mountain bed

Somewhere in The Great Beyond my dear friend Eric Saltzmann ("Saltine") is smiling and saying, "It's about time" right about now if that stuff exists. He used to rave about 6/23/74, and that was his favorite Dark Star. I never agreed with him on that - he was a lawyer (public defender) and we used to argue about shit like that, based on the evidence haha. But that is an interesting Star - it rarely grazes on the main theme and is quite inventive imo.

I'm of the view that if the board was dialed in from the first set on at all 40 Wall shows it might have been a box set, like Europe '72 or Spring '90. Not that the excellence was sustained for the whole 7 months (it was not) but it was still miles above many other tours later on. 

I hope the Playin from 6/22 is on the bonus disc. That is a motherfucker of a Playin.

 

 

Meanwhile I keep hearing two reasonable, compelling and contradictory arguments: 

 

1) you can't win a purple state with a radically progressive politician

2) no centrist democrat has won a presidential election in the past couple decades (see Kerry, Gore etc)

Those are reasonable opinions. My take from that might be as you may stand a better chance with a centrist in battleground states you could lose a more hard left state to progressives that go third party, rather than the establishment candidate. But I don't know. I don't know what to think about polling anymore. Nate Silver was Nostradamus before Nov. '16. All bets are off the table.

Also, (especially) viewed now - 10 years later - Obama would be considered centrist. Hell, he WAS centrist. How else would he have been elected a second time? Nothing he got accomplished would seem radical today for sure.

I've only seen RHCP twice, once in '86 with Hillel, and then again in November '88 - which I think was John's first tour with the band. In my opinion he's easily the most accomplished guitarist they ever had.

I'm a lifelong Cubs fan, firstly. I MAY be the only Cubs fan on here whose favorite AL team is the Sox. Hey, I don't live in The Region so I'm not subject to the territorial pissings, I DO love the city. Thankfully Channel 9 & 44 were both on my TV from about 1973 so I was able as a kid to watch Cubs in the afternoon and Sox at night. I've heard all the announcing combos since. I was not a fan of Harrelson. At all. But as Chisox said, good for him. 

The Fixx w Royston Langdon (Spacehog) opening at Tupelo Music Hall in Derry, NH.

{1st time I’ll be out since Thanksgiving due to a stomach bug}

The Fixx? Nice! Is it still Cy, Jamie, Rupert, Dan & Adam?

I saw them 35 years ago on the Phantoms Tour and I enjoyed it quite a bit. Really great band in that first half of the 80s.

Always a part of my holiday season:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fD2_gx9PrZc

Haha. I heard that one but can’t remember which show that was!

 

I listened to Roadcase 24 last night. So good. Listening to 25 tonight.

 

Mountain Bed - which show are you referring to exactly? Definitely want to listen ASAP!

12/19/13. Enjoy!

Not a popular POV around here, but that remains my all-time favorite lineup. Jeff, John, Glenn & Leroy, with Mikeal coming aboard in 2002. Jeff didn't want to have to be lead guitar and front man--which is understandable--but man, it was great watching him play lead all night in those days.

I agree. That's a highly interesting period, and unique. I got on board in '02 and that lineup still makes me very sentimental about how exciting it was.

Roadcases 24-27, Jeff solo at Largo in December 2013. Jeff's under the weather and does about as much chatting as he does playing. 

Kidsmoke sent my wife  a copy of 12/19 when she got out of hospital last year. I sometimes think the guy could have made a decent living as a comedian if he wouldn't have picked up music. That is a REALLY funny banter-related show.

Everyone's looking for different things. I always have tons of fun and get a lot of joy from seeing Phish. Friday was a particularly special night (although the Saturday show totally killed) as I was there with my 29 year old son on the exact 22nd anniversary of his (and his sister's) first show (the Runaway Jam show in Worcester). So that was extra fun, although he would have much preferred the Saturday show. 

 

Speaking of Big Cypress, I've been listening to a podcast series about Cypress, "After Midnight, Phish's Big Cypress Festival." Very interesting. 

I absolutely understand you. If I was honest with myself I'd admit that much of my ambivalence about this is (I guess!) I'm so biased about the greatness of a lot of that old stuff that that  sometimes prevents me from living in the moment with new stuff - "Oh man...No Man's? I was really thinking it was time for Gumbo".  I'm the same with Wilco truth be told. But I wouldn't testify on the stand about any of this, I'll say that ha ha.

