Save Your Face

This mix creates a continuous, chronological, 65-minute “Slipknot!” from all (but one) of the June 1976 performances. The synchronized “Slipknot” riff appears for only 60 seconds – before the first jam and after the last. Otherwise, it’s exclusively the improvisational passages folding into one another. (I skipped June 4, because no complete soundboard recording circulates.)

1976 “Slipknots” are one of the best places to hear extended “jazz Dead” in the early two-drummer period. The approach is full of open spaces and side-trips, Mickey operating in Billy time zones. It’s not too hard to pretend that the performances are from 1974 and/or representative of an alternate-Earth’s post-1975 Dead timeline.

I’ve never been a super-fan of the June 1976 vibe and pacing as a whole, but the more open spaces of the month are almost always a distinctive treat – Slipknot, Playin’, early St. Stephen jams, the first, swirly minutes of Supplication, etc. 

65-minute mp3 mix zipped up here

• 6/3/76 (11:49)
• 6/10/76 (5:50)
• 6/14/76 (12:00)
• 6/17/76 (6:58)
• 6/19/76 (5:21)
• 6/21/76 (7:22)
• 6/24/76 (7:34)
• 6/27/76 (9:11)

This mix presents an extended version of “St. Stephen,” as played in June 1976.

Upon its return to the repertoire that month, the song often included a sizable jammy passage that concluded with the song’s reprise. 

The first three of the month are the really interesting ones, sounding to me like they could have come from or be heading toward “Supplication” – almost like it’s a leftover mood from the 1975 rehearsals/jams. 

This approach didn’t last long. By the fourth version, “Not Fade Away” begins its takeover of “St. Stephen’s” jam space. On 6/18 (not included on this mix), they played the first “SS > NFA > SS” sandwich, which reduced “St. Stephen” to just its song parts. Following that, all the June jams are “NFA”-inflected.

The mix is arranged chronologically, and you get a full blast of the audience response at the breakout on the first night. The exception to chronology is an audience-only, very NFA take, which comes last.

Because the song’s jam and final vocal section both began with a dramatic pause, the versions string together easily. Similar to the SYF May '77 edits.

38-minute mp3 mix zipped up here

• 6/9 Song > (starting with audience patch)
• 6/9 Jam (7:11)
• 6/11 Jam (4:33)
• 6/15 Jam (5:50)
• 6/26 Jam (4:50)
• 6/29 Jam (4:28)
• 6/23 Jam (6:26 aud)

Plus a bonus track: 

I’ve appended a 13-minute bonus track from a previous SYF mix that edits together three of the earliest “St. Stephen” jams, from June 1968. At that time, when the song was brand new, the jam section was under construction, as it would be again upon the song’s return in ’76.

Source note: 

Many of these ’76 shows have been released, but I only own a few on CD. So, I’ve used fan-circulating tapes across the board.

This mix attempts to find a good setting for the early ‘80s rarities “Dark Star,” “St. Stephen,” “That’s It for The Other One,” and “The Eleven” jam. I decided to flesh it out with other songs that featured in the band’s 1969 sets, with one outlier. 

The earliest track is December 1981 and the latest November 1985. During this period, the band played “Dark Star” twice (’81 and ’84), “St. Stephen” three times (October ’83), “Cryptical Envelopment” five times (1985), and an “Eleven” jam once. Some performances were slipshod, and most are in shows that aren’t particularly great in whole.

Nonetheless, there is plenty to love in the music and in joining the audience as it responds to the sudden appearances of these rare, loved songs.

The mix combines soundboard, matrix, and audience tapes – whatever version of my pick I thought put the performance across. Sequencing does an okay job of gently shifting you among the various ambiances. Some parts of the sequence offered nice opportunities for fake segues. (In the song list, below, “>” indicates a real, as-performed segue.)

Many thanks to twitter Deadheads and Heady Versions users for providing great leads on some of the supporting songs. Several of these selections have been released or have appeared on previous SYF mixes.

The mp3 files are tagged with date and source tape info for each track. 

But don’t worry about those details now. Just imagine that this was a legendary, early ‘80s second set, click download, and strap yourself in.

