u/South-Style-134

Hi everyone! Not sure if we’re getting a new setlist tonight or not, but I figured I’d set up a thread either way. 

Where’s your favorite place to experience a Dead show? Are you riding the rail, spinning, sitting in the stands, couch surfing, or somewhere else? 

John: It’s been an interesting couple of weeks celebrating Jerry Garcia’s life. We celebrated being together a year ago in Golden Gate Park and we mourned that that would be the last time we were all together in that way. 
He was moved by the response to his Instagram post where he shared insight on how brave Bobby was in those last shows. It linked us all up again to read all those comments and be communicating about Dead stuff and Dead & Co stuff again. He sends his very heartfelt “thank you” for helping him feel connected again. That’s what this show is all about, so we’re going to start with The Music Never Stopped because if he’s going to put it somewhere in the show, he’s going to start with it since this is a funky, jammy version. 

The Music Never Stopped - 4/24/78 - Normal, IL

John: That’s what love will make you do. . . [plays a little of the song]. This is a Little Milton song. This is the vastness of the GD catalog. He’s going to reference this song many times both for the musicality and the recording. It’s recorded so purely and gently. It’ll take 5 seconds to hear it and go, “oh, where can I get this?” Fortunately, you don’t have to go looking for it because it’s right here.

That's What Love Will Make You Do - 5/21/76- JGB w/ Merle Saunders

John: 
We’re going to stay in JGB land if we may, not only because the last week was celebrating his life and passing, but because it’s such an interesting sound. A lot of JGB songs were covers and that’s true of this next track. Pay attention to how the beginning of this song shares a genetic similarity to Sugaree. He’s not saying there is any link, but the fingerprint is there. Jerry’s at least thinking about it when he’s playing. 

Shining Star - 8/24/91 - Jerry Garcia Band

John: As he begins to look back at videos and pics, the image of him and Bobby on stage is getting gilded, visually dipped in gold. “Well that is beautiful.” He was doing the thing, he was contributing to the thing, figuring out how to make the next thing better. And the images of the band playing are, in realtime, every day, just for him, becoming iconic. Iconic for him and his life’s story to the visual and the image and the memory. Who would he be if he had not been doing that? It’s like a hot iron getting quenched in the fire. 

Fire on the Mountain - 7/2/23 - Boulder, CO - WHERE THEY LET MICKEY RAP!!!!!

John: This next thing he’s going to try to explain is going to be strange, just relax and try your best to understand. 

You ever have a fruit that tastes like another fruit? 
You ever have a banana taste like guava? 

This is a Peggy-O with a little Althea. He loves when a song tips into a little bit of the groove of another song. 

Peggy-O - 5/8/81 - Uniondale, NY

John: We’re doing another song reference in another song again. There’s about a year’s span of time where They Love Each Other had an uptempo TLEO in the style of China Cat Sunflower. 
In Dead & Co they would ask are we gonna do the ‘73 version? Whoever was the most emphatic about it got their way.
This is a relaxed version of that uptempo thing. 

They Love Each Other - 2/22/74 - San Francisco, CA

John: He’s reaching into Jerry Garcia recording archives. This is a cover of a Bob Dylan song. It was produced by Phil Ramone. John had dinner with Phil one time. He challenged John to write all 50 states down on a piece of paper in a certain time frame and John couldn’t do it. [John meanders a bit here where I couldn’t keep up and then called me/us out telling me/us that we liked the way this show and the music meanders]. 

If there’s a friend on the fence, this is the song that will show Jerry Garcia was a phenomenal singer. 

Simple Twist of Fate - 2/19/78 - Jerry Garcia Band

John: He’s rippin packs and playing tracks with a holographic Bertha. What if he did that [paper rustling and ripping noises]. “Oh we got a Bertha. . .” 

Bertha - 10/29/77 - DeKalb, IL

John: Every time he was up to bat to play Bertha, he thought about how Jerry played it. Jerry played it slowly. John could never do it and he’d listen to Jerry recordings where the crowd was so pumped and the band was chugging along and Jerry would just be so relaxed into it. 

Dark Star was a song Dead & Co probably played more than the original Dead. They’d, as Bobby used to say, take those songs out for a walk.
Dark Stars were always the most exploratory version of the thing (either song or jammy). 
He’s starting to go back and not see the latest as the greatest. He used to think about it as building on the next and making it better the next time through. Now, time is a flat circle when it comes to listening to Dead & Co songs so he’s appreciating what was.

