Welcome back to the Tapers' Section, and we hope you're having a great start to 2015. This week we have music from 1981, 1982 and 1988.
Our first selections this week is from 5/2/81 at the Spectrum in Philadelphia, where we'll play the start of the second set featuring Scarlet Begonias > Fire On The Mountain ; Estimated Prophet > Terrapin Station. The master cassette cuts in during Estimated Prophet, but the big guitar solo and the closing jam are both there, so it's not so bad.
Next up is music from 12/30/82 in Oakland, with some of the end of the second set featuring Truckin' > Stella Blue> Goin' Down The Road Feeling Bad. I say “some of the end…” because the ref tape we're working off here cuts at the end of GDTRFB and is missing the set-closing Johnny B. Goode, but rest assured the master tape in the vault is intact.
Lastly this week is the post-Drums sequence from 12/29/88 in Oakland featuring Space > The Other One > Stella Blue > Throwing Stones > Not Fade Away, The Mighty Quinn. The is the tail end of the pre-MIDI era, and it's interesting to hear songs like Space and The Other in the last versions before MIDI would become such an integral part of the band's sound after the Spring Tour of 1989.
Thanks for joining us, and be sure to stop in next week for more music from the Grateful Dead's vault.
David Lemieux
vault@dead.net