as a huge baseball fan, wrigley field has always been on my bucket list of places to go. so even though it wasn’t for a baseball game, i thought i would go there this past weekend to catch a dead and company show. it was also a good chance to meet up with an old college buddy of mine. john had been living in chicago ever since we graduated in the mid eighties. so between the fact that we hadn’t seen each other in about a decade, and the fact that i knew he would be a good source to figure out some pre show activities, it seemed like it could have the makings of a great weekend.

i drove over saturday morning and got to his place early afternoon. we caught up on a few things and then headed down towards the vicinity of wrigley field and had some cocktails and an early dinner. it was a beautiful saturday afternoon and we got down to wrigleyville in plenty of time to start heading to the show.

it had rained the previous evening, so much so that friday night’s concert was suspended in the first set. but tonight it was perfect, and so it was just a matter of getting in the building and getting situated. my friend kevin had secured two pit tickets for us, but we decided to explore more of the floor seating and then settle in later. more on that in a bit.

we had been debating the merits of the song ‘althea’ in the bar before the show, and sure enough they opened with that. it’s funny how things happen like that at a dead show. overall it was a very good first set, including two of my favorites: ‘jack straw’ and ‘brown eyed women’. it ended unusually with ‘one more saturday night’, which normally is a second set closer or encore. when i texted that to a group of friends back home, one said that means you will have a great second set.

and it was. if you are a fan of the classic pairing of songs the dead generated in the seventies, then you would likely be very happy with the song selections. first up was ‘china cat sunflower’ going into ‘i know you rider’ (‘china/rider’), and then ‘estimated prophet’ going into ‘eyes of the world’ (‘estimated/eyes’). a drums/space interlude was capped by a late period garcia tune named ‘days between’, and then they finished the set with the classic trilogy of ‘help on the way/slipknot/franklin’s tower’. those are all favorites of mine and i am not sure i could have scripted it much better.

we never did make it into the pit. covid protocols required everyone to show proof of vaccinations, which we had. you had to show that to get into the building (you got a wristband for that), and then show proof again to get on the floor (another wristband for that) and then show proof again to get into the pit (even though i already had two wristbands to that effect). the security line to get in was very long, and it looked very crowded in there. it just wasn’t worth it.

but overall it was a great show, a great night, and great friends. well worth the trip. great to see you, john. let’s do this more often.

this month marks the fiftieth anniversary of what could arguably be considered the grateful dead’s most important and popular studio album, ‘workingman’s dead’. of course, ‘american beauty’, also released later in 1970, was maybe as important and certainly as popular. but after listening to both all the way through back to back like i did yesterday, for the first time in a long time, i will make two points. the first is that you could almost consider them to be a double album that just happened to be released individually, the second being that the argument as to which is better is like asking me which one of my twin daughters is more beautiful. it is a question that does not need an answer.

but there is no question that ‘workingman’s dead’ is a demarcation point for the band both commercially and artistically. i also think that it is one of the albums that was at the forefront of the burgeoning movement to what gram parson’s called ‘cosmic american music’, and would lead to what we would eventually reference as ‘americana’. with neil young and bob dylan integrating country influences in their recordings, and the band going even further than that, the dead were also finding their calling in this regard. bob weir had been a huge student of the bakersfield sound and had been incorporating country classics into the set lists. but more importantly, the songwriting duo of garcia/hunter were becoming obsessively productive in this period and lent their own twist to the country influences.

to say that this is a departure from their previous studio offering, ‘aoxomoxoa’, would be an understatement. the psychedelic underpinnings of that session are now entirely absent, the focus now being on songwriting, craftsmanship, and stacked vocal harmonies. it has often been observed that it is not a coincidence that the detail paid to harmonies was happening at the same time they were doing some session work with david crosby. there is likely some truth to that, but crosby himself, not one who tends to be humble in his opinions, contends that they mostly took it upon themselves to add that element to their new sound. it was very much a mutual admiration thing. i follow crosby on twitter, and someone once asked him ‘of all the people who are gone, who do you miss the most?’. his one word answer was ‘garcia’.

of the eight songs, seven of them were in the set list rotation for the rest of their career, the exception being pigpen’s ‘easy wind’. a great song, but it was distinctively his own and when he left the band two years later, i don’t think they ever tried it again.

so what is special about the 50th anniversary edition? in regards to the original album, nothing substantial, in my opinion. they simply remastered the original tracks but there are no ‘alternate takes’ or unissued material. ‘mason’s children’ was recorded during these sessions, and they played it live quite a bit in this period, but we get nothing here.

