Shug

I sure wish they'd put out the live video footage of the Boulder, CO show at the end of the tour (the same show that a lot of the Hard Rain album was taken from) because Dylan and the band are ON FIRE! I cannot understand why people don't like that album, except for the high pitched noise that mars the recording, but the performance is as intense as it gets, I love it!

To complete the gold standard, add in several tracks from How Sweet It Is (I believe from the same shows as the double live 1990 album), especially the Tears of Rage!!!!

RE: Garcia Live Vol. 8, 11-23-91 Milwaukee - I concur, wrp, The setlist is fantastic, like one I'd hope for in vain at so many JGB shows, especially set 1 (any JGB show without either How Sweet It Is or Harder They Come means Jerry is in an especially good mood and digging deep, ready to tackle his most difficult songs, not just trotting out the stuff he can do in his sleep). Melvin and Jerry are way connected, Kahn and Kemper are so simpatico together and with the songs and the band, the ladies are in typical fine form, the recording is fucking stellar, which for me is crucial to hear the b

Awesome, thank you!

More wishful thinking than anything, but I am hoping for a new album from The War On Drugs. I've heard rumors of a song being released for Record Store Day this year. I am preparing myself that they may well have completely spent their collective creativity on their last album, but if they are able to follow it up with something half as good it'll still be a damn good album. Mostly I want them to have a reason to go back on tour, gotta see them as much as possible while they are together, they did some shows last tour that got the audience very very high!

Yeah, I remember in 94 after Healy was fired the sound levels at Dead shows were RIDICULOUSLY quiet. I mean they never played all that loud at all the shows I saw, but it got absurdly soft around that time. Seems to me their personnel decisions in the 90s were not about finding the most qualified person for the job (Bralove, Welnick, Cutler running house sound, Jerry's switch away from Irwin guitars to that horrible acoustic-y electric guitar sound on LIghtning Bolt made by amateur luthier Stephen Cripe)

As for the Dead tunes I don't care for, I think the issue for me is not so much the tunes as how they were played, as others have mentioned. Take Truckin' from 7-18-72 and compare it to any version from the 80s and 90s. When they played it great, I never get tired of it. When they play it weak, I wish they'd retire it. https://archive.org/details/gd1972-07-18.sbd.theotherwayne.88658.sbefail.shnf/GD72-07-18D3T02.shn Franklin's Tower in '77 and '79 was usually epic, but by the late 80s it could be plodding and uninspired. Same for Sugaree. Those repetive Jerry tunes (Franklin's, Sugare

I'm still waiting for this to arrive, but I am stoked to hear all these good reviews! JGB was peaking around this time, I'd say. The most longstanding lineup with quite a few years under their collective belts by this time and lots of good new covers entering the repertoire. Can't wait to get it, thinking about having a full volume listening party for my local Head friends when it gets here.

As a lead singer, he's more like Dylan, mostly character with little prettiness, but the vocal blend they achieve (Pat and John are sweet and Jeff provides the eccentric character) can be gorgeous and similar to The Band, but there is no lead vocalist like Richard Manuel or Levon Helm in Wilco, I agree.

I don't think whether you consider Wilco a jam band (I don't think anybody does, depending on one's definition of a jam band) or not has much relevance to whether they play lots of repeats or few repeats in a run. What does have, I think, a lot of relevance to some fans' expectations for few repeats in a run or residency, particularly in the Winter time in Chicago, is that they have done it so many times. Didn't the Kicking Television residency have zero repeats? Very few repeats in the Incredible Shrinking tour and even in 2014 there were few fewer repeats than at this run. Hell there we

We knew it was going to be a good night when the set break music included Zeppelin, The Who and the Allmans! And when they open with Ashes, it's ON!!! One of the tightest and most inspired shows I've seen them play. A lot due to Jeff's fired up mood. His comments included what I thought was a very sincere plea for people to come together. The crowd by us didn't even consider sitting down and we're way into Nels' epic solos. It was a great start to the run!

