Year by year, I picked out what's good, the virtues, and how they grew through the tours, night by night. At the end, I'll include my essentials, but I insert as many examples as possible along the way.
There were nights from years that were obvious (from '72 or '77), but going back, trying to listen objectively to other nights, I discovered shows like 7/17 and 7/18/76 from the Orpheum in San Francisco. Or, 9/18/87, 80s Dead that just about eclipses anything else they ever did, even from their more known earlier years, with son of Spanish immigrants Jerry Garcia feeling it so much that he busts out some verses in Spanish. Runs of shows in spring, summer and fall of '71, a year I had underestimated, and the late December run in '79 delight despite the adversity of personnel changes and the toll of being on the road almost constantly.
From year to year, the Grateful Dead achieved many different sounds, all of which defined where they were going and what was going on with the times surrounding them. Each sound had its virtues, and I thought I'd break them down as follows...
Early 60s Peninsula Folk Revival
New Years '63, Bob Weir is walking the streets of Palo Alto and hears Jerry Garcia playing banjo in a music store. He invites himself in to chat with him. A student didn't show up for Jerry's banjo lesson or maybe Jerry didn't realize the store was closed for New Year's, but this serendipitous encounter is the beginning of a deep friendship that would last for 3 fruitful decades.
Jerry was well known on the Peninsula folk circuit as a stellar banjo player with a sweet, tender voice that had the tendency to sound introspective but could capture a range of emotion. When Jerry sang a lyric it was as if he had lived that lyric. He had a penchant for soulful playing on his guitar, too.
Pigpen was the son of a Blues deejay from San Bruno who played harmonica, organ and sang the blues in clubs in East Palo Alto, Hayward and Oakland. The group started off as Mother McCree's Uptown Jug Champions (and a few other group names surfaced at the time, too), playing folk and bluegrass in a jug band style in places like St. Michael's Alley in Palo Alto and Kepler's Bookstore in Menlo Park.
Following the Beatles and just about everybody else, they went electric and became the Warlocks. And following in the Barbary Coast history of San Francisco, band members tolerated, absorbed and embraced everything, all kinds of music from Ravi Shankar to John Coltrane to Otis Redding to Reverend Gary Davis to the Yardbirds.
Somewhere along the way they met Phil Lesh, the classically trained Berkeley trumpet player at a party at the Allied Arts Guild in Menlo Park, a detail important to me because I grew up blocks away. The joint they smoked together that night must have been pretty potent, because I don't see the connection between the trumpet and the bass, but evidently somebody had vision. They convinced Phil to play bass in their group, and Phil basically reinvented the bass's role in a rock band, making it much more melodic and giving it a much more lively role in the band, as if it were a chamber group.
Bill Kreutzman had a car and became the drummer because he could haul the gear, something he'd hang over the rest of the band later.
The Warlocks was a name that another band had already, so the band, crowded in Phil's apartment on High Street in Palo Alto, supposedly dug into some spiritual guide dictionary and randomly Jerry put his finger on the words Grateful Dead. Nobody in the band liked the name--it was too creepy, but somehow it stuck. And the myth of the Grateful Dead, with origins in Egypt and many other cultures, took form in a bunch of goofy guys from the San Francisco Bay Area. The myth is a bit like this: If you take care of the corpse of a man whose debts have gone unpaid and hence goes unburied, his ghost will look after you in your travels. The Grateful Dead myth became wrapped up in the theme of their songs--about travelers, wanderers, ne'er-do-wells, rogues, who on the inside might be beautiful loving characters who somehow find redemption in life despite the chaos that surrounds them.
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| The Warlocks at Magoo's Pizza Parlor in Menlo Park. Photo courtesy of InMenlo. |
The Dead played their first show at Magoo's Pizza Parlor in my home town Menlo Park in '65 and became the house band at the early Acid Tests in the Bay Area when Stanford was doing experiments using LSD as a potential "tool" for soldiers in Vietnam either as a psychiatric drug or something to give them extrasensory perception. The acid tests gave the Dead an audience that could be entertained for hours--acid lasts quite a long time!--and the band would either play all night or just sit and stare at their hands, too tripped out to play. A perfect no pressure situation that gave them freedom to explore and adventure.
At some point they find a patron, "Bear," who was a Senator's son, with money, an intense understanding of physics and chemistry, and "nothing wrong with him that the loss of a few billion brain cells wouldn't cure," as Jerry famously said. In addition to bankrolling the band and making the highest quality acid ever known, Bear's scientific habits made him also a sound wizard and he pioneered a lot of the sound system principles that we still use today. Bear housed the Dead in of all places Watts, near LA. The band practiced 12 hours a day, got tight, and also got to see the more developed bands, like Love, in famous L.A. clubs like the Whiskey-a-go-go.
Primal Dead
Another drummer Mickey Hart joined the band on stage one night in '67 and brought a whole different feel than Billy, who had a more straight-ahead, swinging feel. Hart was more polyrhythmic--the band became a bit more eclectic and intricate. This is when they really started developing their more tribal baroque psychedelic feel as a band.
