Mr. Heartbreak

I was at SPAC ‘84. Did we have this conversation?

This is how I feel, too. The overt Beach Boys and Beatles references, the all-timer lyrics to VC and She's A Jar, the songs that sound like they could have been outtakes from some never-before-heard 60s band (When You Wake Up, ELT)...seeing them live on that '99 tour with Jay was a part of it, too. On the outtakes and alternates, I've heard a few - not significantly different than the final versions - but I think they also may have released most of the stuff of highest interest on the Alpha Mike Foxtrot box. Tried and True, Student Loan Stereo and the other tracks on disc 2 of that set might

Listening to the Jerry show from 1976-12-22, Keystone, Berkeley. Now, that one has some sweet Donna vocals on it. She's not perfect throughout, but she does a lot of really nice work. https://www.reddit.com/r/gratefuldead/comments/a8ihmm/today_of_the_dead_jerry_garcia_band_the_keystone/

Very cool. My first Wilco show was in August '99, so the material was all brand new and sounded so fresh. I also got hold of my first Jeff solo show that year, from Lounge Ax the previous year, and that got me really into the whole Wilco/UT/JT world. Summerteeth will always be a top 3 Wilco record for me.

I’ve heard a few people refer to this as “Weir learning slide onstage.” That said, it never bothered me as much as off-key vocals do. As a non-guitarist, I just accepted it at the time. Only in later years have I heard SBD recordings and cringed. I suspect the same is generally true for vocals, too. Anyone lucky enough to catch the Dead live in ‘77 probably felt the shows sounded flawless. It’s only because of HQ recordings that we can notice every little flaw. Hell, they sounded fine live to me in ‘82-‘83!

See, now I messed up a great release for everybody. In all seriousness, I'm glad that they got Phil to back off the harmony vocals by more or less replacing his with Donna's. But, damn, man, she had ONE JOB! For someone who was reputed to be a "better" singer than Jerry or Bobby, I just don't see it. She's great in the studio, but live? Even when she supposedly hear herself better, post-hiatus, she's consistently inconsistent. I wonder how much of it was affected by all those loudly amplified instruments. I'm a singer, so I know what that experience is like - your body trying to be heard

I'd have to listen to the whole show over again to pinpoint too many particulars - I just played through the whole thing, so not really into doing THAT - but a quick scroll through parts of songs reveals that she's particularly flat during the Terrapin debut, and her performance on TMNS is nothing to write home about. I'm a big fan of her harmonies when she's on, so when she's off, it grates on me. My point was more about those who don't like her in general, and always complain about 70s releases. There are a few of those on the Dead.net board, and they're very vocal about wanting more Brent

I've tried to get through some of that Before The Dead material, but still have a long way to go. I grew up with a real Yankee prejudice against country (i.e., it's "redneck" music), and although I've grown to like a lot of trad and alt country, I've never gotten over my loathing for bluegrass. Not even Old and in the Way could cure me of it. Oh well. Yeeee-ha! Been listening to some of 2/26/77 in celebration of the new Dave's, and holy fuck, that thing won't convert a lot of 80s fans to the Donna side of the fence. It's great to listen to that Terrapin live debut and a few of the other trac

Yep. This is the first Wilco tune I thought of when I read the topic. Always struck me as icy, from the first time I heard it.

Yup. Took a few hours to sell out the leftover "a la carte" copies. Good show, worth a listen. The launch of '77!

The 2/26/77 Swing show that's being presented as Dave's Picks 29 is now up for sale. Still available even after a few hours, so it looks like upping the # to 20K copies is relieving some of the typical non-subscriber woes. https://store.dead.net/dave-s-picks-vol-29-1.html

What a game that Rams/Saints battle was. Made me feel a little better about what happened to my Cowboys. I think the Chiefs/Pats game will be a major shootout, but you never know. Wouldn't mind seeing Mahomes take them all the way to a Super Bowl victory. Kid is fun to watch.

