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Not Sure Where To Begin?

The intro posts are always a good start, followed logically by
my thoughts on Music & Being, which guide my writing.
You could also try my current favorite show on the blog,
plus there's good reading under the trading community label.
Or, take a walk on a
Listening Trail.
Showing posts with label trading community. Show all posts
Showing posts with label trading community. Show all posts

Friday, November 26, 2010

The Music Never Stopped

We as Deadhead's are typically a musically sophisticated bunch. Most of us are hard wired to enjoy music deeply, and often our tastes expand far and wide.

As I've mentioned here from time to time, the Dead only fill about 10% of my musical universe on a daily or weekly basis; often far less than even that. In many years of pushing my musical horizons, I have always looked for resources in the sphere of "all music" that can do for me what I try to do here in the Grateful Dead sphere - take my hand, make suggestions, and turn me on to music I would otherwise never find. One of the best I've found is MOG.com.

Beyond its depth of music and the community, I get fixated on the simple slider tool which allows me to see "similar artists" while listening to any song. It's an instant wormhole to connected music I've never heard. I get lost in that slider like most folks get lost playing video games.

MOG is offering free trial memberships right now. If you haven't played around with this site, I encourage you to do so. Check it out.

Wednesday, November 3, 2010

30 Days of Dead: Free Downloads

The Grateful Dead are digging into the vault to offer up daily gems for free listening and downloads, and chances to win stuff.  In their own words:

"The 30 DAYS OF DEAD celebration honors the spirit of camaraderie exemplified by the tapers who diligently documented the Dead’s concerts and trade them freely with other Dead Heads. Encouraged by the band, this practice of sharing helped foster not only a legion of devoted fans, but also created a unique sense of community that has transcended generations.


Since the majority of the 30 live tracks offered during 30 DAYS OF DEAD are previously unreleased soundboard recordings, both life-long Deadheads and those previously uninitiated to the joys of the band will be sure to enjoy the free tunes."

A nice little bit of the Grateful Dead spirit and community continuing to keep its flame alive. Check it out.

Saturday, October 9, 2010

Jesse McReynolds - Songs of the Grateful Dead

Once in a while Grateful Dead tributes appear in the world of popular music. Given the subtle underpinnings of what actually makes Grateful Dead music worth honoring—that often being much more than the songs on a Grateful Dead record—the thought of a tribute album often struggles to appear as anything more than novelty.

This is not the case with Bluegrass legend Jesse McReynolds’ Songs of the Grateful Dead: A Tribute to Jerry Garcia & Robert Hunter. Released earlier this week, here the Dead seem to have been honored in a way that polishes a jewel with which we are already familiar but might not have studied quite so deeply.

The bluegrass roots of the Dead are well known to those who cherish their music, but might be something of a surprise to the mainstream. And while psychedelic jug band bluegrass music might be an eyebrow raiser to many, this element within the foundation of the Dead’s musical spirit is clear. Introduce Jesse McReynonds working with David Nelson to produce a collection of Hunter/Garcia compositions, and we quickly see how naturally Garcia’s music finds home in the Bluegrass genre.

I was lucky enough to receive an advanced copy of the CD, and to chat with Mr. McReynolds about the project. His approach is pure and without cliché. His song selection pushes the boundaries to a place where producing outright bluegrass versions of Grateful Dead songs would seem contrived. Wisely instead, tunes like Franklin’s Tower and Fire On The Mountain showcase fine Bluegrass musician riffing into Grateful Dead territory. And Bird Song might be the finest example of where Bluegrass and the Dead find union.

For Deadheads, the entire CD offers an instant sense of familiarity—all of the songs are well known classics. To hear them presented in McReynold’s style, often with the addition of pedal steel (Stella Blue – perfect!) and other instrumentation well within the Grateful Dead universe, allows us a very intimate perspective on terrain we have traveled often. And the disc is capped off with the lovely and catchy “Day By Day,” a tune written with Robert Hunter himself.

I recommend you check out Songs of the Grateful Dead for yourself and see the familiar in a fresh and naturally fitting light.

Saturday, September 25, 2010

Dead Symphony No. 6 Comes Alive

Road trip to Georgia, anyone? Something good's sure to go down when the LaGrange Symphony Orchestra performs on October 5th, 2010.

The iconic Deadhead adage of "we are everywhere" never seemed more true than when I first heard about Lee Johnson's Dead Symphony No. 6. The Grateful Dead's infusion into the world of classical music was something of a Deadhead community triumph, yet I really didn't know what to expect from this fusion, and I'll admit that I leaned pretty heavily on the skeptic side. Grateful Dead "with strings?" Oh dear, please no.

What is actually transpiring in Dead Symphony No. 6 puts all these fears to rest. You might compare it to the way the Dead's music eclipses the ubiquitous stereotype of "drug music for stoners." This is no mere "Dead with strings" performance.

Having listened, I now find myself hoping that the Dead Symphony caravan somehow makes its way up to Chicago so I can hear it live myself. Lee Johnson's creation isn't something that can be called a Dead tribute. It's more as if the Grateful Dead's muse has manifested itself through Johnson into a classical expression. Lee has allowed the Dead's melodies to seed a final product that is less about Grateful Dead songs being played by a symphony and much more about the intricacies and layers of Grateful Dead creativity finding a compelling voice. Sometimes we can almost sing along, while other times we are given merely taste enough to know which song sparked Johnson to compose and arrange. From there we are treated to a musical experience that reaches its own "gold ring, down inside."

I bring all this up because it is an intriguing element in the evolution of our Deadhead community, and since the music is doing something truly special, I feel compelled to make sure any Atlanta Heads who frequent these pages know about the LaGrange Symphony Orchestra concert on October 5th. It is sure to be an eye- and ear-opening evening. Get there if you can, and come back and tell us all about it.

Saturday, June 5, 2010

Helping Hands For Helping Hands



HELPING HANDS DRIVE

The Grateful Dead Listening Guide is excited to announce that we have launched our Facebook fan page sharing campaign which matches Facebook friends, Facebook technology and a charitable donation to a worthy cause.

Today we start our “contest.” If we can drive the total fan count of the GDLG Facebook fan page to 5000 “likes” by June 30th, a very generous donation will be made to the Rex Foundation on behalf of the Grateful Dead Listening Guide and all of its fans.

SN-Reach, a technology/marketing company based in northern California, has asked the Grateful Dead Listening Guide to help beta test their new Facebook sharing application. Since deadheads epitomize “community,” we represent a perfect audience to help measure the effectiveness of their technology.

To inspire the use of their Facebook app and in an effort to tie this exercise to something a bit more meaningful than simply gathering good data, SN-Reach is offering up a sizable donation to the Rex Foundation when we hit our goal. In the end, the GDLG can gain exposure to a wider audience, SN Reach can gain valuable insight into their application and a worthy cause will receive a monetary gift.

How it works:
Helping is amazingly easy and takes next to no time at all. You can show your support for the Guide and the charity by heading directly to this GDLG Sharing Page, or clicking on the large "Like it? Share it!" button below. There, after making sure that you “LIKE” the GDLG fan page yourself, you can use the handy “SHARE” button under the main message to get the word out to your Facebook friends who you think might help us hit the 5000 fan goal.


Thanks in advance for your help and your time.

--The Grateful Dead Listening Guide

Friday, December 18, 2009

Grateful Dead

Grateful Dead

Grateful Dead

What's in a name?

