Various Artists - Playboy After Dark (CBS Television City, Los Angeles, CA), Volume 5: December 1968 to January 1969

Here's the fifth volume of the episodes I compiled of the "Playboy After Dark" TV show. There are 11 in all. 

Just the first three songs were recorded in 1968. The rest date from 1969. As usual with the albums I post, check out the mp3 tags for more detail. I organized these by recording date. The broadcast dates usually took place a few months later.

Probably the most notable thing about the music here is the performance of the Grateful Dead. As I've mentioned previously, most of the music from this T.V. show has languished in obscurity (though I hope these posts are starting to change that). However, the Dead's performance has gotten around some, especially among Deadheads. As it should, because it's a rare treat to see them on T.V. all the way back in early 1969. Three of their songs are included here. "Mountains of the Moon" is special, because it was only performed 15 times by the band, and this was just the second time. The version of "St. Stephen" was very good too. The only disappointment is that the makers of the show faded the song out while the band was jamming on it. I also included what I could of a third song, "Turn On Your Lovelight." But this is less than half a minute. Basically, it was just a snippet that played as the credits rolled at the end of that episode.

An interesting fact is that the Dead's sound engineer, Owsley "Bear" Stanley, secretly put L.S.D. in the coffee that everyone on the set was drinking! So everyone from Hugh Hefner to the stagehands was tripping on acid during the taping of this episode. You can read more about this incident here:

https://www.openculture.com/2021/01/when-the-grateful-dead-performed-on-hugh-hefners-playboy-after-dark.html

That article also contains a link to the Dead's performance, if you want to see it and not just hear it. And there's another link to a later interview of drummer Bill Kreutzmann in which he talked about the spiking of the coffee. 

While that was probably the most interesting musical performance, there are many other good performances on this episode, with lots of rock and soul. Note, by the way, two songs with "[Edit]" in their titles. Sometimes, for this show, there were other people talking over parts of the music. In the second season this would get much worse, to the point that brief advertisements were even spoken over the end of the last song of each episode. So when you see "[Edit]" in this series, that's usually why.

I would also like to point out how odd it was that the Clara Ward Singers performed for this show. Consider that they exclusively sang gospel songs in churches. I wonder if they were appalled at all the "heathen" appearances and behavior all around them. But kudos to Hefner and Playboy for putting a wide variety of musical styles on this T.V. show. 

This album is 56 minutes long. 

01 River Deep, Mountain High (Bobby Doyle)
02 Blowin' in the Wind (Bobby Doyle)
03 Wear It on Our Face [Edit] (Checkmates, Ltd.)
04 Mountains of the Moon (Grateful Dead)
05 St. Stephen (Grateful Dead)
06 The Great Electric Experiment Is Over (Noel Harrison)
07 Hello Sun (Noel Harrison)
08 Turn On Your Lovelight [Edit] (Grateful Dead)
09 Turpentine Moan (Canned Heat)
10 On the Road Again (Canned Heat)
11 Mendocino (Sir Douglas Quintet)
12 She's about a Mover (Sir Douglas Quintet)
13 Joshua Fit the Battle of Jericho (Clara Ward Singers)
14 Swing Low, Sweet Chariot (Clara Ward Singers)
15 Chicken Wolf (Steppenwolf)
16 Don't Cry (Steppenwolf)
17 Get Out My Life Woman (Joe Williams & Joanne Vent)
18 Hurry On Down (Joe Williams)
19 That Face (Joe Williams)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/fQopeFf6

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/en/RMT1XE2rfHHhYnF/file

The cover photo shows Jerry Garcia of the Grateful Dead. This is a screenshot I took from the video of one of the episodes here.

Bob Weir & Warren Haynes - Weir Here, TRI Studios, San Rafael, CA, 7-31-2013

Once again, I feel obliged to begin this write-up by pointing out that Bob Weir, formerly a member of the Grateful Dead, died last month. (I write this in February 2026.) I've already posted three albums celebrating his musical legacy. But when I putting the last one, which was an episode of his 2013 webcast "Weir Here," I got interested in another episode of that webcast and decided to post it too. For this one, Weir was joined by lead guitarist Warren Haynes.

Here's what Wikipedia has to say about Haynes:

"Warren Haynes (born April 6, 1960) is an American musician, singer and songwriter. He is best known for his work as longtime guitarist with the Allman Brothers Band and as founding member of the jam band Gov't Mule. Early in his career he was a guitarist for David Allan Coe and The Dickey Betts Band. Haynes is also known for his associations with the surviving members of the Grateful Dead, including touring with Phil Lesh and Friends and the Dead."

Jerry Garcia, lead guitarist for the Grateful Dead, was born on August 1, 1942. So this performance took place one day before the anniversary of his birth. The episode had Garcia in mind. As a result, most of the songs were ones that were usually co-written and sung by Garcia, not Weir. Both Weir and Haynes sang lead vocals, separately and together.

Weir and Haynes were supported by a small backing band, while generally staying in acoustic mode: Jeff Chimenti on keyboards, Lincoln Schleifer on bass, Jeff Sipe on drums, and Alecia Chakour and Jasmine Muhammed on backing vocals. Some of these other band members sang lead vocals occasionally, especially on "The Weight."

Like the other "Weir Here" episode, I converted the video to audio, then cut it into mp3s. I haven't seen this circulating as an audio bootleg, but hopefully that will change now. Everything here is unreleased, and the sound quality is excellent. 

Also like that other episode, there were two long discussions that took place during breaks in the middle of the performance. I made those two bonus tracks, so one can hear the music without interruption. 

This album is an hour and 20 minutes long, not including the bonus tracks. 

01 Walkin' Blues (Bob Weir & Warren Haynes)
02 talk (Bob Weir & Warren Haynes)
03 The Weight (Bob Weir & Warren Haynes)
04 Bird Song (Bob Weir & Warren Haynes)
05 West L.A. Fadeaway (Bob Weir & Warren Haynes)
06 Sugaree (Bob Weir & Warren Haynes)
07 talk (Bob Weir & Warren Haynes)
08 Crazy Fingers (Bob Weir & Warren Haynes)
09 talk (Bob Weir & Warren Haynes)
10 Shakedown Street (Bob Weir & Warren Haynes)
11 China Cat Sunflower - I Know You Rider (Bob Weir & Warren Haynes)

Discussion 1 (Bob Weir & Warren Haynes)
Discussion 2 (Bob Weir & Warren Haynes)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/ijoSHxFp

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/pAZtoA5ZfQ0WKVE/file

The cover photo is from this exact concert. It's a screenshot I took from a YouTube video. I used KreaAI to improve the image quality.

Northern California Folk-Rock Festival, Santa Clara County Fairgrounds, San Jose, CA, 5-18-1968, Part 3 - The Grateful Dead

This is the third album out of seven albums I'm posting from the 1968 Northern California Folk-Rock Festival. This set features the Grateful Dead.

I said quite a lot in my write-up for the first album I posted from this festival, the Youngbloods set. I recommend you read that, because most of that applies to this set too. Most importantly, note that this is sourced from an audience bootleg, so the sound quality isn't up to my usual standards. I had to do a lot of work to fix all sorts of flaws. The final results sounds pretty decent for a 1968 concert, in my opinion, but you need to be tolerant about the flaws that still remain.

At the time of this concert, the Grateful Dead were still in a formative stage. They had only released one studio album so far, the cleverly titled "The Grateful Dead," in 1967. Most of the songs performed in this short set were from the second side of the band's second album, "Anthem of the Sun." But that album wouldn't be released until a couple of months after this concert.

The Dead weren't originally scheduled to perform at this festival, so they didn't appear on the poster, or in articles announcing the festival from a few days earlier. However, they did get listed in the official program, as well as in an article that came out a day before the festival. 

In the two write-ups I've done for this festival so far, I extensively quoted a review of this concert from the San Francisco Examiner. It didn't say much about the music, but the reviewer highlighted a few favorite performers. In addition to calling the Steve Miller Band "astonishing", it said "Mike Bloomfield and Buddy Miles in the Electric Flag, Jerry Garcia's guitar with the Grateful Dead, and the blues of Taj Mahal were also outstanding over the weekend." 

This album is 39 minutes long. 

