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Showing posts with label 1976. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 1976. Show all posts

Wednesday, May 20, 2009

1976 June 14 - Beacon Theater

Grateful F\Dead - Oakland 1976

GRATEFUL DEAD
Monday, June 14, 1976
Beacon Theater – New York, NY
Soundboard Recording

Just as picking a show from the early 80’s can present a daunting task when it comes to knowing which way to turn first, June 1976 is like a microcosm of the same problem. The Grateful Dead played a lot of shows marking the inaugural run in the band’s return to the road as a touring act in '76. It seems that nearly the entire month of June has always circulated in good quality, and the shows can sort of bleed together. Way back when we all had to build our tape collections through trade, a large portion of June ’76 was among the easiest music to find because the band had done so many FM simulcasts. This meant that soundboard quality recordings were being seeded, potentially by the hundreds, night after night, up and down the East Coast. Interestingly, certain shows from this run (Chicago Auditorium Theater) remained lost in the fog even from an audience tape perspective while the surrounding dates were easy pickings.

I’ve mentioned before how it seems that this overabundance of easy to find music from June contributes to the bad rap 1976 gets in general – so much material from, arguably, the low point of the year. And while I’ll be the first person to tell you that the music only continued to get better and better as 1976 rolled along, there is plenty to enjoy even as the band was shaking the rust off from its near 20 month hiatus. In fact, the highpoints among this historical “snoozer portion” of the year become that much more special precisely because one generally expects very little from June ’76.

I made early mention of one of my favorite Dead shows in general which happens to come from this time frame - the long time under-circulating masterpiece from June 9, 1976 - and here now is another show that has always managed to poke its colorful petals up over the rest of the June ’76 flower garden in my mind: June 14th from the Beacon Theater.

The show packs great energy, both from the band and audience (clear even on the soundboard), and the first set plays like an archival sample of everything good going on in 1976. In typical early 1976 fashion, nothing explodes (though Might As Well – often miss-documented as “Mighty Swell” – does fly over the top), but the entire set is a worthy listen. And it all rounds out with a memorable Playin’ In The Band.

Jerry Garcia 1976This Playin’ presents a wonderful balance of every direction the song could flow in 1976. Still a staple feature of Dead shows, 1976 saw Playin’ begin to more fully explore different rotation slots in the set lists beyond its hallmark set one closing role. It also started to traverse distinctly different temperaments as if reflecting the changing mood of the band – some would flow out in silky smooth oceans of psychedelic waves, while others could find their ways into jagged and treacherous terrains that boiled with fire and hail. 06/14’s Playin sits in the traditional set one closing spot, and seems to explore and taste both extremes of expression.

With sound quality on the soundboard source that rivals nearly all other tapes, when the band slides into the Payin’ jam everything is about as close to perfection as we could wish. With a terrific balanced mix of instruments, the sense of this six piece band as a true ensemble comes shining through on this tape. Everything weaves together as the band continues to pick up steam. There’s a lovely flow oozing in and out like one’s breath as they roll along. Eventually things quiet to a whisper and we find Playin’ set at the precipice that might have easily led to a roaring Tiger Jam two years earlier, but here in 1976 it hints more at Blues For Allah. The intensity builds again as if we have just passed though the eye of a hurricane, and we are slowly swept back into the fantastic stitch work of an intricate tapestry. Not long after, the drummers tip over an edge into pure rolling thunder – the beat has been consumed and the entire band begins to tremble and fracture leaving us both on dizzying heights and staring up at more impassable mountains of dark foreboding rock. Before a completely blinding meltdown can ensue, the band reappears and another phase of the jam takes form. The drummers come back to the beat while we were lost in some phrasing by Garcia, and soon there is the sense of all the instruments fitting together like massive planet sized gears of reflecting kaleidoscope glass. It’s as if the music can’t take a wrong turn. Each member zeroes in on a simple phrase of their own and they begin to repeat them into each other like the inner workings of a watch. This is one of the most subtle explorations of the band’s pure creative musical force, made somehow more precious by its delicate and fleeting nature. Capping off the jam section of a nearly twenty minute Playin’ In The Band, we find that we’ve travelled many diverse miles all while we otherwise thought we were just listening to another Dead show.

The Wheel opens set two, to the clear shock and delight of the crowd. The song came out on Garcia’s first solo LP in 1972 yet never made it into the live show line up until 1976. Here, the band is fully enjoying themselves (there’s even a nice “Woo!” let out along the way as they become clearly locked into the slow pulsing arch of the songs melodic runs). The solo section paints a majestic picture with Garcia dancing on tiptoe from star to star. It’s short lived, but no less enjoyable for it, as the song comes to a close just as we’re ready for it to go on forever.

