Grateful Dead Listening Guide

1987 August 12 - Red Rocks

icepetal@gmail.com (www.deadlistening.com) — Sun, 06 Dec 2009 18:41:03 PST

GRATEFUL DEAD
Sunday, August 12, 1987
Red Rocks Amphitheatre - Morrison, CO
Audience Recording

The "In The Dark" album was released just the month before this show, and "Touch Of Grey" was lighting a fuse on what would be an explosion of Grateful Dead popularity to eclipse the prior twenty years. Meanwhile the 1987 Dead were operating in their "business as usual" mode, on tour across the country.

There's no denying my personal preference to the Dead's music which came prior to this point in their career. The somewhat pre-1985 lopsidedness to the shows reviewed here on the Guide make that rather clear. But that doesn't mean there oughtn't be some respect paid to often infamously regarded pockets of the Grateful Dead's legacy. For me, the best way to honor and experience these moments comes from stellar audience recordings (by the late 80's many recordings were literally exceeding all expectations of quality). And here we come to the outdoor Red Rocks venue in Morrison, Colorado, providing an ideal setting for some fantastic sounding music.

In 1987 it can be difficult to take the obvious vocal strain that health and drug issues had exacted on Garcia, and to me the band more often than not sounds like a caricature of itself. They sound a bit like a band pretending to be the Grateful Dead—mimicking what one would expect to hear more than simply creating music together. A bit harsh perhaps, but hard to deny. Yet through it all, the Dead were always able to pierce the membrane separating that for which we would forever forgive them, and that for which we would always turn out to share with them. They still had "it" just under the surface, and though it came into full view less and less often, it was never completely absent.

So here we land in the absolute sweet spot at a gorgeous venue. This recording sounds good enough to make the hair on the back of your neck stand up. If you're going to traverse 1987, it may as well be a summertime outdoor show that sounds this good.

Set 1: Hell In A Bucket > Sugaree, Never Trust A Woman, Cumberland Blues > Mexicali Blues, Friend Of The Devil, My Brother Esau, Bird Song > The Music Never Stopped
Set 2: China Cat Sunflower > I Know You Rider, Man Smart (Woman Smarter) > Terrapin Station > Drums > Space > The Other One > Dear Mr. Fantasy > Wharf Rat > Turn On Your Lovelight, E: The Mighty Quinn (Quinn The Eskimo)

The first set is tastefully delivered, and while occasionally veering into that "Dead being their own cover band" feeling, this is no doubt a good time had by all. Bird Song is very satisfying as the structured musical experience peels away revealing a more fractaled landscape. Worth noting is the level at which the band is paying attention to each other. As Jerry hits a sour note and does an admirable job of saving himself, the other band members pick this up and highlight the off-played minor note until it becomes part of the musical tapestry. This seems to fuse the band mates and the music starts to soar, catching energy and spiraling aloft. The jam doesn't last long (a 1987 characteristic), but it's thoroughly authentic Grateful Dead. They drop directly into a nice Music Never Stopped which fires on all cylinders to wrap up the set. The end jamming will put a smile on your face for sure.

China>Rider opens the second set with the band in its comfort zone. It's hard to find fault here, and very easy to just let yourself go. When Jerry absolutely roars out his "northbound train" lyrics, its one of those "wow, Jerry's really into it" moments that are always precious to bump into in these latter years.

Terrapin Station has a nice extended final section where the song's theme repeats and coils into itself again and again. It goes on long enough to become somewhat hypnotic, somehow synching your brainwaves into a passage where time is hard to pin down. This is the effect one typically looks for in the end refrains of Terrapin, yet does not often find.

Drumz is very nice. Overlaid with musical tones and orchestrated thunder, the show goes deeply into Space, holding nothing back as the vortex of psychedelia dissolves the mountain landscape of the venue into liquid winds of light and crystal rivers.

Other One whispers its way into view, and Healy has Bobby's voice tweaked, taking an unfair advantage of the lysergic energy floating all around. While it's hard not to wish Other One was played out a good deal longer, the show is certainly delivering the goods as the band rolls nicely into Dear Mr. Fantasy and then Wharf Rat.

The set ends with Lovelight, and no matter how much I try to let these Bobby versions stir up the embers of Pigpen Lovelights gone by, it ain't happening. This one smacks of the Dead dusting off a version of themselves much better left to the history books. If I'm jaded, so be it. Quinn The Eskimo redeems things in the encore spot, clearly capping the evening off with a joyful energy.

A very satisfying audience recording capturing the band in good form standing on the verge of titanic popularity and a truly inspirational creative comeback in the years to come (1989-90), this show provides a nice window into what 1987 was all about.

08/12/87 AUD etree source info
08/12/87 AUD Download

Under Eternity Blue - Instrumental Hip Hop

icepetal@gmail.com (www.deadlistening.com) — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 14:12:08 PST

The sixth installment of the Under Eternity Blue radio program hits the Internet airwaves this weekend on Spirit Plants Radio with two show times: Saturday, November 21st at 10pm PST, and Sunday, November 22nd at 1pm PST.

This episode will explore something perhaps best described as a guilty pleasure - Instrumental Hip Hop. It may sound counter intuitive, but this musical genre has never ceased to surprise me with its ability to strike a chord of musical enjoyment which I often reach while listening to the Grateful Dead. Blasphemy? If it sounds that way, I hope you may open you ears and give it a try just the same. Once in a while you get shown the light...

After this weekend's airings, this episode will be added to the Under Eternity Blue podcast series and if you are subscribed, you will find this broadcast appearing as a new podcast download then. Information for subscribing can be found at the Under Eternity Blue Music site itself.

Spirit Plants Radio
http://spfradio.yage.net/
Under Eternity Blue with DJ Arkstar
Saturday, November 21st: 10pm PST
Sunday, November 22nd: 1pm PST

The full weekend line up (11am PST Saturday - 11pm PST Sunday) is listed on the Spirit Plants Radio page above.

1982 August 10 - Iowa City, IA

icepetal@gmail.com (www.deadlistening.com) — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 18:29:10 PST

GRATEFUL DEAD
Tuesday, August 10, 1982
University of Iowa Fieldhouse - Iowa City, IA
Audience Recording
1982 sits smack in the midst of probably the darkest stretch of the Grateful Dead's musical career, fame-wise. By '82 the 70's Classic Rock thing had significantly worn off its claim on popular music, and the band was still a number of years away from its full re-immergence into popularity to come later in the decade. Nestled into the quiet earlier 80's, 1982 often holds surprisingly archetypical musical representations of the Grateful Dead. While it doesn't top many (if any) favorite year lists, it's one of those years where you can be rewarded by doing nothing more than randomly selecting a date and giving it a spin on the stereo. 1982 is well worth exploring.

August 10, 1982 was actually the very first tape I pulled out when I decided to begin the Dead Listening project. It made no sense--I'm a 1973 fan through and through--but for some reason, after many years away from the Dead's music, this date was the first to call to me as I stared at my wall of CDs. In my time away, my mind had gotten very fuzzy regarding the Dead's musical history. The ability to look at a tape or CD and instantly recall the musical memory of its highlights was nearly extinguished. Yet when I saw this date, I remembered a wonderful Eyes of the World, and a delicious sound quality to the recording. So 8/10/82 was the first show I loaded onto my iPod. I had a mixed listening experience, not because the actual show was disappointing, but probably because returning to the Dead's music after so long kicked up a significant amount of dust. In an odd way it felt like I was listening to the music through a thick clouded glass window.

I'm not sure why I didn't get to reviewing this date earlier. Lord knows I've let my ears dabble back into this tape many times. Now it seems to fit in nicely.

Set 1: Feel Like A Stranger, Friend Of The Devil, New Minglewood Blues, Tennessee Jed, Cassidy, It Must Have Been The Roses, On The Road Again > Beat It On Down The Line, Stagger Lee, I Need A Miracle > Bertha
Set 2: China Cat Sunflower > I Know You Rider, Lost Sailor > Saint Of Circumstance > Eyes Of The World > Drums > Space > Aiko Aiko > Truckin' > Stella Blue > Sugar Magnolia E: It's All Over Now Baby Blue > Johnny B. Goode

Pretty much my first take away from this show is how interesting the first set list looks on paper. Friend of the Devil in the number two spot, an always welcome It Must Have Been The Roses, and the first of only two times we saw the pairing of On The Road Again into Beat It On Down The Line (the last came two months later).

A tune that could be worn as a badge of 1982 in many ways, Feel Like A Stranger is completely satisfying as the show opener. It bobs and weaves, brimming over with the very essence of the band's sound. More and more as I listen to this audience recording I am struck by how pristinely this sounds exactly like the Grateful Dead. I know that's sort of a goofy thing to say, but maybe you'll get my point as you listen. The taper, Kenny Mance, is FOB (in Front Of the sound Board), and from that position in the 4th row Garcia's guitar in particular outdoes itself in conveying precisely those characteristics which epitomized his sound completely. That deep richness coupled with his signature twang and sizzle-pop high-end just oozes from this tape. At first I thought this impression about Jerry's sound was just due to my absence from the band's music, but the quality is as clear now as it was nearly two years ago when I first returned to the tape. It makes the entire listening experience more enjoyable and intimate at the same time.

With Friend of the Devil following the opening Stranger, I'm sold. Immediately I'm transported directly into my Grateful Dead "happy place." And the set rolls along ever so nicely. Cassidy threatens to drop the train off the rails into a storm filled psychedelic sea below the tracks. And even as it becomes clear that something has gone critically wrong with the entire PA system in Roses, it almost doesn't matter--so potent is the familiarity of the band and its audience here in '82. We're all completely comfortable and at ease. Technical difficulties simply don't matter. Well, they matter to the band and crew, thankfully.

While things are getting duct taped back together to make it through the set, Kenny continues to let the recording roll. There's some guy calling out for the band to let Phil sing and shortly after they unleashes an impromptu detour fully into Space--perhaps at a loss to come up with something else with which to test the PA, or maybe sparked by some vocal feedback. It comes out of nowhere and adds a twisted accent to an otherwise lull in the action, and proves that the sound system is back on its feet. There's even a wonderful little Tico Tico tuning just before they make it into On The Road Again. All in all this is one of the most satisfying "technical difficulties" you could ask for caught on tape.

The second set leaps out of the gate with a nice China > Rider. It's a musical selection that did not lose a step moving from one decade to the next. The transition jam is full of spinning kaleidoscope colors which slowly manage to congeal into the structure of I Know You Rider, with wonderful sparkling solos trailing out of Garcia all the while.

After a respectable Sailor > Saint--another staple of the early 80's--we transition into Eyes Of The World. It's played at a rapid tempo, and Jerry rushes into the first verse, but not before laying down some extremely enticing licks to start things off. The song just blossoms from there. Bobby is a master of syncopation while Garcia splashes and flourishes in rainbow brushstrokes. Again, I'm thoroughly consumed by how Jerry's tone bursts at the seams. As he flies over hills and up into the clouds, his guitar stands as tall as trees. It all ends too soon, as far as I'm concerned. The Drums and Space which follow feel a tad underplayed. The Space only seems to briefly reach the roaring chasm that was hinted in the first set. Still enjoyable, it isn't quite as monumental as many from 1982 could be.

The end of the set seems standard on paper, but it's definitely worth the listen. From the infectious Aiko Aiko to the way Stella Blue manages to gently throb like a massive tide of stars washing slowly in and out of your mind's eye through the final solo section, there is plenty to enjoy. Not to mention, who can avoid applauding the band from barely avoiding a train wreck (maybe not so barely) as Garcia slams out of Stella into Around & Around, only to have the rest of the band head into Sugar Mag. Ah... we love you guys, warts and all.

An "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue" to lead off a two song encore is just icing on the cake here. Again, a lovely AUD recording ushers us in to another great show.

08/10/82 AUD etree source info
08/10/82 AUD Download

Roll Away

icepetal@gmail.com (www.deadlistening.com) — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 18:54:56 PDT

Speaking from experience, it's healthy to step away from a solid diet of Grateful Dead music once in a while. I did it for a multi-year period before starting up this blog, and it was a very good thing. Not only was it refreshing to dive into "other" music with all the daily listening time I had been devoting to the Dead, but in coming back years later, their music opened up like a flower revealing subtle hues I missed in the past. The music spoke with more fine detail and more wide reaching scope than before. I didn’t plan to come back to the Dead when I did, much as I hadn’t planned to step away years earlier. All in all I recommend taking a break from time to time.

In recent weeks I’ve stepped away again. The August 24, 1972 review marked only the first time I had returned to listening to the Dead since early September. And excluding that one show, October 2009 has been a whirlwind adventure into other music; the Grateful Dead receiving nary a thought along the way.

