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Showing posts with label 1978. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 1978. Show all posts

Thursday, September 23, 2010

1978 December 19 - Jackson, MS

GRATEFUL DEAD
Tuesday, December 19, 1978
Memorial Coliseum, State Fairgrounds - Jackson, MS
Audience Recording

A classic and fantastic audience tape from late 1978, the Mississippi State Fairgrounds show on December 19th goes well beyond showcasing stellar heights attained in ‘78. This show works that special sort of time travelling magic we occasionally find where the exact year of the performance becomes indistinguishable to even the most seasoned listener. And even before the knobs and dials are turned back to 1973, this tape will be knocking your socks off.

Set 1: Mississippi Half Step Uptown Toodeloo > Franklin's Tower, New Minglewood Blues, They Love Each Other, Me & My Uncle > Big River, Loser, El Paso, Row Jimmy, Lazy Lightning > Supplication
Set 2: Scarlet Begonias > Fire On The Mountain, Promised Land, Stagger Lee, Truckin' > Drums > Other One > Stella Blue > Not Fade Away > Around & Around E: Casey Jones

We are treated to a fine show opening Half Step > Franklin's with Garcia shredding his way into the transition and liquidly loopifying his way through the solos in Franklin's Tower. The show gets off to a delightful start.

The first set works its way along, establishing a quintessential Dead vibe. The set wraps up with an extended Row Jimmy (over 12 minutes) and a Lazy Lightning > Supplication which, while experiencing a drop in levels just at the transition that will force you to crank up the volume a bit, caps the set on a crest of energy sure to pour over into the second set.

That said, Scarlet Begonias has a somewhat shaky start with what feels like a dragging tempo and Jerry blowing lyrics. But things quickly pull together, and as Garcia plays his first solo he stokes embers into flames, and flames into shimmering heat. We come out on the other side for the song's last verse slipping directly into a sublime musical journey. The tape is sounding perfect. Everything spreads out for miles in all direction and each instrument occupies its own distinct space. The jam moves like wind over a gigantic sail. It ripples and swells, sometimes slowly, sometimes in gusts. The music pushes from several directions at once. Fragments turn and reflect light into unexpected colors and there is a subtle disjointedness to the otherwise rolling and rocking which provides brief secretive glances into a chaotic underpinning far below. Before we can truly grasp these secrets, Fire On The Mountain's theme appears, and we drift effortlessly toward a more familiar shoreline.

The solos through Fire On The Mountain soar. Jerry's tone cries with an emotional voice as Bobby indulges (over indulges?) his love of playing slide up over the 21st fret. Still, the song builds beautifully. Garcia's voice begins to roar and scream. He hits the final solo section and rides the song's theme into the sky. Everything begins to tremble and shake. Phil and the drummers crash and tumble. Jerry continues to burn as the song comes to a fine finish.

In Truckin' we find a full exploration of the secretive chaotic worlds hinted at earlier. The jam unfolds quickly into a swirl of Other One infused darkness. The downbeat slips completely from view and a sparkling canopy fills our visual field, full of slowly undulating clouds. A wonderfully extended jam ensues tinged with a delicacy that belies the typical themes of a 1978 Dead show. Slowly a creeping intensity floods the sky and we are being driven into showers of fire and glass. The chaotic underpinning of twisted roots gives way to Drums. They stand as tall as mountains before us, and the recording offers them to us as no soundboard could.

We come out of Drums not into Space, but rather into a lilting jam section that instantly transports us to the thick summer pastures of the jams found on June 22, 1973. The tone of all the instruments is warm and fluid. Phil and Bobby, especially, sound as if they have been grafted in from five years prior. And the music has an ease to it that is unmistakably 1973-esque. This haunting reminiscence goes on for what feels like forever and leaves us in a space of breathless joy. When Phil hammers us into Other One proper, caves and twisting fractal caverns spin us in all directions. Electricity pours through the outer layer of our skin. It is as if there are several versions of the song being played at once with multiple bands swelling in and out of view—cross fades pull in like tides, then recede like shadows. There is little room for anything but the music here. It is as if we've been absorbed by an enormous intake of the band's breath and will not return to our known place in the cosmos until they have finished with us.

