May 6, 2016

A Call For Missing Tapes

Back in the pre-Archive days, there were a number of Dead tapes listed in the Taping Compendium or in deadlists that a few collectors had, but weren't very widespread. To this day they still haven't been transferred to digital or put online, so you won't find these on the Archive or torrent sites.
I've put together a short list of the tapes that used to circulate, but aren't available or are in inferior quality online, in the hopes that some old tape collectors may still have these and can digitize them.

Jan. 1967 - studio outtakes
One collection of outtakes is here (misdated "12/5/66"), but it runs too fast, a couple songs are mislabeled, and a couple tracks are missing. I'm sure a better copy can be found.

8/4/67 - Lindy
Per deadlists, a partial fragment of this song opened the tape, but it isn't on the copies online.
Now available! 

2/5/69 - Lovelight
The copy of this show on the Archive is missing the opening song, Lovelight. 

3/29/69 - Dark Star
Deadlists has the time of this Dark Star as 21 minutes, but the circulating copies are only 15 minutes (with a tapecut). It's possible the deadlists timing is wrong, but I have hope that an alternate tape of this show may have the complete Dark Star. 
It's now available! 

8/16/69 AUD
A Woodstock AUD used to circulate but has never appeared online.
It appears there was never a Woodstock audience tape of the Dead's show. Per one researcher, "Copies circulating as an “audience” or “stage” recording were actually high-gen versions of the mono PA tape."

Late 1969 - Bucky's Theme (studio outtake)
This was an instrumental with Garcia on pedal steel & John Tenney on fiddle, and was recorded along with Pigpen's 'I'm A Loving Man,' but never made it to a digital copy. 
It's now available!

[2/7/70 AUD
The SBD is very chopped-up and the AUD is more complete for most of the show. Actually, a complete composite source is available online, but I've listed this since for some reason the Archive copy is missing most of the songs and needs to be fixed or re-uploaded.]
Fixed! 

4/12/70 - complete AUD
Several songs from this excellent AUD are patched into the available SBD, but the rest of the AUD would also be nice to have, offering a somewhat different PA mix of the songs.
The Schoolgirl is now available! 

5/24/70 - alternate SBD
A near-complete SBD is available, which is rather rough and distorted in places. But another mono board tape used to circulate, which was only part of the show (it started at Cryptical and went til the first few minutes of Lovelight), but may have clearer sound. 
It's now available! A couple more complete copies of the show have also come out.

6/24/70 AUD - late acoustic set
Surprisingly for such a famous show, we still don't have the complete evening on the Archive. Different sets are scattered across several different source tapes of varying quality: the early acoustic set, the early electric set (but with Cosmic Charlie cut), part of the late acoustic set (with many cuts and some missing songs - the end of the set is also here), and the late electric set. Deadlists notes that the late acoustic set (and the early-show Cosmic Charlie) are complete, so evidently there are still more tapes to find.
The late acoustic set is now available!

(7/9/70 AUD) - Friend of the Devil, Easy Wind
Deadlists notes that these two songs used to circulate on tapes of 7/11/70 (their date is uncertain), but they aren't online. It's possible they're actually from another known show, but there's no telling if we can't hear them.

9/19/70 - acoustic set AUD
Only the last two acoustic songs are on the available copies of this show. Although the quality of the AUD tapes this night is quite poor, it's odd that an entire set of this famous show is still inaccessible. 
It's now available! 

10/4/70 - Pigpen interview
A radio DJ interviewed Pigpen at this show, but the copies online don't include this. 
It's now available!

11/16/70 AUD - Good Lovin'
A fragmentary audience tape included this song, with Hot Tuna and Papa John Creach playing on it, which is not on the SBD tape. 
It's now available! (It seems Papa John Creach is actually the only guest, not Jorma or Jack.)

11/70 AUD - fragment of unknown show
The Taping Addendum lists a batch of Marty Weinberg reels that were transferred in 2001; most of them have been put online by Rob Berger and others, but this partial mystery show is still unavailable.
The tracklist: Till the Morning Comes, China>Rider, Mama Tried, Good Lovin'.  
It's now available

(1970 AUD) - Good Lovin'
This was on a set of Marty Weinberg's reels transferred back in 2001 - the start of a 6/24/70 reel was taped over with part of a Good Lovin' that couldn't be dated, but was from another show. Unfortunately, it wasn't included with the Weinberg reels that were put online.
It's now available (all three minutes of it).

