I really like The Grateful Dead. American Beauty is easily one of my desert island discs, with Aoxomoxoa narrowly missing the cut (only one record is allowed from each band, unfortunately. You should see the dilemma this has created with Zeppelin.)
I especially love to listen to them live, though I’ve never wanted to actually attend a show (I don’t do well in crowds. Especially mostly-high crowds.) Regardless, I love the Grateful Dead, and their music has often taken the edge off of some othwerwise lousy days over the years.
I’ve been listening to a live recording of The Dead that was made at Bonnaroo in June . . . and it’s really amazing. I could listen to this 28 minutes of Dark Star-China Doll-Dark Star for days.
It got me thinking: the only live recording I have of The Grateful Dead is the commercially-available “Europe ’72” (and I can only find CD 2 from that release) and I am hungering for more.
I know that they’ve encouraged fans to trade live recordings and spread the music since the 60s, so I looked online for an archive . . . but I couldn’t find anything that didn’t time out.
That got me thinking (I’m writing today, so I’m thinking a lot . . . dangerous stuff, this thinking): I bet, somewhere out in Internetland, there must be a WWdN reader who has some live Grateful Dead recordings that they’d be willing to share. I’ll totally pay for the shipping and the costs of CDs, if anyone wants to hook me up. Any takers?
Back to work. Final thoughts on the road trip later today (pictures — nearly 500 of them — won’t be available for a few days). I need to finish the CruiseBlog, too.