This mix pulls from the first four shows of The Grateful Dead’s 1984 East Coast Spring Tour – April 13-17, in Hampton, VA, Rochester, NY, and Niagara Falls, NY.
Weird mixes and performance flaws encouraged me to boil this one down to the extensive jamming, which is great. There are some burps in “Help on the Way" (Garcia's guitar may go out for a bit), but it was too good a place to start this mix to resist.
There are a number of strange sounds within these tracks. At several points, chorus vocals are mixed into a huge, echo-filled mass, and there's some wild hand drumming on "Fire" that adds an extra twist to the groove.
92-minute mp3 mix zipped up here
Disc 1 (46 minutes)
- Help on the Way > Slipknot!
- Eyes of the World
- Scarlet Begonias Jam > Fire on the Mountain Edit
- Estimated Prophet Jam > Jam
Disc 2 (46 minutes)
- Playin’ Jam >
- Terrapin Station > Playin’ Mini-Jam
- Jam >
- The Other One > Jam > Other One
- Shakedown Street Edit
Editing Notes: Aside from some of my usual abbreviation moves (skipping the song-parts of “Scarlet,” “Estimated,” and “Playin’), a couple of tracks are edited more esoterically. “Fire” is instrumental except for the final two choruses, which includes that massed, echo effect. I think you’ll find the whole “Scarlet Jam > Fire” sequence quite compelling. “Shakedown” is instrumental until the final verse, after which it flows uninterrupted. The vocal chorus effect is used here, too. Don't miss this "Other One," which ventures far from the main theme.