John A

When you can make it over the Golden Gate Bridge, I'm good for some. Grand Cru even. 🍷😚

10-12-84 was the first of about a dozen instances of a Playin' Reprise without a main Playin' having occurred earlier.... That's totally righteous DSO included the rest of the Playin' in the filler slot.

Would never have guessed Way To Go Home came out of space 7 times. Thought it was exclusively pre-drums material. God bless humanity for that tune to drive the coveted transition out of space slot. This prompted my own research re: Wave to the Wind. Could it have actually come out of space? Yep. It did so twice. Turns out I actually saw one of them. Better to have blocked that kind of shit out I suppose. There are also 2 occasions of Way To Go Home being followed by Wave to the Wind. Ouch.

I have played many an hour of pickup basketball at Barton Hall. The Big Red hoops game were played there until another (proper) arena opened about 15-20 years ago. Wildly cool facility in its own right. TERRIBLE place for live music though. Goes to show the Dead lay down their most famous show there. Because of course they do. 😆

I consider Days Between as much more than "holding up as a Jerry ballad." It's A-list, and I know that high praise, but it's simply brilliant. The only knock on it is that it came around just as Jerry was on his downslope. Listen to 12-11-94. Mesmerizing.

Back to Valley Road, The Dead seemed gung-ho about it, at least briefly. Of the 6 versions, the last 4 were all in Dec. '90 and all 6 were 1st set closers. And just like that, it was gone. 🤭 The other Hornsby song they did, Stander on the Mountain, also saw all 3 of its appearances toward the end of '90 and again all as 1st set closers. I wonder what made them shelve the "Bruce slot" come the turn of the year. Likely Bruce himself I suppose. Hey, one could ask him...

I was also at that Landover show with the lone GD Fever. That seems like something Eaton would want to bust out in an elective. Maybe they've recreated that show? Don't think anybody is gonna get a Samba at a DSO show. 😆

This kind of stuff and a '69 venture are my DSO wheelhouse. Nice.

Because the Grateful Dead is all about serendipity and coincidence, of course in my car yesterday when I tuned into the Sirius channel they were playing Greatest Story -> Bertha from Portland 6-24-73. Pretty damn sweet transition into Bertha to boot. 😀

Not so much "here and there", but this is correct. The combo itself was on hiatus from 10-18-74 through 6-7-80, and the show opening combo was on hiatus from 9-19-72 through 12-14-80. In fact, it was only an opening combo 3 times prior to 1980.

That was breakout #2, after the '85-'89 hiatus. Get your break-outs straight, man. 😜😂

Don't forget the 6-9-77 through Spring '83 Help > Slip hiatus.

Other tidbits I've heard to help fill this in... Come Together, Hey Jude, and a double band Makes No Difference / Shape I'm In. 3 set 2 Beatles songs, plus a double Band encore.

You rang? 😀 Bertha > Greatest Story was played 63 times, whether opening the show (obviously more typical), closing the first set, opening the second set (rare but not vanishingly so) or in the early 70s sometimes showing up in that order later in the 2nd set. Perhaps more surprisingly, Greatest Story > Bertha occurred 11 times - and this also spanning from '72 through '95!

Funny, but true. The last missing link chronologically to the Dead's long, strange trip. And yes, good blog about a strange little winter tour.

Good extended take on the shows / venue, Mango - thanks. I was just listening to a New Year's set 2 GD opener on Sirius XM in the car and I turned it off because even on the soundboard the balloons were brutal. As a former audience taper, you can imagine how I felt about them back in the day. 😠 I streamed the 12-30 show on my big TV / stereo. Sound, video, overall production, not to mention the band's playing, were all impeccable. Funny to read your rant about the repeated encore tandem, because once I'd realized the 12-30 show was almost assuredly a mid to late '78 recreation, I'm thinking shit like, "ok, now it's going to Samson, Estimated, or Playin' and anything else will be a shocker." As well as "Wharf Rat, Stella, or Black Peter - what else is possible?" And it's bothering me! Point being, how fucking spoiled are we to have such gripes? 😉

Gotcha all beat - Hey Jude. 3-1-69 then 3-22-90; 1522 shows. True, the Hey Jude finale showed up in '85 after Mr Fantasy, and also true the 3-22-90 version was more an attempt by Brent to sing the entire song than a successful stab at doing so, but still...

It's a solid app. I did beta testing for it, although I ironically don't have it due to all the beta versions timing out. But I definitely recommend it. Technically Stu Nixon is the only original DeadBase collaborator that is involved. John Scott, the main force behind Deadbase (he did all the programming) dropped off the grid some years ago and the software vanished along with him. It's a crime to pedantic Deadhead humanity that the print version can't be revised with the hundreds of updates and corrections that have surfaced since Jerry left us. That's why Deadbase 50 is such a let down.

It feels safe to proclaim that Eyes > Comes A Time is the first such pairing. Pretty brilliant call, actually. The reverse would seem quite awesome as well.

Having 6 copies of every DeadBase ever printed (kidding, I'm just kidding 😉), I count 14 second set Candymans, the last being 7-7-81 in Kansas City.

Absolute confirmation of elective at She Belongs to me, played only in '85 while On The Road Again was not played after the early 80s ('82 perhaps?).... although I suppose technically if Lisa is onstage it's an elective at the opening notes of Alabama.

Damn. That's high level elective creativity! Love the respect for Quinn that it could go "standard" encore slot after all those gyrations.

Holy shit. That makes the fire Marshall fucking with folks clogging the aisles at Dead shows seem like child's play. (And to be clear, all my banter here is not meant to undermine the obvious seriousness of this scenario.)

Wow great story about the tie dyed hero up front. Which brings up the question: did a Dead show ever pause during the music due to a medical or other situation in the crowd? Closest I can think of is when they didn't play an encore (Providence '86 perhaps?) because Billy got hit with a bottle post space, and the famous line from Phil at the '85 Saratoga show when some moron was hanging over a railing - "hey, man, there's 50,000 people waiting for you to get back into your seat." But none of that ever stopped the music in its tracks. Presumably if a naked guy climbed the speaker scaffolding during a DSO show there'd be a pause as well. 😆

True, although with a little more lasting power, as it turned out. 😂 😛