All versions are now available for preorder. A three-disc compilation drawn from the six shows, Pacific Northwest ’73-’74: Believe It If You Need It, will also come out simultaneously for purchase and streaming, and the complete Portland 1974 show will be released on vinyl as a limited-edition six-LP set. The set will be available on September 7th in both a 19-disc physical edition – limited to 15,000 copies, housed in an ornate box and featuring a 64-page book – and as Apple Lossless and FLAC downloads. The shows were mastered from the original tapes in HDCD by longtime Dead associate Jeffrey Norman at Mockingbird Mastering, and transferred and restored by Plangent Processes. Coliseum and the Hec Edmundson Pavilion in Seattle. Coliseum in Vancouver, the Portland Memorial Coliseum and the Seattle Center Arena, as well as May 1974 shows from the P.N.E. In addition to the Portland ’74 show, Pacific Northwest ’73-’74 also includes June 1973 shows from the P.N.E. Including Portland ’74 amongst the Best Dead Show Ever, up there with Harpur College, Veneta, and Cornell, is not a stretch after you hear this performance, you’ll know why it’s so highly revered.” It’s majestic, and soars to heights that were reserved for the best Grateful Dead shows ever. “At the top of the list, most Dead Heads consider the 5/19/74 Portland jam out of ‘Truckin” to be the best of the best, and this restored and remastered release has this show sounding better than we ever could have imagined. Drawn from arguably the bands strongest tour of their last 15 years on the road, the two-disc Truckin Up To Buffalo features the entire concert at Rich Stadium on July 4, 1989. “In the 1974, the Grateful Dead performed several of the most inspired improvisational jams of their entire 30 touring career, jams that are described by many as some of the finest, purest music the Grateful Dead ever created live on stage,” Dead archivist David Lemieux tells Rolling Stone. A classic July 4th concert is brought to life in HDCD Sound on the first of three historic live releases celebrating the 40th anniversary of the Grateful Dead. Around the 19-minute mark, drummer Bill Kreutzmann kicks into the distinctive tom-tom rhythm of “Not Fade Away,” signaling a transition to one of the Dead’s most-performed covers. Then the players strip the song down to its bare elements, before ramping up again to a funky backbeat section featuring fiery interplay between Jerry Garcia’s guitar and Keith Godchaux’s keyboard. It was part of a long collaboration with the two artists, discussed in this studio visit in the ‘80s.The version finds the band blasting off from the loose, shuffling five-minute Bob Weir–sung original, quickly building to a wild, trilling climax after the six-minute mark. Alison Fensterstock wrote a great story about the event, “ Bust Fund Babies,” and thanks to a local librarian turned up the entirety of the original police report.Ī work-in-progress draft of Robert Hunter’s lyrics for “Truckin’” are in the band’s archive, with some lyrics typed, but some handwritten by Hunter.Īs they had for the Dead’s 1967 debut and Workingman’s Dead earlier that year, the studio of Stanley Mouse and Alton Kelley created the cover. The most infamous verse in “Truckin’” pertains to the Dead’s bust in New Orleans at the end of January 1970. While there are no tapes, there was a lot of press coverage. Buffalo’s presence in “Truckin’” owes to it being the opening night of Hunter’s March 1970 tour with the Dead that ended with the writing of “Truckin’.” One of the most infamous untaped (or perhaps uncirculated) shows in Dead history, when the band jammed with the Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra. According to Hunter’s journal, the Houston reference came from a show in “ 69 or ‘70 when cops in battlegear swarmed the stage to pull the plug,” likely this gig from February 1970. Robert Hunter’s lyrics to “Truckin’” make reference to various events in the band’s life circa 1970. Crumb brought the phrase “ Keep on Truckin’” into the counterculture with a 1968 sequence in the debut issue of Zap Comix that illustrated the lyrics to Blind Boy Fuller’s “Truckin’ My Blues Away.” Though it didn’t refer to actual trucks, it easily mutated into the version seen on truck-flaps everywhere. References to truckin’ to show up in many songs from the late 1920s and ‘30s. And if you haven’t, you can learn (or catch up on the origins). If you’re into Lindy Hops, you may have even trucked yourself. Originating in Harlem in the ‘20s but with tendrils stretching back into the murky era of minstrel shows, truckin’ was a move from Black dance culture. “Truckin’” is a Grateful Dead classic with deep roots, autobiographical lyrics, and a history of big jams, an iconic album closer that provided a preview of what was to come.
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