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.

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.

Our Final Week - The Closing of the Fillmore West, Fillmore West, San Francisco, CA, 7-2-1971, Part 2: The New Riders of the Purple Sage with Jerry Garcia

Here's the second 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 New Riders of the Purple Sage with Jerry Garcia, the lead guitarist of the Grateful Dead.

This is like deja vu all over again, because the previous set I just posted, of the Rowan Brothers, also featured Garcia playing on all the songs. And, just like that set, in this set, he played pedal steel guitar instead of his usual electric guitar. It's played quite differently, as you can see from the cover photo, and one has control over foot and knee pedals to help adjust the pitch of the notes. Around this time Garcia was enjoying learning how to play it well. For instance, that's Garcia playing pedal steel on the classic song "Teach Your Children" by Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young.

The Wikipedia introduction to this band is pretty short, and not that helpful, but here's what it says anyway:

"New Riders of the Purple Sage was an American country rock band. The group emerged from the psychedelic rock scene in San Francisco in 1969 and its original lineup included several members of the Grateful Dead. The band is sometimes referred to as the New Riders or as NRPS." 

The rest of the article is quite long and informative, so here's the link for that:

New Riders of the Purple Sage - Wikipedia

I want to add a bit more to explain more about Garcia playing with this band in this concert. The New Riders of the Purple Sage were mainly led by musicians John Dawson and David Nelson. Both of them had musical ties to Garcia even before the band was formed in 1969. When it was formed, Garcia was essentially a full member. It was an outlet for Garcia to express his enjoyment of bluegrass and country music, and practice pedal steel guitar. In 1970 and 1971 especially, this band frequently was the opening act for Grateful Dead concerts, with Garcia and other Grateful Dead members sitting in on their set, and Dawson and Nelson would often perform on songs in the acoustic portion of the Dead's set.

By the time of this concert, the band members had written a bunch of original songs. However, they still hadn't released any music. Their first album would be released in August 1971, just a month later. Garcia's pedal steel playing was all over the album. However, by the end of 1971, Garcia essentially cut ties with the group, so they could stand on their own instead of being seen as a Grateful Dead side group. 

Note that three songs from this concert, "Down in the Boondocks," "Superman," and "The Weight," were eventually released as bonus tracks on the band's 1971 debut album. The song "Henry" was also included on the "Fillmore - The Last Days" album. The rest of the songs here remain unreleased. 

This album is an hour and nine minutes long.

01 Workin' Man Blues (New Riders of the Purple Sage)
02 Superman (New Riders of the Purple Sage)
03 I Don't Know You (New Riders of the Purple Sage)
04 Down in the Boondocks (New Riders of the Purple Sage)
05 Dirty Business (New Riders of the Purple Sage)
06 Glendale Train (New Riders of the Purple Sage)
07 Portland Women (New Riders of the Purple Sage)
08 talk (New Riders of the Purple Sage)
09 Henry (New Riders of the Purple Sage)
10 Sailin' (New Riders of the Purple Sage)
11 Last Lonely Eagle (New Riders of the Purple Sage)
12 Louisiana Lady (New Riders of the Purple Sage)
13 talk (New Riders of the Purple Sage)
14 Honky Tonk Women (New Riders of the Purple Sage)
15 talk (New Riders of the Purple Sage)
16 The Weight (New Riders of the Purple Sage)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/FDcxEwqp

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/en/Ccby7L4aRfW28IG/file

I couldn't find any good photos of the New Riders of the Purple Sage from this exact concert, or even other concerts from around this time. But I did find a nice one of Jerry Garcia playing pedal steel guitar. And while it also isn't from this exact concert, it is from the Fillmore West, except the year before. (Specifically, a concert on June 5, 1970.) I thought it was a worthy picture to use, because it illustrates how playing pedal steel is very different from playing a typical guitar. 

Oh, also, the original picture was in black and white, but I colorized it with the use of the Kolorize program.

Our Final Week - The Closing of the Fillmore West, Fillmore West, San Francisco, CA, 7-2-1971, Part 1: The Rowan Brothers with Jerry Garcia

Here's the first 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 Rowan Brothers with Jerry Garcia, the lead guitarist of the Grateful Dead.

First off, note that this third day of these closing concerts was basically "Jerry Garcia Day." That's because there were three musical acts, and Garcia performed with all three of them. For once in this series, I know the order of the performances, and the Rowan Brothers were first.

The main reason Garcia sat in for this show was because it was a chance for him to play pedal steel guitar in public, instead of his usual electric guitar, and he was really enjoying doing that around this time. David Grisman also played mandolin through this set. He would often collaborate with Garica, as well as Bob Weir of the Grateful Dead, in later years. Furthermore, Bill Kreutzmann, one of the two drummers for the Grateful Dead, was the drummer for this set.

