I have very broad taste in music, and usually flit between many genres as the fit takes me.
Since I was so kindly given the RSD set on the day it was released, it has been just about the only thing on my turntable. So much to explore and so many memories, it took me nearly 3 weeks to listen to it all for the first time as I enjoyed it so much that each side was played many times over before moving on to the next.
The only other record that has had a look in has been Live/Dead because I became fascinated by how IT had evolved in the time between the two recordings. Dark Star has always been the quintessential Dead song for me, it completely blew me away the first time that I heard it, and has ever since been something of a refuge in challenging times for me. The Live/Dead version has a special place in my heart, being a familiar old friend, but I would be very hard pressed to decide which of the two versions I now own that I prefer.
I have heard many more, and even saw it played live once. Two will do in my collection for now. Adding more might lead to crippling analysis paralysis in choosing which one to listen to!
Where did you see them play it live? I tried to see them whenever they came to the UK, but missed out on a Dark Star. For example I saw them in 1972 at the Empire Pool but the first night when they played The Other One. My brother went to Bickershaw where they played TOO and Dark Star. Another vinyl version worth having is from Paris 1972, issued as another RSD pressing, but I see that it is now very expensive on Discogs
I was at Empire Pool on the second night. It was my one and only experience of seeing them live, and I was probably the youngest person there.
It was the last time I went out with my father, who I later discovered was terminally ill with leukaemia at the time. My mother had made special arrangements to ensure that I got in as I was only 13.
Daddy spent much of the next few months separated from us behind a window in an isolation ward at the Royal Marsden, and died in the November 9 days before my 14th birthday at the age of 43.
He was a truly remarkable man, born in Italy with a Greek father, they fled the fascists and came here. He was a pacifist who lied about his age to serve in the Greek navy in exile, fighting the country of his birth on a ship built by his adopted homeland. He was tone deaf, it was my mother who was passionate about music, his passion was photography which I also love.
It was several years before I could bring myself to listen to the Dead at all, and I am not too proud to admit that listening to the RSD set has made my eyes leak on more than one occasion.
Hi Nicorex
That’s a moving story and I remembered that you had mentioned some of it further up the thread. I am very pleased that you have been able to get hold of a recording of that special night - and on vinyl which is certainly appropriate for 1972.
