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Thread: Grateful Dead May 1977 14CD Box Set

  1. #26
    Highly Evolved Orangutan JKL2000's Avatar
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    Listening to the 2nd Landover, MD disk from Spring 1990 now. Scarlet Begonias is pretty excellent.

  2. #27
    Estimated Prophet notallwhowander's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by JKL2000 View Post
    I don't like Jar-Jar Binks, either!
    Well that's rather orthodox. But Jar-Jar did lay down some cool keys in the early '90s before Vince was in the band. Or am I confusing him with Bruce Hornsby?
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  3. #28
    Highly Evolved Orangutan JKL2000's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by notallwhowander View Post
    Well that's rather orthodox.
    Exactly - as it should be to dislike Donna's vocals! I'm not sexist, Weir's vocals bother me too at times.

  4. #29
    Estimated Prophet notallwhowander's Avatar
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    I like Donna, except when she's off. That can get rough quick.
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  5. #30
    Jazzbo manqué Mister Triscuits's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by notallwhowander View Post
    I like Donna, except when she's off. That can get rough quick.
    Personally I don't think a "Playing in the Band" is complete without Donna yowling away, on key or not.

  6. #31
    At various points in time, just about all of the Dead's vocalists (other than perhaps Pigpen) have annoyed me. The vocal harmonies on the late 60's recordings are often times pretty far off. That's something that was common place well into 1971, at least. There's a Dark Star from the band's last Fillmore East run, where the vocals on "the transitive nightfall of diamonds" Is waaaaay off.

    Jerry of course, lost much of his voice in the 80's, due I think to his smoking habit and also probably drug use.

    Weir's tendency to scream at the end of One More Saturday Night and Sugar Magnolia in the early 70's I never cared for. I actually find that more annoying that thing Donna typically did during Playing In The Band. And there's a lot of shows from later years where Weir sounds a bit hoarse, which may or may not have been the result of the above cited vocal cord shredding he engaged in during earlier years.

    And Weir had little or not facility for singing blues (neither did Jerry, for that matter). The only guy who could authentically deliver a blues song in that band was Pigpen, and when he was no longer able to perform, they should have dropped the blues tunes from rotation. Actually, I think they did that for awhile, but they eventually brought back Good Lovin' and Turn On Your Lovelight, and added things like Walkin' Blues and Little Red Rooster. Truthfully, Weir was best doing the "cowboy" material and he sounded disturbingly comfortable with the bland pop music that appears on some of his solo albums.

    Phil, I'm not sure I can figure out. I think he might have been one of those guys who could sing well in the studio, but not so much live. He sounds wonderful on the studio versions of Box Of Rain and Unbroken Chain, but in concert he always struck me as more than just a bit shakey. But then, I was never happy with the live arrangement of Box Of Rain anyway.

    Actually, I think Brent wasn't that bad as a vocalist either. I think it's hilarious people criticized his songs, even though I don't think it was any worse than some of the stuff Weir was coming up with during that same period (uhm, Picasso Moon, anyone?). The band didn't seem to give him much room to do his own tunes though. Well, maybe they did during the last couple years he was alive, but I always rather liked Tons Of Steel, which seemed to only get played occasionally.

    As for Donna, ya know, I don't get the dislike with her. Maybe her intonation was a bit off, but I don't think she's anywhere near as bad as some people seem to think she is. I don't think she was any worse than a lot of other rock vocalists trying to sing on key in front of 20,000 people, during that time period (listen to any Pink Floyd show from 77, and specifically listen to Roger Waters' vocals, as one example). The thing that bugged me was once again, was that I guess to give her something to sing lead on, the band would occasionally launch into You Ain't Woman Enough, which I believe was an old Loretta Lynn song. Hokey lyrics, and for some reason, I just don't feel Donna sounds very convincing on it. By contrast, I thought she sounded fantastic on Sunrise, even when singing it live.

    Donna takes a lot of shit for being in the band "only because she was Keith's wife", but she was a first call backup singer in Memphis, I think it was. She actually sang on some of those Elvis records where he was trying to regain his credibility after the decade long debacle that was his acting career. I think there was potential there, but for whatever reason, maybe it's just the band's inability to be serious or professional about any aspect of their career (witness the excessive amount of cover material the band did from the early 70's onwards), coupled with bad onstage monitoring that kept them from making the vocals sound as good as they maybe could have been.

    At any rate, I'll take Donna over the likes of Yoko Ono or Courtney Love. Yeah, I know, that's what i believe is called "damning with faint praise", but I can think of a lot of things worse than listening to Donna Godchaux sing, especially when there's a really sweet improvisation coming up in just a couple minutes.