Here's some excerpts of what their Wikipedia entry has to say about them: 

"The Rowans, also known as The Rowan Brothers, are an American country-rock group, originally formed by the brothers Chris Rowan and Lorin Rowan. They were joined by another brother, Peter Rowan, for their second, third and fourth album. Chris and Lorin were raised close to Boston, but in the beginning of 1970, they moved to the West Coast to pursue their music. In 1971, they opened for Grateful Dead as their first gig in San Francisco. Their first album, The Rowan Brothers, was issued on Columbia Records. It was very well critically acclaimed, [but didn't sell well]. The album included such guests as Jerry Garcia and Bill Kreutzmann of Grateful Dead and was co-produced by David Grisman. The group had problems after the first record because their benefactor, Clive Davis, lost his job at Columbia. They were signed to Asylum Records as the Rowans and issued their next album in 1975, this time joined by their more famous brother, Peter Rowan, who brought in such hits as 'Midnight Moonlight' and 'Thunder on the Mountain.' After releasing three albums as a trio, Peter left the group to pursue bluegrass music."

Here's the link to the entry:

The Rowans - Wikipedia 

This album is 30 minutes long. 

01 talk by Bill Graham (Rowan Brothers)
02 Hickory Day (Rowan Brothers)
03 Heavens to Betsy (Rowan Brothers)
04 talk (Rowan Brothers)
05 Outside Clover (Rowan Brothers)
06 talk (Rowan Brothers)
07 Don't You Worry about a Thing (Rowan Brothers)
08 Better Off Dead (Rowan Brothers)
09 Peace and Happiness (Rowan Brothers)
10 Mama Don't You Cry (Rowan Brothers)
11 Livin' the Life on the Farm (Rowan Brothers)
12 talk (Rowan Brothers)
13 Move On Down (Rowan Brothers)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/zwLT8CNX

alternate: 

https://bestfile.io/en/zyQxlTa8C3t0fOd/file

I couldn't find any good photos of the Rowan Brothers from this concert, or any other concert of this era, for that matter. I did find a photo of the two of them posing with guitars out on a hilltop with a forest behind them, in black and white. I colorized it with the help of the Kolorize program. I also got rid of the forest background, and replaced it with darkness. 

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.

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.

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.

The Grateful Dead - Golden Era Cover Versions, Volume 1: 1969-1970

It's been too long since I've posted any Grateful Dead albums here. I have lots to post, especially from what I consider to be their "golden era," roughly from 1969 to 1973. I've already posted four albums of mostly original songs from 1970 to 1972 that never got released on studio albums at the time. This series is meant to complement that, gathering cover versions they did during approximately that same time period. These are all full-band versions. There's a whole other large batch of songs done acoustically that I'll do something with at a later date.

The Dead came up with lots of great original songs. But that didn't stop them from covering literally hundreds of additional songs over the years. I haven't included every single cover song they did during these years. 

For one, I skipped songs that they did so often and so well that they're closely identified with the band, such as "I Know You Rider," "Me and My Uncle," "Morning Dew," and a few more. 

Secondly, I already made two albums of cover songs the band did very early in their career (1965 to 1966). So I often avoided songs during this "golden era" that are also on those albums, unless there's something significantly different about them. 

I also avoided songs were there's no excellent recording. But those are surprisingly few. The band got serious about recording their own concerts almost from the very beginning, and there have been bazillions of official live albums by now. However, the occasional song did slip by, such as "So Sad (To Watch Good Love Go Bad)," where only one poor sounding audience recording exists. A few other songs didn't get recorded at all, such as "Cathy's Clown," "I've Just Seen a Face," and "Games People Play."

Finally, this collection begins in mid-1969, which is when the band really hit their stride, in my opinion. I did consider a few covers from earlier in 1969, but they either weren't that good (such as versions of "Hey Jude") or they're already included on the stray tracks album I made for that time period, called "The Seven."

Okay, that's all about what I did not include. Now let me talk about what I did include. I think many of the songs in this series will be a surprise to you, unless you're a fanatically dedicated Deadhead. Some songs here were played dozens of times, such as "Dancing in the Street" or "Hard to Handle." But others were played only once, such as "Mystery Train" or "My Babe," only were played only a small number of times. 

I strived to make sure there was a balance between songs sung by Jerry Garcia, Bob Weir, and Ron "Pigpen" McKernan. Unfortunately, I could only do so much since I felt obliged to include all the (non-overplayed) cover versions from a certain time period. For this album, there's an unusually large number of songs sung by Pigpen, and only three sung by Garcia. The balance is a lot better on the later volumes in this series.

If you are a serious Deadhead and you see some songs I missed, please let me know. It's particularly tricky for me because I'm only including full-band versions here, as I mentioned above, and there were many songs only done acoustically around this time. Sometimes, a song almost always done acoustically was done with a full electric band, such as the version of "Monkey and the Engineer" here. But I probably missed a couple more like that.

This album is an hour and 28 minutes long.

As an aside, I mentioned above the stray tracks album "The Seven." I moved a couple of songs from there to here, because I thought they fit better. But I also added in a couple new songs there that I'd missed, including one the band only played a single time, in 1968, "Death Letter Blues." So you probably should redownload that album if you have it already.

