December | 2017 | redeyegin

in the last installment of the 2017 releases from grateful dead archivist david lemieux, we get a brilliant show from the summer of 1972, the final show of four in a row that they played at this venue. only three months after their legendary european tour, and the last show before they headed up to oregon for the fabled veneta concert, this show captures them at one of the peak periods in their career. recorded by owsley ‘bear’ stanley, the sound is clean and well balanced. the set list is very typical of the period (almost all of the songs would be on the soon to be issued ‘europe 72’). it is also the early stages of the configuration of the band that would no longer include pigpen, as he had played his final show in june.

the band is firing on all cylinders from the opening ‘cold rain and snow’ to the encore of ‘sugar magnolia’. of note is the ‘he’s gone’ and ‘birdsong’ in the first set. the only possible blemish on an otherwise stellar evening is ‘bertha’. in a song that they normally use as a set opener to get the juices flowing, jerry absolutely butchers the lyrics a number of times throughout the song. luckily he partially makes up for it, maybe out of anger, by closing with an energetic guitar solo to finish up the first set.

i have been subscribing to dave’s releases for five years, and 2017 offered probably the most consistently great four shows of the series. next year also has great promise as it was announced earlier this year that they have successfully negotiated with a few parties for the return of hundreds of missing tapes known as the ‘betty boards’. many of these tapes are from shows from one of their other classic periods -late 1976 to early 1978 – that were missing from their ‘vault’. the holy grail of this was of course the fabled run in may of 1977, notably the cornell university show (although i prefer the buffalo show the next night a little bit more). dave released four of these shows on the 40th anniversary of the cornell date as a boxed set this past may. i highly recommend getting that as well.

if you are a fan of the band, i highly suggest you consider signing up for the 2018 year (link below). they are going fast, and are capped at 18,000 subscribers. he has already announced volume 25, which will be the binghampton ny show from 11/6/77, which was one of the missing betty boards.