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find the best versions of grateful dead songs

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Carrion_Crow

Stealth Head

+49652


Submissions

8
He Was A Friend of Mine
June 14, 1969
Monterey Performing Arts Center

So blissful you might just find yourself floating out of time. A beautiful mellow island in a sea of blazing psychedelia. China Cat tease at the end.
3
Dark Star
Oct. 30, 1968
The Matrix

Rarity w/o Pig or Bobby, but TWO glorious Dark Star jams on this "goof" of a night. Strictly speaking not the Dead, but it's here and its glorious.
2
Turn On Your Love Light
Oct. 30, 1968
The Matrix

A rarity: No Pig or Bobby & no vocals. Still, beautifully inventive soloing shows why they kept it in rotation for so long. This "goof" is worth it.
6
Hard to Handle
April 5, 1969
Avalon Ballroom

Hot sex.
23
Death Don't Have No Mercy
Nov. 2, 1969
Family Dog at the Great Highway

So much feeling coming off an interstellar DS>StS>11 and then they just put this show to bed with brilliance and feeling.

Comments

Playin' In The Band
Sept. 21, 1972
The Spectrum

A version I could just put on repeat and listen to all day. Keith is exquisite, and the jam is hot and intense, then gentle and subtle, then hot again, all in 17 minutes, which feels short considering how much they cover. I love the re-entry around 11:50, when Jerry emits swirling borealis sound-beams around the magnetic poles.
Cumberland Blues
Sept. 21, 1972
The Spectrum

Has a loose sparks-flying feel like a coal car with no breaks speeding down the tracks deep into the mine, like the best ones do, but with a biting hard electric feel that is just exactly perfect.
Ramble On Rose
Sept. 21, 1972
The Spectrum

This song always works better for me when it has that bite-down-hard electricity to it. This one does, driving up the hot-wire tension throughout, and never dragging (as some lesser versions do, "this song, it ain't never goina' end" indeed...). This whole show is peak dead in any case. No toss-aways anywhere.
Loser
Sept. 21, 1972
The Spectrum

This show gets a lot of deserving love, but to me this Loser stands out as a particularly strong part of the first set.
Greatest Story Ever Told
Sept. 19, 1972
Roosevelt Stadium

Probably the worst AUD without an alternative source in the whole of 1972. Pity, because they're just absolutely blazing right out of the gate with Bertha, GSET and then that massive Bird Song. With August-September '72 is up there with the most consistent highest quality shredding Dead of any two-month period in their whole history we should hope hope hope for a cleaner set of reels out there - even if supposedly incomplete. (Please and thank you.) I'm no AUD-phobe, but this one will test the patience of even the most hardcore completists.