There follows some fun stage chatter as no one seems to know what to play next, eventually seeing the band land on Samson & Delilah, followed by a tasteful High Time, and The Music Never Stopped.

With Crazy Fingers, we head into the meat of the second set. Always good for casting a subtly gentle, yet psychedelically mysterious mood, we find ourselves casually ambling through a misty evening as our peripheral vision seems to flicker with unseen light sources. The song trails off into the end portion improvisation and the slow turning galaxy wagon wheels are back. The tides shift, and just as we feel the arrival of a Spanish Jam, Bobby provides a distinctive tease into the Dancin’ that will follow. Gently the jam subsides leaving the drummers to assemble the backbone of Dancin’ In The Streets.

Grateful Dead 1976Dancin’ was a tune that matured over the years after its return in 1976, and the ’76 breed is often one that merits little attention. Truly the versions in the following year become epic. Here, however, we are gifted with some of Garcia’s most delicious solo work of the entire evening. When they launch into the jam, Jerry’s phrasing becomes that of a 1950’s jazz saxophone player (insert your favorite’s name here). The way he holds back, and then blows out phrases flying up and down the fret board provides us with the Jerry we are all so thankful for. His tasteful note selection, filling the syncopated spaces between the beats, brings nothing but smiles to your face. All in all, it’s an understated Dancin’, as most were in 1976. But it’s worth everything to ride with Jerry through the solo section.

Cosmic Charlie, another song seeing its revival in 1976, comes next and is delivered perfectly. Vocally, the song just takes you in and works its magic. And as the pulsing backbeat that bore The Wheel at the start of the set returns to ricochet and echo its way through this song too, we’re firmly locked into the hypnotic trance of the Grateful Dead.

Then the set caps off with the wonderful highlight of Help>Slip>Franklin, containing an improvisational masterpiece during Slipknot which firmly locks this entire show into its spot as one I’m always happy to return to and explore. Here, as the 1976 tour was getting started, this song trio was well rehearsed and sounding very much like the Blues For Allah album version while allowing the band plenty of space to work each rendition into its own unique direction, and all the while finding Garcia able to forget the correct ordering of the lyrics in Franklin’s Tower.

Help On The Way overflows with heartfelt and emotional vocal delivery by Jerry, and rides ever so sweetly through the extended solo section. The tempo is locked in the pocket, and everything shimmers and gleams as they roll into the last verse, and then deftly navigate the intricate path which leads to Slipknot. This jam is representational of a new direction for the Dead. Nothing they were doing in their first ten years sounded quite like this at all. And the music finds its way into a lovely expanse of long flowing phrases atop Bobby’s wide volume swells. A deeply explorative jam finds the musicians listening to and playing off of each other. For a long while we are buoyed in a borderless ocean of the jam’s theme, lost in a timeless space of coolly dark comfort.

Soon much of the jam drops away, leaving Garcia playing off of the drummer’s light accents. Slowly Phil works back in, layering his own solo efforts while Jerry’s notes fly past like meteor showers. Eventually the rest of the band assembles again, and off of Bobby’s seemingly forced change of direction inspired by Phil’s own thumping, the band slips into the heavenly realm of absolute bliss and musical satori that forces chills to electrically snake across your face and down into your heart. We are cast into a pure musical presence which sucks all attention into its own focused midst. There is nothing else in the universe at all. This short (painfully fleeting) passage calls back to the inspirational brilliance found deep within 1970 Dark Stars – joyful expression of exquisite musical passion. Experiencing this music when you can offer it your open heart is a healing event. Our souls filled to bursting, the inspiration fades and the band returns to the coolly dark and mysterious interplay we were comfortably enjoying moments ago. We ride the twisting river toward Frankin’s Tower and arrive in the song’s own uplifting energy and simplicity.

Nothing left to do but smile, smile, smile.