01 Alligator (Grateful Dead)
02 Drums [Instrumental] (Grateful Dead)
03 Alligator [Reprise] [Instrumental] (Grateful Dead)
04 Caution [Do Not Stop on Tracks] [Instrumental] (Grateful Dead)
05 Feedback [Instrumental] (Grateful Dead)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/V37q7cce

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/en/cLQFR8qFjNuyunf/file

The cover photo is from this exact concert. That's Jerry Garcia in the middle, before he fully grew out his distinctive beard. And Ron "Pigpen" McKernan's head can be seen in a cowboy hat.

Bob Weir & Phil Lesh - Weir Here, TRI Studios, San Rafael, CA, 3-13-2013

Last month, January 2026, Bob Weir of the Grateful Dead died. He was 78 years old. I've already posted a couple of things to celebrate his musical legacy, but I want to post another one.

In 2012, Weir opened up his own music studio, called Tamalpais Research Institute Studios, or TRI Studios for short. In 2012 and 2013, he hosted about a dozen concerts in this studio, which were broadcast on the Internet. Generally speaking, he performed acoustic in front of a very small audience, with different guests each episode. I found this episode the most interesting, because his main guest this time was Phil Lesh, the long-time bassist for the Grateful Dead. After Jerry Garcia died in 1995 and the Dead broke up, Weir and Lesh did perform sometimes, for instance in the band the Other Ones. But they almost never performed together in acoustic mode, especially in a studio setting like this. All the songs performed were originally done by the Grateful Dead.

Some other people took part in this concert as well. For the first four songs, it was just Weir and Lesh as a duo, with Lesh coming in halfway through the first song. Then, for tracks 5, 6, and 7, they were joined by Jason Crosby and Joe Russo. For the last song, "Friend of the Devil," Lesh left and was replaced by Cass McCombs. Apparently, that's Lesh who sang lead vocals on "Operator." (The original version on the "American Beauty" album was sung by Ron "Pigpen" McKernan.)

Twice, between songs, the band members stopped playing and had an extension discussion amongst themselves. All that talking has less relistening value for me. So I took those two discussions and put them at the end as optional bonus tracks.

When I found this on YouTube, I did my usual thing of converting the video to audio format, and chopping it into mp3s. I was surprised that I haven't seen it shared as audio files, even though it seems everything Dead-related gets shared that way. So hopefully it can spread around now. 

This album is an hour and three minutes long. 

01 Sugar Magnolia (Bob Weir & Phil Lesh)
02 Cosmic Charlie (Bob Weir & Phil Lesh)
03 Loose Lucy (Bob Weir & Phil Lesh)
04 Jack Straw (Bob Weir & Phil Lesh)
05 Operator (Bob Weir & Phil Lesh)
06 Lazy River Road (Bob Weir & Phil Lesh)
07 Playing in the Band (Bob Weir & Phil Lesh)
08 talk (Bob Weir & Phil Lesh)
09 Friend of the Devil (Bob Weir & Phil Lesh)
10 talk (Bob Weir & Phil Lesh)

Discussion 1 (Bob Weir & Phil Lesh)
Discussion 2 (Bob Weir & Phil Lesh)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/pbTUdbF6 

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/en/c9mqDtoSUMBgZ42/file

The cover photo is from this exact concert. Bob Weir is the one with the beard.  

Bob Weir - Solo Acoustic Live, Tower Theatre, Upper Darby, PA, 9-10-2012

Bob Weir, one of the two main singer-songwriters in the Grateful Dead, died about a month ago as I write this. (He died on January 10, 2026, at the age of 78.) I wanted to post some music in tribute to his musical legacy. So I posted a series of concerts for the closing of the Fillmore West venue in San Francisco that included a Grateful Dead concert. But I also wanted to post something that focused more on him. So I'm posting this, which is a solo acoustic concert he did in 2012.

In the Grateful Dead, Weir was always considered kind of second fiddle to Jerry Garcia. In fact, there's a documentary about his life showing on Netflix right now called "The Other One: The Long, Strange Trip of Bob Weir" that expresses that second fiddle role right in the title. But had Weir led a band on his own, I think he would have been quite successful, because he was a very talented singer and songwriter. His solo career began as far back as 1972 when he released his first solo album, "Ace." (It's a great album, by the way, as good as the Grateful Dead albums at the time, and so is "Garcia," the 1972 Jerry Garcia solo album.) 

But his solo career didn't become his full time career until 1995, the year Garcia died and the Grateful Dead came to an end. He performed in a variety of bands, including Kingfish, the Other Ones, Furthur, RatDog, Bobby and the Midnites, and the Wolf Bros. It was pretty unusual for him to perform in solo acoustic mode, but that's what he did here. This was part of a short solo tour, while he also did an acoustic trio tour that year.

After the Dead broke up, Weir's songwriting slowed down quite a lot. (That's not so unusual for someone who has been in the music business three or more decades already.) As a result, I think only two of the songs here are songs he wrote after 1995: "Ashes and Glass" and "Big Bad Blues." Most of the rest are original songs once performed with the Grateful Dead or covers.

As for the sound quality, I read that, during this tour, each concert was recorded and then one could buy a CD of it immediately after this concert was over. If so, that would explain the soundboard sound quality. However, I don't know if that's true, because this one gets around in bootleg trading circles some, but I haven't seen the other ones from the tour shared in the same way.

This album is two hours and nine minutes long. 

01 talk (Bob Weir)
02 The Music Never Stopped (Bob Weir)
03 Shakey Ground (Bob Weir)
04 The Music Never Stopped [Reprise] (Bob Weir)
05 New, New Minglewood Blues (Bob Weir)
06 talk (Bob Weir)
07 My Brother Esau (Bob Weir)
08 Loose Lucy (Bob Weir)
09 When I Paint My Masterpiece (Bob Weir)
10 talk (Bob Weir)
11 Artificial Flowers (Bob Weir)
12 Weather Report Suite (Bob Weir)
13 talk (Bob Weir)
14 Ashes and Glass (Bob Weir)
15 Big Bad Blues (Bob Weir)
16 Easy to Slip (Bob Weir)
17 Peggy-O (Bob Weir)
18 talk (Bob Weir)
19 Hell in a Bucket (Bob Weir)
20 Dear Prudence (Bob Weir)
21 Sugar Magnolia (Bob Weir)
22 talk (Bob Weir)
23 Brokedown Palace (Bob Weir)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/UiNPi3Qq

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/U3CBuMTDkWOf2W3/file

The cover is taken from a poster for this exact concert. The poster was rectangular, as posters usually are, so I had to make some edits to make it fit a square space. The main thing I did was I chopped out a section in the middle that included a lot of flowers under the skull. 

Our Final Week - The Closing of the Fillmore West, Fillmore West, San Francisco, CA, 7-2-1971, Part 3: The Grateful Dead

Here's the third (and final) set from the third day of five days of concerts that closed the Fillmore West venue in San Francisco in 1971. (See my write-up on the Boz Scaggs set for general information about the closing.) This set features the Grateful Dead.

I had created all these albums in this series a year or two, but never got around to posting them on my blog. The recent death of Bob Weir (I'm writing this in January 2026) gave me the motivation to post them sooner rather than later, mostly so I could get to posting this set. Finally, here it is. But there's a lot more to come, with two more days of the series of concerts still to be posted.

This is a fitting tribute to the passing of Weir, I think because it's a good show of the band in their prime. In my opinion, they had many great years, but their absolute peak was probably 1970 or 1971.

This is a typical Grateful Dead concert for the era. It's long, at nearly three hours. (As is usual for Dead concerts, there was a lot of dead air between songs, but I generally cut that out.) And it consisted of two sets. The first one consisted mostly of shorter songs, often acoustic, while the second set is where the band got spacey and jammed a lot more. 

Some of this has been officially released. Two songs were released on the "Fillmore - The Last Days" album: "Casey Jones" and "Johnny B. Goode." Then, in 2021, many more were released when the "Skull and Roses" live album from 1971 was rereleased in an expanded edition. There were ten songs from this concert on the extra disc (tracks 15, 17 through 22, 25, and 26). However, all those together make up about an hour and fifteen minutes. So that still is less than half of what's here.  

By the way, here's a good blogpost by a Deadhead about this very concert:

Grateful Dead Listening Guide: 1971 July 02 - Fillmore West 

This album is two hours and 41 minutes long. 