This “finishing” actually transports us to as tranquil a setting as can be conceived. Stella Blue appears out of thin air, and Jerry has us huddled close to hear his story. And as we travel out of this songs into the next, we are treated to a segue of such magical intertwining that it feels almost criminal to realize the Dead never did it quite like this again, ever.

There's little point in trying to describe in words the way Stella Blue and Not Fade Away become one during this transition. It goes beyond most indulgent expectations related to the Grateful Dead's ability to weave one song to the next. If you've never heard it, this is a slack-jawed and drool producing passage of music that may amaze you in its having been hidden from your ears all this time. But such is the world of Grateful Dead concert recordings, is it not? This is really why we're here together now. And I'm glad to be able to pull little gems like this out from time to time, even years after starting us down this path of musical guidance and recommendation.

Enjoy. And enjoy again.

12/19/78 AUD etree source info
12/19/78 AUD Download

Thursday, March 26, 2009

1978 February 3 - Dane County Coliseum

Grateful Dead T-Shirt 1978

GRATEFUL DEAD
Friday, February 3, 1978
Dane County Coliseum – Madison, WI
Audience Recording

Early 1978 marks a wonderful peak in the career of the Grateful Dead. Many folks like to say that 1977 didn’t really wrap up until the end of the Jan-Feb run in ’78. I’m not one of them. 1977 can have its own 365 days. 1978 deserves the credit for its early section of musical mastery. Even with Garcia battling laryngitis early on in January (which only made him play more intensely while not being able to sing at all), the first tours of 1978 are worth exploring in detail.

Looking at another stretch of shows that makes choosing one to review nearly impossible (including yet another great run at the Uptown Theater in Chicago), I’ve come back to an old favorite tape for its somewhat subdued, yet wickedly potent dose of phenomenal Grateful Dead music – February 3, 1978. The Dane County Coliseum was some sort of ignition point for this band. It’s hard to find bad shows played at this venue. Featured on Dick’s Picks 18, the highlights from this night make this pick one everyone should own. To add color and perspective, there is also an AUD of this show to enjoy. It’s not what we’d call A quality, but it fully succeeds in delivering the full spectrum of the power that was happening on this night. The deeper the music goes, the more the quality of the listening experience improves, and the music goes quite deep, to be sure.

Jerry Garcia 1978While it’s set two that will receive most of my focus, I can’t help but call attention to the first set’s closer, The Music Never Stopped. After revisiting it for this review, I can’t believe this one hasn’t always stuck in my brain as one of the best ever. How could I have forgotten this? Why don’t all Deadheads hold other versions of this song up to 2/3/78 to judge their worthiness? Do not pass it up when you pull out this tape for a listen. And then, you’ll want to get right to the meat of the second set…

Estimated Prophet > Eyes Of The World > Playin' In The Band > The Wheel > Playin' In The Band

Estimated Prophet expands like we’ve found a veiled entrance to an underground cavern of ancient, untouched mystery. Slowly torches reveal a labyrinth of loosely coiled passages, all reflecting a soft shimmering glow of prism hued light off of flickering flames. The music is soaked, cool and dark, with a hypnotic power that is hard to see coming. The evening’s concert has slowly begun to evaporate around you, and before you’ve even noticed the shift, it’s already nearly gone, leaving you quite powerless to defend the music’s insistent pursuit toward waking your soul to its siren call. By the time the music begins blending into a rolling and shifting landscape, sounding more like a mellow Other One and hinting at the Eyes to come, we have found that our pulse, breath, and complete attention have synced into a collective presence with the music. Effortlessly, the music dissolves the cavern’s wet rocky canopy into sunlight, as if small fissures are allowing starlight to pass through causing the walls to liquidly evaporate like steam, and slowly fade away.