It’s okay. I’m not here to tell you I’m hanging up a closed sign on the blog or anything like that. Not even “gone fishing,” though it may seem a bit like that recently. I’m comfortable that the archives here can keep readers interest (Gosh, I wonder how many folks have read this site cover to cover?) even while I slip away to dabble in other waters.

Regardless, I’m actually well into the research portion (listening) for the guide’s next show review. I won’t let things completely die on the vine. And I did feel like checking in for a moment even if just to pass along a few tidbits.

Somehow,through no doing of my own, the GDLG twitter account password became corrupted last week. If you follow, you might have noticed that @deadlistening has gone completely dark of late. Amazingly frustrating. One can imagine how difficult it is to get any direct support help from such a large “free” service. I really don’t want to have to bail on the account (with its more than 1000 followers) and start over. Hopefully I’ll get lucky soon and find help working through the issues that are somehow preventing my even managing to receive the password reset e-mail via twitter. If you know anyone over at Twitter, I’d appreciate being put in contact. I want my account back.

On a lighter note: While enjoying the next show on the GDLG reviewing bench yesterday while driving home with my 11-year-old, he chimed in from the back seat as the band segued into Truckin’. “This has got to be the Grateful Dead.” It wasn’t because he recognized the familiar tune. He said he knew it because they have a really distinctive sound that let’s you know it’s them every time. I myself had just been marveling at how absolutely archetypical Jerry’s guitar tone was sounding, and we spoke a bit about that distinctive rich, round twang that embodied Garcia’s tone for so many years.

Then, as the band continued singing the tune my son said, “Chicken? Chicken?” I burst out laughing. “Chicken, like the doodah man…”

1972 August 24 - Berkeley Community Theatre

icepetal@gmail.com (www.deadlistening.com) — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 18:50:35 PDT

GRATEFUL DEAD
Thursday, August 24, 1972
Berkeley Community Theatre, Berkeley, CA
Soundboard Recording

“Good time music by good time people”
Bill Graham introduction, 8/24/72
Once again I find myself overwhelmed by the way the Grateful Dead sounded so completely at the top of their game in 1972. In a year that saw a more subtle evolution than its predecessor, there is no doubt that 1972 demonstrated an amazing metamorphosis bridging 1971 to 1973. When one considers ’71 against ’73 they stand nearly as distinct as day to night. And while it is clear that there were many miles between these two years, 1972 showcases an amazing consistency throughout. End to end it’s a constant roller coaster ride through both the Americana Rock and wild psychedelic adventurism that were both completely the Grateful Dead.

Tucked into the summer of ’72 are the August shows. Historically speaking, August contains one of the most famously heralded shows of all time (08/27/72 Veneta, OR) and what was long one of the most completely missing dates in all collections (08/25/72 Berkeley, CA). Woven into that soap opera are a bunch of other shows that can sometimes bleed into each other. And while the 08/27 show is a classic (someday I’ll review it, I’m sure), when I consider you coming over to my house to explore August 1972, my hand is going to grab the show from 08/24/72 every time.

You don’t need to hang around Grateful Dead tapes very long before you realize very little convincing is needed when it comes to listening to a 1972 show. So, allow me to highlight just a few obviously key elements and then step over to the stereo to turn the volume up too loud for us to talk to each other and hit the play button.

Set 1: Promised Land, Sugaree, Jack Straw, China Cat Sunflower > I Know You Rider, Me & My Uncle, Bird Song, Beat It On Down The Line, Tennessee Jed, Playin’ In The Band, Casey Jones
Set 2: Mississippi Half-Step Uptown Toodeloo, Mexicali Blues, Brown Eyed Women, Truckin, Dark Star > Morning Dew, Sugar Magnolia, Ramble On Rose, Greatest Story Ever Told, Sing Me Back Home, One More Saturday Night E: Uncle John’s Band

In the ever flip-flopping of shows from Dark Star to Other One in these early-mid ‘70’s years, this August 24, 1972 show flops to Dark Star, and also manages to capture a Bird Song, China>Rider, Uncle John’s Band, and the obligatory flip-flop defying Playin’ In The Band. It makes for ideal pastures as far as I’m concerned. And in listening to the more exploratory expanses of this fine show I am continually brought to the state of mind where my eyes can no longer perceive the physical space around me. The vivid imagery which floods my vision while my eyes are closed tight suffuses everything continually. And in that vision where light burns around shadows and perspective swims in a sea of joy, I am repeatedly exposed to a musical journey which seems to travel through a landscape constructed of a Mandelbrot set fractal.

Whether it’s within the Playin’ jam, or the amazing Dark Star, or even the insanely tight weave of the final Uncle John’s Band segment, I am forever feeling things move through either the vast open empty spaces of the fractal pattern, or cascading wildly through the forever repeating and coiling tendrils hidden deep in the details. These extremes are synched to the beautiful dynamics that the band is utilizing – something not always ascribed to 1972. Here on 8/24 the Dead are all at once fully at ease and wickedly electrified at the same time – something that manages to describe their essence through this period very well. And yet this show provides ample breathing room which only heightens the entire musical experience.

So let this show play for you and enjoy every moment. In particular be mindful of the way this Playin’ works the extremes. Relish the amazing Dark Star as it catches the quintessential 1972 groove, then flies into complete oblivion, only to return to the groove before drifting into a near complete stillness where it’s Phil who ushers in the luscious Morning Dew which follows. And then stick around for the Uncle John’s Band. It’s a stand out fabulous version which is elevated beyond description as Phil rapid-fires notes through the final crescendo section – a jaw dropping finale to another fabulous show from 1972.

Now let’s hit the volume knob and get this started.

08/24/72 SBD etree source info
08/24/72 SBD Stream

Under Eternity Blue - Late 60's Jazz

icepetal@gmail.com (www.deadlistening.com) — Sat, 26 Sep 2009 09:29:22 PDT

The fifth installment of the Under Eternity Blue radio program hits the Internet airwaves this weekend with three show times: Saturday, September 26th at 7pm PST, and Sunday, September 27th at 7am PST and 1pm PST.

This episode will explore a somewhat forgotten period of Jazz from the last half of the 1960's. Not the "electric Jazz" of Miles Davis, nor the sometimes intense and atonal "free Jazz" that was taking place; this is more a compelling expansion of traditional jazz as it became infused with the psychedelic energy of the day. Overall, it comes off as a more open and freely lyrical form of Jazz.

After this weekend's airings, this episode will be added to the Under Eternity Blue podcast series and if you are subscribed, you will find this broadcast appearing as a new podcast download then. Information for subscribing can be found at the Under Eternity Blue Music site.

Spirit Plants Radio
http://spfradio.yage.net/
Under Eternity Blue with DJ Arkstar
Saturday, September 26th: 7pm PST
Sunday, September 27th: 7am PST & 1pm PST

The full weekend line up (11am PST Saturday - 11pm PST Sunday) is listed on the Spirit Plants Radio page above.

GDLG-007 - Jerry Band

icepetal@gmail.com (www.deadlistening.com) — Tue, 22 Sep 2009 18:33:43 PDT

Listening Session 007: Focusing on Jerry Garcia's solo work outside of the Grateful Dead across the years, along with the occasional story and insight adding color along the way.

1968 May 18 - Santa Clara County Fairgrounds

icepetal@gmail.com (www.deadlistening.com) — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 20:21:16 PDT

GRATEFUL DEAD
Saturday, May 18, 1968
Santa Clara County Fairgrounds – San Jose, CA
Northern California Folk-Rock Festival
Audience Recording
As far as the Grateful Dead go, 1968 contains a collection of music that is in many ways unparalleled across the vast 30 year span of their career. Like no other year, 1968 never spares a single minute toying around with the idea of taking you on a psychedelic music journey. It doesn’t gently take your hand and lead you down a path which exposes you to some magic land. No, 1968 is more like being run over by a freight train fueled on electric Kool-Aid steam . Drop the needle down at any instance of 1968 Grateful Dead and you’re catapulted directly into the heart of a musical expression so lysergic, so steeped in cosmic adventurism, it defies any true comparison to what we might generally bring to mind as the “psychedelic scene” of the late 60’s. The Dead in ’68 go beyond.

At this time the band was fully possessed by it musical muse. This muse stood so close to the veil which normally shrouds its presence in mystery that we have no problem recognizing this higher power working the band like fingers on a hand. The muse found a foothold in this musical ensemble which not two years earlier epitomized the “San Francisco Sound.” Here, that band has broken free of any pigeonholing or time stamping. They are a hurricane force spiraling windstorm of transformative and bone melting music. You are not safe in their presence. You can not emerge innocent with flowers in your hair from this music. I would have hated to have been in a band sharing the bill with the Grateful Dead in 1968, especially if they took the stage before me. What they were doing went beyond music somehow. And they needed no warming up or cooling down. From bell to bell, you got life-altering soul-fire which bleached your flesh and bones into the color of stars.

Sadly, we are missing far more of the Dead’s output from 1968 than we are lucky to have on tape. Vast portions of the year are nowhere to be found. We have spotted shows, partial runs, fragments of music – and that’s from within the patches where we actually have music at all. Between March and August of 1968, for example, we have documents from only four concerts total, while the band was playing nearly night in and night out, early and late shows, free concerts and headlining. It makes what we do have all that much more precious and at the same time painful due to the thought of what has been lost to time, lingering on the air, and left boiling in the blood of the audiences that were there to experience it.

One of these precious treasures from the vast wasteland of lost music came at the hands of The Jefferson Airplane’s Jorma Kaukonen, who recorded his own audience tape of the Dead’s performance on May 18th, 1968. He recorded from the lip of the stage, and while he clearly was on the move occasionally (the mic obviously gets repositioned two or three times during the set to different parts of the stage it seems), the recording is breathtaking all the same. There aren’t a lot of up front vocals, but in 1968 this doesn’t matter in the slightest. The raw inferno of the Grateful Dead’s power explodes like a super nova off of this tape. The mic’s journeying around the stage seems only to intensify much of the psychedelic power. 95% of the time, the recording will bring you to your knees – outdoors at an all day concert with the full force of the Grateful Dead rocketing you to worlds beyond the physical universe. There's a woman asked to say a few words to the folks at home in the opening seconds of this recording. She sums everything up just perfectly.

Alligator > Drums > Alligator > Caution (Do Not Stop On Tracks) > Feedback

Sharing the bill with The Doors, Eric Burdon & The Animal, Big Brother & The Holding Co., The Youngbloods, Electric Flag, Jefferson Airplane, Kaleidoscope, Country Joe & The Fish, and Taj Maha, the Dead used their early slot at the Northern California Folk-Rock Festival to deliver side two of the Anthem Of The Sun album – a record not due to hit the shelves until July of that year. The music explodes, filling the entire Santa Clara County Fairgrounds like a shower of lava. The Dead become a black hole sucking all matter and being into their core. The music is fierce with fists like mountains crushing everything for miles.

To hear this sliver of May 1968 (April is completely absent from tape collections, and May and June only barely qualify as being any better) is to be given a window into the Dead’s evolution through these primal years. As if the January and February tapes display a band any less powerful, this snapshot of May displays something more colossal. This is similar to the way November and December 1972 stand somewhat more brutally powerful than the months just before. The band and its ferocious musical energy is completely unleashed here in May ‘68.

There’s little hope in mapping out this musical journey. Though, I will say that the transition into Caution manages to somehow push things over an edge. Just after you’ve spent about twelve minutes under a gale force of Alligator jamming, Caution takes things up another notch, swirling in that Bluegrass element which, even here in the deepest reaches of psychedelic mayhem, is able to jettison the musical experience further out into swirling space-time.

The first pass into Feedback, somewhere just after Pigpen’s first round of “Just a touch,” comes one like a welcome breather which seems poised to allow our heart to stop racing for a few moments. Of course, this undulating wash of cymbals and turning volume knobs pins us down all the more, only giving us the smallest hints of the insanity to come some eleven-and-a-half minutes later.

The final Feedback is inescapable. Flesh, nerves, hair, bones, and fingernails are shredded so completely as to remove the individual human experience entirely from the event. Where has the fairground gone? Where has anything I held onto as reality gone? Breathing and heart beating are unknown here. The rippling sound beams find names in the valley of my sundrenched treetops and my gurgling brooks.

When it’s over, things have surely been driven so deeply into your body as to never have hope of ending completely.