Dark Star - 7/12/22 - Burgettstown, PA

John: Dark Star was not played very often and neither was St. Stephen, which we’re about to hear. It’s heard more in early Dead sets, which makes sense. It’s a barrelhouse, pigpen in the band playing a vox continental organ like you’d hear in The Doors or Smash Mouth. 
To prove that you don’t really need to play the right notes, listen to the beginning, Jerry’s playing one note off and instead of it being bad, it’s intriguing. 

St. Stephen - 2/2/70 - St. Louis, MO

John: One More Saturday Night was most likely to be missed by John’s friends who’d have to hightail it out during this song to leave with him after the show. So, for John’s friends, here’s what that song sounds like. 

It’s expected play can take a little out, but this is a very Chuck Berry-type but faithful rendition.
Every time they did it in Dead & Co, it was very smoke-em-if-you-got-em and he’d look over at Bobby and see him giving it all he’s got. If Bobby has his way, this isn’t the last OMSN, and it will go on. He doesn’t know who will sing it. They’ve probably been born, but he doesn’t know if he knows them for sure. It’s a good way to leave off. 

One More Saturday Night - 6/23/74 - Miami, FL

For all like 12 people who hang out at the listening party (lol), I am under the weather and won't be hosting a thread for tonight's show. If anyone wants to run a thread, please feel free. I plan on being back at it next week (show schedule permitting). Sending you love and light ⚡️❤️🐢

Update: as some amazing listeners predicted, tonight’s show was a rebroadcast of June 7, hosted by Elijah Funk. Show notes are here.

Hello Listening Party Friends! 

We should have another John-led listening party tonight. 
Also tonight, we’re at the beginning of the Days Between and a year from GD60. There’s probably a lot of feelings coming up for a lot of us, so I’m not posting a question tonight. Feel free to share what’s on your mind or just hang and vibe.

John: Tonight’s a deep show with us being in the Days Between and it would have been a year ago tonight (the Sunday show). He might be intentionally vague about some of that tonight and he may tell more of that down the road. It’s not his story to tell alone. For now, he thinks anyone who was at those shows is thinking about it. It would make it a year since we’ve had a Dead & Co show (except maybe for COVID?). So it might get a little heavy tonight.

Grateful Dead music is about the weary; still finding a way to get a smile on your face, though you might have to pay for it later. Which debts do you pay and which do you defer? Learning that is growing up.

We’re starting with Truckin’. Even a lot of nonDeadheads know this one. It’s Bobby’s phonetical tour de force, and that’s part of the reason they’d keep it slower. If John was ever the one kicking it off, he’d be sure to give him that tempo space for those lyrics. 

Truckin’ - 9/11/83 - Santa Fe, NM

John: If you hear a soft rattling sound, it’s because he’s wearing a necklace inspired by Bobby’s guitar picks through the years. It was a gift from Bobby’s wife, Natascha. 

Anytime the band played a cover, The Grateful Dead never wished the song was theirs. They just played it their way and made it their own. Dear Mr. Fantasy, a Traffic tune, was made into the Dead’s own. 

Dear Mr. Fantasy - 3/27/88 - Hampton, VA

John: He’s never heard a song arrangement like this. It’s originally by The Marvellettes.. It’s quite the title, especially for an old R&B song. 

When The Hunter Gets Captured by the Game - Jerry Garcia

John: There are so many valences and axis on which a Dead song can be played. It can be fast or slow or happy or sad or it can be what he calls smutty. It can goes all kinds of ways and sometimes, it just goes barrelhouse.
That’s what we’re going to hear next. This next version of Eyes of the World is a rare one. Hearing a rare one is like getting a holographic card in a pack. That’s all he’s really doing here; just "rippin packs and playin tracks."

Eyes of the World - 6/8/74 - Oakland, CA

John: Tennessee Jed is next. It’s the opposite of smutty. There’s a featherlight intro to the tune. 
Sometimes he likes to do a GDLP that does the big ones with little ones sprinkled in. He doesn’t want to play games with us this week, his heart is swollen, so he’s focused on the biggies and he’s not afraid to lace two of those together this week. 

Tennessee Jed - 6/18/74 - Louisville, KY

John: You heard in order, Eyes of the World, Tennessee Jed, surely you’re thinking he’s throwing you a deep cut. You’re wrong. He’s going to Sugaree. Who doesn’t love a Sugaree? Sometimes you go to a show and it’s stacked. That’s what he wants to do tonight.
He loved playing it with Dead & Co. Just leave it in.