This sound has commonly been called among Deadheads "Primal Dead." Primal Dead is raw. But there's a youthful energy, an X-factor that's hard to pin down. When they were on, they were creating lightning in a bottle. The blistering speed and seamless transitions were like magic--maybe they should have stuck with the Warlocks as a name. The first show to highlight is 11/10/67, two months after Mickey walked on the stage and started playing in the band. Mickey's polyrhythmic percussive approach makes for a tribal feel that lasts for about 58 minutes straight on a "The Other One">"New Potato Caboose">"Alligator">"Caution (Do Not Stop on Tracks)" jam. "Caution" was a strange name, because the song was a vehicle to throw all cares to the wind, which is what they did in those days.
The energy on 2/14/68, too, is off the charts. The band "deadicated" a set to Jack Kerouac hero Neal Casady, who was Bobby's roommate and band muse for a while and also the subject of what would become Bobby's huge jam "The Other One" with the lyrics calling all Deadheads to get on the bus:
The bus came by and I got on
That's when it all began
There was cowboy Neal
At the wheel
Of a bus to never-ever land
Neal Casady passed away a few days before the show in Mexico and the band played a raucous version of this song, which would stay in the repertoire ever after.
In late February of '69, the Dead recorded Live/Dead in a couple of San Francisco dance halls and it's probably one of the greatest live music recordings of all time from any genre. Required listening. I'm really partial to a show that takes place a few nights before the nights used in this recording. The 2/22/69 show at the Dream Bowl in Vallejo, which was recorded as a warm-up to the shows that made it onto Live/Dead and beautifully sums up this period, is quintessential late '60s Dead. Jerry famously used the adjective "crackling" to describe a show with really high energy, and "crackling" is a very poignant description for all of these late February '69 shows. Primal Dead at its peak. They are pure primal energy--pinpointing the most elemental essence of our nature. And all required listening.
Transition to Americana sound
I've deliberately left out studio albums here, because the Dead were always a dance band to experience live, but it must be said they were great writers at times, too, and the studio albums gave direction to their music both before (rehearsing songs on the road) and after they were released. The Dead make two of their best studio albums, American Beauty and Workingman's Dead in 1970, and these albums, or more precisely, the sound from these albums, represents a clear change in philosophy that would define the band for the next 25 years of their career. These albums mark a paradigm shift from baroque psychedelic weird music to more easily digestible country Americana. These albums brought out both the folksy jug band sound of their early beginnings and the willingness to explore that typified their late 60s efforts.
The 2/13/70 Fillmore East show is a great illustration of this paradigm shift. An acoustic solo "Katie Mae" and a 17-minute Howlin' Wolf cover "Smokestack Lightning" features Pigpen at his very, very best and the 90 minutes that encompass the "Dark Star" > "Other One" > "Turn on your Lovelight" from that night are just about as good as it gets.
What I like about this time, too, is that the Dead did acoustic sets before their electric sets. In general, they performed a one-hour acoustic set, followed by two 60 to 90-minute electric sets. 5/2/70 with its wonderful acoustic set and wild, wild energy throughout all 3 sets is my second pick from this important year.
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| Quintessential Dead. The most representative photo of the band I can think of. The Core Four + Pigpen, the heart and soul of the band. |
The most underrated Dead is '71 Dead. I'm ashamed to say I almost overlooked this year. But re-listening to it, there's no ignoring the sheer energy and joy in playing that for me exceeds that of Deadheads' favorite years like '77. Mickey leaves the band temporarily ('71 to '74) and without a consistent keyboardist (Pigpen was great on organ...when he was healthy), the stripped-down playing in 1971 allowed the Core Four (Jerry, Bobby, Phil and Billy) to get telepathically tight. The energy is raw and intense and is building up for the more pristine, majestic, developed jams of '72.
The album colloquially known as Skull and Roses is a compendium of April 1971 shows recorded on the east coast, and it shows the band in a wonderful moment. If you like Skull and Roses, dig into the more recently released "B-sides" from those recordings, Ladies and Gentlemen... which might be even better. Another recent discovery of mine is Road Trips Vol. 1: number 3, which features a couple of summer '71 concerts at the Yale Bowl and the Chicago Auditorium Theater. These are everything that you could possibly want from a Dead show in terms of energy and that X-factor.
What caught my eye is how much more developed Jerry Garcia as a guitarist got between April of 1971 and April of 1972. By '72, Garcia started developing a more complex soloing style, utilizing more chromatic scales to bevy his solos, which I think was prompted by the addition of the jazzy keyboardist Keith to the band in late '71. 10/21/71 in Chicago is a wonderful illustration of this transition. Keith had only been in the band a week or two, playing his big huge Steinway acoustic piano. In the 10/21/71 show, there is a long, spacey, ultra-Jazzy "Dark Star" with Keith sounding like Bill Evans and pushing Jerry into some interesting Jazzy scales, and all of a sudden this Bill Evans-trio sound blends into Bo Diddley's "Sitting on top of the world" for a few minutes and then goes straight back into late 50s-early 60s cool Jazz "Dark Star."