I'm sorry but at this point the Grateful Dead are worked so deeply into the fabric of my life that the name has lost all meaning. I can't even look to my kids to get a fresh perspective on what they think the band's name is all about. For them, the Grateful Dead has been around forever, so there was never a moment where they saw it as new and questioned me about the potentially creepy nature of the name, or what it's all about. To one degree or another, the band's persona is also woven too deeply into the soundtrack of their lives to wonder about this.

Just the same, the phrase Grateful Dead is pretty intriguing, whether for a rock band or otherwise. And while I am far from the first to do so, I thought it interesting enough to spend a little time discussing the collective wisdom that surrounds the nature of the band coming to be called the Grateful Dead (changing their name from The Warlocks in late 1965) and the potential meaning behind the name. If you haven't happened across all of this stuff yourself, it's a nice little read concerning the origin of the band's name.

I think all that can be uniformly agreed upon is that Jerry Garcia landed upon the name while perusing some encyclopedic/reference publication. Yet on the details of this point Wikipedia's Grateful Dead entry notes more than one angle to the saga:

Phil Lesh's biography: "...Jer[ry Garcia] picked up an old Britannica World Language Dictionary...[and]...In that silvery elf-voice he said to me, 'Hey, man, how about the Grateful Dead?'"

Alan Trist, director of the Grateful Dead's music publisher company Ice Nine, notes that Garcia found the name in the Funk & Wadnalls Folklore Dictionary, when his finger landed on that phrase while playing a game of "dictionary". In the Garcia biography, "Captain Trips," author Sandy Troy states that the band was smoking the psychedelic DMT at the time.

In the summer of '69, Phil Lesh told another version of the story to Carol Maw, a young Texan visiting with the band in Marin County… In this version, Phil said, "Jerry found the name spontaneously when he picked up a dictionary and the pages fell open. The words 'grateful' and 'dead' appeared straight opposite each other across the crack between the pages in unrelated text."

And in Blair Jackson's book "Playin' In The Band" we find all of these paths fusing in Garcia's own telling: "One day we were over at Phil's house...He had a big dictionary. I opened it and there was 'Grateful Dead', those words juxtaposed. It was one of those moments, you know, like everything else went blank, diffuse, just sort of oozed away, and there was GRATEFUL DEAD in big, black letters edged all around in gold, man, blasting out at me, such a stunning combination. So I said, 'How about Grateful Dead?' And that was it."

This last version is the one that rings most true with how the story made its way to my ears long before there was a wikipedia or multiple books that speak to the subject.

There is also the thinking that they picked the name after finding it in the Egyptian Book of the Dead. But this somehow implies far more thought process being involved. The band is historically documented as being devoid of any desire to inflict their own "trip" on anyone, and the thought that they were thinking the naming through on this level strikes me as a bit preposterous. Perhaps personally they mused over such things, but as for trying to design a particular aura around the name—I doubt it highly.

That said, it is interesting to note the reference:

We now return our souls to the creator,
as we stand on the edge of eternal darkness.
Let our chant fill the void
in order that others may know.
In the land of the night
the ship of the sun
is drawn by the grateful dead.

-- Egyptian Book of the Dead

Very thought provoking. This is a wonderful connection to the term "grateful dead" and lyrically it could just as easily come out of some lost song that didn't make it on to the Aoxomoxoa album.

Finally, the band's musical story-scape itself finds a wonderful tie in when checking out that old Funk & Wagnalls Folklore dictionary entry which reads something like this:

GRATEFUL DEAD: The motif of a cycle of folk tales which begin with the hero coming upon a group of people ill-treating or refusing to bury the corpse of a man who had died without paying his debts. He gives his last penny, either to pay the man's debts or to give him a decent burial. Within a few hours he meets with a traveling companion who aids him in some impossible task, gets him a fortune or saves his life. The story ends with the companion disclosing himself as the man whose corpse the hero had befriended.

Good stuff to ponder over when you somehow find time to spare while not listening to the over abundance of Grateful Dead music out there. As if there wasn't enough music to fill our heads 24 hours a day, when we do manage to take a breather from those 1973 Dark Stars, we have no shortage of things to think about.

Have you ever heard any other stories related to the naming of the Grateful Dead?

Wednesday, October 28, 2009

Roll Away

Jerry Garcia 11/17/78Speaking from experience, it's healthy to step away from a solid diet of Grateful Dead music once in a while. I did it for a multi-year period before starting up this blog, and it was a very good thing. Not only was it refreshing to dive into "other" music with all the daily listening time I had been devoting to the Dead, but in coming back years later, their music opened up like a flower revealing subtle hues I missed in the past. The music spoke with more fine detail and more wide reaching scope than before. I didn’t plan to come back to the Dead when I did, much as I hadn’t planned to step away years earlier. All in all I recommend taking a break from time to time.

In recent weeks I’ve stepped away again. The August 24, 1972 review marked only the first time I had returned to listening to the Dead since early September. And excluding that one show, October 2009 has been a whirlwind adventure into other music; the Grateful Dead receiving nary a thought along the way.

It’s okay. I’m not here to tell you I’m hanging up a closed sign on the blog or anything like that. Not even “gone fishing,” though it may seem a bit like that recently. I’m comfortable that the archives here can keep readers interest (Gosh, I wonder how many folks have read this site cover to cover?) even while I slip away to dabble in other waters.

Regardless, I’m actually well into the research portion (listening) for the guide’s next show review. I won’t let things completely die on the vine. And I did feel like checking in for a moment even if just to pass along a few tidbits.

Somehow,through no doing of my own, the GDLG twitter account password became corrupted last week. If you follow, you might have noticed that @deadlistening has gone completely dark of late. Amazingly frustrating. One can imagine how difficult it is to get any direct support help from such a large “free” service. I really don’t want to have to bail on the account (with its more than 1000 followers) and start over. Hopefully I’ll get lucky soon and find help working through the issues that are somehow preventing my even managing to receive the password reset e-mail via twitter. If you know anyone over at Twitter, I’d appreciate being put in contact. I want my account back.

On a lighter note: While enjoying the next show on the GDLG reviewing bench yesterday while driving home with my 11-year-old, he chimed in from the back seat as the band segued into Truckin’. “This has got to be the Grateful Dead.” It wasn’t because he recognized the familiar tune. He said he knew it because they have a really distinctive sound that let’s you know it’s them every time. I myself had just been marveling at how absolutely archetypical Jerry’s guitar tone was sounding, and we spoke a bit about that distinctive rich, round twang that embodied Garcia’s tone for so many years.

Then, as the band continued singing the tune my son said, “Chicken? Chicken?” I burst out laughing. “Chicken, like the doodah man…”

Thursday, July 16, 2009

The Gold Ring Down Inside


History knows the Grateful Dead. They are most universally called the pioneers of the Psychedelic Hippie Rock Music movement. If you think back to most passing mentions you might have read about the Dead in print, or heard on the evening news, some variation of this quick summary is likely to be what you encountered as one news segment or another introduced a piece that had something to do with the band. This quick elevator pitch calling card was created more by our media than the band themselves. And the quick association stuck. Pretty much anyone, fan or foe, would rightly place this crown on the Dead’s head (ha! No pun intended). But while there is no denying the hypnotic draw of the band’s ability to turn time and space in on themselves through improvisational adventurism, the actual power of the band which draws listeners in like an irresistible force of gravity may be something else entirely. Their crowning achievement, and reason for going down in the history books of not only music, but of our culture, might actually stem from something far less easy to pitch into a 15 word sound bite.

