December 2, 2009

Some Overlooked Shows From 1972

This post is in response to someone who said he skipped all 1972 shows that didn't have a Dark Star or Other One....so I thought I'd talk a bit about the shows that didn't have an obvious Big Jam in the second sets.

1972 found the Dead, as always, in development - Keith had moved in, Pigpen was heading out - and a whole bunch of new songs had been added. But in general, they were 'little' songs, so that the set-II jams tended to revolve around Dark Star or Other One just as they had back in '68 - more extended jam-songs wouldn't get added until the Wake of the Flood debuts in '73.
As a result, most shows from '72 (especially after Pigpen leaves) have pretty similar setlists, with just a few things rearranged here and there. I'll concede that fall '71 shows without any big jams are pretty disappointing (something like two-hour first-sets), and I avoid those myself.
However, there was much more jamming in '72 than there had been in '71 shows, as the Dead found new places to build jams in.

First was Playing in the Band, which had been rather flat and stodgy in '71, with just a few moments of syncopated spaciness in the solo before returning quickly to the theme - but we find right away in March '72, they'd rethought the song and put a blazing jam in the middle, which got longer and longer through the year until Playing became a half-hour monster.
Not Fade Away also benefited sometimes from longer jams - once Goin' Down the Road had been added in late '70, NFA shrunk down to a brief four-minute bookend - but in the fall of '71 the Dead started jamming their NFAs again, and this trend continued into '72 (not always, but on many nights).
Bird Song also saw a triumphant revival in summer '72 - the Dead had dropped it for some reason when Keith joined (even though they'd rehearsed it with him in October '71) - and this became a first-set highlight of many shows. (But sadly, they dropped it yet again in September '73, not to be heard again until 1980.)
Truckin' had just a short little outro jam in early '71, but once they found that they could segue it into the Other One (usually via a drum solo), the Truckin' jam got longer and longer, and by '72 they usually dropped the chorus reprise as well in the fervor of the jams. (The Truckin' jam would become even more extended and unpredictable in the next two years, of course.)
Also, He's Gone was introduced in the Europe tour as a peppy little song, but by the fall it started slowing down, and the outro jam became its own thing of beauty, which as often as not could also lead into the Other One.
In short, even though the unique jam themes of '73 and '74 hadn't arrived yet, there were still plenty of jams going on - and if you were to overlook all the shows in which they took a break from Dark Star and the Other One, these would be some of the things you'd miss....

1/2/72 - a unique Good Lovin'>China Cat>Good Lovin', very well-done.
http://www.archive.org/details/gd72-01-02.sbd.eD.8709.sbeok.shnf

3/5/72 - another big Good Lovin' with an early Mind Left Body jam. Deadlists notes, "Garcia is particularly rippin'."
http://www.archive.org/details/gd72-03-05.sbd.miller.20739.sbeok.shnf

3/22/72 - the return of Caution, not heard since 3/18/71. The Caution itself is not as notable as the sweet melodic jam that ends it.
(This show isn't circulating in sbd, but the Caution was released on a bonus disc.)
http://www.dead.net/features/february-4-february-10-2008

3/25/72 - the Good Lovin' and Lovelight are missing from this night (perhaps they're in the Vault?), but we do have the last Smokestack Lightning, a couple one-time-only songs, plus the Bo Diddley set which is pretty neat.
(Highlights on Dicks Picks 30, or an AUD for masochists -
http://www.archive.org/details/gd1972-03-25.aud.hanno.horner.22094.sbeok.shnf )

3/26, 3/27/72 - the Good Lovin' from each of these nights is on the Taper's Section over at dead.net - otherwise there's not much reason to check out the available AUDs, which are horrible.
3-26-72, by the way, is the only Other One from the year that's still completely uncirculated; the AUD only has the first set.
http://www.dead.net/features/tapers-section/march-24-march-30-2008 (Good Lovin' and Playing from 3/26)
http://www.dead.net/features/february-4-february-10-2008 (Good Lovin' from 3/27, and several other Academy of Music selections)

7/22/72 - I admit, you wouldn't miss much from this night, though there are a few highlights (the newly introduced Bird Song, a youthful Playing, and a rare standalone Morning Dew; which were all released as bonus tracks to 7/21/72). I don't recall the odd set-II medley of Truckin>He's Gone>Sugar Magnolia as being too special.
(No longer on the Archive.)

10/2/72 - a great freeform Truckin' jam that goes from one theme to another (including Nobody's Fault and Feelin' Groovy) on its way to Morning Dew. The first set also has a Bird Song and Playing in their full fall-'72 glory.
http://www.archive.org/details/gd72-10-02.sbd.lai.158.sbefail.shnf

10/17/72 - once again, a fine Bird Song and Playing. The second set is strangely truncated, and other than the NFA seems more like another first set.
http://www.archive.org/details/gd72-10-17.sbd.sacks.2219.sbeok.shnf

10/30/72 - a good-sounding AUD with a giant Truckin' jam which, surprisingly, just ends after 15 minutes. The first-set Playing and Bird Song are both sadly cut. Bear recorded this, so it's one of the best AUDs of the year. The second set is full of rockers....perhaps because they were in Detroit?
http://www.archive.org/details/gd72-10-30.aud.cotsman.10915.sbeok.shnf

11/12/72 - the first show in which Playing in the Band was the second-set centerpiece. (The first set had a Bird Song and another long standalone Truckin'.) This show is notorious for its poor mix, in which you can basically only hear the guitars - so it's interesting for those who want to study the guitar interplay.
http://www.archive.org/details/gd72-11-12.sbd.cotsman.9771.sbeok.shnf

11/15, 11/18/72 - the twin monster Playing in the Bands are more than enough reason to check out these shows.
http://www.archive.org/details/gd1972-11-15.sbd.set2.miller.91760.sbeok.flac16 - used to be incomplete, but Miller has recently given us the whole set.
http://www.archive.org/details/gd72-11-18.set2-sbd.cotsman.9002.sbeok.shnf - often said to be the best-ever Playing in the Band.

