Grateful Dead: Refugees from Spaceports (1994)

When I compiled several mixes of 1994 Drumspace highlights a while back, I ended up with a couple hours of isolated passages that I didn’t include. 

I’ve been playing those outtakes lately, and these nine passages turn out to be great.  

36-minute mp3 mix zipped up here

  • Orbital Stabilization (3/27/94)
  • Core Sample (9/28/94)
  • Ore Mine 1 (9/28/94)
  • Field Recording (3/6/94)
  • Malfunction (4/7/94)
  • Beneath the Surface (10/11/94)
  • Interplanetary Feud (3/6/94)
  • Space Ranch (3/4/94)
  • Ore Mine 2 (3/27/94)

Grateful Dead: Ambient 4 – The Plateaux of MIDI

This 100-minute mix compiles 28 space and drums segments from The Grateful Dead’s 1994 Summer Tour. 

These selections previously appeared on my wider-ranging Summer ’94 compilations, which blended them into sequences of regular Dead music. I’ve pulled them together because sometimes you just want to listen to music for spaceports. 

Track titles are the same as on the original comps – to avoid confusion - but otherwise this mix is tagged as an entirely discrete album – to avoid confusion. I’ve added some fades and unified the volume. I created a space disc and a drums disc, but everything should shuffle pretty smoothly, too.

100-minute mp3 mix zipped up here.

This is the fourth mix of this kind of material. The others are:

Music for Scareports: October 1994

This mix combines excerpts from the “Drums>Space” segments of October 1994 Grateful Dead concerts. It’s a sequel to “Music for Spaceports: March 1994.” 

I also previously posted a lengthy mix of October 1994 Dead playing conventional songs, if you want to compare excellent stuff from opposite ends of the spectrum that month.

Source dates are October 2, 3, 5, 9, 10, 11, 13, 14, 15, 17, 18, 19, 1994. The 19th was the last show of the month/tour. Specific dates are included in the song title tags. Track lengths range from 1:30 to 8:30.

90-minute mp3 mix here

  • One Halloween Night >
  • Let’s Go Through the Woods
  • Dervish
  • Trick or Treat
  • October
  • That House Wasn’t Here Yesterday
  • Let’s Get Out of Here
  • Dance of the Skeletons >
  • Baba Yaga
  • The Kid in the James Bond Mask
  • Jazz from Hell
  • Four Cool Cats
  • Dance of the Illuminated Pumpkins
  • You are Getting Sleepy
  • Mona in Her Mask
  • Return of the Illuminated Pumpkins
  • Wendell, this is No Shortcut
  • Off the Venkman Scale >
  • Floyd’s Brilliant Plan
  • A Visit to the Lost and Found
  • Close Encounters
  • At the Mountains of Madness
  • Midnight
  • It Was Only a Dream

Music for Spaceports: March 1994

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

Advisory: There is some wild left/right channel oscillation on several tracks, which is effective on speakers but unpleasant on head-phones.