  7. #32
    Quote Originally Posted by notallwhowander View Post
    Well that's rather orthodox. But Jar-Jar did lay down some cool keys in the early '90s before Vince was in the band. Or am I confusing him with Bruce Hornsby?
    Bruce Hornsby became involved with the Dead the same time Vince was. I think the idea was that having two keyboardists who help them avoid the "Spinal Tap jinx" that seemed to plague the band over there on far stage left. The main thing about having Bruce there that I liked was that as long as he was onstage, there was actual acoustic piano in the band's live sound (something that otherwise never happened after Keith left...for that matter, even when Keith was in the band, the last year or two, he was playing one of those rinky dink Yamaha CP-70 deals).

    The problem was, with Bruce on board, you now had seven people playing, and typically, there was this thing with this band after about 1976 where nobody ever wanted to shut up. I eventually figured out one of the things I liked about the earlier improvisations was there were more dynamics, more what I call spontaneous arranging. You'd hear different combinations of instruments drop in and out, maybe there'd be a sort of an unaccompanied cadenza from Jerry, Phil or Billy (or maybe not), and there was a sense that the band was truly creating something that would never happen again. There's a few shows even from 76 where you're still hearing that happen.

    In later years, though, that went away, big time. There was a hard format the band had to their shows, with songs appearing only in the first or second set, with the Rhythm Devils/Space thing in the middle, typically a Jerry ballad somewhere in the latter half of the second half (usually with Weir being way too anxious to launch into a rocker almost before Morning Dew or Stella Blue had ended) and just a less adventurous approach to improvisation in general. And there were no dynamics. It was like listening to a six people argue at the top of their lungs sometimes. Having said that, there were moments in the late 70's, 80's and 90's where it worked (I was witness to a couple of those occasions), but not like the way it did circa 72-74.

  8. #33
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    Quote Originally Posted by Mister Triscuits View Post
    Personally I don't think a "Playing in the Band" is complete without Donna yowling away, on key or not.
    That presupposes there was ever a version where she was on key. If there is, I haven't heard it. I can't count the times where I cranked up the volume after Yowl 1, got lost in the jam in the middle section, and forgot to turn the volume down before Yowl 2. Just brutal, especially with headphones.

    Strangely enough and as others have said she isn't a bad singer. When she was "on" with the Dead she sounded fine and I have heard her in things that did not involve the Dead where she sounded pretty good. But the Yowl?

  9. #34
    Quote Originally Posted by JKL2000 View Post
    The next mega box set from The Grateful Dead. Preordered! I can't resist these things! (Sorry about the big picture.)

    Ships June 11, 2013 - limited to 15000, but they will be selling digital downloads too.
    You're not the only one. At the age of 57, I've suddenly become such a Dead Head that I've picked up a lot of stuff...and ordered this box as well as the "Formerly the Warlocks". I also have the Grateful Dead Movie Soundtrack five-CD box coming, thir first album, Terrapin Station and Dead Set on their wayt. In the last two months I've bought (hold your breath, drum roll, please):

    1. American Beauty
    2. Anthem of the Su
    3. Aoxomoxoa
    4. Blues for Allah
    5. Built to Last
    6. Europe '72
    7. Europe '72 Vol. 2
    8. Fillmore West 1969
    9. From the Mars Hotel
    10. Go to Heaven
    11. In the Dark
    12. Live/Dead
    13. One From the Vault: August 13, 1975
    14. Reckoning
    15. Road Trips - Vol 2, No 1
    16. Road Trips V2.3 Wall of Sound
    17. Shakedown Street
    18. Skull & Roses
    19. The Closing of Winterland
    20. Three From the Vault : February 19, 1971
    21. To Terrapin: Hartford '77
    22. Truckin' Up to Buffalo, July 4,1989
    23. Two From the Vault: August 23-24, 1968
    24. Wake of the Flood
    25. Without a Net
    26. Workingman's Dead

    I also managed to find a new copy of the Jerry Garcia box, All Good Things (his five solo albums, expanded and HDCD like the Dead reissues,plus a sixth bonus disc) and picked up the recently released Jerry Garcia Band, GarciaLive Volume One, the four-cd box set with Merl Saunders, Keystone Companions, and ordered, from Garcia's site:

    Jerry Garcia Band: Theatre 1839, July 29 & 30, 1977
    Jerry Garcia Band: Lunt-Fontanne, NYC, "Best of the Rest"
    Jerry Garcia Band: Merriweather Post Pavilion, September 1 & 2, 1989
    Jerry Garcia Band - Shining Star

    So, for those who think that getting all the review material I get is great, I'm starting to think no, actually it's not; it's feeding and growing my addiction. Ask a drug addict what his drug of choice is, the answer is usually: "More." Diving, as I have - and spending what I've spent - on all the above, I believe I understand completely.