Sugaree - 9/24/76 - Williamsburg, VA

John: We’re moving onto a JGB. His theory as he’s putting this together is that Bobby’s musical dream was that he was a country western singer and Jerry’s musical dream was as an R&B singer. We’re about to hear The Way You Do the Things You Do. With Jerry’s playing, and the way he plays, he would have easily been in an R&B band. He wasn’t playing them dreaming he was good enough to play them. He was dreaming that he had been young enough to have been on the records. 
This is the most authentic guitar playing by anyone covering anything in life. 

The Way You Do the Things You Do - 5/21/76 -  Jerry Garcia Band

John: It’s Althea time. This is a particularly easy going Althea. The recording itself has something to do with the tune. It’s very pure and direct. He likes some that have room noise and space and sometimes he prefers ones that sound like they’re plugged directly into your brain. 

Althea - 9/3/80 - Springfield, MA

John: Big Railroad Blues is one of his favorite Dead tunes. It could have been a key tune in anyone’s catalogue. 
There’s never a moment where Jerry’s playing on this and it’s not–as they’d say in the guitar world–burning. 
These guys spent more time in college than anyone he knows. For a bunch of guys who grew up in the school of life, they spent more time in college than even most professors. 

Big Railroad Blues - 10/26/71 - Rochester, NY

John: This week marks an observation that’s taken place for as long as he’s been aware of the music. It’s the Days Between. Jerry was born on August 1 and died, 53 years later, on August 9.
It speaks to the inventiveness of Deadheads that they’ve chronicled it this way.
It’s been a year since Dead & Co have played a show. 
There’s a part of his heart that wants to sit for two hours that wants to tell you all that means to him but there’s also a part of him that just wants to play the music.
Letting go in grief is really interesting. You might not even know that you were holding onto the fact that it’s been a year since Dead & Co played a show. It just keeps going like a fractal. You always want it to not be a year since Dead & Co played a show. He finds himself vulnerable for those reasons, so it’s time for Morning Dew. 
It’s a Morning Dew with a lot of contours as Bobby would say. The second part is one of those pin drop moments. 

Morning Dew - 6/18/74 - Louisville, KY

John: Some weeks back, Elijah Funk guest hosted the show where he mentioned liking a standalone Scarlet Begonias as opposed to the ones that went into Fire on the Mountain.. Everyone played differently knowing it was their only shot. He was absolutely right about that. You almost hear the echo of Fire On the Mountain. When you know you’re on your last quarter, you appreciate your video game even more. 

Scarlet Begonias - 6/30/74 - Springfield, MA

John: This has been an especially heartfelt GDLP.
Both for the feeling he has when the music is playing and how he feels talking to us. It’s an ongoing journey. An ongoing chemical reaction. There’s happiness, gratitude, sadness, disbelief “wow I was part of that.” He wants to do it better; did he do it right? He wants to just show up to it; show up for it. So he’s going to play Days Between.
It was written by Hunter and Garcia in the final years of Jerry’s life. The torch was carried by Bobby and John always felt like if there was ever a tune to give Bob alone time on, it was this one. Everyone hang up and let Bobby talk to Jerry. The band was there to be the backing track to Bobby’s conversation with Jerry. 
He’s going to play a Wolf Bros tune. And that band was Bobby’s ideal of his vision. It was true to Bobby’s idea of what he wanted the music to sound like. What could be more of a melding of these two events we’re thinking of on this date than this? 

Days Between - 6/9/21 - Wolf Bros

John: He always thought of Wolf Bros as Bobby’s taking a break from John. If he’s worked with someone for a week, he always tells them to forget he exists on the weekend. 
There is no one like Deadheads. They build and rebuild. They built the days between, the lot, shakedown street, Samson and Delilah never miss a Sunday show. 
He’s attached to the heart and soul of rebuilding. He has a heart as big as a house for all of this. 

And We Bid You Goodnight - 4/2/73 - Boston, MA

Hey now! I think there’s a listening party tonight with John back as our intrepid host. 

I think we can say that plenty of Dead songs tell a story (e.g. Lady with a Fan, Brown Eyed Women, Wharf Rat, Jack Straw, etc.). If you could be a character, or even just exist in a Dead song, which would you choose and why?

John: He’s feeling rested and relaxed and ready to rock. He’s thankful for Mark Pinkus hosting last week’s session and admires him for being such a faithful steward of the Grateful Dead’s legacy and just an all-around good guy and so welcoming of John. 