06/14/76 SBD etree source

Saturday, September 20, 2008

1976 September 28 - Syracuse, NY

Jerry Garcia 1976

GRATEFUL DEAD
Tuesday, September 28, 1976
Onondaga County War Memorial - Syracuse, NY
Audience Recording


This show is featured almost in its entirety on Dick’s Picks Vol. 20. But it has history from long before it came out commercially, and that history is in part related to demonstrating the glory of AUD recordings from a part of a year that isn’t famous for its soundboards. Most of the SBDs from Fall 1976 fall a bit flat. They just lack a lot of sparkle. As we have been dabbling into this period with AUD tapes, there are a fair number of good ones to be found, and it is now time to add 09/28/76 to this list as one of the more satisfying 1976 AUDs. Very up front, with exceptional low end, this tape permeates the sound field with the power of the Dead’s new (in ’76) sound system. Particularly sweet are the sound of the kick drums and Phil’s bass. These instruments tend to lay very flat on the SBD’s, while in the AUDs you can literally touch the energy coming out of them. The drums, especially, pulse with power. You can almost feel the push on the air, absent almost completely from the soundboards. On 09/28 we are thus treated to that most wonderful alignment of the stars – a wonderful recording of a wonderful performance.

Grateful Dead 1976It’s hard not to talk about 1976 without mentioning the dismissing the year gets in many Dead trading circles. Generally you either love 1976, or absolutely don’t. However, even some of the most anti-76 folks out there will generally acquiesce that there are a few glowing spots in this year. 09/28/76 falls into this category easily. In fact, after revisiting this AUD after a good many years myself, I regret that it took me so long to share it here on the blog. This show and recording demonstrate all that I love about 1976, and then some. It was one of the first late-1976 tapes I acquired in trade, and as an AUD, continued to cement my preference for this recording medium over soundboards. For this show, and a few others from the Fall of ’76, the audience tape brings an entirely heightened level of experience to the music itself – not because of the crowd, or the energy in the air, but strictly based on the way the sound of the band comes through on tape.

After a first set that contains some fine songs including Candyman and Friend Of The Devil, the set closes with a herculean Let It Grow>Goin’ Down The Road Feelin’ Bad. This song pairing only occurred twice – the first being on 10/25/73. The Let It Grow displays a rather ferocious intent to grab the audience’s attention, elevating the overall energy of the first set by leaps and bounds. The solo sections sizzle in and out of verses, and the transition over to GDTRFB is quite extended. Things idle with a raw potency between songs, cascading over a large extended peak while the music finds its own path from song to song. But, make no mistake, set two of this show trumps nearly everything that has occurred on the entire tour thus far. This is music that can leave you changed after listening.

First and foremost we have one of those second sets that looks frightfully good on paper. One complete jam:

Playin’> Wheel> Samson> Jam> Comes A Time> Drums> Eyes> Dancin’> Playin’

If the music therein could even come close to being as impressive as the set list, we’re in for a good time. What we get is far more.

Playin’ In The Band launches the second set directly into your heart, exhibiting the quintessential quality of 1976’s deeply psychedelic-mellow vibe. It’s the sort of energy and music that you could completely miss if you don’t fix both eyes (or ears) upon it – like thinking nothing of walking past an everyday looking patch of flowers only to double-take when you catch the fact that the rich colors of the flowers are somehow flowing from one to another the way light reflects off a huge school of phosphorescent fish as they turn and swirl, as if driven by one mind. 1976 has a lot of this kind of stuff going on.

Jerry Garcia 1976Playin’ moves in a slow watery boil. Garcia pulls out lead lines like fingers pulling honey from a jar. Everything breathes together. There is a point where you can sense The Wheel coming from a thousand miles away. Like pre-dawn light in the eastern sky, it barely kisses the swirling darkness of the Playin’ jam. Eventually, The Wheel hint cracks the horizon and begins filling the sky with a throbbing rainbow sun, each solar flare a different color bleeding into the next.

If we give 1975 the credit it truly deserves for bringing us Help>Slip>Franklin’s, rather than attributing it to 1976 when it merely exploded forever into our vernacular as a Dead classic, then The Wheel is ‘76’s crowning jewel – the greatest gift to us of the entire year. In that, it encapsulates 1976 completely. The way it could form out of a jam (on 9/28 perhaps even more artfully that it does on 10/10/76), somehow demonstrates how the song’s musical arrangement in 1976 was written out of the sheer fabric of the band itself. Simply put, it fills your soul. It seems like nothing more than a “good song.” But placed correctly, it elevates you. It draws you into that distraction-free experience of the Now that is typically reserved as the ability of a deep jam only. The Wheel in 1976 just has this power. The Wheel on this night might easily claim the title of best of the year. As if the song itself wasn’t potent enough to lay this claim, it’s exquisite intro from Playin’ and outro into Samson and Delilah assure it.

