Freaks unite! (A Dead thread)

Cafe Society
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Grateful Dead productions has wrapped up the Dicks Picks series and has moved on to a new series entitled Road Trips. Since the big purchase of the vault by Rhino, this series is the first release of previously unreleased recordings.

I’m picky about my Dead. I prefer to listen to a concert in its entirety. Certain songs take on a different flavor, if you will, when they come out of and go into certain songs. For example, Me and My Uncle>Wharf Rat>Deal and Playing in the Band>Wharf Rat>Not Fade Away. Though the same song, Wharf Rat is intrinsically different in each instance because of what surrounds it.
Also a song changes from tour to tour and whether it appears in the first or second set.

For this reason, I typically shun Dead anthologies, as you are presented with songs out of context.

The Dicks Picks series has been my opium for many years. It gave me EXACTLY what I wanted. Entire concerts, spanning the Dead’s entire career, cleaned up and all spiffy-like.

The Road Trips series intends to take songs from various shows on the same tour (Recently released Vol. 1, No. 1 is culled from the Fall ‘79 East Coast tour) and piece together a show representative of that tour as a whole. Most selections are presented with at least some context (Jack Straw>Deal; Wharf Rat>INAMiracle>Bertha>Good Lovin’; Not Fade Away>Morning Dew) to the show in which they appeared.

Given the two-year dearth of releases – I can live with this new format for the series.

Vol. 1, No. 1 has a particular tasty first set opener with Alabama Getaway>Promised Land. And there’s a few tunes from a Spectrum show I attended on 11/6/79. The CD features a Terrapin Station>Playing in the Band (37:42 long!) in the second set which when I heard it at the show, changed the way in which I appreciated the Dead’s experimentation.

Jeff Norman does a particularly good job of re-editing the master tapes, ensuring the CD does not sound like a jig-saw puzzle. Bravo Zulu.

I kind like this new format and am looking forward to more. But please (PLEASE) don’t forget us Heads who still prefer entire shows!!! And release a few more DVDs of entire shows while yer at it! We know you got 'em, and we’ll buy 'em.

Your thoughts?

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From dead.net:

Don’t worry, there will definitely still be full-show releases. We’ll have more on that soon.

This is interesting news. So Dick’s Picks is done, eh? Time for me to catch up–I have 'em all up to about #28 or 29, I think. And here it seems they just reactivated the “From the Vault” series a few months back after umpteen years with only two in the series…

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That almost all of us prefer full shows should be obvious although this does sound interesting. I surprised that my girlfriend hasn’t bought this already. She has all of Dick’s Picks and a suitcase full of bootleg CDs and DVDs. She’s an original dead.net’er with access to the secret forums and all that.

BTW, what’s up with New Year’s this year. Still no announcement. Jackie Green is doing a show in Sac with his regular band so probably no Phil show. Maybe Ratdog or even the Other Ones…

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Biffy,
Once the vault was purchased, Rhino released the third, and last, “From the Vault” CD. There’ll be no more.