Box Sets and More Thoughts about the Grateful Dead. Really?

A convergence of thoughts came to me, prompted by the headline and picture to the left from the NPR website.

Thought #1: The author in this piece basically is questioning the need for yet more box sets by Dylan and Morrison who are the focus here, but not the only ones who issue endless versions and remixes and digitally enhanced and unreleased and lost and found and collector’s only packages. It’s a cottage industry that has been probably going on since 78 RPMS were the carrier of choice, then got a boost with the first Beatles limited box set of vinyl. The collections became the ultimate item for every completist fan, were a safe bet holiday gift set that you wouldn’t buy for yourself and, hard to believe this one, but a way for record labels to assemble already bought and paid for tracks gathering dust in the library, putting a pretty wrapper around it and selling it yet again.  

Thought#2: When my friend George, he being from the executive suite of the now defunct Tower Records chain and currently a professional Facebook philosopher, mentioned dumping acknowledged musical masterpieces from his collection that he never really liked in the first place, there were a flurry of postings of people admitting owning music that they were supposed to love but didn’t. I mentioned that it might be time for me to delete the two and half hour version of “Dark Star” by the Dead. To which George replied “You mean they edited it down?”. (I paraphrase here.) And, only half-joking I replied: “That particular version of Dark Star began at 8:46 PM PST on May 16, 1970 and they finished on October 22, 1972 at 11:57 EST. It was the gig that Jerry was really on it.”

Thought #3: In 1981 I flew into Oakland to meet my old high school girlfriend for a weekend of sun, beach…nudist of course…things grown in the herb garden and a Sunday night Dead concert at the Greek in Berkeley. We didn’t come with tickets, as miracles were always in abundance. And as we sat on the hillside watching the show with the Golden Gate in the background I tendered my resignation. For eleven years I’d immersed myself in their music and concerts, and I decided to go out on a high note. It was a memorable evening, and I wanted to leave it like that. So I did.

Thought #4: Last year as I moved from west to east, I finished uploading all their CDs that I owned and started to listen to the band again. And then I started adding things, like the Grisman/Garcia collections, some oddities and live shows. Throw in a little NRPS and then I realized how much I’ve missed them. The music is (mostly) amazing, from the bluegrass and folk tunes, to the FM radio classics and the experimental pieces and solo ventures, to the electric and acoustic sessions, the good nights and the bad ones. And be honest…Jerry and a few others were stoners or drinkers, so there had to be nights of disintegration. Lord..please save me from another set of forty-eight minutes of percussion. 

Thought #5: The Grateful Dead invented the internet. You don’t believe me? Ha. Without spending too much time on it, I trace some of the origins of modern application use to Stewart Brand, who published the Whole Earth Catalog and helped create the “back to the earth” movement from city to rural areas in the sixties. He was a Merry Prankster along with Ken Kesey, participated in the early  legal LSD experiments and helped produce the first Dead shows at The Trips Festival gigs. Somewhere along the path I have little doubt that the notion of taking zillions of hours of Dead concert tapes and distributing them for free to the masses came up in the discussion. And I think indirectly, we have he internet today as an outgrowth of the conversations and work of the scientist Brand, and the intellectual and artist communities in Northern California that he brought together. 

Thought #6: My nephew by blood and the other one I inherited through marriage, came to the Dead back in their college days, not too long after I moved on and got off the bus. They are Gen X jam band aficionados who got a chance to see the ‘touch of grey’ Dead and now support all of the various permutations and ensembles. I’ve resisted hanging out with these two for a show, but have acquiesced to spend November 1 at Port Chester’s famously restored Capitol Theater for a night with Phil Lesh and Friends. I looked at the list…I don’t recognize any of them, so they ain’t my friends. And it’s a stand up all night show…no seats for old men. Two full sets. Another root canal evening for this kid. But if he sings “Box of Rain”, it might be worth it. Or not.

Thought #7: Search “Grateful Dead” in the music catagory on Amazon and you’ll get 461 results. Drill it down to group albums, and you see 193 releases. Which is laughable…my guess that there are well over a thousand albums worth of concerts in some digitized form or another, readily available somewhere in the internet cosmos. I was never a tape swapper, but I had a fair share of vinyl bootlegs. Still do. If you wonder what it must be like for an artist to have every single note they’ve ever made captured for perpetuity, look no further than here. 

