together for their only show for 2009, and cultural icons Bob Dylan, Willie Nelson, and Ralph Stanley, ROTHBURY 2009 continues to honor America’s extraordinary festival lineage. Interlacing ushers of the new American music scene such as STS9, Chromeo, and MSTRKRFT, globally recognized acts including Femi Kuti & The Positive Force, Damian “Jr. Gong” Marley & Nas, and King Sunny Adé & His African Beats and local Michigan artists The Macpodz, Steppin' In It, The Ragbirds, Four Finger Five, and The Hard Lessons, ROTHBURY delivers music of integrity across all genres. Coupled with a commitment to exploring the integration of art and modern thought and technology throughout the event, ROTHBURY creates a unique 21st century American gathering unlike any other.

ROTHBURY 2009 also unveils its broadened GOOD LIFE VIP offerings. Expanded this year to fit all budgets and tastes, ROTHBURY’s VIP experiences are unmatched by any other U.S. festival. Utilizing the festival’s unique site, fans can choose from a variety of sleeping/living options including beach front and forested environments and a selection of habitats such as safari tents, teepees, pre-fab camping packages and more. Each GOOD LIFE neighborhood offers a distinctly different living experience for a variety of budgets. Visit www.rothburyfestival.com for full GOOD LIFE details.

Building on its mission to create a state-of-the-art large scale sustainable event and to organize and nurture community involvement that makes a difference, ROTHBURY 2009 promises even more cutting-edge festival implementation of ever-changing green technologies. The 2009 ROTHBURY Think Tank, an event within the event, explores the topic of the emerging “New Green Economy.” The Think Tank will host various buzz sessions and roundtables between leading scientists, scholars, writers, progressive political and corporate leaders, youth leaders, ROTHBURY artists, and ROTHBURY attendees. Think Tank Programming details coming soon.

ROTHBURY itself is committed to producing a near zero-waste concert. The first to tackle a green program of this magnitude at an around-the-clock (camping) concert in the USA, ROTHBURY has an on-staff Greening Chief, and has implemented multiple initiatives toward this effort, including replacing disposables with 100% compostables, recycling and composting, choosing clean energy, carbon-offsetting, and Green Ticket options. Visit www.rothburyfestival.com for more information.

ROTHBURY’s current list of confirmed artists is as follows:

The Dead
Bob Dylan and His Band
The String Cheese Incident
Willie Nelson & Family
The Black Crowes
Damian “Jr. Gong” Marley & Nas
STS9 (2 shows: full band/Live PA Set)
G. Love & Special Sauce
Gov't Mule
Broken Social Scene
Yonder Mountain String Band
The Disco Biscuits
Les Claypool
Cold War Kids
John Butler
Chromeo
Ani DiFranco
Matisyahu
Guster
Girl Talk
Femi Kuti & The Positive Force
MSTRKRFT
Martin Sexton
Flogging Molly
Railroad Earth
The Hold Steady
Toots & The Maytals
Ralph Stanley & The Clinch Mountain Boys
Brett Dennen
Zappa Plays Zappa
Grace Potter and the Nocturnals
Shpongle DJ Set
Son Volt
Jackie Greene
Soulive
Man Man
Peter Rowan Bluegrass Band w/ Tony Rice
King Sunny Adé & His African Beats
Lotus
Kid Cudi
STS9 Live PA
The Glitch Mob
Davy Knowles and Back Door Slam
Pretty Lights
Moseley, Law, Sipe and Droll
Rebelution
Quannum All Stars ft. Lyrics Born, The Mighty Underdogs, Gift of Gab & Lifesavas
Toubab Krewe
Sam Roberts Band
Hill Country Revue
Kyle Hollingsworth Band
Lipp Service
2020 Soundsystem
Break Science ft. Adam Deitch
The Hard Lessons
The Low Anthem
Underground Orchestra
Future Rock
The Macpodz
Steppin' In It
Giant Panda Guerilla Dub Squad
Chris Pierce
Rachel Goodrich
The Ragbirds
Four Finger Five

Additional acts to be announced in the coming months.

Tickets available at www.rothburyfestival.com and at 1-888-512-SHOW (Open Mon-Sat 9am-9pm CST).

ROTHBURY is produced by Madison House Presents and AEG Live.

www.rothburyfestival.com

June 15 - June 21, 2009

ccasal — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 11:27:12 -0500

Greetings and big welcome back to the Tapers' Section as we hit the end of Spring. We have some excellent music this week from Grateful Dead concerts in 1974, 1990 and 1991.

Our first selection this week is from Des Moines, IA, the second and last annual show at the Fairgrounds, after the excellent 5/13/73 concert. From this great show on 6/16/74 we have the end of the second set, featuring Truckin'>Wharf Rat, Goin' Down The Road Feeling Bad. This show and the next show in Louisville on 6/18/74 are a great one-two punch on the start of what would be a short but excellent tour.

Next up, from 16 years later at Shoreline Amphittheatre in Mountain View, CA on 6/16/90, we have the end of the first set, featuring Mama Tried>Big River, Friend of the Devil, Cassidy, Big Boss Man, One More Saturday Night, the last two of which are a little unique in that Bog Boss Man was very rare by 1990, and OMSN was rarely heard in the first set. This is part of the complete-show DVD View From The Vault Vol. 3, so if you want to see a fun, intriguing show (GREAT second set), check it out.

Finally this week, from 6/19/91 at Pine Knob Music Theatre near Detroit, we have the end of the second set, consisting of Space>Stella Blue>The Other One>Johnny B. Goode, Mighty Quinn. I absolutely love this sequence for a few reasons: the Stella Blue out of Space is pretty cool and quite unique (they'd done it a few days before on 6/14/91); The Other One is outstanding, with Phil and Jerry playing wonderfully around one another; and Johnny B. Goode out of The Other One is very unique. Mighty Quinn is also a bit of a rarity here. Add to this the two-keyboardist lineup featuring Vince and Bruce, and you have a dynamic, inspired Grateful Dead.

Be sure to check in next week for more great music, specifically from 1973, 1990 and 1991. As always, we encourage you to write to us here at the Tapers' Section at the email address below. Thanks for stopping by.

David Lemieux
vault@dead.net

Grateful Dead Hour no.295

ccasal — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 17:46:11 -0500

Week of May 16, 1994

By request, more from 10/27/79 at the Cape Cod Coliseum.

Enjoy!

Grateful Dead 10/27/79 Cape Cod Coliseum, South Yarmouth MA
HE'S GONE->
JAM->
THE OTHER ONE
NOT FADE AWAY->
BLACK PETER->
AROUND AND AROUND

Thank you for listening!
David Gans

Listen Now

June 8 - June 14, 2009

ccasal — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 10:52:36 -0500

Greetings, and welcome back to another fine week (we think…) at the Tapers' Section, where we'll listen to some of our favourite material from 1969, 1973, 1977 and 1984.