2/18-19/71 - Ken Lee AUDs
A couple fragments from these tapes have become available - here and here - and they sound far superior to the other audience tapes from these nights (as you'd expect from Ken Lee). I don't know if the rest of these tapes ever actually circulated, but it's worth checking.
(Marty Weinberg's surviving reel of 2/24/71 sounds very good but is also incomplete, and it's unlikely more of his recording will be found. The reel also included a Mama Tried with Garcia on pedal steel which was unidentified - perhaps from a 1970 NRPS set - but wasn't included when the reel was put online.)

10/19/71 - Garcia interview
The radio broadcast included a pre-show interview with Garcia, which isn't included in the copies online.
A transcript is now available.

1973? - Pigpen demos
About an hour of Pigpen's home acoustic demos are available online in a few different collections, but the Taping Compendium (p. 449) lists another tape of piano demos which isn't online.

2/24/73 AUD
An audience tape of much of the second set exists, including the Truckin'>Nobody's Fault jam>Eyes of the World, which has never circulated online. (Only a couple SBD fragments from the first & second sets circulate.) 
The AUD tape is now available!

3/15/73 alternate AUD
A complete audience tape exists on the Archive, in varying quality - the first ten songs are rather poor, distant quality with a noisy audience; it then switches to a very good, clear stereo sound up until Truckin', when it switches back to distant mono. I'm not sure if this was pieced together from different sources or if the taper had to move around; but an old '70s bootleg LP had a couple first-set songs from an excellent, up-front AUD tape. It would be a significant upgrade if the rest of that tape could be found. (Only part of the second set is available in SBD.)
The Betty-Board SBD for almost the full show is now available. It would still be nice to find a better AUD source to use for patches, though.

9/9/74
The available sources online are all incomplete, with the longest one still missing several songs at the end of the show; but the full show was available on tape.
The missing songs are now available. 

9/10/74 AUD
This night was taped by the same taper who recorded 9/11/74, in similar quality, and the AUD used to circulate. It would be nice to hear this.
A more complete copy of the show with the SBD cuts patched by the AUD is now available. 

There are a number of other 1972-74 audience tapes that were never transferred to digital, because the SBD tapes are widely available and the AUDs don't sound so great. I haven't listed them all since there would be little interest in these; but one that I'm curious about is 12/6/73, poor as the quality might be, just to hear how the audience responded to that Dark Star. (Dave Cubbedge, a reviewer in Deadbase who made a non-circulating stereo audience tape of the show, describes the audience bickering during Dark Star!)

A large number of studio rehearsal tapes from 1975-77 were in limited circulation but were never put online, probably because only a few fanatics would ever want to collect or hear them all. Nonetheless, there could be some interesting sessions here:

Sept 1975 Studio Rehearsals:
9/1/75: Comes A Time, They Love Each Other
9/16/75: Catfish John
9/23/75: Dancin' in the Streets instrumental jams (a couple takes)
These are now available. 
??/75: Dancin' in the Streets (a couple vocal takes)
[There could be earlier Blues for Allah rehearsals that were on tape but not online, but due to all the song repetitions I couldn't tell.]

April/May 1976 Studio Rehearsals:
4/20/76: Lazy Lightnin' (multiple takes), Born Cross-Eyed tease, Friend of the Devil (two takes), instrumental - This date is now available.
4/24/76: The Wheel (a couple takes)
5/6/76: Jam, Cosmic Charlie (multiple takes), Let It Grow
5/17/76: Cassidy (several takes), Instrumental, Attics of My Life (two takes), Estimated Prophet
5/18/76: Peanut Butter, Might As Well, Blues Jam, Samson & Delilah, Saint Stephen
5/20/76: Saint Stephen
5/28/76: Cosmic Charlie (alt), Samson & Delilah, Crazy Fingers, Music Never Stopped, Might As Well, Playing jam [missing from copies online]
5/30/76: Samson & Delilah

1976-77 Studio rehearsals:
8/26/76: Jam, Dancin' in the Streets (multiple instrumental takes) - part of this is now available.
2/19/77: At A Siding (multiple takes), Equinox (several instrumental takes), Blues, Fire on the Mountain (multiple takes with alt lyrics)
??/77: Funk Instrumental (two takes), Terrapin Station, Playing in the Band

(The Taping Compendium vol. 2 also listed as a 1976 outtake the ambient instrumental 'The Whale's Master,' but this appears to be a Mickey Hart solo track with synthesizers and no Dead involvement.) 

These were the first tapes that came to mind; I'll add to the list as I come across more.
Feel free to add suggestions to the list!