John A

This kind of stuff and a '69 venture are my DSO wheelhouse. Nice.

Because the Grateful Dead is all about serendipity and coincidence, of course in my car yesterday when I tuned into the Sirius channel they were playing Greatest Story -> Bertha from Portland 6-24-73. Pretty damn sweet transition into Bertha to boot. 😀

Not so much "here and there", but this is correct. The combo itself was on hiatus from 10-18-74 through 6-7-80, and the show opening combo was on hiatus from 9-19-72 through 12-14-80. In fact, it was only an opening combo 3 times prior to 1980.

That was breakout #2, after the '85-'89 hiatus. Get your break-outs straight, man. 😜😂

Don't forget the 6-9-77 through Spring '83 Help > Slip hiatus.

Other tidbits I've heard to help fill this in... Come Together, Hey Jude, and a double band Makes No Difference / Shape I'm In. 3 set 2 Beatles songs, plus a double Band encore.

You rang? 😀 Bertha > Greatest Story was played 63 times, whether opening the show (obviously more typical), closing the first set, opening the second set (rare but not vanishingly so) or in the early 70s sometimes showing up in that order later in the 2nd set. Perhaps more surprisingly, Greatest Story > Bertha occurred 11 times - and this also spanning from '72 through '95!

Funny, but true. The last missing link chronologically to the Dead's long, strange trip. And yes, good blog about a strange little winter tour.

Good extended take on the shows / venue, Mango - thanks. I was just listening to a New Year's set 2 GD opener on Sirius XM in the car and I turned it off because even on the soundboard the balloons were brutal. As a former audience taper, you can imagine how I felt about them back in the day. 😠 I streamed the 12-30 show on my big TV / stereo. Sound, video, overall production, not to mention the band's playing, were all impeccable. Funny to read your rant about the repeated encore tandem, because once I'd realized the 12-30 show was almost assuredly a mid to late '78 recreation, I'm thinking shit like, "ok, now it's going to Samson, Estimated, or Playin' and anything else will be a shocker." As well as "Wharf Rat, Stella, or Black Peter - what else is possible?" And it's bothering me! Point being, how fucking spoiled are we to have such gripes? 😉

Gotcha all beat - Hey Jude. 3-1-69 then 3-22-90; 1522 shows. True, the Hey Jude finale showed up in '85 after Mr Fantasy, and also true the 3-22-90 version was more an attempt by Brent to sing the entire song than a successful stab at doing so, but still...

It's a solid app. I did beta testing for it, although I ironically don't have it due to all the beta versions timing out. But I definitely recommend it. Technically Stu Nixon is the only original DeadBase collaborator that is involved. John Scott, the main force behind Deadbase (he did all the programming) dropped off the grid some years ago and the software vanished along with him. It's a crime to pedantic Deadhead humanity that the print version can't be revised with the hundreds of updates and corrections that have surfaced since Jerry left us. That's why Deadbase 50 is such a let down.

It feels safe to proclaim that Eyes > Comes A Time is the first such pairing. Pretty brilliant call, actually. The reverse would seem quite awesome as well.

Having 6 copies of every DeadBase ever printed (kidding, I'm just kidding 😉), I count 14 second set Candymans, the last being 7-7-81 in Kansas City.

Absolute confirmation of elective at She Belongs to me, played only in '85 while On The Road Again was not played after the early 80s ('82 perhaps?).... although I suppose technically if Lisa is onstage it's an elective at the opening notes of Alabama.

Damn. That's high level elective creativity! Love the respect for Quinn that it could go "standard" encore slot after all those gyrations.

Holy shit. That makes the fire Marshall fucking with folks clogging the aisles at Dead shows seem like child's play. (And to be clear, all my banter here is not meant to undermine the obvious seriousness of this scenario.)

Wow great story about the tie dyed hero up front. Which brings up the question: did a Dead show ever pause during the music due to a medical or other situation in the crowd? Closest I can think of is when they didn't play an encore (Providence '86 perhaps?) because Billy got hit with a bottle post space, and the famous line from Phil at the '85 Saratoga show when some moron was hanging over a railing - "hey, man, there's 50,000 people waiting for you to get back into your seat." But none of that ever stopped the music in its tracks. Presumably if a naked guy climbed the speaker scaffolding during a DSO show there'd be a pause as well. 😆

True, although with a little more lasting power, as it turned out. 😂 😛

Days Between does feel like one big dream scape, but interestingly no overt references. Man, those Eleven lyrics are thick. Hunter hadn't yet fully harnessed his powers yet, IMHO. 🤔

Post script: this excersice made me think of one of my favorite songs, Romeo & Juliet, on Dire Straits' "Making Movies" (side 1 of that that record is near the top of my all time favorite sides of any LP): "And I dreamed your dream for you and now your dream is real How can you look at me as if I was just another one of your deals?"