Pre-Keith '71 just had such a raw, intense, blue-sy, root-sy sound that Keith's cool Jazz playing adds onto and builds upon. A perfect example of Pre-Keith would be Jerry's solo on the "Hard to Handle" from the 8/6/71 show at the Hollywood Palladium. It just shreds--it's simple blues with Pigpen doing what he does best as front man and the energy about as high as it gets. Comments in forums about this show recount Jerry on his knees in the middle of this solo, which is something that sounds so uncharacteristically Jerry--he seemed more on the introverted, shy, humble side, but this solo does truly shred, and maybe it was worth getting down on his knees for.
Jerry's more complex, developed, jazz-influenced solos in '72 might be more deeply satisfying, but truly apples and oranges here. The raw blues of '71 was the building block for the Americana Space Jazz of '72. Both very satisfying in different ways. '71 and '72 were both fruitful years of growth for the band. And because of that growth, both of these years present us with exceptional music. The Dead were always at their best when moving and evolving at a frenetic pace. Which continues into '73 and sort of fizzles for a while in late '74 when they rightfully decide to take their hiatus from touring.
Americana Jam
I've always thought the Dead hit an un-eclipsable peak in the last weeks of the Europe '72 tour (the beautifully remastered 70-disc/22-show box set of which is the only thing I'd grab from my house in a fire besides my dogs and my wife). This early 70s sound is the essence of the Dead--the buddy-ness, the friends on the road, the roaming adventure of it all, and this tour features both the beautiful songs and the most majestic, developed, complex jams of any music in any genre that I know. You can catch a selection of the songs on the album Europe '72, but to catch the jams, which are too long to squeeze into a conventional album, you have to get the complete tour box set or find the shows online (they do now sell the shows individually).
The road story is the essence of the Dead mythology, and it's particularly poignant in '71-'72 songs like "Jack Straw," never recorded in a studio album. "Jack Straw" is the story of hobos on the road, hopping freight trains, losing poker matches, getting knifed. The whole song is a gem of the American storytelling genre, and says a lot about us--"We used to play for silver/Now we play for life/ One's for sport and one's for blood/ At the point of knife." With Bobby singing the part of the murderous Jack Straw, Jerry singing his partner Shannon's part, and Phil singing a chorus-like narrator, the song also references the band members' deep friendship. This version from 5/3/72 in Paris just cuts to the soul. When it ends, Bob says into the mic, "I wanna be able to hear a pin drop in here." And that's what it must have felt like in the Olympia Theater that night.
I did a big in-depth post on Spring of '72 that goes into a lot more detail but, as much as I gushed over the Spring Europe tour, Fall of '72 is just wonderful, too, for catching the Dead during another time of great growth and change. The fall of '72 might be better for musicianship and depth of Jams but the spring Europe tour might be that pinnacle moment for the Dead, the sweet spot with Pigpen still alive and doing what he did best combined with the majestic Americana Jazz Space jams.
At this time, a fundamental change happened. Pigpen shunned the acid and pot that the rest of the band members enjoyed, and Pig paid the price for avoiding what fueled the others, dying young at age 27 from either Crohn's Disease, liver and/or kidney failure, alcohol poisoning, or a broken heart, or a combination of all of the above. Either way, he was much too gentle a soul for this world and too feint of heart to continue touring with the Dead, despite his tough exterior. He plays a show or two in mid-'72, but stops touring with them following the Europe tour, and dies in early '73. It's a seminal moment. The Dead's sound had already been in the midst of a huge transition with Keith on piano, but there was still a gap that they had to fill with Pigpen gone, who was the closest thing to a front man that they ever had. And the moment seemed to serve as inspiration to get even better musically and learn more tunes. The tightness and majestic playing they achieved in Europe continues on without Pigpen, but it's also kind of a moment of "Childhood's End"--the age of innocence for the Dead kind of dies with Pigpen. And it's time for them to grow up.
Marked also by two solo albums--Garcia and Ace--both essentially Dead albums, that allowed Jerry and Bobby, respectively, to be leaders, this year is definitive Dead--they've discovered themselves...finally!
Jerry had already been a leader, but songs on his solo effort Garcia show just how good he could be both as songwriter and as leader (both spiritually and musically).
Bobby really emerges here as a leader in '72 and this emergence notably marks the sound of the Dead at this time. He was more timid, unsure of himself in the early days, but you could tell he was absorbing so much and listening to lots of kinds of music to get better. As Bobby said in an interview at this time, "I try to imagine so hard that I'm a string section or a horn section that it almost starts to sound like that on a guitar. I listen to a lot of different kinds of music and try to re-create those feelings and textures."
Then, along with Phil's classically trained, unorthodox, counter-punctual, chamber-music-like bass melody line, between Jerry, Bobby and Phil, you have three melodies running simultaneously, a notion that confuses non-fans but gives the Dead that unique electric dixieland sound. And Billy on drums was swinging harder than even the best of the Jazz drummers at this time while Keith's jazzy keys infused the band with a depth they hadn't had before.