Eyes Of The World brings with it that buoyant joyfulness that gives off the distinct impression that the music is smiling broadly. Relaxed into the moment, Jerry rushes nothing. He runs through solo after solo, and just when you figure he’s stepping up to the microphone to sing, he flows back into another solo section, cart wheeling up mountain peaks again. In between each verse he triumphantly soars and delicately floats in a gorgeous interplay of sunlit peaks and valleys. Even at 16 minutes, the song seems to stretch out far longer, eventually leading up to the highpoint of the evening, Playin’ In The Band.

This Playin’>Wheel>Playin’ captures an enormous segment of quintessential Grateful Dead creativity, reaching well outside the bounds one can easily pin down as simply 1978 Dead. The Playin’ jam begins with Phil taking a relaxed solo over drums and whisper quiet instrumentation from the rest of the band. It’s as if the bass is strolling through a forest, gently kicking up swells of musical texture, like leaves in its wake. The haunting mystery of Estimated Prophet has returned to bring a hushed reverence to the musical experience. The band seems to be allowing their musical magic to reach its own deepest levels of inspiration. They force nothing, and the jamming that slowly begins taking form appears organically, as if born of the music itself, not from the individual members of the band. It courses into you, more than just music – the sweet magic of the Grateful Dead has fully opened its flower, its rich color and fragrance so strong as to wipe all other sensation away from your senses.

Grateful Dead 1978Formless grace seems the most apt description of the long jam that follows. Things aren’t veering aggressively away from the Playin’ theme, yet it has been left miles behind in the distance just the same. As this was the section of the band’s career which saw the formalization of Drums>Space as a fixture in the second set, it is worth noting that while the drummers reach a passage where they are musically calling for the rest of the band to give them room, it doesn’t happen. On the fingertips of small hand percussion the music continues to gently evolve into one intricate tapestry after another. Eventually, the musical beat slips away, as the band coxes the gentle grace into a shifting, tilting landscape of Space. Beware a somewhat brutal tape flip edit as this Space gets started. It’s a bump in the road that quickly passes and leaves you deeply immersed in a pulsing sea of light and color. Throughout this passage, The Wheel is hinting its way into being, and eventually we come out on the other side into the song proper.

The Wheel tends to always strike me as a pop song that someone dosed heavily with LSD, driving it into a realm beyond mere hallucinations to a pure resonance with all things – an awakened spiritual grace tinged with a quiet peaceful knowing. It wears psychedelia like a flowing garment on a body of spiritual serenity. That there is a real song going on binds this inner world quality with a more tangible form. The song’s lyrics and musical structure call us into the same pure church-like setting as Attics Of My Life, or Brokedown Palace. This is a song you often “attend” more so than simply hear. The exit jam embodies a pure distillation of the ocean of grace that has been going on for over a half hour now. It is absolute Grateful Dead music, undeniably marked with the personal expression of the collective musical muse underlying the band’s creative energy. Gently, and with the hands of a loving parent, the music settles us back into Playin’ In The Band, and the set wraps up there.

Like an ace up your sleeve, this show hides out of view for most folks as they draw from the deck of Grateful Dead music. It's a card worth playing time and time again. Enjoy.

02/03/78 AUD etree source info
02/03/78 AUD Download

Wednesday, July 23, 2008

1978 July 1 - Arrowhead Stadium

Grateful Dead stage - June 4, 1978 Santa Barbara

GRATEFUL DEAD
Saturday, July 1, 1978
Arrowhead Stadium, Kansas City, MO
Audience Recording


1978. Arrowhead Stadium. Kansas City, Missouri. The Dead featured as part of the opening bill for Willie Nelson’s annual 4th of July Picnic. A single set show.

