Grateful Dead live, Dick's Picks etc - S&D

so does DSO announce what Dead show they're playing beforehand or is it a surprise?

afaik it's always a surprise. A few old heads near where I was standing at the back of the bar kept trying to "guess the date/venue" throughout the show.

RIP Owsley "Bear" Stanley -- the guy responsible for most of the Dead's live recordings. And umm other stuff too.

Oh damn. RIP. :(

Designed my favorite lightning bolt.

Shit, I hadn't realized that was why my buddy shared this on FB. interesting story, one of a kind dude.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=%2Fc%2Fa%2F2007%2F07%2F12%2FMNGK0QV7HS1.DTL

yeah, quite a life, even aside from any grateful dead stuff.
bear's choice is still one of my fave Dead experiences

supposedly stanley had a ton of non-dead live recordings from the late 60s in his archives that he was really protective of, and mainly kept unreleased -- wonder if any of that will start to surface? selfish, i know, but can't help wondering.

A lot of my favorite Archival Dead releases are from his tapes
http://www.thebear.org/albums.html
His site is refreshingly stark.

This from that page: "I have a lot of tapes stored in the Dead's tape vault. Virtually every band that played on the same bill with the Grateful Dead during my years as soundman, and who did not bring their own soundman, was recorded. I would be very interested in working with any of the bands concerned to see if the tapes represent anything worth releasing. I will post the list once it is OCR'ed (a big job!)."

would love to see that list, jesus christ.
the flying burrito bros. live thing from a few years back was one of his tapes.
some people have suggested he has some unheard Velvet Underground stuff too.

Maybe you could peruse the archive at UC Santa Cruz?

road trip!
this show is the VU one: http://www.archive.org/details/gd69-04-25.sbd.2596.sbeok.shnf

a happy pairing it sounds like "According to Ron Ramsey, who attended the show, the other bands on the bill were SRC (a local group), and the Velvet Underground. The Velvet Underground played a very long set and as a result the Dead only got to play one set on this date. According to Ramsey the Dead did the same thing to the Velvet Underground the next night."

this is the show i really want though
http://olivier.landemaine.free.fr/vu/live/1969/vu_ad_690207_the_pittsburgh_press_february_5_1969.jpg

Love that poster

a happy pairing it sounds like "According to Ron Ramsey, who attended the show, the other bands on the bill were SRC (a local group),

So not the Quackenbush brothers band? Who were from Detroit, this was a Chicago show you were talking about was it? i wasn't aware there were 2 SRCs

and the Velvet Underground. The Velvet Underground played a very long set and as a result the Dead only got to play one set on this date. According to Ramsey the Dead did the same thing to the Velvet Underground the next night."

Would love to hear those shows. I take it they're not in circulation already? Would love it even more if it was a year earlier with Cale onboard.
Did i read recently that there were supposed to be a number more Cale era tapes somewhere. Think I've only heard the normal few, Gymnasium NYC, Columbus Ohio '66, think there are a couple others but can't think what.

dunno, coulda been the quackenbush band?
yeah, the VU sets with the dead have never been bootlegged if the tapes actually exist.
here's a funny thing from unterberger's site about the shows:
10. The Kinetic Playground, Chicago, April 25-27, 1969: For the second and last time, the Velvet Underground shared a bill, unbelievably, with their ultimate antithesis in attitude, the Grateful Dead. According to Doug Yule's recollection in the fall/winter 1994 edition of the fanzine The Velvet Underground, "That show the Dead opened for us, we opened for them the next night so that no one could say they were the openers. As you know, the Grateful Dead play very long sets and they were supposed to only play for an hour. We were up in the dressing room and they're playing for an hour and a half and, hour and 45 minutes. So the next day when we were opening for them, Lou says, 'Huh, watch this.' And we proceeded to play a very long set. We did 'Sister Ray' for like an hour and then a whole other show." But for all the differences between the Velvets and the Dead, they do share one thing in common: sheer volume. "There was a guy standing over by the sound mixing board, and somebody said, 'that's [Grateful Dead soundman] Owsley,'" remembers Milwaukee radio DJ Bob Reitman. "I walked over to him and said, 'Are you Owsley?' He turned to me to answer, and the whole sound system just—and it probably was him—it's like somebody turned the whole thing up so loud that we couldn't hear each other. We just looked at each other and shrugged."

so i guess owsley was definitely at these shows -- whether he taped the VU, who knows?

