Save Your Face

If I were to tell you that The Grateful Dead played a considerable amount of pleasing (and poignant) music during their final three concerts in 1995, you’d probably tell me to prove it. 

2 LP mp3 mix here

• Liberty (5:37)
• Cassidy (6:58)
• Eternity (9:14)
• When I Paint My Masterpiece (5:00)
• Visions of Johanna (9:11)
• Terrapin Breeze (2:30)
• Eyes of the World (18:36)
• Stella Blue (7:39)
• Terrapin Thunder > Jam (7:30)
• So Many Roads (11:45)
• Black Muddy River (5:18)

Notes:

• Source dates included in song title tags.
• These are the final performances of all these songs, obviously.
• This is a justifiably famous “Visions of Johanna.”
• "Black Muddy River" was the encore on the last night. "So Many Roads" was the last Jerry song in the second set that night. 
• There are no edits in this mix, except for “Terrapin Station.” There are some errors, but aren't there always?
• All sources are soundboards, although that for the 6th is inferior to the other two. 
• I’d planned to make it the last four shows, but nothing from 7/5 made the cut.

“If the Shoe Fits” debuted on 6/9/94 and “Childhood’s End” on 7/20/94 – the last two original Grateful Dead songs to enter the live repertoire, both written and sung by Phil Lesh.

If you want to get to know these songs, and possibly come to love them, these are definitely the droids you’re looking for. 

I think I’ve checked out all circulating soundboards and audience recordings, and these two soundboard performances/recordings were the giant, obvious needles in the archive haystack. (It's conceivable that one or both of these made it into The Dead's periodic free single-song download series, but I have no complete list of those downloads. 10/1/94 is the only complete concert The Dead have released from that year.)

This is part of my ongoing project to find outstanding versions of all The Dead’s final compositions, which started with this March 1994 anthology.

mp3 single here

• If the Shoe Fits (10/19/94)
• Childhood’s End (10/3/94)
• If the Shoe Fits (8/3/94 audience recording, Japanese edition bonus track)

As I understand it, Lesh (and perhaps the others) felt that new songs would help fuel Garcia engagement in a period when Jerry was headed in the same direction as in the mid-1980s, when his drugged-out-bad-health put him in a coma that he narrowly survived – living on to drive the 1989-onward renaissance of the band. In the 1995 remake, Jerry died. The big musical difference between those two episodes is that everyone else in the band had their shit together in 1994, whereas the whole band was a mess in 1986. 

My general take on Welnick Dead, so far, is that they are not to be dismissed – a band that had stopped depending on Garcia’s leadership to determine the musical outcome, but who were always therefore also ready when Garcia was feeling spry. Weir has said something to that effect. And when Garcia was feeling spry, it was just as you would wish it to be.

“Shoe Fits” is a rocker that The Dead wore very comfortably on a number of occasions, Lesh singing an uncharacteristically aggressive lyric effectively. “Childhood’s End” was harder for The Dead to navigate, a twisty second cousin to “Unbroken Chain.” 

This mix presents approximately half of the sounds made by The Grateful Dead during the “Drums > Space” segment of their final show.

17-minute mp3 mix here

• Hit It >
• International Telegram
• Fight Me
• Do Not Go Quietly Into
• OM >The Exciting Sequel >
• Intrepid
• Exhale

Cover: Detail of a Peter Max painting

This is the third, completely different, fake album I’ve pulled out of the available soundboard recordings of The Grateful Dead’s March 1994 performances. I think this was a good month.

The first mix combined the final two performances of “Dark Star” with some other remarkable jamming. The second one combined pieces of “Drums” and “Space” to create an Eno-esque ambient jam album. 

Going in an another direction entirely, this curation plucks performances of new compositions that never had a chance to make it onto a studio album. They played all their late period songs at least once in March 1994, except for one that had been retired and three that had yet to debut:

• "Wave to the Wind" (final performance 12/9/93)
• "Samba in the Rain" (debut 6/8/94)
• "If the Shoe Fits" (debut 6/9/94)
• "Childhood's End" (debut 7/20/94)

It’s weird to me that The Dead have never released something that rolls up most or all of the new compositions of the final years. (The closest they've come is putting six of these compositions on the final disc of "So Many Roads.") It would be a really good album, making a trio with “In the Dark” and “Built to Last.” Such a release seems like low-hanging commercial fruit and something that history requires. I’m sure I’m not the first person to present an amateur substitute. The only major flaw here is Garcia's vocal uncertainty on "So Many Roads." Otherwise, these seem like good benchmarks for all the other songs, until even better versions pop up. Thanks again, March 1994!

76-minute mp3 mix here

• Liberty (3/30/94)
• Lazy River Road (3/30/94)
• Eternity (3/5/94)
• That Would Be Something (McCartney cover 3/28/94)
• The Days Between (3/28/94)
• Way to Go Home (3/5/94)
• Easy Answers (3/27/94)
• Corrina (3/31/94)
• Broken Arrow (3/5/94)
• So Many Roads (3/16/94)

This mix curates pieces of “Drums” and “Space” from the same March 1994 shows I surveyed to create this “Dark Star Flashes” mix, which combined the final two performances of “Dark Star” with other jamming from the same month. (Included shows are March 16, 18, 21, 23, 30, 31 - 1994.)