There is another consistency to this band’s output which laces and weaves its fingers throughout much of what was created over its thirty year span. This particular element is something that appears to run at an even deeper level than the psychedelic fireworks which draw justifiable attention. Through it all, the Grateful Dead continually were expressing a heartfelt joyfulness which may best be described as simply uplifting and smile producing. It may sound corny, but the ties that truly bind one’s heart to this band’s music seem to come more from the musical passages that bring us floating and buoyant onto a sea of weightless, timeless pleasure.

Something purely effervescent, as in a sunshine skipping Eyes Of The World, or the blue skied cantering lilt of I Know You Rider forming out of China Cat Sunflower, made for some of the most enchanting musical experiences. It was in moments like these where the audience was just as likely to dissolve from individuals into a singular shared perception and expression of the music, as they were while in the grips of a star exploding Dark Star or Other One. This effervescence traverses the early psychedelic meltdowns, Americana acoustic folk, and tribal-disco beat dance parties which pepper the landscape of the Grateful Dead’s cannon.

It might be said that we went back to shows to fill up on this elixir as much as anything else; to draw again from the well that most silently bound us together. Away from the music, deadheads exchange subtle unspoken looks which act as a secret handshake, confirming allegiance to this hard to pin down soul lifting musical journeying. With a look, we know we “get it” and have “been there.” This is music’s deep seeded heartbeat of expression through the band, and us, which often eludes our description due to its sheer scope – like quantifying the oxygen around us or our place in the cosmos. It’s nearly so completely everywhere that we fail to recognize that it’s there at all, influencing and drawing us in.

While I have often aimed at discussing the thematic undercurrents which ran through and evolved in the Dead’s musical history, it has been a difficult challenge. I often question the validity of the dots I connect between songs (Viola Lee to Cumberland? New Potato Caboose to Bird Song?). And now more than ever, I believe it was the scale, or depth of this overarching soulful theme which caused me to struggle. The Dead’s own universal predilection for letting the music lift the collective audience (band included) into a heartwarming rapture reveals a nearly invisible network of connective tissue which binds all of their musical themes. Sure, there are more focused recognizable manifestations of undercurrents floating across the years of the band’s music. But, from a 10,000 foot view, a new clarity takes shape.

Intertwined, but somehow also existing side by side with this effervescent element, there is also the undeniable undercurrent of what Deadheads universally refer to as a “church like” experience within the Dead’s music. Those musical passages tinged with that quality often described on these pages as being wrapped in the most protective arms possible, rocked like a baby, or hauntingly drawn into a song’s story ‘round the campfire – this element did as much to cement the Dead with its audience as any other, latching into the same soul level resonance attained when the music set you soaring, smiling, beaming. In many ways, this church element works a similar uplifting magic upon the listener’s experience.

In 60 plus years, when people are looking way way back upon the life and times of the last half of the previous century, perhaps these deeper undercurrents will drive the conversations when people reflect on music’s ability to transcend time and communicate through the ages. The Grateful Dead left an indelible mark on the almost imperceptible mechanics of our ability to be moved, shaped, and transformed by music itself. By this may history truly know the Grateful Dead.

Monday, June 29, 2009

The Ones That Get Away


This time of year always gets me thinking about its significance related to the Grateful Dead’s output in the year 1973. I’ve well documented my proclivity for everything “summer ‘73” in numerous posts, and as the last ten days of June approached, I even planned to honor certain favorite highlights in homage to this favorite time of my favorite year. While the Dead seemed to lock into their summer ‘73 vibe early in June at RFK stadium, the three show run at Universal City, CA holds a special place in my heart, even while for most people, it lives well in the shadows. For me, it’s more than simply the music, as each date has its own story in my trading travels. Interestingly, one of the stories is even seeing chapters written as we speak.


I’ve made detailed work out of the passion I hold for the closing night of this Universal City run on July 1st, 1973. It’s a tape that stands out as a shining example of all things good in audience recordings. Now, I’d like to turn our attention to some of the tapes from the rest of this stand.


June 29th, 1973 was the first date from this run I ever collected – a one tape wonder SBD/? tape that provided ample openings into that certain something going on in the summer of ’73 sound. A full review might make its way to these pages eventually, but I’ve held off for the time being. This might have to do a bit with a personal disappointment in the quality of the tape that circulates, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it had more to do with the game of “hard to get” an audience tape from this date has been playing with me for nearly ten years. In fact, this date actually offers a nice window into the world of tape trading relationships, and into the story of how some tapes end up on archive.org in the first place, or sometimes don’t. For 06/29, even though there is a soundboard in ample circulation, it is marred by certain level settings and technical issues which make one thirst for an upgrade of some sort, even perhaps coming from an audience recording source.


To give you a glimpse into how the world of tape trading wasn’t (isn’t) just about finding a copy of a show, but was (is) also about constantly searching for upgrades and alternative sources, let me get you up to speed on my hunt for the June 29th, 1973 audience tape.


So, 06/29 was an early addition to my collection, and served to spark my love of this portion of the year itself. When you would run into this tape on lists, it was always roughly the same partial SBD version. Eventually a SBD “upgrade” came into circulation after Dick's passing. But it left me still lusting after some kind of complete upgrade. Adding to the mystique of 06/29 was the fact that I had never once seen an audience tape for this date show up on anyone’s list.


One day, going back perhaps 8 years ago now, I was contacted via e-mail by a person who had found my contact information off of the several info files circulating around online related to audience tapes from the 1973 era. This sort of contact had become a beautiful undertone to my tape trading experience, helping to spark my amazement at the way the Deadhead community and technology were intermingling, and assuring me that somewhere out there all tapes were waiting to be found. This fellow told me that he had taped 6/29, and wondered if I might help him out by transferring the tape to digital format. What a glorious day that was for me – as seemed to happen often enough, here was another holy grail dropped from the sky on my head. Alas, it was not meant to be…


I confirmed with him that I would obviously be interested in helping him out. Despite his stories of having to miss recording some of the songs because of tough security, I made him aware that this was quite a find, and regardless of quality, the tape yearned to get into circulation. He talked of how he found better seats for the second set, and taped much of the big jams from a pretty sweet spot in the crowd (let the drooling commence). So, I gave him my address and waited for the tapes. And waited... And dropped him an e-mail after a week or so. And waited… To cut to the chase, eventually months went by where I would send off an e-mail every 6 to 8 weeks (completely in stalker mode, I know) wondering if he had sent the tapes, or found some other means of transfer. No reply, ever. Probably three or four years later, my now annual e-mail to him eventually hard bounced off his mail server with a fatal error – his address was dead.


So close. So close!!! When I first made this connection I had shared my excitement with one or two of my trading buddies, fellow hunters who were always out on the fringes looking to fill in gaps in the Grateful Dead taping history. They shared my schoolgirl-like glee over having bumped into this guy, and eagerly awaited my getting the tapes in hand. Only they can truly know this level of frustration. I’m sure they have shared the experience of a vein drying up before the gold itself was found. It’s one of the more frustrating levels of this area of tape trading – silence from the other end of a great line on a tape. And to know that this fellow is more than likely out there somewhere with some understandable reason for not sending the tapes, and never responding to my e-mails, makes it all the more maddening. It’s an example of the both the good and the bad in online relationships: great to get them started, but sometimes falling very short in going further. Where does this guy live? What’s his phone number? Who else do I know who might know this guy?? Maddening.


While I share this story mostly for entertainment purposes, I also do so with hopes to stir that tape back into the light. We sit here at its anniversary, so perhaps getting the stars to align and talking about it will do some good. It certainly worked with the next night.


