Dave's Picks Vol. 51: Scranton

The Grateful Dead‘s September 8, 1973 concert at Nassau Coliseum in Uniondale, New York will be featured on Dave’s Picks Volume 38, which is due in the second quarter of 2021. Dave’s Picks 2021 subscribers will receive a bonus disc containing highlights from the previous night’s show at the same venue.

A sealed, unlabeled box sat undisturbed for decades on a shelf in the Grateful Dead’s San Rafael tape vault on Front Street, its contents an enduring mystery, even to those few with access to the vault. All David Lemieux knew about that box when he became the Dead’s archivist was that it contained tapes belonging to Bear—Owsley Stanley, the Dead’s first soundman and architect of the Wall of Sound. Even in the Dead Heads’ Holy of Holies, the taped-up box was tantalizing. But this was Bear’s personal property, and so he didn’t touch the box out of an abiding respect for the elder luminary of sound. Bear’s archive of Sonic Journal recordings had been kept safe for him for years within the Grateful Dead’s vault—over 1,300 reels of tape stored in heavy-duty cartons like old banana boxes. At any time, David could have popped the tops and explored them to his archivist heart's content. But they were off-limits without the nod from Bear.

The 14th installment of Dave's Picks is devoted to another 1972 show, this one taken from an appearance at New York's Academy of Music on March 26, 1972 - i.e. before the Dead headed across the Atlantic for their legendary series of European shows. Generally, it's a pretty muscular performance, getting off the ground with a driving "Greatest Story Ever Told" and featuring a hefty dose of Pigpen in the first set, including "Mr. Charlie" and the one-two punch of "Big Railroad Blues" and "Big Boss Man." Here, his blues leanings seem of piece with the other roots the Dead lay down early - Jerry Garcia sings Hank Williams' "You Win Again," Bob Weir turns Marty Robbins' "El Paso" into one of his signature cowboy rambles - but by the time Pigpen surfaces toward the end singing the crawling "The Stranger (Two Souls in Communion)"…

Dave's Picks Volume 23 is a live album by the rock band the Grateful Dead. It contains the complete concert recorded at McArthur Court at the University of Oregon in Eugene, Oregon on January 22, 1978. It was produced as a limited edition of 16,500 copies, and was released on August 1, 2017.

Is there anything better than being a Dead Head when one of your favorite shows is officially released in its entirety? We'll double down on your sentiments WolfmansBrother, with DAVE'S PICK VOLUME 50: PALLADIUM, NEW YORK CITY, NY 5/3/77, and we'll bring the fire extinguisher to cool you off after you listen to Betty Cantor-Jackson's complete recording. Don't want the party to end? We'll stoke those embers with a few hot tracks from the first set of 5/4/77. Dave's Picks Subscribers score the monstrous second set from 5/4/77 featuring "Scarlet>Fire," "Terrapin," 'Playing In The Band," "Comes A Time," and more. Woowee!

The ongoing Dave's Picks archival series takes on the lifelong challenge of presenting some of the best of the Grateful Dead's endless back catalog of live sets, cherry-picking recordings from nearly four decades and literally thousands of gigs and revisiting them with refurbished sound and meticulously detailed presentation. Vol. 13 of the series presents the full three-set performance from the band's February 24, 1974 date, the third of three nights at San Francisco's Winterland Arena. This date finds the band in fantastic form, using a sound system that predated their famous "wall of sound" amplifier system by just a month, and spinning their cosmic wheels through a spirited first set of rockers like "U.S. Blues," "Candyman," and "China Cat Sunflower" before relaxing into more wide-reaching territory in the second and third sets on extensive jams like "Weather Report Suite"…

Who's ready to boogie with a little Brent-era Grateful Dead from the Gateway to the West? DAVE'S PICKS VOLUME 47 features the complete unreleased show from Kiel Auditorium, St. Louis, MO, 12/9/79 and you're going to need stamina because this one is high energy from start to finish.