The 13 Drums/Space pieces I liked are presented here as discrete tracks (3 to 6 minutes each), with no editing other than choosing start and fade points and some volume adjustments. I was looking for pieces of music that could stand alone. It’s a snapshot “Infrared Roses” from later in the 1990s, which finds the band tilting toward a chill ambience. 

Once again, I’m very impressed by this 1994 Grateful Dead. There’s a whole lot of getting there in “Drums > Space” segments – but when The Dead do find their way to somewhere, they know it, and these are some of the cool splaces they found in March 1994. I believe we have Bob Bralove to thank for many of the interesting sounds that the musicians are making here (and elsewhere in the '90s). I'm grateful that The Dead were given a sonic platform on which they could be a Brian Eno-esque jam band. You get only the merest hints of such a thing in earlier decades.

55-minute mp3 mix here (titles of files include source dates)

• Voices
• Beat
• On the Surface
• The Workers Shall Prevail
• Roller Rink Confidential
• Hey, Carl Stalling
• Spaceport
• Processional
• Rebeat
• Hansa by the Wall 1
• Hansa by the Wall 2
• Hansa by the Wall 3
• May You Live in Interesting Times

As The Grateful Dead took only 30 trips around the sun, five years is a pretty long time. After Brent Mydland died, Bruce Hornsby and Vince Welnick both played keyboards for The Dead for a year and a half, then Hornsby returned to his solo career, and Welnick carried on alone until the end.

This whole period seems to be treated like a step-child in fan and official appreciations of The Dead’s live music. I certainly had that attitude until very recently. I saw both of these keyboard configurations back in the day, but isolated shows only tell you so much, and since popular opinion reinforced my sense of decline, I never bothered to pursue recordings of this period’s shows. Phil Lesh commenting that the band should have quit a few years earlier than death forced a conclusion didn’t help.

Sure, there were various forms of decline, but they didn’t degrade the band’s performances in some kind of day-by-day way. This was still The Grateful Dead, six extremely talented, grown-up musicians, making music within a long, mutating, intuitive collective sensibility, who played together under the pressure of hundreds of lengthy concerts, in front of millions of audience members. 

Welnick Dead could be amazing – executing songs or jamming. It contrasts with Mydland Dead by being less busy and less thunderous. The climactic Mydland years could sound like everyone soloing at once – one big, loud, shiny machine of music. Welnick Dead seems to have more negative space, and to offer more glimpses of the "jazzy combo" Dead of earlier days. Things can bubble slowly. Momentum can be built on delicate rather than forceful terms. There's more room for just the right note or chord to have the desired effect. Both keyboardists seem more drawn to jazz harmonies than Mydland, and neither tries to be as continuous a dominant element in the music as Mydland – but the choices they make are still very much shapers of the songs. And maybe it's just the era's mixes, but on much of the material I've selected for this blog, the drummers seem to be working to be a single, unobtrusive percussionist, rather than the leaders of a herd of elephants. 

I raise my glass to Vince Welnick and Bruce Hornsby. Thank you for giving us another Grateful Dead that could be as compelling as any of them. Respect.

Evidence:

• Playing with jazz musicians (1993-1994, Welnick)
• Improvisation during the month of the final “Dark Stars” (1994, Welnick)
• Blues-boogies and subtlety (1991, Hornsby and Welnick)
• A nearly perfect second set (1992, Welnick)
• Highlights from an almost randomly-chosen show (1993, Welnick)

Cover: Kiki Smith, "Bird with Stars," 1954, MoMA collection.

Here's a nearly perfect second set from 1992, captured by a superb soundboard mix/recording. 

The set list has no filler, the playing is tight and nuanced, and everyone is singing well. All I have deleted is “Drums > Space” and one verse/chorus of “Here Comes Sunshine” that Garcia thoroughly mangled/mumbled. Otherwise, it’s every minute of the second set, plus encore, in the order played. 

This is the second performance of the resurrected “Here Comes Sunshine,” which had been missing since February 1974, nearly 20 years. The discipline of rehearsals is still in effect, putting the vocals in a satisfactory place, and its whole trajectory is quite structured and exciting.

This was the third show in a five-show run at the Oakland Coliseum Arena, after which they took a break until late January 1993. There are only two official releases of live 1992 Dead, one of which is the entire fourth show and part of the fifth show from this Oakland run. That was “Dick’s Picks” #27, released in 2003. The other release is 3/20/92, included in “30 Trips Around the Sun,” released in 2015.

64-minute mp3 mix here

• Here Comes Sunshine (minus one verse/chorus) >
• Way to Go Home
• Victim or the Crime >
• Terrapin Station > Jam
• The Other One >
• Morning Dew
• E: The Weight

Cover by Saul Steinberg.

A lot of The Grateful Dead mixes that get posted here start with some specific curiosity: shows with horn players, the final “Dark Stars,” Keith “Shakedowns,” “Sevens, Main Tens, and Elevens,” a month someone said was hot, etc. 