I'd say for people looking for a second place after live dead that really like the electric rock improv angle, I'd say the 2nd disc of Hundred Year Hall is one to check. They pretty much explode on The Other One and that jam starts with Casey Jones and goes pretty much full tilt for an hour. It's crazy for any band really. When Lesh rockets that main bass line for the Other One, they just take off. Some of the jamming when they get past the head/song part is really intense on this take and wouldn't sound out of place with Ash Ra Tempel or Cosmic Jokers, but really more melodic as Garcia could really soar.

I think the Cryptical Envelopment/The Other One is one of the best jamming tools the original Dead had and definitely one of the most 'rockin'.

psyched that a bunch of the dick's picks things are on spotify. listening to winterland 1977 now, sounds amazing.

There was a show from Dallas, '77 that they were playing today on the GD channel on XM and it was incredible.

Dunno if anyone's posted this yet, but all of the Europe '72 shows are being released individually:
http://store.dead.net/store/europe-72-shop

oh man you are gonna buy that box set aren't you? keith moon is frowning in heaven. even frowning he looks like a dirty and adorable little imp though.

You had to play the Moon card, didn't you?

I've heard the first two shows, and man, they just come charging right out of the gate. The first show (London, 4/7/72) is stronger than the second (London, 4/8/72), though.

The 72 box is ridiculous.

I mean, you can make a case for the Dead as one of the top three greatest American bands using these shows as evidence.

how many discs is the box?
also, can i borrow it.

There is a palpable sense of some higher presence/consciousness on some Dead boots. I think I was listening to "Not Fade Away" from the London set that I became aware.
They're the only ones, etc.

"more than 60 CDs"

xp tyler I think it's like 40 discs, and of course I didn't shell out the $500 for it - who the hell would? Anyway, it's OOP as a set already. But I've found it via unscrupulous means (you can too!) - I'm five shows in right now. All good, even the weird cafeteria show in Aarhus, 4/16/72.

The original, limited box set was 72 discs, but for some reason the newer, less fancy version you can buy is quoted at "more than 60 CDs".

Nah, they've repressed a sparser version with none of the fancy trimming to buy.

lol @ "more than 60 CDs."
can't even be bothered to count, man. just a lot of discs, ok?

grateful dead die hards are nuts, though, right? a 72-disc set for $450 that sells out pretty much immediately? kaching.

I had friend in High School that would listen to nothing but fucking boot tapes. Road trips got boring quick.

lol @ 'sparser version' - only $450.

Thats actually the same price as the full version, they didn't want to piss off all those people that paid for the original by suddenly offering the same damn thing with less artwork for significantly cheaper (can't say I blame 'em, tbh).

14-minute sugaree on this winterland 77 thing is killlller. the dead!

I've never heard a bad "Sugaree." Ditto "Loser."

on to "europe vol. 2" now...a dead kind of day. I can probably live with four discs worth of highlight from this tour. OR CAN I.

i actually prefer the Dick's Picks #3 Florida show from the same month/year - not only do you get a stunning 15 minute Sugaree but also a great Help on the Way>Slipknot>Franklin's Tower and, in the second set, Eyes of the World>Wharf Rat>Terrapin Station>Morning Dew. mmmm.

I was reading this thread waiting for someone to post this. Dick's Picks 3 is the JAM. Along with One From The Vault, probably my favorite live Dead.