    That said, I am finding so many jewels it's not funny. I always thought Live/Dead through American Beauty was all I'd ever need/want. I'm finding that this band, despite not being a jazz band in any sense of the word, certainly operates with the improvisational spirit of jazz. Yes, some nights are better than others (some, way better), and yes, the vocals can, at times, be pretty shaky, but man, do I regret having ignored this band in the day and never having had the chance to experience the Dead live - especially during their Wall of Sound Days (how they had hearing after that, I'll never know).

    Anyway, despite listening to a lot of music for review, liners, etc, a certain amount of time is devoted, each day, to what is now "discretionary Dead time" as I work my way, sometimes methodically, other times completely haphazardly, through the catalog of music above. And man, am I loving it.

    Next up: interest in Trent Reznor, Nine Inch Nails and How to Destroy Angels courtesy of my Cleveland friend, writer Carlo Wolff. That's the other risk doing what I do. Meeting other writers who go "what? You've not heard this? You have to hear it!"

    And dammit, if they aren't usually right.

  10. #35
    Member wideopenears's Avatar
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    John-
    I'm not even a music writer, and I too have succumbed to the "suggestion disorder"--i.e., "What, you've never heard Blah-bla-woof? You've GOT to hear their album, "woof woof blah!!"

    "Hello, my name is Cone Beckham, and I'm a musicoholic."

    The Dead were really, really transcendent when they were ON, and they had the sort of chemistry that came from Improv spirit, long-term playing together, and willingness to take risks, that most nights there were at least a few moments of Ecstasy produced. I was fortunate to have seen them a number of times from 1983 to 1988, when I got off the bus.....I don't think anyone will argue that this was their best period, but for me, it was GOLDEN. I can only imagine the live experience circa Wall of Sound and Grateful Dead Movie time....

  11. #36
    Estimated Prophet notallwhowander's Avatar
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    I saw them between '87 and '91, not considered prime either, but perhaps those shows were for me.
    Wake up to find out that you are the eyes of the world.

  12. #37
    Highly Evolved Orangutan JKL2000's Avatar
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    Saw them once in 1982, and also saw Jerry Garcia Band/Bobby & The Midnites in 1982. Great experiences, but I wish I'd seen them more.

    Jon, have you considered getting the two boxed sets of "official" releases? I have the earlier box, and need to get the later one.

  13. #38
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    Quote Originally Posted by jkelman View Post
    21. To Terrapin: Hartford '77
    This was my first May '77 live album (love that 16-minute "Sugaree"!!!). Recently downloaded the 9-5-77 show from Buffalo on Dime and I'm starting to discover the greatness of Barton Hall from the night before on various Youtube clips.

    Can't afford this box set right now... although, their decision to have these shows availible as downloads was a good decision nonetheless (wish they'd consider this for the concerts on the Spring '90 boxset also).

  14. #39
    Quote Originally Posted by JKL2000 View Post
    Saw them once in 1982, and also saw Jerry Garcia Band/Bobby & The Midnites in 1982. Great experiences, but I wish I'd seen them more.

    Jon, have you considered getting the two boxed sets of "official" releases? I have the earlier box, and need to get the later one.
    Well, since I've picked up all the remastered/expanded/hdcd versions of pretty much all the official releases (the last ones are coming in the list I provided) I don't see any reason to buy the boxes....no?

  15. #40
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    The Europe 72 full box is KILLER. Upto and including Pigpen era was the best, most experimental, their mid 70s fusiony stuff stuff was cool, too. Weather Report Suite? It was like Relayer for the American Hippie crowd.


    Like the demise of the Prog Era, in hindsight, I lost interest in the Dead's music from 1980 to the end. (yes, I only discovered them in the 80s, but hey, I never heard of King Crimson til '81, too). Jerry became pretty erratic and sloppy , if not downright terrible, after the coma. The last few years, fro the late 80s to the very end, the band was on cruise control. It also seemed to me that Jerry's singing voice deteriorated badly, too. I mean, they released like 3 studio albums in the last 15 years of the band's existence? Pretty paltry.

    I now this cat who's got over 1500 shows--soundboards, in MP3s. Through collecting, and also through some web site that legally put up Dead shows. (archive.com? I forget the name).
    Who the hell can listen to 1500 shows?????

  16. #41
    Estimated Prophet notallwhowander's Avatar
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    Reason? There isn't much reason to buy physical media at all anymore. However, the collector's thing is something bordering on mania in the GD community. Their marketeers have been able to cultivate and exploit it in a very canny way. They know that most of what they are releasing is already available amongst collectors. So big, beautifully designed box sets add value that home taping doesn't provide.

    If I were well employed I'd get this, but really there is plenty of '77 out there. I only dip into it when I'm in a particular mood. So I'm not really going to miss it. Of course, once this hits the street and people start talking about it, I'll feel jealous and left out. But that's life, eh?
    Wake up to find out that you are the eyes of the world.

