The Grateful Dead Thread

I think you’re right, I inherited some of these, Birth of the Dead and History of the Grateful Dead look wrong too.

Golden Road 1965 - 1973

12 CD boxset ( Rhino )

This is a splendid set of essential requisite albums for the discerning deadhead.

Very nicely presented, and fabulously remastered in HDCD.

Gets a lot of plays here :grinning: :+1:

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The Europe 72 triple vinyl Is all very well, but then this came along…

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Hey Tony,

Agreed, “Europe '72” is an amazing album. I remember how cool it was, back in the day, to have a triple album from the Dead. I never did order, or even see it in person, but some years back they put out a giant box set (actually a suitcase if I remember what one of my friends told me correctly…) of most/all of that tour.

Well, ElMarko, I would say you do have just a few albums of Dead material… lol. Looks like a lot of “treasure” there if you ask me.

Hey Debs, welcome! I have been seeing posts by you on the Forum of years and have admired your system and your posts. Great to see you here and (now) know that you enjoy listening to the Grateful Dead. This is one of the reasons I started this thread, to see who in this great, worldwide, Naim community also enjoys the music of the Dead. That is definitely a nice set.

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Ah, CliveB, I replied to a post above before seeing this one of yours. I mentioned this set. Cool to see it. I have never been around anyone who had it. I know a friend of mine in Canada got it but I never had a chance to visit him after he had ordered this set. That is truly amazing. Talk about a ton of music to listen to…

Ah! brilliant ! a Dead thread. . . . . I was 17 when I first saw them live. Myself and three friends took the train from Hull to Kings-Cross and booked in to the seediest and probably the cheapest room in town, it was just a place to crash. Grabbed some food and made our way to Alexandra Palace. We rolled up in a sea of heads and soon found ourselves sitting down on the floor in a cloud of smoke and weirdness. I’d been to quite a lot of gigs that summer but this was no ordinary gig, more like a happening. A sea of skulls, smoke and laid back freaks, some with the widest grins i’d seen in my life and I had been to a few festivals in fields and parks that year and seen a lot of grinning. . . . . So, I think they opened with Scarlet Begonias which instantly got everyone to their feet. Garcia’s live playing was a revelation and I was pleased to be a Deadhead from that moment on. The happy daze of 1974.

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I didn’t realize I had so many. Less than half are mine. I have the Dead Box set that Debs posted and the Birth of the Dead which I really liked. All the Dic k’s Picks albums are new for me. I’ll have to see which ones are the latest remasters and check them out.

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Happy to welcome you here to this Dead-thread artist! I, also, saw my first Dead show when I was 17. It was both mind-blowing and something that would become the “soundtrack” to my life for many years to come. I still have my ticket from my first show, which is unripped since there was such a push to get in that my ticket never got taken.

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Sounds great ElMarko. A great journey of listening awaits you.

I think I got all the album images fixed.

China Cat Sunflower/I know You Rider still does it for me. Sounds better than I’ve ever heard it.

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I found a version I haven’t heard on the D ick’s Picks album. Good SQ.

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Saw this yesterday folks, This album was released on Nov. 10, 1969

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I wonder what the uk date was. I can remember exactly when I first saw it. In those days there was little information about forthcoming releases, especially obscure American bands. So when I was browsing a record shop in Oxford, finding it was a surprise - that was one thing, but hearing it was staggering. Incidentally, that first UK pressing is highly regarded by some (see the Hoffman thread on Dead vinyl) and my copy has a vitality I’ve not heard on any other version.

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This is a great show. I like the Philly (The Rectum) show from a week earlier as well. It has a great Dark Star > Morning Dew!

Not sure if it’s still available…

image

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There’s no disputing the great “jazz influenced” playing from ’72-’74. Billy K’s drumming is sensational. One can only surmise he was listening/influenced by Tony Williams and Jack DeJohnette at the time. As Phil once said regarding the Europe ’72 tour; “Billy played like a God.”

Some folks have written about the Miles Davis influence after the Dead opened a few shows for Miles in April ’70. The Miles sets from those shows were of course commercially released by Columbia/Sony, but I’ve never heard the Dead’s sets (I know they’re available on the Archive in poor SQ).

By the way, there’s a radio interview with Phil (not sure the date) where he states that the jazz influence was less relevant and instead he thought they’re playing more resembled the counterpoint heard in Handel’s Concerto Grossi (try the Op.3 & 6 sets). Interesting comment to a music history geek like myself… :wink:

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Top tip Todd, listening to Philly session/Dark Star as I type this. Its on Qobuz if anyone doesn’t have the vinyl.

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This is a fun book. It has a lot of band history covering recordings and so on, including solo projects, but it is organised around a month by month and yearly time line which includes all the gigs they played - in this respect it can serve as a kind of reference work. My hardback copy is the first edition published in 2003, so there has been a lot released in the intervening years. However, the paperback currently available on Amazon has a date of 2015, but whether it has been updated or not, I don’t know.
GDead-book

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So happy to see a Dead thread on here - thanks Naimgary! Huge fan here and was also lucky enough to see them all 3 nights at Wembley in 1990 but sadly never saw them on their home soil. I have a reasonable vinyl collection of Dead (all the studios and a bunch of box set of which Cornell May '77 is a firm favourite) I just received the St Louis Fox Theatre which I haven’t listened to yet but look forward to doing so this weekend.

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