Our first selection this week is from the Fillmore West in San Francisco, during the course of another of the fine four night runs the band played at this mighty fine little venue. From 6/8/69, we have the very hot 1969 sequence of Dancing In The Street, He Was A Friend of Mine>China Cat Sunflower>New Potato Caboose. This is the final live Grateful Dead version of New Potato Caboose, and although not the level of some of the exquisite mid-1968 versions, it a good listen nonetheless.

Next we have one of the most famous jams of 1973, the sequence of Dark Star>He's Gone>Wharf Rat>Truckin'from 6/10/73 at RFK Stadium in Washington, DC. They didn't play too many shows in the late spring and summer of 1973, but when the Grateful Dead did convene, magic usually transpired. This jam is certainly one of the best, most inspired and unique of a very, very good era.

From four years less a day later, we have the big second set jam from 6/9/77 at Winterlnd in San Francisco, on the final night of a very good three night run at Winterland. This jam, consisting of Estimated Prophet>St. Stephen>Not Fade Away>St. Stephen>Terrapin Station>Sugar Magnolia, US Blues, One More Saturday Night, is a great way to cap off one of the finest six week periods in Grateful Dead, from 4/22/77 to 6/9/77. This Winterland show would be the last Grateful Dead concert for three months, with the band picking back up right where they left off when they returned to the stage on 9/3/77 at Englishtown with yet another exceptional 1977 concert.

Lastly this week, and I believe we may have played this jam before here at the Tapers’ Section, to celebrate its 25th Anniversary, we have the Red Rocks jam from 6/14/84 featuring Shakedown Street>Playing In The Band>Dear Mr. Fantasy, with this being the first-ever live Dear Mr. Fantasy by the Grateful Dead. The way they fall into Fantasy from the Playing In The Band spacey jam has always been one of my favourite little Grateful Dead moments. It might not be perfect, but it’s right.

Make sure you stop in next week for more great music, including selections from 1974, 1990, 1991. See you here, we hope.

David Lemieux
vault@dead.net

Jay Blakesberg Creates Magic With Dead Tour Photo Books

lilgoldie — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 13:32:39 -0500

Photographer Jay Blakesberg has been shooting the Grateful Dead since the late ’70s, and has even picked up the pace in the years following Garcia’s passing. Though he shoots album covers for many bands and works regularly for Rolling Stone and other magazines, he always makes time to shoot The Dead and their many offshoots—he’s been the de facto chronicler of Phil Lesh & Friends since that ever-evolving unit got its start in 1998. The last couple of years he’s also gotten more and more into video directing: Besides Phil & Friends’ commercial DVD (the group with John Scofield), he’s directed video shoots at various jam band festivals and other venues.

For the recent Dead tour, Jay added a new wrinkle to his impressive resumé—instant author. He created beautiful individual photo books for every city on The Dead’s tour; a great memento for fans. Previews of each book would appear online at blurb.com/thedead shortly after the concert and then they could be ordered right then and there. (Tour books for all cities are still available through Blurb at that URL.) Additionally, Jay partnered with filmmaker Justin Kreutzmann to document the tour in that medium—hopefully we’ll see more of their handiwork in that area up the road a little.

We talked to Jay a bit about his experience creating the tour books and being out on the road with the band.

How did you come to go on tour and create these amazing photo books for each stop along the way?
Actually, it was Jill Lesh who asked me for a proposal to go out on the road because she wanted me to be part of the team with Justin Kreutzmann to document the tour on video and also to do photography. The idea for the tour book—having one for every city they played in—also came from Jill Lesh. It was a brilliant idea.

You know me, I love books—I’ve published numerous books and I love the tactile feeling of making books and looking at photography books, so to me it was a great challenge. We also got a ton of press from the printing and concert industry that also thought that this was one of the coolest new ideas to come along for band merch in a while.

I would think it must have been hard to be on the road, shoot the shows and then turn the books around so quickly.
It was a huge workflow thing for us, because I had to shoot the shows, edit them, create the books in just a few days to get them up on line so people could see them and buy them. But it was a super-fun project and we’re hoping we can take this idea to other bands or festivals because I think it’s a great idea. I was talking to David Lemieux on tour and he was saying what a great memory package you can have now, between the tour book and the downloads or instant CDs available the same night at each show, and imagine if we could have done this 25 years ago!

We used to make our own tour books, with setlists and stuff that we cut out of newspapers and magazines, weird things like that. Psychedelic scrapbooking.
Right! I still collect and save everything; all of my old ticket stubs, backstage passes and things I’d pick up outside shows. I figure my kids will probably sell it all on eBay some day after I’m gone. [Laughs]

So, the workflow was, as soon as the show was over, we’d immediately start editing so we could get some things online at dead.net, jambase.com, etc., literally the next morning. I was shooting anywhere between 1,000 and 1,500 pictures a night, and I was typically editing about 50 percent of those out immediately.

So most of the shows I was left with 600 or 700 pictures; a couple of shows I had 800 or 900. I’d go through them and, with a software program—Lightroom by Adobe—I’d do a first edit and I’d usually end up with 200 or 300 marked blue [keepers] and then out of the blues I’d go through it again and five-star about 125 pictures.Then, out of those I'd send about 30 or 50 to dead.net, etc., and then I’d burn a DVD with those 125 five-star images and Fed-Ex them back to San Francisco, where my digital production guy, Ben Kautt, would design the book, make a pdf and put it up online. I’d be on the East Coast and I would look at it and make suggestions: “Let’s swap this photo for this other one, lose that shot, let’s make this a full page, let’s add an extra rehearsal room photo.” I’d go through and make an edit and he’d make the changes and he’d put up another pdf and we’d get it closer to being final. And when it was ready—usually after three rounds of edits—he’d upload the book to Blurb, and they would take it from there, and make it live and available for sale.

One of the other things I was brought in for was this tour app we did for the iPhone. It’s a very cool technology. I had done an electronic book on the Grateful Dead for the iPhone, and when I showed that to Phil and Bobby, who are big iPhone guys—and Mickey is also—they loved it and said, "This is great. How do we do something like this for the tour?" So we went into high gear and created a platform for the iPhone where we could have streaming audio from every show on the tour, and blogs by the band, set lists, photos, instant “Tweets” via Twitter right after they started playing a song, and backstage video. It turned out to be really cool. You can find it in the iTunes App store under “The Dead.”

So really, what I did on tour was create and manage content that was used across a whole range of places: The iPhone app, the tour book idea, the video stuff that’s up on dead.net that Justin and I did, plus the band now has an incredible documentation of this tour and this incarnation of the Band Beyond Description! I don’t think the Grateful Dead or The Dead has ever done such an extensive documentation of a tour.

Did you guys shoot much video of the music, or was it mostly backstage stuff?
We did shoot a lot of music. We would look at the set list every night and say, "Ooh, let’s cover these two or three songs as best as we could as a two-camera shoot." The idea for the film that Justin and I want to make is more of a documentary glimpse of the overall tour, with a healthy dose of old history thrown in through interviews, and not a concert film really. It can’t be a concert film because we didn’t do a four- or five- or six-camera shoot anywhere. But we have good coverage of very specific songs, of “Drums,” and then a lot of backstage stuff. We did a lot of great interviews, too. We interviewed some of the crew guys and we spent a lot of time in the rehearsal rooms backstage every night, watching them get into the groove and warming up. So we have a lot of intimate behind-the-scenes stuff. The photos I took really tell a story, but the video that Justin and I and our third party in video land—Stephanie Cinesi—created is really going to tell the Dead story in a way that is brand new.