I’ve been poking around the Welnick years lately, and this mix came out of my interest in the sequence of “Here Comes Sunshine” followed by “Way to Go Home.” I really like “Way to Go Home,” and there’s a natural affinity between the two, given the way The Dead played “Sunshine” in this period. They played the pairing four times (’92, ’93, 2x’95). They never jammed a connection, but the 1992 one has a nice little hinge, and this one has an instrumental noodle in between that serves as both a coda to “Sunshine” and a walk-up to “Long Way.” This is a very good "Long Way," though the mix blunts it somewhat.

Beyond that material, it was the jamming and not the songs/singing that cooked that night. “Terrapin” reverted almost immediately back to a “Playin’” jam after the final vocal section, so this seemed like a good time to try an instrumental “Terrapin.” It’s a tough edit to get from the instrumental break to the final jam, but what the hell. The jamming on both sides of "Terrapin" is superb.

Anyhow, here’s another check-in with 1993 Dead that reassures you that more listening will be rewarded. 

42-minute mp3 mix here

• Small Improvisation (1:44)
• Here Comes Sunshine (mostly inst. edit) (4:09)
• Way to Go Home (6:44)
• Playin’ > Terrapin > Playin’ (inst. edit) (14:38)
• The Same Thing (7:17)
• Drum Space Improvisation (7:47)

This is the first SYF mix to pull from the period when Bruce Hornsby and Vince Welnick both played keyboards for The Grateful Dead. That period lasted a relatively long time, from September 1990 to March 1992, making it as distinctive an episode in band membership/chemistry as any other. 

I’ve combined pieces of three unreleased shows from a six-show September run in Boston, MA, one year into the two-keyboard lineup. I used matching recordings as my sources, which offer a fat, immersive live experience. I haven’t made any internal edits in the material presented here, but I created cross-fades to make it sound approximately like two continuous sets. 

The mix of compositions that ended up on top, when I put pressure on these shows, has a definite personality – mostly Garcia-sung blues-boogies and sepia-toned character dramas. The "Workingman's Dead"/"American Beauty" Revisited vibe of this music is unintentional, but refreshing – a reminder that there were always several Grateful Deads lurking in the hodgepodge of material they played on any given night. When you isolate one of them, you experience a show, a year, and/or a lineup differently than when you listen to whole shows. 

The two keyboardists lend texture, color, and exciting rushes to these old songs, and "Stella Blue" seems particularly excellent to me. I think that both those keyboardists were paying attention to the lyrics, and playing accordingly, and since Garcia is singing well (except for "New Speedway"), many of these performances really sell the songs. 

By accident, there are some statistically significant performances in this mix:

• They hadn’t played “We Bid You Goodnight” in 107 shows, and this turned out to be the last one they ever played.
• This is the first “Nobody’s Fault but Mine” in 450 shows (9/3/85), and they only played it two more times before the end of the band. 
• Aside from an isolated performance on 6/10/73, The Dead played “It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry” only six times, all during the Hornsby period. This is the next-to-last one. (The song was a staple of solo Garcia shows from '72-'86 in acoustic & electric sets, though it disappeared after his coma and only popped back up in solo sets in '95.)
• This is a fairly rare instance of The Dead playing full-blown “Dark Stars” twice in three consecutive shows, in the 1990s period, let alone at the same venue in three days. I haven't deleted anything from these two "Dark Stars," so, in an era when there was often a first-verse-only "Dark Star," this mix offers a palindrome: first verse > second verse> first verse.
• Though not covered in this mix, the 9/20/91 show of this Boston run includes the only time after 1976 that they played something other than “Franklin’s Tower” after “Slipknot” – playing “Fire on the Mountain” instead.

2h21m mp3 mix of September 22, 24, and 26, 1991 here (song title tags include performance dates)

Set 1:

• Cold Rain and Snow
• Let the Good Times Roll
• Feel Like a Stranger
• Althea
• It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry
• New Speedway Boogie
• He’s Gone (final section) >
• Nobody’s Fault but Mine >
• Spoonful
• High Time
• Candyman
• Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door
• The Weight

Set 2:

• Dark Star
• Stella Blue
• Dark Star
• Ship of Fools >
• Dark Star
• Standing on the Moon
• And We Bid You Goodnight

Cover: Treated scan of thrift store photo

Cover: “Full Stop,” John Latham, 1961

The last two “Dark Stars” The Grateful Dead played occurred within two weeks of each other, six months after the previous performance, and 1.3 years before the end of the band. On the calendar of career “Dark Stars," they draw attention to themselves. 

I honestly had no idea how great The Dead could be in this period, when the spirit of jammy exploration moved them. I like how laid back they are in these performances, which are simultaneously drifting and full of momentum. Thumbs up to this Grateful Dead. 

52-minute mp3 mix here, which flows approximately like a continuous set.

• Dark Star (3/16/94, verse removed)
• Victim or the Crime Jam (3/21/94)
• The Other One (3/18/94)
• Playin’ Jam > (3/30/94)
• Dark Star (3/30/94)
• Jamming Down the Road (3/21/94)

I’ve posted another 1993-1994 mix, which includes the “Dark Star” before these two, with David Murray on sax.