11/24/72 - aside from another phenomenal Playing and a hot Truckin', this show has perhaps the best Not Fade Away of '72. This show is notable for being one of the most rocked-out of the year, with hardly a slow song in sight.
http://www.archive.org/details/gd72-11-24.sbd.gardner.5288.sbeok.shnf

14 comments:

  1. this is really useful. On the one hand, Dark Star and the Other One are easy markers in a set for jams, but on the other hand it can get kind of predictable when all the jams come from and go to the same places.

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  2. The second half of '72 produced some of my favorite GD and that 10 show November run is full of top flight performances.I kind of spaced on how good that 11/24 Not Fade Away is,the boys get an A+ for effort throughout the show on that particular evening.The Not Fade Away jam between 2:15-4:45 is just raw,with a Mountain Jam hint and one twisted quick run from 4:24-4:39.The Goin' Down the Road also some explosive licks between 3:00-4:30 with Keith joining in and comping nicely.

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    1. Garcia is also really hot in Sugar Magnolia, 11/24/72.
      He breaks a string or something and drops out midway through NFA, so the others vamp for a few minutes without him and it goes slack for a while...I don't think I'd call it best-of-the-year anymore. But anyway, it's definitely a show where they felt more like rocking out than heading to outer space. Maybe they had an impatient cowboy audience that night?

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  3. You could make a case for the entire show sans Deal and Sugaree having a little something.The last two and a half minutes of Tennessee Jed offer up a nice jam.I am always at a loss for the best of the year,but I thought the 3/23 and the 7/16 versions of Not Fade Away were well done,of course 7/16 featuring Berry Oakley and Dickie Betts.I like Not Fade Away,but find the vast majority pedestrian.I would lean toward your inference of an impatient cowboy crowd in 1972 Dallas as a good bet.Then again on the same tour in K.C. and Houston they performed 20-30 minute very out there versions of PITB and Dark Star and surely those cities were not bastions of free thought and artistic creativity.Go figure,maybe they looked out in the first few rows in Dallas and saw a lot of cowboy hats.

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  4. I just heard the post-Caution melodic jam from 3/22/72 on Sirius, it's great. It reminds me of Me and Bobby McGee, which they played in the first set that night. Bobby McGee was first integrated into a '72 jam at 5/3/72 (again on 5/10/72) but the best integration of that song into a jam is 9/28/72: He's Gone > The Other One > Me And Bobby McGee > The Other One > Wharf Rat.

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  5. Were the Boathouse tapes real?? Supposedly Jerry had given some tapes to Keith before he came into the fold so he could get a better feel for the band. They werent recovered till 05??!! How could that be??

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    1. Keith died from complications of car accident I wouldve thought they would've been recovered way before that. Then again the Pizza Tapes came about in a similar fashion!

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    2. Probably everyone forgot Keith had the tapes, and until Latvala started sorting through the Dead tape archive a couple decades later, no one in the Dead organization would have cared either.

      The story, per Dennis McNally:
      "In the late summer of 1971, just before Keith Godchaux began rehearsals with the Dead, Garcia handed him a big box of tapes and said, “Here, this is our most recent tour. Learn our music.” ...Donna Jean doubts mightily Keith ever bothered to listen to them - he'd never listened to the Dead all that much before he auditioned... In any case, he left the tapes on his parents' houseboat in Alameda, and there they stayed. For 35 years.
      In the spring of 2005, his brother Brian and son Zion were cleaning out the houseboat, found the tapes, and gave them to Donna, [who called David Lemieux]... Master tapes include April 28 and 29 at the Fillmore East...7/31 Yale Bowl (alas, blank), a small piece of the Hollywood Bowl, Berkeley Community Theatre [August 14-15], and others.
      Dick's Pick #35 is the complete San Diego (8/7/71) show, all that was salvageable of the 8/24 Chicago show, and an hour-plus from the Hollywood Bowl (8/6), which is all that existed on the tapes."

      I'm not surprised that the tapes were buried and forgotten for so long - this happened to a number of old Dead shows, and probably some have yet to be found. But I am curious where they dug up the complete SBD tapes of 7/31 and 8/6 which were sampled on the later Road Trips '71 release.

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  6. Really good thread btw. SO I just bought 06-02-1972 on vinyl...damnnnn. Am I the only one who is listening to this album? Side 1 2nd song is Expressway.

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  7. Garcia, Kahn, Kreutzmann, Saunders

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  8. The 2/6/72 Garcia/Saunders KSAN broadcast has actually been a well-known, much-loved show for many years now! There's a bootleg on Amazon, multiple copies on Youtube, etc....and hopefully it'll be an official release someday.
    This blog is limited to Dead shows, but there's some background on the show here:
    http://lostlivedead.blogspot.com/2014/10/february-6-1972-pacific-high-recorders.html

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  9. The Owsley Stanley Foundation have preserved the missing first reel of Houston 1972-11-18 (Promised Land thru' Tennessee Jed), hopefully they have the other missing reels from this show.

    https://www.facebook.com/OwsleyStanleyFoundation/posts/3454711404611840

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    1. I wonder why the OSF are preserving Dead reels themselves rather than sending them to the Dead vault. Whatever stray Dead reels ended up in Bear's stash (and they may all be incomplete parts of shows), I don't think the Sonic Journals series will include any Dead shows.

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