John A

7-29-88 is also the only Playin' that went straight into the reprise since it happened a few times in '76 just after the hiatus. This was my first show after moving to California. Not a bad way to get introduced to West Coast living! (Still didn't quite make up for missing the Greeks a couple weeks earlier, however. Something about wisdom teeth having to be extracted...)

And since Greg pegged a Beatles cover that qualifies, I'll spill another one (Rain) and a Paul M (That Would Be Something). The obscure '85 Weir cover is Kansas City, played the day after the Royals won the World Series. I'm pretty sure the rest have been named, and unless there's something still missing, my list sits symmetrically at 15 covers and 15 originals. Never expected there'd be 30 total entries. Originals: Operator Till The Morning Comes St Stephen Dark Star Cosmic Charlie Comes A Time To Lay Me Down Loose Lucy The Wheel If I had The World To Give Standing On The Moon Truckin' Sugar Magnolia Lazy Lightnin' My Brother Esau Covers: Good Morning, Little Schoolgirl Big Boss Man Next Time You See Me Wake Up, Little Suzie Going Down The Road Feeling Bad I Know You Rider Me & My Uncle Hey Jude Dear Mr. Fantasy (I Can't Get No) Satisfaction Why Don't We Do It In The Road That Would Be Something Kansas City Stir It Up Rain

Originals list is now down to 15. I, and A. Crew as well, have erred. "Mountains of the moon" opens the second line of the first verse. Damn it! edit: and the cover list has now come side by side with 15 as well. Just got a new one. Shit.

Aww, man, neither Satisfaction nor Hey Jude made it to my list. Good ones! So the covers has swelled to 14, because I got 2 more myself. I'll reveal one of them as Stir It Up, which could be controversial because they never really did the whole song. Only a train wreck of a stab it it in Hampton '88. Bobby aborted after about a verse, and Jerry for whatever reason wasn't interested in helping him! But I think it still makes the list.

Dead didn't play Easy To Slip, plus it starts with "it's so", nor did the Dead play Breadbox which is technically called "Move Along" I think anyway, and Ain't Superstitious starts with "well"... Tea, sing Race Is On to yourself again and get back to us. 😜 But, we have Tea with Next Time You See Me, and 2muchfun back again strong with Till The Morning Comes. That leaves just 2 covers on my (new) list, having come up with the obscure 1985 Bobby cover. The other cover hint: while the song starts with the title, it isn't sung straight up but rather in a drawn out fashion. This might get knocked off in 24 hours. Good work by the Starheads. 👍

And with Mountains of the Moon we are now waiting on 1 original and 2 covers (or anything else I may have missed). edit: I just came up with another cover. Hint - it's quite obscure, done by Bobby in 1985. Woe is the OCD Deadhead. 😂

I didn't count Here Come Sunshine because only in the reimagined version that showed up in the 90s did it start that way. And Dancing' doesn't count because it opens with "dancin', dancin', dancin' in the streets" But with Schoolgirl and Boss Man we're down to 2 covers from my list. And with Cosmic we're also down to 2 originals from my list.

Don't Ease Me In doesn't count because "don't ease, don't ease" opens the song. Dear Mr. Fantasy didn't make my list; well done Billy Delyon. So we're now up to at lease 16 original and 9 covers. Thus far by my count 13 of the originals and 5 of the covers have been named. Good work, folks! And kudos to 2muchfun, who has dominated the proceedings. At least 3 originals and 4 covers still to go....maybe more?

For no good reason other than weird thoughts about the Grateful Dead follow me around, I randomly mused this afternoon about Dead songs, categorized separately by originals and covers, where the opening words are the song's title. Nothing came to mind instantly, although after thinking for a couple minutes I had a small list. I thought a bit more, and the list kept growing, but I quickly got stuck. Note there's a handful of examples that almost qualify but not quite, like Attics ("In the attics of my life" opens the song), One The Road Again ("She's on the road again"), and Smokestack ("Whoa-oh smokestack Lightning"). So tonight I was motivated to look trough a list of song the Dead played and see what said perusal might uncover. My cursory research totals 16 originals Grateful Dead songs and 8 non obscure covers that fit the bill. In fairness, I got less than half of these on my own. Anyone want to take a stab at some of these? I'll be interested in one's I missed...

You picked a damn good vintage for a large touring year! Spring tour was no more than solid, at least in my book, but the February shows, the summer tour, and obviously the fall tour were all gold. I saw both Oakland post space Foolish Hearts, but for some reason didn't make it down to LA for those Forum dates. And after seeing what happened with the Dylan appearance on 2-12 I was beating myself up over it. Pretty cool that they essentially let Dylan call the pre-drums sequence, which reads like an extension of the first set and includes the only Monkey and the Engineer since '81 plus an electric version to boot.

And back to our random Dead minutiae of the day…. Foolish Heart was played 3 times after space, in consecutive appearances, about 6 months after it debuted. On 12-28-88 it was Miracle > Foolish > Lovelight to close the show. On 2-7-89 it was put between Throwing Stones and Good Lovin'. And on 2-12-89 it ended the 2nd set after Other One > Stella. And with the experiment obviously over, it went back to its pre-drums slot, seasoned in with an occasional 1st set appearance.

If Billy Strings takes over for Mayer in Dead & Co, is the new band then Dead Strings? 😁 Wait, could that actually happen? 🤔

I played many hours of pick up basketball at Barton Hall growing up. Fond memories of the old barn. Cornell's campus truly is second to none. While I have a good excuse for missing the '77 show during 5th grade, I was 15 by the '81 show so the excuses get flimsier.

Of all the moments that qualify as a go-to for revisiting any given show, what lights me up about this one is the Brent jam in Big River. Goes to show you don't ever know...