He’s got a list of songs perfect for the summer. There’s a little Dead and Co, but mostly Dead. It’s more fun for him to listen to when it’s the Dead. He can be in the crowd that way. It’s also a way of proving to himself that he’s always loved the music and didn’t get into it just because he was in the band. 

We’re starting things with New Minglewood Blues. It's a great first song in a set. It’s played with a nice chug this time around. Phil Lesh’s bass is pushing the song forward and you can hear him clearly on this track. It’s from San Bernardino, CA, (which is one of his favorite California towns to say). 

New Minglewood Blues - 2/26/77 - San Bernardino,CA

John: He does feel a little bit like we’re just getting started so we’re keeping it light. We are going to go slightly more complex, to something with a few more chords. It’s Brown-Eyed Women and we was going to play the slowest one but then found the best one. BEW and Tennessee Jed that start with the electric guitar, you know what you’re getting [John continues to vocalize the intros that we’re all so familiar with, which I can’t even begin to transcribe.] 

Brown-Eyed Women - 5/25/77 - Richmond, VA

John: He wants to play Bird Song next. It shows up the same as when he put this show together, it can hide on the setlist. It’s always a meditation as most is on one chord. It’s a modal thing that stays on this one color. The quest for greatness becomes what can you express over that droning note. He might never have looked at a setlist and thought (enthusiastically) “Oh, great, it’s Bird Song!” but every time he got into playing it on the setlist he thought (appreciatively) “oh, great! It’s Bird Song!”
He loves a Grateful Dead recording when the guys were close to home. They’re well-rested after sleeping in their own beds and ready to play.  

Bird Song - 8/25/72 - Berkeley, CA

John: He’s gonna play a version of a song he’s had on his mind for the past few weeks. It’s an acoustic FOTD recorded before the release of American Beauty (which had this as a track). It’s an interesting live snapshot where it’s played much like it was on the record. 

Friend of the Devil - 4/18/70 - San Francisco, CA

John: That recording has a patina on it that makes him want to drink cool water out of a hat. 

He needs a Jack Straw a lot of the time. It’s the reference song for him for GD. It has a little bit of everything. Bobby vocals. Jerry vocals. A little bit of guitar or a lot of guitar. It’s an MRI that shows us the internal organs of the band on any given night. He can tell from a Jack Straw how that band was doing. 

Jack Straw - 7/31/74 - Hartford, CT

John: It’s time for PITB. If you’re a tried and true Deadhead, you’re happy for this to come up, but if you’re new to the music, you may not understand, so he’s going to explain it: 

It begins with a form a bit like walking from an urban area to a marshland. And you may see some things you’ve never seen before (or rather hear). And it can be beautiful things. And you just let it happen because you eventually come back out onto a sidewalk glad for the trip. Wherever you are in the world, it’s going to sound entirely different. That's the beauty of this music.

Playing in the Band - 12/10/73 - Charlotte, NC

John: We’ve already heard FOTD from the same show this next track is from. FOTD is from American Beauty and because they were released so close together, there’s also a song from Workingman’s Dead, New Speedway Boogie. 
For some Dead & Co insight on this tune: he’s fond of this song because the way you made the song shimmy was the way you made it what it was. The tune has a barrelhouse blues kind of quality. It wasn’t the note you played but how you were playing. He loved making it to the microphone in time to sing “Mountain!” and he’d make it a little game to see if he could make it to the mic in time. “Mountain!!” 

New Speedway Boogie - 4/18/70 - San Francisco, CA

John: We speed forward into Sugar Magnolia. And the opening notes on Bobby’s guitar are so clear, they’re possibly high def. His vocals are so strong and you just think, “that guy’s not here? How can that be?” 
And then John gets existential thinking about Bobby from the track in 1973 and thinks, “that guy is going to know me!” We’re going to listen to a very ignorant Bob Weir (ignorant to John Mayer, John says laughing). When John says something sincere, he has to break it up with a joke, so now you know he was sincere. 

Sugar Magnolia - 3/24/73 - Philadelphia, PA

John: He’s a very spirited, well-rested, happy John Mayer. He’s going to share that with us in this next track, Big Bossman, sung by Pig Pen.

We know that the Dead started as a bit of a blues band, but if you go back to 1970/69 and these guys, white guys, from the Bay Area start this and try to take on Jimmy Reed. They love blues music so much, they’re just going to start doing it. There’s very little insistence from the rest of the world that you should, and they’re probably explaining to people why they’re doing it. They do it with such completeness that no one bats an eye. You think, “hey this is part of the thing we know and love.”
Imagine getting together with your friends and saying “let’s do this with so much heart” that it becomes part of the catalogue. 

