NewsGrateful Dead / 30 Trips Around the Sun / definitive 4CD live set
As part of their 50th anniversary celebrations, the GratefulDead are issuing a gargantuan 80CD box set that includes 30 unreleased live shows – one for each year the band was together from 1966 to 1995.
30 Trips Around The Sun will contain 73 hours of music and cost almost $700, and is exclusively available via the band’s Dead.net website. An even more limited, custom lightning-bolt USB drive edition is also being released if digital files are your thing.
Thankfully, if you can’t stretch to these lavish limited edition sets, a more modest four-CD version of 30 Trips Around The Sun will be made widely available in September. This smaller set includes 30 unreleased performances – one from each concert in the boxed set. As a bonus, the four-CD collection starts with Caution (Do Not Stop On Tracks), from the band’s earliest recording session in 1965 (this is on seven-inch gold vinyl in the big box). The booklet in this set includes an essay by Dead aficionado Jesse Jarnow dissecting every track in the collection.
30 Trips Around The Sun will be issued on 18 September 2015.
- • UK Pre-order: 30 Trips Around The Sun The Definitive Live Story
- • USA Pre-order: 30 Trips Around The Sun: The Definitive Live Story
- • CANADA Pre-order: 30 Trips Around the Sun the Definitive Live Story
- • GERMANY Pre-order: 30 Trips Around the Sun-the Definitive Live Story
Track listing
Disc: 1
1. Caution (Do Not Stop On Tracks) – The Emergency Crew
2. Cream Puff War (Live at Fillmore Auditorium, San Francisco, CA 7/3/66)
3. Viola Lee Blues (Live at Shrine (Exhibition Hall, Los Angeles, CA1/10/67)
4. Dark Star (Live at Greek Theater, Berkeley, CA 10/20/68)
5. Doin’ That Rag (Live at Dream Bowl, Vallejo, CA 2/22/69)
6. Dancing In The Street (Live at Winterland, San Francisco,CA 4/15/70)
7. Ain’t It Crazy (The Rub) (Live at Fox Theater, St. Louis, MO 3/18/71)
8. Tomorrow Is Forever (Live at The Palace Theater, Waterbury, CT 9/24/72)
9. Here Comes Sunshine (Live from San Diego Sports Arena 11/14/73)
Disc: 2
1. Uncle John’s Band (Live from Parc des Expositions, Dijon, France 9/18/74)
2. Franklin’s Tower (Live From Lindley Meadows, Golden Gate Park, San Francisco 9/28/75)
3. Scarlet Begonias (Live at Cobo Hall, Detroit, MI 10/3/76)
4. Estimated Prophet (Live at Capital Theatre, Passaic, NJ 4/25/77)
5. Samson And Delilah (Live at Providence Civic Center, Providence, RI 5/14/78)
6. Lost Sailor>Saint Of Circumstance (Live at Cape Cod Coliseum, South Yarmouth, MA 10/27/79)
7. Deep Elem Blues (Live at Lakeland Civic Center, Lakeland, FL 11/28/80)
Disc: 3
1. Shakedown Street (Live at Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 5/16/81)
2. Bird Song (Live at Manor Downs, Austin, TX 7/31/82)
3. My Brother Esau (Live at The Centrum, Worchester, MA 10/21/83)
4. Feel Like A Stranger (Live at Agusta Civic Center, Agusta, ME 10/12/84)
5. Let It Grow (Live at River Bend Music Center, Cincinnati, OH 6/24/85)
6. Comes A Time (Live at Cal Expo Amphitheatre, Sacramento, CA 5/3/86)
7. Morning Dew (Live at Madison Square Garden, New York, NY 9/18/87)
Disc: 4
1. Not Fade Away (Live at Oxford Plains Speedway, Oxford, ME 7/3/88)
2. Blow Away (Live at Miami Arena, Miami, FL 10/26/89)
3. Ramble On Rose (Live at Zenith, Paris, France 10/27/90)
4. High Time (Live From Madison Square Garden, New York, NY 9/10/91)
5. Althea (Live at Copps Coliseum, Ontario Canada 3/20/92)
6. Broken Arrow (Live at Knickerbocker Arena, Albany, NY 3/27/1993)
7. So Many Roads (Live at Boston Garden, Boston, MA 10/1/94)
8. Visions Of Johanna (Delta Center, Salt Lake City, UT 2/21/95)
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I preordered this and the huge box set. Yes it’s expensive but I go through periods where I listen to nothing but live Dead. I could only imagine the cost if this were released on vinyl too.