Rude is sadly correct about Petaluma but he forgot to add the traffic issues. 😎 And yes, Shoreline is WAY too far, although the lone Dead Co show I saw was there. Kinda enjoyed it, if only for the spectacle. They did bust out Sing Me Back Home this year at Shoreline. My musical commute is typically no farther than the the corner of my living room to turn on the amplifiers. 😆 Word is that Mayer will be calling it quits after this tour. Whether the core 3 replace him and continue, or not, is up to them. Vicious unfounded gossip, or "you heard it here first"? We shall see...

The Mountain Winery in Saratoga is indeed a very sweet venue. Bit of a pain to get in and out of it, and the wine is pretty lame, but the concert spot is awesome.

I would have guessed no show opened with Tennessee Jed, but research uncovers that 6-29-76 Chicago also opened with it.

Good one, Hardpan! Not only that, but Far From Me opened 2nd sets on 8-8-82 Alpine and 9-24-82 Syracuse. Man, talk about thread drift.

Louie Louie opened the second set at a Frost '88 show as well as in Louisville '89 - that's technically Brent. A Little Light opened set 2 at the LA Forum Feb '89. Blow Away opened set 2 Spring '89 in Pittsburgh, and again Fall '89 in Charlotte. Pockey Way actually opened a surprising number of both 1st and 2nd sets from '87 through '90.

A few other good selections, in rambling fashion... speaking of '81 Shakedowns, there's 9-12-91 Greek and 8-28-81 Long Beach. And speaking of Brent in particular, how 'bout that Wheel -> Never Trust A Woman at that Long Beach show. Also 5-23-82 Greek (another Shakedown) is a barn burner. Casey Jones closing set 2 and a Satisfaction -> Brokedown encore. Who else wants to snuggle up with a Deadbase and give a Top 10 list a go? 🎵

This came up recently with a buddy and I realized that it's both an interesting exercise and something I'd never contemplated. And hell, people seemingly have top 10 lists for everything, so why not? Clearly the subjective nature of such an endeavor is bottomless. How much does one spread the shows out over Brent's entire tenure vs concentrating on peaks points? To what degree does a personal connection with a show override any objective measures? Does a particularly incendiary section of a show vault it onto the list at the expense of a wire to wire barnburner that lacks a famous moment? Do first sets need to even count? Such questions could go on an on. When I considered the concept, it seemed like there were a few shows that would probably appear on many lists and rightfully so. But also there were periods, or maybe more specifically runs in one venue, that had to somehow have representation, regardless of whether specific periods, say for example Spring Tour '90, could otherwise dominate the list. So as an opening salvo, with some hemming and hawing along the way, I'll offer the following... •10-27-79 Cape Cod - The pre-drums section alone gets it here. •10-14-80 Warfield - Certainly one of the October '80 epic 3 set shows from San Francisco / Radio City has to qualify. How could the list exclude this singular run? If you aren't familiar with the Music Never Stopped become so ASAP and you can thank me later. 😆 That, a chilling acoustic China Doll, a hot Scarlet -> Fire, a rare era Morning Dew, and a transfixing Brokedown Palace round out the evening's greatness. •5-6-81 Nassau - Five legendary words to introduce one of the best half hours of music in Brent's tenure: "This one's for Bobby Sands" •10-10-82 Frost - Tough to pick one from the great 10-9 and 10-10 duo, but I'm going with 10-10. Welcome to the Frost, folks, you're gonna like it here. •11-2-84 BCT - Now I'm admittedly veering into guilty pleasure territory, but frankly this show would make my top 5 list. So awesome that the reintroduction of Phil on vocals is a good thing. 😚 •6-14-85 Greek - Other than the anemic Cryptical bust out (on the other hand they busted out Cryptical, so there's that) these three "Twenty Years So Far" Greek shows were pure gold. But I gotta go with the 14th. The Boys overcame technical problems to play what were essentially two short first sets, and the Dew / Comes A Time / China Doll Jerry led second set speaks volumes. •Richmond '85 - The great Fall Tour '85 needs a representative on my list, and while I gravitate toward the Richmond pair choosing between 11-1 and 11-2 is a tall order. Hmmm... I'm punting. 🤔 •10-9-89 Hampton - When you bust out the first Dark Star in five years, along with the first Attics in 17 years, not to mention seasoning in a Death Don't Have No Mercy, all while playing a top notch show disguised as The Warlocks....well, enough said. •10-16-89 Brendan Byrne - At the risk of one too many Fall '89 shows on my list, happy 42nd birthday Bobby. 🎈And to think, a show on my list could actually open with Picasso Moon. 😂 •3-29-90 Nassau - I think it can be universally agreed upon that a list without an entry from perhaps the most fundamentally solid tour in the Brent era is unacceptable. There's frankly a lot of leeway here, but I'll go with the 3-29 Branford extravaganza. ⚡ And with that, I open the floor.

Love this spot in Portland. The stained glass contains the notes to Dark Star. https://blog.mcmenamins.com/stained-glass-part-ii/

Franklin's from 10-27-79 Cape Cod is so the fucking GOAT. End of discussion. 17 minutes of absolute bliss. (With apologies to the great Franklin's from '76 and '77 that were part of epic HSF suites.) And via the 30 Years Around the Sun release, we have premium sound for 10-27. In fact, I think this is an obvious entry for any "top 10 Brent era shows" list. Hmmm, maybe that could be an interesting post... I bet that list will be wildly subjective after a small handful of consensus shows. If there are even those.

Yep, and since '71 is the year for HTH, that's saying something.

Warriors looking very strong thus far. Overheard in game one from the play by play guy: "The splash brothers are having a Poole party." And Bobby had some choice seats a few rows off the court for game 2...