Big Boss Man - 4/13/71 - Scranton, PA

John: This is a Dead & Co song. Terrapin Station that every time it came up on the setlist, he knew it would be a great night. He wishes they could have played it every night. There’s so much that can be done with the song. 

When he hears it, he feels like he has contact with what made the 1970s the 70s. There’s a dragon flying around somewhere in TS. There’s a renaissance faire in TS. There’s jousting in there. It’s a fantasy vibe from the 1970s. 

John really took it out for a walk, as Bobby would say, with Jeff Chimenti. There was always a time after the solo where things got placid. John would have liked to conduct it and they’d just stay in it awhile, then John would look over at Bobby like “okay, okay, we’re bringing it back in.” 

Terrapin Station - 7/1/23 - Boulder, CO

John: Two more songs. The first is a Bob Dylan song that Bob Weir, to an extent, made his own. I think Bob Dylan is one of those guys who, even when you’re friends with him, he’s still Bob Dylan. Weir toured with Dylan and it seemed like he had Dylan’s stamp of approval. 

He likes this track because on that day, John was in summer theater for My Fair Lady playing Professor Higgins. 

When I Paint My Masterpiece - 7/18/90 - Noblesville, IN

John: We’re ending this week’s show with a more recent version of a ballad. Stella Blue is a song you can find in the early Dead, but there’s something that happens when you mix the fragile message of Stella Blue with 80s/90s GD. A lot of the sounds you hear are sounds John would make on keyboards while waiting for his guitar lessons. They were adopting a new technology, so you hear a classic GD tune with new tech. 

Stella Blue - 4/3/89 - Pittsburg, PA

Hey now! According to the interwebs, we have a guest host tonight, Mark Pinkus, head of Rhino Records. You’ll recall that Rhino Records provided John access to the Dave’s Picks archives that we’ve been enjoying hearing on the show. We’ve had some great guests on the show and 
the Grateful Dead and Dead and Company had some great hosts too. 

Which brings me to the question of the week: who has been your favorite guest to sit in with either GD or D&C and/or who would you have liked to see play with the band?

Mark: He’s been at Rhino Records for 34 years and the Grateful Dead’s label for 20 years. He started in 1983 as a young GD fan. He met a girl at summer camp who was a fan. He immediately drove from camp to the record store and bought the only album they had - Skeletons from the Closet. The first song from that record is the first GD song he ever heard: 

The Golden Road (To Unlimited Devotion)

Mark: The very first show a year after he got into the band, July 13 ,1984. He drove up with his friend David, and they became lifelong Deadheads. He’d seen plenty of bands prior to this and from his prior experience he was expecting the songs from the album. They didn’t play that album. Instead they opened with Bertha: 

Bertha - 7/13/84 - Berkeley, CA

Mark: The next song comes from a fun show. He first spoke to John in 2015, shortly after the Fare Thee Well shows and before Dead & Co. He’d sent John a bunch of CDs, and John called to thank him. They both agreed that Brown Eyed Women would have been a massive hit for the Dead if there had been a studio version and had it been treated as a single. 

Brown Eyed Women - 7/31/74 - Hartford, CT

Mark: This is a special song for Mark’s family. They were at a Dead and Company show in 2022 and few hours before the show, Mark’s oldest daughter got engaged to another Deadhead. If you happened to be at the show this next track is from with shirts saying “she said yes,” well, that was the Pinkus family and now you know. They also lovingly refer to this as the love show. “They Love Each Other” was the father-daughter dance for Mark and his daughter. 

They Love Each Other - 6/24/73 - Portland, OR

Mark: He’s a huge Brent fan. They say when you become a fan, you fall in love with the keyboardist at the time you became a fan. In keeping with that, his favorite is Brent. He had a CD player with Built to Last in there with “I Will Take You Home.” He’s not playing because that’s a second set song and in keeping with Eric from a few weeks ago, he’s sticking to a setlist and we’re still in the first set, so instead, here’s “We Can Run.” 

We Can Run - 10/9/89 - Hampton, VA

Mark: Next up is Box of Rain. He had to include a Phil tune in this collection. He was in the crowd at a show chanting “let Phil sing” with the rest of the crowd. In one of the few times Jerry spoke at a show, Jerry leaned into the mic and said, “we’re saving him for later.” Phil was a great man and Mark encourages you to check out Phil’s son, Grahame, who is keeping the Grateful Dead torch burning. 