Oh, one last thing. While making this, I also fixed all the Grateful Dead albums I've posted so far, adjusting the volume balance between songs and updating the mp3 tags to the new system I'm using. So you might want to grab those again too.

01 New Orleans (Grateful Dead)
02 Hi-Heel Sneakers (Grateful Dead)
03 Ole Slew Foot (Grateful Dead)
04 Big Boy Pete (Grateful Dead)
05 Smokestack Lightning (Grateful Dead)
06 Hard to Handle (Grateful Dead)
07 He Was a Friend of Mine (Grateful Dead)
08 Walking the Dog (Grateful Dead)
09 Dancing in the Street (Grateful Dead)
10 It's a Man's, Man's, Man's World (Grateful Dead)
11 Mystery Train - My Babe (Grateful Dead)
12 Monkey and the Engineer (Grateful Dead)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16700756/TGRATFLDED1969-1970_GldnEraCovrVersonsVolum1_atse.zip.html

I love how weird the album cover is. I would never presume to make something that weird myself for an album cover. But for this series, I decided to use versions of concert posters. There are lots of really interesting concert posters for the Dead, whereas photos of the band in concert are far less interesting in comparison. This particular poster is for a concert in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in May 1970. 

Since posters are rectangular and album covers are square, I had to cut parts of the top and bottom. I also did some resizing vertically to squish more in. Finally, all the images of this poster that I could find had some damage to them. So I used the best bits from two versions, and then cleaned up some remaining rough parts. If anyone has an idea of what the heck this image is about, please let me know!

David Crosby & Jerry Garcia - "David & the Dorks" - The Matrix, San Francisco, CA, 12-15-1970

In 2022, a deluxe edition of David Crosby's 1971 solo album "If I Could Only Remember My Name" was released. It's great stuff, with a second disc of interesting previously unreleased material. In celebration of that release, I'm posting this concert.

The guys in Crosby, Stills, Nash (and Young) were friends with the guys in the Grateful Dead. David Crosby was particularly close with the Dead's lead guitarist Jerry Garcia. In late 1970, Garcia got heavily involved with the recording of Crosby's "If I Could Only Remember My Name," taking part in many daily recording sessions. In fact, a who's who of the best and most famous San Francisco musicians took part in recording that album. Members of this loose group sometimes recorded their own song as well as Crosby's. This would turn into a short-lived musical collaboration often known as P.E.R.R.O., which stands for the Planet Earth Rock and Roll Orchestra.

Somehow, out of this, with both Crosby and Garcia working on some of each other's new songs, the two of them decided to take their songs to a few concerts in San Francisco Bay Area clubs. They played three nights in a row at the Matrix, a club usually considered too small for the likes of big names like Crosby and Garcia. They also did one more concert at another venue a few days later (the Pepperland in Marin County). Then, just as quickly as it happened, this short lived experiment was over. Crosby and Garcia never jointly led a band in concert again. This experiment would have largely been forgotten except for the fact that a soundboard recording was made of one of the concerts, as well as some of their practice sessions in the hours before one of the shows.

Now, I need to better explain just who was in the band, and what it's called, because it's complicated. In addition to Crosby on lead vocals and rhythm guitar and Garcia on lead vocals and lead guitar, there was a bassist and drummer. There's no doubt about the bassist: Phil Lesh from the Grateful Dead. And we know the drummer was also from the Dead, but the band had two drummers, Mickey Hart and Bill Kreutzmann, and it's not certain who played this show. Most of the information about these concerts say it's Hart, but there's reason to believe it's Kreutzmann. For the band's final show, there are a few photos, and one is clearly of Kreutzmann. But Garcia has talked about these concerts, and he's mentioned both drummers. It could be one or the other played at any given time, depending on who was available.

The band's name is even more complicated. In the limited promotion of the shows, it was listed as "Jerry Garcia and Friends." But on stage, Garcia gave the jokey name "David and the Dorks." Yet also on stage, Crosby used the jokey name "Jerry and the Jerks." The truth is, because there never was a formal band as such, but just some musical friends playing together for a few days, they didn't have a name. And "Jerry Garcia and Friends" doesn't really work, because most of the songs and lead vocals were done by Crosby. So I'm billing this under "David Crosby and Jerry Garcia."

As far as I know, Crosby has never said much about these shows. But Garcia discussed them a couple decades later, when his memory was already a bit hazy on the details:

"We had a little band called David and the Dorks. He was the star and it was his trip that we were doing and it was right around the time he was doing his If I Could Only Remember My Name album and he was in the Bay Area a lot. One time me and Phil and Bill and Mickey, we backed up David. We did maybe two or three shows. I think they were all at the Matrix in San Francisco. They weren't announced or anything, we just went in there on a Monday night and had a lot of fun and the sound was cool. In fact, that was the core of the band that played on David's album: David and the Dorks. It was a fine band and a short-lived band. Almost legendary. We had a lot of fun."