what is of substantial interest is that they tacked on a complete show from 2/21/71 at the capitol theatre in port chester ny. as a few friends will know, when i first heard about this i had mixed emotions. i was happy as i wanted to hear more of this rather legendary six night run at this venue, but disappointed because i had been hoping for a few years now that they might release the whole run as a box set. most of the shows had been considered lost until they came back into the band’s archives with the return of the ‘betty boards’ about 4-5 years back. the second night (2/19/71) was released by the band in 2007 as ‘three from the vault’, but the rest of the tapes were missing. this run is significant for a number of reasons, most notably that mickey left the band abruptly after the first show, never to come back for years. you can hear bobby address this fact in his comments in the second set when someone in the crowd asks about his whereabouts. kreutzmann adjusts quite well, and really doesn’t miss a beat (pun partially intended). a great example of this is his work on the aforementioned ‘easy wind’. on the album version, the two drummers turn in quite possibly one of their best dual efforts in the studio, but here billy tackles it all on his own, and nails it.

the other significant aspect is that the show features favorites from both ‘workingman’s’ and ‘american beauty’, as well as new material from bobby and jerry’s new solo records. we also get ‘me and bobby mcgee’, just a few weeks after janis joplin’s cover of kris kristofferson’s classic had hit the airwaves. it was on her album ‘pearl’, which was released posthumously after her untimely death. they were all great friends, and i have always contended that this was one of the best duos that jerry and bobby ever did together (although this might not be the best version), and you can hear the ache in their voices. jerry also turns in a great ‘bird song’, which is robert hunter’s tribute to janis (‘all i know is that she sang a little while and then flew on’).

so, in a nutshell, get this only if you have an interest in the live show. i contend that it is worth the price for that. but you may not.  i will likely have more to say on this subject when they do the 50th package for ‘american beauty’, but until then, a little pig:

 

 

 

in line with my last post about musical releases from 2019 that went by without comment, i thought i would also do one reflecting on the output from the grateful dead over the last twelve months. say what you will about the band, but it is hard to deny that their fan base has not diminished much since they stopped playing in 1995, following garcia’s death. the band, and/or their crew, had begun recording their live shows almost from the outset, and most of the recordings from a total catalog of an estimated 2,500 shows are still around. the organization has been slowly and methodically releasing selections from the vault for nearly 25 years now, and this year was fairly typical in that regard. here is a brief summary of what they (including the garcia family organization) presented this year. it is pretty substantial.

of course, over the last several years the lynchpin of the archival releases are the quarterly ‘dave’s picks’ series.

volume 29 was the 2/26/77 show from san bernardino – essentially the first show of that legendary spring tour. i wrote about it more extensively back in february. they come out swinging, fresh off of recording new material for the upcoming ‘terrapin station’ album. indeed, they open the show with the title cut.

volume 30 takes us back to their first show of the seventies. on january 2nd of 1970 they played at the fillmore east in new york city, and this performance is pretty typical of the transition the band was going through at the time – still playing material from their heavier psychedelic sixties act, but beginning to sprinkle in more americana songs by robert hunter that would eventually be released on the ‘workingman’s dead’ album just a few months later. the transition was not working out well for organ player tom constanten, as his carousel style playing didn’t really mesh well with the new songs, and he would be out of the band within a month or so.

volume 31 takes us to the other side of the seventies, a december 3rd show in 1979 at the uptown theater in chicago. this one also showcases somewhat of a transitional period for the band, as they are hitting their stride after installing a different keyboard player. brent mydland had replaced keith godchaux earlier in the year, and the band had renewed energy, inspired by the different style of playing and brent’s gruffy vocals, and the new material they had just recorded.

volume 32 takes us back to march 24th of 1973, a monster show at the spectrum in philadelphia that clocks in at nearly four hours – 31 total songs. this was in the middle of an east coast tour that they had started a couple of weeks earlier, right after the passing of one of their original members, pigpen. as some of you have heard me argue, i think 1973 might be their overall strongest year, and this is very representative of that period.

a new format that they have been starting is revisiting their studio albums as they each hit their 50th anniversary. this year’s package was focused on ‘aoxomoxoa’, the last album of their earlier psychedelic period. it has the original 1969 mix, and then the 1971 mix that they decided to do for marketing reasons, and then a second disc of live material from the avalon ballroom in january of 1969. interesting, but i have to admit i am more looking forward to next year, when we hopefully will see something regarding the aforementioned ‘workingman’s dead’, and ‘american beauty’.

