Shug

And Pat looked WAAAYY into it with his vocals , keys and xylophone and banjo but especially when he picked up a guitar! He was rocking out!

I agree best show I’ve seen since night one of the Ace Hotel Los Angeles run a few years ago. Random Name Generator has gotten positively rocking!! If I ever was a child has also developed into a strong live song . I think they sometimes take awhile for the live arrangements to fully develop. Even the new songs were tight and solid as well as nuanced, exactly what I was hoping for after being underwhelmed with the studio versions. When Wilco are inspired and locked in sync, they are in a class by themselves and when they play their Rolling Stones-style rock they are the greatest! Lighting is spectacular too, what a fantastic show!!

PM or email me if interested shug909 at yahoo dot

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

He seems like he'll say any bullshit the marketers tell him to.   I have a hard time respecting his opinion after he says every release is incredible, awesome, unique, best show, blah blah blah when some are great, some are good and many are mediocre, but they all get the same hyperbolic praise from him.  And he's such a dork.  Surely there is someone who deserves that job more and would be better at it than him, if the company were willing to hire someone who was in it for the fans and for the music, not the profit.  They probably got the best man for the job for what their priorities are.

Have you heard the previous night? Pretty much my go-to versions of Alabama > Greatest Story, On The Road Again, West L.A. and Throwing Stones >

Touch Of Grey. Decent Morning Dew toward the end, too!

Re: 10-9-82 Frost.  I liked it better than I remembered!  Strangely, the Dupree's stood out for me.  This seems to be a pretty much mistake free show, except for Bob in Truckin' [what's new? ] and Jerry is really solid in his playing throughout.  Not as many peak crescendos on a casual listen. I like the middle jam in the proto Throwing Stones, too.  I'm not usually a fan of the early versions of songs, like the In The Dark songs in '82 and '83, but this was a welcome change of arrangement for me.  Thanks for the rec!

Have you heard the previous night? Pretty much my go-to versions of Alabama > Greatest Story, On The Road Again, West L.A. and Throwing Stones >

Touch Of Grey. Decent Morning Dew toward the end, too!

I have and will give the whole thing another spin at your rec.  I like to do composite compilations of stuff from a given year and these shows were high on the list for my 1982 ones.

Music Never Stopped 10-9 Frost

Bertha 8-10 Iowa

Minglewood 10-10 Frost

Sugaree 10-10 Frost

Beat It On Down The Line 8-10 Iowa

They Love Each Other 4-14 Glenn Falls

Mama Tried 4-6 Philly

Candyman 4-6 Philly

Lazy Lightning 8-6 St Paul

Jackaroe 4-6 Philly

To Lay Me Down 8-3 Kansas City

Women Are Smarter 8-3 KC

Let It Grow 9-11 West Palm Beach

Deal 10-9 Frost

China>Rider 10-10 Frost

Playin' 10-10 Frost

Crazy Fingers 10-10 Frost

Sailor>Saint 10-10 Frost

Space 9-17 Portland ME

Spanish jam 9-17 Portland

Other One 9-17 Portland

Going Down The Road 9-17 Portland

Morning Dew 9-17 Portland

Sugar Mags 9-17 Portland

US Blues 9-17 Portland

Brokedown Palace 9-24 Syracuse

I hope my post didn't come across as argumentative.  That wasn't my intent, but I was in a mood this morning, so there might be some aggro tone there that was unwarranted.

 

Anyway, I agree with you about setlist variation.  I like being surprised. They've generally done a pretty good job of changing up the setlist at the shows I've seen (I usually only see one show per tour), but there are still a lot of songs I've never see them play, and a number of songs they've almost always played. 

No worries!  Kindness appreciated, thanks!

37 years ago today. I like the previous night better, though I realize most people prefer this show. Frost box set one day? Hmm.