So what's the most annoying thing about this year's NFL playoff season? Too much defense and not enough offense. Controversial calls by officials. The frigging Eagles are still in it. Tony Romo announcing (I love the guy, but I know some people can't stand him). The Apple commercial with that incredibly annoying Cosmo Sheldrake song.Feel free to add your own.

The Satanic Majesties stuff has been floating around on the interwebs for quite a while. I've got 130 mp3 tracks of Satanic Sessions that I apparently downloaded in 2011.

"Jerry Christmas and Happy Bob Weir!"

Oh my God, my brother used to do that, and it was maddening. The worst offenders were: If the thunder don't get you, then the lightning will. He travels the fastest who travels alone (which is actually just a Rudyard Kipling poem with music added to it). After Jerry's death, he would sometimes be listening to a particularly ragged version of a Dead tune, and out of the blue he'd say something along the lines of "Come on, Jerry, shoot another bag of dope." That was always a bit of a buzzkill, too.

Your 3rd sentence is the key for me: "It's hard to separate the music from the lyrics from Garcia's delivery..." I come at this stuff from a literature background, and I have looked at some of these songs strictly on the page. Dark Star is a good effort from a young man, but I think Hunter reached much, much greater heights as he developed as a lyricist. But I'm pretty tough critically. If I'm honest, I'd say Dylan wrote a few lyrical masterpieces (Visions, Tangled, maybe It's Alright Ma), but I'd have to comb through the catalog to find something by Hunter that I'd put in the rarefied "m

This is great, because it really is the exact opposite of my experience. I vividly remember my glassy-eyed older brother sitting on the floor listening to the E72 Jack Straw (then the only one available to the public), and I was baffled - I thought this band was kind of boring. They certainly didn't RAWK like what I was into: Aerosmith, Hendrix, Kiss, Van Halen, etc., etc. But I remembered some of the lyrics I heard, and most were a cut above the harder rock bands: like when they appeared on SNL in '78 ("Drivin' that train/High on cocaine"), or the brand-new Throwin' Stones they played at my

Well, that's pretty understandable. It was the first set of lyrics Robert Hunter passed along to the Dead. It's not bad, really, but it's no lyrical masterpiece. Sometimes, when they went way out there, Jerry wouldn't get around to singing the second verse. Most fans don't seem to mind that in the middle of a great pre-hiatus Dark Star meltdown (though it's always a disappointment to me when that happens). I think Playin' In the Band is similar in that it's a well-known vehicle for lengthy space jams, and the lyrics aren't among the Dead's greatest, either. But it would never occur to me

Right? Wicked cool, as we say in New England. I already have both these January shows on my iPhone, so there must be something really good there. Only got a couple more 70 shows with me at all times. I was thinking about a post I saw on a thread somewhere that might make a good Dead-related topic. This guy posted that he listened to the Dead for the jams, and that he viewed the songs - the structured songs, including the lyrics - as filler between the jams. That kind of blew my mind, not in a good way. As a poet and songwriter myself, I immediately felt, "You view one of the great America

Pretty interesting how, having only lyrics to work with, Jeff ended up writing a more compelling melody than the one Woody originally had. Now, if someone could just come up with better melodies for some of Dylan's musically uninteresting lyrical masterpieces, we'd really have something!

This 1970 release is good news, IMHO. Maybe not so good for all the people clamoring for more 80s-90s Dead.

I agree, and feel much the same. The timeline was different for me, too. Sometimes people think I saw a zillion shows because I'm such a Deadhead, but in reality I only caught about a half dozen Dead shows during Jerry's life. The first was in '82, then a few in '83 and '84. I was in school, and had an academic scholarship, so touring was never going to be on the table for me. My parents probably would have disowned me. By '84, Jer really looked like shit. His playing was suffering, although it still had a ways to fall. We know today that he'd had a habit for eight years by then; at the ti

I think a lot of us would like to know the answer to this. Anyone have a connection to someone who can answer the question? Full band? Jeff & guitar only? Do TPTB address stuff like this on the board here or on the Wilcoworld site? The listing "Jeff Tweedy" would lend to thinking they're solo acoustic shows...but the recent TV appearances and the full band performance at The Hideout would lend to thinking the band will be there.