Grateful Dead - reviews of official live and Vault releases

Well done, my good man!
(borrowed)
right on senor!
-chester

 

Mike is great value to the Deadheads on this forum. Thanks Mike.

 

Hmm..we haven't had a new release in what a month or two...must be something new in the works soon!

(Not that I need more..like many I have more then I can ever listen to!)

 

We should be hearing about the next Road Trips any day now.

Next week's Taper's Section is going to have something from '72. I have my fingers crossed that he's trying to tell us something.

 

Although it's great the the GD have been putting out so many live recordings on CD, I wish they'd release more shows sourced from multi-track analog reels. While the 3 "From the Vaults" releases are from master multi-track reels, many of the Dick's Picks are from two track masters. Not to say these 2 track releases are sub par. Most of them are quite good and were likely derived from the best sources available (the 2 track reels made for the band/archival purposes.)

But sonically most of the 2 track recordings pale in comparison to the multi-tracked discs. Some of the best multi-track recordings of the GD were made by Betty Cantor Jackson. While she recorded tons of live GD (and Garcia's various side projects) throughout the 1970's, Betty's 1977 recordings are the easiest to track down. In addition to the legendary Cornell show from May of that year, there are at least another dozen that make the rounds - most of which have the same (great) sonics of the Cornell recording.

 

^ well they did release the To Terrapin from the last show of the May 77 tour last year which was floating around as a "betty board" and they did an amazing job with it from a mastering sound point. I found the show to be a little sluggish for my tastes but its still May 77.

 

Yeah, I agree with you 100%. I was familiar with that BB from cassette and DAT trading days, so I was quick to buy it when it was officially released. Unfortunately even the great sonics couldn't improve the slow pace of the concert.

 

I just got it and am rather enjoying it.

 

They have said that there aren't many multi-tracks, and most have already been used. (One exception is 8/27/72 which I suppose they'll get to someday.)

 

just wondering, does anybody here get totally bored with the GD after awhile? I've been a huge fan since 1982, saw them about 80 times on tour in the mid-eighties, have a b-load of sbds...but I get into them heavily and then get burnt out, I haven't listened to them inabout a year...then all of a sudden something happens and I'm back on the bus again, for about six months....does anyone here ever get bored of them? With a few exeptions, it seems most people that post on here about the GD only post about the GD, dont ya'all ever listen to anthing else, like jazz, hard rock, prog, Bolliwood, roots reggae, or country ? (country and jazz I was turned onto by the GD, btw)..I find a lot of this stuff to be more deeper and meaningfull than the Dead....and I find most of the official archival releases to be boring..maybe the thrill is to own something that's not a capiltalist product meant to make money off of obsessives...this is so not meant to be a thread-crap, but isn't the whole gestalt of the psychedelic experience about expanding your horizons ??? It seems these Dead threads are verging on sicko Beatles obsessiveness, just my opinion, discuss....

 

What in the world are you talking about? This thread is almost four years old, and it's barely five pages.

Nice threadcrap.

Start a new thread if you wish to discuss this topic further.

Thanks.

 

I just wanted to know some opinions, like am I the only one ??? You're one of the only people I've ever seen on here post on any other type of music besides the GD..and I don't want to start a negative thread on The Dead (hey, that rimes)...

 

yeah, I know, you're the other one (pun intended) btw, I used to sell these Deadicated bumper-stickers on tour (silver on black computer font) One of them ended up on one of their semi-trucks in the late eighties... I go for along time without listening to them, but always come back...

 

Well, as I think you know, I listen to all of the musics you mention and more, in addition to the Dead, and, no, I've never gotten bored of the band. I do go in obsessive cycles with their special appeal (stretches of weeks where I listen to at least some Dead daily, then months where I only put them on occasionally). I've posted before about why I think the Dead--especially live Dead--inspired this sort of obsessiveness.

See, for example, post 62 in this thread:

http://stevehoffman.tv/forums/showthread.php?p=1686916&highlight=dead#post1686916

There are also some musings by me and others on the relationship between the obsession inspired by live Dead performances and that inspired by certain kinds of jazz listening in this wonderful thread--in which I think you participated:

http://stevehoffman.tv/forums/showthread.php?t=131488&highlight=grateful+dead

L.

 

While I am not a hard core deadhead by deadhead standards and don't really enjoy post 82 material I will go in phases were I play them a ton and then have to take a four to five month break.

