Deadheads - 4 questions you might be able to help me with. To the Undead..just listen!

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I am guessing your YouTube algorithim is a lot like mine. I got this Lake Placid show pushed to the top of my page and was listening to this version of Sugaree just yesterday. This is just fricking killer and I am going to have to go back and listen a few more times.

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It may never end..one link led to this custom solo of Peggy O from 1977. How could he play so many different sounding version of the same thing!!

Peggy O' - 31 minute "stiched together solo" from 77

My favorite Sugaree
5/22/77

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Are you new to the Dead?

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Yes. I started listening to them while working in my flower garden after we got sent home in March of 2020 due to Covid. My mom had passed in January and for whatever reason the music (many of the sad songs) helped me deal with that too. Within a few weeks, something happened and I started this quest to figure it all out.

I truly believe the music has changed me and helped me deal with the death of my mom and the isolation caused by the shutdown.

It's pretty much all I listen too now and I have extensive 70's rock collection and 9 guitars. As a guitar player I am obviously now a big fan of Jerry. He now goes on my personal rock guitar Mount Rushmore with Stevie Ray, Jimmy Page and GNABM*.

*Gonna Need a Bigger Mountain: pick anyone from Terry Kath, Duane Allman, Eric Clapton, Jim Hendrix, Jeff Beck or Keith Richards

The Dead never play a song the same way twice. That’s their deal. Not just the big jam vehicles like Dark Star, The Other One, Playjng In The Band, and so on. But even the more basic ones like, say, Me & My Uncle. Every time they’re subject to however the band is feeling that night and, while they stay within the bounds of the song, each member interprets it a little differently every time.

The thing about the Dead is that you really need to listen to a lot of their music to really appreciate it. You can literally spend hundreds of hours exploring their music. Try to listen to whole shows as much as you can because there’s an arc there. And they took to the stage without a setlist and figured it out as they went along. Not only was every song different, every show was different. I’ve been to more than one run of three shows without hearing any song twice. That was only possible in the later years when they had a huge repertoire. On the Europe ‘72 tour you got either Dark Star or The Other One every night. (Only on 5/7/72 did you get both, including a Dark Star jam inside the jam in The Other One. Check that one out.)

And that’s the other thing about the Dead. They had a lot of great songs. Garcia/Hunter tunes like Friend Of The Devil will enter the American folk archive and be performed by musicians decades from now. But a lot of their music is what they played when they weren’t playing songs, when they were just improvising like a jazz band. Bill Graham used to say: “They’re not the best at what they do. They’re the only ones who do what they do.”

You should check out The Grateful Dead Movie. And read The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test by Tom Wolfe.

There is NOTHING like a Grateful Dead concert. I have a favorite coffee mug that reads:

36,806 Songs
2,317 Concerts
298 Cities
30 Years
11 Members
1 Band
GRATEFUL DEAD

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I truly believe the music has changed me and helped me deal with the death of my mom and the isolation caused by the shutdown.

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It's weird how that happens. I love listening to the Dead in the summertime. But I've been really listening to it a lot lately dealing with some personal stuff.

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Look up the Hampton Coliseum 10/9/89 show - post drums/space - Death Don’t Have No Mercy > Mr Fantasy > throwing stones > good lovin - from the depths of despair to a beautiful spring day. It’s pulled me through many a rough time

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That’s fine but you want to listen to both of those Hampton shows in their entirety, 10/8/89 and 10/9/89. They were billed as “Formerly the Warlocks” since the Dead had been banned from Hampton Coliseum because of unruly fan behavior following the explosion in their following that came after the success of In The Dark. There were a lot of idiots coming around just for the party, and to buy drugs, and had no interest in the music or even to see the show.

The Dead’s new MIDI instruments breathed new life into the band. Jerry could finally play the horn and be like Coltrane. They got interested again. They busted out Help > Slip, Dark Star, and Attics at those shows for the first time in years. Death Don’t got busted out at Shoreline on 9/29/89 for the first time since 1970. That period sent shockwaves through the Dead community. I’m happy to say I was there in Alpine Valley to see the bust out of We Bid You Goodnight on 7/17/89, and my first Standing On The Moon, under a full orange moon, that you can see on the DVD Downhill From Here. (And that lawn is a pretty steep hill.)

Listen to whole shows. Listen to Drums and Space (collectively referred to as “Drumz.”) Go all in. Paradise waits.

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both of those Hampton shows in their entirety, 10/8/89 and 10/9/89.

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Wow..they were super sharp in those shows. Thanks