another new trend has been to issue something for ‘record store day’, and this year they revisited the ‘reckoning’ material and offered a two disc package with acoustic material from the warfield theater run in 1980. perfect soundtrack for a summer afternoon on my deck.

of course they usually put out some kind of box set each year, and this year they chose to focus on five shows from giants stadium in east rutherford, new jersey. one from 1987, two from 1989, and two from 1991. the 1991 shows have bruce hornsby on keyboards, and the second night is also presented as a full length blu ray disc in the box set. very well recorded and worth a look if you like this period of the dead.

their last output for the year was rather unusual. due to a number of reasons (mostly jerry), the dead never released a studio album in the nineties. but they were writing and playing new material, and so dead archivist dave lemieux put together what he found to be the strongest live versions of his favorite unreleased songs from that period and released it as such in november. again, if you like this period of the band (post brent), you may find this interesting. i don’t, and i didn’t.

in addition to the grateful dead organization’s output, i also pay attention to what the garcia estate is doing in a similar fashion. 2019 saw the release of two volumes that are reminiscent of the dave’s picks series, namely the ‘garcia live’ series.

volume 11 features the jerry garcia band in fine form on november 11th 1993 at the civic center in providence, rhode island. jerry was not happy with the super stardom of the dead at this time and hated playing in large arenas. but he sure found renewed energy when he went out on the road with his own band.

volume 12 goes back 20 years earlier to january 1973 when garcia and merl saunders played a three night run at the boarding house in san francisco. while two long time staples of the early versions of the band were there – john kahn on bass and bill vitt on drums – the other interesting component was a young r&b vocalist named sarah fulcher. different than any other garcia band recording i have heard, sarah is on many tracks the lead vocalist, instead of just a backup role. hers is a very improvisational, bluesy, and soulful style, and she can get a little over her skis sometimes. think donna on steroids. but the liner notes suggest that much of that may be due to the unstructured nature of the band, and she is just filling in space. jerry’s playing on the songs where she takes the lead is great, taking on the role of the rhythm guitarist like you don’t normally hear. his overall leads also have a more bluesy sound to them, totally different than his work with the dead at the time (compare it to the dave’s picks 32 described above). the band is tight, and their version of ‘that’s all right mama’ in the second set is just scorching.

and last, but certainly not least, we have the box set they released – ‘electric on the eel’ – which i reviewed in march. three shows from three different years (1987, 1989, and 1991) from a summer benefit festival at a camp near the eel river in california. of everything that i have talked about here, this would be one that i would point you towards, as well as that 1980 warfield album. i also thought this was an excellent year for the dave’s picks series.

once again, thanks for following me this year, and i look forward to another great year in music.

 

 

 

 

the 29th installment of the dave’s picks series brings us a cleaned up version of a show i have had for many years, but hadn’t listened to in quite some time. i had forgotten what a magnificent evening it was. one of the things to keep in mind is that this is their first show in nearly two months, and was the first of their legendary spring tour of 1977, one of the strongest periods in the repertoire, in my opinion. since their last show on new year’s eve at the cow palace, they had been spending much of that time rehearsing and recording songs for what would eventually become ‘terrapin station’. indeed, two of those songs make their debut here in the first set, ‘estimated prophet’ and ‘terrapin station’. the fact that they ambitiously opened the first set with the latter gives us an idea as to the confidence they had in themselves and the material.

i am sure my first copy was from when the original ‘betty boards’ starting circulating in the late eighties as bootlegs. and so what we have here is the polished production of the original tape reels that were returned to the vault in the last couple of years. as such, the sound quality is fantastic. although there are a few spots when it feels like they are going through the motions, there are some exceptional highlights here. there is a great ‘help/slip/franklin’s’ in the middle of the second set, and a nearly perfect ‘eyes of the world’ shortly after that.

as bonus material, they added what they had of the following evening’s show at santa barbara, just the fifth reel. the other four reels have never been found. luckily, the fifth reel contains an excellent ‘morning dew’, one that rivals any i have heard from the 1977 period.

on an interesting side note, the venue was only in existence for another 4 years, as it was irreparably harmed when a twin engine cessna crashed into it (on september 11th, no less).

all in all a very worthy addition to the series. with any luck i will get to talk more about it with david directly. he is hosting the release of dogfish brewery’s ‘american beauty’ ipa this friday, and i will be there early to chat with him. i am sure i will be listening to this on my road trip there.