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| Bobby and Jerry develop as leaders and the band gets even more telepathically tight. |
There is a series of extended second set jams on the European tour lasting between 50 and 90 minutes (from the following nights: 4/16/72, 4/26/72, 5/3/72, 5/4/72, 5/10/72, 5/11/72, 5/13/72, 5/24/72 and 5/26/72) that could easily be turned into a 9-disc album or mixed into one album (what a project that would be). 5/26 might be the crown jewel, but these are all worth digging into and they kind of build upon each other, so worth listening to in succession. The sequences are cinematic, majestic, palatial, and expansive. This hypothetical album could be called something like "Post-apocalyptic Moonscapes from a Galaxy Far. Far Away" or "Postcards from Mars." Leave all references to the Grateful Dead aside, as naysayers would just write it off as hippie rock, but it's so much more. Market this hypothetical album as Jazz or ambient music, and it would just open a whole new audience to this stunning music.
Even the length of their shows during this Golden Age is indicative of how much they were "feeling it." At the end of a 2+ hour first set in Paris on 5/3, the crowd chanted for an encore, but little did they know that Dead shows at this time lasted close to 5 hours and they still had the longer, stranger second set to keep partying.
My picks: Besides those already mentioned in Europe, for Summer and possible all-time greatest Dead show (8/27, the Springfield Creamery Benefit for Ken Kesey and his Pranksters in Veneta, Oregon); and for Fall: 9/17, 9/23 and 9/27, 11/15 and 12/31, all of which are just astounding perfection in Dead lore.
There isn't much video available from this time but I love Jerry's slow, laconic, meticulous, deliberate, lazy solo on this slow "Bird Song" starting @3:01--you can't get higher, you can't find more peace than this here. And it contrasts with the '71 "Hard to Handle"solo I shared earlier. Slow introspective ballads like "Bird Song" are more Jerry's strength than the rockers (though you can't say the guy couldn't peal the paint off ceilings when he wanted to rock).
Listening to '72 Dead is like triumphantly going home, like being on the back side of Alpine Road in the San Mateo county Redwoods and oak-covered hills, and being in a very magical place for a few hours of sheer joy.
The Dead Turn Pro
Consistently packing arenas and other large venues for the first time in their career, the Dead turn pro in '73. They carry the majestic playing and the Americana feel from late '72 into early '73 but bring it to much bigger venues around the country and add some more depth to the space jams.
The first show to highlight is 4/2/73. Great songs all around with the greatest "Greatest Story Ever Told"--really the definition of rock n' roll here. Then the raunchiest and loosest "Loose Lucy." The 11-minute jam following "Here Comes Sunshine" is like the arrival of a UFO and somehow it melts into Kris Kristofferson's "Me and Bobby McGee." Listen closely to Phil here in the transition. With one toe dipped into the country classic, Phil's still navigating deep, deep space with what I'd call his Bubba-yum bass, a style he continues exploring later in the set with "Eyes of the World." He stretches time like bubble gum, pushing time out to the extreme, and making it bouncy at the same time. Jerry goes bananas at the end of this "Eyes." They all do. This is an A+ show.
A really nice transition from the Americana Jam Sound of '72 to a more ambitious Space Jazz comes about in Spring and it develops fully in winter. Some have noted that the 12/31/72 show represents that switch to an even firmer foot in the '73 Space Jazz sound and I won't argue, but late '73 is when they really go far out into Space.
One week in mid-November shows the Dead at their Space Jazziest. 11/11/73 has the best mellow deep jazzy complex spacey "Dark Star" that I know of, which transitions beautifully into "Eyes of the World." 11/14 in San Diego features a 70-minute sequence that goes: "Truckin' > Other One>Big River>Other One>Eyes of the World>Other One>Wharf Rat." 11/17 at Pauley Pavilion at UCLA presents another magical space jazz sequence known as the "Playing Sandwich" that goes: "Playing in the Band>Uncle John's Band>Morning Dew>Uncle John's Band>Playing in the Band." UCLA basketball legend and notorious Deadhead Bill Walton gushes on and on in the liner notes about how wonderful it was to see the Dead play on the Bruins' home court and use their dressing room, full of co-eds and the like.
My first love from '73 is the 12/19 show that features an era-defining "Here Comes Sunshine," maybe even better than the Pauley Pavilion version, a 20-minute "Playing in the Band," with a noticeably absent Donna (giving birth, as noted in the liner notes), and a "Nobody's Fault by Mine" jam that blends surprisingly into a space jam that re-creates not exactly the sound but the feeling of a space ship taking off, one of the strangest sounds I've ever heard, and notable in the Dead's history. How about 12/2 in Boston? Another tremendous show with a nearly flawless 19-minute version of "Eyes of the world"--its groove is unparalleled!
Some time in my teens I realized that I had spent my childhood watching space movies and wanting to get off this rock, but somehow I knew that we were never going to make it far out to space. As a species we just spend too much time hating each other. Finding late 73 Dead cured this whole gap in my life. The Dead turned pro and they used what they had learned over the years to help us escape this madness down on Earth. They took me and a lot of others to space. And I thank them for that.
'73 is a very close second to '72 as my favorite year. Where it exceeds musically, '72 wins for more intimate venues, and there's just a more intimate sound to '72, but the deep space jazz of '73 is pretty nice.
