John A

This announcement was indeed a bit of a bombshell. Hadn't seen that last of shows, Tea. You can keep the '94s. 😆 8-14 and 8-15-71 should be nice upgrades. Same with 8-14 and 12-27-79. 4-1-86 probably. 7-15 and 7-17-88 are great shows, but incredible sounding recordings circulate. 3-39-93 was on Sirius XM the other day via the remastered source. Whatever. Maybe if one doesn't have a collection of the official releases maybe this could make sense to buy into? Or someone who typically only listens via streaming?

I just finished a book that came out last year, Here Beside The Rising Tide: Jerry Garcia, The Grateful Dead, And An American Awakening by Jim Newton. Ever since it was published 4 years after Jerry's passing, I've considered Blair Jackson's biography Garcia: An American Life the best book written on anything encompassing Jerry. Granted, Newton had an extra quarter century of archival and personal unearthing surrounding Garcia's and The Dead's story, but he took all that and hit it out of the park. Moreover, the book equally serves as a commentary of the literary, social, and political happenings surrounding Jerry's formative years and the Dead's ascension. I can't recommend this book highly enough.

Not to mention that 1st set contained the Jack-A-Roe bust out.... ah, to go back in time and be on the Spring '77 tour!

I stayed on topic with The Dead doing Dylan and just posed a few notable examples of awesomeness. I did neglect Visions however. My bad... Of course moving to the JGB there's a whole other can of Dylan worms to open. In that arena I'd start with Tangled up in Blue, Forever Young (arguable as good at late era JGB got), the likes of December '79 Positively 4th Street's that go off the rails, Senior from the 1990 JGB double live CD release, the open gorgeousness of Simple Twist of Fate with the extended Kahn solos, and the delicate power of I Shall Be Released. I think 8/8/90 is the version of the the latter is the one I'm thinking of where there are a quick series of notes at the end of the main jam where It sounds like Jerry's guitar is having an orgasm. While that's an admittedly odd subjective concept, I've felt it since the moment I heard it live, and the recording doesn't make me reconsider!

I understand I grabbed this sentence out of a long and informative review of a DSO show, which is in itself both great to both see and read... But wait a minute! You have no love for Garcia nailing a Baby Blue? Or a jarringly soul drenching 1990 rendition of Knockin' on Heaven's Door? Or any one of the 1985 takes on She Belongs To Me? How about a rocking version of All Along The Watchtower?

That phrase is an oxymoron!

That is quite the interest '77 set list. It's like they played some of the second set in the first set. 😄

Every elective should have at least 2 JGB songs. Test passed. 😃

That 1st set looks varied, surprising, and fun as hell.

The 12-11-94 Days Between at Oakland Coliseum more than atoned for the Cosmic Charlie debacle. There are few versions of a Dead song that render a best ever debate moot, and I'll argue this was one of them. Given Jerry's condition by the end of '94, we couldn't believe what we were hearing. Sadly this was the post-Healy era, and the sonics of our FOB sweet spot reference tapes had fallen off a cliff. But then some years back, to the rescue, came the generally lame release collecting late era songs. Thank heavens they put that version of Days on it, because now we have a surprisingly impressive mastered SBD. So Many Roads is perhaps the only other cut that redeems said release. I'm drawing a blank of what that release was called. Edit: I googled it because it was on the tip of my tongue and bothering me: "Ready Or Not" is the name

New Speedway Oakland '91 bust out (first since 1970) closed the first set. Epic shocker, and quite the placement.

Sick encore. Raw meat, with no exceptions, every where you look. Hot damn!! And only '69 will deliver a Rag.

Coincidental there were 5 Shakedown -> Berthas, all from '79 through '81, and 2 of them were at the '80 and '81 Barton Hall shows. Hmm... This is a very good show, definitely better than Barton Hall '80 but of course not 5-8-77! The 30 Trips inclusion is both an under the radar gem and a head scratcher. Before Stella the SBD cuts and it's an audience from there on out. The audience holds its own, but the drop-off in sound is quite obvious, and moreover sonicly incongruent.. Bold choosing that show given the partial SDB. It's not like there isn't a treasure trove of unreleased '81 to chose from. Although many of the vault tapes have issues that year. This was early in the transition from Betty making the tape to Healy doing house sound AND archiving the music. Took him a few years to sort that out.