(See the problem figuring out the drummer? He mentioned both!)

Now, let me explain some about the music here. The first six songs are from a rehearsal before one of the concerts, so there's no audience noise. I made significant edits to most of them. For "Alabama Bound," at first I thought it was an instrumental, but then I listened closely and head Crosby's voice buried deep in the mix in a couple of places. I used the sound editing program Spleeter to bring them up in the mix. I could only do so much - the louder I made them, the more some sonic flaws would show. But at least you can hear a little bit of him now.

For "Eight Miles High" (which Crosby co-wrote when he was in the Byrds), there was about four minutes of instrumental jam, which then petered out to a complete stop. After some silence, Crosby then sang one of the verses, before that too came to a stop. It seemed more logical to me to have his singing first, so I changed the order. Then I tried to merge the two bits together. It doesn't quite work because there was a change of rhythm, but still, I like it better this way than having it in two parts.

The same problem happened with all the remaining songs from the rehearsal. Namely, the band would hit a tricky spot and stop. Then, after figuring out what went wrong, they'd resume. I simply edited the break in the middle of the song out to make one continuous version. Generally, there was just one stop, but for "Cowboy Movie" there were several. 

Note that even with these edits, these were rehearsals and the versions were pretty rough. For instance, "Cowboy Movie" petered out before all the verses were sung. And "Bird Song," a brand new song at the time, was especially rough, petering out about halfway through. I also cut out many minutes at the start of "Bertha," where Garcia was teaching the song to the others by playing the same chords over and over. (That also was a new song, by the way. The Dead wouldn't play either "Bertha" or "Bird Song" in concert until February 1971.)

The rehearsal makes up their first half hour and the first six songs. The remainder, another hour and two minutes, consists of the Matrix show done in front of an audience. Personally, I think the sound quality is excellent, and the music is fascinating. Crosby has said in interviews that he wished he could have joined the Dead. He essentially got to live out that dream for a few days with these concerts, since he was backed by three members of the Dead. 

It's fascinating to consider that virtually NONE of these songs would have been familiar to the audience at the time, unless one counts the Jefferson Airplane version of "Triad" which came out in 1969, or they were familiar with some of the cover songs. Crosby's songs wouldn't be released until the "If I Could Only Remember My Name" album came out in early 1971. And, as I mentioned, the Garcia original played at the actual concert, "Bertha," hadn't been played in public (or appeared on album) yet. On top of that, they did some rare covers. "Deep Elem Blues" was played by the Dead from time to time, starting in early 1970, but they hadn't put it on album yet. "Drop Down Mama" wouldn't get on a Crosby album until 1989. And "Motherless Children" doesn't seem to have been done by Crosby or Garcia except for these shows.

Now, while the sound of the music is very good, there were some big problems between the songs. It seems that the owners of the Matrix club liked to record particularly interesting concerts, which is why this soundboard recording survives. But at the time it wasn't uncommon to turn the recording device off between songs in order to save tape. That's clearly what happened here. Usually, there's just a couple seconds of applause, which then gets suddenly cut off. Also, the applause was very quiet, because the soundboard picked up what was happening on stage nicely, but very little of the audience. So I boosted the audience volume a lot. I also did some copying and pasting, then editing, to get more applause after each song and have the volume of it rise and fall as one would expect. It doesn't sound great because I only had little bits and pieces to work with (and they sometimes had hiss or other issues), but at least it should be good enough to have the concert flow with an audience presence, as one would expect.

The other problem with the recording device getting turned off between songs is that there is no banter whatsoever. There isn't even a single "thank you" to be heard. There's nothing I could do about that. However, Crosby did speak a bit at the start of "Cowboy Movie," after the music had already started. His voice was very low, but I boosted it a lot so you can hopefully make out what he's saying.

If you're a fan of Crosby, Still and Nash and/or the Grateful Dead, you should give this a listen. We're lucky that any recording of such a unique concert has survived, much less a quality soundboard. If you don't like the rehearsal section, due to my edits or otherwise, you can still cut that out and you're left with a concert that's over an hour long.

01 Alabama Bound [Edit] (David Crosby & Jerry Garcia)
02 Eight Miles High [Edit] (David Crosby & Jerry Garcia)
03 Cowboy Movie [Edit] (David Crosby & Jerry Garcia)
04 The Wall Song [Edit] (David Crosby & Jerry Garcia)
05 Bertha [Edit] (David Crosby & Jerry Garcia)
06 Bird Song [Edit] (David Crosby & Jerry Garcia)
07 Drop Down Mama (David Crosby & Jerry Garcia)
08 Cowboy Movie (David Crosby & Jerry Garcia)
09 Triad (David Crosby & Jerry Garcia)
10 The Wall Song (David Crosby & Jerry Garcia)
11 Bertha (David Crosby & Jerry Garcia)
12 Deep Elem Blues (David Crosby & Jerry Garcia)
13 Motherless Children (David Crosby & Jerry Garcia)
14 Laughing (David Crosby & Jerry Garcia)

https://www.imagenetz.de/iFWzn

alternate:

https://pixeldrain.com/u/QgqbBpoZ

second alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/MPhEvPFfyw2QhqQ/file