And Samson itself is elevated by the seamless transition. The song cooks. But it’s the jam that returns directly off of Samson’s final downbeat that begins to cement this set as one for the ages. We are placed directly back into the night-mist fabric of Playin’ In The Band without transition. It just rushes forward again and silences the crowd which had been brought to its rowdiest level by the previous song. The Dead demonstrate their complete control of the proceedings with this shift. The next few minutes of music are picture perfect – the kind of stuff that could only appear like this, pure inspiration and improvisation tucked deep in a long string of music. Jerry is whipping out lead lines now in his classic swooping birdlike arcs. There is no resistance to the fusing together of everyone in the building. The band’s singularity of being suffuses the crowd – all hearts beat as one. As if this wasn’t elevating enough, next comes a song that could deliver prayer-like spiritual oneness in almost any year: Comes A Time.

It’s arrival is like emerging from a dense forest into a wide valley of grassy hills under a sunlit sky tinged with the smell of Spring. And as is often the case, this song brings out the best in Garcia. His voice - its inflection, emotion, and pure intoxication – is matched only by his guitar work. Man, to hear Jerry and Donna repeat the final sets of the line “only love can fill” sends chills down my spine – absolutely riveting. This section is like almost nothing else, somehow far more than you’d ever expect it to be. The exit solo is short and sweet, and it ends with the band seeming to search for the next step. Drums to the rescue, we get treated to the awesome power of Billy and Micky.

Here you can completely appreciate the already wonderful audience recording all the more. 1976 Drums on a soundboard never sound this energetic. Proving that fact, there is a tape flip covered by the SBD itself for about 15 seconds. You can completely hear what is lost in the SBD. The AUD returns for the last few minutes of Drums and we are headed for more glorious music.

Eyes Of The World charges at breakneck speed. This is a supercharged version of the song, and the music sets off an effervescence of stars appearing and burning out all around you. The speed of the song propels Jerry’s solo work into heavenly realms. His leads manage to float lazily above the locomotive pace of the music beneath them, gently singing and dancing. This is a 1976 Eyes through and through; not better or worse than those of 73-74. It brings about those involuntary smiles throughout. At the end, the song angles sharply back into the Playin’ jam, but only for a moment. Quickly, the band finds itself in a unique thematic jam that walks a line between loping and stomping. It’s slightly Bolero-like - something not quite heard before or after this show. It goes on for a nice while, and then Phil starts hinting back at Playin’. But Jerry has another idea.

Donna Jean Godchaux 09-17-76As if this colossal complete set long jam wasn’t big enough already, the band heads into Dancin’ In The Streets. This late in the year (about four months after the song’s re-introduction to the lineup), the song has fully matured, each musical part integrating perfectly with the other. The crowd becomes fully locked in, clapping along. Yet, the music is so loud, when the band starts jamming, you can’t hear the claps – another great example of the music’s power and energy. The jam dances along (no pun intended), resolving in a near perfect run through of the syncopated end refrain. This leads to the final verse which fades itself to a whisper, upon which Playin’ finally makes it’s true return (after, what? Four teases throughout the whole set?).

The band takes some pleasant time letting the jam float about the arena. Slowly the entire band simmers all the way down and lets the reprise fully take form. Ecstatic, the crowd bursts into cheers as the song draws to its close.

When listening to the audience recording, this set easily defies all negative connotations cast at 1976. This is the Dead firing on all cylinders. Enjoy.

09/28/76 AUD etree source info
09/28/76 AUD Download

Friday, June 6, 2008

1976 October 10 - Oakland, CA

Grateful Dead - Oakland 1976

GRATEFUL DEAD
Sunday, October 10, 1976
Oakland Coliseum Stadium – Oakland, CA
Audience Recording


“This might be a great recording…”
(audience member leaning in to talk to the taper during The Wheel, 10/10/76)

This audience tape is of the breed that gives off unparalleled energy. Outdoor, sitting in the sweet spot, if you want to hear the pure might of the Dead’s sound system in 1976 then look no further. The band’s power on this date defies all stereotypes associated with the shows of this year. Virtually everything will blow your hair back. The sound stands as tall as a skyscraper in front of you. And while the tape comes with a plethora of raucous outdoor audience enhancements (everyone is having a grand time), over it all the music on this tape simply explodes. It’s not sonically perfect, but most of the tapes that share this characteristic are not (see 05/12/74.) This tape does have ample low and high end which, coupled with its clarity, makes for a very enjoyable listen.

The show opens with a Might As Well that lets us know that the band is already on a pretty serious high. And loud. Things are really really loud. It feels great. Jerry’s steel-necked Travis Bean guitar seems to be vibrating electricity at every turn. I can’t recall it ever sounding quite as nice. And he finds the pocket on most every single song. The solos are all peppered with a little something extra. Likely, as good as it sounds in the crowd, the band’s monitors are equally cranking for the outdoor setting. Having played on outdoor stages many a time myself, I know that when these things are perfectly set you can really lose yourself in the bowl of sound rising off the floor around you. It all leads to the sensation that the music plays the band. They are just relaxing into the entire experience, and hitting it out of the park time and time again. Jerry is spinning pure gold all day long.

