Random Dead Show

Buffalo in late March 1973 with the single best Box of Rain I've heard:

Palate Cleanser: Scarlet-Fire From Winterland '78

Sweet and Donna didn't ruin it. New Years performance, excellent video and audio quality. Check out the flame war in the comments when some dude says Sublime would have been bigger than the Dead and another says more innovative:



Here's the Fire to round it out:



Update: Bonus JGB doing Bread Box from the Garden in '91.

Update: Double Secret Bonus: Visions of Johanna from the soon-to-be-demolished Spectrum in Philly 1995. Any hard core Head should feel bad about the Spectrum's demise.

Update: To give you a taste of just how good shows at the Spectrum were, check out this gem of a show with the best sound quality I've heard:

Friday Night Music--Bob Weir Edition

I'm going to see Ratdog at the Tower Theater in Upper Darby, PA tomorrow so I thought I'd feature some good Bobby riffs through the years. Most of the Ratdog stuff is poor quality so I'll focus on mostly Dead material. BTW, Ratdog just performed their 800th show on earlier this year. A nice run with no end in sight.

I'll start with the excellent Black Throated Wind from a show I was at at RFK Stadium in June 1991:



Here's Ratdog performing the epic Standing on the Moon from 2005 with a nice intro by Bobby talking about Jerry:



Next we have the Dead doing Dylan's extensive Desolation Row. Not sure of the year but I'm guessing 1989 or so. It always amazed me that Bobby could sing every word to this song without a problem and would always screw up on Truckin'.



Finally from Roosevelt Stadium in Jersey City, NJ circa 1976, a great version of Johnny Cash's Big River:



Set list on Sunday manana.

Update: Set list from last night:

I: Jam > Feel Like a Stranger > Big River > Row Jimmy > Money for Gasoline, Lazy River Road, Odessa > Dark Star > Bertha

II: Catfish John@, Jack-A-Roe@4, Corrina@, Last Time > Ashes and Glass > Stuff > Dear Prudence > St. Stephen > William Tell Bridge > The Eleven

E: Touch of Grey

Friday...Er, Saturday Night Music--Bob Weir Edition

Tonight we feature the music of Grateful Dead lyricist and vocalist Bob Weir.

Bobby's had an interesting career from playing with the Dead and Kingfish to Bobby and the Midnights, an acoustic tour opening for the Jerry Band with Rob Wasserman all the way up to his current band Ratdog. The videos I've selected are a mix of different songs through his career.

First, from 1983, Bobby and the Midnights performing Easy to Slip from Switzerland:




Next we have what is probably the best song to come out of the Weir/John Barlow collaboration--Estimated Prophet. This song always struck me as it describes the phenomenon of California and the people it attracted. People thought if they make it to Califoria, life would be better only to realize that it was not the heaven they had hoped for. To me, it was one of Weir's strongest song writing efforts and was a nice compliment to Jerry's epic Terrapin Station found on the same album. I included this version because it's from the last show ever at JFK Stadium in Philly. I met my future wife several hours after this was played. JFK was torn down several years later.

Video quality is poor but the sound isn't bad:




Next is a nice little twosome of Bobby doing what he did best--playing cowboy tunes that still sounded great. Me & My Uncle--a John Phillips tune-- was always a great first set crowd pleaser and remains my wife's favorite Dead song. The "left his dead ass there by the side of the road" portion comes out of nowhere. It was the most-played Dead song live in the Dead's history according to some.

Big River always appealed to me for some reason I can't quite express. I liked the beat and the way the song flows and Bobby gave a different life and feel to the Johnny Cash classic:




Finally, from the present Weir band Ratdog doing Standing on the Moon with an intro interview with Bobby talking about Jerry. This is pretty sweet and I have to admire bobby for keeping the great Jerry songs alive: