Save Your Face

This mix includes every 1983 Dead track Dave Lemieux chose for the 2010-2021 “30 Days of Dead” releases. There have been a notable number of full-show, 1983 releases in this period, but these tracks are not on them.

Dave has served up a delicious 100-minute selection – something like a giant first set with a deeper dive. I wasn’t shy about leading off with 1983’s most notable breakout, setting the whole in motion as an impossible, but desirable trip.

These tracks are a reminder that among all the sterile, poorly-mixed early-80s soundboards, there are scores of tapes that are as beefy and immersible as those from any year, allowing the Dead of the era to make their case on even terms.

100-minute mp3 mix zipped up here

• St. Stephen (10/15/83)
• Bertha >
• Greatest Story Ever Told (12/30/83)
• Sugaree (10/17/83)
• My Brother Esau (4/10/83)
• Dupree’s Diamond Blues (4/19/83)
• Jack Straw (3/26/83)
• Far From Me (4/13/83)
• Might as Well (4/10/83)
• Cassidy (8/31/83)
• To Lay Me Down (10/17/83)
• Playin’ in the Band >
• China Doll >
• Playin’ Jam > Jam (8/31/83)
• Don’t Ease Me In (8/31/83)

Editing notes:

Everything is volume equalized. I found numerous places to add gentle segues. I addressed a dramatic volume shift in “Jack Straw” and a tape gap in “Bertha.”

This mix includes all but two 1985 tracks released on “30 Days of Dead” (2010-2021). The omitted tracks are the 6/24/85 “Brother Esau,” released on “30 Trips,” and the 9/3/85 “Don’t Ease Me In,” cut to avoid song repetition.

Two 1985 concerts have been released in full: 6/24/85 on “30 Trips” and 11/1/85 as a “Dick’s Picks.”

There’s lot of 1985 fun to be had, when the band and soundboard recordings converge correctly. They do here - where Dave Lemieux has micro-curated four unreleased shows.

78-minute mp3 mix zipped up here

• Feel Like a Stranger (9/3/85)
• They Love Each Other (9/3/85)
• The Music Never Stopped (9/3/85)
• Hell in a Bucket > (6/27/85)
• Don’t Ease Me In (6/27/85)
• Lost Sailor > Saint of Circumstance > (4/4/85)
• Deal (4/4/85)
• Estimated Prophet > (6/28/85)
• Terrapin Station (6/28/85)

Aside from the two track-omissions noted above, the only editorial interventions were track start-and-end points, volume equalization, and sequencing.

This mix includes most of Dave Lemieux’s 1970 selections for the first twelve years of “30 Days of Dead” (2010-2021). Dave’s plucks provide a vivid take on the emergent, post-psychedelic band (acoustic and electric), as well as tracking the evolution of the jam songs that originated further back.

I have sequenced, volume-equalized, and established start/end-points, based on the raw “30 Days” tracks.

2.5-hour mp3 mix zipped up here

Disc One: New Stuff (75 minutes)

• Friend of the Devil (6/7/70)
• Little Sadie (2/23/70)
• Candyman (5/1/70)
• Uncle John’s Band (3/1/70)
• I Know You Rider (5/1/70)
• New Speedway Boogie (6/7/70)
• Dire Wolf (12/31/70)
• Cumberland Blues (2/11/70)
• Black Peter (2/11/70)
• Easy Wind (1/6/70) [WMD bonus track, 2001]
• Mason’s Children (1/10/70)
• Operator (9/18/70)
• Attics of My Life (12/27/70)

Disc Two: Oldies (76 minutes)

• Cold Rain and Snow (12/28/70)
• New Minglewood Blues (12/26/70)
• Cryptical Envelopment > The Other One > (6/7/70)
• The Main Ten (6/7/70)
• Dark Star (2/14/70) [Long Strange Trip track, 2017]
• China Cat Sunflower > I Know You Rider (2/1/70)

Inclusions and Exclusions:

• I omitted one track that subsequently appeared on a Dave’s Picks.
• I included two tracks that subsequently appeared as strays on later releases (see track list annotations, above). The 2/14 “Dark Star” is a great performance that fell through the cracks of both “Bear’s Choice” and “Dick’s Picks Vol. 4.” Cool that it was featured on “Long Strange Trip.”
• I chose one “Friend of the Devil” from three Dave included in the “30 Days” series – the one Dave chose to include in three different years!
• I chose the slow, 3/1/70, “Uncle John’s Band” over the two, additional fast ones from “30 Days” (2/11 and 5/1).
• I chose the crispy, vocal-proper 2/11/70 “Cumberland Blues” over the somewhat murkier singing of 12/31/70.

Art: Marshall Frantz

This mix brings together most of the September-December 1973 Dead performances that have been released exclusively via “30 Days of Dead” (2010-2021), as of January 2022.

Official Dead curator Dave Lemieux has used the annual, November event to pluck extraordinary, individual Dead performances from shows the haven’t been released in full and perhaps never will be. 

The Fall ’73 selections combine into a mighty set.

105-minute mp3 mix zipped up here

• Weather Report Suite (11/23/73)
• Let Me Sing Your Blues Away (9/17/73)
• China Cat Sunflower > I Know You Rider (9/24/73)
• Playin’ in the Band (11/25/73)
• Dark Star > Mind Left Body > Dark Star >
• Feedback Chaos > 
• Eyes of the World > 
• Stella Blue (10/25/73)
• Ramble of Rose (12/19/73)

What was omitted:

• Tracks that were subsequently released on whole-show/road trip/etc. albums (as of January 2022).
• The 12/8/73 “Weather Report,” cut in favor of this 11/23/73 version, which is sonically-beefy on the bottom end and has extremely well-performed and mixed vocals.
• The 10/23/73 “Black Throated Wind,” which has a weird mix that highlights Keith’s exciting keyboard part, but which isn’t repeat-listen/album-worthy as a recording.

Cover art: Leo Morey

Official Dead curator Dave Lemieux has used the annual “30 Days of Dead” event to highlight and release extraordinary, individual Dead performances from shows the haven’t been released in full and perhaps never will be.

This mix melds Dave’s big-jam selections from 1994 into a single, volume-equalized, segued, trip. “Eyes of the World” appeared twice in Dave’s 1994 picks, and I chose to omit the 7/3/94 version that preceded this “Fire on the Mountain.”

Only one 1994 show has been released in full (10/1/94), on the “30 Trips Around the Sun” box. This mix provides a more concentrated Lemieux-curated case for 1994 being great - a take that I wholeheartedly agree with. 

mp3 mix zipped up here 

• Feel Like a Stranger (10/19/94)
• Shakedown Street (10/15/94)
• Playin’ in the Band > (10/05/94)
• Uncle John’s Band > Jam (10/05/94)
• Saint of Circumstance (09/19/94)
• Victim or the Crime > (06/26/94)
• Eyes of the World (06/26/94)
• Fire on the Mountain (07/03/94)

Art by Leo Morey

As far as I can tell, the four tracks provided here continue to be the hardest Joy Division studio outtakes to find. While certainly not essential for the casual/moderate fan, they will scratch the completist's itch.

You will need these four tracks to complete the studio recording jigsaw puzzle, all the other pieces of which are provided by:

• The releases from the band’s active period (proper albums, “Still,” singles/b-sides)
• The semi-official bootleg, “Warsaw”
• The official boxed set, “Heart and Soul” 
• The official BBC Sessions

Four tracks zipped up here

• Atrocity Exhibition (June 4, 1979 - Piccadilly Radio Session)
• Digital (March 4, 1979 - Eden Studios, Genetic Records demo)
• Novelty (mid-July, 1979 - Central Sound Studios)
• Transmission (mid-July, 1979 - Central Sound Studios)

If you’re looking for curated live Joy Division, try this collection.

