8/16/80: bring a poncho

My problem regarding this blog is that I ignore the little stuff and get bogged down in the big projects.  I really should do more little hit 'n run posts like this.

I gave this show an anniversary spin yesterday and quite enjoyed it:
https://archive.org/details/gd1980-08-16.SonyECM250.walker-scotton.miller.88959.sbeok.flac16

No rain check indeed.  The Mississippi River Festival was an every-other-week-or-so summer concert series hosted by Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville, a half-hour outside of St. Louis (lots of info here, if you're really curious).  "Maybe 3000 in a small outdoor shed close by the river," recalls an eyewitness at LMA, and "everyone except for the first 10 rows or so got soaked!"  It was was the first show of their late summer 1980 run, and also their first show after the death of Keith Godchaux.  It's a solid 1980 show, all good but not a lot of standout stuff, save for a couple of things that I submit for your consideration:

• Althea > Looks Like Rain is imho the most exciting thing in the first set.  1980 muscle!
• This China>Rider, however, is the most exciting thing in the show, a real all-timer.  Sharp as a tack, with everything you want from this vintage: a very energetic but not rushed tempo; a depth-charging, fiery Garcia-led jam with a great peak; a belting "headlight" verse with a huge Phil bomb.  The works, in other words.
• Joani Walker's aud tape is utterly fantastic all the way through, the work of a real master taper (Noah Weiner wrote a short but sweet ode to it at his great old blog), but the sound of the rain coming down hard, starting around 20 seconds into Ship of Fools, is one of those one-of-a-kind terroir moments that is magical and utterly unique to this recording.  You can almost smell it.
• Tip of the hat to Brent Mydland for his keyboard work at the start of the Estimated jam.  The sound of his electric piano, with a perfect mix of echo/delay and outdoor rainy ambience, is totally sublime.

Another famous rain show is 6/20/83, and as intense as this recording is, it doesn't quite hit the sweet spot for me like this one does.

10/3/80: sing along if you know this one

https://archive.org/details/gd1980-10-03.acoustic.mtx.seamons.94131.flac16

Going through all the Oct 80 acoustic/electric shows is not a project I will undertake, but I do occasionally enjoy dipping in to see what might be hiding in there.  Tonight, as they start Ripple, Jerry announces "you can sing along with this one if you'd like," and Bob adds, "Jerry wrote this one for his mom."  Ok!  Not things I'd expect to hear from either of them, but there you go.  During the final round of da-da-dada's, someone onstage (one of the drummers?) hollers "sing!" and Bob retorts, "sing, don't howl."  On this aud, however, it doesn't sound like a lot of the crowd took them up on the offer.  C'mon, deadheads!  How many times did Jerry invite you to sing along?  Sheesh.

Otherwise, it's the usual straightforward acoustic set.  Phil seems unusually present in the mix (On the Road Again!), and I always forget what an interesting anomaly these instrumental performances of Heaven Help the Fool were (sans rhythm section).  The only other real noteworthy point, however, is when Mickey can be heard during the lull before Bird Song offering to sing Fire On the Mountain.  Another opportunity lost, I suppose. 

Onto the electric sets.  Excelsior.

8/21/80: Uncle John's set

jam and Budweiser?  eww.

Time for a little anniversary shoutout to a favorite under-the-radar show: 8/21/80 at the Uptown Theatre in Chicago.  The acoustic-electric Warfield/Radio City runs define 1980 for many, but, for my money, the band’s best playing of the year happened on the August-September tour.  There are a lot of great shows from that stretch, and I wouldn’t claim that this one is the best, but it has a distinct flavor and a unique vibe that never fails to please me, particular in the dog days of August.

Take your pick between a nice sbd and an excellent aud.  I think the aud is the better bet:
https://archive.org/details/gd1980-08-21.sbd.miller.99034.sbeok.flac16
https://archive.org/details/gd1980-08-21.akg-beyer.stankiewicz.126369.flac1644

The first set is nothing to write home about: it has a fine setlist and nothing is really lacking, but there’s also nothing that ever much jumps out at me, beyond a nice Peggy-O and a rare late-set Shakedown.  But the second set is one of those magical performances where individual songs are all pieces of a very complete whole, emerging and sinking back into a tapestry that feels as unified as any symphony.  Shades of 7/17/76 perhaps?  I don’t want to get your hopes up, but this takes me to a similar headspace as that classic [disclaimer: 7/17/76 is a much better show].  Mickey and Billy take the stage to start things off unusually with a quiet duet on tar and talking drum for a few minutes before the rest of the band enters softly to join in for a prelude to a long and stunning Uncle John’s Band.  Not your usual opener, and not your usual Uncle John's either, as it jams its way into something that resembles more of a Playin’ jam.  It’s some of my favorite music from that year, and it’s all right there in the first 20 minutes of the set!

I don’t know if the rest of the set necessarily holds up to a blow-by-blow style of review.  There are no ups and downs: the enchantment has been cast masterfully, and the spell isn’t broken until the very end.  They come back to earth for Truckin’, dive back in the pool for the Other One, then the drummers take another turn, and the boys forego any spacey exploration and ease right into the Wheel, jam it back into the end of Uncle John’s in a most satisfyingly symmetrical close to a wonderful 45 minutes of uninterrupted music.  A mere 45 minutes?  Yeah, well, quality over quantity I say, and I’m happy to sacrifice the more standard combinations and set-closing standards for a jam as unique as this.

