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).

Jesse Jarnow pointed out that Phil Lesh takes over the Grateful Dead for six, extended, abstract bass adventures during the December 1973 shows.

Here are those passages, in chronological order, gently segued, totaling 39 minutes. The first one gives you a couple of minutes to orient yourself before Godzilla reaches the power station.

These are not bass solos (other players present), but Phil steps beyond the normal zones of 1973-1974 collective abstraction to establish his own soundscape plots - dropping bombs, embracing distortion, shifting an octave, firing off drones and tones. The band generally steps back to give him a canvas, with much of the accompaniment minimal and often gentle. It is paradoxically violent and soothing music.

39-minute mp3 mix zipped up here (dates/cities included in song titles)

Cover art: Howard V. Brown for the May 1934 issue of Astounding Stories. It reminds me a little bit of the cover of Neil Young’s abstract distortion album “Arc,” while also inviting you to hear this music in color.

This post offers a three-piece, chronological survey of improvisational Grateful Dead performances from their first seven shows of 1973 – February 9th to 24th – none of which have been officially released. Highlights of the last two shows of the month (2/26 & 2/28) were released as “Dick’s Picks, Vol. 28” (2003).

These are older Save Your Face mixes, but I am taking the opportunity to re-share them now that streaming options are available, in addition to the blog's traditional mp3 downloads.

February 1973 was rough going for nearly all the many new songs the band was learning on-stage that month, and old standards weren’t often particularly tight or exciting, compared to late 1972 or later 1973.

However, the improvisational band leapt into 1973 with a big grin on its face – continuing its rapid expansion into the spaces opened up by Pigpen’s departure from the stage in mid-1972. (He died in March 1973). “Like a steam locomotive, rolling down the track,” the Dead were constantly departing and arriving in this period. 

This mix is a dense collection of February’s more exploratory passages. I included full (sung) songs and made instrumental edits as I saw fit, in order to avoid anything that got in the way of the overall momentum and quality.

The two new-for-1973 songs that were on target, right out of the gate, were “Eyes of the World” and “China Doll.” Both are extensively documented on the mix. With “Eyes,” you can hear the band figuring out how to put the pieces together to create the the structured ’73-’74 jam. There’s no good execution of “Here Comes Sunshine” in the first seven shows of the year, but they nailed it musically once, and that performance flowed seamlessly into “China Cat,” so I took out the sung parts of “Sunshine.” (You’re welcome!)

February 9, 1973: Palo Alto CA (56 minutes)

• PA: Wavy Gravy
• China Cat Sunflower > I Know You Rider
• Uncle John’s Band (instr. edit)
• Playin’ in the Band (instr. edit)
• Eyes of the World (1st time played) >
• China Doll (1st time played)

Stream on Youtube

Stream on Archive

Read the original post and download here

February 15-19, 1973: Madison WI, St. Paul MN, Chicago IL (107 minutes)

• Bertha (2/15)
• Here Comes Sunshine (instr. edit) > China Cat Sunflower > I Know You Rider (2/17)
• Not Fade Away > Goin’ Down the Road > Not Fade Away (2/17)
• Dark Star (2/15)
• He’s Gone (2/19)
• The Other One  > Bass & Drums (edit 2/19)
• Playin’ in the Band (2/15>2/17) > China Doll (2/15)
• Birdsong (instr. edit 2/17)

Stream on Youtube

Stream on Archive

Read the original post and download here

February 21-24, 1973: Champaign Urbana IL, Iowa City IA (86 minutes)

• Truckin’ > Bass & Drums (2/21) > 
• Eyes of the World (2/21 > 2/22) >
• China Doll (2/22)
• Playin’ in the Band (2/22)
• Dark Star (2/22) >
• Space (2/22) >
• Bass > Feelin’ Groovy Jam (2/24) >
• Sugar Magnolia (2/24) 

Stream on Youtube

Stream on Archive

Read the original post and download here

This mix presents an hour of vocal-free “Victim or the Crime” jams. 

I want to call “Victim” the Dead’s “Sister Ray” – a chugging, ecstatic, downer groove that pounds, drones, gets quiet, freaks out, dissolves, reforms, etc. Stringing 10 performances together does the same thing on a larger scale.

Resistance is futile. PLAY IT LOUD.

53-minute mp3 mix here

The sequence:

• 1991-09-25
• 1990-07-12
• 1991-09-13
• 1991-06-19
• 1991-03-21
• 1990-02-27
• 1990-07-04
• 1990-05-06
• 1990-04-01
• 1989-12-31

Note on selections:

I asked twitter for suggestions of good versions, and the responses mostly guided this mix, augmented with some poking around of my own. The mix doesn’t reflect a comprehensive review of all versions from the period covered. The date range bridges the 1990 keyboard player changeover without diverging in character very much. I’m also a fan of the 1993-1994 approach, which is quite different.