  17. #42
    Quote Originally Posted by N_Singh View Post
    The Europe 72 full box is KILLER. Upto and including Pigpen era was the best, most experimental, their mid 70s fusiony stuff stuff was cool, too. Weather Report Suite? It was like Relayer for the American Hippie crowd.
    I've thought about it, but art $450, at the moment it's a little dear. But I can see myself picking it up at some point, because the two "europe 72" double and triple disc sets are terrific.

  18. #43
    Highly Evolved Orangutan JKL2000's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by jkelman View Post
    I've thought about it, but art $450, at the moment it's a little dear.
    Do you mean on eBay? Or is that just for the digital music?
    Last edited by JKL2000; 05-09-2013 at 10:50 AM.

  19. #44
    Highly Evolved Orangutan JKL2000's Avatar
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    > I also have the Grateful Dead Movie Soundtrack five-CD box coming

    The only format I've ever seen this in is a thick jewel case - does anyone know if there's a box set that's not in a jewel case, but in some kind of cardboard package? If it's only the jewel case, it's annoying that it's always referred to as a box, because IMO it's a case, not a box. I just don't like those thick jewel cases.

  20. #45
    Jazzbo manqué Mister Triscuits's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by JKL2000 View Post
    The only format I've ever seen this in is a thick jewel case - does anyone know if there's a box set that's not in a jewel case, but in some kind of cardboard package? If it's only the jewel case, it's annoying that it's always referred to as a box, because IMO it's a case, not a box. I just don't like those thick jewel cases.
    The version I have has the first three discs in a fatboy case, plus two discs in a regular-size case, all enclosed in a cardboard slipcover.

  21. #46
    Quote Originally Posted by notallwhowander View Post
    Reason? There isn't much reason to buy physical media at all anymore.
    Sorry, cannot agree. For example, the Garcia box comes with a 130-page book filled with essays that reveal plenty about the sessions. That's one GREAT reason for physical media, as it's still rare for digital media to come with such accoutrements.

    Plus, while I'd agree that you can deal with digital media of the same or better quality than physical (if we're talking about high res), there's still something very nice about the tactile aspect of a cd, the excitement of opening your mailbox and seeing a parcel filled with (hopefully) great music.

    I've no issue with digital - get it all the time for review purposes and as long as it's either lossless or, at worst, 320K MP3, I'm absolutely fine as it reduces promotional costs for artists in a substantial way - but if I review a digital copy, and want a hard cd, I always lobby for that, and most artists/labels are happy to do comply. The real issue, from a reviewer perspective, is understanding that there have been times where artists send out more promos than they sell, and that is, imo, totally nuts. So if they can save the costs of sending out hard cds, and only provide them - and, even then, only on request - to writers who actually review the disc, then I think it's a big win for everyone.

    And if I really love a record, I do want a hard media version, if it exists.

  22. #47
    Highly Evolved Orangutan JKL2000's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Mister Triscuits View Post
    The version I have has the first three discs in a fatboy case, plus two discs in a regular-size case, all enclosed in a cardboard slipcover.
    Interesting - I'm pretty sure I saw it in a store (new) in just a fatboy case. I hope I'm wrong.

    Jon (sorry, is it Jon or Jim?) when you get your copy can you let us know what kind of packaging it has? Did you order from Dead.net?

  23. #48
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    Quote Originally Posted by Mister Triscuits View Post
    The version I have has the first three discs in a fatboy case, plus two discs in a regular-size case, all enclosed in a cardboard slipcover.
    That is the version I have and I got it when it first came out. GD.net had a special deal where you could get the extended DVD version of the movie (my original copy was on betamax), the 5 disc "soundtrack" and a spiffy T shirt. Never seen a long box version.

  24. #49
    Estimated Prophet notallwhowander's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by jkelman View Post
    Sorry, cannot agree.
    I prefer physical media too, though I really don't use it anymore. I guess that media is a term a little too broad for what I actually meant. A book has certain properties that screens don't have. Analog has properties that digital doesn't have. But when you get into the digital music realm, really you're looking at what kind of media you want to store your files on. There's no appreciable difference between a hard drive, a CD, or flash memory, all files being equal. It really comes down to the kind of file it is, and the quality of the Digital-to-Audio converters in your playback gear. The only "reason" to prefer a CD is a matter of taste, which isn't really much of a reason. All the packaging and booklets are inducements to buy a physical product that is becoming increasingly superfluous.

    If I had the money, I would have a few of these nice limited edition Grateful Dead box sets in my collection.
    Wake up to find out that you are the eyes of the world.

  25. #50
    Member wideopenears's Avatar
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    MY GD movie is a longbox...but it's the 2 DVD version, not the soundtrack. IT came in a nice cardboard/paper box, not the plastic box thingie...

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