Closing Winterland

Given that Jimi Hendrix's career as a frontman lasted only about three years, it might be hard to believe that there's still great material that hasn't been officially released even 40 years after his death (of course, unofficially released is a different matter). But here is Jimi's three-night stand at Winterland in San Francisco from October of 1968, which, despite excellent recordings by Wally Heider, sat largely unreleased until 2011. A single disc was compiled and released by Rykodisc in the late '80s (there was also a hard-to-find three-track bonus disc), but had been out of print for years when this box set arrived…

This month's covermount CD is Grateful Dead: From The Bay To The Pool, Live 1971–1978. A must-hear curation of classic and rare tracks to delight Deadheads and non-believers alike. Wharf Rat, Truckin’, Casey Jones and more!

In 2008, the idea of a rock band doing their proverbial thing in Egypt holds far less cache than it did 30 years prior. However, it was unquestionably a novel notion when the Grateful Dead sought to begin diplomatic talks between the U.S. Government and Egyptian officials to allow for the band to bring their "long, strange trip" to Cairo's Gizah Sound & Light Theater in mid-September of 1978. Considering the precarious political state of the world at the time, it is a minor miracle that these shows came off at all. Rocking the Cradle: Egypt 1978 (2008) gathers two-and-a-half hours of highlights from the September 15 and 16, 1978 performances – with the vast majority coming from the latter date. While they played on the 13th (as a sort of sound check) and the 14th as well, there is no music from either date located here…