 

https://archive.org/details/gd82-10-10.sbd.sacks.338.sbefail.shnf

 

10/10/82 - Frost Amphitheater, Palo Alto, CA

I: Minglewood Blues-> Sugaree-> Little Red Rooster, Tennessee Jed, Cassidy, Loser, Far From Me, Looks Like Rain-> China Cat Sunflower-> I Know You Rider

II: Playin' In The Band-> Crazy Fingers-> Lost Sailor-> Saint Of Circumstance-> Touch Of Gray-> Drums-> The Wheel-> Throwing Stones-> Not Fade Away-> Black Peter-> Sugar Magnolia, E:Satisfaction-> E: It's All Over Now Baby Blue

I've been listening to this one a bunch lately, I especially love the smokin' Minglewood opener!  They could've used that one in the opening slot alot more, IMO. Slides into a real strong Sugaree, too.  What a great place to see the Dead, only caught them there once, the last year in 1989, that was a good high day!

It could be that he was consciously using a contemporary reference for the sake of modern audiences, many of whom weren't alive to see the Dead.   There's no chance whatsoever that John is unaware the Dead came before Phish, or was slighting them in any way.  Wilco did a tour with Bob Weir and played Grateful Dead songs on sage with him.  The Dead don't need to be buffed up any more than they already are. 

 

Also, do we know for sure that the Dead are the pioneers of setlist variety?  Or have they simply been marketed that way?   There were probably countless long-forgotten folk artists that knew thousands of songs and could do ten times more shows with no repeats than the Dead.  

I was more joking than being serious, I don't really think he was slighting the Dead or they need more credit.  I don't know of any other rock band or a touring band of any other kind of music before the Dead that pioneered setlist variety more than they did. It wasn't til the early 80s really, that the no repeats in three nights pattern started with the Dead but it certainly made people consider a three night run in a given city something where you didn't think twice about going all three nights.  The expectation was so set in stone that some Heads would complain if a single song was repeated in a three night stand!  "they played Black Peter on night one, I can't believe they did it again on night three!"

I think with all the songs Wilco can pull out after long periods unplayed and then freaking nail it, they have more than enough skill and talent to do no repeats, as they have demonstrated on some of these no repeat runs in the past.  I also get that some fans won't like it, the more casual ones, likely, if they don't get to hear their fave song at the one show they go see.  But the Dead just did what they wanted to do and their fans got used to it.  Everyone knew you probably wouldn't hear Truckin' unless you went to three shows in a row, stuff like that.  I think it was a win-win for the band and their dedicated fans. 

Yes John, vary the setlists in America, like Phish!

I noticed he said like Phish, not the Grateful Dead.  C'mon John, give credit to the pioneers of setlist variety, at least.  I guess the Dead are still probably anathema to many from an art-rock, punk-rock indie-rock background.  Really I don't care who is the model for setlist variety but how great would it be if they would play no repeats for three shows in a row all the time?  One might even start to miss Jesus Etc ( or insert whatever overplayed warhorse you are tired of hearing) if you didn't hear it every time you saw them live!  You might actually get to hear a song like Kingpin once in awhile or not have to go years without getting Monday or Ashes of American Flags.  And diehards would likely attend more shows, too.

Ode to Joy?  Wilco should have just named it Sky Blue Sky II.  When I first got on VC in 2008 SBS was still taking a beating from many hardcore VC'ers, I didn't get the criticism then, and I don't get it now.  Wilco is band that been around the block, lyrically, sonically and personellwise,  and they can make any album they want to, hell they own the damn label.  I guess folks expected light-hearted poppy tunes with lots of hooks and clever lyrics given the title "Ode to Joy", but no, the band goes and throws out a curve ball maybe hoping the fans can rise to the occasion and appreciate the fact that they're not sitting back on their laurels rehashing the familiar.  I trust Tweedy and the boys to know what they're doing, and Ode grows on me with every new listen.  If you're not into it, that's cool, just think of it was as an experimental album of deep cuts.  

