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The Grateful Dead Dark Star


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28.    Gentlemen, Start Your Engines (Barlow/Mydland) - 4:09

so so so so fucking bad, man... worth it for comic/superlative value at least.

THEE worst nomimally dead song ever?

otherwise, yeah, the box is worthwhile.

It's so so so fucking bad, but even more so for me is

Way to Go Home (Bralove/Hunter/Welnick) - 6:27

The last show I saw I got one of these. Though a longshot I thought if I stared at Vinnie long enough & hard enough, maybe I could make his head explode and the damn song would end.

Didn't work, but it was worth a try.

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I've been enjoying very much the first volume of the Pure Jerry Series, which is: The Jerry Garcia Band: Theatre 1839, San Francisco, July 29 & 30, 1977. It really is pure Jerry. If you don't like Garcia's approach music, don't get this. If you do though, you'll love this music. It's a three cd set, and it has songs like Mystery Train, Simple Twist of Fate, I Second That Emotion, The Harder They Come, and a bunch of other cool stuff. Garcia was in great form these two nights, it seems as if 1977 he could do no wrong. Even Donna Jean Godchaux is halfway decent. You can only order this off of Jerrygarcia.com, but it's worth it if you like the Dead or Garcia.

Edited by Matthew
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Um...yeah. Deadhead here. :wub:

My journey started in 1978. I was 16. Saw bunches of shows 1978-86, my last July 4, 1986, two or three days before Jerry went into a diabetic coma and scared the hell out of everyone. This was also my daughter's first show (in utero). But she, now 17 and quite the little hippie chick, did catch The Dead at Bonaroo last month. She thought they were terrific. Ah, the circle of life.

I opted out of shows mainly because I got sidetracked by other areas of my life, but I've always sought out recordings. Those of you into the digital download thing will definitely want to check out the ETree Live Music Archive, a HUGE repository of free live music recordings, offered up with the blessings of the artists. They're currently hosting hundreds of Dead shows.

:excited:

Edited by gdogus
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Here's a show that might change your outlook of the cowboy songs, and wonder if The Grateful Dead could have become a country band. Some really great takes on songs that I thought were familiar! This was a brand new sound to me.

June 28, 1969 Veteran's Auditorium

Garcia sticks to the pedal steel for a handful of tunes, gazing up at all of the treble coming from Pigpen's organ. Bob's voice is full and they are really enjoying themselves.

Check it out!

Anybody check this out yet? I posted it up here because it was so different from any other Grateful Dead I had previously heard. Gotta love archive.org.

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Funny that I just came upon this thread. I just started listening to the Dead. I picked up the Golden Road box set and am pouring through all this music, all of which is new to me, except the radio hits.

Listening to Skullfuck right now. Am definitely loving the live stuff much more- early studio stuff has moments of greatness but often too trippy for me.

Live/Dead, Workingman, American Beauty, and Skullfuck are great, and I'm sure Europe '72 won't let me down.

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Here's a show that might change your outlook of the cowboy songs, and wonder if The Grateful Dead could have become a country band. Some really great takes on songs that I thought were familiar! This was a brand new sound to me.

June 28, 1969 Veteran's Auditorium

Garcia sticks to the pedal steel for a handful of tunes, gazing up at all of the treble coming from Pigpen's organ. Bob's voice is full and they are really enjoying themselves.

Check it out!

Anybody check this out yet? I posted it up here because it was so different from any other Grateful Dead I had previously heard. Gotta love archive.org.

Sure did - and you're right, it's really very different from most Dead sets. Thanks for the link!

For more unusual Dead, I recommend the (official) live acoustic album Reckoning. It's one of Brent Mydland's earlier gigs with the band. Absolutely gorgeous work from everybody.

d132431mvm7.jpg

Edited by gdogus
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There's a Japanese import of RECKONING containing the song "Oh Babe, It Ain't No Lie," omitted from the US CD.

Right - the song was included on the original two LP set, but left off of the US CD issue, for reasons that passeth understanding.

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What is they say about ... "You can never go back"?