01 talk by Bill Graham (Grateful Dead)
02 Bertha (Grateful Dead)
03 Me and Bobby McGee (Grateful Dead)
04 Next Time You See Me (Grateful Dead)
05 China Cat Sunflower (Grateful Dead)
06 I Know You Rider (Grateful Dead)
07 Playing in the Band (Grateful Dead)
08 Loser (Grateful Dead)
09 Ain't It Crazy [The Rub] (Grateful Dead)
10 Me and My Uncle (Grateful Dead)
11 Big Railroad Blues (Grateful Dead)
12 Hard to Handle (Grateful Dead)
13 Deal (Grateful Dead)
14 Promised Land (Grateful Dead)
15 Good Lovin' (Grateful Dead)
16 Sugar Magnolia (Grateful Dead)
17 Sing Me Back Home (Grateful Dead)
18 Mama Tried (Grateful Dead)
19 That's It for the Other One (Grateful Dead)
20 Drums [Instrumental] (Grateful Dead)
21 That's It for the Other One [Reprise] (Grateful Dead)
22 Big Boss Man (Grateful Dead)
23 Casey Jones (Grateful Dead)
24 Not Fade Away (Grateful Dead)
25 Goin' Down the Road Feelin' Bad (Grateful Dead)
26 Not Fade Away [Reprise] (Grateful Dead)
27 talk (Grateful Dead)
28 Johnny B. Goode (Grateful Dead)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/xUZsaYbF

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/en/uJ3AYFRLyXngCGF/file

The cover photo of Jerry Garcia is a screenshot taken from this exact concert. It's from the "Fillmore" movie. Given Bob Weir's recent death, I wanted to use a photo that had Weir in it. But the only one like that I could find would have been very tricky to colorize, due to it being dark and murky. Plus, I'm not completely sure if it's from this exact concert or not. But here it is anyway. If nothing else, it's good way to help imagine the ambience of the concert, since it shows the audience too.

In Concert Against AIDS, Oakland Coliseum Stadium, Oakland, CA, 5-27-1989, Part 4: The Grateful Dead with Clarence Clemons

Here's the fourth and last out of four albums I made from the "In Concert Against AIDS" concert in 1989. This one consists of a set by the Grateful Dead. Furthermore, they were joined by saxophonist Clarence Clemons for more than half of the songs they played.

In the late 1980s, the Grateful Dead had a surge of popularity. This was due to their 1987 hit album "In the Dark," and especially one song from it, "Touch of Grey," which was their only song to ever reach the Top Ten of the U.S. singles chart. As a result, they were the headliner for this benefit concert. 

They proceeded to play a typical concert, with a typically long length. This album is nearly two and a half hours long, and that's after I cut out many lengthy pauses between songs. But they did make a nod to the fact that many in the crowd weren't the usual devout Deadheads by performing their two best known songs, "Touch of Grey" and "Truckin'." 

By most accounts, their performance wasn't extraordinary or unusual compared to their many other concerts that year. But what did set it apart was the presence of Clarence Clemons of Bruce Springsteen's E Street Band joining with his saxophone on a majority of the songs. I mentioned Clemons in Part 2 of this concert, because he also played saxophone on a couple of John Fogerty's songs.

I looked it up, and it turns out Clemons joined in a Jerry Garcia Band concert earlier in 1989. But this was the first time he played with Garcia in an actual Grateful Dead concert. His soulful style added an interesting element. It was so successful that he went on to play at about a dozen more Dead concerts later that year. He sometimes played with the Dead and/or splinter bands after that, but not as frequently.

This album is two hours and 23 minutes long. 

53 Touch of Grey (Grateful Dead)
54 Greatest Story Ever Told (Grateful Dead)
55 Althea (Grateful Dead)
56 Walking Blues (Grateful Dead)
57 Iko Iko (Grateful Dead with Clarence Clemons)
58 Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again (Grateful Dead with Clarence Clemons)
59 Bird Song (Grateful Dead with Clarence Clemons)
60 Promised Land (Grateful Dead with Clarence Clemons)
61 Hell in a Bucket (Grateful Dead with Clarence Clemons)
62 Fire on the Mountain (Grateful Dead with Clarence Clemons)
63 Blow Away (Grateful Dead with Clarence Clemons)
64 Truckin' (Grateful Dead with Clarence Clemons)
65 Drums [Instrumental] (Grateful Dead)
66 Space [Instrumental] (Grateful Dead)
67 I Will Take You Home (Grateful Dead)
68 The Other One (Grateful Dead)
69 Wharf Rat (Grateful Dead)
70 Turn On Your Lovelight (Grateful Dead with Clarence Clemons)
71 Brokedown Palace (Grateful Dead with Clarence Clemons)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/Mg13oudf

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/xe9CMacMKAPTz4f/file

The cover photo shows the band's lead guitarist Jerry Garcia at this exact concert. 

In Concert Against AIDS, Oakland Coliseum Stadium, Oakland, CA, 5-27-1989, Part 2: John Fogerty with the Grateful Dead

Here's the second out of four albums I made from the "In Concert Against AIDS" concert in 1989. This one consists of a set by John Fogerty, backed by the Grateful Dead. Well, kind of the Grateful Dead, as I'll explain in a minute.

At the time, Fogerty hadn't been on tour since 1985, and he didn't have a backing band, so he got some very talented musicians to support him just for this concert. Specifically, he was supported Jerry Garcia on lead guitar, Bob Weir on rhythm guitar, Randy Jackson on bass, and Steve Jordan on drums. Jackson and Jordan were very well respected session musicians at the time. Jackson would later go on to greater fame as one of the judges on the "American Idol" TV show. And if you know anything about the Grateful Dead, you'd know the two best known members were Garcia and Weir. They were the lead vocalists and songwriters for the vast majority of the band's original songs. So whether one can consider this the Grateful Dead is debatable, since the other band members were missing. But in my opinion, at least, I'd consider anything with Garcia and Weir in it to be the essence of the Grateful Dead, even if it was just the two of them in a duo.

On top of that, Clarence Clemons added his saxophone playing for the last two songs. He was a long time member of Bruce Springsteen's E-Street Band, but he also had a hit of his own in the 1980s. 

Fogerty is best known as the leader of Creedence Clearwater Revival (CCR) in the 1960s and early 1970s. He effectively retired from the music business from 1976 to 1985. But then he came back with a big hit album in 1985 ("Centerfield") and another album in 1986. When he went on tour in 1985 and 1986 to support those albums, he avoided playing all of his many CCR hits, due to a dispute with his record company. But in 1987, he was persuaded to resume playing his CCR songs, and did so at a one-off benefit concert that year. I think this was the second big concert where he played those songs, and it was a big deal at the time. Furthermore, the fact that Garcia and Weir were going to back him on was announced in advance, adding to the anticipation.

Here's what a Los Angeles Times article from the day after the concert had to say: "Fogerty's set... [was] a wonderful occasion in and of itself. It wasn't just that Fogerty devoted most of the show to old Creedence Clearwater Revival hits that he rarely plays because of bitterness toward his old record company. It was the sheer, smiling delight and vocal aplomb he brought to the performance. Grateful Dead guitarists Jerry Garcia and Bob Weir lent unremarkable support, but Fogerty, drummer Steve Jordan, and bassist Randy Jackson supplied all the sizzle one could ask. Saxophonist Clarence Clemons, the day's only surprise guest, turned up to haunt through an encore rock-out to 'Suzie Q' and 'Long Tall Sally.'" 

As the article noted, Garcia and Weir were pretty restrained in their playing. Fogerty's songs were short and simple, so they respected that. That meant Garcia didn't go off on lengthy solos like he did with the Dead, but stuck to what the songs needed, based on the original versions. They also added backing vocals on some songs, with Weir singing more than Garcia. It looked like Garcia was having a ball, smiling through most of the set. Probably, he enjoyed simply being a backing musician through a bunch of classic songs that he loved, instead of having to be the main star, which was almost always the case for him. 

This album is 41 minutes long. 

24 Born on the Bayou (John Fogerty with the Grateful Dead)
25 talk (John Fogerty with the Grateful Dead)
26 Green River (John Fogerty with the Grateful Dead)
27 Down on the Corner (John Fogerty with the Grateful Dead)
28 talk (John Fogerty with the Grateful Dead)
29 Rock and Roll Girls (John Fogerty with the Grateful Dead)
30 talk (John Fogerty with the Grateful Dead)
31 Centerfield (John Fogerty with the Grateful Dead)
32 Proud Mary (John Fogerty with the Grateful Dead)
33 Midnight Special (John Fogerty with the Grateful Dead)
34 Bad Moon Rising (John Fogerty with the Grateful Dead)
35 Fortunate Son (John Fogerty with the Grateful Dead)
36 talk (John Fogerty with the Grateful Dead)
37 Suzie Q (John Fogerty with the Grateful Dead & Clarence Clemons)
38 talk (John Fogerty with the Grateful Dead & Clarence Clemons)
39 Long Tall Sally (John Fogerty with the Grateful Dead & Clarence Clemons) 

https://pixeldrain.com/u/eLjiHABc

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/MZAspsTu9FmVaWK/file

The cover photo is from this exact concert. Fogerty is wearing the baseball cap, while Garcia can be seen further back.