2-hour mp3 mixtape zipped up here

• Cold Rain and Snow
• Dancin’ in the Street
• Jam >
• Not Fade Away
• Dark Star
• The Eleven Jam
• That’s It for the Other One >
• Comes a Time >
• That’s It for the Other One
• Jam >
• St. Stephen
• Dark Star
• Space >
• Morning Dew
• It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue

Artwork by L.B. Cole.

It is a dimension as vast as space and as timeless as infinity. It is the middle ground between light and shadow, between science and superstition. This is the dimension we call the Grateful Dead.

Imagine if you will, 30 minutes of 1985 Grateful Dead music related to “The Twilight Zone” theme and mood.

With the help of middle-man Merl Saunders, the Dead were hired to create theme and incidental music for the 1985 reboot of “The Twilight Zone.” A soundtrack album was released containing a combination of ominous Dead “space” and cheesier, ‘80s pop moves.

This mp3 mix includes all the “space” passages, plus an edit of studio outtakes, plus three live passages. No cheesy stuff.

“Merl says that the night he sat in during the ‘space’ jam at one of the recent Berkeley shows, ‘we did a bit of the Zone without the theme. It was kind of loose. We’d been in the studio working things about a week, and then all of a sudden I was just up there onstage!’” (Golden Road #6)

According to Garcia, the band recorded enough bits to construct a much larger Twilight Zone space.

“… but what we got [to do] was a collection of little musical inserts called stings and bumpers – you know, little hunks of non-specific music of various lengths that have different moods. One might be a mood like, ‘Don’t open the door,’ or ‘Don’t go up into the attic.’ Or, ‘I’m going to work work, honey. Are you sure you’ll be OK home alone?’ They go all the way from a sort of noncommittal [he makes light, almost playful guitar sounds] to a real ominous ‘Braaaaaagh!” They gave us a huge menu of those – 40 that are like 5 seconds, 20 that are 6.5 seconds, a bunch that they can fade in and out. Then it’s the music editor who actually fits them into the show.” (Golden Road #6)

My assumption is that the 17 minutes from the official soundtrack included on this mix are made up of a slew of these tiny pieces of mood music, edited together. 

31-minute mp3 mix zipped up here

• Twilight Zone (live 6/21/85)
• Twilight Zone (live 9/15/85)
• Twilight Zone (studio outtake edit)
• Space (live 3/9/85 w/Merl Saunders)
• TZ Soundtrack: Main Title Theme
• TZ Soundtrack: Kentucky Rye Pt. 3
• TZ Soundtrack: Shadowman (edit)
• TZ Soundtrack: Nightcrawlers
• TZ Soundtrack: Eye of Newton (edit)
• TZ Soundtrack: End Credits

The session/demo edit comes from this set of fragments. I found that several of them contain the exact same, main passage (w/some different treatments), so my edit comprises the non-repeating passages. 

If you enjoy the Dead making soundtrack music, you might like:

• This 1969 edit of the band playing cartoon music
• These 1994 edits of full-bore MIDI wonderfulness

This two-hour mix features a particular zone of 1973-1974 jazz Dead. It’s comprised of some of the most diffuse and drifty “Dark Star” passages of the period, plus adjacent jams that took the same mood into additional territory. 

Common denominators are complex, gentle beauty and Bill Kreutzmann’s amazing drumming.

Soaring-melodic-rock “Dark Star” moments occur very rarely. The first verse of “Dark Star” appears periodically to present the straight melody that solves the Rubic’s Cube happening everywhere else. 

Each track is a continuous, as-played, Dead passage (with one exception that I forget). I’ve chosen start and end points based on the coherent zone I was seeking. I’ve created segues where opportunities presented themselves and faded elsewhere. 

I figured two hours of this trip was enough. It’s the same length as this compendium of Europe ’72 “Dark Star” passages and adjacent jams. The two mixes offer an easy and interesting way to compare and enjoy the two extremes of the mature one-drummer period. 