And here comes Bob Wagner from the East Coast bound and determined to tape this event, and the run that follows it, mostly inspired by little more than the fact that he (and potentially all of us) may never get the chance to hear these shows on tape otherwise. On summer break from medical school, we can only thank the wheels of time and circumstance for placing Bob and the Grateful Dead in the Midwest in the Summer of 1978. And once again, he pulled out a very nice recording for the record books. To this day it remains the only circulating copy of the show altogether.

For whatever reason (I’m sure we could come up with a few), this show is often overlooked. But whether it be a short show (they were one of three opening acts that day), or not circulating at all in SBD form, the Dead came to play, and the set of music they pumped out on this day is full of magic. We are very lucky that Bob Wagner managed to get this one down on tape – a true crime and loss if not for his efforts.

Jerry Garcia - April 11, 1978The set opening Bertha>Good Lovin’ sets a nice mood for a midday set. And a pretty blazing Jack Straw hides in the middle of this show, complete with its explosive lead section build up. It seems to take the crowd by storm, and is not the last time in the show that the power of the music will seem to over match the more mundane circumstances of the show on paper. That the band was tapping into the heart and soul of its transformative magic, not to mention so often, and so deeply, adds a special quality to an already unique show. They seem to be playing their hearts out, like it’s the closing of Winterland or something. Probably more true was that they hadn’t a care in the world and were just having a ton of relaxed fun.

After hardly more than a handful of songs (and a sweet Friend Of The Devil among them), we reach what can be considered the second set portion of the single set show. What follows is a passage of music firmly locked into the moment, with multiple facets of sparkling light like a diamond turning in sunshine.

In ways that are difficult to explain in words, Terrapin Station oozes with energy like a call to worship. Somehow, in its coming directly on the heels of two cowboy tunes, its natural juxtaposition seems to beckon you from across the stadium to settle in close to hear a story. As if the countless leaves of a tree are all hands drawing you to its roots, there is a silent mystery about the song. We are no longer just sitting in the sunshine digging a rock and roll show. Something more is taking form.

Terrapin’s small solo section before the “Since the end is never told” section catches more psychedelic energy than most other Terrapins I can bring to mind. Bobby and Jerry work some really fine interplay as they bounce the song's thematic melody off of each other. Eventually Bobby pulls himself one beat behind Jerry, echoing him, and the effect is gorgeous. It becomes more difficult to judge to true start of the measure. And with that, subtle lights and colors begin to take form in the otherwise normal air around you as the wheels of rhythm patterns begin to mesh and disconnect at the same time – like a dance of miniature star systems floating like dust in daylight. This is very brief, but equally gratifying.

Arrowhead StadiumPlayin’ In The Band stretches out into the July sky, opening the stadium up beyond the parking lots, the city, state, and even the shores of the oceans in either direction. A higher than normal energy ride (perhaps the band was trying to pack in as much as they could into their timeslot), they swirl slow twisting winds into gusts and electronic stampeding somewhat quickly. Before it’s over, things slip almost completely and wonderfully out of bounds with only the drummers holding down anything remotely related to music moving forward in time. Spacey vibrations blur vision and eventually give way to Drums.

This leads into Space - the band now taking the crowd in attendance down twisted damp and dusty caverns of caves that are still forming before our eyes. Passages appear and disappear as soon as you to step forward. Eventually, Jerry leads us to some light at the end of a tunnel into Estimated Prophet. As the sound of chaos slowly fades in the distance behind you, the song appears.

