Dead brings to life Dave’s Pick CD series
October 24, 2011
Thought the Dead marketing machine was done with live archival releases?
Fat chance. The music never stops. Not fade away. And all that …
Six years after the famed series “Dick’s Picks” was retired — and just weeks after the “Road Trips” series reached the end of the road — the Dead’s live legacy continues with “Dave’s Picks.”
Dick was the Dead’s longtime archivist Dick Latvala. Dave is David Lemieux, the current archivist, who took over the job when Latvala died in 1999.
Dave’s Picks will be a numbered limited edition series limited to 12,000 copies (that number could be elastic, based on previous Dead decisions). The CDs will be close to Dick’s Picks in philosophy, Lemieux says, featuring complete shows.
The Dead’s website promises “the finest unreleased shows from the master tapes, brought to life with HDCD sonics by Jeffrey Norman, period photos, and informative liner notes.”
The first release comes from a May 25, 1977, show at the Mosque in Richmond, Va.
Dead.net offers an advance subscription package with a lower price ($95) and a bonus disc.
“This is the most excited we’ve been since the ‘View from the Vault’ (DVD) series,” says the excitable Lemieux, who says 90 percent of his personal listening time is spent on Dead audio.
“Mostly it’s going to be two-tracks (as with the Dick’s Picks and Road Trips series).”
The archivist invites fans’ input: “We not only welcome your input, we need your input. … There’s too many shows and too many hours. … Everyone’s opinion matters to us. If you think that such-and-such is a great show, we’re going to listen to it.”
To contact the team, email vault@dead.net — put “Grateful Dead” subject line.
In other Dead product news:
- The 2011 edition of the Grateful Dead Almanac no longer will be printed on paper. “Yes, here in the second decade of the 21st Century (and after a bit of screaming and kicking), we’ve (gone all digital),” the editors say. View the online Grateful Dead Almanac.
- Rock book author Paul Grushkin (“Grateful Dead: The Official Book of the Dead Heads”) takes another look at the band’s hardcore fans with “Dead Letters: The Very Best Grateful Dead Fan Mail.”
- The “Road Trips” CD series has come to an end with No. 4. Vol. 5, capturing the Boston Music Hall show from June 9, 1976, and (partly) June 12. The series ran four years and released 17 discs.
- Lemieux’s massive “Europe ’72, Vol. 2″ had a cup of herbal tea on the Billboard album charts, topping out at No. 193 in the week of its release.
Month of the Dead: free rare downloads
November 5, 2010
Who knew, but it looks like November is Grateful Dead month.
The band’s web site, dead.net, serves up a fresh track every day this month. They’re mostly unreleased soundboard recordings, the Dead folk say. Tune in and download the 320Kbps songs while you can — once the day’s up, the track is gone.
So far we’ve scored live performances of “New Speedway Boogie” (Fillmore East, 1970), “Dark Star” (Fillmore West, 1969) and a spaced-out “Playing in the Band” (Des Moines, 1973).
Archivist/Dead insider Dave Lemieux selected the songs, which aren’t announced in advance. The giveaway seeks to reward the “tapers who documented the Dead’s concerts and trade them freely with other Dead Heads.”
To download the songs, you’ll need to be a member of dead.net — free and easy sign-up. (The site itself is awkward/buggy, so be patient whilst finding your way to the downloads.)
Once you’re there, a trivia contest could lead to a major score: a freebie “Road Trips” collection or the new Dead box set from Rhino, “Formerly the Warlocks
“Warlocks” comes in a cigar box (tobacco, Virginia, get it?) with all kinds of goodies. The music has been mastered to HDCD specs, with Mike McGinn doing the mixing.
Grateful Dead’s history a Society affair
March 6, 2010
Roll over Frederick Douglass and tell Abe Lincoln the news: the Grateful Dead have crashed Manhattan’s local history museum.
Dead heads are flocking to Central Park West this weekend as “Grateful Dead: Now Playing at the New-York Historical Society” debuts.
The exhibit comes almost exclusively from the Grateful Dead archives at the University of California Santa Cruz and is its first major showing. So what’s the Dead memorabilia doing way over there in Manhattan?
The historical society has your answer in one incredibly long sentence: “(The Dead) played in and around New York City on a regular basis, from early dates at Greenwich Village coffeehouses, impromptu performances in Central Park and at Columbia University during the 1968 Student Strike; to concerts at midsized venues, including the Fillmore East, the Academy of Music and the 46th Street Rock Palace in Brooklyn during the 1970s; and, ultimately, to performances at larger halls and stadiums such as Radio City Music Hall, Madison Square Garden and Giants Stadium.
“The Grateful Dead’s time in New York will be viewed in the context of cultural traditions and events unique to New York, but also as yet another stop on a long, strange touring trip that included dates in New York, San Francisco, and everywhere in between,” the museum explained.
Another reason: the Dead archive materials remain mostly warehoused in Santa Cruz, as the university prepares primo exhibition space as a permanent home.
Goodies on display include the band’s famed psychedelic concert posters, trippy set lists, album art such as the “American Beauty
For those who want take-home, the gift shop is brimming with fun psychedelic stuff.
The Los Angeles Times tracked the Grateful Dead exhibit’s history, which starts improbably with Henry Kissinger, who gave a speech at the museum urging historians to look at the ’60s in order to understand the U.S. A former museum board member copped to being a Dead head and lobbied for a band exhibition as a follow-up on Kissinger’s advice.
The exhibition runs through July 4 — fittingly, as it’s a touchstone holiday for the band and its Uncle Sam.
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