2-hour mp3 mix zipped up here

• Dark Star > (12/6/73)
• Jam After Dark Star (12/6/73)
• Dark Star (11/30/73)
• Dark Star (2/24/74)
• Dark Star (6/23/74)
• Dark Star (11/11/73)
• Jam After Dark Star (11/11/73)
• Dark Star > (10/18/74)
• Jam After Dark Star (10/18/73)

Errata: The two 12/6/73 tracks are mislabeled as 12/5/73 in the mp3 files.

Cover art: Detail manipulation of Leo Morey, 1934. Used as the cover of the August 1934 issue of the pulp magazine “Amazing Stories.” High resolution image of the original painting courtesy of Heritage Auctions.

These were the only shows I ever walked to from my own apartment, and my group had mail-order, 10th-13th row, center floor tickets both nights. I’d seen my first four, lackluster shows in 1988, and I was still a fairly new 1970s-centric tape-head, who considered contemporary live shows to be more good fun than musically impressive.

And then, all of a sudden, I was bar-band distance from two nights of tight, powerful, adventurous, boisterous 1989-1990 era Dead. I couldn’t believe how good they were. I hardly knew how to process the fact that present-tense Dead were great, except that seeing more shows became incredibly important. (The head-scratching gorilla, looking at a Stealie skull, sitting on top of a pile of books, is exactly the right image for me at this moment.)

The only current official release from Spring ’89 is “Download Series Vol. 9” (2006), which features highlights from the two Pittsburgh shows that immediately preceded these Ann Arbor shows.

I’ve been listening to tapes of these shows since the week after seeing them, but a recent “ultramatrix” upgrade to the circulating tapes finally makes the recorded experience punch harder and feel more like the live event I remember. 

Almost 3-hour mp3 mix zipped up here

Disc One (54 minutes):

• Feel Like a Stranger >
• Franklin’s Tower
• Dupree’s Diamond Blues
• Mama Tried
• Touch of Grey
• When I Paint My Masterpiece
• Bird Song >
• Promised Land

Disc Two (58 minutes):

• Let It Grow >
• U.S. Blues
• Scarlet Begonias >
• Fire on the Mountain
• Samson and Delilah >
• Cumberland Blues >
• Man Smart, Woman Smarter

Disc Three (57 minutes):

• Playin’ in the Band >
• Built to Last >
• Playin’ Jam
• China Doll (>)
• The Other One (>)
• Around and Around >
• Playin’ Reprise
• The Mighty Quinn
• Not Fade Away

Editing notes:

• Where you see “>”, that means the band/tape plays straight through – no edits, no tuning break.
• Where you see “(>)”, that means I cross-faded an artificial segue to keep the flow going.

This mix presents thirteen 1972-1974 performances of the transition jam between “China Cat Sunflower” and “I Know You Rider.” 

Most selections are from 1974, the bounciest, grooviest year of the band’s history, and consequently the peak year for this jam. As one would expect of 1974, the passage got longer and more hair-raising. 

All the performances followed the same pattern:

• Transition-introduction (25 seconds)
• Weir solo (1.5 to 2 minutes)
• Garcia solo > Feelin’ Groovy jam (variable, the length of the whole jam minus ~2.5 minutes)
• Approach to I Know You Rider's first verse (10-30 seconds)

The Feelin’ Groovy theme was added to the China > Rider jam in March 1973.

Within the standard frame, variations abound in the individual playing and the collective mesh. Drop the needle into the same sections of many versions in a row, and you’ll be surprised. 

Pried loose from the two songs, the China > Rider jam stands up on its own as part of the bubbling “thematic jam” arc that runs through Alligator, Dark Star, Good Lovin’, Tighten Up, and “stuff that happened after Truckin’ in 1974.” (You'll find more mixes focused on such themes here.)

Different sound board mixes also contribute to the experience of variety. This variable is especially cool for the Weir solo section, where his guitar part syncopates more strongly with with different musicians on different recordings.

I was stuck between two options for this mix: Choose five or six versions, or include too many for any sane person to listen to at one time. I went with too many.

For review purposes, I isolated 28 of the period’s jams (mostly 1973-1974), and then I winnowed them down to 13 for this compilation. 