Box Of Rain - 2/28/73- Salt Lake City, UT

Mark: Here’s the final song of the first set. Victim or the Crime. The first time he ever actually met the members of the band in a business setting was August 2010. One of them leaned forward and looked very sternly at Mark and said the Dead were very unique and it might work with other bands, but if you want to work with them, it helps if you’re a fan. 
Mark says, “I have a terrible voice, but name a song and I’ll sing it. 
Mickey looks at Mark with a devilish grin and says, “alright, Victim or the Crime.” Mark delivered a line and the rest is history. 

Victim or the Crime - 10/15/89 - Rutherford, NJ

Mark: Onto the second set. What better way to start 
This song is a family favorite. You could see the Pinkus family at the Sphere poking each other as they sang, “just gotta poke around.” Instead of blasting off to space from San Francisco at the Sphere, imagine being in front of the pyramids as this song rings out. 

Shakedown Street - 9/16/78 - Giza, Egypt

Mark: Another epic tune - Terrapin Station. Anytime you heard those opening notes. 
It’s time also to give Robert Hunter a shout out. Hunter/Garcia was an amazing duo - and he’ll say it - better than Lennon/McCartney. Terrapin Station turns 50 next year and Rhino Records is planning to celebrate it. 

Terrapin Station - 7/4/89 - Buffalo, NY

Mark: We all know about the post-drums/space ballad that Jerry would sing. It was such a challenge to choose only 12 songs to represent the Dead (and he encourages you to try it). There were so many he wanted, but we’re getting Morning Dew. He went to David Lemieux and asked if there were any projects he really wanted to do. David said there was one project - a Europe box set. They make those decisions because if it’s something both of them would buy, they assume, other Deadheads would want it too. 

Morning Dew - 5/26/72 - London, UK

Mark: We’re at the show closer, and to close the second set, it’s Sugar Magnolia. In this song, we get to experience Bobby the Rockstar. Bobby was a great husband and father. He and Bobby bonded over being girl dads. He was also a great sports fan. The last question Mark ever asked Bobby was who his favorite San Francisco athlete was and Bobby took the question in many different directions (and the second set of that show may have been a little delayed because of that conversation). 

Sugar Magnolia - 9/20/82 - New York, NY

Mark: We’re at the encore and one of his favorites is a cover song. It’s unfair to call these covers as the Dead always made the songs their own. He thought about a Dylan song (or even a full Dylan song). He decided on The Weight originally by The Band. This includes vocals from Bruce Hornsby on the second verse.
When he was dating his wife, they would play a fun game and ask her to guess who was singing (though she recently said it wasn’t that fun). She could always tell between Bob and Jerry but would get tripped up on other vocalists. One time he asked her who was on this second verse and she knew right away it was Hornsby. Mark attests that he did marry well. 

The Weight - 6/17/91 - Rutherford, NJ

Mark: All the special shows had a double encore. It’s Mark’s show today, so you get a second encore. He’s always loved this song and remembers the show on 4/22/88 when they finished playing this song, the crowd walked out still singing the chorus. 
This is also Bill Walton’s favorite song. He was at the Dead & Co song when Maggie Rogers came out to sing The Weight. If you’ve ever seen Bill Walton dance, you know he’s all elbows and he elbowed Mark’s wife in the head. She was fortunately fine, but now he can say his wife has been elbowed by Bill Walton. 

Black Muddy River - 4/2/90 - Atlanta, GA

Hey now! We should be back to hearing John’s selections. Not sure if we’ll get new picks tonight since we know John has been actively in the studio, which brings me to tonight’s question (that I don’t think I’ve asked): 

If John’s next album included one Dead song as a tribute, which do you think it should be and why?

John: Back in mind, body, and spirit this week. If you listen in, later on in the show, he’s going to share a Grateful Dead cover John recorded in the studio back in 2014! John loved what Eric Krasno did with the show as a setlist form last week. 

John spent the 4th of July in Montana, and even though we can’t get together to listen to the music (or in John’s case, play), he knows we were listening together - just not “together, together.” He knows we’re out there (or as we say, Weir out there). We’re gonna start with the best Dead tune for the 4th, US Blues. Whenever he’d sing “summertime done, come and gone” he was always grateful when it wasn’t quite gone. Here’s to going out on all those trips. 