Can someone give me a recommendation as to the Dick's Pick (or easily available bootleg) with best Help>Slipknot>Franklin's Tower?

Thanks.

― Randy Moss' dog's personal chef (Bill Magill), Thursday, December 16, 2010 2:27 PM (9 months ago) Bookmark

Look no further - this show. This is my favorite suite of tunes too and this one smokes. The "Slipknot!" is mindblowing.

xp Never heard a bad "Black-Throated Wind," even though they're all pretty similar.

There is a palpable sense of some higher presence/consciousness on some Dead boots. I think I was listening to "Not Fade Away" from the London set that I became aware.
They're the only ones, etc

Hey, there's a reason people followed this band around... it wasn't just the songs themselves, there was this strange, trance-like groupmind thing that occured at shows (and actually still does). Rave kind of had a similar dynamic actually.

"on to "europe vol. 2" now...a dead kind of day. I can probably live with four discs worth of highlight from this tour. OR CAN I."

Hundred Year Hall, Rockin the Rhein and Steppin' Out with the Grateful Dead are both multitrack releases from the same tour. Hundred Year Hall is pretty much a complete show, Steppin' Out is kind of a best of the dates in England (with I think one track from Holland) and Rockin the Rhein is a compilation from the other shows in Germany withe a couple of Pigpen features from England. I don't think any of the tracks on these three duplicate with now what is on the two volumes of Europe 72. Add it up, there is quite a bit already out there from that tour.

They are also going to put out the individual shows from the tour outside the box.

I think you can look at that particular version of the Dead and pretty much call it a zenith point. Pigpen was still around to do the raveups and you got a bit of organ and piano on some tunes, which was a cool mix. They had a piano player that could go out, but was much more honky tonk and fit better on the cowboy tunes. Phil still sang, while not a great singer, it added to the country tunes like He's Gone. Donna was a featured player instead of singing through the whole set. They only had one drummer, so on a lot of tunes, it's just tighter and swings more, especially on the rootsy numbers. The guitar tones also hadn't turned into that super clean no bite tone on both guitars, which too me, I don't really like on later Dead music.

A friend sent me four discs of the complete 4-disc boot of Jersey City 8/6/74 with great annotation and I have to say '74, just on the evidence of this show, might be an underpraised year. They come outta the gate really hard on this show and there's a Seastones interlude that's really pretty out - whole show is tremendous although the opening Bertha/Mexicali Blues/Don't Ease Me In/Beat It Down the Line/Jack Straw is just so good. Shoot, even "Eyes of the World" is pretty good, and I don't like that song much at all.

Hey, there's a reason people followed this band around... it wasn't just the songs themselves, there was this strange, trance-like groupmind thing that occured at shows (and actually still does).

which shows do you mean on the "actually still does" bit - which acts? b/c I will go to these shows. unless it's Ratdog, I don't care for the Ratdog I've heard.

well I couldn't vouch for the quality of the music necessarily, but I guess I was still experiencing the "magic" at the Phil and Friends shows and even Other Ones shows... and I assume with Further the whole phenomenon is still happening... that was always the point of it all, that acid-test group-ritual thing

which is what I mean by magic btw... not as metaphor for it being a particularly high-quality show musically, but rather that the band and audience would literally create this kind of ritual space by vibing off each other, sending energy back and forth. in a way, the band was always beyond "coolness" or conventional conceptions of taste because the focus within the scene was always more on the energy, it's a self-contained world

and Rockin the Rhein is a compilation from the other shows in Germany withe a couple of Pigpen features from England. I don't think any of the tracks on these three duplicate with now what is on the two volumes of Europe 72. Add it up, there is quite a bit already out there from that tour.

RtR is a complete single German show, Düsseldorf 4/24/72, plus two songs from London, 5/24/72. Definitely compares favorably with Europe '72, despite a dodgy moment or two (forgetting to play the bridge of "He's Gone," for instance).