Three Grateful Dead Reissues Announced Featuring Classic 70s Live Sets
Three Grateful Dead archive collections are to be reissued by Real Gone Music on 3 June. The live sets – Road Trips Vol 1 No 3 – Summer ’71; Dick’s Picks Vol 3 — Pembroke Pines, Florida 5/22/77; and Dick’s Picks Vol 12 — Providence Civic Center 6/26/74 & Boston Garden 6/28/74 – have all been hard to come by, with the Road Trips set never before available at music retail.
Road Trips Vol 1 No 3 – Summer ’71 captures the band at a time of personal and professional upheaval. Still, the music belies their fractured state – one disc of the set is devoted to the 31/7/71 show at the Yale Bowl in New Haven and the other focuses on 23/8/71 show at the Auditorium Theatre in Chicago. Many of the songs, like Wharf Rat and the covers of Me And My Uncle and Big Railroad Blues (a particularly rocking version), were about to feature on the September 1971 double-LP Grateful Dead a.k.a. Skull and Roses, while Sugaree and Bird Song didn’t come out till January 1972 on Jerry Garcia’s eponymous debut solo album, so this Trip provides the always fascinating, caught-on-the-fly look at the band integrating new material.
Dick’s Picks Vol 3 — Pembroke Pines, Florida 5/22/77 presents a show considered by Dead Archivist Dick Latvala to be the finest performance from the band’s legendary Spring 1977 tour. It features a never-to-be-repeated medley of Estimated Prophet/Eyes Of The World/Wharf Rat/Terrapin Station/Morning Dew, along with exceptional versions of Help On The Way/Slipknot!/Franklin’s Tower.
Dick’s Picks Vol 12 combines the second sets of two memorable nights for the Grateful Dead, 26/6/74 at the Providence Civic Center and 28/6/74 at the Boston Garden. The Providence set has gone down into Dead folklore for featuring what some believe is the greatest version of China Cat Sunflower ever recorded. Meanwhile, the Boston show boasts one of the most renowned jams of the Dead’s entire career – a flawless 14-minute Weather Report Suite: Prelude/Pt 1/Pt 2/Let It Grow leading into a 27-minute version of the fittingly named Jam.