U.S. Blues - 5/14/74 - Missoula, MT

John: This track excites him so much, he loves Cold Rain and Snow, but he loves it when a recording has Bob louder than Jerry. It’s a treat and an education in how great Bobby was. It’s also an example of how to accompany someone on the guitar. 
This demonstrates the fluidity of how Bob kept the tune going forward. 

Cold Rain and Snow - 10/24/70 - St. Louis, MO

John: Mississippi half-step uptown toodleloo. He has no idea how a man like Hunter can sit down and put pen to paper and decide that’s what he’s gonna call it. It sure is fun to say, though. 
This track, it’s like those tiktoks that ask what cars would survive 600 miles an hour and you know the ones that get airborne and go up over the overpass? The middle of this tune, is like that were we get up and over the ramp and it slows down on the lazy river and our chances of survival are 100%. If you don’t know what John’s talking about, well, he knows your phone is listening, so you’ll know soon. You can’t tell him otherwise. 

Mississippi Half-Step Uptown Toodeloo - 3/26/73 - Baltimore, MD

John: China>Rider time. This one – and he hates himself for using this adjective – is creamy. It’s a very special track and Bobby Weir is up in the mix and you’ll understand his contribution. It’s kinda like John C. Reilly’s character in Talladega Nights, he was shakin and bakin Jerry into first place. 

China Cat Sunflower>I Know You Rider - 12/10/73 - Charlotte, NC

John: This is from a Dead & Co gig at Hollywood Bowl on Halloween night 2021. They’d do two things when they’d play there: one they’d make a traffic announcement telling people to avoid that exit because it was full of hippies and RVs (and he was proud of being part of the cause for that). 
Two, and maybe because he lives in LA, he could feel a pause for everyone waiting to get back to the show the next night. 
This performance was brought back to John's attention by Elijah Funk. Dark Star>El Paso>Dark Star is strange, but Halloween is a perfect time for that kind of strangeness. 

Dark Star>El Paso>Dark Star - 10/31/21 - Los Angeles, CA

John: Jerry Garcia means so much to so many and so many different things.
For John, one of the facets of Jerry’s music that gets him thinking is when Jerry plays the blues. John wants to play it for his blues friends. Like he’ll wonder if Eric Clapton has heard a specific track because it would give him a new appreciation for Jerry (which he’s sure he has heard it.)
This next track is the perfect example, case in point. Jerry could have had a career as a blues musician. It’s one of the many facets of Jerry Garcia. 

Next Time You See Me - 12/7/71 - New York, NY

John: This is a two-birds with one stone because he’s been wanting to play PITB and he doesn’t think he’s played a China Doll. It shows off how great a singer Jerry was. You should check out the 1985 shows as they’re transitional. [John proceeds to explain how the ‘85 shows bridge between the music of the early 80s and the late 80s/early 90s and realizes that’s just how decades work.] He’s gonna go sit in the corner. No. He’s gonna go dance in the corner til his dunce cap falls off. 

Playing in the Band>China Doll - 4/28/85 - Palo Alto, CA

John: He recorded the next track in 2014 a year before he met up with any 
He just loved the Dead so much, he wanted to cover them. 
Aaron Sterling, Jim Keltner were both on drums. The drum track from this tune became the drum track on Roll it On Home. He thinks he’s going to add it to the channel because he loves it that much. 

Friend of the Devil - John Mayer

John: The female background vocalist on that track doing the harmonies was actually John. He enjoys singing as a woman. . .
It’s time for a Dead and Co track. He listened back to Foolish Heart and he enjoyed listening to Bobby picking up the mantle from Jerry. It has a special sincerity to it where you can tell Bobby is picking up the sword. 
It’s from Folsom Field from Boulder, CO and omg to be there on any date. . .

Foolish Heart - 6/18/22 - Boulder, CO

John: We’re closing this week by leaving us on a sincere note. He knew by being in Dead & Co that he was a passive route for people to something more important than him.
That was never more apparent than when he played Brokedown Palace. He’d look into the eyes of men older than him, men who didn’t care at all about his solo career [laughs]. These men were communing with someone they lost. You could always tell who was standing there for two or three or four [other people]. When you play a song like Brokedown Palace, they unpack in front of you and if there’s ever a time when someone gets to that place, it’s where they reanimate for six minutes. It’s one of the shortest Dead songs but that might be because of it’s power. Sometimes their eyes were closed, but even when their eyes were open, you could tell they were with someone else.
Now he has that sensation as well. We move forward in life and embrace the was. You can’t rail against the was. For there to be a was, there has to be an is. Do as much is as you can this week, because when it becomes was, is turns to gold and he has tons of gold now. 
He’s in a good place this week where he can say that without breaking into a thousand pieces. 