05/18/68 AUD etree source info
05/18/68 AUD Download

1977 February 26 - Swing Auditorium

icepetal@gmail.com (www.deadlistening.com) — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 12:29:36 PDT

GRATEFUL DEAD
Saturday, February 26, 1977
Swing Auditorium – San Bernardino, CA
Soundboard Recording
There was a wonderfully harmless war started in the online Grateful Dead community throughout the late 1990s and early 2000s. It came down to people having to choose allegiance to the year 1976 or 1977. ‘77 fans found it abundantly easy to laugh at and ridicule the Dead’s output from 1976 as tired, slow, limp, and utterly outshone by the following year, while ‘76 fans (or perhaps more accurately phrased, people who didn’t find 1977 to be the year above all other years) stood fast on the merits of 1976’s often overlooked psychedelic wonderland of creativity and inspiration which could make 1977 seem somewhat too organized and contrived. Just in writing that last sentence I can feel the ire of both camps rising to defend the motherland. And if I haven’t already made it abundantly clear in my writings, I was a banner waving member of the 1976 crowd.

And while I spent my heavy trading years obsessively collecting everything I could ever find from the Dead’s entire output of the 70’s, 1977 was never part of that blind obsession. While I can call to mind the merits of nearly every stop on the calendar in 1973, 74, 75, 76, and 78, such is not the case with 1977. Oh, I know my way around that year. I know that I gravitate to the feel of the spring and summer shows more than those from the fall and winter. But I don’t bleed the details of 1977 like I do the other years.

Flash forward to today, and I can freely admit that 1977 is like a new flower opening up before me. It represents new discoveries for me tucked within an era to which I’m already intimately in tune; and what a glorious hidden jewel to be able to discover after all this time.

I went in to revisit this 02/26/77 Swing Auditorium show remembering that it was good, and little else. What followed was a heart opening ride into a sensational Grateful Dead show which towers with perfected Grateful Dead energy and groove throughout. Beyond the clear set list highlights, the show is filled with songs I’d normally pass over, yet everything from this show shines and delivers a full cup of the Dead’s most potent elixir.

Set 1: Terrapin Station, New Minglewood Blues, They Love Each Other, Estimated Prophet, Sugaree, Mama Tried, Deal, Playin' In The Band > The Wheel > Playin' In The Band

Set 2: Samson And Delilah, Tennessee Jed, The Music Never Stopped, Help On The Way > Slipknot! > Franklin's Tower, Promised land, Eyes Of The World > Dancin' In The Streets > Around & Around, E: US Blues

The opening Terrapin (its debut) ushers in the fact that 1977 was going to bring with it an entirely new level of Grateful Dead musical exploration. It’s a mind-blowing thought to consider what it must have been like to attend this show and have this be the opening event. An instant classic to be sure, the Dead waste no effort on trying to figure this tune out from the stage. It fires at near full strength immediately, and by the end we’ve been thrust into the wild pulsing heart of the band right in the show’s opening number. The band rides this wave into a sublime first set of song delivery. 1977 is getting off to a magical start. Minglewood, They Love Each Other, Sugaree, the Estimated Prophet debut – really everything in the first set is terrific. It just feels utterly wonderful.

The set closes with a Playin’ > Wheel > Playin’ that funnels the entire set’s wildly energetic magic into a concentrated psychedelic ride. Playin’ In The Band creates a slow churning boil like a lava lamp under high heat. The ground shifts and buckles and bows in all directions until there comes an eruption into a galaxy imploding wormhole which transports the entire auditorium out of the physical plane. Out beyond the stars images flicker and glow. Sound passes in ceaseless ripples of energy riding the drummers’ beat, while great mountains and rivers of energy swell and recede on Garcia’s phase shifting distortion and Phil’s slow popping bubbles of starlight.

Jerry decides to move into The Wheel, and it happens without the drummers first locking onto the standard Wheel rhythm pattern. The transition is fabulous (great transitions being something of a hallmark for 1977), and The Wheel come on riding all the psychedelic energy of the Playin’ before it. A lovely and twisted exit jam follows and the outer space landscape of the Playin’ jam slowly fades back into view spreading our depth perception out beyond planets and stars which gently bob and turn around us.

Set two rockets out of the gate with a fine Samson And Delilah and a Tennessee Jed containing a Garcia solo that leaves you wide-eyed and smiling from ear to ear. The Music Never Stopped follows and it spirals ever-upward to a high-stepping crescendo.

We then reach Help > Slip > Franklin’s, and the Slipknot opens us back up to the misty magic we enjoyed in Playin’ In The Band. The music is a swirling blanket of distant clouds, corkscrewed hallways and shimmering fractal glass. At times overpowering enough to sweep your breath away yet mysterious enough to leave you unaware of your need for breath at all, the jam rolls in on itself as it reflects the glowing patters in every cell of your body. The tides rise and fall in random patters eventually bringing us back to the jam’s theme and on into Franklin’s Tower.

Franklin’s kicks off with its infectious uplifting energy. We are immediately locked into a dance around the most precious hearth of Grateful Dead music – the place where everything is simply infused with joy and pleasure. The solos stretch out and return to verse as our attention to time dissipates. To a degree this Franklin’s Tower is made more enjoyable by the absence of any triumphant explosion or peak. It rides a buoyant stream ever onward with the occasional parting of mountain tops revealing a blazing sun above pulsing and dancing along with our hearts and feet.

After a curiously placed mid-set two Promised Land, we reenter this joyous bond with the band in Eyes Of The World. Again we are treated to a flowing output of music that doesn’t attempt to dazzle us with acrobatic feats, yet locks in just the same keeping the gaze of our heart transfixed on the music’s soul-reaching expression. We are treated to a nice Phil solo that sounds grafted right out of 1973, and then we roll right into Dancin’ In The Streets.

Dancin’ turns up the disco funk dial to ten and Jerry springboards his solos into the sky. He’s fully cranking on his auto-filter wha-wha pedal and the music cooks along. From here the show powers through its finale with Around & Around and the US Blues encore.

1977 exudes a certain glorious level of Grateful Dead energy and psychedelic adventurism. It’s nearly impossible to go wrong anywhere you step. And it started out of the gate on the right foot with the very first show of the year.

This is a fabulous quality soundboard recording with titanic Phil throughout.

02/26/77 SBD etree source info
02/26/77 SBD Stream

Listening Trail – The Dark Star Garden

icepetal@gmail.com (www.deadlistening.com) — Fri, 14 Aug 2009 09:09:34 PDT

Another installment in the GDLG Listening Trails Series

There is no denying it. Nothing quite describes the Grateful Dead’s deepest level of musical magic better than Dark Star. It’s at once some of the most “cosmic” music the band made, and at the same time the most personal. It’s hardly the first taste of the Dead you’d typically want to give someone, but it’s the one thing that can cement the band’s music into the soul forever onward.

Please note that this is not a list of the Grateful Dead’s best Dark Stars of all time. Far from it. The song defies being stacked up in such a way. Yes, one can have their favorite versions, but I never even set about reviewing shows for the Guide based upon which Dark Stars I find to be “best.” Those on this trail serve to provide a direct path to some of the noteworthy version that have already turned up in reviews here. Nothing more than that. I get the sense that if I was new to exploring the Grateful Dead and found my way to these pages, I might want to easily be pointed to some good Dark Stars. Thus, the Dark Star garden has been created.

Here is a listening trail not for the faint of heart. The entrance isn’t brightly lit near the front of the park, and you might have to make friends with the park ranger before he will trust you to traverse this path alone. But the seclusion and secretive nature of this trail only enhances its enchantments.

So, in swirling mist and a perception of perspective and direction that undulates like heat off a road at its entrance, let’s take a stroll past a few of the GDLG’s current Dark Stars. There is no hope of stacking these up in order of importance, so we’ll just take them chronologically.

Please follow the links below to fully enjoy this Listening Trail.

06/14/69 – I was surprised after posting this review to learn how few people knew about this show. I guess 1969 can be that way in that the entire year tends to blur into one long peak along the Dead’s long strange trip. Here, we come face to face with the cauldron of molten fire which forged the very soul of the Dead’s musical exploration. The review knows better than to attempt a true charting of the musical journey. The music speaks a thousand whispering voices forever.

06/24/70 – You may have bumped into this show already, but if not, you are a sure goner now. This Dark Star weaves in and out of view while also providing the driving force behind some of the greatest musical expression the band ever produced. Dark Star > Attics > Dark Star > Sugar Magnolia > Dark Star > St. Stephen and beyond. There’s a reason this show ranks as one of the best of the best, and it is well captured as this Dark Star ebbs, flows, and explodes.

07/26/72 – By 1972 Dark Star was not only everything it ever had been, but also a great deal more. This colossal version tipping the scale at over thirty minutes delivers everything you could ever expect, and then rushes into a musical adventure which typified the Dead’s most blissful destination of the day. It’s as if it took until 1972 for Dark Star to fully open the doors to an improvisational land where the Dead could romp and dance freely, and their hearts fill to bursting with this Dark Star.

08/01/73 – A liquidly lovely, jazzy jam filled, outdoor summer Dark Star that exudes that certain special flavor that only 1973 could bring. This Dark Star not only demonstrates the best of these elements, but also paints haunted and mournful stories out of twisted night filled landscapes like none other. This is some of the most satisfying music 1973 has to offer, during a time when Dark Star was still king.

Under Eternity Blue - 70's Afro-Highlife

icepetal@gmail.com (www.deadlistening.com) — Sat, 15 Aug 2009 15:03:40 PDT

The fourth installment of the Under Eternity Blue radio program hits the Internet airwaves this weekend with two show times: Saturday, August 15th at 7pm PST, and Sunday, August 16th at 7am PST.

This episode is going to spend its time enjoying the subtle hypnotic undertones of the Highlife music that came out of Africa in the 1970's. Somehow more soul-catching than other forms of Afro-Pop, Beat, and Funk, this Highlife fuses African folk music roots into modern instrumentation, and together they produce a wildly intoxicating listening experience. This sliver of the Afro-music movement elevates the mood and warms the spirit, all while remaining very understated and fluid. It's a splendid addition to the rotation of any musical connoisseur's library.

With the launch of this fourth installment also comes the unveiling of the Under Eternity Blue podcast series itself. Now you can subscribe directly to a feed featuring this non-Dead side project of the GDLG. UEB episodes will get added to the feed after the weekend debut of each new broadcast. All three of the previous episodes are already queued up and ready for download and podcast subscription. Information can be found at the Under Eternity Blue Music site.

Spirit Plants Radio
http://spfradio.yage.net/
Under Eternity Blue with DJ Arkstar
Saturday, August 15th: 7pm PST
Sunday, August 16th: 7am PST

The full weekend line up (11am PST Saturday - 11pm PST Sunday) is listed on the Spirit Plants Radio page above. If you can’t tune in live, all shows become listenable via archive streaming after the show ends Sunday night, with the newest Under Eternity Blue episode turning up in its podcast feed as well.

GDLG Podcast How-To

icepetal@gmail.com (www.deadlistening.com) — Sun, 02 Aug 2009 13:39:54 PDT

This post is here to help you enjoy the Grateful Dead Listening Guide’s Podcast Series. It will occasionally be updated, need be, and currently contains new feed address info for any of you currently subscribed to the podcast.

All podcast can be found via the linked menu on the left side of the site, and also under the label "podcasts."

There are a few different ways to listen to the podcasts. Hopefully one of these suggested methods will make it easy for you to enjoy the listening sessions:

1. Click on the link which leads to the MP3 file of an episode (generally, “Listening Session 001, 002, etc…" in each podcast post) and the file should begin streaming.

2. Right click (in Internet Explorer) on the link to the MP3 file and select “Save Target As…” This will allow you to download the podcast episode directly to your computer. From there you can load it into your player of choice. Other browsers should also provide ways to save the podcast MP3 files to your computer.

3. Subscribing in iTunes (note: new feed address info below):

While the show still remains frustratingly out of the iTunes Podcast Directory, you can still subscribe to the podcast feed in iTunes:

On your iTunes menu bar click on Advanced, then "Subscribe To Podcast."

In the URL field, paste this blog feed address:

http://feeds.feedburner.com/DeadListeningPodcastSeries

This will trigger the subscription and download of the entire series and keep you updated as new episodes appear.

Please note that this feed address has changed and is specific to the podcast series alone. It is not another blog to follow. While the podcasts will continue to be posted here on the guide, the GDLG feed itself is so large that older podcast episodes are slowly falling off the back end, making new subscribers to the podcast miss out on the earliest episodes.

If you have successfully used the GDLG blog feed to pull all the episodes into iTunes already (with the GDLG logo and full file descriptions), my guess is that it will continue to work just fine. If you do decide to switch to the new podcast feed, it will come into iTunes as a new show, triggering the download of all past episodes. A minor annoyance to consider deleting your historical episodes to make room for the same ones under a slightly different name, but it might make sense as one day we may formally divide the two feeds and post podcasts in the podcast feed only.