The Wall of Sound Sound
The band needed the ultimate PA to make a growing legion of fans happy. They achieved it with the Wall of Sound in '74, a project that they had been working on earlier but its culmination is always attributed to '74. Crystal clear sound with perfect separation between instruments. Phil had a speaker set for each string of his bass--need I say more? The massive tower was made up of 604 JBL speakers and fifty-five 600-watt McIntosh 2300 power amplifiers, each generating 26,400 watts RMS of audio power. “No other band would have put what amounted to ninety percent of its total earnings into this,” soundman Dan Healy said of the experiment in sound, a culmination of work from the Bay Area's top engineers and escapees from computer companies.
It wasn't loud they were going for, but pure, musical clarity, so the guy a quarter mile away could feel like he was right there.
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| Wall of Sound '74 |
Monstrous jams--The Dead meet Miles Davis's Bitches Brew era. The songs could also be good in '74, but the shows sometimes uneven. Energy is down at times. Some heads complain that '74 is "mellow Dead." It might be in part due to the almost-too-clear recordings of the time that can sound sterile. Though the musicianship is still top notch--they can also sound tired, but it must be said that Phil always seems inspired throughout the year, which he says is his personal favorite and is a major plus for Phil Phans like me. On shows like the 7/17/74 Fresno show, he carries the day through a massive "Playing" and a "Weather Report Suite" jam that is well worth listening to if the rest of the show isn't quite A+ material.
Hard to pick a complete show, but Dick's Picks 12 (a combo of 6/26 and 6/28) has some definitive '74 jams that are about as big as any they ever did. Dick's Picks 31 (shows between 8/4 and 8/6) reveals the Dead at their absolute peak in '74. Definitely a required listen. Other oddities are the longest "Playing in the Band," a 47-minute monster jam on 5/21/74 in Seattle. Though more frequently I put on 5/14/74 in Missoula, the only show they ever did in Montana, which is strange because they're a funky western kind of Montana band. I'm putting together a '74 Compendium of Official Releases--more thoughts on that in a later post.
This year is a perennial favorite of Dead Heads, and though, yes, it's one of my favorites, I also find it kind of bittersweet, with a slight preference for '72 and '73. They take a well-needed hiatus starting in October. Their last run of shows before the break is beloved by fans, but I find the music a bit forced, preferring the spring and summer '74 shows previously mentioned. There's also just the bittersweet notion of a band that's truly burnt out and needing a break and you can hear it, despite the efforts put in to these October shows.
The Dead Rebuild
The Dead take a break and play only 4 shows in 1975, one of which is a top 10 (8-13-75) that I would put on any newbie's required listening list. The break probably did them good, but Phil said they never were the same again while Bobby preferred later years. Each band member worked on solo projects and remembered why they played together.
There's a very loose sound that allows for a good stage to rebuild in '76. It's looser than '72, which has some loose elements, too, which serve it well. But in '76 there's not nearly as much of an Americana sound. The looseness paradoxically precludes but also prepares us for the tight sound of '77. Somehow the looseness allowed them to explore, get on firm ground again. This loose '76 sound borderlines on sloppy--it isn't for the most part, but I'm sure there were some sloppy nights in '76. But when it's good, this looseness makes for a real good time and it allows them to find their footing again.
This loose, near-sloppy sound works to perfection on two nights 7/17 and 7/18/76 at the Orpheum in San Francisco. The first of these nights features some jams that are cinematic, infectious, and really unique in the Dead sound. 7/18/76 features one of the best versions of "Stella Blue" that I know of with Jerry's second pass on his guitar a sheer masterpiece in greatest guitar solos of all time. I can't find the interview, but some time Jerry said that this was his favorite Dead song. If memory serves, Jerry liked the way that all members of the band could sort of build and peak together all at once in the crescendo finale of "Stella Blue."
The music builds in such a deliberate way, but it's the lyrics on "Stella Blue" that work together perfectly with the music to tell the story of the band. It opens:
"All the years combine
they melt into a dream
A broken angel sings
from a guitar
In the end there's just a song
comes crying like the wind
through all the broken dreams
and vanished years"
Somehow the words point to the band's autobiography, but could also reference a million other things. "Stella Blue" tells the story of it all. It's been said before but worth mentioning that Willie Nelson in his old age did a wonderful cover of "Stella Blue," and it's just so fitting and says a lot about the song.
What's crazy is that when the band debuted the song, mid-1972, "All the years" were only 7 or 8 years that they'd been on the road at that time, but there's a road-weeriness to the sound already or the image that the words create that makes it seem like they had been doing it for a lot more years. The band packed a lot of living into those years. Watching a tape of Jerry when he was about 37 and I too was around that age, my wife noted that he looked a lot older than me. I mean a lot older. He always looked ancient. Like a Buddha. I'm a firm believer that Jerry lived multiple lifetimes in one and that's why he looked so ancient. Making happy millions of people wore on him and I think the burden of being responsible for people's happiness is eventually what took a toll on and killed him. The burden was too great. And it was "Stella Blue," "Black Peter," and later songs like "The Days Between" and "So Many Roads" that sort of foreshadowed the toll of the burden.
