John A

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!

Well, prior to the hiatus China -> Rider was a first set thing. And when it returned to the rotation in '79 it closed first sets here and there, only to become a second set opener almost exclusively. In the '72 through '74 era, many songs that would eventually appear only in the first set would be sprinkled into second sets either before, or fascinatingly sometimes AFTER the big jam segment. Songs like Deal, Ramble On Rose, etc. But that's more an evolution of how shows would come to unfold than a set one / set two swap. Finally, it occurs that simultaneous to the Looks Like Rain flipflop, a major set two Bobby song permanently left the rotation - Lost Sailor. This all occurred in the Spring Tour '86, so I wonder aloud if there's a connection there...

She absolutely was a big part, and the Bobby / Donna LLR duets, spring '77 in particular, are the stuff of beauty. But as far as it moving to the second set, I don't see Donna having been a factor, as it was still a 1st set song for 6 years after her departure. I just found the about face curious. Something in spring '86 caused it to turn on a dime into a set 2 number.

Another random fun Dead song fact of the day: I knew the gist of this, as when I was officially on the bus in ‘86 Looks Like Rain was a second set song and I understood it had been more first set historically. But the sudden and almost complete reversal is interesting. Previously it was sprinkled into a 2nd set here and there but quite rarely. After the abrupt reversal on the Spring ‘86 East Cost tour it would only show up in the 1st set 4 more times. Twice on that tour itself, once in Summer ‘86, and the outliner being 7-4-89 in Buffalo. And you can't count JFK Stadium '87 on the Dead / Dylan tour because it was a single set show.

Well how 'bout that - if anyone read the breakdown of Scarlet Fire I posted recently, note one of the 3 Hell -> Fires has come back to life! 😁

Hard to beat a Truckin' -> Dark Star -> Dew. God bless '72 through '74. Easy to argue the greatest era (poor Mickey), not that I'm saying other era based arguments can't be well formed also.

Random fun Dead song lists fact of the day: On 12-29-77 at Winterland, The Dead played China → Rider. Sounds mundane enough, until one realizes that they retired both those songs during the hiatus. This is out of left field and the only appearance of China → Rider from Oct ‘74 through Feb ‘79, when they rejoined the rotation. As Jerry must’ve of course been feeling it that night at Winterland, it’s the only Rider → China Doll ever and features one of 7 Terrapin encores.

Now back to my regularly scheduled pedantic OCD Grateful Dead song analysis. 🤓 (With the requisite shout out to https://www.gratefulsets.net/, of course.) Here's some fun Scarlet/Fire facts for geeks who won’t roll their eyes (speaking for which, there was a Scarlet -> Eyes at Frost 4-27-85 😀)… There were 241 shows with both Scarlet and Fire, 238 of which were Scarlet -> Fire. Talk about a whoppingly high percentage! The other 3 were Scarlet -> Touch -> Fire twice in ’84 and an infamous (IMHO) Scarlet -> Victim -> Fire that I witnessed at Shoreline ’91. After the first iteration of Fire, Scarlet showed up 26 times with no Fire. That number surprises me; I’d have guessed somewhat lower. Only two instances were in the first set, not surprising at all. I saw what is perhaps the most notorious of these at Alpine Valley: Scarlet -> I Will Take You Home, and the bust out of the latter no less. A confusing moment at a Dead show to say the least. Curiously, I'd argue the hottest Scarlet of all time was two nights after the first Fire, a set 1 closing Scarlet -> Fire at Winterland 3-18-77. On 3-20-77, Scarlet closed set 1 and it absolutely shredded. Very much worth a listen for anybody unfamiliar. Finally, there were 12 appearances of Fire without a Scarlet. That would have been my ballpark guess. Some of these are pretty well known, such as the Olin Arageed -> Fire in Egypt, the Fire coming out of space at Radio City Halloween '80 that made it onto the Dead Set LP, and the Saturday Night -> Fire to open the show at Ventura '85. But one could argue the coolest of these was the ’91 Boston Garden Help -> Slip -> Fire, apparently sparked by Bruce Hornsby ribbing Jerry to shake things up. And lamely, again IMHO, there were three Hell -> Fires. That’s 25% of the naked Fires after all! 😲