There are a few photos of this band playing at their fourth and last show, at the Pepperland in Marin County, a few days later. However, those photos are black and white, and of poor quality. Furthermore, none of them clearly show Crosby and Garcia together. So instead, I found a photo of Crosby and Garcia in the studio from late 1970, while working on Crosby's "If Only I Could Remember My Name" album. Neil Young was also playing with them, but I cropped him out so you only see some of the back of the neck of his guitar in front of Crosby's guitar. I believe that's Phil Lesh on bass in the background.

As I've mentioned many times on this blog, I really dislike using black and white photos for cover art. So I colorized it.

The Grateful Dead - The Wheel - Non-Album Tracks (1971-1972)

I've mentioned how I filled the big gap between the Grateful Dead's studio albums in 1970 and 1973 by making no less than four albums out of the original songs in that period. This is the fourth and last of the albums I've made.

The reason they didn't release any studio albums at that time was because the songs appeared on solo albums by Jerry Garcia ("Garcia") and Bob Weir ("Ace"), plus they put lots of new songs on their live albums, especially "Europe '72." Most of the songs here either come from "Europe '72" or associated archival releases from that same European tour. But, as I often do, I removed the crowd noise to make it all sound like a studio album.

There are two cases where I had to resort to the studio tracks from those solo albums I mentioned above. "The Wheel" is a great song, and the Dead played it a lot in concert. But, strangely, they didn't start playing it until about 1976, even though it was released on a 1972 album. I didn't want to stray chronologically from around 1972, so I was forced to use the version from the "Garcia" solo album.

It's a similar case with "Walk in the Sunshine," from "Ace." I believe that song was never played by the Dead at all, the only song from "Ace" they ignored. So I had to use the version from that album.

As for the album as a whole, I was careful to keep the usual mix of songs sung by Garcia, Weir, and Ron "Pigpen" McKernan. Garcia has the most, and McKernan the least.

Also, as I did for all the four albums i made from this time period, I included one cover song. Each time, I picked a cover that has become so closely identified with the Dead that many assume they wrote it. This time, I went with "I Know You Rider." The Dead played this a billion times in concert, almost always as a medley with "China Cat Sunflower."

The Dead truly were at a peak in the early 1970s, so this is a great album. While putting these four albums together, I came across a lot more cover versions that I didn't have room to include. But I'm planning on organizing that material and posting it here eventually.

01 The Wheel (Jerry Garcia)
02 Brown-Eyed Woman (Grateful Dead)
03 Mexicali Blues (Grateful Dead)
04 Tennessee Jed (Grateful Dead)
05 Chinatown Shuffle (Grateful Dead)
06 Walk in the Sunshine (Bob Weir)
07 Comes a Time (Grateful Dead)
08 Next Time You See Me (Grateful Dead)
09 I Know You Rider (Grateful Dead)
10 One More Saturday Night (Grateful Dead)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15118829/TGratefulD_1972_ThWheel_atse.zip.html

I'm very pleased at how this album cover came out. When I decided to name the album "The Wheel," I went looking for wheel-related artwork. I found a blue wheel with some red roses on it, which seemed fitting since roses are one of many Dead visual symbols. But just having that seemed too bland, so I went looking for mandala artwork, since that's another circular thing that fits with the Dead ethos. I found a nice one, overlaid the blue wheel on top of it, and the two seemed to fit perfectly. :)

The Grateful Dead - Ramble On Rose - Non-Album Tracks (1971-1972)

As I've mentioned previously, the Grateful Dead wrote a remarkable number of great songs in the early 1970s, and in my opinion that was the peak of their career, but a large number of them weren't released on any studio album at the time. So I've made four albums that cover the gap between the "American Beauty" album in 1970 and "Wake of the Flood" in 1973. This is the third of those four albums.

The other day, the Reconstructor blog (https://the-reconstructor.blogspot.com/) posted a similar album to this one. According to that blog, the Dead were planning on releasing a studio album in 1972 that would have been titled "Rambling Rose." But instead of going to the studio to record their new songs, they decided to release a live album instead, and "Europe '72" was the result. I'm not sure why they wanted to call the album "Rambling Rose" when they had a song with the title "Ramble On Rose," but the again, the song does include the lyric "Did you say your name is Rambling Rose?"

I went with the album title "Ramble On Rose" because I found a really great cover art picture at the "What If" blog (https://whatif-misc.blogspot.com/) a year ago, and I asked back then if I could use it too. So now here we finally are. That locked me in to using "Ramble On Rose" for the album title.