There was no rhyme or reason to the 28 I started with, except that I tried not to miss long versions. Of course, my picks are entirely unrelated to how well or badly the band played and sang the two songs on either side of the jam. 

Some versions got cut for bad sound or out of tune instruments. Some performances were simply okay. Others were really good, but lacked any great distinction when compared to many other versions. In this last respect, 1973 got trampled by 1974; I started with a dozen versions from each year. 

Anyhow, here are 13 really fine China > Rider jams. 

82-minute mp3 compilation here

• 72/10/08 (4:44)
• 73/07/28 (5:27)
• 73/09/11 (5:56)
• 74/02/22 (5:34)
• 74/02/24 (7:00)
• 74/03/23 (5:24)
• 74/05/19 (5:23)
• 74/06/08 (5:17)
• 74/06/16 (7:36)
• 74/06/30 (7:54)
• 74/07/31 (6:26)
• 74/08/05 (8:18)
• 74/09/10 (6:46)

Cover art by Mary Poliquin. You can purchase a print here.

Here’s a big, happy, fake show curated from the December 1970 tapes – a very brief, interesting, unreleased musical moment.

The “American Beauty” songs are limbered up (LP released the previous month), the band is tilting toward the cowboy/“Other One” statement of their 1971 live album, and there are still two drummers in the band. Hart would leave prior to the March-April, 1971 recording of “Skullf*ck.”

What else is new and interesting about December 1970? 

• “The Other One” had just started breaking out into true jams in November. It's flourishing in December.
• “Me and Bobby McGee” and “Around and Around” debuted in November. This "Around" is smoking!
• “Good Lovin’” was becoming a bigger deal, with extended jamming and episodes of great, free-form Pigpen storytelling. This mix presents the best of all of that.
• Unique events in the December shows include the only electric “Monkey and the Engineer,” a very rare electric “Deep Elem Blues” (last ’til ’80), the last-ever performance of “Til the Morning Comes,” and the final performance of “Attics of My Life” until 1972. 

Jesse Jarnow pointed me at this month, and I had a fantastic time listening and re-listening to it. I was also primed for it by a 1970 mix from Mr. Completely. 

For this mixtape, I’ve arranged the stuff I really liked into four “sets,” so that it has manageable and coherent listening episodes that scratch particular itches.

While the month’s set lists don’t imply lots of jamming, it’s there, and it’s great. I edited together pieces of multiple versions of “The Other One” and “Good Lovin’” to create giant versions of the month’s big jam songs, without vocal repetition. The “NFA>GDTR” jam almost dissolves. The "Hard to Handle" is involved. There’s even a minute-long “Mountain Jam" that slides into a "St. Stephen" jam. My 45-minute “Good Lovin’” edit is mostly jamming, with just a few stretches of exceptional Pigpen rapping, plus both ends of the song itself. 

4-hour mp3 mix zipped up here (performance dates included in song tags)

Set One (66 minutes)

• Truckin’
• Sugar Magnolia
• Cumberland Blues
• Dire Wolf
• Black Peter
• Friend of the Devil
• Attics of My Life
• Easy Wind
• Til the Morning Comes
• Casey Jones
• Brokedown Palace

Set Two (60 minutes)

• Deep Elem Blues
• Beat It On Down the Line
• Me and Bobby McGee
• It Hurts Me Too
• Me and My Uncle
• Hard to Handle
• Mama Tried
• Big Railroad Blues
• Smokestack Lightning
• Around and Around
• The Monkey and the Engineer
• The Frozen Logger

Set Three (66 minutes)

• The Other One (3-version edit) (23 minutes - one track)
• Good Lovin’ (5-version edit) (44 minutes - six tracks)

Set Four (48 minutes)

• China Cat Sunflower > I Know You Rider
• St. Stephen >
• Not Fade Away > Goin’ Down the Road
• Darkness Jam > St. Stephen Jam
• Morning Dew

I’ve also included a considerable amount of stage banter, longer bits as separate tracks, which I haven’t bothered to list above - but it adds a lot of personality to the performances!

