I had a few Grateful Dead albums that I enjoyed in college, particularly Blues for Allah, Terrapin Station, and Go to Heaven. I wasn’t by any means a Deadhead, but that changed on August 9, 1995. I was driving home from work in Chicago, listening to WXRT radio, and it was announced that Jerry Garcia had passed away from a heart attack. I listened to the lovely tribute and music throughout the evening on WXRT, and determined to listen more deeply to the music of the Grateful Dead. Seventeen years later, I’m still doing that.
I was very fortunate in that by the late nineties, once I had devoured their studio work, it was easy to access their vast, informal catalogue of live concerts. Unlike any other band at that time, a very few more know, the Dead never played the same show twice, constantly mixing set lists, styles, lengths of songs, and also adding in a healthy dose of surprise cover songs. This is why the band garnered a following that joined them from show to unique show, and began trading tapes of shows that the band not only allowed, but also created space for next to the soundboard at each concert. The band’s sound engineers recorded each concert de rigueur, so that they and the band could listen and improve the experience for the listeners. The tapes were retained. Luckily for me, by the time of Jerry’s death, the Dead had a cutting edge website that was opening up these live archives and releasing them digitally. The discs came with a caveat emptor (because the tapes were never made for retail release), but that was rarely necessary, since Deadheads were now listening to a level of quality long lost in the copying of tapes over several decades.
I’ve snapped up these releases as soon as they were offered. Famous concert runs at Winterland and the Fillmore East, rare early concerts at Lake Tahoe, epic Wall of Sound shows from the Spectrum – each show has its own personality, energy, and artistry. My username on Dead.net is Late Bloomer, which I chose because I never saw Jerry play. Nonetheless, various incarnations of the remaining members still tour continuously, and still write music. I get to at least two shows a year, and occasionally take a week off work to follow the band for a handful of shows across the country.
The latest archive release is a limited edition set of six complete shows from 1990, packaged in a beautiful box with period memorabilia and a handbook of essays and memoirs from that concert run. My set arrived in the mail today, so please excuse me; I have eighteen discs that are waiting to be loaded onto my iPod.
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