Save Your Face

This mix presents heavily edited versions of five long, exploratory, thematic grooves from the Grateful Dead’s 1975 Blues for Allah sessions at Bob Weir’s studio (Ace’s):

• Groove #1
• Groove #2
• Distorto
• Proto 18 Proper
• Blue Noodle Soup

(This is the second installment of Save Your Face mixtapes based on “The Complete Circulating 1975 Ace’s Sessions (2026).” You’ll find the first one here.)

In the edits presented on this mix, I have condensed the full recordings by removing the less interesting parts throughout each track. The original combined length was about 60 minutes, while these edits total about 40 minutes.

The objective was to tighten these often exciting but loose performances into thrilling, streamlined “jams” with no slack. In pursuit of that, I have removed many passages of music, ranging from nine seconds to more than a minute.

I cut the places where Jerry was between guitar solo ideas. I shortened passages where the band settled into a pattern for longer than made sense for a composition or a listener. I removed places where the band returned to the theme’s base for a while, before taking the next leap into its elaboration. These grooves adhere to fixed patterns, so removing pieces doesn’t break the flow. It just enables an editor to create gentle corners and a forward velocity that the full-length recordings lack. 

Comprised of only the most interesting passages, these edits create the illusion of performances that sound more like… well… performances. Baggy explorations now come across more like tracks for a rock/funk/fusion LP. I’ve known these recordings for many years, and even I was shocked and delighted by the transformations. 

41 minute mp3 mix zipped up here. All tracks sourced/edited from the lossless “Complete Circulating 1975 Ace’s Sessions (2026).”

• Groove #2 Condensed (2/28/75, 5:17) - originally 10:07
• Proto 18 Proper Condensed (2/28/75, 7:18) - originally 11:36
• Blue Noodle Soup Development Condensed (4/2/75, 2:36) - originally 5:06
• Blue Noodle Soup Condensed (3/11/75, 9:58) - originally 16:46
• Groove #1 Condensed (2/28/75, 10:11) - originally 14:14
• Distorto Condensed (2/28/75, 6:13) - originally 8:07

Some additional notes:

• Distorto gradually developed into Crazy Fingers. Both Blue Noodle Soup and Proto 18 Proper received more organized treatments elsewhere in the sessions. However, those takes don’t have the fire of exploration.
• The remarkably prolific 2/28/75 session also included the long/earliest performances of a protean King Solomon’s Marbles and the EAC Jam changes (which developed into The Music Never Stopped). Neither of those contained enough meat to be worth carving into a shorter event.
• The file set you’ll download carries the album title “Sand Castles: 1975 Ace's Selections 5 - Grooves Regrooved (SYF mix).” This ties it to the previous SYF Ace’s curations and disambiguates it from other presentations of this material.

Cover image: John Hilgart, based on his photograph of an ice cream cone melting down a sidewalk in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware.

This mix curates four hours of music from the 24-hour “Complete Circulating 1975 Ace’s Recordings (2026).”

It is not a summary of the sessions. It is not chronological. It is not archivally-minded. It is emphatically a Save Your Face joint: Isolate something specific in Grateful Dead music, and sequence it into a cool listening trip.

(Save Your Face has shared links to the complete sessions and a great, summary compilation that guides you through all aspects of the sessions - Angels in Flame. I helped with those, but they were not Save Your Face mixtapes.)

In the case of this mix, I sought 1975 Ace’s passages that are more like live performances than rehearsals. They capture the band playing in earnest, rather than just running through changes, or settling into a groove without shape or development. 

The result is a fierce and wonderful version of “live” Dead and the final chapter of “jazz Dead.” It is all instrumental, except for Franklin’s Tower. 

Unsurprisingly, Slipknot and King Solomon’s Marbles loom large, as they appeared early in the sessions and went through many changes. The Blues for Allah suite (BFA > Sand Castles & Glass Camels > Strange Occurrences in the Desert) also featured many nice variations of its three elements. 

Beyond that core, the mix features two more album songs (Help on the Way and Franklin’s Tower) and everything that includes improvisational jamming: The Nines/Orpheus, No Name, A Lost Soul, the Proto-Fire jam, and a big, 1974-like jam in the middle of a Blues for Allah sequence. 

I have edited start points to manage creaky beginnings (of performance or tape source) and to keep every second compelling. I have also re-equalized quite a few tracks that were stabby or murky.

To avoid repetition of very similar takes of the same song from the album sessions proper, I have omitted some solid performances and included some takes of Slipknot without the preceding Help on the Way.

The selections are organized into four albums/playlists, each an hour long, and each intended to be a unique musical/listening arc through the themes and variations. 

The four sequences are tagged as different albums in the metadata, but all tracks are numbered consecutively, 1-36, across the set. So, if you want to re-tag it as one big “album,” rather than four small ones, that’s easy to do.

Download mp3s here. All tracks derived from the lossless Complete set (2026).

* Indicates two tracks where there’s an edit within the track. For the short Blues for Allah, I chose the first, most basic cycle through the pattern from a longer track and terminated it with the drums from the end of that track. For the edited King Solomon’s Marbles/Stronger Than Dirt, I started the track at the eruption of the Stronger Than Dirt riff and kept going until the reintroduction of the King Solomon’s Marbles riff, which I then terminated with the very end of the song. This track provides a handy needle-drop and way to compare the two riffs, with very nice playing in between. Otherwise, no razor blades were applied between the beginning and end of tracks on this mix.

Cover image: Adapted from a photograph of the band at Ace’s in 1975 by Stephen Barncard (also the producer/engineer of American Beauty).

The Grateful Dead spent most of 1975 creating new music from the ground up inside Bob Weir’s home studio - “Ace’s.” 

At long last, the chaotic, circulating tapes from these sessions have been sorted into a uniform, complete collection. A devoted band of fan-archivists discovered approximately 24 hours of unique material on the tapes - eliminating duplications, identifying the best source for each minute, and solidifying the dating of all material.

As a result, listeners and scholars can now follow the Dead’s creative process across the year, from protean ideas through (and beyond) the recording of “Blues for Allah,” packed with additional hours of music that was only ever played in these sessions. (There are gaps in this audio development story, because some session tapes do not circulate.) 

The archivist group outputted two audio collections, each with its own, information-rich set of liner notes: 

You can download “The Complete Circulating Ace’s Recordings” (24 hours) here, choosing between FLAC and MP3. This collection is organized as individually dated folders - archive style - rather than carrying a single “album” name. The folder also contains the liner notes separately. These notes are a significant contribution to Dead scholarship - highly recommended.

These 24 hours of chronological sessions, including every note, noodle, and chat, is an amazing fly-on-the-wall experience, when you’re in the mood for it. However, it’s probably not the best way for most people to encounter this new-and-improved version of the 1975 sessions.

The curated “Angels in Flame” compilation presents approximately half of the material (~ 11 hours), organized in a more listener-friendly way. In addition to including at least one version of every theme/song pursued in the sessions, it tracks the development of many musical ideas from their earliest appearance to their final (or last known) form. It even curates some of the best banter. The liner notes for “Angels in Flame” provide detailed commentary on each theme/song.

You can download “Angels in Flame” as FLAC and MP3 here, plus the liner notes unique to the compilation.

Anything more you’d like to know about the music or the archival project itself can be found in the liner notes for each set.