06/30/73 was a recording I seeded out on the Audience Devotional Tree back in August of 2001. Just a few weeks ago I pulled out an old old DAT version of the same recording which offered a different lineage path from the reel I put into circulation eight years ago. My ears really liked what they heard. I had decided that with this being one of my all time favs recordings, it would be fun to seed out this DAT, get it up on the archive, and then write my review on June 30th, 2009 sharing this new copy with everyone here. It all went according to plan until just three days ago.


The DAT source (http://www.archive.org/details/gd1973-06-30.aud.weiner.99703.sbeok.flac16) is indeed now up on archive.org. But drawing this bit of attention to the date over the last week has stirred up some contact from some old friends in the community – friends who were pivotal in my seeding out 06/22, 06/26, and even that first copy of 06/30 back in 2001. And that stirring has just now shaken loose an upgrade of true proportion for this date which I am eagerly awaiting in the mail (I do know that this copy will indeed arrive). Once I have it, I will seed yet another version of this show, and after it makes it to the archive, I’ll post my review for 06/30 and link to the upgraded copy at that time. It won’t hit the anniversary exactly, but I’m okay with that. I look forward to it just the same.


What is interesting to me is that my world of tape trading, and in particular this Indiana Jones type treasure hunting, is still in motion today. And for this passage of time you all get to ride along with me just like the old days. You probably can’t resist listening to the version I posted up just last week. I can’t blame you, and I’d be shocked if you weren’t interested. It sounds darn good. And then you may stay tuned in for the new version to be made available, saving that repeat listening perhaps for the new copy coming a week or two from now. That, my friends, is the living breathing heart of trading tapes, rolling out right here on the pages of the GDLG.


And we can all collectively keep holding our breath that the 06/29/73 AUD will show up in my mailbox soon too.

Saturday, June 20, 2009

The Quiet Allure Of Audience Tapes


Upon launching the Grateful Dead Listening Guide I brought up a somewhat understated intention that went beyond the overarching goal of helping folks navigate the endless choices of Dead concert recordings online. Early on I came clean on the point that I was particularly fond of audience recordings, and that in years past I had devoted much of my time and energy to spreading the word of audience tapes and the joys within. There was little denying that throughout my ongoing ramblings there would be a sometimes subtle, sometime outright, push to wake people up to the beauty of audience recordings and my opinion that they (yes, I’ll say it) put the soundboard medium to shame on many levels critical to enjoying the magic of the Dead’s music.

Well, I haven’t been keeping any kind of score card, but I can safely tell you that after general e-mails and comments thanking me for putting up the guide overall, nothing quite comes close to the number of people who confess to having been converted over to an appreciation of audience tapes where before they wouldn’t have given them a chance. And, with readership growing steadily, the frequency of converts continues to rise. It’s a good thing, and it seems to be happening naturally, without my wildly banging some audience tape gong.

I often look at the collective readership of the GDLG like that single person I described at the start of this project who discovered the old grizzled deadhead living across the street (still not sure why I always paint him as old and grizzled. I’d like to think that I’m not particularly either), and began borrowing tapes, listening to stories, and building a collection of music not ever to be found in the nearby record stores. So here after nearly a year and a half, the old deadhead has turned this fellow on to about 80 shows. And being careful as he has been, he has slowly let his personal preference for audience tapes whisper its way into the newcomer’s ear. And slowly, being unconcerned with succeeding, the audience tape medium has been allowed to work its magic and gain another passionate devotee.

There can be little doubt that something more than music is going on when you listen to audience tapes, and this goes well beyond the simple fact that these recordings capture the crowd noise and room ambience. As has been recently articulated by folks commenting on the passing of legendary taper, Jerry Moore, when you listen to a good audience tape you can’t help but experience a layer of gratitude for the person who saw fit to deal with all the rigmarole of taping in the first place. This gratitude quickly expands to a difficult to describe sharing of the taper’s experience as it happened, placing a certain physical layer into the soundscape where we come to discern the true scale of the live musical experience (readily displayed when listening to tapes of 1974’s Wall Of Sound. Worth checking out the podcast too). And then we also come to appreciate the fact that the audience recording is a document completely separate from the world of commercial music. It is the product of people, shared from friend to friend, not packaged onto the shelves of record stores. This most quiet social/cultural layer is on every tape, and infuses the listening experience before during and after the tape is actually playing.

It is no wonder that the Grateful Dead Listening Guide is doing such a fine job of showing people the light of audience tapes. They work on so many levels, one only needs a slight nudge in their direction. From there, the tapes themselves begin to shed light on many things, not the least of which is the actual music itself as it flowed from the stage to the audience.

I once thought that an audience tape was only bringing us a small fraction of the listening experience at a Dead show, like how a photograph is a two dimensional take away from a four dimensional experience. But, when we consider everything “coming off the tape” when listening to audience recordings in particular, they appear more akin to the experience of discovering a rich layer of complexity hiding just below the surface of something we hitherto thought we fully comprehended. There is far more within them than a surface view can reveal, like fractals within fractals, and the sub atomic universe deeper within physical matter than any microscope can see.

It’s the crazy talk of a Deadhead, I know. But I struggle to find any more concrete means to explain the experience of the Dead’s music preserved under the glass of a pristine audience recording. That it is really there defies proof, yet the effects of its being there ripple into our more discernable perceptions of the experience. We know it's there because of the impact it leaves on us. People do turn on to audience tapes. The ear does tune to the spectrum of frequencies caught on tape after a short while allowing the listening experience to unfold like a blooming flower. A slight nudge really is enough to draw in the masses.

There is an invisible pied piper playing a siren song here – crazy as any deadhead out there. I’ve been drawn in by that song for a good long time, and I’m glad to see others hear it too.

Thursday, June 4, 2009

The Stories Of Jerry Moore

Jerry Moore

He Was A Friend Of Mine


I lived through the dawning of the Internet Age of Grateful Dead tape trading. I participated through our amazement that we could be so immediately in contact with other traders (by the thousands), all sharing lists and arranging trades instantaneously - so unlike "the good old days" - to the full explosion of high speed sharing which brought the real need for a trading community to its end.

While living through all of that, I built up a cassette tape collection (then CD collection) numbering in the thousands, and all the while enjoyed not only collecting the tapes, but collecting the stories. Hearing about the old days, talking to people, sharing long e-mails - this was an even more precious gift than the tapes themselves.

One of the ongoing stories was the one titled, "Jerry Moore." I call it a story, because he was no more than that to me (and pretty much my entire circle of trading partners). Yes, there were people who could referencing knowing him way back when. But after getting online in 1997, despite my own ever-widening circle, Jerry Moore was "lost."

Did he die? Had he fallen off the grid? Did someone last hear that he was battling heroin and had sold off all his tapes to pay rent? Had someone seen him retreat into a forest cave to live among the rocks? Quite literally, all of these stories were floating around, and the only thing that stitched them all together was the fact that Moore was "lost" to us; "us" being the world of obsessed tapers trying to digitally archive all the old master tapes we could find. Often were the times I pined over how very absent Jerry Moore was from our world.

And so he grew mythical. And so I found myself in possession of tape copies of many of his recordings not even knowing they were his. Tapes of 10/01/76, 11/04/77, and God knows how many others, all were more often simply "AUD - taper unknown." And this in the age of digital communication.

That all changed for me one day in 2002, when an East Coast taper I knew quietly let me in on the fact that he was acquainted with Moore himself - an old friend, and that Jerry was interested in archiving what was literally a closet full of his masters, complete with a TARDIS-like quality of holding far more music than could conceivably fit inside. A small group of us became MooresBoys, a Yahoo Group devoted to making trips to Jerry's place to help deal with the closet, and then go through the careful Analog>DAT transfers, followed by digital editing into the final drafts that would go into mass circulation.