In the Estimated jam, Jerry becomes very expressive. Not only does he let his running lines scale the small hills and valleys around us, but he leaps into the air from time to time to traverse the clouds and sunshine directly. He’s playing “big.” In doing so, you can feel the music’s power take form, settling into the zone which typified a better than normal experience with the Grateful Dead. Eventually it feels like we are getting far more magic than we deserve from some odd venue, opening act single set version of Estimated Prophet. But it just keeps on coming, the entire band delivering more and more of the precious stuff. For me, as I listen to this, I can help but gain an extra level of delight in knowing that this pure moment is buried in a show that gets very little press. I love that I could have forgotten about something so magical, and then found it again. If you’ve heard this show in the past, and somehow just put it aside, you will know exactly what I mean here when you listen to the Estimated. And it doesn’t let up at all as the music moves along into the next songs. As things progress the entire band begins to drive the intensity in a more and more tightly would ball of energy, arriving shortly thereafter in Other One.

Jerry Garcia 1978This Other One exhibits a fluidity that courses nimbly over the senses. Like rapids rampaging downhill, the momentum builds quickly and Jerry is careening his notes into towering heights which bend and twist the music along. The band sounds very locked into the moment, seeming to relish their ability to whisk the daylight-soaked crowd of onlookers fully into their corner of the galaxy. The only drawback is that it feels like the band is sensing the press of their opening timeslot. We arrive in Wharf Rat much too quickly considering the fact that the band is obviously dialed into the zone, leaving behind an Other One that could have grown to mythic proportion.

However, this Wharf Rat is fabulous. Right out of the gate Garcia’s solo is full of tremendous peaks, his notes emanating out from the depth of his soul – an outpouring of emotion. It grows, subsides, then builds again into a rampaging passage of shredding guitar notes – massive and threatening enough to nearly disrupt any ability to remain grounded to the physical plane. The final verse comes and goes, and the music heads right back to this sense that chaos could overtake things at any moment. Wonderful stuff.

They close the set ferociously with Around & Around and Johnny B Goode. This serves to bring the crowd back down to earth and demonstrate the band's ability to please all comers with good old rock and roll. No one goes away unhappy.

1978 often pales due to its proximity to 1977. But like 1976, ’78 offers some truly inspired playing just waiting to be discovered by somewhat more intrepid explores of the Dead’s musical archive. 07/01/78 is a shining example of just this sort of discovery. Enjoy!

1978-07-01 AUD etree source info
1978-07-01 AUD Download

Thursday, May 15, 2008

1978 July 5 - Omaha Civic Auditorium

Grateful Dead - April 11, 1978

GRATEFUL DEAD
Wednesday, July 5, 1978
Omaha Civic Auditorium – Omaha, NE
Audience Recording

There are certain quiet corners of Grateful Dead recordings that won me over to the band’s music far more than the famous shows. I recall being completely turned off to 1978 by the first tape I got, 10/21/78. Everything I read about it indicated that it was pure gold. Well, not for me. I avoided the year for a good while after that, afraid that the entire year might strike me the same way. Even the July Red Rocks shows somehow missed the mark for me. Then I bumped into the shows from just before Red Rocks, July 1st, 3rd, and 5th. Maybe it was the audience recording flavor, or in part having to do with how hard it was to find them in trade, but these dates opened my eyes and ears to 1978.

Jerry Garcia - March 11, 1978All three dates are worth hearing. But July 5th, 1978 is a clear highlight. It’s a perfect package from front to back. You can feel it right from the opening Sugaree. Jerry’s solos are wonderful. The Beat It On Down The Line burns. The first set has that special feel to it, and you can tell that everything is touched with a little something extra . Mind you, I am walking you into Bob’s “learn slide guitar on the job” phase, and I apologize in advance for this. Haven’t heard about how bad Bob was on slide? Well, my friends… there is little to say, and painfully plenty to hear.

This show has a great Lazy Lightning>Supplication to close set one. Not only does Jerry tear it up in the Supplication jam, but the final choruses go on and on, drawing more and more energy into the music. Bobby seems unwilling to finish the song, letting it go and go. Eventually they stop on a dime and the set ends.