Anyway, regardless of title, this is another great album that should be a must-have for any fan of the band. As I did with the other albums from this era, I was careful to have a mix of songs sung by Jerry Garcia, Bob Weir, and Ron "Pigpen" McKernan, with Garcia's songs dominating. For each album of these four, I'd include all original songs plus one cover. In this case, the cover is "Morning Dew."

Generally speaking, I've tried hard to avoid using the exact same versions of the songs that are on the 1972 solo albums by Garcia and Weir. Both those albums are so good that every Dead fan should own them and treat them just like Dead albums. (Actually, the Weir album, "Ace," is basically a Dead album of Weir songs, since the full band appears on every song.) But I had to make an exception this time for the song "Cassidy." The Dead didn't play the song for the first time until 1974, which is too late to fit into this album's time frame. Plus, the studio version from "Ace" is fantastic.

There are only seven songs here, but they're long, so the album is 48 and a half minutes long. That would have been unusually long for a single album in 1972, but it was doable. ("L.A. Woman" by the Doors from 1971 was a bit longer.)

01 Ramble On Rose (Grateful Dead)
02 Cassidy (Bob Weir)
03 The Stranger [Two Souls in Communion] (Grateful Dead)
04 Black-Throated Wind (Grateful Dead)
05 He's Gone (Grateful Dead)
06 Looks like Rain (Grateful Dead)
07 Morning Dew (Grateful Dead)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15118833/TGratefulD_1972_RambleOnRse_atse.zip.html

As mentioned above, thanks to the "What If" blog for the excellent cover art. I did change it slightly in that some parts of the text was darker than others, and I made it all equally dark.

The Grateful Dead - Empty Pages - Non-Album Tracks (1971-1972)

A few weeks back, I posted an album I titled "Bird Song." It's the first of four albums I've made of the many original Grateful Dead songs around 1971 and 1972 that didn't get released on any studio album. This is the second album in that series. That time (roughly 1970 to 1973) was the peak of the band's songwriting and performance abilities, so all the songs here are excellent.

If you're a fan of the Grateful Dead, you'll probably recognize nearly all of the songs here. Most of them were on the popular live albums "Skull and Roses" and "Europe '72," though in a couple of cases I've chosen alternate versions. One song that is lesser known despite being a band original is "Empty Pages." It was written and sung by band member Ron "Pigpen" McKernan.

All the songs here were taken from officially released live albums - the band seemingly has hundreds from this time period. Thus, the sound quality is excellent. But I've tried to remove the audience cheering as much as possible, to create the impression that this is a studio album much like "Workingman's Dead" and "American Beauty." Actually, many of the live songs from "Europe '72" were tinkered with in the studio, for instance adding better backing vocals, so some of these are live/studio hybrids.

I've tried to be careful to make sure there's a typical mix of songs sung by band members Jerry Garcia, Bob Weir, and McKernan. I think I succeeded with that.

All the songs are originals, except I've allowed myself to include one cover song per album during this era. In this case, I've included "Me and My Uncle," which is so closely identified with the Dead that probably most people think it's one of theirs. (Strangely, it was written by John Phillips of the Mamas and the Papas in 1964, but that band never recorded the song.)

01 Bertha (Grateful Dead)
02 Wharf Rat (Grateful Dead)
03 Me and My Uncle (Grateful Dead)
04 Loser (Grateful Dead)
05 Mr. Charlie (Grateful Dead)
06 Sugaree (Grateful Dead)
07 Empty Pages (Grateful Dead)
08 Jack Straw (Grateful Dead)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15118679/TGratefulD_1971-1972_EmptyPges_atse.zip.html

Around 1972, the band authorized an official guitar book of the band's songs. I had a copy for a while, and it was great because in addition to having the chords and music of lots of wonderful songs, it also had illustrations for each song, done by many of the same artists that did celebrated concert posters for the band. I made the cover art using one such illustration from the book (but with some rearranging). Then added the "Grateful Dead" text from elsewhere in the book, and added the "Empty Pages" text with the same font.

The Grateful Dead - Bird Song - Non-Album Tracks (1970-1971)

Robert Hunter, who wrote most of the lyrics for the Grateful Dead, died last week. In tribute to his legacy, I'm posting more from the Dead.

From about 1970 to 1972, the Grateful Dead had a tremendous burst of creativity. Yet the band only released two studio albums during that time, both in 1970: "Workingman's Dead" and "American Beauty." They should have put out a lot more. Instead, the band's two main singer-songwriters, Jerry Garcia and Bob Weir, each put out solo albums in 1971 that were filled with songs that would become standards for the band. Plus, a lot of new songs were put on live albums, especially "Skulls and Roses" and "Europe '72."

I've given myself the goal of compiling all those original songs onto studio albums in a similar vein to "Workingman's Dead" and "American Beauty." Like those albums, I've tried to create albums that are about 40 minutes long each, with short versions of songs compared to the band's usual live standards.