Again, this post will likely be edited in the future as things may change regarding the GDLG podcast and the iTunes Podcast Directory. Despite numerous failed attempts to work through iTunes Support, a resolution has not been found. Any iTunes Podcast wizards out there? I’d love some help. Drop me a line.

1973 June 30 - Universal Amphitheatre

icepetal@gmail.com (www.deadlistening.com) — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 09:40:22 PDT

GRATEFUL DEAD
Saturday, June 30, 1973
Universal Amphitheatre – Universal City, CA
Audience Recording
Deadheads can stay up late into the night debating several eternal questions. One of these is often goes like this: If you had a time machine, what Grateful Dead show, or run of shows, would you go back to attend? For me, I can pretty confidently say that I’d be setting the dial for the three day run from Universal City, California at the end of June, 1973 to attend the 6/29, 6/30, and 7/1 shows.

I’d be lucky in that it wouldn’t be too crowded – nothing like the time travel pile up going on over around 05/08/77. The ’73 Universal City run is not popular. In all my years of tape trading I’ve never bumped into anyone who shares quite my enthusiasm for the whole Summer of 1973 thing, and the Universal City run is arguably the low point of the summer, given all the fire works surrounding it. Even after years of getting up on soapboxes in online Dead forums, and clearly taking every opportunity to talk about it here on the GDLG, I doubt very highly that I could fill a room with like-minded folks. Oh, several people are glad that I’ve hipped them to the golden yummies to be found in this period, but enough for these folks to make this selection in the Way Back Machine? I doubt it. And no offense taken, I’ve learned to accept that there is clearly something firing a little differently in my brain when it comes to this stuff. So… I’d have plenty of legroom traveling in time back to these shows.

Of course, the fact that there apparently wasn’t a swarm of future dwellers packing the rafters on 05/08/77 raising their hand held mobile devices in the air, glowing with a somewhat more annoying light than say, a bic lighter (though there would also be some iPhone holders running the zippo lighter app, I’m sure), means that we either never figure out time travel, or that when we do (did), we luck out and find all the Dead shows splintered into an endless refraction of themselves related to our own personal time-space continuums allowing each of us our own “copy” to attend. Each show is actually happening all the time, and our linear experience of them is merely called into our perception at the moment we hop across the continuum and step into the parking lot an hour or two before show time. Oops… digression.

June 30th, 1973 was one of those low circulating and forever “AUD only” shows (all before the passing of Dick Latvala and the ensuing circulation of so many soundboards), and my copy was crusty. While I did luck out in 2001 to bump into a 7” reel copy from the assumed master AUD reel itself, and put it into circulation via my Audience Devotional Tree, for the longest time I had this tape copy that bordered on being of slightly too poor quality to trade. This was a real issue for me because of how deeply the music on this tape was tapping into my heart. That I was able to circulate a better copy which peeled off the layer of off-pitch hissy crust, was an absolute dream come true. After 2001, it was much easier for 06/30/73 to get its point across. And shortly after, when the soundboard started making it around, it almost didn’t matter. The SBD sounds great, yet has absolutely no life to it at all – and this propagated the bad reputation this date lives with.

This show has that familiar brand of 1973 jazzy psychedelia that I’ve been pointing out for a while. Yet where a show like 06/22/73 reaches peaks that nearly bring one to tears as the band finds its way deeply into improvisational transcendence, 06/30/73 is sort of the opposite. This show feels more like on great pulse in the heartbeat of the Grateful Dead rather than something full of peaks and valleys. The show’s highlights swell more that explode, and I think it is because of this that this tape offers another sensational full show experience. This is only enhanced by the fact that the recording quality of this audience tape is nearly unparallel throughout the rest of 1973.

Putting into circulation another upgraded version of this recording (linked below, as usual) allowed me to converse about and “study” the archeology of this recording a bit more thoroughly. It turns out that the band’s sound crew was making audience tapes directly at the sound board at this time, and supplying them to the band. This newest version confirms that the reel was dubbed in 1979 directly off of Garcia’s own tape stash. As heavenly a lineage as one could wish for. The recording fits in as one of the very best recordings of 1973. It succeeds in not only capturing the ’73 version of the Wall Of Sound perfectly, but also presents an enormous helping of that hard to capture audience energy and spirit. It’s a multi-dimensional experience, and all of this in unavoidable as one listens to this tape.

Set 1: Promised, The Love Each Other, Mexicali Blues, Tennessee Jed, Looks Like Rain, Bird Song, Cumberland Blues, Row Jimmy, Jack Straw, Deal, Beat It On Down The Line, Black Peter, Playin’ In The Band

Set 2: Greatest Story Ever Told, Ramble On Rose, El Paso, Dark Star > Eyes Of The World > Stella Blue, Sugar Magnolia E: Saturday Night

1973 is known for a degree of repetitiveness in its first sets. It’s not that the band wasn’t playing a large repertoire of songs. There was plenty of variety there. I think it’s more a widely held opinion among traders born out of having listened to a lot of 1973 shows. I think the first sets are better described as “predictable.” However, perhaps it comes down to distance making the heart grow fonder, but when I listen back to 06/30/73’s first set now, it thoroughly satisfies. There is a powerful sense of ease and enjoyment flowing out of the music. The extremely predictable 1973 Promised Land opener feels full of smiles. They Love Each Other swings, and I have found myself unable to shake rolling the car windows down and playing this tune at full blast on recent summer days. It sets the air alight with dancing energy, and only grows as it goes. Jerry’s solo tumbles out, bobbing and weaving as if it were shaking its hair and stomping its feet. Just as we’re sure it’s over, he takes it around the track again lifting the energy all the more. The sound quality of this recording combined with the close proximity of the audience around the taper serve to create an intoxicating representation of the Dead in 1973 here, and it’s only just getting started.

Mexicali shimmers and is followed by a strong Tennessee Jed containing another solo in which Jerry stirs the energy pot to boiling, aided by Phil’s low end standing as large as the entire amphitheatre. The song crashes out of the solo, and the crowd goes nuts. A thick and warm Looks Like Rain follows, and then we arrive at Bird Song.

It’s early in the show, yet Bird Song casts out an energy much more aligned with precious time spent deep in the heart of a Grateful Dead concert. The music twinkles, as if rising off of a crystalline waterfall bathed in sunlight. In short order, we float out over its edge and begin a weightless journey into Jerry’s solo. It’s a moment that expands in every direction around you, shedding the personal borders of skin and bone, and fusing you to the music’s core. Bird Songs in 1973 were very consistent, and without fail, this one latches on to Dark Star elements wrapped in a slightly more lyrical presentation. Eventually, just before returning for the last verse, Garcia is playing harmonics with Keith echoing and playing off of them on the Fender Rhodes. The twinkling crystal is everywhere unraveling the mysteries of the universe and veiling the answers as quickly as they appear. Out of the last verse, we are set aloft again. This is heart opening music which spreads its own arms wide enough to embrace the entire horizon as a sunset’s light gently swirls like smoke off of a candle’s flame.

After Bird Song we are fully in the zone of a Grateful Dead show. The crowd idly hoots and hollers, while the band lazily puts together the building blocks of the next song. Cumberland Blues is coming as clear as day. This minute or so between songs finds me transfixed every time I listen. Something comes off of the tape which defies my own explanation. I don’t expect you to find it with me – it seems impossible to say, “listen to this amazing space between Bird Song and Cumberland,” so I won’t go out on that limb. In trying to give it a more tangible perspective, I think it’s simply more evidence of how this particular recording breathes with the strongest representation of a Dead Show’s energy, both within and in between the music. Again, the entire tape is like one enormous heartbeat in the pulse of 1973 Dead.

When Phil kicks it in to Cumberland Blues, we are off to the races. One thing that I have no trouble mentioning is my opinion that I find this to be my absolute favorite, and possibly the best Cumberland Blues I’ve ever heard the band play. It is this very recording that sparked and cemented my theory of thematic undercurrents running through the decades of this band. In this Cumberland, Viola Lee Blues is alive and well. Jerry is clearly allowing all the exploration of that earliest of Grateful Dead “jams” to infuse and distil into his Cumberland solo work. Psychedelic Bluegrass to the highest degree. When his solo begins to cycle into a whirlpooled syncopation leading down a twisting rabbit hole, the already clear Viola Lee tendencies come bursting forth causing us to laugh out loud and shake or heads in stark amazement. It’s molten primal Grateful Dead, splashing in every direction. If you play the game with me about which five Grateful Dead songs would you take to a desert island, this Cumberland Blues would be coming with me. The fire within this version provides an anchor to this show, and it spreads out in every direction.

Row Jimmy exudes its 1973 aura beautifully, followed by thoroughly enjoyable versions of Jack Straw, Deal, and Beat It On Down The Line. Black Peter is so perfectly placed in this first set, it can’t be imagined anywhere else. After BIODTL (that’s the old cassette label abbreviation of Beat It On Down The Line, kids. Did you need me to spell that out?) has drawn everyone to their feet for a free for all dance, Black Peter sends us all into the most serene and contemplative spaces of Grateful Dead music. It’s another quite campfire story moment as Jerry weaves his tale. His solo on this song surpasses expectation, bringing a lamenting sorrow onto the wings of eagles. The solo soars and floats, sears and settles directly into your heart. This beautiful version comes to an end and we are back in the zone with the audience in no hurry for whatever comes next. A guy screams out, “Hello, Jerry!” and we laugh lightly with the rest of the people around the mics. It’s another wonderful human layer coming off of this recording – a Dead show being captured in every way.

Playin’ In The Band demonstrates every characteristic which describes the Summer 1973 sound of the Grateful Dead. As the jam opens up, Billy’s drumming spirals out into jazzy riffs and downbeat defying patterns. He is at once fully charged, yet thoroughly laid back in the pocket, forcing nothing. The band on top of him wastes no time dropping completely into a controlled psychedelic wind storm and the tendrils give way, knot, compress, and zig zag back out with a never ending fluidity. The music balances between a looseness and being a daredevil contortionist in ways not fully explored earlier in the year, nor after. Garcia is rearing back and firing off phrases which coil into the air, extending beyond vision. They round corners trailing themselves in liquid never-ending reflections until it appears that all of the notes are made of one pure yet ever-changing voice. Everything is at once fragmented yet showing us precisely how it all fits together. The jam is remarkably too short. Not that it is substantially shorter than most normal Playin’s of the day, but it is clear that this particular version had things growing which could go on for eons. And on the next night, we’d find that Playin’ would not be contained, setting the pace for the song locking into a tradition of going on longer, and exploring much further, as the summer continued.

Set two arrives with Greatest Story Ever Told, and it absolutely nails the psychedelic strut boogie counterpoint that the song was hitting so well in 1973. It’s a fantastic second set opener, and mounts an ever expanding energy climax through the solo until the sound is pressing us back like a gale force wind. The crowd takes a while to simmer down afterwards, and just as it does, Ramble On Rose begins. In every way the epitome of that Europe ’72, American Dead sound, Ramble On Rose blurs the lines between rock and country leaving us with something wholly Grateful Dead. It’s a lot like Mississippi Half Step in that way. And this version shines a polish on everything distinctive about the song. If the tune could ever come off as a bit of a throw away, it isn’t happening here at all. Maybe having a bit to do with that dominant wall of sound that is pressing upon us, and the way Phil’s bass is occupying air to such an extent that we struggle for breath, this song satisfies entirely.

El Paso delivers a cascading cowboy kaleidoscope, spinning so quickly we can’t help but be swept up into a tumbleweed rolling frenzy. The song feels like it’s riding lightning and we can only grab on as tightly as possible not to be lost to the wind. And then a different wind blows in as Dark Star descends.

Like a magician blowing a handful of glittering dust particles out over the expectant crowd, Dark Star gently scatters into the air around us, each dust speck with its own comet trail streaming out behind. They all slowly begin to take alternate paths of flight as the music slowly builds in intention and direction. We veer into that quintessentially mid ’73 jazzy jamming and the music slowly topples in on itself only to spin and return with new colors and patterns extending off of each instrument. We eventually find ourselves in a fairytale garden of chimes and breezes, as breathtakingly gentle coming out of this monstrous sound system as the roaring press had been all consuming just a few songs prior. Now, we are lost in a quiet sea of mists as the first verse forms like a prophet out of thin air. Words are just sound fragments creeping out of the blanket of music around us. They give way, and the sounds settle down to the ground like impossible leaves of electric ivy. But the ground isn’t there and we appear lost in a vast and endless expanse of towering ribbons of music. They begin to twist and coil, talking in a language we can’t hope to absorb. This musical space increases in velocity, and the band is conjuring magic of untold secrets. There comes a massive low note out of Phil which shears off all but our most intimate layer of being. Moments later these sounds whisk out of existence and Jerry is shuffling into Eyes Of The World.