Living half a country away from the closet, I only performed my tasks on the DAT>SHN/FLAC mastering side of the equation (though Jerry did send me his actual tapes from 10/02/76 - Jesus! He had taped the holiest of 1976 grails ever - 10/02/76!!), so I never got out to meet him in person. But that didn't stop the stories.

Jerry wrote. He wrote a great deal. He wrote and wrote and wrote and wrote. We conversed in e-mail over a multi-year period back then where I was blessed to learn a seemingly endless wealth of knowledge around the life and times of Jerry Moore, the taper. Stories of how he fashioned a telescoping golf ball retrieval tool into his mic stand of choice in the 70's. Stories of how his very first recording, Grateful Dead 06/10/73 was so disappointing to his ears that he recorded over it a month or two later with a sweet recording of the New Riders. Stories of cajoling other concert goers to record with his gear because his seats sucked (07/29/74). Stories of avoiding roadies. Stories on top of stories, back and forth in e-mail.

Reading Jerry Moore is sort of like reading James Joyce or Camus, or Aristotle, or Edward Albee. He wrote thickly. He loved words, perhaps more than music. And he loved vetting out the truth in people and their actions, as much as he loved the details around nearly every facet of what it took for him to do all that taping. I always had to read his e-mails more than once to make sure I was *getting* what he was saying, sometime afraid I was catching the complete opposite meaning in his prose. And I loved that about Jerry.

An example, from the very last e-mail exchange we had between us. He begins an answer to my question related to the appearance of other old tapers more recently on the Internet scene:

odd?
yes and noah.
seems obvious.
then again,
hmmm.

real world answer?
okay.

It was not the first time he played on my name like that, and, of course, the e-mail went on and on from there. It pains me deeply that there will be no more e-mails going on and on from Jerry Moore. I will miss him terribly. I have him to thank for elevating my joys in tape trading to their very highest, and that had nothing to do with the actual tapes he made, but just by being a friend of mine - just by turning from myth into a person with great stories.

So, the giant Internet tubes that changed our community forever get a big tip of the hat today. We can all remember and relive Jerry Moore's master cassesttes so easily now. He is certainly forever part of our living history in music. Just a few of his recordings have made it here onto the guide so far. So many more to come.

09/07/73
06/23/74
08/04/74
04/23/77
05/08/77
11/04/77

Thursday, May 21, 2009

Grateful Dead Listening Guide - Kindle Version

Amazon expanded Kindle subscriptions to offer blogs. I couldn’t resist setting up the Grateful Dead Listening Guide (Kindle Version) in the Amazon store. They are currently offering a free 14 day trial too. Got a Kindle? Check it out. Know someone with a Kindle whose life is missing that certain electronic layer of the Grateful Dead? Pass along the news!

Wednesday, May 13, 2009

Learning The Ropes To A Forgotten Trade

Way back when, if you decided that you were going to collect Grateful Dead concert tapes, it wasn’t something that was extremely easy to do. Back in the days of analog music preservation, it was not all that common for someone to have two cassette decks, and having two decks was only the bare minimum required in the secret door knock that would get you into this club. It certainly didn’t stop there. Once inside, there were many feats of strength you had to perform in order to be granted a seat at one of several tables that warmly understood you were a welcomed comrade ready to trade. It was barely enough to just be a lover of the Grateful Dead, who then felt something snap in your head telling you that you had to figure out a way into the club. You had to learn the rules. Now in general, everyone had some kind of help. Since you couldn’t easily stumble upon the world of Grateful Dead bootlegs without someone “turning you on” to tapes, you would generally know someone who had at least a faded and patched together map of the road in.

While the kindness of deadheads is a historical fact, being allowed to copy your friends tapes (or relying on your friend to copy them for you if you didn’t even have your second deck yet) would only get you so far. Eventually you’d run out of his tapes. By then, you were probably a full blown addict, and getting deeper into the club was now a necessity – life without more of those Summer ’73 tapes was just unthinkable. So, you had to wrangle up two cassette decks and start trading.

Deadhead tape traders were (are) a detail minded bunch, and there were many facets to tape trading that could either smooth or obstruct one’s way into the world of building a tape collection. Once inside door number one of this club, you would be quickly directed down a particular hallway based upon just which kind of cassette decks you owned. If you could afford it, or rigmarole some means of acquisition, possessing two Nakamichi tape decks could get you into the first class lounge of this tape trading Moose lodge (never do it without your fez on). Folks who went “all in” to this club were spending a pretty chunk of change to get set up with two Nak decks. Even as tape decks were speedily going down the path of the black and white TV and 8-track player, Naks were fetching top dollar, and this long after they went out of new deck production. There were some models that represented the crème de la crème, one of which was the Nak Dragon, a deck that would run you a minimum of $900 “used” in the 1990’s. This, while you could stroll into Target and pick up a fancy dual-well dubbing deck for under a hundred bucks (we have a special room in the club for you guys with dual-well decks, by the way). And yes, even in the Nak lounge, the Dragon guys would sit at their own table (the bastards!). It’s not that Nak folks wouldn’t trade with non-Nak folks, but it certainly helped. Those Nak decks really did make the very best possible copies of tapes. If you had the tapes I wanted, and Nak decks, I was going to do everything I could to find a way to score a trade with you.

Okay, so decks were important. I brandished a couple of Nak decks myself. But even more important was knowing how to use them. There were a few cardinal rules in trading that I’ve probably mentioned before: NO DOLBY; use good quality tapes (Maxell XLII’s and XLII-S’s); and set your levels right. That last rule was subject to serious debate. Because of this, you were best off to just ask your trading partner where they wanted their levels set (I was a +3 to +5 peak guy. Many others would say set them flat to +0). And then you had to actually set the levels. This required looking at the set list, picking a part of some tune (or tunes) that you knew generally produced a “loud” moment, fast forwarding to find that spot, and playing the tape to then set the recording peaks on deck two. I would generally seek out the end portion of a Sugar Magnolia, or the explosive start of an Other One. You had to take care, because blowing level setting would cast a negative picture in your trading partner’s eyes when it came to trading with you ever again.

It didn’t end there. Where do you want the set list and tape genealogy written out? Can I write on the j-cards? Back of the peel-and-stick tape label sheet? And special packaging instructions - did you know that we typically never ever mailed the plastic cases that cassette are stored in? They just break in transit. Rubber banding the tape with a special loop to prevent the hubs from spinning the tape loose while in the mail – I kid you not, we cared about all of this.

Rules. Rites of passage. Customs. When we weren’t blissed out the newest Dark Star to cross our paths, deadheads certainly were sticklers for details.

Wednesday, May 6, 2009

Social Deadworking

Grateful Dead 1971
I find myself drawn to the way the world of online Social Networking and the Grateful Dead have been crossing paths of late. I work in the field of Internet Marketing, and thus have an interesting perspective to see both forces at play. Recently, there has been a good deal of buzz around the way folks are twittering set lists while attending the current Dead tour, and the ensuing shock and disgruntled opinions around how this “new age” of communication technology is stabbing the magic of the Dead concert experience in the heart. It seems someone nabbed a complete set list before one of the shows even began, and was tweeting the songs prior to the band playing them, thus bursting the bubble of spontaneity for many folks. Beyond the simple fact that people have a choice whether to read up on these things while en rout to, or while attending a show, it is wild to see how the electronic age version of scribbling a set list down on some paper can stir such discord.

