Grateful Dead 1969 Fillmore West Boxset coming

From the Grateful Dead board:



DavidGans - 11:45am Mar 5, 2005 PDT (#1632 of 1633)

High Noon By The Bay

Hello -

This was emailed to me with no disclaimer on it not being for public disemination (which is the typical deal):

"In conjunction with Apple, we will be making the official announcement on the 1966 Rarites download on Tuesday to coincide with the announcement of the 40th Anniversary celebration release of the 1969 Fillmore West Box. Could you mention it on KPFA Wednesday? Peace, Eileen."

Dick would have screamed with joy - WooHoo!

David (Gans)

 

I was just listening to 3/2/1969 the other day: mindbending! Will this be the 2/27 to 3/2 run in its entirety?

40th anniversary of 1969? Wouldn't that be 2009?

I'm not sure I'm too keen on the Dead selling digital downloads right now because I don't know what it holds for the future of the trading community.

 

This year is the the 40th anniversary of the band...or more technically, when Phil joined the band. I think they are rolling out a number of high-profile projects, these being the first of them. I am unsure of what the boxset will consist of but the on-line community has been crying for complete sets of the entire run for years (often refered to as LDBS - [Live Dead Box Set]). I guess we'll see waht the official anouncement says...

 

I hope we get the whole run in its entirety. Even thought the set lists are very similar, each performance is special.

 

I'll bet this is related to the upcoming publication of "Searching For The Sound---My Life With The Grateful Dead" by Phil Lesh. Just got an Advance Reading Copy last week. I'm so glad he mentions his guest conducting gig with the Berkeley Symphony Orchestra. I happened to be one of KPFA's recording engineers for classical concerts at the time and got to record it. I'm looking forward to the 1969 Fillmore West Box. My wife went to some of those shows and I know she'll love it.

 

Dave Gans is claiming that e-mail is a forgery.
we shall see...those fillmore west shows are no longer for download at the archives.org site. The plot thickens.

 

It does look like hoax. ****.

 

Perhaps not.

From a link posted on dead.net to the GDForum (apparently sent out as an e-postcard)

http://www.gdforum.com/cgi-bin/dada/mail.cgi?flavor=archive&id=20050606171918&list=postcard

"Other coming attractions.

By now you won't be surprised to hear that sometime in the future there will be some sort of 'product' release, it happens all the time. But I was told one interesting item slated for later this year, that is cleared for your consumption!

In mid-October, there will be two items released, dealing with the same material. The Grateful Dead shows at the Fillmore West from 2-27-69 to 3-2-69 are legendary, and much of Live Dead comes from those shows. There will be a 10-CD package, limited to 10,000 copies, and available only from dead.net, that will contain every single note from the entire run. Rhino/WEA will release a 3-CD compilation of selected cuts from this series. The Rhino/WEA package will be available everywhere, including the GDForum store.

So, there you go, now you have something else to look forward to!"

 

This was also discussed here:

http://www.stevehoffman.tv/forums/showthread.php?t=54569

 

There was a big tree, years ago, called "The Live Dead Boxset", and it was the first time I got my hands on the entire 3/2/69 show. I've since upgraded 3/1/69 (multi-masters sound better than the two-tracks, IMO), leaving only 2/28/69 as the only one I really consider sub-par sonically (but outrageously good musically).

Each show is fantastic, but I think my favorite total show from this run remains 3/1/69. The first set is a mind-blower, beginning to end, one of the most ferocious sets the Dead ever performed, followed by a second set that opens with two delicate acoustic gems, before launching into the whole Dark Star>St.Stephen>The Eleven>Etc sequence that's so emblematic of this period. And that sloppy, off-the-cuff, fallin' of the stage boozy "Hey Jude" encore? Priceless Pig!

 

Hi Chris,

I got burned posting one awhile back. Oh well..... if it is, you meant well and if it isn't, two people will say thanks and the thread will quickly lose interest.

The one that was emailed to me, disguised under someone else's email address, was actually rather well researched and must have taken somebody a looooong time to put together. Some people must have a LOT more free time than i do.

Take care,
Jeffrey

 

Ah, don't sweat it, Jeffrey. We all get fooled by wishful thinking every now and again...

Besides, I bet that Lemieux is trying to figure out how to get all of the '72 European tour into a single boxed set. As outrageous as the idea sounds, there were enough of us ready to get in line, credit cards in hand (myself included!)

Regardless, I will be among the 10,000 waiting for the Fillmore '69 set. I still get a thrill from 3-1-69.

And just because I like showing off my Fillmore collection, here is the handbill/poster from that famous run of shows.

Chris

 

Hopefully it will be a physical boxed set and not digital downloads.

The Dead just commercially released 2 shows in digital format only (MP3, FLAC.)

 

I am sure it will be a physical boxed set - since how can you limit a download to 10,000 easily?

