Grateful Dead

First Appeared in The Music Box, August 1994, Volume 1, #3

Written by John Metzger

A big thank you to David Gans and his Grateful Dead Hour for this month's tape. Side one contains a portion of an excellent Grateful Dead show from 1974 and features a beautiful full blown Weather Report Suite. The tail end of this masterpiece winds around and around before landing in a wonderfully mellow, space-filled Dark Star. Of course it just can't end here and the band wraps things up with a very pretty China Doll.

The second side of this tape features an 1968 performance. Horrible soundboards of a portion of this show have been floating around for years, so I was quite happy to pick up a killer quality version. The set begins with a rapidly played, but very sweet Dark Star/China Cat Sunflower. The band then enters The Eleven which is more commonly paired with St. Stephen which wouldn't debut for a few more months. This version of The Eleven contains some immense full band jams which build to a fiery peak before settling into a short, apocalyptic feedback. Next comes a full blown That's It For The Other One/New Potato Caboose/Born Cross-Eyed, portions of which were used on the Anthem of the Sun album.

Copyright © 1994 The Music Box