Jerry Garcia Oakland 1976Virtually everything in set one delivers the goods. Do not pass up the Ramble On Rose which features the fantastic echoing of the vocals from the back of the stadium. It’s a really cool effect, not to mention Jerry's howling delivery of the “Goodbye mama and papa” line. Wow. And even if you feel like you never have to hear another Promised Land again until the day you die, you might want this to be the one you hear when that day comes. Jerry’s final solo run starts off with an ascending run that goes over the top, a complete embodiment of the entire first set’s energy. And one of only three West Coast performances of Friend Of The Devil in 1976 (with its new slowed tempo) provides a needed breathings space for everyone.

The set closing Dancin’>Wharf Rat>Dancin’ is a sweet set ending treat. As I've probably pointed out before, the devoted deadheads of the day might have been shaking their heads as the song kicked off in the pure disco stylings of the day, but in retrospect we can easily lock into the groove. The band pounds things out in synch with the already charged energy. Jerry sets off into the solo section under Phil’s snaky popping bass runs. Bobby syncopates the rhythm. And what follows is good times Grateful Dead. After a time the band cools. Jerry rolls way off on the high end and begins weaving his licks around the stadium in slow moving curves. He then lifts into the air with a few high note bends, and the band lands in a tightly pocketed section which settles even further as they spin down into Wharf Rat. This transitional pairing saw a total of 7 incarnations, 6 of them in 1976. Jerry offers a bit of slide work, and the Dacnin’ has been completely left in the past. Or has it? Bobby and Keith seem of a mind to return, and Jerry takes the bait, speeding his solos. But this then becomes something like the feeling of easing the radio dial between two stations that are on nearly the same band. Like two watercolors drying into each other, Dancin’ comes and goes, the spacier jam appears and disappears, and after a nice period of this back and forth we arive at Wharf Rat. Jerry offers towering solos out of the song which stand like majestic gigantic redwoods all around you. Bobby deftly brings the band back to Dancin’ and they cook through the chord change arrangement section perfectly. The set ends. The sun is shining at midday.

Jerry Garcia & Bob Weir 1976The big set two jam is another 1976 set that looks amazing on paper. They were really pushing themselves in creative directions. The performance is up to the task, and does not disappoint. Playin’ In The Band rolls into the jam and the quintessential 1976 playing style takes form. Giant wagon wheels the size of galaxies, formed more out of multi-colored gossamer syrup than wood, begin slowly spinning into each other under your feet for as far as you can see. Here again we find the magic of a 1974 Playin' bleeding into the years after. It’s deeply psychedelic jazziness pervades the band’s mind bending meanderings. Coolly the band slips into Drums.

This Drums is short and sweet. Near the end, the drummers hint at Other One and the crowd catches this and cheers. However, whether by a last minute redirect or a forgotten pre-determined set list, the Other One is not meant to be (yet). The hallmark drum intro to The Wheel quickly forms and moves things along. This song was such a nice addition to the lineup in 1976 and came to embody part of the real “feel” of ’76 shows. This day’s version has it in spades.

The Wheel makes a sensationally invisible transition from post-Wheel lilting music into a deep Space blow out. As great as the Playin' jam was, I think this post-Wheel jam is even better. This goes into a short Drums followed by the entire energy of the whole show peaking with Other One.

Phil Lesh - October 1976This is a take no prisoners version, chugging along with an almost evil grin. Burning white hot electricity blows you back like a ferocious wind storm. Our continually somewhat vocal neighbors around the taper are gasping and chuckling in complete rapture. The music speeds on and on, taking us hurdling down twisted pinhole fissures in interlocking caverns formed by the erosive power of torrential rushing energy through the landscape of consciousness. Did I mention it takes no prisoners? This is yet another satori moment, almost brutally grabbing you by the throat and aiming your senses directly at the band. You can barely remember to breath.

And then, because this band had a knack for tapping into the loving center of the elevated conscious experience, rather than opting to play with the fragile psyches in their grip, they let the horizon balance and wind subside on the shores of a Stella Blue. The song emanates grace, safety, and warmth. It’s a very welcome stabilizer, which tips right over its own edge back into the forest of impossibly colored trees and iridescent rivers. A jam comes back which finds the band moving more slowly through the caverns they sped through minutes earlier on the return trip to Playin’ In The Band. Playin’ reaches its crescendos, capping a fantastic set two jam sandwich. Sugar Magnolia seems a most appropriate set closer.

