headyversion

find the best versions of grateful dead songs

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Carrion_Crow

Stealth Head

+49667


Submissions

9
Sugaree
Sept. 10, 1972
Hollywood Palladium

So perfect, it's hard to believe that people could improvise music like this together. This amazing show deserves a clean-up!
14
Big River
Dec. 6, 1973
Public Hall

Overlooked: Between one of this site's favorite HCSs and one of its favorite Dark Stars is a perfect, articulate, and virtuoso version of Big River.
3
Casey Jones
Oct. 28, 1972
Cleveland Public Hall

Just outrageous. Problematic show b/c of mix and cuts in the source. Not here: just a blizzard of jam.
4
Greatest Story Ever Told
Oct. 28, 1972
Cleveland Public Hall

Show is overlooked b/c mix problems, but they're absolutely on fire and this version shreds like all get-out. Call C. Miller for this one please!
6
Playin' In The Band
Oct. 28, 1972
Cleveland Public Hall

Could be massively heady, but Billy is so high in the mix that it's hard to follow others. Any cleaner versions out there? Has everything but the mix.

Comments

El Paso
March 20, 1977
Winterland Arena

Right on Beggar's Tomb, that's right. I also use Truckin' in the same way. These are songs these guys could play in their sleep, and, c'mon y'all let's admit, they sometimes did. When they're as hot and tight as this, you know it's all going to be good.
Franklin's Tower
March 19, 1977
Winterland Arena

Check your pulse if you're still sitting still after this. This one rises on a beautiful accelerating arc, then quiets to a whisper.
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.