I guess I turned into Homer at some point.

HS: PLAY TAKIN' CARE OF BUSINESS! WHY WON'T YOU PLAY TAKIN' CARE OF BUSINESS!

BTO: We'd like to play one from our latest record..

HS: NO NEW STUFF! PLAY TAKIN' CARE OF BUSINESS NOW!

Turning back the calendar, Phish in Providence Friday and Saturday

 I rarely listen to much after The Island Tour at home. It felt to me the the beginning of a farewell of that period (of sorts) - culminating in Cypress. I would have accepted it ending right then and there.

Netflix aired The Irishman Wednesday night and it was totally engrossing to me the whole time - 3.5 hours. In this day and age that is crazy-long but it deserved the treatment. It was really nice how it stuck to history most of the way. After reading Lawrence O'Donnell's EXCELLENT book on 1968 (Playing With Fire) and any number of JFK/RFK bios you get a real feel for the antipathy between the people involved. 

No spoilers, just make sure you see it. 

That helicopter was so overloaded. You can see people sitting on others' laps before it takes off. It had a capacity for 10 but they crammed 17 into it, as if they were fleeing a zombie apocalypse... 

Yeah, it's one of the most edgy things I've ever seen in a Rock doc. The whole thing is an almost non-stop nightmare, but when they're trying to GTFO of there...

Well don't waste any more time, get this one going! '73 Dead always goes to the top of my new release playlist

I could not agree more. I love all the years in that period but there's just some X Factor at work in 73 that is incomparable. There's a level of preciseness and clarity that makes almost any song in a show really interesting. 3 minute songs, songs you normally might consider "stock" or a "throwaway". They can all sparkle.

Maybe it's because of the sheer amount of shows Garcia was playing then. There's around 75 GD shows that year, maybe 40-50 with Merl, add in the (to me) possibly most important factor - the 25 or so O&ITW shows with Jerry on banjo. The dude's chops were at an alltime high. THEN he gets the NYE holiday off - no Dead show. So he apparently HAD to go sit in with the Allmans at the Cow Palace! He could have had a NYE at home...but nooooo! 

It's great to hear Jerry on that pedal steel.

Definitely. It's just different from other, more established players on the instrument at that time. 

I remember David and/or Marmaduke talking about how hard all those marathon gigs (1 set on acoustic, one on pedal steel, 2 on electric) eventually became for Garcia. He was ready to quit doing the Riders' set and they were like, "Hold on, we gotta get the right guy, he'll be here soon!". And they get a real motherfucker - Buddy Cage. But that was when the LSD went out of their music and they became a great harder-core country band. Garcia's lines on the steel - as amateurish as they may be - still had his trademark psychedelic curl at the end of a phrase. It doesn't sound 'traditional'. Not that traditional is bad, it's just that he was able to put his own stamp on the thing.

Thanks for that, Oil Can. There's been so much written about this but it's always interesting no matter the viewpoint. The most recent thing I've read that dealt with "What happened at Altamont?" was Sam Cutler's book. You really get an insider's insider's account from that one, and it goes on for chapter after chapter. Fascinating stuff on what was essentially a fucking horror show almost from its conception.

There also a new Riders of The Purple Sage boxset coming out from the Owsley Foundation. 

This sounds very interesting. Between about 15 and 20 years ago I was on a NRPS tree ran by a guy named Noah Weiner. The guy I got my stuff from was Barry Barnes. He did a lot of work with the GD Compendiums, really nice guy. I got a couple of hundred hours from that group - a lot, if not most of the FMs from the Dead radio broadcasts in '71. There was a '69 show that was just McDuke & Garcia in some small room, I'm having a brain fart on the name!

Anyway, this is 3 shows of VERY early Riders. I'll have to look at the price because The Dead keeps me pretty broke haha.

Bookmark this post. Wilco is in by 2025, maybe sooner.

 

Edit: I guess I should add my reasoning. It seems like YHF is just too universally lauded as a classic and important LP to ignore.

YHF is their DSOTM, etc. etc. I think it's their best record.

I didn't see Wilco live until 2002. YHF was the first record I heard. I IMMEDIATELY thought, "WOW. Now THIS is really something!" Of course, I went backward and got BT, ST, AM. I was super impressed by how different every record was. I think they'll get in easily - maybe not first ballot, but not long after that. They've always had critics/media digging them. 