 I just wish the music and songcraft and performances had substance.  it could be dark angry or bummed out disonnant substance like At Least That's What You Said, Spiders or Bull Black Nova or upbeat rocking substance like Side With The Seeds Theologians or Wilco The Song and You Never Know or it could be sad and beautiful substance like you Are My Face Wishful Thinking or Country Disappeared, but this is just wispy and barely there.  I'm just not into minimalism much.  I get that some people hear a lot of beauty in it an thats great for them, its just not what I like.  I don't expect anything from the band, but I certainly feel its my prerogative to feel disappointed when I don't like what they are putting out and I certainly don't think I'm failing to rise to some standard just because my tastes are different from other fans.  I'll appreciate the originality when it leads to music I like, when it doesn't, I won't.

It's a disappointing album. Boring would be my one word description. I get that I've been with the band since 1995, but why would anyone listen to this beyond a few listens instead of putting on Ghost, Yankee, BT or AM?? It's Jeff's worst vocal performance. There are very very few melodies and choruses which are always appreciated in my book (I love Warm and Warmer and they didn't have much in that regard either, but it is more missing here in a full band context.)

 

It's basically On Fillmore + Jeff Tweedy featuring 2 appearances by guitar virtuoso Nels Cline and textures by Mikael Jorgensen. No wonder Pat is pissed.

I'm with you.  Jeff isn't really singing.  There aren't any strong melodies or bridges beyond these barely-there basic ones and certainly no catchy hooks or pop songcraft.  Guitars and keyboards?  I'm not hearing anything but wispy little flourishes way in the background.  Drums are plodding and mixed far too loud, sounds like Glenn is banging on cardboard boxes instead of a drum set and it does not serve the songs well, IMO.

I got somewhat hopeful about this album after reading some fan comments and reviews and I really was excited to put it on and wanting to like it, but to me its just more of the same boring stuff from the last few albums.

This album, unfortunately for me, confirms my opinion that new Wilco music since The Whole Love just takes up space in the live show setlist that would be better served, in my opinion, by more rare songs from A Ghost Is Born, Sky Blue Sky, and Wilco the Album.  I think Wilco do not need a bunch more new mediocre or worse songs to play live, they need more setlist diversity from the best songs from their past catalog, a huge number of which rarely get played. I get they are artists and want to always be creating and progressing but the results of that work is, for me, getting increasingly boring.

I like Wilco as a live band, I don't really listen to their studio albums anyways, so its not too much of a bummer for me if the records aren't good.  But it is a bummer for me if the live show gets increasingly filled up with mediocre songs at the expense of far better older songs.  I used to be a die hard Richard Thompson fan in the 90s but I don't go see him anymore for this very reason.  I sure hope this doesn't happen with Wilco, but it seems to be trending that way for my tastes and its kind of a bummer. 

Still looking forward to two nights in Austin this month and still hopeful that these songs might be stronger when played live, as has always been the case with Wilco, for me.

I don't know where Tim went nor the name of the new bass player.  I've only seen them on web streams since Tim left, not even sure when it happened, but it was definitely before May this year.  Tim just had a sweet groove, like a Motown R&B thing (too much to compare him to James Jamerson?) but could also go deep into jazz and really anything else, always serving the song, melodic and swinging most of the time.  I thought he was so great in TTB.

Did you watch the Lockn set this year in which they played the whole Layla album with Trey Anastasio?  Susan ripped a hot solo and sang great lead on Have You Ever Loved A Woman and Trey was looking over at her with an amazed smile on his face.  I joked with my friends it was like he and Susan were having a musical affair while Derek watched, ha ha ha!

Pretty bummed about losing Tim Lefebrve on bass, but that was almost too good to be true forever.  Majorly bummed about losing Kofi Burbridge to another plane of existence. How great he was!