Various Artists - Monterey International Pop Festival, Monterey County Fairgrounds, Monterey, CA, 6-18-1967, Evening Show

This is the fifth and last album I'm posting from the 1967 Monterey International Pop Festival. As I've mentioned previously, the festival itself was divided into five parts, and one had to buy tickets for each part. This is the longest album from the festival, and probably the most important in musical history, especially due to the set by Jimi Hendrix.

With most of the previous parts from this festival, I've made reference to a Wikipedia page listing all the songs known to have been performed at the festival. Let me do that again, as I mention the missing portions:

Monterey Pop Festival set list - Wikipedia 

The Blues Project started the evening show. The two songs here are the only ones listed at the Wikipedia page, but it's known they performed more. Unfortunately, the band was in the process of breaking up when this concert happened. A key member, Al Kooper, left a couple of months prior to this. (He had his own solo set at the festival.) The band collapsed shortly thereafter, though there were later reunions.

The second set was by Big Brother and the Holding Company, starring their lead singer Janis Joplin. As I mentioned previously, they were the only act to perform twice at the festival. That's because they went over very well the first time, the day before, but the band's manager didn't allow them to be filmed at that time. (The cameras were running but pointed at the ground, which at least allowed the audio to be recorded.) By the next day, the band members were convinced that getting included in the documentary about the festival would give their career a big boost. So they played a short set of just 15 minutes, compared to 23 minutes the day before, in order to get enough film footage. It turned out to be a very smart career move indeed. When the "Monterey Pop" movie documentary came out in 1968, Joplin's performance in it helped make her a big star.

The next set is quite a mystery - even the band's name: "the Group with No Name." This band was led by Cyrus Faryar, a singer-songwriter who had previously been in the Modern Jazz Quartet. But no songs from this set have been made public, and none or the names of any of the songs performed are known, nor is the number of songs. It seems they were not well received. A Newsweek review of the festival said they "were terrible and may well not last long enough to get a name." That turned out to be accurate, because the band broke up before they released any music. 

After that came Buffalo Springfield. I'm especially excited about this, because up until 2024, only five of the songs they performed were publicly available. But that year, there was a "record store day" release of their entire set here. That release included three songs that were previously unreleased, and even unbootlegged: "Hung Upside Down," "Nobody's Fool," and "Pretty Girl Why."

Here's a review about the Buffalo Springfield set in Rolling Stone Magazine in 2024: 

First-Ever Buffalo Springfield Live Album Released on Record Store Day 

This performance is unusual in that key member Neil Young quit the band about a week before the festival, only to rejoin shortly afterwards. (He quit and rejoined multiple times.) Young was temporarily replaced by two people: lead guitarist Doug Hastings and rhythm guitarist and vocalist David Crosby. Crosby's involvement was controversial, because he was still a member of the Byrds at the time, and in fact he performed in their set at the festival as well. 

Here's a quote about the controversy by Roger McGuinn, the leader of the Byrds: "I didn't know David was going to sit in with Buffalo Springfield, and that wasn't really a big deal. What was happening was that we were not happy with each other, like a marriage breaking up. He was really upset because we didn’t do his song 'Triad.' That was the big bone. He wanted to be the lead singer of the Byrds, you know, the head Byrd. That wasn't happening. To his satisfaction, we were sharing vocals equally. At Monterey I was trying to be a trooper, like Bobby Darin taught me, and try and soldier on and do it."

I don't know how much Crosby's sitting in with Buffalo Springfield impacted his role with the Byrds, if at all. But he was kicked out of the band a few months later. And his involvement with Buffalo Springfield was key to his future music career, because he would later be a member of Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young with two members of Buffalo Springfield: Stephen Stills and Neil Young.

The next act up was the Who. Jimi Hendrix moved to Britain in late 1966 and soon found fame there. One he was living there, he and the Who had seen each other perform. They were both impressed with and intimidated by each other. Neither wanted to be upstaged by the other at this festival, especially since both had made destroying their instruments part of their acts. They decided to toss a coin. The  Who won the right to play first.

Adding to the competition between the two acts, backstage before their sets, Hendrix played his guitar while staring at the Who's lead guitarist Pete Townshend, trying to impress him with his skills. Townshend said later, "It was just Jimi on a chair playing at me. Playing at me like 'Don't fuck with me, you little shit.'" 

Here's how the Wikipedia entry about the festival describes the finale to the Who's set: "At the end of their frenetic performance of 'My Generation,' the audience was stunned as guitarist Pete Townshend smashed his guitar and slammed the neck against the amps and speakers. Smoke bombs exploded behind the amps and frightened concert staff rushed onstage to retrieve expensive microphones. At the end of the mayhem, drummer Keith Moon kicked over his drum kit as the band exited the stage." 

The Who's set was relatively short, only 25 minutes, when they were allowed to play up to 40 minutes. So their set here is complete. But their performance was very impactful, especially due to the destruction of their instruments. They were a British band, and hadn't had any hits in the U.S. yet, except for "Happy Jack" in 1966, though there already was a lot of buzz about them. Their performance at the festival would raise their profile in the U.S., helping them to have two more U.S. hits later that year, "Pictures of Lily" and "I Can See for Miles."  

Eric Burdon of the Animals later commented about the Who's performance: "The American audience went: 'What the hell is this?!' The climax of the show was just like a terrorist attack, with the bombs and the smoke. It was just shocking!"

After the Who came the Grateful Dead. The band would go on to play concerts for decades, becoming one of the most popular touring bands in the U.S. But keep in mind this was very early in their career, with their debut album ("The Grateful Dead")coming out only three months prior to this festival. In a Newsweek review of the festival, music critic Michael Lydon commented: "The Grateful Dead were beautiful. They did at top volume what Shankar had done softly. They played pure music, some of the best music of the concert. I have never heard anything in music that could be said to be qualitatively better than the performance of the Dead, Sunday night.

The next act was the Jimi Hendrix Experience. This was possibly the most musically historic set of the entire festival. As an aside, Hendrix was not well known in the U.S. at the time of the festival. The main reason why he appeared at the festival, and especially at a pivotal spot near the end of the final night, was because Paul McCartney of the Beatles was a member of the board of governors for the festival, and he absolutely insisted that Hendrix had to perform there. The Wikipedia entry on the festival has a good summary of what happened during Hendrix's set, so I'll quote that here:

"Brian Jones of the Rolling Stones introduced [Hendrix]. His use of extremely high volumes, the feedback this produced, and the combination of the two along with his dive-bombing use of the vibrato bar on his guitar, produced sounds that, with the exception of the British in attendance, none of the audience had ever heard before. This, along with his look, his clothing, and his erotic antics onstage, had an enormous impact on the audience. To take things further, aware of the Who's planned explosive finale, he had asked around for a can of lighter fluid, which he'd placed behind one of his amplifier stacks before beginning his set. He ended his Monterey performance with an unpredictable version of 'Wild Thing,' which he capped by kneeling over his guitar, pouring lighter fluid over it, setting it on fire, and then smashing it onto the stage seven times before throwing its remains into the audience. This performance put Hendrix on the map and generated an enormous amount of attention in the music press and newspapers alike." 

Actor Dennis Hopper had this to say: "Hendrix was certainly a great guitar player. He became part of the guitar, it was an extension of his, ah, his feelings and his sex and everything. He was unmatched in that."

And music critic Robert Christgau wrote this in The Village Voice decades later: "Music was a given for a Hendrix stuck with topping the Who's guitar-smashing tour de force. It's great sport to watch this outrageous scene-stealer wiggle his tongue, pick with his teeth, and set his axe on fire, but the showboating does distract from the history made that night - the dawning of an instrumental technique so effortlessly fecund and febrile that rock has yet to equal it, though hundreds of metal bands have gotten rich trying."