Thought #8: Here are just a few cities where the Dead played and have soundboard tapes that have been “officially” released and for sale: New York, Hartford, Columbus, Tampa. Oakland, Pembroke Pines, London, Hollywood, San Francisco, Jersey City, Boston, Englishtown, Union City, Madison, Landover, Oklahoma City, Kings Beach, Syracuse, Richmond, Daly City, Baltimore, Springfield, New Haven, Lincoln, Atlanta, Philadelphia, East Troy, Rochester, Toronto, San Diego, Chicago, Des Moines, Austin and I’m getting tired.

Thought #9:  The latest Dead box set is the Sunshine Daydream Deluxe CD/Blu-Ray Exclusive, and as described on the Dead.net site: remastered, unreleased, complete, from the original tapes, transferred and restored. Includes a bonus documentary. 40 page book. Individually numbered/limited to 12, 500. 

Here is the description of this release from the site:

“Call it what you will, the sun was beating down hard and bright on that fateful day in Veneta, Oregon when the Grateful Dead heeded Ken Kesey’s call to help save the family Creamery. The 100-degree and rising temperatures did not deter the band who were still riding high from their adventures across the pond. It did not discourage filmmakers John Norris, Phil DeGuere, and Sam Field who gained entry into the Dead’s tight-knit world with their promise to capture the culture and integrity of the scene. And it certainly didn’t inhibit the estimated 20,000 Dead Heads who could not believe their, well, pot…luck.

In fact, this blistering day turned out to be a near-perfect little piece of the Grateful Dead experience and it is with great pleasure, that 41 years later we can present Sunshine Daydream to you the way it was meant to be seen and heard. As Prankster Ken Babbs puts it in the liner notes, this previously unreleased concert film “is a time capsule, a vessel full of exuberant free spirit as exhibited by the enraptured, edified, and satisfied concertgoers, a spirit that can still resound, that can still fill our hearts with joy, with compassion, with that sense and knowledge of our oneness, our open sharing and caring and the belief that the goodness inherent in all of us will continue to shine just as it did in Veneta, Oregon, in 1972. And will prevail.” And prevail it does, with its pristine sound and beautiful visuals, the band transporting the audience to other-worldly planes with definitive versions of their beloved songs like “Bertha,” “China>Rider,” “Playing In The Band,””Greatest Story Ever Told,””Dark Star,” and “Sing Me Back Home” and the Dead Heads in their wild and, quite literally, naked glory.”

Thought # 10: I bit. First of all….Veneta Oregon? C’mon. Sunshine Daydream? I can’t think of a more boring name for a Dead collection. Let’s be inventive here. Track list…how many versions of these same old songs can one listen to? And “Dark Star” again…clocking in at 31:28. Short version. But take a look at the track list…3 CDs of music from my favorite period of Dead-dom:

Disc 1  
1. Introduction [4:01] 
2. Promised Land [3:24]
3. Sugaree [7:30]
4. Me And My Uncle [3:16]
5. Deal [4:55]
6. Black-Throated Wind [7:01]
7. China Cat Sunflower> [7:58]
8. I Know You Rider [7:03]
9. Mexicali Blues [3:49]
10. Bertha [5:59]

Disc 2
1. Playing In The Band [19:57]
2. He’s Gone [9:32]
3. Jack Straw [5:06]
4. Bird Song [13:17]
5. Greatest Story Ever Told [5:36]

Disc 3
1. Dark Star [31:28]
2. El Paso [5:04]
3. Sing Me Back Home [10:51]
4. Sugar Magnolia [8:45]
5. Casey Jones [6:25]
6. One More Saturday Night [5:03]

Final Thought: I started listening to this a few weeks ago. It is probably the finest set from a Dead show I have ever heard. The sound quality is crystal clear, the band has never (and I mean never) sounded so incredibly wonderful as this. And the song selection is a primer into why the Dead was one of the premier roots bands of our generation. Now there is some grumbling about the poster being free with the less expensive retail version but not the deluxe one, and reports of some Blu-Ray compatibility issues. My suggestion? Just lay back, shut your eyes and listen. And do what I did to really enhance the experience…I deleted “One More Saturday Night” so I didn’t have to hear the worst Bob Weir song ever created. Other than that, I give it the ol’ stomp of approval. 

Following is a list of Grateful Dead live albums from Wikipedia in recording date order. The dates listed are the principal recording dates and do not include bonus tracks or bonus discs.