Regarding the digital downloads - I downloaded the Palladium show from '77 yesterday - and it went real well. Even so, I really don't like the fact that I have to provide my own jewel cases, artwork and time/effort to download, convert FLAC to WAV and burn to CD. Regardless, the show sounds great and I guess you have to applaud the efforts of the Dead for giving us more shows than we might get if we just had to stick to Dicks Picks/Vault releases.

 

Digital Downloads - I download plenty of Dead shows for free so I certainly don't mind paying them for a few. However, I really hope this doesn't mean that the Vault and Dicks Picks series are being phased out. Those who are technically challenged or those who do not have high speed will have great difficulty downloading and burning these to CD-R. It could hurt the Dead financially too, since those who can't download it won't buy it. But I'm sure they thought of that

 

Hi Chris,

Thanks! Must admit that i took it kinda hard when two members said that i was "cruel". That seemed like a pretty harsh thing to say when i meant well. Maybe i was just overly sensitive. After the thread, i decided to avoid all future GD threads but then realized that there was no way i could resist them.

I LOVE your Fillmore pic. Do you have the handbill or the poster?

Take care,
Jeffrey

 

yeah, that is one bad *** fillmore graphic. WOWza! handbill or poster? how much is an original? which year?

-eddie

 

Glad you guys like the image. The picture is from a scan of my postcard, which is identical to the poster. It was created by Lee Conklin, and is in my opinion one of the more striking images in the entire Fillmore set. I find it rather frightening, frankly. It is ironic that Conklin created such a hellish image for such a beautiful run of music.

To really appreciate the detail one should find an original first printing poster. The scan doesn't really do justice to the artwork. Conklin was famous for "morphing" images together using pen and ink. There are dozens, perhaps hundreds of skulls, faces and other body parts hidden in the poster. It is a remarkable piece of work for something as intentionally ephemeral as a concert advertising poster.

Jeffrey, I have both a first printing poster and a postcard in my collection. There were two separate printings of the poster. The first printing (done before the shows) sells for roughly $300-400 in NM condition, and the second printing (done after the shows) runs $150-200 for a NM poster. The original postcard can be had for $25-30. Condition drives price with this stuff, so lesser condition copies can be had for much less money if you are not too particular. If you are interested in obtaining one there are a few good dealers around, and eBay is always a good source for this material. This particular poster has increased steadily in value over the past few years, as it is quite popular with both serious and casual collectors. Feel free to PM me if you want more information on my experience with poster dealers.

In case you can't tell, I love this stuff.

I just hope they use the image for the box artwork.

Chris

 

Hi Chris,

WOW! I wish we lived closer b/c i would LOVE to see that baby in person...... my compliments!

Take care,
Jeffrey

 

From Mix magazine:
http://mixonline.com/mag/audio_remarkable_restorations/

The Grateful Dead: Fillmore West 1969 — The Complete Recordings

Even for a group that has already released literally hundreds of hours of live recordings, this is a milestone. This limited-edition (10,000 copies) 10-CD set must be regarded as the crowning achievement of the Dead's most adventurous musical period. These four concerts (February 27, 1969, through March 2, 1969) yielded the recordings that were used on the group's most magnificent psychedelic opus, Live/Dead (released in November 1969), and represent the apex of their improvisatory genius. Boasting four versions each of their late-'60s classics “Dark Star,” “St. Stephen” and “The Eleven,” plus favorites such as “Alligator,” “Caution,” “Cosmic Charlie” and others, the box captures the group right before they began a slow evolution toward the country musings of Workingman's Dead.

Aside from being the most jaw-droppingly intense music to come out of San Francisco in the late '60s, the Dead's Fillmore West shows have some historical significance in the audio world: These were the first live 16-track recordings ever made. It helped that Ampex, which first developed the 16-track by converting a 2-inch video machine to an audio-only function, was based down the road a ways from San Francisco. Pacific Recording in San Mateo was the first local studio to take delivery of a 16-track, right when the Dead were in the thick of recording their third album, Aoxomoxoa, on 8-track. The Dead convinced Ampex to lease them a 16-track — the third made — to capture some of their live performances. And so Dead engineers Bob Matthews and Betty Cantor and a couple of beefy roadies maneuvered the 750-pound behemoth up the stairs of San Francisco's Fillmore West ballroom to record the band for a live album.

“The process by which we recorded was a simple one,” Matthews recently told David Gans on the Grateful Dead Hour radio program. “Microphones [were] placed on the stage that [were] used for the P.A. split and [those] same microphones went directly to channels on the tape machine with no signal processing in between. No artistic decisions were made [concerning] the electronic signal.” Later, when he went to mix what became Live/Dead (culled from parts of two of the four concerts), he used “a fairly complex set of delays and reverbs to re-create that feeling of being in [the Fillmore].” One advantage of using the 16-track is that it allowed the use of 14-inch reels, “which at 15 ips allowed you to record continuously for an hour-and-a-half, and, of course, with the Grateful Dead [who rarely stopped between songs in those days, instead threading their songs together with long jams], that was very important,” Matthews said.