This Eyes is large. But there is never the sense of aimless noodling. Quite the contrary, as the song drives into its most extreme moments there is time and time again the sense that the music is being pushed out of its own skin – beat, harmony, and structure often lose purchase and venture briefly into pockets of chaos. This all happens without the song itself losing step anywhere. It’s more that the band is forcing itself to dare the entire world to implode, unafraid of the consequences, sure that the greater whole of the band will keep things together. The rapids boil and erupt everywhere, and the path of the river is lost, but the water rolls on and on. They slam in and out of the intricate 7/8 theme sections and race over shifting terrain. Eventually the music quiets featuring a trio of mostly Billy, Phil and Keith. Things idle for just a moment and then they rocket one last time back to the 7/8 theme which then launches another deep dive to the outer edges of the song structure. The music flies free and oozes between form and chaos beautifully. Garcia and Lesh are tipping to and fro, often following nearly incomprehensible paths. Finally, we work our way to Stella Blue.

A perfect landing for a big jam, Stella Blue and China Doll seemed to share this role throughout 1973. The crowd settles in, and the quiet reflective story unfolds. Again, the recording brings the musical panorama directly to the tip of our nose, and we sink in as Jerry croons, and plays soft lullaby colors.

Rocketing in the opposite direction, Sugar Magnolia and One More Saturday Night close out the show in a rocking and rolling frenzy. We are left exhausted, but equally ready to set the dial back to the parking lot and experience the show all over again – or perhaps just hang out with new friends until the show tomorrow night.

06/30/73 AUD etree source info
06/30/73 AUD Download

Related Post: The Ones That Get Away

1979 July 1 - Seattle Center Memorial Stadium

icepetal@gmail.com (www.deadlistening.com) — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 05:01:49 PDT

GRATEFUL DEAD
Sunday, July 1, 1979
Seattle Center Memorial Stadium – Seattle, WA
Audience Recording
I don’t think it matters what goes on moving forward, 1979 is one of those years that is forever going to reside a bit in the shadows. It’s okay. Some Grateful Dead years are meant for a more quiet and lurking seclusion. They serve an interesting purpose for collectors. For many folks, getting deeply into 1979 comes long after scouring other years that first drew the eye and ear. And once this exploration begins (like when you tell yourself, “I need to collect that entire run leading up to New Year’s Eve,” or, “I have to hear Brent’s first tour with the band. I’ve heard that May ’79 was hot.”), there is the pleasure of discovering a whole universe of music that seemed to have been hiding from you. More amazing Grateful Dead! Why didn’t someone tell me?! Well, it just doesn’t work that way, and that’s okay. Part of the mystique and draw here is how we all grow into the music of the Dead. It’s definitely the journey and not the destination. The music can only be experienced in real time, and one show at a time. And that recognition that there may have been an entire year of music you overlooked is part of the journey. It enriches the enjoyment, and probably all Dead tape collectors have shared that experience. So, 1979…

Not only is this a year that bleeds and fades into the crossover between decades (kinda can’t avoid it on the calendar and all), ’79 is also the first year where I start to hear that element of the Grateful Dead that displays a real timelessness. Certain songs in 1979 call back to many years earlier, and defy being described as 1979 versions. More than this, many classic tunes begin giving off a reflection to the wonderful history of the Dead. In 1979, songs like Uncle John’s Band, Stella Blue, and Half Step not only feel timeless, but they draw beautifully from the past, making their present experience all the more sweet – a feeling like, “they’re still my good old Grateful Dead.” This feeling isn’t there for me prior to 1979. Before that year, they simply were that good old Grateful Dead, and didn’t need to “still” be them. Does that even make sense?

On July 1st, 1979 the Dead played a wonderful show that is ripe with this reflective power. It overflows with that special timelessness. The song selections often enhance this, and make for an extra enjoyable ride. There are actually a lot of shows like this somewhat lost in 1979. July 1st is only one of them. There’s a lot of gold to be mined out here (you just don’t hear much about Summer 1979). This show offers us a great path into these backwaters because the recording is fantastic, and I still tend to use audience recording quality as a bit of a guiding light as I pick shows to review. As I’ve said before, a good show matched with a good recording makes for an ideal listening setting. So, in hunting around the summer of ’79, July 1st stood out as a logical choice.

“Hey, God damn it! Get up there and play!”
This audience tape opens up with nearly four minutes or so of pre-show chatter, leading off beautifully with a guy screaming admonishments at the band to get the show started followed by folks near the taper offering their opinion of this guy – precious AUD tape moments. Idle chit-chat around the taper continues, including talk of the previous night’s show, and a request for a copy of tonight’s recording. It’s a nice set up for the music which follows.

Set 1: Half Step > Franklin's Tower, Mama Tried > Mexicali Blues, Peggy-O, Minglewood, Stagger Lee, El Paso, Brown Eyed Women, Passenger

Set 2: Don't Ease Me In, Samson And Delilah, Sugaree, Terrapin > Playin’ > Drums > Space > Stella Blue > Truckin’ > Around And Around E: Shakedown

Opening with a Mississippi Half Step Uptown Toodleloo is always a treat. The song casts out a beautiful bird’s eye view as it paints the Rio Grande gently snaking across a sun dappled landscape. The song tends to strongly point back to the years of its inception, 1972-1973, wiping away associations to the actual date of its performance as it lopes along. And here in ‘79, it serves to instantly bring us to that island which was so much the Grateful Dead – converse to most of the popular cultural and musical trends by the end of the 70’s. Half Step gives off this “sound of the Dead” – something more than a straight up cowboy song, and yet not flamboyantly psychedelic by any means. It’s more “American Dead” than anything. Sliding into Franklin’s Tower, the crowd ignites as the music swirls. The mix is a little Bobby heavy at this point in the show, but given his extremely strong and creative playing there’s little to complain about. And the mix will soon even out into lovely AUD bliss. Half Step>Franklin’s show openers were always great at getting the party started, and by the end of this one the audience is left frenzied and wide-eyed.

The first set continues to roll along, angling in and out of true cowboy territory, and finally closing the set with Passenger which could often rip it up, and this set closer is no exception. Garcia’s slide soloing is an incredible blend of teeth clenching intensity blurred with a dizzying melodic line. All in all this song goes from hot to blistering as Jerry continues to solo without his slide and fires bullet after bullet all over the place, picking faster than we can keep up. Breathlessly, the song ends, wrapping up the first set.

The second set wastes no time in continuing to blur the time stamp on the show as they open with Don’t Ease Me In. Side note: let’s all thank the taper for catching that something was wrong with the left channel mic input. We almost ended up with a horrifically flawed recording of the second set. So, it’s good times out of the gate with Don’t Ease, prancing and dancing a carousel ride all the way.

Out of the space between songs, the drummers begin hammering out a tribal groove and we get treated to a rather exceptional Samson And Delilah. This takes quite a bit for me to say, as Samson is a pretty regular throw away for me. But Mickey and Billy draw you in, and the song comes off without a hitch.

And then Sugaree manages to both take us back and catapult us forward. When Sugaree first made the scene it was never a 13 minute monster. But by 1979, the song had become a showcase for Jerry, and a staple favorite working its way solidly into the line up both with the Dead and Garcia’s solo projects. This version gets started and seems to push and pull like forever reaching and receding waves lapping at the shore. It breathes and pulses, and the solo sections slowly build to blur the lines of the music’s coming and going. Eventually, in the third solo, Garcia reaches his rapid staccato picking and fingering and a slow plume of energy begins to cascade across everything, as if the tops of mammoth redwood trees have turned to molten showers of fireworks and streamers of light. The second set is going very nicely at this point. And then Terrapin.

Gilded columns and archways recede beyond our vision above us as the haunting and regal mystery of Terrapin Station consumes the air. As 1979 moved along, Terrapin grew and grew. The mid section solo here on 7/1 extends its reach into softly pinwheeling suns, clouds, and mountains. This section of the song was really starting to find its legs in the summer of ’79, and here we encounter some of the most delicious passages of music very much cut from the current Grateful Dead cloth. Terrapin truly paved new ground for the Dead, while drawing at times on the haunting grace of so much that they had always done. Eventually fitting in like as if it was always meant to be, Terrapin moves into Playin’.

Playin’ In The Band is an absolute joy to behold. Hard to find much to disappoint in any Playin’ jam, here the music expands and quivers in and out of pools which pull our vision deeply within, never failing to find more and more intricacy and detail the longer we look. Soon, the music begins rushing at us like gusts of wind rippling through a flag, casting everything into an endless undulation. The pulsing and rushing of the music climbs in intensity; much of which comes at the hand of Bob doing unbelievable things with his strumming hand. Eventually, things appear to simmer down, and Garcia’s guitar begins to sing like a bird pocketed between more of his staccato snaking brilliance. Sound gathers into rapidly blooming flowers which fragment off at impossible angles, first by the handful, then filling every space of our visual field. The Dead have rolled out a tapestry which weaves through the hearts of all in attendance. As was often the case, we are brought to a selfless moment of connection to the music. As it sings its song we are as much the voice as the instruments playing. Somehow Drums begins…

Space takes us to strange science fiction terrains, where inverted laws of physics and multi-mooned skies baffle and confound our senses. While this world swirls around us, leaving us only able to desperately try to stand still and hug the wall, hoping the air itself won’t grab us by the shirt and toss us into a boundless maze of confusion, Stella Blue forms around our toes. It starts completely woven into the pattern defying chaos and soon soaks into everything around it. We come out of Space into a Stella Blue that can stand as a defining version. The Dead and the Jerry ballad – something that would always serve to separate them from being “just some psychedelic jam band.”

Stella Blue is delivered on delicate wings, and brings the entire musical experience directly into the Dead’s common “church-like grace.” The abundantly raucous and vocal crowd is gone, and for every one of the thousands in attendance it has become a one-on-one session with Jerry Garcia. His earnest vocals whisper for you to take heed, yet offer enough time bound weariness that he seems caught singing the song as much for his own ears as yours, and this only serves to draw us in further.

Then, as is often the case, it is Jerry’s soloing which catapults Stella Blue into the heavens and down to the fiber of each cell in your body. Finding more room than you’d think possible to draw on emotion, Garcia’s guitar work communicates untold volumes of expression. He towers over lofty mountain peaks, filling the sky with song, and draws to a delicacy that could rock a baby to sleep, all continually conveying heartfelt lyrical emotion. The end solo climbs on and on, and eventually Jerry is layering in the opening refrain to Truckin’, letting it weave into the slow back and forth rocking of Stella Blue’s chord structure.

You need to know that this audience tape has what we in the trading community have long come to call a “Cut Of Death” occurring exactly at the worst possible time in the music. Back in the day, this would be followed by having to stand up and go flip the cassette, or at minimum suffer through a few seconds of blank tape hiss. Here the cut, which tears the heart out of this Stella>Truckin’ transition almost completely, is stitched end to end, but is not much less painful for it. There is just enough of the transition on each side of the cut to make us both appreciate it and cringe for having missed this bit of music – just a few measures, really. Boys and girls, this is life in the world of tape trading. The best thing you can do is warn your friends when you are about to play this wonderful tape for them (as I am clearly doing now). It is far better to know it’s coming than not.

So, Truckin’ explodes and the crowd is set ablaze once again. The version is hot and contains a really nice treat in that it segues into a Nobody’s Fault But Mine Jam. It isn’t all that long, but it has all the high step strut we could ever ask for. The way Around And Around appears from within is also very fine with Jerry finding fragments of the song’s opening and allowing them to coalesce into the traditional hard-stop transition for which the tune is so well know. From here the set cruises to a hard rockin’ close.

A cherry on top in the highest degree, the band returns to the stage to deliver a Shakedown Street encore which is a true rarity. While it doesn’t expand out into an extended jam, it is still a decidedly enjoyable way to bring an end to a Grateful Dead show.

Enjoy this show for the window it can provide into the deeper recesses of the Grateful Dead’s concert history. May you find yourself drawn down side roads and into gullies. It’ll be good to see you there.

07/01/79 AUD etree source info
07/01/79 AUD Download

GDLG-006 - A Grateful Effervescence

icepetal@gmail.com (www.deadlistening.com) — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 05:03:23 PDT

Listening Session 006: Examining the Grateful Dead's hard to pin down underlying theme of uplifting joyfulness. Hear how it was often more than psychedelic improvisation which defined this “band beyond description.”