The final act of the evening, and thus the entire festival, was the Mamas and the Papas. They had had many big hits of their own by this time. But the band's main songwriter John Phillips had recently wrote a single meant to promote the festival, "San Francisco [Be Sure to Wear Flowers in Your Hair]." Rather than had his own band play it, he gave the song to Scott McKenzie, who was having a huge hit with it right when the festival was happening (as I detailed in the write-up in the first part of this festival). McKenzie wasn't just a random singer though. He and Phillips were friends since childhood, and played in different bands together. When Phillips created the Mamas and the Papas, he invited McKenzie to join, but McKenzie turned down the offer, wanting to try a solo career instead. In any case, towards the end of this set, McKenzie joined the band and sang his hit song with the Mamas and the Papas backing him.

Indian sitar player Ravi Shankar had this to say: "The group who really made me feel good, I can't tell you how nice, was the Mamas and the Papas. There was melody, there were lyrical moments, and beautiful - and they looked so good together." (As an aside, he enjoyed many of the other acts in the festival, but hated the destruction of instruments by the Who and Hendrix.)

Now, this is going to be an extra long write-up, because before I finish with this festival, I want to write a little bit about how it came to be in the first place. I'm putting that explanation here because it turns out the main instigators of the festival were actually the members of the Mamas and the Papas, so I think it's fitting to put this explanation after talking about their set. The festival came together rather quickly, in just a few months, but during that time the band members worked tirelessly on it, basically putting the band on hold for a while to do so.

The band put on a pretty good performance despite being too busy organizing the festival to rehearse much beforehand. But in retrospect, the fact the band spent so much time organizing the festival was probably a sign that they had grown tired of being in a band together. Phillips remembered as the apex of the band's career, saying, "There would never be anything quite like it again." The band put out a new album in October 1967. But after that, they decided to take long vacations to "get the muse going again," according to Phillips. But instead, the band fought during their vacation time, resulting in an announcement that they had broken up. They did manage to reunite for another album in 1968, only to break up again.

The festival was originally conceived as a money-making event. But the people involved didn't have the money to pay for star acts. So the organizers changed the idea to a benefit concert (although first class transportation was paid for all the acts). The profits from sales of albums drawn from the festival still help fund charities decades later, especially due to steady profits from the hit "Monterey Pop" movie documentary. Ravi Shankar was the only act to be paid, because he signed a contract early on, before it was changed to a benefit concert.

The festival had a very unusual board of governors to help organize it: John Phillips, Donovan, Mick Jagger, Paul McCartney, Roger McGuinn, Johnny Rivers, Smokey Robinson, Paul Simon, Brian Wilson, Lou Adler, Terry Melcher, Andrew Loog Oldham, and Alan Pariser. All the next except the last four were famous musicians at the time. The last four were successful music producers or managers. Some, like Phillips and Simon, were very involved, while others like Smokey Robinson basically just gave their name to the effort.

By the way, one of the last things I want to mention about this festival is all the bands that didn't play. Here are some names, plus the reasons why they didn't participate in paranetheses: the Beach Boys (internal squabbles), Donovan (couldn't get a U.S. work visa due to a drug charge), the Kinks (couldn't get a U.S. work visa due to being banned due to a union dispute), the Lovin' Spoonful (fighting a drug charge, plus internal squabbles), and Dionne Warwick (cancelled right before the festival because she had a schedule conflict). Kaleidoscope (the U.S. band, not the British one) did play at the festival, but only outside, for the crowd who didn't have tickets to get inside.

There were still more acts that were asked but declined. Producer Lou Adler later said, "There weren't a lot of tours [at the time]. We're still talking 1967. Not a lot of acts [were] working all the time. The San Francisco acts [were] playing around San Francisco. The big acts couldn't get visas to get in. The Motown acts were working, the blues acts were working, but the acts that we went after, they had time even though we had a short window [to get them]. ... Everyone jumped on very quickly. We tried for the Impressions. We got some no's, from some of the Motown acts, and Chuck Berry passed."

In my recent write-up about the 1969 Toronto Rock and Roll Revival Festival, I mentioned that legendary 1950s star Chuck Berry was notoriously cheap. This is another good example of that. John Phillips tried to invite Berry. "I told him on the phone, 'Chuck, it's for charity,' and he said to me, 'Chuck Berry has only one charity and that's Chuck Berry. $2,000.' We couldn't make an exception." 

Anyway, that's the festival. I hope you enjoy. Personally, if I could get in a time machine and see just one rock festival, I think it would be this one, even over Woodstock in 1969. Actually, the people who created the Woodstock festival came up with the idea immediately after watching the "Monterey Pop" documentary movie in 1968. Like many others, they wanted to repeat the success of Monterey, but make a lot of money from it instead of doing it as a benefit concert.

Here's an interesting quote from Chris Hillman of the Byrds, contrasting the two festivals. "I didn't do Woodstock, and I remember Gram Parsons and I were sharing a house in the San Fernando Valley, and Woodstock was on the news. The situation there. We were laughing, and I said, 'That's no Monterey.' And it wasn't! There was a sense of commaraderie at Monterey." 

This album is three hours and 35 minutes long. 

01 talk (Tommy Smothers)
02 talk (Paul Simon)
03 The Flute Thing [Instrumental] (Blues Project)
04 talk (Blues Project)
05 Wake Me, Shake Me (Blues Project)
06 talk (Tommy Smothers)
07 Combination of the Two (Big Brother & the Holding Company)
08 Harry (Big Brother & the Holding Company)
09 Ball and Chain (Big Brother & the Holding Company)
10 talk (Peter Tork)
11 For What It's Worth (Buffalo Springfield)
12 Nowadays Clancy Can't Even Sing (Buffalo Springfield)
13 talk (Buffalo Springfield)
14 Hung Upside Down (Buffalo Springfield)
15 talk (Buffalo Springfield)
16 A Child's Claim to Fame (Buffalo Springfield)
17 talk (Buffalo Springfield)
18 Nobody's Fool (Buffalo Springfield)
19 talk (Buffalo Springfield)
20 Pretty Girl Why (Buffalo Springfield)
21 talk (Buffalo Springfield)
22 Rock and Roll Woman (Buffalo Springfield)
23 Bluebird (Buffalo Springfield)
24 talk (Eric Burdon)
25 Substitute (Who)
26 talk (Who)
27 Summertime Blues (Who)
28 talk (Who)
29 Pictures of Lily (Who)
30 talk (Who)
31 A Quick One while He's Away (Who)
32 talk (Who)
33 Happy Jack (Who)
34 talk (Who)
35 My Generation (Who)
36 talk (Bill Graham)
37 talk (Bill Graham)
38 Viola Lee Blues (Grateful Dead)
39 talk by emcee (Grateful Dead)
40 talk (Grateful Dead)
41 Cold Rain and Snow (Grateful Dead)
42 talk (Jimi Hendrix)
43 Alligator (Grateful Dead)
44 Caution [Do Not Stop on Tracks] (Grateful Dead)
45 talk (Bill Graham)
46 talk (emcee)
47 talk (Brian Jones)
48 Killing Floor (Jimi Hendrix)
49 talk (Jimi Hendrix)
50 Foxy Lady (Jimi Hendrix)
51 talk (Jimi Hendrix)
52 Like a Rolling Stone (Jimi Hendrix)
53 talk (Jimi Hendrix)
54 Rock Me Baby (Jimi Hendrix)
55 talk (Jimi Hendrix)
56 Hey Joe (Jimi Hendrix)
57 talk (Jimi Hendrix)
58 Can You See Me (Jimi Hendrix)
59 talk (Jimi Hendrix)
60 The Wind Cries Mary (Jimi Hendrix)
61 talk (Jimi Hendrix)
62 Purple Haze (Jimi Hendrix)
63 talk (Jimi Hendrix)
64 Wild Thing (Jimi Hendrix)
65 talk (Paul Simon)
66 Straight Shooter (Mamas & the Papas)
67 talk (Mamas & the Papas)
68 Got a Feelin' (Mamas & the Papas)
69 talk (Mamas & the Papas)
70 California Dreamin' (Mamas & the Papas)
71 talk (Mamas & the Papas)
72 Spanish Harlem (Mamas & the Papas)
73 Somebody Groovy (Mamas & the Papas)
74 talk (Mamas & the Papas)
75 I Call Your Name (Mamas & the Papas)
76 talk (Mamas & the Papas)
77 Monday, Monday (Mamas & the Papas)
78 talk (Mamas & the Papas)
79 San Francisco [Be Sure to Wear Flowers in Your Hair] (Mamas & the Papas & Scott McKenzie)
80 talk (Mamas & the Papas)
81 Dancing in the Street (Mamas & the Papas)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/8vU9t776

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/3WanaF2nlZaXyl8/file

Like most of the cover art I've made for this festival, I had too many good options to choose from, so I broke the image into four smaller ones. From top left clockwise: David Crosby (with hat), Richie Furray (with glasses) and Stephen Stills of Buffalo Springfield, Roger Daltrey and Pete Townshend (smashing his guitar) of the Who, the Mamas and the Papas, and Jimi Hendrix.