Thanks all for the quality discourse, and thank you Rick for the apology. Consider it fully accepted. Brian - there couldn't be more truth to you sentiments. Well stated. Despite having bristled at Rick getting personal, I'll share a very personal thing. We effectively adopted an older and formerly homeless Filipino man who my son befriended when he was in his early teens. This gentlemen has now lived with us for close to 15 years. First he slept in a tent against the side of the house when no extra bedrooms were available, then in his own room when the kids started moving out. I'm not looking to pat myself on the back; the arrangement quickly evolved into the consummate win/win. He's a character, but a super sweet one. I virtually never take out the garage or recycling, he's quite handy in general around the house, he's endeared himself to the neighbors and does yard work and painting for many of them, he takes care of the dogs allowing us extended no worries travel, etc, etc. No one asked any of this of him, it just evolved organically. That's the kind of tiny anecdote that makes the world spin just a tad more brightly. Moreover, he's even become more than a bit of a Deadhead. Ha! All that said, you're all invited onto my yacht the next time you're in the south of France. 😜😂😊

Wow, I inadvertently struck a serious cord. I’d let that whole rant roll off me if not for the quoted bit above. With the caveat that my wife sometimes accuses me of not communicating so clearly, I don’t know how the context and tenor of my post could be that misconstrued. Of course we live in a different world price wise than when Jerry was with us, and of course I could have cited any number of examples where live music has become exorbitant. Hell, a friend recently paid $1,000 each for back of floor Springsteen tickets. And a 5-8-77 Barton Hall ticket stub says $7.50 ($6.50 for Cornell students!) - amazing. My analogy to DSO felt obvious because (a) their prices are just barely above the most a face value ticket ever cost to see Jerry, and (b) we’re on a DSO chat forum after all. I love witnessing younger Heads like you who were never able to see Jerry so passionately, profoundly, and palpably enmeshed in The Grateful Dead’s musical universe. That’s the future of this scene, and it’s a bright and wonderful thing to behold. What I don’t appreciate is you making it personal with me about money. Yes, I can buy more or less whatever I want. Although a yacht and the monthly rental for the berth to keep it in Saint-Tropez would hurt. 😂 But how does that change anything, much less the observation I was trying to innocently make? You said in another thread you were heading to Costa Rica. The air is great down there. Take a deep breath.

Most I paid to see Jerry was the final NYE ticket 12/31/91 - I think around $45. Now DSO costs more than that... 3x5 index cards and money orders indeed. Thanks for the memory!

I just read John Mayer‘s eulogy to Bobby from this afternoon. Very nice. I like how he was careful around mentioning Jerry. He did so just once, and used it to spin a great analogy, connecting a Jerry / Bobby sentiment with a newfound Bobby / John sentiment. He also did great on a solo acoustic Ripple, complete with thick sunglasses and a Bolero tie!

Warfield show announced (and sold out immediately) after Bobby's SF memorial tomorrow, and billed "Graham Lesh & Friends". All A-list musician who are in town anyway (Mayer, Trey, Dead drummers, who know who else?) are bound to want to participate. Seems there's huge potential and an emotional and epic evening at The Warfield.

I'm sure many here have read about this; in the late 60s (most likely late summer '68) The Dead actually tried to fire Bobby and Pigpen because Phil and Jerry were frustrated they couldn’t keep pace musically with the band's evolution. The story is as much legendary heresy as fact, but there's definitely more than a little something to it. One angle is it was Phil's idea, and he convinced Jerry to go along with it. Jerry being notoriously averse to confrontation, he had band management do it. The best the event can be pieced together is that it simply didn't take. Bobby and Pigpen kept showing up, and no one stopped them. So quintessentially Grateful Dead! This situation would repeat itself a decade later with Keith and Donna, this time in a very different fashion. Anyway, it's easy to understand that as of 1968 Bobby's playing was indeed stunted in relation to how Phil and Jerry were evolving musically at warp speed. He was both younger and had far less musical training. He knew how to play coffee house acoustic music, but he was way out of his league on electric guitar as the psychedelic era was ushered in. Given all that backdrop, this later Garcia take on Bobby’s playing is all the more awesome...

A buddy of mine wrote this. I find it intense and amazingly well said. Wish I'd written it. 😊