The fact of the matter is that we occasionally get more than we bargain for with all this technology. Today, we are all best friends with the guy who snuck a peak at the Dead’s set list before the show got started. 30 years ago, our friend would have emerged from back stage grinning broadly and immediately told us what he saw (this assuming there was a pre-show set list to see back then). We’d probably be thrilled at this window of insight, and then perhaps bemoan his telling us every song before the fact – or be amazed that he was able to remember the entire list long enough to retell it at all. But it would have all happened between perhaps a half dozen people, tops. Today, the pack of friends he tells is every human being who happens to be tuned in online. Now, instead of a few of us talking about this event, hundreds (thousands?) of us are amazed to find that we even had a friend nosing around back stage at a Dead show, let alone that he crushed all the excitement for those of us in attendance who thrive on the spontaneity of the band’s performance.

These are just the growing pains we suffer as we mesh our Grateful Dead community into the ever-evolving digital age. In some ways it’s not unlike the bitterness many deadheads felt when every single show turned up online, making the music that took some of us decades to track down and assemble into our personal tape collections instantly accessible to anyone with an Internet connection. It took a lot of years, but we got over it (most of us, anyway), and now the full online digital catalog is just part of life.

And I’d venture to say it’s the growing pains talking when people instinctively curse the advent of these technologies (Damn you Twitter! You harshed my buzz!). But what’s happening here is an evolution of the way our community ties itself together. Facebook, Twitter, blogs, they all serve as a new version of being signed up to the Grateful Dead’s mailing list as advertised in the bi-fold of the 1971 Skull & Roses record sleeve:

 Grateful Dead Freaks UniteToday we’re able to sign up for a myriad of communication channels, with the band and with each other, and many of them now flow in real time. But they serve the same purpose as the original – to unite us.

While anyone dabbling in these new Social Media tools will attest to a certain level of static noise coming over the channel, it is an interesting vantage point from which to experience the thoughts and goings on of our tribe, especially while there are events (the Spring 2009 Dead tour) going on in real time around us. For anyone struggling to wade into the water because of the sense that this information comes too quickly and from too many angles, it’s actually possible to clear away some static. First, you should accept that you’re going to miss stuff. You can’t keep up with all of it, so don’t rank the experience upon how much of the information you can consume. You can also impose a little filtering. With Twitter, for example, it’s possible to search tweets with an imposed theme via hashed keywords like #GratefulDead, or #TheDead. Check it out. It’s a little better than pouring though what seems like mindless noise, although there’s plenty of noise even within a themed search. As things like Twitter stick around, the ability to filter will only improve. There are many third party apps out there helping as well.

So, while the new world of Social Media catches many of us off guard, we should try to avoid rash decisions related to its value. It really just points to another skill we need to develop – learning how to best make use of our tools, even if that skill turns out to be the talent for dialing down the constant drone of Dead noise to an acceptable level. As we’ve seen with the evolution of audio technology, all new gadgetry needs to be accepted, learned, and adapted to best serve the community. We screwed up CDs big time when they first flooded into trading circles. For those of us who were there, we have countless piles of drink coasters made from Track At Once (TAO) burned discs with two second gaps between our Scarlets and Fires, and endless Sector Boundary Errors (SBE) leaving those annoying little blips between tracks. Eventually, we figured it all out, got over it, and wove the technology into our community. Thank goodness the price of blank discs plummeted so continually.

Eventually more and more technology will come along making the stuff we struggle with today seem completely normal. I eagerly await the day I can re-master all of my AUD transfers into some new holographic simulator that allows us to go back and feel like we are actually sitting 10th row center while Jerry and the boys play their hearts out in front of us. We’ll go to shows together without leaving the house. And yes, there will have to be a holographic parking lot scene with every show too.

Shall we go…?

Saturday, April 4, 2009

The Dead Are Live Again


The Dead 2009 tour is upon us, and deadheads all over the country are gearing up for the upcoming musical adventure. Having had the pleasure of being interviewed by Bill Kramer, journalist for The News Leader, a newspaper serving the Shenandoah Valley, it got me thinking about the events that are about to unfold. Portions of the interview were used in the article, The Dead to conjure their magic in Charlottesville. And this left me with a number of thoughts still bouncing around my head, many of which did not find their way into print.

I think folk’s anticipation of the upcoming tour of The Dead is mixed with excitement and melancholy dismissal. And I’ve found no way to personally come out on one side of the fence or the other. Those too young to have seen Jerry and the true Grateful Dead are blessed with the real chance to hop on the bus (2009’s version of it, at least), and experience not just the potential for great music, but the entire “scene” from the parking lot and beyond. There’s no denying the power of tapping into a sea of people who all seem to “get” what you get. The Dead culture lives on, and that’s very good. Yes, it has changed dramatically over the years. But we were talking about the way it was changing dramatically way back in 1989 too. And they were saying similar stuff in 1979, and probably 1969. Personally, I lean hard on the melancholy side of things. I miss Jerry Garcia. A lot.

For those old enough to have been to shows while we had Jerry, the Dead 2009 tour holds the promise of our “scene” coming together again. However, most deadheads will go through some resetting of expectations due to the absence of Garcia, and that itself can be a softly sad experience. It’s a mixed bag for sure. As I was quoted in the article, in the end, if you focus on the here and now, the tour holds the power to connect musician, music, and audience in that wonderful dance the Grateful Dead did for so many years. I’d rather have them out there playing, than not playing at all.

Bill asked me if all the musical incarnations that the surviving members have been exploring post-GD would impact The Dead on the 2009 tour. Without a doubt, they will. They can only enhance things. The members of the Dead follow their musical passion much like Jazz artists. Every night has to find some inroad into discovery and growth. You can’t do that without drawing on what you did last night, last week, or last decade. Sure they may be cynically thought of as the best Grateful Dead cover band of all time, but they are still more truly artistic than a lot of what’s on the road these days.

On the subject of the Dead and their commercialization, the reaction to ticket prices for this tour sees opinions vary widely. Are they sellouts? Are they capitalizing on the past? Can we blame them for that? It goes on and on. Despite all the ups and downs around this, it is clear that the power of catching the closest thing to a live Grateful Dead show is mighty. There’s no denying the call down by the river side to hear Uncle John’s Band one more time. And perhaps The Dead will bring Summer on just a little sooner for us all. It’s early April here around Chicago, and I think I can speak for most of us when I say we’re all feeling pretty overdue for the change of seasons right about now.

Tuesday, March 31, 2009

DeadListening on Twitter


The Grateful Dead Listening Guide is now on Twitter!
(follow deadlistening now)

Without new technology this site would never have come into being. The idea for the GDLG came in response to what I felt were drawbacks and roadblocks born from the benefits associated with our new digital age bringing all Dead shows to our fingertips. It becomes an interestingly blurry distinction, or perhaps more so, an uroboros-like connotation, which leaves it hard to call the technology outright bad, or good. Without its drawbacks, I would not have found an avenue into the pleasure of my own creative output here. We wouldn’t have all the Dead shows online if not for the dedication of a well connected community, and we wouldn’t have seen the entire face of our trading community turned on its ear if not for the music having made it online. One has fed the other, and back again.

That said, there is also new communication technology springing up all the time. On the surface it can seem to only complicate the angles from which we get our information. But the Internet world is one of constant change. One’s existence online has become far more than a single webpage. Groups, companies, and people now have a “web presence,” and this spreads across multiple platforms and communication channels – I beg your pardon. That’s my “day job” persona talking.

I know some of you are already “fans” of the GDLG blog page on Facebook, and I’d encourage and welcome any Facebook users here to pop on over and join the group there – not that there’s anything particularly unique happening on that page. I keep waiting for Facebook to improve the usefulness of the blog pages in general. Regardless, I’d love to keep building the community there. Come on by and become a fan.

The jury may still be out on how good or bad all of these Social Networks are, but they are here just the same. Take Twitter. Good? Bad? I have no clue. My gut reaction is that it’s as much an intrusive little bother into the flow my day, as it is a unique way to keep up with people I know. And in the spirit of accepting new technology as having as much potential for good as bad, I’ve launched a DeadlListening specific Twitter account.

Do you tweet? Whether that question is completely baffling to you or not, why not stop by and consider following the GDLG on Twitter? And to be sure, not following DeadListening on Twitter will not leave you out of any loop. As you’ll see from the most recent tweets, I’m not plumbing the deepest Grateful Dead wisdoms on Twitter. It’s just a slightly more personal (and decidedly less significant) way to keep in touch over the Internet tubes.

I look forward to seeing you, everywhere.

Saturday, March 14, 2009

1970 Study – Musical Soul Expander

Jerry Garcia 1970
I’ve gone on record saying this before, but it’s worth repeating: While 1973 is generally my personal favorite year of Grateful Dead music, 1970 might truly be the best year of them all.

The year stands out for me because it is one of convergence – the unanimous kings of pure psychedelic mastery merging with their own soul stirring progress into consummate songwriting which calls to mind a certain timeless Americana/Folklore campfire intimacy. Rooted in 1969, when they first started folding this acoustic element into shows, it reveals the Dead as an even more multifaceted jewel than anyone could have imagined over the previous four years. The Grateful Dead were riding a wave of pure creativity in 1970 which saw them artfully playing well worn strings while also inventing new instruments at the same time.

An evening with the Grateful Dead was now something altogether epic, spanning the relaxed intimacy of an opening acoustic set, followed by the amped up Psychedelic Country twang of a New Riders Of The Purple Sage set (complete with Jerry on pedal steel and Mickey on drums), capped by the Electric Dead at full force. “Mama, mama, many worlds I’ve come since I first left home.”

Grateful Dead 1970With this multidimensional musical energy at full throttle, 1970 also seems to best encapsulate something of the real roots of the subculture documentation of the band’s musical history. Great swaths of the Dead’s output this year are missing from the Vault completely, due in no small part to soundman Owsley “Bear” Stanley ending up in jail (it was he who was so instrumental in all the shows being recorded from the beginning), and the loose and unsecured manner in which the band’s soundboard tapes were protectively archived (master reels had a way of “walking out” of the vault). As the luck of timing would have it, by 1970 the growth of the Dead’s fan base, and audience tapers along with them, meant that even while large chunks of the year were either going absent from the band’s personal archive, or never even making it in, many of the missing holes actually were documented in the organic archiving of the intrepid tapers of that day – the grandfathers of the Dead bootleg audience tape phenomena.

It is no understatement to say that a lot of the audience tapes from 1970 are God awful wrenching on the ears. And sometimes these recordings with the worst sound quality are all we have as a clouded, scratched, and muddied lens into some of the greatest Dead music of all time (check out 04/24/70 Mammoth Gardens sometime to get this point completely – brutal on the ears, yet possessing a Dark Star and Eleven to rival all others).

Defying the odds stacked up by the band’s challenge to record and preserve their own output, combined with the field recording challenges of the era, there are still soundboard and audience tapes from 1970 which serve as shining jewels in the band’s deserved crown. With regard to the audience tapes in particular, they are often all there is on tape from some amazingly pivotal moments in the Dead’s concert history. These aural documents are plentiful enough to bring ample joy to those tape collectors out there who recognize the glory of 1970 Grateful Dead, and whose ears are seasoned enough to be unencumbered by what those perhaps less initiated might find as barriers to the music itself.

No doubt, fully appreciating even the best AUDs of 1970 requires the listener to have traveled a bit down the road of AUD tapes in general. I often mention that an AUD tape can require a bit of time for one’s ear to acclimate – sometime a few minutes, or a song or two. When it comes to 1970, this acclimation process can take a good deal longer, and is not always measured by listening to a single tape. I know for myself, after getting a number of 1970 AUDs early on in my trading experience, it wasn’t until I had gone down a longer road of building an appreciation for audience tapes in general, and came back to these ‘70 tapes, that I found my ears completely open to the music on these recordings.

This apparent rite of passage makes the joy within this music somehow more precious and special – the known futility of thinking we could hand over what we feel are actually good sounding tapes like 06/24/70, or 05/07/70 to a person never before exposed to audience tapes and believe they would be able to fully circumvent the auditory barriers which block total access to the magic within. They can’t. And thus, shows like this takes on an air of existing in some inner circle, or some secret room within the halls of the Grateful Dead tape collector’s mansion. Many people can’t find the room, because they haven’t passed through the outer chambers yet. But, the journey has its rewards, and is worth all the trials one’s ears might face in making it in.

While it had its own roots in 1969, 1970 ushered in the model of musical journeying that embodied the Grateful Dead forever onward. While there is no denying the pure primal pleasure found in the intense uninterrupted psychedelia of the years before, it seems that when the Dead started to spread their wings and explore the accessibility of acoustic roots, their hypnotic connection to the universal musical soul expanded even further.

Tuesday, February 3, 2009

Happy Anniversary


The Guide celebrates having one year under its belt today. In the first year we’ve logged 70 show reviews. If viewed as being a brand new tape collector, that’s a pretty nice collection of shows to have gathered in a year’s time. Not an overwhelming number, but enough to start causing our non-Deadhead friends to think very seriously that we have some kind of problem, just the same.

In the old days this would represent something on the order of 160 cassette tapes – definitely time to start building some nice wooden cassette racks for the wall! Spread out over a year, we might not even have noticed that we dropped something on the order of $425 on our new cassette habit (to say little of stamps and bubble envelopes). Also worth recognizing is the fact that we would have probably spent a good deal of time sending a fair amount of this music out to other like-minded traders, turning other folks on to some amazing music.

That’s one thing about the Grateful Dead tape trading scene – it resonates with, and follows the laws of balance in the universe. There is a built in regulator switch to tape trading that makes it almost impossible not to share out at least as much music as you accept in. And the more you give, the more you get. It is (was) not uncommon to be gifted tapes pretty regularly, and this then would inspire us to do more of the same. Whether it be adding an extra tape or two in a trade just because you really wanted to share some show that wasn’t part of a trade request, or the handing out of tapes to strangers at a gas station when you see with a Grateful Dead bumper sticker on their car, this sort of stuff went on regularly in tape trading.

I know we touched on this a while back, but it’s also worth recognizing that after a year of this trading, our significant other has not been blind to our new found zeal for something having altogether nothing to do with said “other.” We’re probably spending a bit more time than could be rationalized under headphones, or in the basement. Does she/he know about that $425 bucks!?! And to be sure, we are catching grief for always exiting the normal activities of life every 46 minutes to go flip a tape – and I mean always.

The fact that we seemed powerless to stop these things was a telltale sign that we were in the right place. And I suppose that while the onset of our “digital age” has changed the very nature of our trading community forever, we can be thankful that so much music is now so easily accessible in forums such as this and others across the net. And the give and take is still alive and well. I can’t express how much pleasure I get from knowing how appreciative folks are about the content of this site. That’s what I’m getting in trade – the knowledge that I’m achieving a bit of my intended goal for the guide. Thank you all for that.