US Festival '82, Glen Helen Regional Park, San Bernardino, CA, 9-5-1982 - Day 3, Part 1: The Grateful Dead

The first act presented here from Day Three of the 1982 US Festival is a set by the Grateful Dead. This was the start of the final day of the festival.

By the early 1980s, the Dead were a musical institution that seemed to defy cultural trends. However, they were at their best performing in their own way to their own fans, the Deadheads, and generally tried to avoid this type of festival playing to most who only knew their music a little bit or not at all. 

However, I saw an interview with band drummer Mickey Hart who said they made an exception for this festival because they were inspired by festival funder Steve Wozniak's effort to try something new and different. And even though it might seem just like another big rock festival many years later, at the time it was innovative in many ways, especially with technological innovations, such as the sound system, which used digital delay to prevent the echo-like problem of the sound being slightly off from speaker to speaker. In fact, it's not an exaggeration to say the first US festival became the template for how all big music festivals were run afterwards. 

Anyway, the last studio album the Dead released was "Go to Heaven," in 1980. But that wasn't the point with this jam band, and they didn't even bother to play any songs from it. Instead, they did a "short" version of their usual concert format, complete with the instrumental "Drums" and "Space" sections.

One unusual aspect of this concert was that it started about nine-thirty in the morning. The festival organizers nicknamed this "Breakfast with the Dead." One of the band members commented that although they'd played past sunrise at various concerts, this was the first time they'd had such an early start time in their long career. It seems the crowd reaction to their set was quite positive.

This album is an hour and 53 minutes long.

001 Playing in the Band (Grateful Dead)
002 Shakedown Street (Grateful Dead)
003 New Minglewood Blues (Grateful Dead)
004 talk (Grateful Dead)
005 Samson and Delilah (Grateful Dead)
006 China Cat Sunflower (Grateful Dead)
007 I Know You Rider (Grateful Dead)
008 Sugaree (Grateful Dead)
009 Man Smart, Woman Smarter (Grateful Dead)
010 Truckin' (Grateful Dead)
011 Drums [Instrumental] (Grateful Dead)
012 Space [Instrumental] (Grateful Dead)
013 Not Fade Away (Grateful Dead)
014 Black Peter (Grateful Dead)
015 Sugar Magnolia (Grateful Dead)
016 U.S. Blues (Grateful Dead)
017 [I Can't Get No] Satisfaction (Grateful Dead)
018 talk (Grateful Dead)

https://www.imagenetz.de/k9QKU

alternate:

https://pixeldrain.com/u/3gGcVH35

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/sePp0A8lulLw5iJ/file

The cover photo is from this exact concert. It's shows the band's two main lead singers, Bob Weir (in shorts) and Jerry Garcia (with glasses and a beard).

SNACK Benefit, Kezar Stadium, San Francisco, CA, 3-23-1975, Part 2: The Grateful Dead

The second major act to perform at the 1975 SNACK benefit was the Grateful Dead. 

Note that this was a very unusual concert for the Grateful Dead. That probably explains why the band appeared quite early in the day, to lower expectations. 1975 was a strange year for the band. They went on touring hiatus in October 1974, and only resumed touring on a regular basis in June 1976. In 1975, they just played four concerts, including this one.

Technically, this act was billed as "Jerry Garcia and Friends." But actually, it was every member of the Grateful Dead plus Merl Saunders on organ and Ned Lagin on keyboards. 

What really sets this concert apart for the band though was the set list. For one thing, they were used to playing two hours or longer each concert. But here, they were limited to a 30-minute long set. (They went a little over.) They decided to fill nearly all of that with a completely instrumental performance, except for the encore. Furthermore, their big instrumental section was music that they'd never put on record or performed in public yet. According to media reports, they called the entire thing "Space Age." However, later in 1975 they would release the studio album "Blues for Allah" and most of it was on that album in different forms, so we can assign names to the parts of the instrumental sections.

That was a pretty ballsy move to perform such experimental music, especially in front of a crowd that mostly did not consist of their usual "Deadhead" fan base. The only thing they did to appeal to the masses was the encore, a lively cover of the Chuck Berry standard "Johnny B. Goode," with vocals. This has to be one of the most unique concerts the band ever did. The only times they played versions of this "Blues for Allah" song making up most of their set was in their four 1975 concerts.

This album is 37 minutes long.

Note that the track numbering continues where the numbering for the previous album from this concert left off. All the rest of the albums from the concert follow that same pattern.

08 talk by Bill Graham (Grateful Dead)
09 Blues for Allah [Instrumental Version] (Grateful Dead)
10 Milking the Turkey [Instrumental] (Grateful Dead)
11 Drums [Instrumental] (Grateful Dead)
12 Milking the Turkey [Instrumental] (Grateful Dead)
13 Blues for Allah [Reprise] [Instrumental Version] (Grateful Dead)
14 talk (Grateful Dead)
15 Johnny B. Goode (Grateful Dead) 

https://www.upload.ee/files/17209138/VA-SNCKBnefitKzarStdumSnFrncscoCA197502GrteflDed_atse.zip.html

alternate:

https://pixeldrain.com/u/y8zQGFnP

I was ready to post the albums from this concert weeks ago, but I was held up by the cover art. I found photos for six of the eight acts from this exact concert, but all of them were in black and white. So it took me a while to get around to colorizing them with the help of the Palette program. This photo only shows the band's two lead singers, Jerry Garcia and Bob Weir. I know I got the colors right for Garcia, because I found a color photo of just him. I preferred this one though. I had to guess the colors for Weir, and stuck pretty closely to what the Palette program chose.

UPDATE: On October 7, 2024, I upgraded the photo with the use of the Krea AI program.

Jamaica World Music Festival, Montego Bay, Jamaica, 11-25-1982, Part 5: The Grateful Dead

The fifth and final set from the first day of the 1982 Jamaica World Music Festival was performed by the Grateful Dead. But don't worry, there are two other days to the festival after this.

Actually, it would be more accurate to say this took place on November 26th instead of the 25th, because the band started playing after midnight... well after midnight! The festivals started at 7 P.M. each "day" of the festival, so it was probably dark by the time the first acts got on stage. But then there were delays common to such festivals. Apparently, by the time the Grateful Dead took the stage, it was about four in the morning!

The Dead played one of their typical sets, going for about two hours. However, it seems to me that they were inspired by the Jamaica festival setting to play more of their upbeat songs than usual, including some that came close to having a reggae sound.

One interesting note is that the song "Throwing Stones" played here hadn't been released on album yet, and in fact wouldn't be released until five years later, on the band's 1987 studio album "In the Dark." They had just started playing it in concert a couple of months earlier.

This album is an hour and 55 minutes long.

65 talk (Grateful Dead)
66 Sugaree (Grateful Dead)
67 New Minglewood Blues (Grateful Dead)
68 Loser (Grateful Dead)
69 Man Smart, Woman Smarter (Grateful Dead)
70 Althea (Grateful Dead)
71 Let It Grow (Grateful Dead)
72 talk (Grateful Dead)
73 Samson and Delilah (Grateful Dead)
74 Scarlet Begonias (Grateful Dead)
75 Fire on the Mountain (Grateful Dead)
76 Drums [Instrumental] (Grateful Dead)
77 Space [Instrumental] (Grateful Dead)
78 Throwing Stones (Grateful Dead)
79 Not Fade Away (Grateful Dead)
80 Black Peter (Grateful Dead)
81 Good Lovin' (Grateful Dead)

https://www.imagenetz.de/dmUEX

alternate:

https://pixeldrain.com/u/hyStHwiC

second alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/Kqkz3cffmHWtLrc/file

The cover photo is from this exact concert. However, the original was in black and white. I used the Palette program to help convert it into color. From right to left, that's Phil Lesh, Bob Weir, and Jerry Garcia. The three other band members weren't in the photo.