On the downside, there are very few publicly available studio outtakes. Also, I've avoided using the recordings from the two solo albums unless there's no other option, because I figure most Dead fans should have those albums already. But on the upside, there are mountains of officially released live recordings from that time in pristine sound quality. They can easily be made to sound like studio takes by removing the crowd noise. Besides, the Dead were played better live anyway, which is why they favored live albums at the time.

I've come up with so much original material from 1970 to 1972 that I was able to make four stray tracks albums! This is the first one. Well, almost all original material. For each of those four albums, I've allowed myself to include one cover song, if it's a song so closely identified with the band that many people assume they wrote it. In this case, it's "Goin' Down the Road Feelin' Bad."

Note that in addition to all those new originals, the band also played a ton of cover songs in those years. I plan to do something with the best of those later. Furthermore, the band played even more interesting songs in an acoustic format, mostly in 1970. I have plans for that too. But I want to deal with the original stray tracks first.

In order to figure out which songs to put on which of these four albums I'm making from that era, I consulted a list detailing the exact dates each song was played live for the first time. Then I divided those into four groups, one for each album. However, in some cases I moved a song from one group to another in order to have a good balance of songs sung by Jerry Garcia, Bob Weir, and Ron 'Pigpen' McKennan.

Note that two of the recordings - "Deal" and "Greatest Story Ever Told" - date from 1972. But that's just a matter of finding the best live recordings. Both songs had their debuts in February 1971.

By the way, "Tastebud" is a very little known and rarely played original song by McKennan. It was first done in 1966, and I had a version of it on a stray tracks album covering that time period. But it was only played live a few times, and no version of it was released at the time. The band then brought it out of mothballs and tried it again in the studio in early 1970 with the idea of putting it on "Workingman's Dead," only to leave it unreleased again. I've included that version.

01 Bird Song (Grateful Dead)
02 Mason's Children (Grateful Dead)
03 Tastebud (Grateful Dead)
04 To Lay Me Down (Grateful Dead)
05 Greatest Story Ever Told (Grateful Dead)
06 Deal (Grateful Dead)
07 Goin' Down the Road Feelin' Bad (Grateful Dead)
08 Playing in the Band (Grateful Dead)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15379267/TGratefulD_1970-1971_BrdSong_atse.zip.html

For the cover art, I used some nice fan art. Unfortunately, it's been a while since I found it, and I don't remember who did it or where it came from. I do remember that I added the wood in the background, in imitation of the look of the "American Beauty" cover.

The Grateful Dead - The Seven - Non-Album Tracks (1968-1969)

So far, I've posted a few Grateful Dead albums here and there, mostly from their earliest era (1965 to 1966). I've got a lot more from them to post, and I'm going to try to move forward more chronologically from here on out. There isn't much in the way of stray tracks from 1967, so this is what comes next.

This album is a mix of studio and live material, with nearly all of the performances being unreleased, despite the band having a seemingly infinite number of official albums, the vast majority of them live. The first song here, "Clementine," is an obscure Phil Lesh/Robert Hunter original that was released on the "So Many Roads" box set. The second song, "Dark Star," is of course very well known to any Deadhead, but this is the studio B-side version. It's less than three minutes long, which sounds absurd for that song, but this version has its charm.

Another highlight is "The Eleven," a Jerry Garcia/Robert Hunter original that only appeared on the live album "Live/Dead." But this is an unreleased studio version. "The Seven" is an even rarer original instrumental. Both it and "The Eleven" are named after the unusual time signatures the songs are played in.

The rest of the songs are cover versions. Since the songs are ordered chronologically, one can see a shift over the course of the album from psychedelic music to country and folky music. So this mirrors the dramatic shift in styles from the album "Aoxomoxoa" in 1969 to "Workingman's Dead" in 1970.

By the way, I named this album "The Seven" since that's the title of one of the songs. But I chose that song title because I thought it has a nice double meaning: for most of the 1960s, the Grateful Dead has six band members, but from November 1968 to January 1970, which covers most of the time of this album, they had seven, thanks to the addition of Tom Constanten. 

Note that this version of the blues classic "Big Boss Man" wasn't exactly performed by the Grateful Dead, but it sure sounds like it because the lead vocals and lead guitar were done by Jerry Garcia. It was recorded at the San Francisco home where most of the members of the Jefferson Airplane lived. Garcia was joined by fellow Dead member drummer Mickey Hart, as well as Jorma Kaukonen and Jack Casady from the Jefferson Airplane. The Dead played this song from time to time, but the lead vocalist always was Ron "Pigpen" McKernan. This is an interesting version because Garcia sang it.

This album is 54 minutes long, not including the bonus track.

Speaking of the bonus track, "What's Become of the Baby" was included on the band's 1969 studio album "Aoxomoxoa." But that version is so distorted with studio effects that it's kind of a mess. The song was only done live once, in 1969. That version is more interesting, in my opinion, so that's the bonus track version here.