This is a wonderful listening experience that surprised me in being even better than I remember when I decided to revisit it in consideration for the blog. Worth returning to again and again, and definately from the opening notes on.

Wednesday, April 2, 2008

1976 June 9 - Boston Music Hall

Grateful Dead 1976

GRATEFUL DEAD
Wednesday, June 9, 1976
Boston Music Hall – Boston, MA
Audience Recording

Back in the day, this was perhaps the most difficult of the circulating June ‘76 shows to find. I say “of the circulating shows” because a few shows from this month sat in the “holy grail” bucket – ones you saw absolutely nowhere (6/4, and 6/27 among them). I had an admittedly charmed trading life back in the 90s, and one trade in particular brought me 05/07/70, 05/12/74, and 06/09/76 all in one box. I don’t remember the trader’s name, but it was a guy with the classic “everything,” and I went for stuff on his list I had seen nowhere else. I probably sent him my A quality 04/29/71 and the composite of Watkins Glen 07/28/73 that I seeded out for the 25th anniversary. God, that Watkins tape opened any door I wanted back then. More on that when I work up the review.

That 06/09/76 was so hard to come by seems a cruel joke played on this year of Dead shows. As mentioned before, 1976 gets such a bad rap, and it is in no small part due to the fact that most of the best stuff imaginable from that year just never got into wide circulation. Now, not only does this AUD master circulate, but so does the SBD. I’m a firm believer that good AUDs from 1976 give off an energy that was often missing from soundboards from that year. That, and the purely nostalgic feelings I have for this tape lead me to talk about the AUD.

Jerry Garcia 1976The return of St. Stephen is only one stellar aspect of 06/09/76. The entire second set completely out performs how it looks on paper; and it looks mighty fine on paper:

St. Stephen> Eyes of the World > Let It Grow > Drums > Let It Grow, Brown Eyed Women, Lazy Lightning > Supplication, High Time, Samson, It Must've Been The Roses, Dancin’in the Streets > Wharf Rat > Around, E: Franklin's Tower

The first set is no slouch, looking like a dream set that might have been penned by some fans in the parking lot before the show. Cold Rain opens. It was only played three times in ’73, and once in ’74 on the last night of the farewell stand at Winterland (it was the opener that night too). Cassidy was played only once before, early in 1974. And then we get Scarlet Begonias, Music Never Stopped, and Crazy Fingers, all in a row. Whew! But set two opens with the song that most fans probably didn’t even allow themselves to think about ever hearing again.

The crowd’s reaction to St. Stephen is priceless stuff (equaled again upon its second return in 1983). The song’s jam demonstrates the 1976-typical slowly spinning kaleidoscope of sound right from the first notes. It swirls and swirls going further and further out – Jerry finding one beautiful space after another. They all key back together for the last verse as if they’ve been playing the tune every night since it was last played on 10/31/71. When they shift from “What would be the answer to the answer man?” into Eyes it is dreamy perfection. Is this really happening? You will be in the giddiest of Grateful Dead spaces here.

This Eyes is perfectly described as jubilant. The super up tempo treatment of the song is pure pleasure. Also, it has another new 1976 twist: they build the song backwards with the long exit jam coming before the song itself. This one goes on for 8 minutes before the first verse, and it serves to prolong the giddy zone all the way through. Your dog might even start twirling around the living room to this song, his or her little puppy paws rising and falling like incense smoke overhead.

Grateful Dead -August 4, 1976Not good enough for you? Try refraining from joy as the band eases out of Eyes into a light and dreamlike mist that sounds bound perfectly for Wharf Rat, only to have Bobby magnificently draw out Let It Grow. It fades into view like a ghost out of the fog. Brilliant. The Let It Grow is overflowing with more of the wonderful interlocking spinning wheel glory of 1976. In and out of Drums on a dime. And then there’s this perfect little Brown Eyed Women. The song hardly ever gets a second thought when it comes to “best of” conversations. But, I’ve always found this one somehow a cut above. The quickened tempo has a lot to do with it, I’m sure.

In many ways Supplication seems to define 1976. There was nothing like this happening pre-retirement at all, and it has a groove altogether new to the Dead's repertoire. The band stokes this fire nicely, but they don’t linger. That’s okay. Ounce for ounce, the Lazy Lightning>Supplication scores a 10 all the way through.