Mickey Hart, Joan Osborne & the Flying Other Brothers - Concert for Dave Obey, Regency Ballroom, Hyatt Regency, Washington, DC, 3-21-2004

I recently posted four albums of Joan Osborne singing Grateful Dead songs in concert with the band Phil Lesh and Friends in 2006. This is very similar. Two years earlier, instead of singing Dead songs with former member of the Dead bassist Phil Lesh, she did a concert where she sand Dead songs with former member of the Dead drummer Mickey Hart.

I know very, very little about this concert, and I could find almost no mention of it on the Internet. At some point I must have known something about it, because I put it on my "wish list" with the SoulseekQT file sharing program. After many months, I had forgotten all about it, and it showed up, allowing me to download it. 

Looking it up at discogs.com, I see that it technically was officially released at one point, but it seems it was a limited release and quickly went out of print. The record company that released it literally only ever released this one album. This was billed as the "Concert for Dave Obey," so I looked him up. It turns out he was a Democratic Congressperson in Wisconsin from 1969 to 2011. He was considered one of the most progressive people in Congress, which would explain why the likes of Obsorne and Hart performed a benefit concert that presumably helped raise money for his reelection.

That's about all I know. I don't know if more songs were played, or if anyone talked between songs, etc... If you know, please inform us. But what I do know is that it's great hearing Osborne sing Dead songs. And the song quality is excellent. By the way, I think Mickey Hart sang some lead vocals too, but he only did a bit of that since he's not known for his singing. Whoever played lead guitar did a very close imitation of Jerry Garcia's style, including the guitar tone.

This album is an hour and eight minutes long.

01 Sugaree (Mickey Hart, Joan Osborne & the Flying Other Brothers)
02 Scarlet Begonias - Fire on the Mountain (Mickey Hart, Joan Osborne & the Flying Other Brothers)
03 Queen Bee (Mickey Hart, Joan Osborne & the Flying Other Brothers)
04 I Know You Rider (Mickey Hart, Joan Osborne & the Flying Other Brothers)
05 Franklin's Tower (Mickey Hart, Joan Osborne & the Flying Other Brothers)
06 Going Down the Road Feelin' Bad (Mickey Hart, Joan Osborne & the Flying Other Brothers)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16082496/JOANOS2004_ConcrtfrDveObyRgencyBllroomHyttRgencyWshingtnDC__3-21-2001_atse.zip.html

The cover is the exact one from the official release.

Phil Lesh & Friends with Joan Osborne - Joan Osborne Sings Grateful Dead Songs, Volume 4 (2006)

I've already posted three volumes of Joan Osborne singing lead vocals on Grateful Dead songs with the band Phil Lesh and Friends. This the fourth, and unfortunately, last album in the series.

As with the others in this series, the entire tour was professionally recorded and released at the time, so the sound quality here is great. Also like the others, the songs are in chronological order from when they were played in concert.

Most of the songs here are Grateful Dead originals, but not all of them. "Let the Good Times Roll" and "In the Midnight Hour" are classic songs in their own right that were frequently covered by the Dead. "Blue Sky" was never performed by the Dead. However, it's by the Allman Brothers Band, another famous jam band from the same era, so it fits right in. Finally, just like the last volume, a Ryan Adams song was performed, "Peaceful Valley."

This album is one hour long, more or less exactly.

01 Attics of My Life (Phil Lesh & Friends with Joan Osborne)
02 Here Comes Sunshine (Phil Lesh & Friends with Joan Osborne)
03 Blue Sky (Phil Lesh & Friends with Joan Osborne)
04 Reuben and Cherise (Phil Lesh & Friends with Joan Osborne)
05 Lazy River Road (Phil Lesh & Friends with Joan Osborne)
06 Let the Good Times Roll (Phil Lesh & Friends with Joan Osborne)
07 Peaceful Valley (Phil Lesh & Friends with Joan Osborne)
08 In the Midnight Hour (Phil Lesh & Friends with Joan Osborne)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16049341/JoanO_2006d_JoanOsbrneSngsGrtefulDdSngsVolum4_atse.zip.html

The cover photo shows Osborne at some point during this 2006 tour, but I don't know the details.

Phil Lesh & Friends with Joan Osborne - Joan Osborne Sings Grateful Dead Songs, Volume 3 (2006)

I've previously posted two albums of Joan Osborne singing Grateful Dead songs with Phil Lesh and Friends in 2006. Here's a third album. There's one more to come.

As I said with the previous volumes, there's a lot of charm in hearing how Jerry Garcia and Bobby Weir of the Grateful Dead originally sung these songs. But hearing Osborne sing them is a different thing altogether. Not only does she have a remarkable voice, but it's interesting hear a woman sing these songs. Plus, you still got very Dead-like jamming thanks to Dead bassist Phil Lesh and the other musicians.

All the songs here have soundboard level quality, due to the fact that all the concerts by this band from 2006 were officially released at one point. I've put them in chronological order.

This time, all the songs are Grateful Dead originals, except for "I Know You Rider" and "Turn on Your Lovelight." But the Dead played those two zillions of times. And "Magnolia Mountain" was originally by Ryan Adams, and was written after the Dead had already broken up.

This album is an hour and 17 minutes long.

01 I Know You Rider (Phil Lesh & Friends with Joan Osborne)
02 Turn on Your Lovelight (Phil Lesh & Friends with Joan Osborne)
03 High Time (Phil Lesh & Friends with Joan Osborne)
04 Magnolia Mountain (Phil Lesh & Friends with Joan Osborne)
05 Althea (Phil Lesh & Friends with Joan Osborne)
06 Candyman (Phil Lesh & Friends with Joan Osborne)
07 China Doll (Phil Lesh & Friends with Joan Osborne)
08 Stella Blue (Phil Lesh & Friends with Joan Osborne)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16029883/JoanO_2006a_JoanOsbrneSngsGrtefulDdSngsVolum3_atse.zip.html

The cover is a photo of Osborne from the Bonnaroo Festival in 2006.

Phil Lesh & Friends with Joan Osborne - Joan Osborne Sings Grateful Dead Songs, Volume 2 (2006)

This is a second volume of Joan Osborne singing lead on Grateful Dead songs with the band Phil Lesh and Friends in 2006. There are four volumes in total.

Every concert Phil Lesh and Friends performed in 2006 were released digitally at the time, so everything here has soundboard quality. The vocals on "Shakedown Street" were rather low in the mix though. Maybe that was how it was at the concert, for whatever reason. But I fixed that using the UVR5 audio editing program.

All of the songs here are closely associated with the Grateful Dead. However, some of them happen to be covers for the Dead that they played in concert a lot. Only "New Speedway Boogie" and "Shakedown Street" were originals.

This album is an hour and ten minutes long. There are only six songs despite this album being well over an hour long due to lots of jamming.

01 Good Lovin' (Phil Lesh & Friends with Joan Osborne)
02 Next Time You See Me (Phil Lesh & Friends with Joan Osborne)
03 New Speedway Boogie (Phil Lesh & Friends with Joan Osborne)
04 Morning Dew (Phil Lesh & Friends with Joan Osborne)
05 Gimme Shelter (Phil Lesh & Friends with Joan Osborne)
06 Shakedown Street (Phil Lesh & Friends with Joan Osborne)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16003044/JoanO_2006a_JoanOsbrneSngsGrtefulDdSngsVolum2_atse.zip.html

The cover photo shows Osborne with Phil Lesh at the Bonnaroo Festival in Memphis, Tennessee, in 2006. Osborne and Lesh were much further apart, but I moved them closer using Photoshop.

Phil Lesh & Friends with Joan Osborne - Joan Osborne Sings Grateful Dead Songs, Volume 1 (2006)

Singer-songwriter Joan Osborne had the honor of singing lead vocals with the Dead, the successor band to the Grateful Dead, in 2003. However, she didn't sing lead all that much, and did more backing vocals, because the band still had Bob Weir as a member, who had been one of the two main lead vocalists for the entire duration of the Grateful Dead's existence. By 2006, she was lead vocalist again for the related band Phil Lesh and Friends. This time, she did a lot more of the lead vocals. It also so happens that all of the band's concerts from this year have been made available with soundboard quality. So I've gone through those and picked out all the songs where Osborne sang lead. That resulted in four albums. Here's the first one.

Before I go further, I should explain why I've specifically sought out the songs sung Osborne. The Grateful Dead and successor bands have had many excellent lead vocalists over the years, most especially the two main originals, Jerry Garcia and Bob Weir. But those vocalists were known more for having character than technical prowess. Osborne, in addition to being a successful singer-songwriter in her own right, has one of those special voices, a diva voice, if you will, that can expertly sing just about anything. So it's quite something to hear Grateful Dead songs sung by someone of her caliber, while at the same time one got the instrumental prowess of bassist Phil Lesh and his band mates.

