Grateful Dead - Fillmore West 1969 - The Complete Recordings

The 4 That's It for the Other Ones perks me up.

All pre-orders taken before November 15, 2005, will receive an exclusive bonus CD containing previously unreleased Grateful Dead performances recorded at the Carousel Ballroom and Fillmore West between 1968-1970.

So 11 discs for $80? Shit, this'll sell like hotcakes, I imagine.

haha, well some of us share our TVs with loved ones. who might not want the TV to become exclusively a Dead-watching device.

thanks, mark. the write-off angle will sell!

but really, this box cld be the greatest thing ever

http://www.billboard.com/bb/daily/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1001179803

PDF, I think you'd be kinda crazy to buy the 3 CD set if you are not even sure you like the Dead. Just check out Live/Dead first. Although, the way you describe your tastes, you'd probably like "Two From the Vault," which is from 68, a lot better.

It's not that I'm not sure I like the Dead. It's that all the Dead I've ever heard I've, let's be kind and say strongly disliked. But I've only heard Amercan Beauty and Workingman's Dead and a couple of mid-80s bootlegs, and never anything from '68-69, when (I'm told) they were noisier and more "rockin'." Also, I'm a "too much is always better than not enough" kinda guy. But you're the second person who's recommended Two From The Vault over Live/Dead. Can you explain the difference, in some detail, so I can make an informed purchasing decision?

The centerpiece and opening song of L/D is a 24 minute workout on the Dead's signature "Spacey" tune, Dark Star, with lots of long, dreamy, and clear guitar lines. The same song on 2FTV is about 10 minutes, and the jam sounds almost rehearsed by comparison. The longest tracks on 2FTV are the blues numbers (I think a couple clock in at around 15-17 minutes), which have a lot more vamping than jamming. Even the longest songs tend to have more sharply focused guitar lines, a little more fuzz. That being said, the second half of L/D isn't that much different than the same tracks on 2FTV (they're probablu better, in fact)

Having said all that, I still like L/D better, and it's only one disc, so...

http://cgi.ebay.com/Grateful-Dead-Fillmore-West-1969-10-CD-limited-box-set_W0QQitemZ4790704599QQcategoryZ307QQssPageNameZWDVWQQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

How in the hell am I, a person with virtually no interest in actually possessing COLLECTIBLE ITEMS, going to resist the urge to rip this and sell it immediately? Hopefully the item itself will be so perfectly packaged that I will be unable to part with it.

I had Two from the Vault (I think it might have been the first GD I owned), so I've always been partial to it over Live/Dead. I think the 2Vault Dark Star is better; you get That's It for the Other One on 2Vault, too, which is a good thing (and the drums part is pretty short, right? The Lovelights on both albums are great; 2Vault also has Morning Dew, which, although it really didn't hit its stride until later, is great.

And c'mon, it's tough not to love Jerry's happy guitar lines during The Eleven's jam.

That said, L/D has the feedback->we bid you goodnight, which is great, too. Really, I don't think you'll go wrong w/ either. Great fun GD bluesrock that's fun to blast. What's nice about the blues playing is that it's not Mayall/Beck/Clapton/etc. blues vamping. Everyone is playing together and there aren't any showoff riffs. It's also nice to hear Phil early on - just kind of dances around underneath it all. Great stuff.

I'm from the "they-were-never-the-same-after-PigPen" school of thought that sees them as two different bands. L/D was the last record they made that had that PigPen thing going on. As they began turning into CSNY (Workingman's/AB) he seemed to get phased out (maybe he was just too fucked up to contribute).

but i would never pay for a ten CD boxed set of the complete fillmore west 69 recordings.

I'm listening to the 3disc Fillmore teaser. Sounds fabulous.

can't really imagine being a fan and hating on WD/AB (then again I can't imagine preferring WD to AB, but most people seem to.) Plenty of Pigpen's spirit on those. Of course "Operator" is one of my favorite of his.

can't wait to get my hands on this box. Where is it??

"The less a given Dead song features the human voice, the better it is. "

You might want to check out Grayfolded, which is John Oswald's huge 2CD edit piece of versions of Dark Star through out the run of the band. It is an amazing headphone album and the vocals of the song are downplayed. I'd love to hear Oswald do something like that with 70s live Miles Davis recordings. I think that could be really good listen.

I've also came to like Europe 72 more than Live Dead. I think the Dead going back to the roots of their folk music and at the same time bringing in Keith Godcheaux on piano really expanded their sound. Pigpen's tunes on Europe 72 are a highlight of the reissue in the box set, as he sings great even though he was really sick at the time and died not long after that tour.

haha, it kind of is, isn't it?

fave thing in the booklet, which isn't terribly packed: Dennis McNally choosing 3/1/69 as his fave Dead show ever thanks to it burning start to finish . . . only to have the encore version of "Hey Jude" be the worst piece of shit in the history of music! that, he argues, is what makes the Dead the Dead, and what makes them worth obsessing over--the full spectrum they covered. made me laugh out loud and kind of agree, though obviously not to the same degree.

2/27 really does rip: the solo on "The Eleven" just keeps pushing further.

on the other hand, 2/28's "Doin' That Rag" kinda sucks. 2/27 & 2/28 take a while to rev up, as was said above.

I kinda feel bad about being a Dead fan that generally fades during Pigpen jams.

Still got my mint unopened package of these. It's probably outperforming my pension at the moment.

McNally (quoted by M Matos above) is right that the "Hey Jude" on the 3/1 show is horrid: Pigpen sounds ghastly, & the playing is similarly lumpy: it sounds like everything that's wrong with Janis Joplin's music, w/o any of her redeeming features.