Another recording I'd like to point out is the audience tape of an Oakland show (10/10/76) with the energy off the charts that is so much better than the soundboard recording official release. It reveals something unique: Logic would say that the better sound recording would come straight from the soundboard, but there's an energy in the audience tape that goes unfelt in the more crystal clear soundboard recording. It's a direct tap into the soul of the music. It's like with opera recordings. I prefer the old recordings of Maria Callas with the crackling sound of imperfect or oldie-but-goodie technology over the newer more crystal clear digital recordings. Somehow the life of the recording gets sucked out when it's too clear and this 10/10/76 show is a great example. This happens with many other Dead shows and music in general, but this example illustrates it just night and day and I had to note it here, though we could point to a million other examples.
The just exactly perfect Dead
To say the now-known-by-everybody as the "best Dead show ever" Cornell show (5/8/77) is overrated is absurd, but there are plenty of other just exactly perfect shows that might even be better from May of '77. It must be noted that Cornell is noted not just for the recordings of the show, which were a favorite of tape traders, but for just the ambiance of the show. There was a special feeling there--snow outside, sweltering sweaty bodies inside enjoying an especially danceable set of tunes--that I couldn't describe in fairness. "You had to be there." And I wasn't. The Betty Board (recording by famous sound woman Betty Cantor-Jackson) captures this energy. You could possibly point to better playing in other nights, but there is a feeling here. Worth noting is that this Cornell show was included in the Library of Congress's National Registry, along with classics like Vince Guiraldi's "Charlie Brown Christmas."
As I finish up this post, it was announced that they will release the Betty Board recording of the Cornell show, in addition to a few other nights before and after the Cornell show, and the Grateful Dead website broke with inquiries and orders. The Cornell show truly is the holy grail. And I mention the Betty Boards here also for good reason. Betty Cantor-Jackson was one of the Grateful Dead sound engineers and her recordings by my ear are head-and-shoulders the best of all live recordings. She worked on the Europe '72 recordings and this famous Cornell show, in addition to another favorite recording of mine, the 7/8/78 show. Her recordings are deep and capture a wide range of sound. You feel like what it's like "to be inside the music." The sound recreates the airy sound that the Dead were able to get on the Europe tour with the Fender amplification, which blew the minds of Europeans who hadn't heard that sort of depth in sound before. In a sad note, Betty became estranged to the band much later when she broke up with keyboardist Brent Mydland. She ended up having to sell her recordings and the Cornell show ended up lost in a garage sale somewhere. The tapes were recently recovered, serendipitously just in time for the 40th anniversary of the shows, and are up for official release, so the band can make another buck, and I'm really hoping relationships were mended with the band and Betty's well compensated for her efforts, because nobody captured the band quite like Betty.
Another pick that I'd add to the Cornell show, the Boston show the night before (5/7/77), and the Buffalo show the night after (5/9/77) would be nine days after May ended, 6/9/77. As one rock journalist noted for the show: "All of the Deads in One." The delirium, country-rock, blues party, the experimental, the magical--they accomplish some amazing transitions, stringing together an incredible medley of tunes in the second set that harkens their name as magicians.
It's easy to denigrate '77 as Disco Dead, but there's no denying how tight, happy and exuberant the music is. The only song that I can think of that really has a disco beat is "Dancin' in the Streets" and when they played it at this time, it was a good 15 minutes of hard dancing.
What is special about the Dead is, despite their willingness to explore, get abstract, and delve into really intellectual and experimental music, they never lost sight of the fact that they were a dance band and a vehicle for people to experience 3 to 4 hours of sheer joy and bliss.
They also partook in the fun, many times dropping acid before playing (but never before first setting up their instruments. of course, as Bob Weir notes in this interview.) This dance hall loose-ness, this environment of fun, is what fueled the improvisatory style of their music. As Weir notes, "We adopted a sort of “play the ball as it lies” mentality rather than adopting a bunker mentality and just trying to get this thing right."
Which isn't to say that the Dead weren't perfectionists. Notorious for taking a long time to tune and get set up, Weir recalls that it was a sense of perfectionism that drove them. "You know, we really wanted to be in tune. And I think we were probably a little better in tune than most bands were. But I don’t know if it was noticeable to anyone other than perhaps the musicians. We were finicky about that, and we were also a little self-indulgent on that regard." But at the end of the day, it was the dance-hall, carnival, free-for-all atmosphere, a space of tolerance and fun, that made the Dead who they were, as Weir notes, " I mean, when we got the place rocking and everybody was having fun, you could fuckin’ feel it. And that was our whole purpose for being there, because that’s the best there is, as far as I’m concerned." That's when it's just-exactly-perfect, as Weir would say during shows.
Other picks from '77 I'd include are 5/19 and 5/21 (featured on Dick's Picks 29--check out the 16-minute "Sugaree" from 5/19). Just randomly put on any show on from May '77 and be pleasantly pleased with Deadperfection. There are other wonderful shows later in the year. A September show in front of a hundred thousand fans at Englishtown, NJ (9/3) has a wonderful combination of great energy and tight playing with the best version of "Mississippi Half-Step Uptown Toodleloo" that I know of.