I discovered Jon Hassell’s music in the Fall of 1983, soon after I arrived in Ann Arbor for college. Schoolkids Records had all the EG label “ambient” albums in their cut-out bin for three or four bucks each. In addition to finding out what Eno and Fripp were doing outside of rock and roll, I heard Harold Budd and Jon Hassell for the first time. 

This short mix draws from several of the live Hassell bootlegs I happen to have. It’s my audio argument in support of an expansive, official, live release program.

You can support that goal by contributing to this official fund dedicated to preserving and releasing Jon Hassell's archives. I hope you'll donate, if you enjoy this sampler of unreleased music.

I started with the intention of including one excerpt from every tape I had, but I ended up pruning and adding tracks in pursuit of a more aesthetically satisfying double-LP experience.

The mix's mp3 song title tags provide details in this format:

Charm (Live 1981-11-13 Toronto, Art Gallery of Ontario (Hassell, Eno, Brook, Dieng))

92-minute mp3 mix zipped up here

• Nice 3 (1998)
• Nice 1 (1998)
• Berlin 8 (1988)
• Nice 5 (1998)
• Missing You (2006)
• Charm (1981)
• Courage > Dream Theory (1982)
• The Elephant and the Orchid (1985)

This mix is a 21-minute edit of all 10 Keith and Jerry “They Love Each Other” solo passages from April and May, 1977. Three tracks include only Garcia’s solo. 

It’s a wonderful, woozy conversation, in slow motion. They’re not quite two souls in communion. Keith is a little uptight and resistant, though flirtatious. Jerry’s just like, “Come on baby, let’s go downtown and have some fun.” Except for one night, when Keith was the horny one.

I did the best I could with the segues (jump cuts), given the combo of official sources and fan sources, including audience tapes. The sonic and mood shifts might actually enhance the drama of this dialogue going round in circles.

The download contains both a single-track (21-minute file) and an “album” made up of the 10 separate pieces - in case you want to poke around by date. The single-track file is tagged to become part of this mix, which includes similar edits of Spring ’77 performances of Peggy-O, Sugaree, and Brown-Eyed Women.

21-minute mp3 mix zipped up here (dates in tags)

This mix offers instrumental edits of eight performances of Eyes of the World, featuring many tempos and temperaments. The vocals appear once, in the middle of a long studio rehearsal edit from 1976. 

The aesthetic premise is to cut Eyes thematic jamming free from the song-structure and the vicissitudes of vocals. For instance, cocaine Eyes, minus cocaine singing. 

There aren’t many Dead pillows of grooviness as fine as Eyes. This mix overstuffs that pillow. One drummer and two. Keith, Brent, and Vince. The band and its members being all their different selves, across the decades, with their eye on this particular, happy place.

Cover art: Odilon Redon, “Closed Eyes” (1894)

100-minute mp3 mix zipped up here (tagged appropriately)

• 6/8/74 (9:32)
• 3/25/90 (8:55)
• 5/76 (16:48, w/vocals)
• 6/11/93 (8:00)
• 11/5/79 (19:01)
• 2/27/81 (6:03)
• 9/11/74 (15:52)
• 4/7/94 (17:14)

Throughout the Dead’s career, there are improvisations so perfect that they seem, in retrospect, to be compositions, arranged perfectly, played only once.

A subset of those are performances that exclude the drummers, allowing Weir, Lesh, and the keyboardists to spontaneously weave gorgeous textural arrangements around Garcia story arcs. 

They are tiny planets that coalesced in the vastness of space – often lasting only a minute, rarely as long as three minutes.

With shape and momentum, but no beat, these passages sometimes brush up against classical music. In October 1972, they may actually be attempting something like that, in form and bowed string-sounds, long before MIDI. (I find 10/23/72 mind-boggling in this respect.)

Later, keyboards and MIDI enabled simulated strings, brass, woodwinds, pedal steel, etc. Sometimes the band sounds like it’s scoring tender scenes in movies or playing in a Bill Frisell zone. The extended, heartbreaking melody they crafted on 10/2/94 is another of my favorite Dead passages. 

The earliest hints of such music are in the beauty-seeking drones and tones that often followed noisy Feedback in 1969. Compilation of those here. 

The mix below hints at the subsequent history of the this gentle mode with selections from just a few, far-flung periods: 1972-1973, 1981, 1993-1995.

30-minute, 12-track, mp3 mix zipped up here

This mix gathers up Easter eggs that the Dead scattered across their 1976 shows. The title and track list come from this Dead Essays/Light Into Ashes guide. 

It’s quite a trip to know you’re listening to 1976, yet all you’re hearing are big, extremely-together, nimble, out-of-nowhere jams. The fullness of the the manifestation confuses your inner-ear timeline.

The jams come in many flavors, and some taste quite quite a bit like Tighten Up, Stronger Than Dirt, and Dark Star. Fire on the Mountain makes its first live Dead appearance as Happiness is Drumming. The other passages are entirely their own trips.

This mix contains 16 tracks, including some vigorous Playin’ jams from the same shows and instrumental edits of two Wheels and a Wharf Rat that were integral to the surprise trips.

83-minute mp3 mix zipped up here