Under Eternity Blue - Early Dub Reggae

icepetal@gmail.com (www.deadlistening.com) — Fri, 17 Jul 2009 10:02:05 PDT

The third installment of the Under Eternity Blue radio program hits the Internet airwaves this weekend with three show times: Saturday, 7pm PST, and Sunday, 6am PST and 6pm PST.

This episode will explore dawn of Dub Reggae music coming just before the true explosion of the genre in the mid-70's. If you aren't all that familiar with Dub, or are a long time fan, this "heady" style of Jamaican instrumental production is a natural crossover for any Deadhead. This show explores the earliest years of Dub, which have their own unique flavor as Reggae itself was forming out of the more upbeat stylings of Rocksteady before it.

Now that there are a few UEB shows under my belt, I will be creating a podcast subscription feed for this "non-Dead" project very soon. You can currently stream past shows (Ambient Electronica, Psychedelic Folk). Soon moving forward, each show will be released as a podcast (earlier episodes retroactively included) some time after the original weekend airing on Spirit Plants Radio itself.

Spirit Plants Radio

http://spfradio.yage.net/
Under Eternity Blue with DJ Arkstar
Saturday, July 18th: 7pm PST
Sunday, July 19th: 6am PST & 6pm PST
The full weekend line up (11am PST Saturday - 11pm PST Sunday) is listed on the Spirit Plants Radio page above. If you can’t tune in live, all shows become listenable via archive streaming after the show ends Sunday night.

The Gold Ring Down Inside

icepetal@gmail.com (www.deadlistening.com) — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 14:41:48 PDT

History knows the Grateful Dead. They are most universally called the pioneers of the Psychedelic Hippie Rock Music movement. If you think back to most passing mentions you might have read about the Dead in print, or heard on the evening news, some variation of this quick summary is likely to be what you encountered as one news segment or another introduced a piece that had something to do with the band. This quick elevator pitch calling card was created more by our media than the band themselves. And the quick association stuck. Pretty much anyone, fan or foe, would rightly place this crown on the Dead’s head (ha! No pun intended). But while there is no denying the hypnotic draw of the band’s ability to turn time and space in on themselves through improvisational adventurism, the actual power of the band which draws listeners in like an irresistible force of gravity may be something else entirely. Their crowning achievement, and reason for going down in the history books of not only music, but of our culture, might actually stem from something far less easy to pitch into a 15 word sound bite.

There is another consistency to this band’s output which laces and weaves its fingers throughout much of what was created over its thirty year span. This particular element is something that appears to run at an even deeper level than the psychedelic fireworks which draw justifiable attention. Through it all, the Grateful Dead continually were expressing a heartfelt joyfulness which may best be described as simply uplifting and smile producing. It may sound corny, but the ties that truly bind one’s heart to this band’s music seem to come more from the musical passages that bring us floating and buoyant onto a sea of weightless, timeless pleasure.

Something purely effervescent, as in a sunshine skipping Eyes Of The World, or the blue skied cantering lilt of I Know You Rider forming out of China Cat Sunflower, made for some of the most enchanting musical experiences. It was in moments like these where the audience was just as likely to dissolve from individuals into a singular shared perception and expression of the music, as they were while in the grips of a star exploding Dark Star or Other One. This effervescence traverses the early psychedelic meltdowns, Americana acoustic folk, and tribal-disco beat dance parties which pepper the landscape of the Grateful Dead’s cannon.

It might be said that we went back to shows to fill up on this elixir as much as anything else; to draw again from the well that most silently bound us together. Away from the music, deadheads exchange subtle unspoken looks which act as a secret handshake, confirming allegiance to this hard to pin down soul lifting musical journeying. With a look, we know we “get it” and have “been there.” This is music’s deep seeded heartbeat of expression through the band, and us, which often eludes our description due to its sheer scope – like quantifying the oxygen around us or our place in the cosmos. It’s nearly so completely everywhere that we fail to recognize that it’s there at all, influencing and drawing us in.

While I have often aimed at discussing the thematic undercurrents which ran through and evolved in the Dead’s musical history, it has been a difficult challenge. I often question the validity of the dots I connect between songs (Viola Lee to Cumberland? New Potato Caboose to Bird Song?). And now more than ever, I believe it was the scale, or depth of this overarching soulful theme which caused me to struggle. The Dead’s own universal predilection for letting the music lift the collective audience (band included) into a heartwarming rapture reveals a nearly invisible network of connective tissue which binds all of their musical themes. Sure, there are more focused recognizable manifestations of undercurrents floating across the years of the band’s music. But, from a 10,000 foot view, a new clarity takes shape.

Intertwined, but somehow also existing side by side with this effervescent element, there is also the undeniable undercurrent of what Deadheads universally refer to as a “church like” experience within the Dead’s music. Those musical passages tinged with that quality often described on these pages as being wrapped in the most protective arms possible, rocked like a baby, or hauntingly drawn into a song’s story ‘round the campfire – this element did as much to cement the Dead with its audience as any other, latching into the same soul level resonance attained when the music set you soaring, smiling, beaming. In many ways, this church element works a similar uplifting magic upon the listener’s experience.

In 60 plus years, when people are looking way way back upon the life and times of the last half of the previous century, perhaps these deeper undercurrents will drive the conversations when people reflect on music’s ability to transcend time and communicate through the ages. The Grateful Dead left an indelible mark on the almost imperceptible mechanics of our ability to be moved, shaped, and transformed by music itself. By this may history truly know the Grateful Dead.

1970 December 28 - El Monte, CA

icepetal@gmail.com (www.deadlistening.com) — Sun, 12 Jul 2009 20:38:48 PDT

GRATEFUL DEADMonday, December 28, 1970Legion Stadium - El Monte, CAAudience Recording

Music can change your mood, brighten your day, and transport you to far away lands. The Grateful Dead were good for all of these things, and sometimes a bit more. Sometimes the Dead’s music could even change the weather on you, causing the sun to burst through a cloudy day, or even change the season from winter to summer. Such is the case with 12/28/70. Firmly planted in what nearly anyone would call the middle of winter (okay, just seven days in on the calendar), this show ushers bright green grass, sunshine, and warm breezes into the coldest and darkest of days. It’s really something pervasive to what could be called the Dead’s 1971 sound – a folk and country tinged psychedelic rock that emanates a deep relaxed and joyful ease. And here at the doorsteps to 1971, we have a recording that brings this to our ears beautifully. Good time, summertime Grateful Dead.

12/28/70 was another tape which came to be a fixture for me as my appreciation of audience recordings grew over the years. As yet another recording by the same duo responsible for the infamous 08/06/71 tape, as well as the wonderful recording of 07/01/73, on December 28^th, 1970 Craig Todd and Harv Kaslow managed to come away with a recording that stands right up there with the gems they would produce in years to come. With beautiful range and surprisingly impressive stereo separation, this tape defies the standard pigeonholing that many people attribute to old Grateful Dead audience tapes.

Musically, 1970 becomes a difficult year to stack shows against shows, mainly because the truly phenomenal nights claim an unfair advantage over other shows which are good in their own right, yet perhaps don’t exist on the same “truly phenomenal” plane. While 12/28/70 isn’t one of these shows that can be called “best ever,” recognizing it as a good 1970 show coupled with its being preserved in spectacular recording quality given the time period, offers a quality inroad to the world of great AUDs. It’s a quiet and unassuming date tucked into the tail end of 1970. Overall it sounds a bit more distinctly like 1971, aided by the set list featuring tunes which would come of age in that following year. All of this combines to make for a fine addition to anyone’s collection. As your ears come to acclimate to the frequencies and ambience of the recording you should easily find a spot on the floor with the crowd, relaxing and flowing with the evening’s proceedings; summer breezes flowing through you.

The show’s set list also delivers an interesting chronology across the Dead’s repertoire, inserting highlights throughout, rather than building to a single explosive climactic moment. In so doing, the entire show plays out with a very nice energy. And while the over all feel is relaxed, there is just enough intensity and edginess intermingled with more standard material to make for a fine end to end listening experience.

Set One: Cold Rain And Snow, Truckin', It Hurts Me Too, Me And My Uncle, Beat It On Down The Line, China Cat Sunflower > I Know You Rider, Cryptical Envelopment > Drums > Other One > Cryptical Envelopment > Sugar Magnolia, Casey Jones

Set Two: Smokestack Lightnin', Big Railroad Blues, Me And Bobby McGee, Deep Elem Blues, Cumberland Blues, Morning Dew, Good Lovin' > Drums > Good Lovin' > Uncle John's Band

The show offers up a wonderful string of tunes out of the gate, complete with the opening Cold Rain And Snow, a stand alone Truckin, and fine China>Rider which unfolds like a spiraling flower with infinite petals. China Cat Sunflower throbs, filling every beat possible, and Garcia’s solos ring out beautifully. The road opens up before us as they coast into the transition jam. Bobby solos nicely as the band shifts effortlessly around bends and over hills. When Jerry picks up the lead, and Pigpen the tambourine, they have locked into the epitome of everything sublime in 1970-71. I Know You Rider flows out from the stage, and you can feel the crowd locking in, soaking it up, and gelling into synch with the music. The recording quality here shines as brightly as ever, and we are placed in a spot from which we have no desire to leave. From here the show feels like it could never end. Some prolonged equipment troubles sort of squash this vibe until we emerge on the other side into Cryptical Envelopment. It’s early in the set still, yet the band is casting its full spell over us, picking up directly off of the energy which trailed out of I Know You Rider.

This Other One suite doesn’t disappoint in the slightest. The great haunting storytelling ensues as Jerry spins Cryptical’s twisted tale, and the song reaches out with arms of unavoidable beckoning like dangerous craggy seashores luring sailors with songs of mermaids hidden in the wind. Drums follow, and then Other One itself. The deeply tribal rhythm resonates throughout as the music swirls in a sea of incomprehensible vines intertwined into an Escher-like landscape leaving no safe place to tread. There is darkness licking like flames all around as the band folds into and out of the beat, occasional returning to the driving pulse while often letting go into a soup of frothing confusion. With shifting syncopations the music resemble how the band’s jamming in 1973 could feel like it was just on the edge of tumbling head over heels down a mountain while running downhill. The song crackles into the final verse and then breaks like the sun over the horizon back into Cryptical Envelopment.

As is so often the case, the final Cryptical brings us to the voice within the inner sanctum of the Dead’s musical muse. As Jerry lightly solos over the slow churning gurgling riverflow of music, a serenity pervades as the song captures the most elemental being at the band’s core. This is remarkably simple music, wanting for nothing, pushing nowhere. And as Garcia sings out the last refrains of “You know he had to die,” the music goes on to fold in on itself, bending all perception into a center of pure musical satori, once again fusing us to nothing but perception of the moment.

We drop directly into Sugar Magnolia which has fully matured since it appear earlier in the summer. This is long before Sugar Mag evolved into the heavy rocking set two closing standard (a tune that I’m unashamed to say I skip more often than not). Here, the song is full of its original intent, and a good time is had by all. I particular enjoy hearing the guy near the taper after the song who comments, “Amazing what you can do with two guitars.”

A lot like 03/18/71, this show seems to shine in some unsuspecting spaces. Tucked away in this set are thoroughly wonderful renditions of Big Railroad, Deep Elem, and Cumberland Blues. Deep Elem Blues and Cumberland stand back to back, and exude a pure Grateful Dead American rock-n-roll that is deeply intoxicating, in much the same way that I Know You Rider and Going Down The Road Feelin’ Bad was in this time period. The music is unforced and relaxed, hypnotically drawing the listener in. When Morning Dew follows Cumberland the edges are beautifully blurred into that Americana-Folklore-Psychedelia that stands as the figurehead for this band’s musical persona. As Jerry opens up into the final solo section there are diamond raindrops hovering all around, swirls of colored smoke crystallizing from glass into spider webbing, all eventually exploding into a cascade of star showers as the song climaxes. Out of the dust, Good Lovin’ appears and everyone shakes their bones.

Not necessarily a hall of fame version, this Good Lovin’ demonstrates some fine improvisational rockin’ and a nice little segment deep in the jam where Bob and Jerry fall back into the song’s thematic key while the rest of the band continues to churn in the more bluesy groove. For a brief time Jerry is cartwheeling his solo in a slightly more St. Stephen and Eleven fashion which overlays the rest of the music nicely.

Good Lovin’ spills directly into Uncle John’s Band which closes the show with more of that pure Grateful Dead warmth and inviting energy which, once again, brings us to a place from which we have no need to consider leaving. Time could stop here and we wouldn’t care why.