Ragged, Unpredictable Dead
'78 they were sometimes as tight as '77 but with more ragged energy that was dispersed inconsistently. There's a mantra among Deadheads that '77 is the best year, but damn if there ain't some shows in '78 better than the best of '77. I would take the Red Rocks show (7/8/78) and Dick's Picks 18 (2/3/78 and 2/5/78) over the famous Cornell show. Unfortunately, you can hear the band get worn out over the year and there are some low points. Another required artifact is the New Year's show, which features "everything." A true Grateful Dead spectacle. Nice to watch on video as a pure piece of Dead history and it's good to see Dan Ackroyd and John Belushi perform as the Blues Brothers as an opening act. I see it as the beginnings of decadent Dead and of some strayed relationships with Donna and Keith, who would leave the band not too much later. I prefer other shows/years, but the New Year's show does feature the Dead doing what the Dead did best--Entertain!
Donna and Keith just barely get out of the Dead alive. The endless touring and drug regimen would destroy even the best of us. It killed Jerry, though it must be said that several band members are still up to touring and partying in their mid to late-70s, which is a tribute to their persistence and strength, because they are still keeping the music fresh.
The Godchauxs leave the band in early '79. Keith would die in a car crash not much later and Donna would go on to be inducted in the Alabama rock n' roll Hall of Fame.
But I haven't said much about Donna, who is frequently denigrated by Deadheads, mostly for her off-key howling, but is a pretty essential character in the Dead universe who I appreciate...Let me explain: Donna had two enormous obstacles: 1) she was a woman in an extremely macho environment. (For as much as the Dead were supposedly about peace and love and inclusion, I couldn't imagine what it would have been like to be a woman on the bus with the Dead.) And 2) they never set the monitors up well enough in order for her to hear herself in the mix. The band had an extraordinary monitor set-up--they just probably didn't work to get her into it--but the band also had those 12-hour days of practicing together in the beginnings that she didn't have. With all its time together, playing in all kinds of environments, venues, and with all kind of adversity, the other band members were just telepathic enough to trust each other when at the same time Donna couldn't hear herself, nor did she have that built-in trust with band members that would have allowed her to hear herself in the mix and sing better.
It really must be said, though, that Donna makes two extraordinary contributions to Dead history: 1) She introduces the band to Keith, who added a whole new dimension of sound to the Dead. This was a genius moment, and we have to salute her, because adding Keith changed everything and we wouldn't have such wonderful tours like the Europe '72 tour without Keith's jazzy influence. 2) Her work with the Jerry Garcia Band (I'm thinking '75-'78) is some of the prettiest gospel singing and part of for me what was Jerry's most underrated period. Clearly, she could hear herself in the monitors in the smaller venues with the JGB, because she sings well. I'm listening to 11-8-76's recording of the Jerry Garcia Band at Sophie's in Palo Alto (GarciaLive vol. 7), all of which is just stunning. The best "Knockin' on Heaven's Door" that I know of (from any band), and Donna on the gospel tune "Who was John?" just slays. A lovely "After Midnight" and Bob Marley's "Stir it Up" too. The 3-22-78 in the Redwoods (GarciaLive vol. 4) also just kills. I've always been partial to "Love in the afternoon," and the "Mission in the Rain" is a tearjerker for anybody who has lived in San Francisco.
Both of these Jerry Garcia Band recordings are some of my favorite shows in the entire Grateful Dead + Grateful Dead extended universe catalogue. And Donna plays an important role here--she shared and encouraged Jerry's passion for gospel music--and that shouldn't be forgotten.
X-factor
I already mentioned the late December '79 shows as having great energy, but my question is why? Admittedly, I'm not an 80s Dead kind of guy, but paradoxically my favorite Dead keyboardist is Brent Mydland, who occupied that seat in the band during the entire decade. Joining the band in late April of '79, Brent breathed life into the band when they needed it most.
Just as late '71 and '72 provided the band with a frenetic pace of change with new keyboardist Keith Godchaux, who added a whole new dimension to the Dead's sound, the same occurs with Brent and it shines radiantly on the 12/26 and 12/28/79 shows. 12/26 might have the most creative and inspired second set that I can think of for any era and 12/28 also sparkles with energy.
It took a little while for Brent to get used to the idea of playing in the Dead, and being the "new guy" for like 11 years is eventually what killed him, but being the new guy here really gave these shows the X-factor that Heads so crave. Everybody in the band is playing with a renewed sense of energy and Brent's Hammond organ just makes the energy peak perfectly. It also must be noted that they made a more efficient version of the Wall of Sound and in '79 we see the fruits of this, as Phil's bass, Jerry on his guitar Tiger, everything sounds very clear. Wonderful sound on both of these recordings. Very tight!