and the weight….
I don’t think these are audience recordings. I think what makes GD unusual is that they tended to record everything themselves – so the audience could record it for their own enjoyment, but the band would always have a definitive version they themselves could release. Bootlegging (selling audience recordings for money) is hence minimized, theoretically, since why pay for something that might be released officially? Surely that makes everybody happy. You get a record of the gig you attended, and the band doesn’t lose one cent because anybody who buys bootlegs is bound to buy every official release.
My feeling is that PF might have the opposite problem – bootlegs of many of their shows do exist, there are simply no “official” recordings. The only live material released in the big boxes, to my memory, was BBC recordings. So one possibility might be that PF simply didn’t bother to record very much, if anything. (With the exception of some Walls shows.) Why else sit on it, this late in the game?
Then again, we know the BBC Paris Theatre 1971 recording exists in good quality as it’s been broadcast on FM. What possible reason is there not to release it officially? (Anybody else still hoping forlornly for a Meddle box?) And all those other early John Peel sessions?
There were comments (on Amazon for example) when Yes “Progeny” was announced earlier this year that you’d have to be crazy to want to buy 7 versions of the same set list. No, you’d just have to be a fan. The ultimate untapped resource in my opinion, perhaps (here I go, very opinionated…) the finest unreleased body of recorded sound from the second half of the 20th Century, is the Frank Zappa vault. FZ recorded everything. There are technical issues (FZ tended to physically snip sections out of the master tape when compiling live albums) but the Family’s trickle of releases in the past 20 years has been depressing. In my dark hours, I just wish I can outlive Gail…in hope of hearing more of it…
They are not audience recordings. Some of these are mixed from multi tracks. The reason why no other band can get away with so many live recordings is every night is different. Even the same songs songs performed on different nights are different. Pink Floyd etc. play the same thing every night…note for note.
Wow, they keep delivering. This is the case study in how to treat your fans — and how to keep giving us that warm feeling of connection, so we all grow old happy and as much in love with you as we always were.
I wish Pink Floyd would take note. Surely you recorded SOMETHING, guys? How about The Complete Wall Shows 1980-81? I’m pretty sure you recorded some of those in their entirety, since “Is There Anybody Out There” was a pick and mix from 8 different shows. That’s 30 shows in pristine quality, plus two dress rehearsals, should fit on 64 CDs plus a couple DVDs for the footage…tasty. Wait to see how fast I’d buy it.
The Grateful Dead were unusual in that they actively encouraged bootleggers, sometimes setting aside audience space for bootleggers and when the internet came along, providing free access to show recordings. So there will be a lot of material out there to enable archivists to select the best quality material.
Pink Floyd, I think, were a lot more precious about what was recorded and quite litigious about keeping control of their music, so while there may be stuff available they won’t release it unless it meets a very high standard and anyone who tries to put unauthorised material out there is likely to get a stiff letter from the solicitors.
The Grateful Dead also invented social media…
And there’s already a new pre order on dead.net: the complete July fare the well concerts. 12 CDs and 7 DVDs or blurays.
If you are a deadhead you had to buy the huge version
And if you’re not a Deadhead then a consise summary of 30 years of live performance, by an act considered by many one of the best live bands in the world, is a good place to start.