As wonderful as Live/Dead sounded upon its release 36 years ago, when it came time to put together the Fillmore West box, there were a few sonic problems and anomalies that had to be dealt with by veteran Bay Area engineer Jeffrey Norman, who has spearheaded the audio side of the Dead's ambitious archival release program for the past several years.


Grateful Dead’s box set engineer Jeffrey Norman


One is that the Dead's two drummers, Bill Kreutzmann and Mickey Hart, had just two tracks each. “They put the kick and the snare on the same track, and the reasoning probably was, ‘Well, the snare is going to be the high end of the spectrum and the kick is the low end, so we can kind of deal with it that way,’” Norman says as he sits at the Neve VR console in the Dead's Marin County studio. “And to some degree that's true, but the blends of the two vary from night to night and there's distortion on a lot of it. Fortunately, each of them had another overhead track that was cleaner, so I'm trying to feather those in and use the overhead to do whatever I can. I also mult that one kick/snare track into two faders and treat one like a snare and the other like a kick. Some of the vocals, particularly Jerry [Garcia's], are distorted, too. If you listen closely to Live/Dead, you hear it a little bit, though I think that album sounds great.”

Early on, Norman “realized there were some things that could benefit from going over to a workstation: no tape degradation with repeated passes, selected noise reduction and the ability to move time slightly so that instruments are more time-coherent,” he says. “So I transferred it all to Pro Tools at 24-bit/96 kHz and started mixing, and I was really disappointed in how things were sounding, particularly on something like ‘Doin’ that Rag' from February 28, 1969, where Jerry's vocal was so distorted. What I've figured out is that analog-to-digital converters — even good ones — have a very difficult time accurately recording distortion and they have their own level of distortion.

“If it's really clean, they might add things the ear doesn't pick up,” Norman continues. “But when there's audible distortion, they make it even worse. So I went back and talked to Steve Jarvis and rented his Genex A-to-Ds — now I'm using his D-to-As as I'm mixing — and then, for the vocals, I rented a CEDAR Cambridge, which is pretty incredible for the de-clipping. It's eight channels of a lot of restorative elements: It's able to analyze where a clip is or too hot a level and to interpolate on either side of that. It wasn't quite as successful as I had hoped it would be, but it was definitely an improvement on those vocals.”

Norman also dealt with the incredible amount of bleed on many of the tracks. He pulled up singer Ron “Pigpen” McKernan's lead vocal on “Alligator,” which revealed Garcia's guitar nearly as loud as the lead vocal. Both of bassist Phil Lesh's tracks have prominent drums, organ and rhythm guitar, in addition to Garcia's axe. “Jerry's guitar is in everything,” Norman says with a smile. “Fortunately, he was playing really well.”


The Grateful Dead jamming onstage, February 27, 1969—captured live and included in the upcoming box set
photo:Michael Merritt

Speaking more generally of his approach to mixing these tapes, Norman says, “I get a good, rough bed of everything set up and get the tones and reverbs I'm going to use, start someplace in the computer and usually the first thing I mix is the vocals because there's so much ambience and leakage that I find it a lot easier to get the vocals in a rough position and then bring them up and down, depending on when they play. So when it's a jam, the vocals aren't in there; when they're singing, they're in there and I can tailor the other instruments around the vocals. It helps me make that weave together.”

Among the other gear Norman employed for the mix were the Neve VR's EQs, Summit Audio compressors, Pacific Microsonics 2-track A/Ds (the Dead have long-supported HDCD) and a Fairman tube mastering compressor, a Danish box akin to a Fairchild that Norman uses on bass. He adds, “I always mix back to analog tape because it still sounds the best. I have an Ampex ATR in like-new condition — thanks to Mike Spitz — and I mix to half-inch with Dolby SR.

“Once I get past the technical things, which I guess is what I'm here for, the music is just so great; it's spectacular,” Norman concludes. “I mean, anyone who can sustain a 25-minute jam and have it be interesting the whole time — that's just incredible!”

 

I got my two copies today, #2558 & 4370. Similar packaging as the Garcia boxset from last year. The book is the same as the three-CD version, just not in a hardcover. Time to dig deep, boys!

 

I am getting very jealous here. My copy hasn't arrived yet.

I guess you guys who received it already paid for expedited shipping? I did not - maybe that is why my copy has yet to show.

Enjoy - I know I will when my set shows up.

 

TWO copies?!!! Now here's a man with foresight.

I just received word that my box arrived today.

 

I expect mine will be waiting for me when I get home.