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Instrument: Band / ensemble / orchestra
David Browne: So Many Roads - The Life and Times of the Grateful Dead
by Doug Collette
So Many Roads: The Life and Times of the Grateful Dead David Browne 496 Pages ISBN: # 0306821702 Da Capo Press 2015 In the unusual way it mirrors the Grateful Dead's singular approach to improvisational music, David Browne's So Many Roads is unique in the extensive bibliography devoted to the iconic rock and roll band. Like the Dead as they introduce the themes of a song, explore it and often move in ...
Continue ReadingGrateful Dead: The Best of the Grateful Dead
by Doug Collette
As with so many aspects of the Grateful Dead oeuvre, there's more to The Best of the Grateful Dead than meets the eyes and ears. An embossed cover the glossy likes of which don't usually adorn such compilations, plus the presence of sound arising from brand new remastering done on the bulk of the thirty two tracks, are only the most obvious touches to a collection that may surprise even the most (tie)dyed-in-the-wool Deadheads. Who may, in fact, ...
Continue ReadingFare Thee Well: A Celebration of Fifty Years of the Grateful Dead, July 3,4 & 5, 2015
by Doug Collette
Mickey Hart, Bill Kreutzmann, Phil Lesh, Bob Weir, Trey Anastasio, Bruce Hornsby, Jeff Chimenti Fare Thee Well: A Celebration of Fifty Years of the Grateful Dead Soldier Field Chicago, IL July 3, 4, 5, 2015 Fare Thee Well: A Celebration of Fifty Years of the Grateful Dead was one of those rare events that surprises and satisfies in equal measure. The temptation is to over-speak, then, is simply another aspect of the profundity ...
Continue ReadingGrateful Dead: Dave's Picks Volume 14 Academy of Music, New York, NY, 3/26/72
by Doug Collette
There was nothing like a Grateful Dead concert and never more so than in New York, but this one comprising Dave's Picks Volume 14, is an especially significant one: the final night (except for a benefit for the Hell's Angels the very next evening) of a six-night run at the Academy of Music on 3/26/72, taking place just before the band departed on their now legendary initial exodus to Europe. Leave it to the good ol' Grateful Dead to turn ...
Continue ReadingGrateful Dead: Europe ‘72
by C. Michael Bailey
When asked the best introduction to the Grateful Dead for the uninitiated, I recommend Europe '72. That opinion has not changed in the intervening 40 years. This tour is one storied in the history of the band. It was the group's great bluesman, Ron “Pigpen" McKernan's last tour before he died of drink at the age of 27 in 1973. It sported the husband a wife teams of Keith and Donna Godchaux who brought a soulful presence to an already ...
Continue ReadingGrateful Dead: Dick's Picks Volume 12
by Doug Collette
Comprised of recordings in Providence RI and Boston MA from June of 1974, fairly early on in the Grateful Dead's use of their now legendary “Wall of Sound," Dick's Picks Vol. 12 documents a point in the iconic band's evolution where the pendulum of improvisation was swinging back toward more open-ended playing after the more structured approach they took at the turn of the decade, documented in the studio recordings of Workingman's Dead (Warner Bros., 1970) and American Beauty (Warner ...
Continue ReadingDave's Picks Volume 12 Colgate College 11/4/1977
by Doug Collette
There's much that's distinctive about Dave's Pick's Volume 12, not the least of which are concert notes by the late Dick Latvala on the fold-out insert included in the 3CD digi-pak package. This inclusion in lieu of the customary essay by one esteemed Deadhead or another is particularly appropriate as the latter-day archive series, the followup to 'Dick's Picks,' the original project in the same mold, wends its way to its third year of existence, simultaneously moving one step closer ...
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