I love all music with Jazz being my favorite and think its great if the Dead opens doors for other people to dig other genre's like Bluegrass, Country or the Blues.

 

I hear what you are saying. I've been collecting tapes and going to see the dead and the various members now for over 30 years. I strongly believe them to be one of, if not the, greatest rock band to date. You got to root for the home team! I think I have fairly close to every show that is commonly available up through 1975, which means essentially every show they played from some of those years. I enjoy their music and they make me interested and bring up a wide variety of emotional response.

Having said that, there are long periods over the years when I listen to them only very rarely, perhaps every month or two, because I wear out on them a bit. Right now is one of those periods. It'll cycle through, with obsessive listening at other times. Right now I'm listening to huge amounts of jazz and psych and some classical.

By the way Chris, thanks for the Pharoah Sanders. It sounds great. But my wife made me take it off at dinnertime because of the "screechy saxophone which you know I can't stand". She never says that about Grateful Dead music.

But anyway, back to the topic of the thread. I am also interested in hearing some reviews of the sound of some of the latest releases. I feel kind of different from the other gentleman (can't remember who) who likes the traded versions better than the releases; I really enjoy the sound quality of the releases. The Dead organization does what I consider a really good job in general of upholding high standards for sound.

 

My favorite vault release is the 5 cd Grateful Dead Movie Soundtrack.There is lots of nice jamming going on and the sound is pretty good too,being a multitrack.Interesting versions of Playing In The Band,DarkStar,and an Other One sandwich,unfortunately we get only the shorter version of Eyes Of The World from the 19th.I wouldn`t mind if they release the rest of this run,I imagine they will do a Feb`74 Winterland box at some point though.

 

Re-reading Mike's original post, I think that's one of the best posts ever on the forum, and I'm only a mild dead admirer. If we ever give out awards, I nominate that single post.
I only have the Terrapin Deluxe out of all of them. I see the compostion of Terrapin as being their "Round Midnight."

 

I might as well lightly weigh in, if only to say that yes I do slow down at times listening to GD if I think it's annoying the neighbor's dog, but I always come back. There's just too much unique musical texture and information/inspiration that I can't find elsewhere. I can go without 1st sets for long periods, but can't seem to live without 2nd sets. I do post about other artists (including the SHF-mandatory Beatles), but I've also repeatedly gone on record singing the praises of a local indie station (brisbane 4ZZZ) that plays brand new and amazingly varied music every single day and day out, so my quest for "new" is far from dead.

ps we'll be wrapping up "that other" GD thread very shortly. You're all invited.

 

I've only been on the bus for a year or so. I clearly didn't get 4k posts writing only about the Dead. But the Forum's been a bit less riveting lately (IMO), and I'm still in the throes of my relatively new romance with this group, so this is pretty much where I'm going to be found these days. Besides, I've found that the folks that inhabit these threads are amongst the best that SH.tv has to offer.

Having said that, I'm now listening to Coltrane's First Meditations (for Quartet). I think what enabled me to hear the Dead, after years of, well, hostility on my part was that my ears gradually got more open via jazz (primarily), classical, and a lot of other things. So perhaps I went a bit backward in that respect.

 

Not sure what you're talking about my friend, we must not read the same stuff here!

Speaking only for myself, I'm a HUGE fan of the Dead and have been for many years. I have literally thousands of recordings of them in either CD, DAT, cassette, etc..and consider myself pretty well-versed on them. It's to the point I can listen randomly to any show from say 1977 or 1974 and often guess the exact date it's from. (I don't mean to sound arrogant here..just that I've listened to them a lot the last 25 or so years.)

That being said I'm also just as huge a fan of and consider myself just as well-versed in bands like Depeche Mode, New Order, Pet Shop Boys, The Pixies,The Replacements, The Smiths, The Clash, Ramones, etc..I could go on and on..many of these bands are about as different sounding as you can get from the Grateful Dead!

I also now many forum members personally who are the same way..

 

Great! The ones posted here so far and in the Dick's Picks thread have been very helpful. I'm looking forward to your reviews of the more recent stuff.

 

I think I may have asked this before but why is the Eyes on GD Movie Soundtrack edited? How long was it actually? I see the same one on So Many Roads is about 18 minutes and the GDM version is about 13 minutes. Is the the So Many Roads version complete?