Finally, the return of High Time (last played on 07/12/70!) ushers in some space to breath. Gotta love the guy sitting next to the taper bellowing out “Dark Star” in a heavy Bostonian accent before it too.

Disco Dancin’. Many an old deadhead shudders at the thought of anything that happened after 1974. And the return of Dancin’ In The Streets in 1976, with its blatant nod to the disco beat of the times, is generally the first thing pointed to when marking the signs of the apocalypse. However one feels about it, 6/9 contains the third airing of the newly vamped version (debuted six days earlier after being shelved on 12/31/71). Still in its infancy, it’s mostly a group effort with no one taking center stage. This allows for lots of intricate play between the band members who are clearly listening closely to each other. They stumble and catch themselves nicely through the end themes, and Wharf Rat follows nicely, with Around & Around closing the set unsurprisingly, but the sizzling double tempo ending portion adds a welcome flair.

The Franklin’s Tower encore is a good ride. It feels like a pretty standard delivery until Jerry starts exploding in the leads sections. The final solo passage builds to a climatic fervor before settling back down and allowing the song to end. A nice end to a great show.

Enjoy!

Thursday, February 28, 2008

1976 October 3 - Cobo Arena

Grateful Dead October 3, 1976 GRATEFUL DEAD
Sunday, October 3, 1976
Cobo Arena - Detroit, MI
Audience Recording

One of the first tapes from 1976 that I collected outside of a number of June shows, this date was yet another that I hadn’t seen on any other lists anywhere. It might have been something I picked up just to fill out a trade for that reason alone (for a while I didn’t go head over heels for 1976). What I got was a giant dose of the best that 1976 has to offer. This show, and tape, remain at the absolute top of my picks for 1976 Grateful Dead. It takes the ribbon as a show and as an AUD tape.

Other 1976 AUD aficionados might beg to differ, and I’d agree that there are sonically better recordings from ’76 which I will feature here in due time. But this show (set two in particular) does that something special that only certain AUD tapes do – it captures the arena as an instrument. The sound of the hall on this tape is participatory, not distracting. The tape captures all instrumentation clearly. There’s wonderful separation. And Cobo Arena bounces everything from drums to vocals in a perfect outer layer – it all gels into the classic Dead AUD tape experience. I know this tape had a lot to do with my becoming a flag waving, card carrying, AUD loving Deadhead.

Grateful Dead 1976So, back when I got this show, it was only the second set that I found on some guys list. Set one emerged years later when the set two SBD made the light of day. The copy of set one that is part of this version I’m linking in this post isn’t quite up to par with the copy of the second set. While you owe it to yourself to hear the Scarlet Begonias from set one, I’m far more focused on your hearing the second set tape. Oh, and the SBD… Most all SBDs from the Fall of 1976 seem rather flat and dry. This show is a completely different experience in SBD. Not at all what I recommend here.

Allow me to share some thoughts on the big set two jam:

Once we emerge from the vocal section of Playin’, the energy is unmistakable. The crowd is once again hushed by the blanket of concentration happening on stage. There’s a long passage of Jerry playing with the wha-wha pedal, and then without. Each member of the band is picking and choosing their note placement with precision. It’s similar to the energetic spiraling of a ’73-’74 Playin’ but somewhat more mellow. This is a fluid Playin’ jam, not an edgy, dark jam. The expanse of Cobo Arena brings to mind underground caverns lit by invisible light sources of ever-changing colors; the music spreading across the ceiling like a phosphorescent algae flowing as fast as water. Deep into the jam Jerry starts to poke his head up over the spacey, viscous ooze with some lead lines that just make you marvel that things could get even cooler than they already are. The band is in such a good place, this could certainly go on all night. Based on everything that comes after, we are blessed that it doesn’t. Without a flourish, we enter Drums. It is short and sweet.

Jerry Garcia - Fall 1976The Wheel is pretty standard fare for 1976, but the jam afterwards is nothing short of stunning, the first of many more fantastic improvisational passages from this set. The jam is picturesque, as many Wheel jams are, but here the band begins to play loosely with the upbeat jam normally associated with Comes A Time in the late 70's. You want to pinch yourself because it’s so joyful. Another moment in Dead tapes that approaches the satori moment. You’ll tell the story of this jam to your friends back home.