So this is the third year that Nels has sat in with TTB during their Beacon run, I think?  Bell Bottom Blues was good, but how about the Miles Davis' cover Ali from two years ago, that one should please those who like the instrumentals and the out-there jazz.   https://youtu.be/Qy8XgOt6luQ

any head who hasn’t yet watched the documentary “anthem to beauty” should seek it out. i haven’t viewed it in ages, but i still get chills thinking about robert discussing his lyric writing for american beauty. he was really tapped into some spring of eloquence that even he acknowledged “was not made by the hands of men”. that was my first dead album (dad’s old copy on my first turntable in 5th grade), and the gateway for years of amazing, ear-opening, soul-reorganizing music that has followed ever since. ripple, brokedown palace, attics- all still bring chills, but the most meaningful for me for a long time has been box of rain. it took on greater meaning for me when my dad died of cancer when I was 23, and I recalled robert talking about writing it for phil when his own dad was sick.

 

“maybe you’ll find direction, around some corner where it’s been waiting to meet you...”

Box Of Rain, Ripple and Brokedown Palace, for me, may be his finest, most psychedelic lyrics and all three are from the same time period, he was tapped into something deeper for sure.  Its shocking how good they are, I've listened to all three in a row a bunch of times, a repeated them several times in the last 24 hours.

Box Of Rain, to me, is the most eloquent articulation of my psychedelic experiences and what I think of as the philosophical worldview that they helped me crystalize. 

I would have liked to make these Red Rocks shows, but I got shut out for tix.  I mean literally, I got ZERO tickets even offered and I tried ALL the presales and onsales and all that shit when they went on sale.

Looks like they played well and Jim looks really healthy from photos I saw, he lost a bunch of weight.  I'm glad they did these shows, but are they really back?  Seems more like a handful of reunion shows than the band really being a permanent full time band again.  I am not holding out hope they will fully return with MMJ as the full time main gig of all the players.  I hope that happens, but its not looking that way to me.  i hope I'm wrong and this is just the teaser to a coming end of the hiatus back to full time touring.  I haven't seen them since frickin' 2015! 

Those are great shows...I"ve always found 83 and 84 to be very underrated....

Yeah, people harp on those years for Jerry being at a low point with drug addiction and unhealthiness, which is true, and there were some bad shows and his voice was shot maybe half the time, but the musical performance peaks were really not that scarce in those years as some make it out to be and I think it applies to JGB and the Dead.

The sound quality of the recordings makes a big difference to me and there were some sweet SBD recordings in '84 and '85, probably better than the quality of the boards in '82 and '83 overall.  These Philly shows sound pretty great to my ears!

https://archive.org/details/gd1984-04-19.sbd.miller.118658.flac16

https://archive.org/details/gd1984-04-20.sbd.miller.103432.flac16

https://archive.org/details/gd1984-04-21.137247.sbd.miller.flac1648

If you haven't heard these or heard them in awhile, here's a reminder.  Smoking run in Philly Spring of '84.  I like most of these better than 10/12, 10/20, 6/27 and the Greek run, although all those are good shows that year.  I got no problems with 1984 shows when they were on,  Check out the Scarlet>Fire, Let It Grow, Help>Slip, Estimated, Bird Song, just tons of highlights in this Philly run!