01 Clementine (Grateful Dead)
02 Dark Star (Grateful Dead)
03 Death Letter Blues (Grateful Dead)
04 The Eleven (Grateful Dead)
05 Who's Lovin' You Tonight (Grateful Dead)
07 Seasons of My Heart (Grateful Dead)
08 The Seven [Instrumental] (Grateful Dead)
09 Big Boss Man (Jerry Garcia with Mickey Hart, Jorma Kaukonen & Jack Casady)
10 I'm a Lovin' Man (Grateful Dead)
11 He Was a Friend of Mine (Grateful Dead)

What's Become of the Baby (Grateful Dead)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15118720/TGratefulD_1968-1969_The_Sevn_atse.zip.html

I made the cover from a 2015 Grateful Dead concert poster. I made some significant changes, especially squishing the entire image vertically to get a rectangular poster into a square frame. I also changed the coloring of certain parts, and of course changed the text.

The Grateful Dead - Midnight Hour - Non-Album Tracks (1966)

Here's the second of two albums dealing with the best of the cover songs performed by the Grateful Dead in 1965 and 1966. This album just covers the second half of 1966.

I said this only covers "the best of the cover songs," so let me explain what I mean by that. The Dead played tons of songs in 1966. (Very little survives of them from 1965, other than some studio recordings.) The website www.setlists.fm, lists 70 different songs played by the band in 1966, compared to only 33 in 1967. Twelve of those were originals, which I compiled on the album I called "Mindbender." That still leaves nearly 60 songs, and between this and the other covers album I just posted, I've only included 25 songs.

So how and why did I whittle this down to only 25 songs? I wanted to make these two albums something I'd like to listen to a lot. So the first thing I did was remove nearly all the songs that the Dead would go on to perform lots of times later in their career, because I (and any typical fan of the group) would already be very familiar with those. There are lots of songs like that, such as "Viola Lee Blues," "Me and My Uncle," "Cold Rain and Snow," "Sitting on Top of the World." and so on.

I did include a couple of songs like that for various reasons. For instance, I included "Good Lovin'" because it was sung by Bob Weir, whereas Ron 'Pigpen' McKernan would sing it for the next bunch of years until he died in 1973. I included "Dancing in the Street" and "In the Midnight Hour" because I wanted a couple of lively songs where the band got to stretch out and jam, since that was a key part of their 1966 sound, where they often tried to balance being both daneecable and jammy.

There's another big bunch of songs I didn't include either because there were no recordings at all, or none of high enough sound quality.

There are also many songs that I just didn't feel were good enough for inclusion. One thing I strove for was to have some balance between songs sung by Jerry Garcia, Weir, and McKernan, even though McKernan tends to dominate. There were a bunch of McKernan-led bluesy songs that weren't that different from each other. Had I included a lot of those, it would have changed the overall sound of the album from lively and danceable into slow and bluesy. I did include some of those however, especially when I thought Garcia's lead guitar work was particularly impressive.

On the first album, all but one of the performances have been officially released. But on this one, about half are still unreleased. Those are all taken from a series of concerts at The Matrix in San Francisco in late November and early December 1966. These concerts are all excellent soundboards (I assume recorded by Stanley). I surprised that nothing from those concerts have been officially released (yet?).

By the way, there's one song here, "It's My Own Fault," taken from one of those Matrix shows, where the voice of the lead vocalist is unclear. It's definitely not McKernan, and it doesn't sound like Weir or Garcia either. Doing some Googling, I see that some people speculate it either was someone else in the band who rarely sang lead, or it was some unknown guest vocalist. It's definitely the Dead playing though, as you can tell from Garcia's great guitar work.

Oh, one other note. The version of "In the Midnight Hour" comes from an official release (the "30 Trips Around the Sun" box set), but it's edited by me. That's because that version started out playing fast, then about a minute in there was some kind of tape glitch, followed by some wobbly sounds, and then the rest of the song was at a slow pace and a different pitch. That sounded bad to me, no doubt due to some tape damage, so I cut out the worst couple of minutes. Then I changed the tempo and pitch of the first part to match the rest and created a seamless edit. The result is a couple of minutes shorter than the official version (yet still 13 minutes long), but I think it sounds a lot better.

01 Nobody's Fault but Mine (Grateful Dead)
02 Keep Rolling By (Grateful Dead)
03 He Was a Friend of Mine (Grateful Dead)
04 One Kind Favor [See that My Grave Is Kept Clean] (Grateful Dead)
05 Overseas Stomp [The Lindy] (Grateful Dead)
06 I Just Want to Make Love to You (Grateful Dead)
07 Big Boy Pete (Grateful Dead)
08 It's a Sin (Grateful Dead)
09 You Don't Love Me (Grateful Dead)
10 It's My Own Fault (Grateful Dead)
11 In the Midnight Hour [Edit] (Grateful Dead)

https://www.upload.ee/files/15118603/TGratefulD_1966_MidnghtHour_atse.zip.html

I called this "Midnight Hour" because I couldn't think of a better name. None of the song titles worked that well, I felt. If you have a better title suggestion, please let me know.

Thanks to Peter at the Albums I Wish Existed blog for the cover art.