headyversion

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grendel

Books and Music

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Submissions

16
Shakedown Street
March 24, 1981
Rainbow Theater

15+ minutes of funk w/extended overlapping vocal rounds of "just gotta poke around", etc. before jam Brent adds cool "fuzzy" SFX
1
Big Railroad Blues
Oct. 30, 1971
Taft Auditorium

Check out Keith on this one! He's never been so up front before & right outta the gate!!
20
Cream Puff War
July 3, 1966
Fillmore Auditorium

Peppy early version w/Jer belting out lyrics & Pig doin' some nice work on organ. No archive copy exists; got this off 30 Days of Dead-worth the DL!
8
Passenger
May 7, 1979
Allan Kirby Field House

Super-charged EARLY Brent version rips and tears and shreds. Final jam before the coda is the best they ever did in this tune. Goes to 11.
30
Little Red Rooster
Nov. 30, 1980
Fox Theatre

All about Brent.
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Comments

Scarlet Begonias -> Fire On The Mountain
Dec. 26, 1981
Oakland Auditorium

Grossly underrated at less than double digits at the time of this posting. Those who have commented already are among the most astute posters & some are among the toughest/most brutally honest as well. Should tell you the current ranking is a disservice to the rendition & I urge y'all to listen & give this some well deserved ups. As noted a very crunchy Miller SBD copy awaits. Great exploratory '81 jamming here in both tunes and Brent fans in particular should sing his praises for the work he does in the transition jam...very much the case in the best '81 versions.
Brokedown Palace
May 16, 1993
Sam Boyd Silver Bowl

Happily surprised out how good this is. The trick seems to be that Garcia understands the limitations of his '93 vox & instead of trying to hit notes he can't he changes his phrasing to fit a breezier reading...less gospel, but still extremely heartfelt and tenderly beautiful. Strong band involvement overall too...deserves its upper spot on the ladder here although at first i was skeptical.
Shakedown Street
Aug. 21, 1980
Uptown Theatre

Paging Dr. FunkenMellow...give me a shot of Jerry wah-wah stat! Grossly underrated version from the always jumpin' Chicago Uptown.
Scarlet Begonias -> Fire On The Mountain
Oct. 22, 1978
Winterland Arena

Great Seamons matrix of this transferred by CM available now & totally worth it. Agree not every S>F has to be a rager to be heady--this one is a mind meld that would get a raised eyebrow from Spock. https://archive.org/details/gd1978-10-22.mtx.seamons.99496.sbeok.flac16/gd78-10-22d3t04.flac
Let It Grow
Dec. 16, 1992
Oakland Coliseum Arena

No reason this shouldn't be way higher on the ladder. Latvala thought enough of this show to make it a pick & this is a highly jammed version with less midi than usual for the era (a good thing, that) & a spacey section in the mid-jam that adds a lot to the mix. One of the stronger 90s entries and probably the best of '92.
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