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| Brent brought out the best in Jerry when he needed it most. |
Reckoning
The Dead's electric sound in 1980 for me is fine, but during a spell in October when they did weeks-long runs of shows in both the Warfield Theater in San Francisco and Radio City Music Hall in New York, they return to the idea of having an acoustic set before the electric sets, something they hadn't done consistently since 1970. These are some of the last shows the Dead could be seen in smaller venues. The album compiling these wonderful acoustic sets is Reckoning and was on repeat for what seemed like many years as I fell asleep in my late teens and early twenties. Here's a "Bird Song" from 10/31 that reveals the Dead at their acoustic best. I so wish that they could have done this more often in their later years. Reckoning rules!
80s Dead
I don't feel qualified to write about 80s Dead. I'm not suggesting avoiding 80s Dead, as there are virtues to be found throughout the decade and especially late 80s--the Madison Garden run in '87, the 10-16-89 show, and others. I hit upon 80s and 90s Dead in this post, but I do feel the need to comment on the Spring 1990 tour, which is up there with the spring '72 and spring '77 tours as greatest tour ever.
Sunday Afternoon at the Ballpark Dead
The spring '90 tour feels like grown-up Dead, like the culmination of all the hard work they did in the 60s, 70s, and 80s. The best vocal harmonies the Dead ever achieved was in 1990 without question, and 1990 was arguably the tightest they got in terms of musicianship, too.
This 6-16-90 show at Shoreline back home (I insert the video of the entire show here) is a good argument I can think of for why I might agree with Bobby Weir who says that this was his favorite period for the band--just down home good ole fun-lovin' Dead--it isn't even considered one of the great shows. The 1990 sound doesn't get too heavy or too intellectual in gigantic 70-minute space melt-your-face explorations, but the music they were making really gels and synthesizes all the craziness into digestible songs. Just plain old songs.
Their show with Branford Marsalis on sax (3/29/90) features a pinnacle Dead moment. Branford joins the band at the end of the first set with a spacey "Bird Song" that would be everything you'd expect from a musician of Branford's caliber joining them on stage. The Dead then decide to invite him to sit in on the second set, teaching him a few tunes during the intermission. This version of "Eyes of the World" is just an "ear-gasm." (There are better sound recordings than the video I attach, but you get the picture.) Along with American Beauty and Europe '72, Without a Net, which is a selection of highlights from the spring of '90 tour, is what really turned me on to the Dead when I was about 16. And I remember listening to this version of "Eyes" and thinking it was my idea of what heaven sounds like. Like a pleasant warm day with a cold beer at the ballpark kind of sound.
Without a Net was "dedicated to Clifton Hanger." I didn't know who Clifton Hanger was when I was younger and listening to the album. It was a mystery and I didn't have information at my fingertips in the pre-Google years. It turns out that Clifton Hanger was Brent Mydland's alias that he used when traveling at hotels and the like. He died before release of the album, which features his last great tour. Brent was another casualty of living on the road with the Dead. I didn't appreciate Brent's playing quite as much when I was younger, but I do now. And it seems fitting to mention this anecdote--the music then was so good, but there's another bittersweet tinge.
In Conclusion
In conclusion, either Bobby or Jerry said that "Dark Star" is in just about everything the Dead ever did. That "Dark Star" philosophy, that spirit of exploration, the freedom to go deep, infused them with their approach to every song and every note they ever played. For me, in the same way, '72 is part of everything they ever did, capturing the spirit and energy of late 60s Dead with the tightness achieved at later peak moments ('77 or '90). I certainly listen to many other years. It would just be close-minded not to. And certainly other heads have other favorite years. But I keep coming back to '72, like coming back home. Finding new years and new shows is still something I look forward to. And it says just how rich their career was that there are still shows that are ready to discover. I had no idea how good 4-2-73 was until it came in the mail the other day in my Dave's Picks subscription series. And I'd gone so long without it.
Suggested (Required) Listening:
11/10/67
Live/Dead
2/22/69
2/13/70 (Available in Chunks on Dick's Picks 4)
5/2/70 (Available as Dick's Picks 8)
Skull & Roses
Europe '72 (I link the album that includes a few discs of songs from the tour, but ideally you listen to complete tour and complete shows and I'd definitely hit up 4/14/72, 4/26/72, 5/3/72, 5/4/72, 5/10/72, 5/11/72 and 5/26/72)
Sunshine Daydream (the DVD here is definitely worth a peep to witness the ambiance of a Dead show)
9/27/72 (Available as Dick's Picks 11)
4/2/73 (Available as Dave's Picks 21)
11/11/73 (Available in Complete Winterland '73 recordings)
11/17/73 (Available as Dave's Picks 5)
12/19/73 (Available as Dick's Picks 1)
6/26 and 6/28/74 (Available as Dick's Picks 12)
8/4 and 8/6/74 (Available as Dick's Picks 31)
8/13/75 (Available as One From the Vault)
7/17/76 (Available as Dave's Picks 18)
7/18/76
5/8/77 Available here on YouTube or order the official '77 box set here.
7/8/78 Red Rocks
2/3/78 and 2/5/78 (Available as Dick's Picks 18)
12/26/79 (Available as Dick's Picks 5)
Reckoning
9/18/87
10/16/89 (Available as Nightfall of Diamonds)
All of Spring '90 but Without a Net will do
3/29/90 with Branford Marsalis released as Wake up to Find Out