For about 2-3 years now - since I became a little Internet savvy and discovered the joys of online music and musical discourse (in my own modest way), I have been looking for a version of a particular show. The only GD show I ever saw - the start of a three-night stand at Winterland in March, 1977. Now thanks to gdogus and a link to that remarkable archive site, I have found it. Early bits sound like crap, but it's warming up now on Scarlet Begonias.

But I suspect there better shows to be found there, so I'm going to have a swell time trying them out with a view to burning several for repeated home use. It's certainly the most diverse, voluminous site of Dead shows I've found. And seems to be pretty user friendly, too.

Still, "my" show sounds pretty modest and scrappy for what was for me a momentously life-changing experience! ^_^

As I'm gradually regaining an interest in the Dead, after a couple of decades of very passive fanship, I still have mixed feelings about them. I like only the live stuff. And even then ... well, I can easily live with the vocals, but sometimes they just sound so damn dribbly and pathetic.

Other times, tho', they sound just what I need. Magical. Shimmering. Head-spinning.

Another funny thing: I blame the GD pretty majorly for my interest in jazz, yet I sometimes have difficulty reconciling the jazz-lovin' part of my brain with the GD part. Sometimes it seems the jazz guys and gals do so, so brilliantly what the GD wish they could do. The story in What A Long Strange Trip (or whatever its title was) about the Dead HATING the idea of following Miles on stage at Fillmore rings true.

A few months back I got a real cheap copy of the last Winterland show and have been enjoying it a lot.

Big applause for Lon for starting this thread - it seems like it's going to be a Live One!

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The only GD show I ever saw - the start of a three-night stand at Winterland in March, 1977. Now thanks to gdogus and a link to that remarkable archive site, I have found it. Early bits sound like crap, but it's warming up now on Scarlet Begonias.

You hit an interesting footnote for you one & only. You got to hear the most complete live version of "Terrapin Station," as after that night they stopped doing the "At A Siding"/"Alhambra" portion.

I have a friend who many years after your show started screaming "Play the rest of it damn it!" when the band as usual starting drifting off to another place and didn't play those above mentioned parts. "Why don't they ever finish it?"

Not owning Deadbase at the time, I couldn't tell him that they never did.

Except once. B)

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take5, I'll be interested to hear your reactions to "Live Europe '72"---that was the one that I got most excited about at first.

I'm listening to the second disc now. I am really liking- maybe my favorite one so far because it has less of the blues stuff. I like Pigpen gettin' down and all, but I just generally have been falling out of favor with white blues anyway. The stuff on this disc, with Garcia singing and the dual guitar stuff, the spacy arrangements- that's what I pretty much expected and wanted to hear.

The verson of Truckin' hear is outstanding.

I must give special mention to Phil Lesh. How does he know where to move the bass around what the guitarists are doing? :blink:

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Don`t know why I missed this thread till today-The Dead were THE band for me when I was a sprog.Loved it all through 72, and then became,very gradually,dissillusioned as I felt a looooong decline set in.My favourite albums were Anthem ,Aoxomoxoa and naturally Live Dead. The reason I bought a cd player was the fact that From the Vault 2 was not released on vinyl, same day I bought my first Charles Gayle and David S Ware albums.Go figure.

Anyway I still pickup all the archive albums from my fave period, much to my partners irritation,she does not understand why I must have yet another version of Lovelight! (Same problem with Thelonius Monk!)

Plug for the Rockin the Rhein, fantastic presence on Dark Star! :tup

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Lesh is very interesting, he was a trumpeter and arranger/composer/orchestrator in a modern classical way, and then all of a sudden he's the Dead's bassist!

I don't know how he does that but I think it's his musical experience somehow (duh, I know but. . . he's very good). I like the hollow body bass sound he had going for many years.

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at least a full third of their songs is country music. fuck that shit. ...

another third of their book is the useless tapestry in sounds attempts. they have a small handful of good songs. i recently checked out a '72 4 cd set. two good songs on the whole thing. chinacat sunflower, and some other thing.

weak

Well, thanks for stopping by, man! Yeah, yeah - we'll see each other again soon, 'k? Really. Buh-bye.

:w

Edited by gdogus
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