The real highlight for me is the Estimated Prophet jam leading to Eyes Of The World. This Estimated flows into some lovely Garcia solo work. His playing is fully inspired, rounding over and over itself with beautiful lines until the band flows into a brilliant passage near the end where the drummers lock into a rhythmic pattern not unlike an Other One groove that completely does away with the downbeat, leaving it impossible to count the measures. Jerry’s playing does cartwheels over head and the band is completely at one with the moment. This small section is blissful. You can feel yourself being absorbed into the music. It draws your attention, silencing thought and elevating the senses. It is fleeting, to be sure. But these are the moments that carry the band above a mere musical experience. I can come back to this passage again and again.

Grateful Dead - November 15, 1978The jam enters a sweet enjoyable Eyes of the World with Jerry working the melody of the verses into unique phrases, changing notes and giving emphasis to words in ways not typical of the standard song structure. This, laced with strong solo sections, makes for a very nice listen. Out of Eyes we get a Phil jam with the drummers before the actual drums and space section. It’s a lot of fun, reflecting back on his monster solos in 1973. The post Space section of the set is most notable for Jerry’s solo in Wharf Rat which just explodes. It wastes no time building from anywhere. It starts on a peak and pushes itself into the sky, possessed with emotion.

Bob Wagner, who took it upon himself to travel from his east coast home and do the summer tour across the Midwest thinking that if he didn’t do it, he might never hear the shows on tape, recorded this show from in front of the soundboard with his mics spread out roughly eight feet apart. It makes for a very nice recording. His master tapes of this night were stolen from his car only months after the show. But, at the show he allowed another taper to patch into his rig, and thus we have Tim Knight’s master tape preserved here. Amazing how things work out that way.

This is a great show, relatively unknown, tucked away in the quiet backwaters of the 1978 summer tour. Enjoy!

Tuesday, February 5, 2008

1978 May 16 & 17 - Uptown Theater - Chicago, IL

Uptown Theater Floor Seats 1978 is often a year of complete mystery to newbies. Everyone says 1977 is THE YEAR (I won't weigh in on that now), and many disregard '78 as a declining year for Jerry Garcia. While it is true that drugs were taking a toll in 1978, and the band was not knocking it out of the park every night, there is plenty to love here.


Uptown Theater ca. 1980Near and dear to this Chicago born deadhead who grew up only blocks from the Uptown Theater, Dead shows from this venue provide a special connection.

It is an agreed upon truth that, "There was never a bad show played at the Uptown." The band always went over the top. And they played here over and over and over again in 78 and 79.

Perhaps because of the Midwest location, tapes from these shows had always been really hard to find. Chicago wasn't exactly one of the Dead taper Meccas easily found on the coasts. As my tape collection grew, setting my sights on the likes of May 17th, 1978 was nothing short of seeking a holy grail like Watkins Glen (more on that later). First I stumbled upon unknown gen cassettes where things were C+ quality along with having tape speed problems. Still, things were good enough to sit awe struck at the amazing Half Step>Franklin's Tower (first Half Step>Frank ever played), the Dancin', and the unbelievable Space out of Drums that floats into Terrapin (maybe the best space of the year, in my mind).

Uptown Theater view from balconyA few years later, famed taper Bob Wagner provided me with his 7" reels of both the 16th and 17th (though the taper is unknown) and I immediately set about the digitization of these phenomenal recordings, patching where I could certain cuts and flips. By 1978 it was more and more common for extremely good quality recordings to be coming out of the audience. These two are no exceptions. Nearly perfect recordings in every way, you need look no further to get that feeling of having scored perfect seats for two perfect shows. The scheduled show on the 18th was cancelled, on account of Billy coming down with the mumps.

We will come back to 1978 again, because there are lots of amazing highs over the year (want more now? seek February and all of May). But, these two nights provide a very critical addition to anyone's collection. You need to know about the Uptown Theater. After listening to these, you will not soon forget, either.

I get chills thinking about Jerry's tone and solos in Franklin's Tower on 5/17, along with his vocal delivery. It will instantly produce a smile on your face. He's got your right where you want to be.


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