I’m curious about what sort of things went on in the rehearsal rooms, because we don’t think of the Grateful Dead as a band that sat around and rehearsed before a show… to say the least.
That’s true. [Laughs] You know, I was just at Summer Camp Festival with moe. and Umphrey’s McGee, and both of those bands had instruments and amps in a back room. It’s become a much more common thing. Phish used to always do it. They used to have a lot of guests play with them, so it was a great place to get the guests warmed up. I have pictures of both Phil Lesh and Bob Weir in Phish rehearsal rooms at Shoreline; Warren Haynes, too.

What goes on at the rehearsal room with The Dead? Well, they look at the set list and they rehearse. You know, rehearsal is a big part of what made the Grateful Dead so great back in the late ’60s. Listen to those Fillmore West CDs from ’69.

I think it was Gary Lambert who said, “Of course those were phenomenal shows, because that’s when the band rehearsed all the time!” Rehearsal is part of what made them able to be an incredible improvisational band. It doesn’t just happen.

In Marin, before the tour, they were rehearsing jams, and yes, they still improvised, but it gave them a sturdier framework. I also watched them in the rehearsal room and they’d say, “OK, we’re going to play ‘Terrapin’ in the first set and then in the second set, right in the middle of ‘China-Rider’ let’s throw in a little Terrapin,’” or “Hey, this is how we’re going come out of this song to get into this other song.” Transitions. A place where they could throw out ideas and see if they could make them work, before going into a show cold and winging it.

Were you ever there when they were actually making up the setlist?
I think once or twice I saw a band member really getting into the set list at a venue. Often, though, they were e-mailing it before the band got to the venue. But at the venue is when it would get updated.

How were the set lists done?
I believe different band members picked out and made the set list. One night it would be a Phil set list, one night it was a Bobby set list, one night it was a Bill set list…

So that was true, eh? I’d heard that but couldn’t believe there was actually a show where Bill or Mickey would choose the songs…
Yes, indeed. They were rotating. The set list would typically be done early in the day, because the crew needs to get it and everyone needs to be aware of what’s going to happen, for a variety of reasons. And then it changes and evolves over the course of a day. Literally, when they send the list in the early afternoon, by the time they get to the rehearsal room at 7 p.m. that set list has changed a few times—songs get swapped out, orders get changed. The Sharpies come out.

Here’s a funny story: Up in Buffalo, “Morning Dew” was on the set list and all of a sudden I saw Billy crossing it out. I’m a huge “Morning Dew” guy so I’m like, ‘Whoa, Billy, what’s up? You’re not gonna do ‘Morning Dew’? He says, “We’re saving it for New York City. We want to do it at Madison Square Garden.” I said, “Great idea!” So they get to Madison Square Garden. Do they play it? No. OK, more shows go on, still no “Morning Dew.” The first night in Philly, I was up on stage during soundcheck and the only person up there was Phil and I needed to do some shots of his new custom speaker cabinets. So I said to him, “You know, you still haven’t played ‘Morning Dew’ yet.” I knew the set list was already done for the first night and it wasn’t on there. So Phil looks at me and he says, “You’re right. We haven’t played ‘Morning Dew,’ and we really need to play it before we leave the East Coast.” I said, “Well, that means tonight or tomorrow.” And he says, “I think you’re right,” and he got this kind of prankster look on his face.

So sure enough, I was on the bus driving over to the venue with Warren the next day and he says, “So, ‘Morning Dew’ is on the set list.” And I said “Yeaaaah!” I told Warren the story about how I reminded Phil they hadn’t played it yet and I asked him who was singing it and he said Bob wanted to sing the first one and “I’m gonna sing the next one. That’s one of the songs Bob want to alternate between us singing.” They played it that night and it was a great moment. Warren sang the next one, so East and West both got “Morning Dew” and both were incredible versions.

As a guy who did a bunch of tours back in the day, what are your observations about the crowd and the vibe of the tour? Everyone keeps talking about how many young people there were out there. My 18-year-old son hit the Forum show, his first…
The thing that was interesting is because a lot of the seats up front were VIP seats and more expensive, the people up front were a little bit older but definitely long-time Dead Heads and way into it... But in general, yeah, there were a lot of younger fans. Younger fans, older fans—everyone came to the party! I thought the energy was great, I thought most of the fans loved it, and when they got to a place like Madison Square Garden that place exploded from the crowd. There were some very electrified moments coming from the audience.

Backstage, the energy was really high, too. Mickey and Billy were really into it. Most shows, Mickey and Billy were the first ones there working on their drum section, so they were putting in almost an hour of soundcheck of their own before the full band soundcheck. Same thing up in Marin at rehearsal: Mickey and Billy would get there before everyone else because they had this guy Jonah Sharp helping Mickey with a bunch of the programming and they really wanted to get it all dialed in. I think their hard work paid off, because everyone really thought the “Drums” were amazing on this tour.

Jeff was amazing on this tour, too.
Jeff was amazing. He knows the song book really, really well, and so does Warren. I think everyone was really stepping up to the plate. I’d walk into the rehearsal room and Warren and Jeff would be working out some vocal stuff, so when Phil and Bobby got there, there was already energy in the air to up the ante and have all of them take it to the next level. It was phenomenal to see them work out the intricacies of their harmonies. They did not take it for granted that they could go out and sing a song like “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door” without practice. It was an amazing process to watch, but as I said, it’s something that many bands in the jam world do on a regular basis.

Were you there for both of the Branford nights?
Oh yeah, Justin got a great video interview with him talking about how he met the band and about playing with the band and stuff like that.

The first night I don’t think he came in the rehearsal room except to look at the set list.

Sometimes when they would rehearse, they would find a groove and really be getting it going, and all of a sudden, they’re like, “OK, let’s stop it right here. Let’s see where it goes onstage,” which I thought was very cool. They definitely did that with Branford the second night backstage. They did that frequently with a lot of songs in rehearsal—get it going, bottle the magic brew, and then on stage open the bottle back up and see where it would take them. They didn’t beat songs to death in the rehearsal room. They got them to the point where they were ready to go. The rehearsal room was like the launching pad, and then they’d get on stage and the rocket would blast off!

For more info about Jay and his work go to blakesberg.com.

Grateful Dead Hour no.294

ccasal — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 18:25:33 -0500

Week of May 9, 1994

By request, excerpts from two excellent 1979 shows: 10/27/79 at the Cape Cod Coliseum, and 7/1/79 at the Seattle Center Arena.

Enjoy!