The entire Jerry backing vocal or duet vocal in Me and Bobby McGee is freaking killer! https://youtu.be/Q-kyAF1JSVs or this one from Ladies and Gentlemen might be a better vocal performance https://youtu.be/SJnfdEX0QWk

THX! Might try to seek it out, but not for $250 on Amazon, sheesh!

Does anybody have Dave's Picks Vol 2 from 7-31-74 Dillon Stadium Hartford, CT? Is the beginning of Scarlet Begonias clipped like it is on all the SBDs on archive.org? And ditto about Garcia's high harmony backing vocals on Promised Land and the Dylan tunes and others, those could be such choice little moments of fantasticness to my ears, too!

I think he could play good faster when he wasn't singing lead. Think of the blazing speed he could get into on Saint of Circumstance and Let It Grow and Lazy Lightning. I might be over-stating it, or maybe its my imagination, because he certainly solo'd great on plenty of his own songs, but I hear something different when he didn't have to pay attention to when he had to step back up to the mic after a hot solo when it was a Bobby song. Plus those odd chords and time signatures of Bobby's songs gave him a very interesting and very different foil to solo against compared to the Hunter Garcia

No, its my response to people who think Bobby's songs are just time-killers until the next Jerry song. I've never been of the mind that Jerry was the prime artist in the band, more important than the others. I see the Dead as a collective in which the sum is all the more interesting because of the disparate elements that make it up. I think Bobby's contributions to the Dead's music is huge and I think there would be huge hole in all Dead shows if you cut out all the Bobby songs. There are actually people who seem to think that it'd be better without Bobby songs, which is astounding to me.

Looks Like Rain from 4-20-83 is Article H in my ongoing case for Garcia being able to solo his ass off on songs in which he didn't have to sing lead.

According to this poll, for what its worth, most evangelicals went Trump, but so did many Catholics. I'm not surprised at the evangelical numbers, they seem to me to be far more rigid and homogenous in their beliefs and opinions than Catholics. http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/11/09/how-the-faithful-voted-a-preliminary-2016-analysis/

I got excited there for a moment that there was actually a practicing, believe in God, go to church, take communion, use Christian doctrine as a guiding life principle Catholic who was foregoing the exclusivity clause. Now that would be something to get excited about!

An athiest Catholic? I didn't know any existed! Seriously, if the major religions just removed the exclusivity clause from their dogmas, there would be so much more peace and so much less divisiveness in the world and in communities and even in families. sorry this is going so far off topic, but I'm very grateful for the sensible discussion, thanks so much, folks!

It would be a tremendous thing if my family and all Catholics thought as you do (same goes for my fundamentalist evangelical Christian mother who told me a few days ago that I am going to hell and was mad at me for forcing her to say to my face what she believes in her heart). I commend you on your attitude. I respect your position tremendously. Thanks for saying it!

I'm so glad someone else is expressing these ideas. I am with you. What has been revealed is just how racist, sexist and xenophobic a huge swath of the US populace really is. All through my life it has been unacceptable, in the culture that I have lived in, to publicly express these values. Little did I know so many held them but were just keeping their mouths shut (as a native Californian, I got a BIG shock when I lived in Memphis, TN for a few years in the 2000s and I heard the racist shit white people would say to my face thinking I would agree with them just because I'm white) I also

Dude, I'm glad you brought this up, I just checked and the rooms went down to $119 at the LondonHouse, so I got the lower price on Hotels.com. I probably wouldn't have checked if you hadn't brought it up so thanks!

Thanks for those suggestions, I appreciate it along with a lot of other ideas from the visiting Chicago thread, thanks! And thanks, Magnetized, for the birthday wishes, too!

We are staying at the LondonHouse about 3 or 4 blocks from the venue for $140 a night. The weather is going to be a shock flying in from Arizona, but I'm looking forward to wearing some winter coats that I never get to wear here! Besides bars and restaurants, what are some good indoor daytime activities in Chicago this time of year? How about Wille Dixon's Blues Heaven or some other music history museums or sites? Our first Wilco shows in Chicago and my wife's birthday to boot! We could more than use a boost of good vibes lately so we are especially stoked!