12/28/70 AUD etree source info
12/28/70 AUD Download

The Ones That Get Away

icepetal@gmail.com (www.deadlistening.com) — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 05:26:45 PDT

This time of year always gets me thinking about its significance related to the Grateful Dead’s output in the year 1973. I’ve well documented my proclivity for everything “summer ‘73” in numerous posts, and as the last ten days of June approached, I even planned to honor certain favorite highlights in homage to this favorite time of my favorite year. While the Dead seemed to lock into their summer ‘73 vibe early in June at RFK stadium, the three show run at Universal City, CA holds a special place in my heart, even while for most people, it lives well in the shadows. For me, it’s more than simply the music, as each date has its own story in my trading travels. Interestingly, one of the stories is even seeing chapters written as we speak.

I’ve made detailed work out of the passion I hold for the closing night of this Universal City run on July 1st, 1973. It’s a tape that stands out as a shining example of all things good in audience recordings. Now, I’d like to turn our attention to some of the tapes from the rest of this stand.

June 29^th, 1973 was the first date from this run I ever collected – a one tape wonder SBD/? tape that provided ample openings into that certain something going on in the summer of ’73 sound. A full review might make its way to these pages eventually, but I’ve held off for the time being. This might have to do a bit with a personal disappointment in the quality of the tape that circulates, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it had more to do with the game of “hard to get” an audience tape from this date has been playing with me for nearly ten years. In fact, this date actually offers a nice window into the world of tape trading relationships, and into the story of how some tapes end up on archive.org in the first place, or sometimes don’t. For 06/29, even though there is a soundboard in ample circulation, it is marred by certain level settings and technical issues which make one thirst for an upgrade of some sort, even perhaps coming from an audience recording source.

To give you a glimpse into how the world of tape trading wasn’t (isn’t) just about finding a copy of a show, but was (is) also about constantly searching for upgrades and alternative sources, let me get you up to speed on my hunt for the June 29^th, 1973 audience tape.

So, 06/29 was an early addition to my collection, and served to spark my love of this portion of the year itself. When you would run into this tape on lists, it was always roughly the same partial SBD version. Eventually a SBD “upgrade” came into circulation after Dick's passing. But it left me still lusting after some kind of complete upgrade. Adding to the mystique of 06/29 was the fact that I had never once seen an audience tape for this date show up on anyone’s list.

One day, going back perhaps 8 years ago now, I was contacted via e-mail by a person who had found my contact information off of the several info files circulating around online related to audience tapes from the 1973 era. This sort of contact had become a beautiful undertone to my tape trading experience, helping to spark my amazement at the way the Deadhead community and technology were intermingling, and assuring me that somewhere out there all tapes were waiting to be found. This fellow told me that he had taped 6/29, and wondered if I might help him out by transferring the tape to digital format. What a glorious day that was for me – as seemed to happen often enough, here was another holy grail dropped from the sky on my head. Alas, it was not meant to be…

I confirmed with him that I would obviously be interested in helping him out. Despite his stories of having to miss recording some of the songs because of tough security, I made him aware that this was quite a find, and regardless of quality, the tape yearned to get into circulation. He talked of how he found better seats for the second set, and taped much of the big jams from a pretty sweet spot in the crowd (let the drooling commence). So, I gave him my address and waited for the tapes. And waited... And dropped him an e-mail after a week or so. And waited… To cut to the chase, eventually months went by where I would send off an e-mail every 6 to 8 weeks (completely in stalker mode, I know) wondering if he had sent the tapes, or found some other means of transfer. No reply, ever. Probably three or four years later, my now annual e-mail to him eventually hard bounced off his mail server with a fatal error – his address was dead.

So close. So close!!! When I first made this connection I had shared my excitement with one or two of my trading buddies, fellow hunters who were always out on the fringes looking to fill in gaps in the Grateful Dead taping history. They shared my schoolgirl-like glee over having bumped into this guy, and eagerly awaited my getting the tapes in hand. Only they can truly know this level of frustration. I’m sure they have shared the experience of a vein drying up before the gold itself was found. It’s one of the more frustrating levels of this area of tape trading – silence from the other end of a great line on a tape. And to know that this fellow is more than likely out there somewhere with some understandable reason for not sending the tapes, and never responding to my e-mails, makes it all the more maddening. It’s an example of the both the good and the bad in online relationships: great to get them started, but sometimes falling very short in going further. Where does this guy live? What’s his phone number? Who else do I know who might know this guy?? Maddening.

While I share this story mostly for entertainment purposes, I also do so with hopes to stir that tape back into the light. We sit here at its anniversary, so perhaps getting the stars to align and talking about it will do some good. It certainly worked with the next night.

06/30/73 was a recording I seeded out on the Audience Devotional Tree back in August of 2001. Just a few weeks ago I pulled out an old old DAT version of the same recording which offered a different lineage path from the reel I put into circulation eight years ago. My ears really liked what they heard. I had decided that with this being one of my all time favs recordings, it would be fun to seed out this DAT, get it up on the archive, and then write my review on June 30^th, 2009 sharing this new copy with everyone here. It all went according to plan until just three days ago.

The DAT source (http://www.archive.org/details/gd1973-06-30.aud.weiner.99703.sbeok.flac16) is indeed now up on archive.org. But drawing this bit of attention to the date over the last week has stirred up some contact from some old friends in the community – friends who were pivotal in my seeding out 06/22, 06/26, and even that first copy of 06/30 back in 2001. And that stirring has just now shaken loose an upgrade of true proportion for this date which I am eagerly awaiting in the mail (I do know that this copy will indeed arrive). Once I have it, I will seed yet another version of this show, and after it makes it to the archive, I’ll post my review for 06/30 and link to the upgraded copy at that time. It won’t hit the anniversary exactly, but I’m okay with that. I look forward to it just the same.

What is interesting to me is that my world of tape trading, and in particular this Indiana Jones type treasure hunting, is still in motion today. And for this passage of time you all get to ride along with me just like the old days. You probably can’t resist listening to the version I posted up just last week. I can’t blame you, and I’d be shocked if you weren’t interested. It sounds darn good. And then you may stay tuned in for the new version to be made available, saving that repeat listening perhaps for the new copy coming a week or two from now. That, my friends, is the living breathing heart of trading tapes, rolling out right here on the pages of the GDLG.

And we can all collectively keep holding our breath that the 06/29/73 AUD will show up in my mailbox soon too.

The Quiet Allure Of Audience Tapes

icepetal@gmail.com (www.deadlistening.com) — Sat, 20 Jun 2009 06:47:12 PDT

Upon launching the Grateful Dead Listening Guide I brought up a somewhat understated intention that went beyond the overarching goal of helping folks navigate the endless choices of Dead concert recordings online. Early on I came clean on the point that I was particularly fond of audience recordings, and that in years past I had devoted much of my time and energy to spreading the word of audience tapes and the joys within. There was little denying that throughout my ongoing ramblings there would be a sometimes subtle, sometime outright, push to wake people up to the beauty of audience recordings and my opinion that they (yes, I’ll say it) put the soundboard medium to shame on many levels critical to enjoying the magic of the Dead’s music.

Well, I haven’t been keeping any kind of score card, but I can safely tell you that after general e-mails and comments thanking me for putting up the guide overall, nothing quite comes close to the number of people who confess to having been converted over to an appreciation of audience tapes where before they wouldn’t have given them a chance. And, with readership growing steadily, the frequency of converts continues to rise. It’s a good thing, and it seems to be happening naturally, without my wildly banging some audience tape gong.

I often look at the collective readership of the GDLG like that single person I described at the start of this project who discovered the old grizzled deadhead living across the street (still not sure why I always paint him as old and grizzled. I’d like to think that I’m not particularly either), and began borrowing tapes, listening to stories, and building a collection of music not ever to be found in the nearby record stores. So here after nearly a year and a half, the old deadhead has turned this fellow on to about 80 shows. And being careful as he has been, he has slowly let his personal preference for audience tapes whisper its way into the newcomer’s ear. And slowly, being unconcerned with succeeding, the audience tape medium has been allowed to work its magic and gain another passionate devotee.

There can be little doubt that something more than music is going on when you listen to audience tapes, and this goes well beyond the simple fact that these recordings capture the crowd noise and room ambience. As has been recently articulated by folks commenting on the passing of legendary taper, Jerry Moore, when you listen to a good audience tape you can’t help but experience a layer of gratitude for the person who saw fit to deal with all the rigmarole of taping in the first place. This gratitude quickly expands to a difficult to describe sharing of the taper’s experience as it happened, placing a certain physical layer into the soundscape where we come to discern the true scale of the live musical experience (readily displayed when listening to tapes of 1974’s Wall Of Sound. Worth checking out the podcast too). And then we also come to appreciate the fact that the audience recording is a document completely separate from the world of commercial music. It is the product of people, shared from friend to friend, not packaged onto the shelves of record stores. This most quiet social/cultural layer is on every tape, and infuses the listening experience before during and after the tape is actually playing.

It is no wonder that the Grateful Dead Listening Guide is doing such a fine job of showing people the light of audience tapes. They work on so many levels, one only needs a slight nudge in their direction. From there, the tapes themselves begin to shed light on many things, not the least of which is the actual music itself as it flowed from the stage to the audience.

I once thought that an audience tape was only bringing us a small fraction of the listening experience at a Dead show, like how a photograph is a two dimensional take away from a four dimensional experience. But, when we consider everything “coming off the tape” when listening to audience recordings in particular, they appear more akin to the experience of discovering a rich layer of complexity hiding just below the surface of something we hitherto thought we fully comprehended. There is far more within them than a surface view can reveal, like fractals within fractals, and the sub atomic universe deeper within physical matter than any microscope can see.

It’s the crazy talk of a Deadhead, I know. But I struggle to find any more concrete means to explain the experience of the Dead’s music preserved under the glass of a pristine audience recording. That it is really there defies proof, yet the effects of its being there ripple into our more discernable perceptions of the experience. We know it's there because of the impact it leaves on us. People do turn on to audience tapes. The ear does tune to the spectrum of frequencies caught on tape after a short while allowing the listening experience to unfold like a blooming flower. A slight nudge really is enough to draw in the masses.

There is an invisible pied piper playing a siren song here – crazy as any deadhead out there. I’ve been drawn in by that song for a good long time, and I’m glad to see others hear it too.

Under Eternity Blue - Psychedelic Folk

icepetal@gmail.com (www.deadlistening.com) — Sat, 20 Jun 2009 06:23:35 PDT

The next installment of Under Eternity Blue hits the airwaves this weekend. For those that don't know, I started a podcast side project for an online radio station (Spirit Plants Radio) a couple of months ago. Loosely structured, Under Eternity Blue explores other music that I find meaningful and satisfying - I do spend 80% or more of my time not listening to the Grateful Dead after all.

This episode focuses on the Psychedelic Folk genre. It's an easy call that most Grateful Dead fans will find plenty of inroads to this particular installment, and perhaps I'll turn you on to something you hadn't heard before.

Spirit Plants Radio

streaming live:
http://spfradio.yage.net/
Under Eternity Blue with DJ Arkstar
Saturday, June 20th: 6pm – 7pm PST

Sunday, June 21st: 6am – 7am PST & 4pm – 5pm PST

If interested, check out the first Under Eternity Blue podcast focued on Ambient Electronica.

The Stories Of Jerry Moore

icepetal@gmail.com (www.deadlistening.com) — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 14:14:19 PDT

He Was A Friend Of Mine

I lived through the dawning of the Internet Age of Grateful Dead tape trading. I participated through our amazement that we could be so immediately in contact with other traders (by the thousands), all sharing lists and arranging trades instantaneously - so unlike "the good old days" - to the full explosion of high speed sharing which brought the real need for a trading community to its end.

While living through all of that, I built up a cassette tape collection (then CD collection) numbering in the thousands, and all the while enjoyed not only collecting the tapes, but collecting the stories. Hearing about the old days, talking to people, sharing long e-mails - this was an even more precious gift than the tapes themselves.

One of the ongoing stories was the one titled, "Jerry Moore." I call it a story, because he was no more than that to me (and pretty much my entire circle of trading partners). Yes, there were people who could referencing knowing him way back when. But after getting online in 1997, despite my own ever-widening circle, Jerry Moore was "lost."

Did he die? Had he fallen off the grid? Did someone last hear that he was battling heroin and had sold off all his tapes to pay rent? Had someone seen him retreat into a forest cave to live among the rocks? Quite literally, all of these stories were floating around, and the only thing that stitched them all together was the fact that Moore was "lost" to us; "us" being the world of obsessed tapers trying to digitally archive all the old master tapes we could find. Often were the times I pined over how very absent Jerry Moore was from our world.