Grateful Dead 10/27/79 Cape Cod Coliseum, South Yarmouth MA
DANCIN' IN THE STREETS->
FRANKLIN'S TOWER
ONE MORE SATURDAY NIGHT

Grateful Dead 7/1/79 Seattle Center Arena
PASSENGER
SHAKEDOWN STREET

Thank you for listening!
- David Gans

Listen Now

June 1 - June 7, 2009

ccasal — Fri, 29 May 2009 11:50:51 -0500

Greetings and welcome back to our end-of-the-month, start-of-the-next Tapers’ Section, where this week we’ll play music from 1970, 1974 and 1980.

As we don’t play too much acoustic Grateful Dead here at the Tapers’ Section, owing largely to its dearth in the Grateful Dead’s vault, it’s always a pleasure to bring you some good acoustic music. From 6/4/70, the first night of a four night run at the Fillmore West, we have the opening set consisting of Deep Elem Blues, Candyman, Silver Threads And Golden Needle, Friend Of The Devil, Black Peter, Cumberland Blues, Wake Up Little Susie, Swing Low Sweet Chariot, Uncle John's Band, a classic acoustic Dead set.

Next up, from two nights later at the same venue, we have some tasty electric Grateful Dead from 6/6/70, featuring Dire Wolf>Alligator>Drums>Lovelight>Not Fade Away>Lovelight>Uncle John's Band. It’s interesting to hear this electric Uncle John’s Band compared to the acoustic version from two nights earlier. There were a few songs from the era that the band could effortlessly shift from the acoustic sets to the electric sets and back, including Candyman and Dire Wolf.

From just a bit under 10 years later, in Minneapolis on 5/31/80, we have the second set opening sequence of Feel Like A Stranger, Ship, Lost Sailor>Saint of Circumstance>Jam>Wharf Rat>The Other One. I always love these pre-Drums versions of The Other One, and a pre-Drums Wharf Rat is a major rarity for the era.

Finally this week, to celebrate the anniversary of the theatrical release of The Grateful Dead Movie, which premiered at the Ziegfeld Theatre in New York on June 1, 1977, we have this majestic version of Playing In The Band from the Movie, recorded live on 10/16/74 at Winterland. This is the complete half hour version of the song.

We’ll see you next week here at the Tapers’ Section where we’ll have more great music drawn from the Grateful Dead’s recorded history. As always, we encourage you to write to the email address below with questions or comments.

David Lemieux
vault@dead.net

Grateful Dead Hour no.269

ccasal — Tue, 26 May 2009 11:24:31 -0500

Week of November 15, 1993

By request, excerpts from the famous "stealth" Grateful Dead show, where the band was billed as "Formerly the Warlocks"! Plus a track from a wonderful Garcia-Grisman CD.

Enjoy!

Grateful Dead 10/9/89 Coliseum, Hampton VA
FEEL LIKE A STRANGER
BUILT TO LAST
WE CAN RUN
THE MUSIC NEVER STOPPED

Jerry Garcia and David Grisman, Not for Kids Only
THREE MEN WENT A-HUNTING

Grateful Dead 10/9/89 Coliseum, Hampton VA
DARK STAR

Thank you for listening!
- David Gans

Listen Now

May 25 - May 31, 2009

ccasal — Tue, 26 May 2009 10:16:33 -0500

Welcome back to what we hope is another great and interesting week here at the Tapers' Section. This week we have two major jams from the Europe '72 tour, as well as a big, typically hot jam from the May 1977 tour.

First up this week is the big second set jam from 5/24/72, the third-to-last show of one of the greatest tours in Grateful Dead history. From this excellent show, we have Mexican Hat Dance, Truckin'>Drums>The Other One>Sing Me Back Home. Ditties like this Mexican Hat Dance are quite common, but this is definitely one of the most well-developed tuning ditties the band ever performed.

Next we have, from the very next show, the penultimate concert on the tour, a completely unique, and very well-played jam of Uncle John's Band>Wharf Rat>Dark Star>Sugar Magnolia from 5/25/72. When we put together the 4-CD set Steppin' Out with the Grateful Dead in 2002, we'd considered doing it as a 5-CD set, and this jam would have been the centerpiece of Disc 5, but it ended up as a majestic 4-CD release, with which we were very happy.

Finally this week, from the very last night of ALSO one of the greatest tours in Grateful Dead history, we have the second set sequence from Hartford on 5/28/77 featuring Estimated Prophet>Playing In The Band>Terrapin Station>Not Fade Away>Wharf Rat>Playing In The Band. This tour, from its very first show on 4/22/77 to this night, is one of the finest periods in Grateful Dead history, up there with April-May, 1972 and October-December, 1973. Every night featured something completely unique and interesting and inspired. This is really one of those tours from which I can grab any show randomly and be happy with what I selected. This Hartford show, of course, was recently released as a full-show, 3-CD set titled To Terrapin-Hartford '77.

Be sure to stop in next week for music from 1970, 1974 and 1980. Lots of great coming up as we end May and start June. See you next Monday, we hope.

David Lemieux
vault@dead.net

SIRIUS XM to Air The Gorge Show Live

frogstorm — Thu, 14 May 2009 13:32:36 -0500

SIRIUS XM’s Grateful Dead Channel will broadcast The Dead’s last show from their spring tour at The Gorge in George, Washington live on Saturday, May 16 at 10:30 pm ET. Exclusively on the Grateful Dead Channel, SIRIUS channel 32 and XM channel 57. For more information, visit www.sirius.com/gratefuldead or www.xmradio.com/gratefuldead

The Grateful Dead Channel is an exclusive channel that features music spanning the band's career with unreleased concert recordings and original shows hosted by band members Bob Weir, Mickey Hart and Bill Kreutzmann. The channel also features rare archival interviews with Jerry Garcia and contributions from Grateful Dead experts David Gans and David Lemieux.

For more information, click here.

May 18 - May 24, 2009

ccasal — Tue, 12 May 2009 10:51:49 -0500

Hello and welcome back. This week at the Tapers' Section we have music from 1973, 1977 and 1981, each jam featuring some excellent playing.

First up this week is the second-of-three weekend shows in May, 1973, this one being from 5/20/73 in Santa Barbara, a wonderful jam consisting of Truckin'>The Other One>Eyes of the World. The late spring and summer of 1973 was somewhat odd in the Grateful Dead's touring history in that there wasn't any really big summer tour, aside from a short six night run on the west coast at the end of June (Vancouver, Seattle, Portland and three nights in Hollywood). Instead, the band played a few well-selected larger scale shows between 4/2/73 and 9/7/73, specifically: Des Moines on 5/13, Santa Barbara on 5/20, SF on 5/26, Washington DC on 6/9&10, Watkins Glen on 7/27&28 and Roosevelt Stadium on 7/31 and 8/1. The quality of these shows certainly made up for the lack of quantity.

From the first night of a two night run at the Fox Theatre in Atlanta, on 5/18/77, we're very pleased to play the start of the second set, featuring Jack Straw, Ship of Fools, Estimated Prophet>Eyes of the World. The next night on 5/19/77 is a little more well known, thanks largely to its inclusion on the massive 6-CD Dick's Picks Volume 29, but this 5/18 show contains plenty of great music.