As I've said before, I think originality and ceaseless "creativity" for its own sake is way overrated by lots of artists and fans.  I'm all for it if it results in art that is strong and high quality.  I'm not for it if it results in stuff that is mediocre or weak.  I think Wilco's last three albums are mediocre at best especially compared to their earlier stuff (I know many disagree with me).  As for what they play live, I just want to hear their best stuff, whether its old or new.  Its not about nostalgia for me, like trying to remember and relive old times, its about I want to hear a killer band playing their best music.  Its about what I perceive to be high quality and low quality.  If the new stuff were as good to me as the old, I would be wanting to hear it. But for me, with Wilco and a lot of other bands I like, I like the earlier or mid career stuff best.  I think there is a fairly observable trend that artists create their strongest work when they are young and hungry and they mellow out as they age or put out more and more music.  I get that many songwriter performers want to focus on their new stuff, and I'd guess that wanting to feel relevant and having a judgement and aversion to "becoming a nostalgia act" is motivating them, consciously or subconsciously.  I just wish they'd take a tip from what the Grateful Dead did and not even consider a song's age in deciding whether to play it or not, play what is good, keep a large repertoire from the entire catalog going at all times and don't do a shit ton of repeats.  What is a bummer and a shame to me is this approach of playing the new music heavily on the tour when it came out and then dropping nearly all of it for subsequent tours to again focus on the next batch of new stuff.  An example is what they did with One Sunday Morning, playing it almost every night or close to that for a year and then suddenly dropping it for years.  To me a great song like that, probably the best song on Whole Love, would be great to hear every once in awhile  If they had thrown that in every fourth or fifth show on the last few tours I think many fans would look forward to hearing it, I know I would.  Its almost as much of a bummer to play the old warhorses every single night, another thing that the Dead never did and something that I wish all my fave bands would not do or hadn't done (Tom Petty was, of bands I follow, one of the worst offenders of this).  That's why at least on this tour Wilco has a cool two night few repeats pattern.  I will see them back to back in Austin and know I'm getting variety, even if its predictable variety.

If Wilco ever makes another record as good as A Ghost is Born or Sky Blue Sky, I'll be the first to be excited to hear it live.  Until they do, I'll continue to want to hear their best music, which for now, is still their stuff from 10-15 years ago, IMO.

Webcast was great! John's bass sounded particularly sharp to me. Jeff's vocals did seem a little strained in a few places, but aside from that, the band seemed locked in and totally on top of their game. Aside from my usual favorites, I liked "I'll Fight" and "The Joke Explained," which I think were both better than the studio versions. The one thing that occurred to me was that, as great as the band sounded, it's clear they need a new album to promote. The setlist variety is wonderful as always, but it will be nice when it is focused on new material.

As always, a variety of opinions will exist, even though mine may be in the minority.  I think the exact opposite, its great to see them NOT play a bunch of new songs that to me are not as good as their older songs.  I don't care for Star Wars or Schmilco and wasn't that crazy about the Whole Love, especially not compared to Sky Blue Sky and A Ghost Is Born and even Wilco the Album.  I'll take songs from 10 years ago anyday over songs from the last three albums.  I also hate the idea of a band "promoting" new material, as if it were primarily product to sell instead of art to enjoy.  Wilco, to me, is a primarily a live band, that is how they make their money, I believe, so keep loyal fans coming back to see show after show with lots of setlist variety and old rarities and yeah, I guess a few new songs for those that like 'em.  I'd like them, too, if they were as good as their old stuff.

They really had fun with Not For The Season. It's interesting how it became an acoustic staple and the band kind of took up a similar, tighter version with just some more dynamics and a little guitar weirdness. Now it's like the Loose Fur version again, but more since there's a bigger ensemble. All kinds of playful, avant noodling.

Yeah, it had a nice jam at the end, I liked it better than I have in the past. 

Audio mix was not that great, as others noted.  Drums were too loud, especially for Ashes and Nels was too low in the mix for that one.  I think it got better as the show went on, or I got used to it.  At Least That's What You Said was great.  Love all the Sky Blue Sky songs they are playing this tour!

 On Tour With The Grateful Dead, Summer 1993

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6BqvEpPyjXM&feature=youtu.be

I didn't know Peter Shapiro didn't see the Dead until 1993.  I dug Kesey's statement about the fleeting moment of brilliance, the crack in your consciousness that "lets in all the light and opens up all the possibilities...the kids will watch 5 hours of mediocre music for that one moment, that click, because it puts them in touch with the invisible."

I am not familiarized with GD beyond 1991...does anybody think there is 1993 material for a box set? Any great shows out there? Thanks

No there isn't.    Well I guess somebody might find some they think are worthy, but not me.  1991 is the last year I listen to and that is very infrequently.