Funny Meme Thread?

89 is so freaking good. everyone looked happy and healthy... honestly 87 through 89 is probably the last great run. by 90 it looked like jerry was back on smack and like you said, brent died. Also, 68 through 74 has some serious heat.

Hollywood Palladium 71 run- check it out if you have not heard.

hell yea

:snatch:

Let me start with Hollywood Palladium 71. Fantastic stuff. I always look at mid-1971 shows for several songs: Playin in the Band was adding ~7 seconds per show, and in '71 it was brand new, powerful, and muscular. They weren't even playing it in combos yet, or at least it was a standalone song mostly then. Also, the great "first set" material being honed back then: Deal, Loser, um I think Greatest Story Ever Told. Basically, yes I love that Palladium run, and you can find so many treasures in 1968 FOR FUCKIN SURE, man that year STILL tripps me the fuck out.

1974...yeah, definitely. I'll say this about ALL the years, until the late 1980's: every year, had almost a different 'tonal quality' of the recordings. Obviously, this is partly because performing- and recording equipment was always improving, and their respective operators on the Dead payroll getting better all the time! Bear Stanley recorded a TON of great Dead shows, and founded Alembic which was a titan in live sound engineering.

Anyway, yeah 1989 was a special year because it was almost over... And that 7/4 setlist is special because there wasn't too much of the "new" songs, it really was a full-throated effort on the boys' part that night.

My favorite year would probably have to be '77, but 1968 would be my other choice. VERY DIFFERENT songs/tonality, but if '77 was the sound of pure, highly refine coke and heroin, then 1968 was the ultimate acid/ganja experience.

Soda speak!

Also... for what it's worth, the JGB was fantastic during the 80s, even when he was flagging hard for the Dead. For whatever reason -- the closer-to-home gigs, the more freely available drug scene, John Kahn his running buddy as the bass player, and Melvin Seals the preachin' organist, probably made him feel more "at home" than with the Grateful Dead Machine, which was what it was becoming by that point.

Those Jerry Garcia Band shows from 1980 right up until, say 1994 were uniformly BETTER than the average Dead show. (With some exceptions, I must add. And this is NOT a slight at the Dead...)

And also, his collaborations with David Grisman and others during the 90's was quite a sight to behold. His acoustic chops are SURPRISINGLY AWESOME, and you can really make out his picking and technique, which on acoustic, was actually phenomenal. I highly recommend basically every Garcia solo effort even during the turbulent 80's, and forlorn 1990's.

Sorry for the thread-derail -- I can feel your appreciation for the Dead, and I just wanted to add my two copperheads.

WTF???