Lastly this week, 5/17/81 in Syracuse, we have the second set opener of Cold Rain and Snow>Samson and Delilah, Ship of Fools, Estimated Prophet. There was plenty of good music played on this tour, including the 5/6/81 show from Nassau that is Dick's Picks Volume 13, and for all of you video enthusiasts, the Tom Snyder Tomorrow Show with which you might be familiar was taped was on 5/7/81.

Be sure to check in next week for three massive jams, two from 1972 and one from 1977. See you then, we hope, and feel free to write with questions or comments to the email address below.

David Lemieux
vault@dead.net

Grateful Dead Hour no.809

ccasal — Mon, 11 May 2009 18:16:06 -0500

Week of March 22, 2004

And the conclusion of the second set of 3/1/87 at HJK, plus some more tracks from the then-new Jerry Garcia boxed set.

All Good Things: Jerry Garcia Studio Sessions
SUGAREE
MY SISTERS AND BROTHERS

Grateful Dead 3/1/87 Henry J Kaiser, Oakland CA
THE OTHER ONE->
BLACK PETER->
AROUND AND AROUND->
GOOD LOVIN'
~
DON'T EASE ME IN

Thank you for listening!
David Gans

Listen Now

Grateful Dead Hour no.808

ccasal — Mon, 11 May 2009 18:02:41 -0500

Week of March 15, 2004 or later

Continuing with the complete second set of 3/1/87, and a live track from my favorite guitar-god band, moe.

Grateful Dead 3/1/87 Henry J Kaiser, Oakland CA BLACK MUDDDY RIVER
HE'S GONE->
DRUMS

moe. 10/3/03 Orange Peel, Ashland OR (Instant Live CD) REBUBULA

Thank you for listening!
David Gans

Listen Now

May 11 - May 17, 2009

ccasal — Fri, 08 May 2009 15:24:54 -0500

Hello, and welcome back to the Tapers' Section, where this week we'll check out some excellent music from 1970, 1973 and 1978, all of which took place during this week in the Grateful Dead's recorded history.

Our first stop is on 5/14/70 in Kirkwood, MO, where the band would be playing less than two weeks after the famous show at Harpur College show in Binghamton, NY. Although hard to match, they do a fine job of continuing that energy, with the spectacular sequence of New Speedway Boogie>Nobody's Jam> New Speedway Boogie>St. Stephen>Not Fade Away>Lovelight The next night the band would appear in New York for another magical Fillmore East concert.

From Des Moines, IA, on 5/13/73, we have the second set jam featuring He's Gone>Truckin'>Drums>The Other One>Eyes of the World>China Doll. This would begin the run of three shows over the next two weekends, with 5/20/73 in Santa Barbara, and 5/26/73 at Kezar Stadium in San Francisco.

Next up, from about five years later on 5/10/78 in New Haven, CT, and part of the terrific Dick's Picks 25, we have a run of songs that straddles the first and second sets, featuring Me and My Uncle>Big River, Peggy-O, Let It Grow>Deal, Bertha>Good Lovin'. This is truly one of the most fun Picks out there. To really demonstrate how much fun this Pick is, we have this wonderfully comical Dancing In The Street from 5/11/78 in Springfield. You can feel the party dripping through the speakers.

Stop in next week, when we'll hear music from the aforementioned 5/20/73 show in Santa Barbara, as well as tunes from 1977 and 1981. As always, we welcome you to write us here at the Tapers' Section at the email address below. Please be sure to include the words Grateful Dead in your subject so that it gets through our near impenetrable spam barriers.

David Lemieux
vault@dead.net

Grateful Dead Hour no.807

ccasal — Thu, 07 May 2009 16:58:35 -0500

Week of March 8, 2004 or later

This week we begin a three-week series encompassing the complete second set of 3/1/87 at the Henry J. Kaiser Convention Center (formerly the Oakland Auditorium). This was the first night of a Sunday-through-Tuesday run in the grungy East Bay arena that became our home base after the demise of Winterland.

Sound man Dan Healy wasn't impressed with the fact that I had a contract with the Dead to do the Grateful Dead Hour, and although he grudgingly allowed me to plug a cassette deck into the soundboard feed for this run, it was the only time. Nothing was easy in dealing with the Dead and their crew. (And by the way, thanks to Bob Menke for lending me his Sony D-5 to do this.)

The music was terrific. There was something amiss at the San Francisco Civic in January - as anyone who heard the band's wild stab at the Beatles' "Get Back" on 1/28 can attest - so it was greatly reassuring to hear the GD hit the ground running at the Kaiser a month later.

And if I remember correctly, it was during this run of shows that Herbie Greene did the shoot for the Dylan-Dead tour photo.

Also in this show: a phone interview with Donna Jean Godchaux, who had just released a CD called At the Tablewith her family group, The Heart of Gold Band. This is a sweet and spiritual album that I liked a lot, especially the songs by Brian Godchaux, one of which is featured in this program. As I write this in April 2009, Donna Jean is on the road with a new ensemble, The Donna Jean Godchaux Band with Jeff Mattson. I attended their debut performance at Camp Zoe on April 17, and I give 'em an enthusiastic thumbs-up.

And: a track from the boxed set All Good Things: Jerry Garcia Studio Sessions, which was about to be released.

Enjoy!

Grateful Dead 3/1/87 Henry J Kaiser, Oakland CA
HELL IN A BUCKET->
SCARLET BEGONIAS->
FIRE ON THE MOUNTAIN
SAMSON AND DELILAH

All Good Things: Jerry Garcia's Studio Recordings
THAT'S A TOUCH I LIKE

Interview: Donna Jean Godchaux

Heart of Gold Band, At the Table
INDIAN TIME
LITTLE RED-HAIRED GIRL

Thank you for listening!
David Gans

Listen Now

A Wearable Monet

frogstorm — Wed, 06 May 2009 19:05:57 -0500

Amongst the jillion-and-one elements supporting The Dead’s Spring 2009 Tour is the artwork -- from the interactive spiral galaxy logo on the Tour’s home page, to the nifty musical minuteman dude on the Tour’s laminated working passes, to the designs on the Tour T-shirts sold at the merch stands in the lobby. And if you’ve been to a gig lately, you’ve likely noticed a particularly fine new T-shirt, quite unlike any we’ve seen before...

In advance of each tour, Merch-Maestro George Bross solicits artwork possibilities from various folks, from which he picks the designs that become the tour's trophy T-shirts. This time around, one of the submitted artworks came from Monet Weir, Bobby’s 11-year-old daughter: it’s a lovely, blossomy, viney-twiney take on the familiar skeleton-and-roses motif, done up in yer classic blue, red and white. Monet thought of the drawing she gave George as just a suggestion, really: a rough idea, a sketch, a template if you will, which -- should it by happy chance be chosen for a T-shirt -- would then be whisked away and turned over to some professional-type artiste person to be turned into professional-type artwork. But Maestro George, in one of those moments of insight, foresight, and white-light clarity, swiftly perceived that Monet’s drawing was not a sketch or suggestion or template for any artwork at all, oh no -- Monet’s drawing WAS the artwork. So he had a bunch of T-shirts made up, and, well, hotcakes should only sell this well.