Speaking of band mates, in 2003, in addition to Lesh and Osborne, the band consisted of Larry Campbell (guitar, violin, slide guitar, mandolin, and vocals), Rob Barraco (keyboards and vocals), and John Molo (drums), and either John Scofield, Barry Sless, or Trey Anastasio (guitar).

The songs are generally Grateful Dead originals or covers closely associated with the band. "Nobody's Girl" is a rare case of an original written after the Grateful Dead came to an end in 1995.

The songs are in chronological order of the concerts they occurred in. The range here is from February to June 2006. You can find the exact details in the mp3 tags, as usual.

This album is an hour and 15 minutes long.

01 All Along the Watchtower (Phil Lesh & Friends with Joan Osborne)
02 Caution [Do Not Stop on Tracks] (Phil Lesh & Friends with Joan Osborne)
03 Sugaree (Phil Lesh & Friends with Joan Osborne)
04 Nobody Girl (Phil Lesh & Friends with Joan Osborne)
05 He's Gone (Phil Lesh & Friends with Joan Osborne)
06 Cosmic Charlie (Phil Lesh & Friends with Joan Osborne)
07 Mr. Charlie (Phil Lesh & Friends with Joan Osborne)
08 Death Don't Have No Mercy (Phil Lesh & Friends with Joan Osborne)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15950784/JoanO_2006a_JoanOsbrneSngsGrtefulDdSngsVolum1_atse.zip.html

The cover photo of Osborne is from her time with Phil Lesh and Friends in 2006, but I don't know the exact details.

The Grateful Dead - Golden Era Cover Versions, Volume 4: 1973

Here's the fourth and last volume in this series of albums of cover versions by the Grateful Dead from their "golden era" of 1969 to 1973.

This one is a bit different than the others in the series, because virtually all the songs in previous volumes were officially released, but six out of the ten songs here are still unreleased. But never fear, because the sound quality is excellent throughout, with everything coming from soundboard recordings.

Actually, the first two songs have been officially released (and just last week as I write this in July 2023, for one of them). However, I didn't use the official version because it actually sounded a bit worse than the bootleg version I already had.

You may notice that six songs have "[Edit]" in their titles. Those are all the unreleased ones. For some weird reason, all those had the lead vocals way down in the mix, even though they're from three different sources. So I did my usual thing, using the audio editing program UVR5 to boost the vocals relative to the instruments. 

You may notice this volume is significantly shorter than the others in the series, although it still has a reasonable length. That's because I did most of the volumes in this series by year, and the band did fewer covers in 1973. Their golden era was a tremendous burst of creativity, but by 1973 they were slowing down. They continued to tour into 1974, but then went on touring hiatus for a year and a half. Strangely, from 1974 through the rest of the 1970s, they did almost no new cover songs in concert, so this is a good place to end the series.

This album is 46 minutes long.

01 It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry [Edit] (Grateful Dead)
02 That's All Right, Mama [Edit] (Grateful Dead)
03 You Ain't Woman Enough (Grateful Dead)
04 The Race Is On (Grateful Dead)
05 Nobody's Fault but Mine (Grateful Dead)
06 Peggy-O (Grateful Dead)
07 Working Man Blues [Edit] (Grateful Dead)
08 Thirty Days [Edit] (Grateful Dead)
09 Rip It Up [Edit] (Grateful Dead)
10 Blue Suede Shoes [Edit] (Grateful Dead)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15409332/TGratefulD_1973_GoldnEraCovrVrsionsVolume_4_atse.zip.html

As with the other covers in this series, the cover uses a concert poster from the relevant year. And, as usual with posters, I had to do some cropping and editing to get the rectangular poster art to fit into a square space.

The Grateful Dead - Golden Era Cover Versions, Volume 3: 1972

I recently posted the second volume in this series of Grateful Dead cover versions from their 1969 to 1973 golden era. I'd posted that after forgetting for a year plus to follow up posting the first volume. I figure I'd better post the rest of this series before I forget again. There's this volume, for the year 1972, and one more volume coming soon for the year 1973.

There's been such a proliferation of official live albums by the Dead over the decades that most of the songs here sound great since they come from official releases. However, there are two exceptions: "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue" and "Tomorrow Is Forever."

Also, I didn't include "Morning Dew" and "I Know You Rider." Both of those are covers, but I put version of them on 1972 studio albums I put together.

Many of the songs here were done lots of times by the Dead over the years. But others are extremely rare. For instance, "Are You Lonely for Me" and "How Sweet it Is (To Be Loved by You)" were only played once in concert.

This album is an hour and 15 minutes long.

01 Are You Lonely for Me (Grateful Dead)
02 How Sweet It Is [To Be Loved by You] (Grateful Dead)
03 Good Lovin' (Grateful Dead)
04 Rockin' Pneumonia and the Boogie Woogie Flu (Grateful Dead)
05 Hey Bo Diddley (Grateful Dead)
06 It Hurts Me Too (Grateful Dead)
07 You Win Again (Grateful Dead)
08 Promised Land (Grateful Dead)
09 Sing Me Back Home (Grateful Dead)
10 Big River (Grateful Dead)
11 It's All Over Now, Baby Blue (Grateful Dead)
12 Around and Around (Grateful Dead)
13 Don't Ease Me In (Grateful Dead)
14 Tomorrow Is Forever (Grateful Dead)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15376826/TGratefulD_1972_GoldnEraCovrVrsionsVolume3_atse.zip.html

Like the other volumes in this series, I'm using interesting concert posters as the basis for the cover art. This one is for their 1972 fall tour. As usual, I had to do some cropping to get the rectangular poster art to fit into a square space.

The Grateful Dead - Golden Era Cover Versions, Volume 2: 1971

I hate it when I start to post a series of albums, but then get distracted and fail to follow through. It's happened again with this series. I posted Volume 1 over a year ago (as I write this in June 2023). But at least I do tend to notice these things eventually and finish them off. In this case, there are four volumes total.

From about 1969 to 1973, the Grateful Dead had a remarkable burst of creativity, what I'm calling their "golden era" for this series. They wrote more original songs than they ever did before or since, with the vast majority of them becoming classics. But they also played many cover songs they'd never done before. For the rest of the 1970s, they would do very, very few new cover songs, but they did lots of covers during those same years, 1969 to 1973. Volume 1 dealt with covers from 1969 to 1970. This one just focuses on covers from the year 1971.

It would have taken forever and a day to listen to all of the different versions of each song here and pick the best versions based on sound quality and performance. So instead, I assumed the performances were all solid, since this was their golden era, and chose the versions mainly based on sound quality. That means the vast majority of these are officially released versions. The only unreleased ones are "Searchin" (performed with the Beach Boys), "Hide Away," "I Washed My Hands in Muddy Water," and "The Same Thing." If there are any Deadheads out there with strong opinions on which versions I should have used instead, I'm all ears.

This album is an hour and 26 minutes long. The songs are ordered chronologically based on the exact performance dates.

01 Dark Hollow (Grateful Dead)
02 Johnny B. Goode (Grateful Dead)
03 Big Railroad Blues (Grateful Dead)
04 Not Fade Away - Going Down the Road Feelin' Bad (Grateful Dead)
05 I'm a Hog for You (Grateful Dead)
06 Oh Boy (Grateful Dead)
07 I Second That Emotion (Grateful Dead)
08 Big Boss Man (Grateful Dead)
09 I'm a King Bee (Grateful Dead)
10 Mama Tried (Grateful Dead)
11 Searchin' (Grateful Dead with the Beach Boys)
12 Me and Bobby McGee (Grateful Dead)
13 El Paso (Grateful Dead)
14 Ain't It Crazy [The Rub] (Grateful Dead)
15 Hide Away [Instrumental] (Grateful Dead)
16 Run Rudolph Run (Grateful Dead)
17 I Washed My Hands in Muddy Water (Grateful Dead)
18 The Same Thing (Grateful Dead)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15366272/TGratefulD_1971_GoldnEraCovrVrsionsVolum2_atse.zip.html

The cover is based on a concert poster for a concert in Ann Arbor, Michigan, in 1971. I cropped it and vertically squished it some in order to get most of the rectangular poster to fit into a square space. I also replaced the name of the opening act (The New Riders of the Purple Sage) with the album title. I made some other changes in Photoshop to clean and simplify things a bit.