The whole Uptown run is worth a listen: 8/19 is more well known and probably the “best show” of the run from top to bottom: there's a dynamite Half Step > Franklin’s > Minglewood and a fine Stranger that bookend the first, and the second is a top-to-bottom heavyweight muscle set.  8/20 is rightfully lesser known, but anyone under the spell of the other two shows will appreciate the heavy Space > NFA > Dew at the end.

Have fun!

2/29/80 - an intercalary Masterpiece

Robert Hunter replaced Rachael Sweet, btw

2/29/80 is, I think, the one and only time Garcia played on an intercalary day (or "leap day" for you non-Julian types).  The late show was broadcast on WLIR (Long Island) and a few songs were released on the bonus disc that came with the 2/28/80 After Midnight CD.    I prefer the rawer sound of the broadcast to the official release, though.  Listen to this "When I Paint My Masterpiece" and hold on: the tone of Jerry's Tiger guitar in 1980 is always a thing to behold, but sweet lord, talk about peeling the paint off the walls!  Outta sight.

2/28/80, courtesy jerrygarcia.com

11/28/80 - Florida man ponders new box set

I've got a weird relationship with Florida.  All my life, I've had some family there (almost none of them native), so I'm there a couple of times a year.  This isn't the place to get into it in depth, but I'll say this: it's got a weird vibe.  I like it, because like any truly weird place, it's got its own unique brand of weirdness.  And, like any little pocket of weirdness, it's not surprising that the Dead tended to play better than average shows there.  So, with all the @FloridaMenandWomen in mind, it's always a good time to listen to a Florida Dead show.

More to the point, I was thinking about Florida because of a list that's going around of the 30 shows selected for the Dead's enormous 50th anniversary boxed set (now confirmed at dead.net).  Unusually for picky deadheads, general consensus (and I use the word lightly) in my neck of the woods is that they picked some real winners and some surprisingly cool sleepers.  Inevitably, a couple of choices are going to jump out as being a little too left-field, and one was the 1980's representative: 11/28/80 in Lakeland, FL.  It's smack in the middle of a quick 4-show swing through Florida and Georgia, on the heels of the much more famous (but not as exciting) run of acoustic/electric run of shows, and it's not a show that probably springs to anyone's mind as belonging in the top tier of the year.  11/30/80 was a cult favorite, a punchline in Nick Paumgarten's fine 2012 New Yorker article that was finally (and deservedly) enshrined for posterity as a Dave's Picks release.  11/29/80 seems to be a pretty popular favorite, at least for fans of the early 80's, with an eye-popping setlist and fine playing to match.  But 11/28?  Misguided choice, or a well-kept secret?

Giving it a close listen, I'd have to say neither.  I think it's a very good show, but not a great show, which probably means that I'm not hearing the ephemeral x-factor that's apparently obvious to someone else.  By this point, warts-and-all is the name of the game, but there are still some stumbles and slips in this one that do make this seem like a strange choice: Jerry's solo in Jack Straw starts in the wrong key, there are some pretty big vocal clunkers in Tennessee Jed, that sort of thing.  But there are some pockets of really inspired, raunchy playing, too: a demonic and demented Little Red Rooster (seriously), a powerful Looks Like Rain, some downright nasty jamming at the end of Deal, and the debut of the rare electric Deep Elem Blues (fresh from the acoustic sets from the prior months).   The second set has the same inconsistent highs/lows: a nice Stranger opener has some more stumbles, and the highlight is most definitely the unique To Lay Me Down > Let it Grow > Terrapin, all of which are wonderful but not quiiiite at that next level of magic, to my ears at least.  There's not much happening in drums>space, then the post-drumz is energetic but, for the most part, pretty run of the mill.

There's some really fiery stuff in there, no doubt, but 11/29's second set embodies the magic in much more sustained, consistent way.  It's not all spotless -- the transition into Franklin's from Shakedown (again, one of a kind) is a total clunker, but the whole set glistens and sparkles: Jerry eases back while Brent comes to the fore in a great, airy Shakedown jam, sparks fly everywhere in Estimated, and they really make the most of the usually negligible post-Truckin jam with some seriously hot Other One jamming.  Space has some much heavier, creepier, involved jousting between Jerry, Brent, and the drummers (always a good sign when they stick around), and when the Other One itself finally materializes (complete with the crowd egging Phil into his intro roll), Jerry goes off like fireworks.  He pulls out all the stops with a gorgeous Stella Blue, and despite usual shakiness of Casey Jones, it still feels like something special and out of the ordinary.

Why didn't they pick 11/29 over 11/28?  I have no idea.  What drives official release selections is probably far more mundane than picky heads ever take into consideration: the tapes are missing, the tapes are of poor quality, the tapes have some technical limitation that I'm not hearing, the tapes have a giant cut that can't be patched.  To be honest, there are a handful of 1980 shows that I would've picked over 11/28 -- 1980 hasn't exactly been overlooked, but there are still a number of other shows I would have pulled for.  True, griping about official releases is a guilty pleasure that nevertheless feels like biting the hand that feeds, but a $700 box set touting itself as a representation of the "narrative of the Grateful Dead's live legacy" does add a little more weight to the selections than usual: rather than simply being released on their own merits, these shows now stand as a kind of representative of their year.  

In all fairness, by the way, I love most of the choices they made.  There are some really inspired and non-obvious selections in there, almost outnumbering the picks that are already widely acknowledged classics.  I'm really excited that we're getting major upgrades of 9/24/72, 9/18/74, 10/3/76, and 4/25/77!  Really excited.