Trouble was, they were only available in Children’s Size L, because the thinking was that it was a children’s shirt. Now Children’s Size L fits some women but not all, and no men to speak of, which to no one’s surprise except maybe George’s left a whole lot of disappointed Deadheads at the merch tables. Well, positive group-think has been applied to this pickle, and the cognitive leap has been made from “shirt for a kid” to “shirt by a kid”, and now Monet’s wonderful design is available on T-shirts in sizes to accommodate pretty much everyone. Get one for yourself (and your inner child) today.

LIVE CDs Available at Every Show

frogstorm — Tue, 05 May 2009 23:39:49 -0500

The Dead are offering high fidelity souvenir recordings immediately following each show!

Here's how it works:

1. Go to the T-Shirt Stand and buy a "the Dead:Live" wristband

2. Enjoy the show!

3. Return to the CD pick up station after the show and trade in your wristband for a CD set.

Don't miss out!

3 CD Set : The Whole Show : $25.00

500 limited edition CD sets per show, available only at the shows, direct from the Dead.

May 04 - May 10, 2009

ccasal — Mon, 04 May 2009 10:21:20 -0500

Welcome back, as we continue our ride through the month of May in the Grateful Dead’s recorded history, with stops in 1972, 1977 and 1978.

This week we’ll start our voyage in Paris, France, on the first night of the two night stand in the city of lights. From the second set, we have this magnificent, typical-of-Europe-’72 jam featuring Jam>The Other One>Drums>The Other One>Me and Bobby McGee>The Other One>Wharf Rat. These two Paris shows were loaded with good music, with some if it making it onto the Europe ’72 album. Hopefully some day we’ll see a France ’72 album released featuring music from these two shows, plus Lille on 5/13/72.

Next up, from five years plus a day later on 5/4/77 at the Palladium in New York City (check out last week’s Tapers’ Section for more music from this run), we have this very tight, very inspired second set jam of Terrapin Station>Playing In The Band>Comes A Time>Playing In The Band. As I mentioned last week, this run of shows, and the entire tour, featured a very unique jam/song sequence virtually every night, and this one is no exception.

From a year and a day later in Hanover, NH, we have the second set closing jam from 5/5/78 featuring Not Fade Away>Stella Blue>Around and Around, Werewolves of London. This was the first night of the second half of a very good tour, with the first half taking place 4/6/78 to 4/24/78 and the second half taking place 5/5/78 to 5/17/78, with plenty of great stuff during these five weeks, including the 5/10&11/78 shows that have been immortalized as Dick’s Picks Vol. 25.

Lastly this week, from the next night on 5/6/78 in Burlington, VT, we have the show-opening quintet of songs, consisting of Sugaree, Minglewood Blues, Beggy-O, BIODTL, Loser.

Stop in next week for more great music, from 1970, 1973 and 1978. Some very good stuff coming up.

David Lemieux
vault@dead.net

NEW Video from The Dead

Jonathan Lane — Sat, 02 May 2009 20:17:51 -0500

New: Branford A new web movie directed by Justin Kreutzmann and produced by Jay Blakesberg. Edited by Justin and Stephanie Cinesi.
New: Nassau	New: Letterman Backstage
Goin' Down The Road	4/14 Charlottesville
4/12 Greensboro	The Last Rehearsal
New York Taxi Tour	Till The Morning Comes
The Dead Rehearse (#3)	The Dead Rehearse (#2)
The Dead Rehearse (2/27/09)	The Dead at the Inaugural Ball
The Dead - Frosting on the Cake	We Strike At Noon
Get Weirder	Time in the Groove

Chicago Exhibit Features Grateful Dead Art

frogstorm — Fri, 01 May 2009 18:38:44 -0500

If you're in Chicago for The Dead shows, be sure to catch this exhibit right across the street from Allstate Arena!

The exhibit will feature limited-edition works created by Bill Kreutzmann and rare signed work by Jerry Garcia. It also includes photography of the Grateful Dead chronicling their 30 year career by Herb Greene and Baron Wolman, plus poster art by Richard Biffle.

Where to see it? Go to Café Le Cave, 2777 Mannheim Road, Des Plaines, Illinois. It's located directly across the street from the concert venue; it's FREE and open to the public.

Hours of the exhibit will be Monday, May 4, 2009 – 12-6 and Tuesday, May 5, 2009 – 10-6.

Denver Exhibit Celebrates Psychedelic Rock Posters

frogstorm — Fri, 01 May 2009 18:32:03 -0500

The Denver Art Museum takes a deeper look into the experimental art of the late 1960s, its message and its meaning, with their new exhibit The Psychedelic Experience: Rock Posters from the San Francisco Bay Area, 1965-71. The show features work by celebrated artists such as Wes Wilson, Stanley Mouse, Alton Kelley and Victor Moscoso. Of course many of the posters celebrate the Grateful Dead, so if you're in Denver for the 5/7 show, check it out!

The exhibit runs from now until July 19th.

Click here for more information.

Grateful Dead Hour no.928

ccasal — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 18:29:14 -0500

Week of July 3, 2006

Bob Weir has collaborated with The Waybacks many times in recent years, including a kick-ass "Weirbacks" set at Hardly Strictly Bluegrass in October 2006. I like this band a lot - they're wildly inventive musicians, and they have a reputation for doing interesting things at music festivals. For example, their recent appearance at MerleFest included a performance of The Rolling Stones' Sticky Fingers with guest John Cowan.

Here we have some Waybacks and Weirbacks from Merlefest 2006, plus a great take on "Cumberland Blues" with fiddle giant Darol Anger, and a track from the band's then-new CD. Their latest is Loaded.

Enjoy!

The Waybacks with Bob Weir 4/28/06 Merlefest, Wilkesboro NC
BIG IRON
CASEY JONES
The Waybacks w/ guests 4/29/06 Merlefest, Wilkesboro NC
BRIGHT PLACE
LIKE A ROLLING STONE

The Waybacks, From the Pasture to the Future
THE PETRIFIED MAN
The Waybacks w/ Darol Anger 10/2/05 Hardly Strictly Bluegrass, San Francisco
CUMBERLAND BLUES

Thanks for listening!
David Gans

Listen Now

April 27 - May 3, 2009

ccasal — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 10:40:07 -0500

Greetings, and welcome back to the Tapers’ Section, where this week we’ll focus on some magnificent music from the final Fillmore East run in April, 1971, as well as a killer jam from 1977.

Our first selection this week is from the middle night of the five night run in April, 1971, from 4/27/71, with the exceptional Lovelight, in which Pigpen, in his inimitable way, introduces a couple, and seems on the verge of marrying them off. Please note that all three of our Fillmore East 1971 selection this week are from the 4-CD set Ladies and Gentlemen…the Grateful Dead: Fillmore East 1971, so if you want to hear four more hours of this excellent material mixed from the multi-track masters, polish off that gem of an album, or pick up a copy if you don’t have it.