Building on this post's title, I was thinking about an obscure concept (as, for better or worse, I'm want to do 😄) about overt references to dreams/dreaming in Dead song lyrics. And it occurred to me that there's a good correlation between such references and the notion of A-list Dead material. To wit, with apologies for anything I've undoubtedly omitted, we have the following: •Stella Blue: "All the years combine, they melt into a dream"; "there's just the pavement left, and broken dreams"; and more poignantly, "It seems like all this life was just a dream" •Hep on the Way: "Without love in the dream it will never come true" •Black Muddy River: "And dream me a dream of my own" (underrated greatness) •Mission in the Rain: "Ten years ago I walked these streets my dreams were riding high... now I would be happy, to just have one dream come true" •China Cat: "Through a dream night wind" •Crazy Fingers: "Gone both dream and lie" (perhaps somewhat under the radar, but a fascinating line) and "gone are the broken lies we saw through in dreams" •Come A Time: "Gotta make it some how, all the dreams you still believe" •To Lay Me Down: "With our dreams entwined together" •Althea: "You may be the fate of Ophelia, sleeping and perchance to dream" (Anytime Hunter wants to evoke Shakespeare is A-OK with me 😆) •Foolish Heart: "A foolish heart will call on you to toss your dreams away" •Fire on the Mountain: "It's more than just ashes, when your dreams come true" •Box of Rain: "For this is all a dream we dreamed one afternoon, long ago"; "then please don't be surprised when you find me dreaming too" •Attics of my Life - perhaps the crowning dream reference jewell: "full of cloudy dreams unreal"; "in the book of love's own dreams, where all the print is blood" (what a mesmerizing line)"; "in the secret space of dreams, where dreaming lay amazed"; "when there was no dream of mine, you dreamed of me" (tough to top that one) Like I said, a plethora of A-list material...and not to leave Bobby out, we have, beyond Lost Sailor: •Cassidy: "I can tell be the mark he left, you were in his dreams" •Music Never Stopped: "Old men sing about their dreams, women laugh and children scream" •Saint of Circumstance: "Was it you I heard singing, oh while I was chasing dreams" •My Brother Esau: "Sometimes at night I dream, he's still that hairy man" I suppose what I'm trying to get at is when the Dead overtly sing of dreams/dreaming they're almost universally at the height of their powers. 🥰 I'm sure I've missed some, but that feels like a serious list. ☺️

And you won! Go Maryland!

Not sure if folks clicked the link for the Garcia / Hunter '69-'70 Larkspur home, and I'm sure it's been completely updated since, but we're talking about a damn nice property. I stopped to investigate on my way into the canyon to park for my hike last week and took a few photos. Unfortunately my pics don't reveal much, due to the great landscaping/foliage in the front. Plus, the listing in my link only shows a single photo of the outside. We're talking well set back from the road with great landscaping, gorgeous redwoods throughout the property, and a back that butts up to a creek. Sold for $3M in 2014, and estimated at a value well north of $4M today. Welcome to exceedingly attractive Marin property in 2022. 😬 But when our heroes were renters back in the day I'm guessing their monthly nut was amazingly low. But to the podcasts, Sam Culter was interviewed in a few episodes. He stayed in the city after being fired from The Stones in the wake of the Altamont disaster. He was briefly homeless, and Garcia invited him to stay with them for a while at some point. He related having many intense conversations with Jerry about band management and organization, which Garcia was wanting to get under the hood around. After all, this was the period where The Boys had just realized "the reverend" Lenny Hart had swindled them. Cutler's point was that whether one want's to deal with it directly or not, this was all critical stuff. And playing great music alone was not sufficiently sustainable. When the band finally had to vote a member for the role of ultimate sign-offs, Garcia obviously demurred - so not his bag! They ended up going with Phil, because everyone agreed he was the pickiest dude in the band, and if he signed off they'd all be good with it. 🤔 But the point to my post is that Culter made a point of how modest the house was. Of course this was in part stemming from his experience with how the Stones rolled... How could he have known he was in what would be a $4.5M home 50 years later? 😂

Garcia played Werewolves on all Halloween appearances, be it with the Dead or the JGB, every time there was a Halloween show from 1985 on. Who can name them all without cheating? Edit: I just did the mental exercise my self, and didn't recall there were Halloween performances by JGB in '86 and '93 - but both include Werewolves so my original statement holds true. I had only pulled the '87 though '92 versions from memory.

No one is listening to these podcasts? Or is it just that the other current thread "crickets" is carrying the day? Ok then, I'll trickle out one more... ●Box of Rain, recorded in the summer of 1970 for American Beauty, didn't debut live until 1972. BUT, it was played once, in the acoustic set, on 9-17-70 at the Fillmore East. There are no recording for photos documenting the show, but Gary Lambert (of Sirius XM's "Tales From The Golden Road" fame, among other Dead universe stuff) was at the show and distinctly recalls the musicians in the same configuration as they were in the studio for the American Beauty sessions. Phil played the acoustic guitar, and Garcia played the piano. Love hearing the kind of shit! That's the kind of shit Eaton would be under the hood of, should DSO ever recreate that show. Barraco on bass!