Moreover, I just checked our beloved www.gratefulsets.net and the 2 show openers are there. Not only did Deadbase never have them, I've never seen them online. Not that, admittedly, I troll online setlist sites. I'm at least a smidgen normal. 😂

What a cool choice to put Playin' Reprise at the end of a no encore show's filler. Especially after Dancin' was split up earlier. This is a really odd show for setlist geeks. It's post hiatus, where one safely assumes 100% accurate lists. But here, Deadbase has the show starting with Sugaree. Even the Deadbase 50 edition (published in 2015) makes no mention of Bertha or Mama Tried in the corrections segment that begins the book. Only when the 30 Trips Around The Sun box set was released, and Cobo was the 1976 selection, could folks see the first set was normal length. Almost all '76 shows have at least 10 set one songs, but this one (should have?) stuck out with only 8, so the additions make complete sense. Wonder what happened to poor Bertha and Mama Tried all those years? 😆

That's a righteous looking 2nd set. I was complaining about The Dead's three Hell in a Bucket -> Fires recently, and lo and behold DSO played one of those show this winter. Part of the reason I think that combo can't work is the abruptness of Hell's closing vs a Fire intro. I even recall someone at the DSO recreation chiming in that it was indeed a stop / start. Now Corinna -> Fire on the other hand... that sounds intriguing. I can imagine all kinds of cool possibilities in that surprise transition.

Mr. Fantasy at the Alpine show, only the 3rd version, makes a case as the best one The Dead ever played. It's so raw the structure isn't settled in yet, yet also arguably the hardest they ever jammed it. Epic! Less than a month earlier was the bust out 6-14 at Red Rocks, and there's a story about Brent proposing to Jerry in the limo on the way to the show that they tackle Mr. Fantasy. Jerry, never one to dispute a cool notion, went all in. The story assumes they hadn't worked it up in any fashion until hours before showtime. And being The Dead, they didn't put any energy into settling on the structure for a few more months. I really want that story to be true, 'cause it's awesome!

The quad speakers in the early 90s, I'm thinking '93 in particular, could make for some next level drums/space segments.

Truer words have not been said. I was there. It wasn't a tease, rather they were totally playing Cosmic Charlie, if just for several bars. And when they ground into Wharf Rat (which I consider a perfect term for the "transition"), I've never felt the air sucked out of a building like that. Hard as it is to suggest Jerry panicked while on stage, what else happened?

Bye and Bye? Talk about obscure! Is that a DSO bustout?

It was cool, during the acoustic segment, to see the photo on stage of what appeared to be one of Bobby's nightly acoustic numbers with the Dead in '94 / '95. With Jerry conspicuous in the background.

Chula Vista one of the 7 songs shows I've identified. Still no other with 8!

8 songs before drums. In the drums/space era, I don't know that any show tops or even equals that number. I know a few 7 song shows, but no others with any may as 8. Anybody??

Wild post coma JGB era! Lots of songs to unpack in that show... Crazy Love appeared and disappeared with the '86 / '87 window. Love In The Afternoon disappeared later in '87, only to show up one more time at a '91 Warfield show I attended. It was a rare show I missed the beginning of, due to some will call clusterfuck outside at the box office. I ended up coming in at the end of the second song, and what does Jerry play next? Yep, that lone Love in the Afternoon. Meanwhile, Forever Young was the perfect song for Jerry to bring into the repertoire right after his coma. Might have been at his first show back. And I Want To Tell You just got a little bit of play just after the coma. Then made it's way into Dead shows near the very end.

Greg, all you describe is indeed a wonderful thing! In the 60s, they only had so many songs so sets were similar on the whole. In the early 70s, they had many more songs but played more songs per show. And they weren't concerned with any repetition around what they wanted to play. I recall being flabbergasted, as a newly obcessed mid 80's Head, at the revelation they played Estimated in something like 45 consecutive shows in '77 after its debut. By the early 80s, they'd perfected the novel concept of not repeating songs in multi-show runs in the same city. And even then, you get assholes like me saying, "China -> Rider, Estimated->Eyes -> drums -> space -> Other One -> Wharf Rat -> Throwing Stones -> NFA? Come on guys, mix it up!" I vividly remember a conversation in line before one of the final Feb '89 Kaiser shows. I was talking with my buddy, and hemming and hawing about having seen just exactly that second set at a recent show. A guy in line in front of us pretty much put me in my place, interjecting a comment about my smug protestations and punctuating it with, "they don't owe you anything." Fully acknowledged! I did my best to save face by responding, "of course they don't owe me anything, but that doesn't mean I can't ask." Funny I remember that exchange so clearly yet haven't thought about it for years. And for a final comment on shaking things up, I was living in The Bay Area by 1990 and wasn't doing any east coast shows anymore. But I had a guy on Spring Tour '90 feeding me the setlist after each show. I wrote them all down, studied them, and realized the whole 16 show tour contained a song that happened yet appeared. Maybe the streak ended one of the final nights. Amazing!