From the very next night, on 4/28/71, we have the jam of Dark Star>St. Stephen>Not Fade Away>GDTRFB>Not Fade Away, with the entirety of the jam featuring former Grateful Dead keyboard player Tom Constanten sitting in for the final time (he’d left the band officially after the January, 1970 shows in Hawaii).

Our last selection from the Fillmore East run is the show-closing jam, plus the encore, from the last ever Grateful Dead concert at the Fillmore East, from 4/29/71. This is commonly referred to as one of the best jams of 1971, and features Alligator>Drums>Jam>GDTRFB>Cold Rain and Snow, Casey Jones, Midnight Hour>We Bid You Goodnight. When we were putting the Ladies and Gentlemen album together in the summer of 2000, we knew this jam, and the previous selection from 4/28/71, had to be on there, and everything else fell into place from there.

Finally this week, to jump ahead exactly six years plus a day, we have the big jam from 4/30/77 at the Palladium (formerly the Academy of Music, site of the great seven-night run in 1972) in New York City. Every night on this Spring Tour of 1977 offered a unique sequence, and this is no exception, featuring St. Stephen>Not Fade Away>Stella Blue>St. Stephen>One More Saturday Night, Terrapin Station.

Be sure to stop back next week as we continue our journey through May with some excellent music from 1972, 1977 and 1978. Lots of good stuff coming up in the month ahead. And as always, feel free to email the address below with any questions or comments about the Tapers’ Section.

David Lemieux
vault@dead.net

Grateful Dead Hour no.445

ccasal — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 17:31:57 -0500

Week of March 31, 1997

This week's show features a 1996 live performance by the David Murray Octet with guests Bob Weir and Phil Lesh.

A bay area native, Murray was a founder of the World Saxophone Quartet and has recorded and performed in a zillion configurations and contexts. He worked with Bob Weir, Taj Mahal, and others on a stage musical about the life of baseball legend Satchel Paige that so far hasn't seen the light of day. Murray sat in with the Grateful Dead, playing tenor sax and bass clarinet, at Madison Square Garden on September 22, 1993, and again at the Oakland Coliseum on February 26, 1995. He played with the Jerry Garcia Band at MSG on November 12, 1993. In 1996, Murray released an album titled Dark Star - The Music of the Grateful Dead. I was asked to contribute liner notes (from the "Dead" perspective; Howard Mandel provided a jazz scholar's take); an excerpt:

The Dead was a player’s band and a composer’s band. Given their long-term commitment to real-time inventiveness, they had to come up with songs that could keep their own interest as well as that of their fiercely attentive audience while remaining open enough to permit excursions into the unknown and ungoverned. This is a band that loved to jam and took composition seriously, and neither aspect of their creativity took a back seat to the other.
Their philosophy of performance allowed every player to invent his part anew at any time, and melodic and rhythmic interest could come from everywhere. David Crosby calls it “electronic Dixieland”: everybody has lots of room to blow and everybody invents at once. By being good listeners as well as good players, they were able to create spontaneous musical structures of impressive complexity - and then either truck on into another song or just blow everything away and start something new without a look behind.

So for a guy like David Murray, himself a force of nature with a tremendously diverse palette – just look how many configurations he works with on a regular basis – crossing paths with the Grateful Dead is a glorious opportunity for two (somewhat overlapping) audiences to deepen the discourse and turn each other on.

Murray is collaborating with Grateful Dead guitarist Bob Weir on a stage musical that follows the parallel tracks of jazz musicians and black baseball players through the 20th Century by telling the story of the legendary pitcher Satchel Paige. It was inevitable, and most welcome, that Murray would sit in with the Dead, and it happened at Madison Square Garden September 22, 1993. Blues harp legend James Cotton was onstage that night, too.

The Dead were using an earpiece monitor system that allowed the musicians to speak directly to each other while the music was playing, so Murray got plenty of cues from guitarists Bob Weir and Jerry Garcia and bassist Phil Lesh. “They laid it out for me like a blanket,” Murray recalls. “They opened it up for me and gave me all the room I wanted.”

Not only was the Dead’s audience the largest Murray has ever appeared before, but they were also the most attentive and responsive. “When I played a solo, I could see bodies moving with my saxophone. They were with every note. It was phenomenal, and I loved it.”

The evening – and the music, and the musicians – made a deep impression on David Murray, and this record is the happy result.

In preparing for these sessions, Murray studied several dozen songs from the Dead’s hundred-plus-title working repertoire, mindful of the needs of the music and always conscious of the line between jazz and rock’n’roll. “I picked tunes that were intrinsically and esthetically comfortable for me to play in a jazz format,” he explains. By studying a number of different performances of a given tune, Murray has been able to distill the spirit of the Dead’s music, integrate some specific melodic notions that were transitory in the continuous flow of Dead music but well worth the attention they get here, and – as important as anything that happens in an endeavor such as this – preserve the fun that lies at the heart of this music.

(And a personal note: Murray sat in with my band, then called Crazy Fingers, at Sweetwater in Mill Valley on January 30, 1994. I found myself standing onstage between Murray and guitarist Henry Kaiser, trying to find my way into a roaring torrent of sound. It was a peak experience for me! Bob Weir also sat in that night, but I wasn't on stage with him.)

Enjoy!

The music:

David Murray Octet 3/6/97 Fillmore Auditorium, San Francisco
DARK STAR with Phil Lesh and Bob Weir
CHINA DOLL with Bob Weir
SHAKEDOWN STREET with Bob Weir

Thank you for listening!
- David Gans

Listen Now

The Dead on Letterman

frogstorm — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 12:05:10 -0500

With The Dead appearing on David Letterman on Thursday, April 23, we figured we'd take a quick look through the Grateful Dead's history on Letterman's shows going back more than 27 years.

History of the Grateful Dead on David Letterman

The members of the Grateful Dead, mostly Jerry and Bobby, have a long relationship with David Letterman going back to 1982. The two guitarists first appeared on Letterman on 4/13/82, during the Grateful Dead's Spring tour, on a night off between shows at Nassau Coliseum and the Glens Falls Civic Center. On this episode, they played two acoustic songs, "Deep Elem Blues" and "Monkey & The Engineer," with Jerry and Bobby revealing terrific senses of humour in describing the origins of the moniker Dead Heads. Classic stuff. Bobby had a bit of a cold, and his voice was a bit off, but they played these acoustic tunes very well.

The next visit to Letterman was on 9/17/87 on the night off during a five night stand at Madison Square Garden, at which they played Bob Dylan's "When I Paint My Masterpiece" with the Letterman house band backing them. While talking with Dave, they discussed their new video "So Far," the shows at MSG, and the success of In The Dark. Bobby then did one of the oddest things these guys have ever done on TV, he attempted to lift Jerry via a parlour trick, with Dave and Biff helping out. The sight of an unwitting Jerry, in a nice coat, sitting as the crew tries to lift Jerry with two fingers is one of the most hilarious images of the band I've ever seen. Just the way Dave looked at the camera and said "we're going to lift Jerry" had us all cracking up. I'd been at the two previous shows at the Garden, and they were playing very well and, obviously, having loads of fun.

