headyversion

find the best versions of grateful dead songs

please login or register.

Carrion_Crow

Stealth Head

+47940


Submissions

2
El Paso
Sept. 30, 1976
Mershon Auditorium, OSU

Phil rips this one wide open with a brilliant countersolo to Jerry's brilliancies and whirlygigs. Strong version here.
3
Johnny B. Goode
Sept. 28, 1976
Onondaga County War Memorial

I think they encored JBG whenever they knew they'd absolutely nailed it. It's like comedians telling "The Aristocrats". Musicians can just tell....
9
Dancin' in the Streets
Sept. 28, 1976
Onondaga County War Memorial

How on earth is this not up yet? It really kicks off the Fall '76 retooling of Dancin' with style. Brilliant, tight, and part of an enormous 2nd set.
6
New Minglewood Blues
Sept. 28, 1976
Onondaga County War Memorial

This one and the 07.18.76 versions are both so goddamned good. Jerry is a tsunami behind snarlin' Bobby. So gritty, so good.
2
Samson and Delilah
Sept. 27, 1976
Community War Memorial Auditorium

Stunning. Chronically underrated song in a chronically underrated year: Listen to Jerry blaze through this like a man with 100 fingers.

Comments

China Cat Sunflower -> I Know You Rider
Dec. 6, 1971
Felt Forum, Madison Square Garden

The China Cat kind of 'chugs along' at a slower pace than others from the era, but they switch gears in the transition jam. They must have signaled each other to kick up the tempo and put some steam on it because it's night-and-day. Keeping with the highway metaphors: The IKYR has the inertia of an 18-wheeler cruising flat straight road in high gear and is just hella-good fun.
El Paso
Nov. 21, 1973
Denver Coliseum

Smoothest whiplash ever here: Musical magic in action coming in from a furious high-elevation Playin' with hardly a hint of the El Paso within it. Suddenly it hasn't just already started, but it has retroactively played itself into a forwardsback existence that was always there waiting too bloom outwards in its fractal filigree. Or maybe I'm just trippin' - hard to say.
Playin' In The Band
Oct. 25, 1973
Dane County Coliseum

Unique and beautiful piano-led motifs around 12:00 start with repeated notes high in the register that remind me of Keith Jarret's work with Charles Lloyd. It's undoubtable that they'd all been turned on to each other's music by this point and I know that Lloyd sat in once at the Family Dog on 03 August 1969.
Black Throated Wind
Oct. 25, 1973
Dane County Coliseum

BTW at its best. This accelerates in a perfect arc from its tentative and sheepish first lines of regret walking the blue highway towards its outraged manic triumphant 180° turn. Go back and get hurt again, Bobby, do it....
Big River
Oct. 25, 1973
Dane County Coliseum

Jerry's solo at 3:30 is a pristine three-chorus example of soloing over changes. Just killer, it is.