This is an LP-length, Spotify mix that curates non-album material from the period of “Heaven Up Here” and “Porcupine.” The idea is to create a concise companion to those albums – the best b-sides and the most interesting alternate versions of album songs. 

This was the period when the young Bunnymen quartet was peaking at doing what came naturally, ahead of the greater circumspection/confection/long-term-template of “Ocean Rain” (1984) and beyond. It’s hard not to love the moment when a fixed group of musicians figures out how far it can take doing what comes naturally.

Though produced under very different biographical/developmental circumstances, the second and third Bunnymen albums fell together at the time and still do. This mix blurs their alternative edges into one trip.

Forty years on, the attempted, at-the-time, critical anatomization of Bunnymen music into psychedelic, proto-goth, post-punk-Doors, etc., categories makes sense and isn’t relevant anymore. There was nothing like the original Bunnymen recipe, nor will there ever be. 

Spotify Playlist

This mix presents an hour of vocal-free “Victim or the Crime” jams. 

I want to call “Victim” the Dead’s “Sister Ray” – a chugging, ecstatic, downer groove that pounds, drones, gets quiet, freaks out, dissolves, reforms, etc. Stringing 10 performances together does the same thing on a larger scale.

Resistance is futile. PLAY IT LOUD.

53-minute mp3 mix here

The sequence:

• 1991-09-25
• 1990-07-12
• 1991-09-13
• 1991-06-19
• 1991-03-21
• 1990-02-27
• 1990-07-04
• 1990-05-06
• 1990-04-01
• 1989-12-31

Note on selections:

I asked twitter for suggestions of good versions, and the responses mostly guided this mix, augmented with some poking around of my own. The mix doesn’t reflect a comprehensive review of all versions from the period covered. The date range bridges the 1990 keyboard player changeover without diverging in character very much. I’m also a fan of the 1993-1994 approach, which is quite different.

I discovered Jon Hassell’s music in the Fall of 1983, soon after I arrived in Ann Arbor for college. Schoolkids Records had all the EG label “ambient” albums in their cut-out bin for three or four bucks each. In addition to finding out what Eno and Fripp were doing outside of rock and roll, I heard Harold Budd and Jon Hassell for the first time. 

This short mix draws from several of the live Hassell bootlegs I happen to have. It’s my audio argument in support of an expansive, official, live release program.

You can support that goal by contributing to this official fund dedicated to preserving and releasing Jon Hassell's archives. I hope you'll donate, if you enjoy this sampler of unreleased music.

I started with the intention of including one excerpt from every tape I had, but I ended up pruning and adding tracks in pursuit of a more aesthetically satisfying double-LP experience.

The mix's mp3 song title tags provide details in this format:

Charm (Live 1981-11-13 Toronto, Art Gallery of Ontario (Hassell, Eno, Brook, Dieng))

92-minute mp3 mix zipped up here

• Nice 3 (1998)
• Nice 1 (1998)
• Berlin 8 (1988)
• Nice 5 (1998)
• Missing You (2006)
• Charm (1981)
• Courage > Dream Theory (1982)
• The Elephant and the Orchid (1985)

This mix curates material from the final three shows of the Dead’s Europe ’90 tour, at London’s Wembley Arena.

The final night - 11/1 - was a particularly strong performance. Unfortunately, Jerry’s voice was ragged at the end of the tour and was completely shot for the middle show, Halloween. I skipped everything with that problem.

The mix features 66 minutes from 11/1, 45 minutes from 10/30, and an instrumental edit of Halloween’s Bird Song (which extends the Dark Starriness). Some fortuitous segues enabled me to make the second set flow continuously.

2-hour mp3 mix zipped up here

Set One:

• Cold Rain and Snow
• Cassidy
• Valley Road
• Picasso Moon
• Let It Grow >
• Interlude
• Stander on the Mountain

Set Two:

• Terrapin Station
• Victim or the Crime
• Bird Song (instr. edit)
• Playin’ in the Band >
• Dark Star >
• Interlude >
• Dark Star >
• Weirdness >
• Playin’ in the Band