A few thoughts about the last few years of Dave's yearly series:

- Generally speaking, '18 & '19 were solid. I guess we can just go on an assumption that '77 will get a shout out every year. I love everything, but '77 is that meal you eat a lot - you know it'll taste good but maybe we could put something different on the menu? I loved that we had the first show of the 70s and one of the last in '19. The 2018 Boise '83 show was a very pleasant surprise.

- So for 2020, what would you think should be this next year's early Brent Era selection (if there is one, there had better be!)? I personally find it hard to believe that out of 36 Dick's, 17 Road Trips, and now 33 Dave's - plus numerous singular releases and a box set every year - that 1984 has had exactly ONE show put out there, the 10/12 from the 30 Trips box. I'm well aware that '84 is a very hit/miss year, but the under-representation is pretty sad. Anyone who's familiar with that year knows there's some hot shows. So...my vote is for a good HQ '84 show.

The one thing I'd REALLY like to see is the (as yet uncompleted) final Soundgarden studio album

They were working on one at the time of Chris' passing, they have enough material for a record. Kim, Ben and Matt all want to do this. The thing that's missing for completion are the files for Chris' vocals - I believe they are still held by his estate (Vicky). 

Kim did an interview with Eddie Trunk earlier this week and he's pretty positive this will all be worked out and that an album will happen. So I hope it's sooner than later.

A few random thoughts:

- Congrats to the Nats. You were a fun team to watch, and we're all the better for you guys doing what you did. Addendum: Zimmerman, retire. Go out on top. You're an ambassador for the game now. Don't 'chase the dragon.

-. Willson Contreras is rumored to be very available. I almost cannot believe that. 

- Is Cole the first 40 million dollar man?

I take that back. Listening to Today in Grateful Dead History, Worcester 11/5/85. Lemieux says Walton brought almost the entire team to this show, so this is probably what I was referring to. 

Did anyone here see the PPV of 12/31/87 where between sets Tom Davis interviews Kesey, Bird, McHale, and possibly someone else (?). It's all fun and games until Kesey makes a comment about "Well, we've all smoked pot, we have that in common!", and you can visibly see Bird (a face for a stupid amount of corporations, including the Celtics) immediately get REAL uncomfortable. It's really something.

Below is a link for all the Garcia stuff up for bid. You ain't kiddin' about the comic books, jw -- quite a bit of them.

 

https://www.bonhams.com/auctions/25922/#/!

True story: one time I was lucky enough to have dinner with The David Nelson Band before a show at my friend's bar in Charleston SC. After dinner David and I retired to a sun room for a cig. I was NOT gonna blow it by asking about Jerry, NRPS, or even music. He brought up the subject of comic books - of which I had a passing knowledge  - and the guy had an encyclopedic knowledge of the stuff, mentioned his collection, etc. On that and The Civil War (I had brought up just seeing the Burns doc) the man was an absolute authority on both subjects, and I was left dumbstruck by how amiable and scholarly he was.

Not that this has anything to do with anything, but I guess he was one of Garcia's oldest and dearest musical buddies and they must have shared some of the same obsessions. Plus, I just wanted to brag because it was one of the best nights of my life. I turned 40 a couple of days later. Pretty nice early birthday present. 

The next Dave's Pick will be the Dekalb show from 10/29/77. It's a little hard to find the info from the sub page, but Dave talks about it in the video: https://store.dead.net/dave-s-picks-2020-subscription.html

OK, first off I like this show quite a bit. There are stellar versions of quite a few tunes, even if they don't make anyone's "Top" list. It's a solid show for the period. But here's why I'm not the biggest fan of this tour, or the Spring tour that follows: there's some serious repetitiveness going on with the setlist - there were 25 songs played at least 20 times in about 80 shows, Estimated appears nearly every night, and Samson every other night, just to start. Promised opened nearly a quarter of the shows, there's a shit ton of Bertha Good Lovin's, etc etc. Eyes was played 25% of the time, the version here is very good. 

This is the tour where I hear Mickey's foot more than ever before. This is a ROCK version of GD, subtlety took a back seat many times. It's played well, no question. But the tours from '76 and then post-Egypt is much looser and jazz-like. It's just a matter of preference, no one here has to agree with me. 

Charile Miller for official Grateful Dead archivist!! He would do it the right way!

We might get a little more 80-85 Brent Era if that was to happen. The dude puts in the time with what he does.