This mix curates 47 minutes of the Grateful Dead’s final performance with saxophonist David Murray as a guest.
This show was not represented on Save Your Face’s “Dead is Jazz” compilation, which included some fantastic, earlier Murray performances. That’s primarily because there is no ideal tape for this show. Murray is very quiet on the audience and soundboard tapes, and he is very loud on the circulating monitor mix. None of those options would have slotted into the “Dead is Jazz” mix smoothly.
However, the monitor mix is fab, in its own way, with Murray’s sax punching you in the face like Ornette Coleman.
I’ve narrowed the focus to the vocal return/jam section of “Estimated,” an instrumental edit of “Eyes,” “Space,” and a “Days Between” that mostly succeeds (few/brief Garcia lyric lapses), with Murray figuring it out and delivering a great close.
As there is a non-band-member memoir that claims that no one was listening to Vince in their monitors, I need to point out that about two minutes into this “Eyes” edit you’ll hear Garcia asking for Vince to be turned up. “I can’t hear Vince at all.”
47-minute mp3 mix zipped up here
- Estimated Prophet > (edit)
- Eyes of the World (instrumental edit)
- Space
- Days Between
Cover art: Robert Rauschenberg