And so he grew mythical. And so I found myself in possession of tape copies of many of his recordings not even knowing they were his. Tapes of 10/01/76, 11/04/77, and God knows how many others, all were more often simply "AUD - taper unknown." And this in the age of digital communication.

That all changed for me one day in 2002, when an East Coast taper I knew quietly let me in on the fact that he was acquainted with Moore himself - an old friend, and that Jerry was interested in archiving what was literally a closet full of his masters, complete with a TARDIS-like quality of holding far more music than could conceivably fit inside. A small group of us became MooresBoys, a Yahoo Group devoted to making trips to Jerry's place to help deal with the closet, and then go through the careful Analog>DAT transfers, followed by digital editing into the final drafts that would go into mass circulation.

Living half a country away from the closet, I only performed my tasks on the DAT>SHN/FLAC mastering side of the equation (though Jerry did send me his actual tapes from 10/02/76 - Jesus! He had taped the holiest of 1976 grails ever - 10/02/76!!), so I never got out to meet him in person. But that didn't stop the stories.

Jerry wrote. He wrote a great deal. He wrote and wrote and wrote and wrote. We conversed in e-mail over a multi-year period back then where I was blessed to learn a seemingly endless wealth of knowledge around the life and times of Jerry Moore, the taper. Stories of how he fashioned a telescoping golf ball retrieval tool into his mic stand of choice in the 70's. Stories of how his very first recording, Grateful Dead 06/10/73 was so disappointing to his ears that he recorded over it a month or two later with a sweet recording of the New Riders. Stories of cajoling other concert goers to record with his gear because his seats sucked (07/29/74). Stories of avoiding roadies. Stories on top of stories, back and forth in e-mail.

Reading Jerry Moore is sort of like reading James Joyce or Camus, or Aristotle, or Edward Albee. He wrote thickly. He loved words, perhaps more than music. And he loved vetting out the truth in people and their actions, as much as he loved the details around nearly every facet of what it took for him to do all that taping. I always had to read his e-mails more than once to make sure I was *getting* what he was saying, sometime afraid I was catching the complete opposite meaning in his prose. And I loved that about Jerry.

An example, from the very last e-mail exchange we had between us. He begins an answer to my question related to the appearance of other old tapers more recently on the Internet scene:

odd?

yes and noah.

seems obvious.

then again,

hmmm.

real world answer?

okay.

It was not the first time he played on my name like that, and, of course, the e-mail went on and on from there. It pains me deeply that there will be no more e-mails going on and on from Jerry Moore. I will miss him terribly. I have him to thank for elevating my joys in tape trading to their very highest, and that had nothing to do with the actual tapes he made, but just by being a friend of mine - just by turning from myth into a person with great stories.

So, the giant Internet tubes that changed our community forever get a big tip of the hat today. We can all remember and relive Jerry Moore's master cassesttes so easily now. He is certainly forever part of our living history in music. Just a few of his recordings have made it here onto the guide so far. So many more to come.

09/07/73
06/23/74
08/04/74
04/23/77
05/08/77
11/04/77

GDLG-005 - Into The 80s

icepetal@gmail.com (www.deadlistening.com) — Sun, 31 May 2009 06:55:17 PDT

Listening Session 005: Exploring the sometimes under-appreciated early 1980s output of the Grateful Dead in excellent audience recordings, along with the occasional story and insight adding color along the way.

1969 June 14 - Monterey Performing Arts Center

icepetal@gmail.com (www.deadlistening.com) — Sat, 30 May 2009 05:36:51 PDT

GRATEFUL DEAD
Saturday, June 14, 1969
Monterey Performing Arts Center - Monterey, CA
Soundboard Recording

Most all Deadheads are familiar with the 1969 “Live Dead” album. To a certain degree, this record represents a watershed moment in the band’s history, showcasing the true “live performance” magic of the Grateful Dead captured on vinyl. Not only does it possess quite possibly the highest of all musical events in all Dead folklore with the 02/27/69 Dark Star, but it also goes a long way in writing the book on the rest of the material contained on the album. While it could be argued that it was all downhill for Dark Star after this LP version (no, I’m not attempting to make this case myself), such is not the case with Lovelight. Its evolution had gotten well down the path by the time they played the version used on the record (January 26, 1969), but it was not nearly complete. As 1969 moved along, Lovelight continued to grow, stretching its boundaries not only in duration, but in creativity as well. By the summer of 1969 the song was bursting at its own seams.

It is often the case when listening to old tapes of Grateful Dead music, that you can be struck by the fact that what you are hearing never made it onto a commercial release, and thereby, into mainstream society. It is not uncommon to hear music so good, you can’t believe it only lives by the grace of a sub societal sect that cared for and shared this music fully outside the scope of a record label and commercial industry’s ability to present it as an example of a band’s musical identity to the “outside” world. This tends to happen at a higher than average ratio when it comes to 1969 Grateful Dead. And June 14th, 1969 exemplifies this in spades.

Turn On Your Love Light > Me And My Uncle > Doin' That Rag > He Was A Friend Of Mine > Dire Wolf; Dark Star > St. Stephen > The Eleven > Turn On Your Love Light > Drums > Turn On Your Love Light

As this show begins, we can hear everything known to be archetypically “Lovelight,” and a good deal more. Jerry’s leads give the appearance that he is a daredevil tightrope walker, fearlessly charging forward while blindfolded and balancing several tea cups on saucers across each extended arm, each of these holding aloft a feather-strewn lady sitting in a chair – like some twisted and distorted Dr. Seuss character. He has no concern which way the tightrope turns, bows, or buckles. He’s confidence radiates for miles. The song rolls like a river charging through the wild west terrain of America, great frothing whitecaps boiling over boulders, long swaths of orange and mustard brown silt running like ribbons under crystal glass cover. We are delivered to more remote and twisted vistas than the commercially released Lovelight might ever have dreamed of. Pockets of imploding feedback, great yawning taffy-like pulls of guitar-dinosaur moaning, and strobe light exploding curtains of color adorn the music while Pigpen’s improvised truck driver love poetry sprinkles a consistent thread throughout the 26 minute opening bookend of the show.

When the song sneaks its way into Me And My Uncle, the unmistakable aura of Grateful Dead magic pervades everything. We are defenseless as the band casts its controlling energy over the entire hall, happily lost in their hypnotic trance. Me And My Uncle crackles with a psychedelic power unfairly permeating a simple cowboy song. Bobby’s vocals quiver and tremble with their edgy glimmer, and Garcia’s guitar work is like a tumbleweed caught in a tornado. The Dead’s ability to superimpose one musical genre into the fibers and tissues of another in 1969 was nearly unequalled in any other year. Here in the summer of ‘69, the band was already headed down a creative path toward the formation of the “Acoustic Dead” which would fully play out through the winter and well into 1970. Yet at this time the titanic lysergic beast of 1968 still shrouded even the most traditional of songs, and often made it a more brain twisting challenge to reach stable ground in even the most straightforward of music. As Me And My Uncle deposits us directly into Doin’ That Rag, we are immediately thrust into the belly of the beast again, and Garcia is in as fine vocal form as he’s been on guitar up to this point. He’s delivery matches Bobby’s with its certain crazed and bug-eyed intensity.

That Jerry Garcia could sing a song! His voice paints a Cheshire Cat smile into the air. Doin’ That Rag is so overflowing with the symbolism that pervades the veiled and subtle messaging of the Grateful Dead, it’s a shame that the song could not have secured a more stable home in the Dead’s repertoire. It flashes forward to Robert Hunter’s lyrical majesty contained on American Beauty, crafting pictures and imagery into a poetic mural of spiritual grace, lessons to learn, and endless snapshots of the psychedelic experience.

This draws us directly into He Was A Friend Of Mine, another song that fell out of the rotation after the first few years and probably the one I personally miss the most, along with Viola Lee Blues. Jerry’s vocals and guitar solo only build upon what was happening in Doin’ That Rag. It’s a drippy walk through a folk ballad, showcasing the Dead’s personal signature wonderfully.

When we arrive in Dark Star, it quickly makes everything that proceeded it seem like child’s play. The song comes on as if we’d been slipped a massively over-potent elixir brewed by some medicine man in the Central American jungle, and all the warnings we’d been given in preparation for the ensuing experience amount to not even the smallest level of readiness for what’s happening. Looking back on the show up to this point, we can only laugh at ourselves for having thought we were witnessing the psychedelic grandeur of the Grateful Dead. Dark Star is the real deal, a true game changer.

Oddly, in the grand scheme of Grateful Dead things, the fact of the matter is that most of their music isn’t all that psychedelic. We all have probably been asked the question, “How is this psychedelic rock?” by people in our immediate circle who hear this music over our shoulder. I’ve been asked the question many times, and there’s little point in arguing. Tennessee Jed? Ramble On Rose? Promised Land, Big River? This list goes on and on – this isn’t hippie psychedelic music. I suppose those of us on the inside find it all tinged with the roots of psychedelic rock in some way. Such is the power of that portion of the Dead’s music that truly was psychedelia incarnate. And that, beyond doubt, was Dark Star in 1969. The Dead’s psychedelic preferences didn’t infuse Dark Star. Dark Star was the elixir itself. It was stepping into the inner chamber of a hidden palace to find a secret underground sea of mists, colors, and sounds all in a cosmic dance of intricate beauty. One taste, and you can forever onward begin to trace hints of it throughout everything else. Have you ever heard the strains of Dark Star while gently taking in a beautiful spring morning? That’s it.

There’s little sense in road mapping 06/14/69’s Dark Star for you here. It’s a version that makes you very thankful that recordings of this band were made in such abundance. The idea of this performance having been lost to history as each note rang out without being recorded is unthinkable. The one thing I will mention in regard to the actual playing on 06/14 is that while the entire song quickly latches into the musical satori experience of the Grateful Dead’s living breathing musical muse, there is a near indescribable soul burning passage in the section that follows the first verse. As music revolves, and feedback swarms into all empty space around every sound, the dance between form and chaos overwhelms. This push and pull is never ending. It lays to waste any ability to retain a sense of separation between music and listener.

You are drawn to listen because the music is finding itself within you. Dark Star is the muse within us all. It wakes itself as it plays. The illusion is that we believe Dark Star works on us. This is not true. It is seeking itself within us. We aren’t really there at all in the end. The more we can work to realize this absence of division, the more deeply we can release into the moment. The parallels to pure spiritual knowing here are not coincidental. The force of Being sings through many forms, and in the depths of Dark Star its musical voice is true. The thematic undercurrent which was Dark Star itself binds to everything in the Grateful Dead’s history. In that, it goes beyond any simple mapping from one song to another on a time line. In 1969 we were blessed to be exposed to the pulsing heart of the Dead’s magic. Once exposed, the beat echoes forever forward and back, in and out of music, in and out of self. Dark Star is just something altogether elemental while also dwelling beyond most everything else imaginable.

When Saint Stephen rolls out into The Eleven, there is a controlled frenzy to the intricate rhythm. As if taming something part swarm of bees, part lightning, and part molten furnace core, the Dead sear through time and space with an impossible control over something so ferocious. The music sweats. The pulse races. And in a great swirl of callioped color we find ourselves back at the start of the show as Lovelight steps back on the stage. Beautifully the song drops completely out into Space momentarily and then flashes back into view (one of my favorite elements of any Lovelight). Complete with opening band Aum's leader, Wayne "Tha Harpe" Ceballos, filling in a bit as a guest vocalist, and a drum solo in the midst of everything else, this closing bookend of Lovelight adds another 17 minutes on top of the 26 minute opening ride. Yes, Lovelight was in full bloom during the Summer of 1969.

The tape we have sounds good, but also possesses something of a classic Dead bootleg quality to it. It isn’t culled directly off of a 10” master reel. It has that cassette feel to it, while not taking anything away from the quality of the recording – just a nice layer of listening pleasure reminding us how lucky we are to have the tape at all.

06/14/69 SBD etree source info
06/14/69 SBD Stream

Grateful Dead Listening Guide - Kindle Version

icepetal@gmail.com (www.deadlistening.com) — Thu, 21 May 2009 12:26:05 PDT

Amazon expanded Kindle subscriptions to offer blogs. I couldn’t resist setting up the Grateful Dead Listening Guide (Kindle Version) in the Amazon store. They are currently offering a free 14 day trial too. Got a Kindle? Check it out. Know someone with a Kindle whose life is missing that certain electronic layer of the Grateful Dead? Pass along the news!