headyversion

find the best versions of grateful dead songs

please login or register.

Carrion_Crow

Stealth Head

+48136


Submissions

1
Sugar Magnolia
Sept. 17, 1970
Fillmore East

Something happened to the song between August and September, and this is the "first" Sugar Mag that resembles the song we know, now it's tight.
3
Cold Jordan
Sept. 17, 1970
Fillmore East

The tape quality is low, but the band was completely on in an historically important and beautiful show. Completists only AUD is C-, you're warned.
4
Easy Wind
Aug. 19, 1970
Fillmore West

Undoubtedly one of the greats. Everyone is on. Bobby solos, then Jerry schools the world, then at 7:03 sounds like D. Crosby steps in like Godzilla.
3
Friend of the Devil
Aug. 19, 1970
Fillmore West

Early uptempo, shitkickingly good. These first ones are all worth mentioning. This one is fast and good bluegrass.
3
The Other One
Aug. 18, 1970
Fillmore West

Fast and furious acid rush here. That they could go from bluegrass sweetness to this hard rock monster in one night is testament to their huge range.

Comments

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.
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....