The shows are:

• 12/12 Santa Rosa, CA
• 12/23 Winterland, SF, CA
• 12/26-27-28 Legions Stadium, El Monte, CA
• 12/31 Winterland, SF, CA

This mix simulates a 28-minute live, instrumental jam session by David Crosby, Garcia, Lesh, and probably Kreutzmann - otherwise known as David & The Dorks or Jerry & The Jerks.

This improvisational quartet had its own identity, often quite different in mood and pulse from the Grateful Dead. All the players sound delighted, responding to each other with big ears.

There’s only one live tape, and it’s very much worth your time. (See source note, below.) The point of my edit/mix is to create an extended jam by this band.  I am very grateful to Jesse Jarnow for pointing me at the tape and inquiring if this kind of edit could work.

My edits remove the vocal sections from six songs, while retaining nearly every other second of the music (of those songs). Some excellent non-verbal Crosby vocalizing remains, as well as the final chorus of “Motherless Children.” 

The Dorks played live only four times, all in December 1970: Three official shows at the Matrix (12/15-17) and one unannounced set in San Rafael a few days later. The only known live recording is this one from the 15th.

The Dorks are so nearly an apocryphal band that there is no photograph of the whole quartet on stage together. I made a live band image for the cover art by compositing elements of three photos. The Crosby/Lesh locked-in implications of the fake photo are fully acquitted by the music.

Convention makes Mickey Hart the drummer on this 12/15/70 recording. A photograph makes Bill Kreutzmann the drummer at a subsequent show. Jarnow has scholarly reasons for suspecting that Kreutzmann was the band’s only drummer; my ears agree. (Apologies to Mickey, if I’m wrong!)

Put this in your playlist alongside Mickey & The Hartbeats ’68 and Grateful Airplane ’70, as well as some of this late-summer ’69 bonus-player, curve-ball fun. 

Dorks 28-minute instrumental/jam edit, mp3 mix, zipped up here

• Wall Song (3:39)
• Laughing (7:09)
• Triad (5:23)
• Deep Elem Blues (3:13)
• Motherless Children (4.44)
• Cowboy Movie (3:57)

Source note:

For this edit, I’ve mostly used the file available for download here, which also includes a rehearsal session tape. (I did not include anything from the rehearsal tape, which is altogether less committed than the live event.) There are variations of the live tape on archive.org. I had one of those, which I used in a couple of places.

This mix creates long electric guitar solo edits from multiple takes of Charlie Christian’s performances in the Benny Goodman Sextet. Twenty-five solos are combined within six songs, lasting half an hour.

Charlie Christian, “the genius of electric guitar,” died at age 25 in 1942. He arrived and left just in time to be an extraordinary pioneer in the early 1940s small group scene, which replaced big band jazz with nimbler units, who discovered the way forward.

Christian was spotted by the golden-eared John Hammond in Oklahoma City in 1939, who recommended him to Benny Goodman. Though limited mostly to 15-to-45-second solos in his recordings with the Goodman Sextet, Christian played in all kinds of directions – toward bop, west coast jazz, and Chuck Berry’s blartney-blartney. He’s credited as one of the originators of modern guitar solos.

The document of record is the four-disc, “Charlie Christian: The Genius of Electric Guitar.” It’s great both for Christian and for the Goodman Sextet. The Goodman and Artie Shaw small groups were the  disruptive, post-punk, insect-rock of the early 1940s. Also pop superstars who got their clothes torn off by screaming fans. Elvis and The Beatles didn’t invent that stuff.

My selections for edits are based entirely on there being sufficient takes, and sufficient Christian soloing, to make an edit a worthwhile value-add. Jerry Garcia and Steely Dan listened to Charlie Christian. The history of jazz since 1940 listened to Charlie Christian. You should, too. I’ve made it easy with edits that present him as the featured rock star of the album.

28-minute mp3 mix zipped up here

• Wholly Cats (6 solos)
• Breakfast Feud (9 solos)
• I Surrender Dear (2 solos)
• Good Enough to Keep (3 solos)
• Solo Flight (2 solos - the whole song)
• I Can’t Give You Anything But Love (3 solos)