

musings about the dead and their music. the shows always speak for themselves, but i'll add comments on their contexts, sonic quality, and other points of interest. something like that.
the following night's performance ain't half bad either: https://archive.org/details/gd1971-08-15.sbd.130890.MrBill.flac16
5/14/70: meramec community college, kirkwood, MO. with nrps.
sandwiched in between an east village fundraiser for timothy leary and the renowned fillmore east show featured on the road trips series, the dead and nrps play an evening gig at the 2200 seat on-campus gymnasium, home to the midwest conference meramec archers. the show followed the typical structure for performances during this era—an acoustic set by the dead, followed by the new riders (w/ jerry sitting in on pedal steel), and an electric dead finale. the show was played while the band was recording the workingman’s LP, as evidenced by the tunes and the focus on the singing and harmonies throughout.
in october of ‘74, the dead retired from performing after a five-night stand at winterland. the following january, they met at bobby ace weir’s mill valley recording studio to start laying down the tracks for what would become blues for allah. outtakes from these sessions have been available on the archive for some time. last year, a new studio reel emerged of remarkable quality and historical significance. labeled “the first day,” the recording contains what audio engineer/archivist allen bershaw believes to be the first 1975 grateful dead studio session.
in a late-seventies interview with jerry garcia, he shared: "we kind of made a ground rule for that record: ‘let's make a record where we get together every day and we don't bring anything in.’ …the whole idea was to get back to that band thing, where the band makes the main contribution to the evolution of the material. so we'd go into the studio and jam for a while, and then if something nice turned up we'd say, ‘well let's preserve this little hunk and work with it, see if we can't do something with it.’ and that's how we did most of the album."this session documents the fertile period of exploration the band was engaged in during their “retirement.” in a larger sense, the dead’s choice of material for the album indicates that they were busily carving a unique path that no one expected. do yourself a favor and spend a bit of time with “the first day.” i’m fairly certain you’ll be more than pleased that you did.9/19/70: fillmore east, new york, NY.
the third night of this 4-show run is quite special, primarily because of the dark star suite. unfortunately the opening acoustic set is a very poor quality audience recording, distant and plagued by an extremely rowdy, hollering bunch of folks positioned around marty weinberg’s Uher 4000L mono reel-to-reel. the soundboard of this evening, however, is another story.