Bobby hints at Dancin', but after many bars of marvelous interplay between everyone, Phil and Jerry seem locked together on their way to Come A Time itself. However, we get Good Lovin' instead. It starts with the refrain we remember from the start of Good Lovin' back in 1970. The tune is incredibly hot. Jerry and Donna's background vocals are spot on. The lead break is sensational - all sorts of things are being toyed with here. But it's the jam out of the song that reaches the same levels of play that have been displayed time and time again over the last ten days of the tour. Each member of the band is listening to, and playing off of, the other. We even hear the familiar shuffle-like jam that came out of Eyes of the World less than a week earlier on 9/28. Near the end, with Jerry and Phil locked together again, they are getting completely in synch for Comes A Time. Then a glimmer of Slipknot appears that makes me think I had heard it before during an earlier jam (in Playin'?). But all things focus on a single point, and Jerry lets loose another stellar version of Comes A Time. Sweet and full of subdued emotion.

Jerry Garcia October 3, 1976The all too short jam out of Come A Time is priceless. It's like a dawn breeze comes by and lifts you up into the air; the sun just peaking up over the horizon. Jerry orbits around a central theme while the entire band seems to search for the right direction to go. But it is as if they cannot help but be in the zone at the same time. I remember when I first got this tape I had never heard one of these late 70's post Come A Time jams before. I was awestruck. The fact that, after quite a few years of trading, I could discover something so unique and so utterly breathtaking from this band that I was already on such familiar terms with thrilled me to no end. And it occurs twice in this show; once out of The Wheel, and again after Comes A Time.

Out of this jam, Bobby finally gets the Dancin' he was hinting at earlier. Nothing stands out more than Phil seeming to sprout an extra left arm or two as he manages to be all over the neck of the bass at every moment. A very smooth transition into Not Fade Away follows. The groove is good, but can't quite match the levels from the rest of the set. Bobby pulls off a China Cat tease on the way back to Dancin', but the rest of the band has little or no interest at all. The crowd, on the other hand, sure hears it, and wants it. China>Rider had not been played since 1974, and wouldn’t again until the end of 1977. There is a brief Drums break before they bring Dancin' back for good and you can hear a big dude call out in a husky voice "I Know You Rider!!!!" Well, no chance tonight.

So, you want to know something that pains this AUD loving, old tape transferring deadhead’s heart? Check out the archive.org reviews attached to this version of the show I seeded (linked below) and note the message from the actual taper in 2005. Humboldt Dead, you came so close, and now I can’t find a way to contact you so we can digitally archive your tape as an upgrade. Oh the pain.

Wednesday, February 13, 2008

1976 July 17 - Orpheum Theatre, San Francisco, CA

Grateful Dead 1976GRATEFUL DEAD
Saturday, July 17, 1976
Orpheum Theatre - San Francisco, CA
Audience Recording

The natural gravitation to 1977 as the year of choice for many deadheads often leaves 1976 looking like the younger brother of the high school quarterback/homecoming king. For me, 1976 might be the best kept secret of the Dead taping world.

1976 had a few things working against it that may have lead to its bad rap. The opening run of the year in June, was paired with FM-Broadcasts of nearly every night, and thus, a lot of June 1976 has always circulated in pretty good quality. However, when you look at the year overall, the band really seemed to use June as a warm up (they'd been on hiatus since 10/20/74). June has lots of fabulous moments, but taken in context the best of the year lurked in the much more hard to come by tapes from the rest of the year. This is not to say that June is bad - oddly the shows that didn't widely circulate from June are a good deal better than those that did. But, when you were a young taper, the easiest shows to score from '76 were from June, and they would tend to sound sort of the same. That would often cause one to back off from looking for more from that year. Because of all this, many people think 1976 is very sleepy and underwhelming. It might not be 1972, but it is by no means something to overlook.

Jerry Garcia 1976So, where to start? Beyond 07/18/76(FM), the July Orpheum run was always hard to track down in the days before everything was simply "here." These were the kind of shows you might see on the list of a guy who wouldn't give you the time of day until you had gathered some serious off the beaten track shows to offer in return. I can't help but start with 07/17/76 because of the set two jam. It's the sort of stuff that when you hear it the first time, you can't believe you've gone without it, and afterwards, you can't wait to hear it again.

The first set is a bit of a warm up. There's not much to write home about there. But to quote another great taper, Rob Bertrando, in his archive.org comments, "I rate the second set jam 5 stars, as good as anything the Dead ever did." It is hard to disagree. From the Dark Star like hush that casually blows into Comes A Time, through jam after inspired jam, you'll find this second set wastes no time grabbing the golden ring.

Taped by another Grateful Dead Taper Hall of Fame member, Bob Menke, from the front of the balcony, I recommend using the set two opening Samson to set your listening levels to as loud as you can bear. When it ends, turn the volume up some more (trust me), and unplug the phone. This is what it's all about.

07/17/76 etree source info
07/17/76 AUD download

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