In 1989, during a five night run at the Brendan Byrne Arena at the Meadowlands in New Jersey, Bobby and Jerry once again visit Dave, on 10/13/89, this time playing "Second That Emotion" with Paul's band once again backing them up. Also very cool during this appearance was during the commercial breaks, they played along with the band on the music the leads in and out of the commercial breaks, including "Good Lovin'," "Mighty Quinn" and "Hideaway," amongst a few other things.

In 2003, The Dead appeared on Letterman with that version of the band, featuring Bobby, Phil, Mickey and Bill, as well as Jeff Chimenti and Rob Barraco on keyboards, Jimmy Herring on lead guitar, and Joan Osborne on vocals. They played a rocking version of "Casey Jones."

Bobby and Jerry also appeared separately on Letterman, the former playing "The Winners" with Rob Wasserman in 1991, and the latter playing "Friend of the Devil" with David Grisman in 1993.

Latest Tour News & Reviews

Jonathan Lane — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 14:51:12 -0500

Dead.net brings you the latest press from each stop on the tour. Click the links below to read the reviews. (newest items appear at the top)

Get Back To The Gorge

Kitsap Sun Interview With Mickey

Shakin' It At Shoreline

San Francisco Chronicle Review
JamBase Review
San Jose Mercury News Review
Press Democrat Feature

LA Fadeaway

LiveDaily.com Review
OC Register Review

Things To Do In Denver When You're Dead

Denver Post Feature
Daily Camera Interview With Mickey Hart
Denver Post Review
Denver Backbeat Online
Marquee Magazine Review

Chicago, IL - The Dead's Kind Of Town

Chicago Tribune Feature
Chicago Tribune Review
Daily Herald Review
Lumino Magazine
Kansascity.com Feature
Feelin' The Dead In Philadelphia, PA
Philadelphia Inquirer Review
Philadelphia Inquirer Feature
Courier Post Online
JamBase Philly Review
Dead Crazy In Hartford, CT
Hartford Advocate Interview With Mickey Hart
Hartford Courant Feature
Hartford Courant Review
Back In The Big Apple - New York, NY
Jambase Jay Blakesburg Madison Square Garden Photos
Jambase Jay Blakesburg Letterman Photos
The Star Ledger Interview With Mickey Hart
New York Post Review
Nassau '09 - Uniondale, NY
Newsday Feature

You've Got The Dead In Wilkes-Barre, PA
Times Leader Feature
Where The Dead Roam - Buffalo, NY
Buffalo News - "Bring Out Your Dead"
Buffalo News Review
'Wicked' in Worcester, MA
Boston Globe Interview With Phil Lesh
Worcester Telegram Interview With Bob Weir

Upstate In Albany, NY
Schenectady Daily Gazette Interview with Bill Kruetzmann
Schenectady Daily Gazette Review
Times Union Review
Shawangunk Journal

Charlottesville, Virginia Is For Dead Lovers
Richmond Times Dispatch Review
Daily Progress Pre-Show
Daily Progress Review
Freelance Star Review

The Dead Go To Washington
"How Barak Obama Resurrected The Dead"
The Dead Visit The White House
The Washington Post Review
Fredicksburg Review

Kick Off In Greensboro, NC
USA Today
RollingStone
News Record Review
Jambase Review
Raleigh Telegram

3 For Free In NYC
LiveDaily Review

April 20 - April 26, 2009

ccasal — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 11:28:21 -0500

Welcome back to the Tapers’ Section, where this week we’ll be playing three excellent jams from April, 1969, and one big jam from April, 1978.

Our first stop this week is in Worcester, MA, on 4/20/69, and in honour of the 40th anniversary of that concert, we have the show’s big jam sequence, consisting of Dark Star>St. Stephen>The Eleven>Death Don’t Have No Mercy. No Lovelight to round out the jam, but it’s a great Death Don’t, making it a perfect ending to the trifecta that started the sequence.

Next up, from just two days later in Boston on 4/22/69 we have another exquisite 1969 sequence, featuring Doin’ That Rag>That’s It For The Other One>Death Don’t Have No Mercy. We hope you don’t mind the two versions of Death Don’t this week.

To end our little trip back to the April, 1969 tour, we have music from 4/25/69 in Chicago, featuring Hard To Handle, Doin’ That Rag, Good Morning Little Schoolgirl, Morning Dew. Apologies for the two versions of Doin’ That Rag this week, but we don’t get a chance to play it too much here. This tour also featured the 4/26&27/69 shows that make up Dick’s Picks Vol. 26.

Lastly this week we are going to check in with some music on 4/21/78 in Lexington, KY, where we’ll hear the post-Drums sequence of Jam>Stella Blue>Truckin’>Playing In The Band, Werewolves of London. This version of Stella Blue is the one included on the outstanding five-CD boxed set “So Many Roads,” and we figured you should also hear what came after this excellent version of Stella Blue.

Be sure to stop by next week for music from 1971 and 1977. And as always, feel free to email the address below with questions or comments about the Tapers’ Section.

David Lemieux
vault@dead.net

Grateful Dead Hour no.1

ccasal — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 11:27:28 -0500

Grateful Dead Hour no. 1

Week of September 5, 1988

This week we hear a November 1987 interview with Jerry Garcia by Mary Eisenhart, a longtime Deadhead and a good friend of mine who is also the forum manager here on Dead.Net. The full transcript is posted on Mary's web site; portions appeared in BAM Magazine, and Mary was kind enough to allow me to broadcast parts of it in the very first episode of my nationally syndicated radio show, the Grateful Dead Hour.

This program is being circulated in the DeadNet forums. Click here to find out more and sign up for a copy if you're interested.

An important note about this interview, from Mary's post in the vine topic:

....this [interview] certainly highlights the difference between doing interviews for print (which this was, originally) and broadcast. Let's just say if you INTEND to do an audio interview, learn from my lame example and do not say "uh-huh" at 30-second intervals.

My commercial syndication deal lasted exactly one year. Since September 1989, I have distributed the Grateful Dead Hour myself to a combination of Public, college, community, and commercial stations. The complete station list is here, along with a list of other Grateful Dead radio programs.

5/2/70 was released in 1997 as Dick's Picks vol. 8

Enjoy!

The music:

Jerry Garcia Band, Cats Under the Stars
CATS UNDER THE STARS
GOMORRAH

Grateful Dead 10/18/78 Winterland, San Francisco
TERRAPIN

Grateful Dead, 1968 studio single
DARK STAR

Grateful Dead 5/19/74 Portland Coliseum
SCARLET BEGONIAS

Grateful Dead 5/2/70 Binghamton NY
VIOLA LEE BLUES->
FEEDBACK->
I BID YOU GOOD NIGHT

You can browse or search the Grateful Dead Hour program logs on the GD Hour web site. Let me know if there's a particular program you'd like to hear, and feel free to post requests and comments here or by email to gdhour@dead.net

Thanks for listening!
David Gans

Listen Now