If the first days are the hardest days, we shouldn’t worry now about our ability to explore more great music in year two of the Grateful Dead Listening Guide. Whether you started reading a year ago, or have only recently stumbled into our corner of the web, I’m glad to have you along. The wide readership, responses, and always positive feedback are constant reminders that starting this thing was a good idea. I look forward to continuing to explore the music and musical spirituality that inspires me to write and share my thoughts with you all.

You can always blame that grizzled old Deadhead that lives across the street when your friends look at you with an air of confusion. Listen to the music play!

Saturday, January 10, 2009

1974 July 21 - Hollywood Bowl

Gratful Dead 07-21-74 Hollywood Bowl
GRATEFUL DEAD
Sunday, July 21, 1974
Hollywood Bowl, Los Angeles, CA


There is no denying it. The Grateful Dead’s sound system in 1974 was a sonic masterpiece. As the stories go, experiencing the Wall Of Sound wasn’t something of being completely flattened by some tidal wave of music. Rather, folks who were there describe how the music wasn’t overwhelmingly loud - you could converse with the people around you. But the music was extremely powerful, and breathtakingly clear, invoking not the slightest amount of ear fatigue even when the band would roar. And on the subject of roaring power, there was no shortage of it fueling the speakers themselves. The 75-ton Wall ran with 26,400 watts of power, and could maintain its optimal sound quality at a distance of two football fields length from the stage, and “acceptable” sound quality at a distance of a ¼ mile, with wind being the only enemy over great distances. More tasty spec info can be found in the Wikipedia entry for the Wall.

It’s from Wall Of Sound tapes that I first began to cement my firm belief that there is no better way to enjoy a good AUD tape than when it’s an outdoor recording. When you combine a good audience tape, with the great outdoors, and the Wall Of Sound, you find yourself primed to experience some of the finest examples of live music field recordings out there.

Wall Of Sound 1974The Wall Of Sound came and went quickly, only used throughout most of 1974 (though 1973 was also spent with a prototype sound system based on a similar premise). Until we master time travel, the best way to relive the Wall’s existence is through the AUD tapes that have been preserved since that year. I’m sure I’ve said it before, but, don’t be fooled. Soundboard tapes from 1974 are not the Wall Of Sound. In order to get as close as we can to its pure electricity and the luscious warm glow of tone, let alone the quadraphonic amplification of Phil’s bass, we simply must slip in an AUD tape, and let it roll. And let it roll loud.

1974 delivered a few more handy gifts beyond the Wall itself. It also saw the band absolutely peaking in their ability to stoke the fires of their musical muse, molding it like clay into whatever direction and shape they wished. The sound system was privileged to back a library of music that knows nearly no equal. That, and 1974 saw a very convenient upsurge in actual audience tapers who had really mastered their craft over the last few years. All across the country, there were people armed and ready with the equipment and skills to step up to the Wall and bring a slice of the listening experience back home with them. Lucky us.

Hollywood Bowl - Los Angeles, CANow, let’s visit the Hollywood Bowl for the show on July 21st, 1974. For this show we currently have no soundboard in circulation whatsoever.

[Hey, quick side note: This is not the first time that the GDLG has featured a review of a show for which no soundboard circulates. And in two of these other instances (07/31/71 and 08/06/71), the soundboards have actually made it into circulation (commercially, even) since the penning of their reviews. I don’t mean to start a trend here, but I’m just sayin’…]

Actually, the lack of a SBD tape is of little matter for this date, because we had Rob Bertrando in attendance with his Sony ECM-22P mics and TC-152SD deck on hand (let alone all the blank tape, batteries, and cables) sitting up close - certainly well within two football field’s length ;-), ready to preserve the event.

It’s Summer 1974, and there’s little not to like from the Grateful Dead at this time. The entire show is a wonderful aural experience, culminating with a massive Playin’ In The Band sandwich in the second set featuring some unique song pairings and packed with typical 1974 jamming that demonstrates the full range of talents the band had mastered by this juncture. Set one contains a sweetly delivered Mississippi Half Step > It Must Have Been The Roses, always a well matched pair. The transition into Roses is lovely. And probably one of the coolest additions to the Dead’s playlist in 1974 was Scarlet Begonias. This evening’s rendition is no slouch, providing a great example of the way the band could twist their personal brand of psychedelic rock into mid-70’s funk. The trade off for having this entire fantastic tape is the inevitable tape flip six and a half minutes into the song. We end up losing what was likely another four or five minutes of jamming at least. The set wraps up with Around & Around, and then comes Seastones.

Phil Lesh 1974Like it or not, you’re going to have to ingest some Seastones if you’re going to call yourself a Dead tape collector. Phil Lesh, and Ned Lagin (pronounced “Lay-Gen” as in “generation”) would fill what amounted to a set 1.5 with their improvisational electronic soundscapes throughout 1974. About as foreign sounding as one can imagine, Seastones pushed the Wall Of Sound into the outer space of experimental music completely. This AUD tape provides a wonderful document of the piece, complete with ample crowd chatter trying to come to terms with what the heck was coming off the stage for 13 minutes.

Set two opens with China Cat Sunflower > I Know You Rider, the Wall giving off its sensational spectrum of frequencies as the crowd welcomes the old favorite. 1974 was a year of wonderful China>Riders, most all of them seeing a large amount of transitional jamming from one song to the other. This version is well performed and features the lovely four chord step down theme just before they make it into I Know You Rider, always a highlight in the China>Riders from ’74.

As if the AUD doesn’t sound good enough all the way through, as the Playin’ jam begins, the sound spectrum seems to open up in all directions as Bobby flips on his phasing/flanging effect. It’s as if some veil we couldn’t perceive at all has been whisked away. Weir’s tone and chord voicing here is absolute perfection. The rest of the band paints a picture under his delivery, and eventually Garcia rises over the top, soon allowing his wha-wha pedal to work at full force. Dynamite 1974 yummies raining down from everywhere, the music-scape tunnels, spirals, and dances.

Grateful Dead - July 21 1974The jam goes a long way in demonstrating the development of the band to its point of mastery in 1974. Not only do they flow from passage to passage lending a sense of slow turning panes of thick stained glass which reshape and redefine the entire landscape before us, but again and again there rises and recedes the trembling chaotic space so often found in 1974, as if the music is teetering over the edge into complete deconstruction. Throughout the jam, this space never fully washes everything else away. Rather, it ebbs and flows in and out of consciousness, like a mystery occasionally revealing its truth to us, then vanishing again. The way this threads itself in and out of the otherwise musical improvisational explorations of the band shows just how on top of their game the Dead were here. And the sound quality of the tape throughout is stunning, pure full-range power surging through the air. Twenty one minutes pass and we’ve travelled to many a land.

Playin’ edges into Spanish Jam at Bobby’s lead, but never fully forms, quickly redirected into Wharf Rat. From here there’s the unique pairing segue into Truckin’. About one minute into Truckin’ there’s a tape flip which, if you listen real close in the right channel, you can hear coming as Bertrando and a buddy discuss pulling it off. Truckin’ lifts the crowd energy and thunders along into a nice bopping exit segment which then turns into a sultry Nobody’s Jam, and then back to Playin’ In The Band. Nice.

This tape makes easy work of coming to appreciate the Wall Of Sound and outdoor audience recordings of the historic sound system. The recording has been in circulation forever, but the transfer from December 2007, done at the hands of the MOTB team, elevates the sound quality more than ever before. Enjoy!

07/21/74 AUD etree source info

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