Brokedown Palace - 11/17/72 - Wichita, KS

Grateful Dead listening party tonight with guest host, Eric Krasno. Should be an interesting night with picks we haven’t heard. I don’t know about you, but it’s blazing hot where I am. Staying inside and listening to the show is a great end to a long weekend. Speaking of which, how was your weekend?

John: He’s passing the mic to Eric Krasno.Eric started out in Soulive when John was starting out in his career. They’ve stayed connected and been friends ever since.

Eric: Thanks to John for having him on for this. Soulive actually opened for John in 2006 on tour. He’s also from the band, Lettuce, and producer for hip-hop and soul. He’s been a deadhead since he was 12 years old. He was introduced by his brother and started collecting tapes. 
He was able to later tour with Phil, but also shared the stage with Bill and Bobby. It’s given him a deeper appreciation for the music. 
You know it’s an epic show when the band opens with Bertha. This is also his wife’s favorite Dead song. This performance is from an underrated era in GD music. 

Bertha 04/27/71 - New York, NY

Eric: Spring 77 is probably his favorite season of the Dead. The band found a precision and freedom in their playing. 

Fire on the Mountain > Scarlet Begonias - 5/5/77 - New Haven, CT

Eric: The boys bring in a new voice to the mix in this next track. When the vibe was right, it was a great vehicle to push a performer into improvisation and bring new sounds to the band. This is true of Branford Marsalis. Eric had Branford on his podcast and Branford said he had no idea what he was going to play. He just got up there and did it. Branford doesn’t sound like a guest at all, but rather a member of the band. 

Eyes of the World - 3/29/90 - Uniondale, NY w/Branford Marsalis 

Eric: This is one of his favorite versions of PITB. Their great moments of improvisation were conversations. You can hear Jerry opening new doors with the sound, but no one player is dominating the conversation. 

Playing in the Band - 8/27/72 - Veneta, OR

Eric: This is one of the most unique moments in GD history. The band took a break from touring to create and record Blues for Allah. After recording, they revealed some of the most complex and intriguing music. The composed and improvised sections fit together seamlessly. 

Help on the Way >Slipknot! >Franklin’s Tower - 8/13/75 - San Francisco, CA

Eric: This recording he was actually in the building when it was played. It was his intro to the Dead and Dead culture. His brother dragged him along, without tickets, looking for a miracle. They walked the parking lot with their fingers up. They ran into his brother’s friend from college who knew Bob Weir and they ended up with floor seats and got to go backstage and high five the band. He later found out from Phil that Eric’s now friend, Graham Lesh, was there that night as well. Graham was 3 and Eric was 13. 

This is Dark Star filtered through 20 years of the band’s experience. 

Dark Star - 10/16/89 - Rutherford, NJ

Eric: As a major fan of late 70’s GD, he had to include something from Cornell. 
This Morning Dew exudes pure emotion. As a guitar player, what gets him is Jerry’s sense of dynamics, the balance between holding back and playing out. 

Morning Dew - 5/8/77 - Ithaca, NY

Eric: This next one is one of his all time favorite songs. Hunter and Garcia are some of the best songwriters of all time and this is them at their best. They could break your heart with a song and many of us have cried to this song. 

Brokedown Palace - 12/10/71 - St. Louis, MO

Eric: Having been a Deadhead since the age of 12, Eric’s greatest gift was learning from Phil Lesh. Phil listened differently and treated improvisation as a conversation. Box of Rain was Phil’s first collab with Robert Hunter. He wanted to write a song for his father. He gave the melody to Hunter, who wrote the lyrics to fit Phil’s idea. It’s dedicated to Phil Lesh. 

Box of Rain - 1970 - American Beauty album

Hey now! 

We’re back to John’s picks tonight. It will be interesting to see if Don’s episode inspired tonight’s picks. 

With summer in full swing, and many of us coming up on a holiday weekend, what is your go to show to listen to on a road trip? I’ll start with Dead and Company in Boulder, CO on July 3, 2023. 😂

John: The contours of grief are interesting and surprising to say the least and this has been a tough week for John in terms of losing Bobby. Your dreams are like TV shows that you’re forced to watch. They set you up emotionally for the day. 

He doesn’t want to fake his way through this or cry all over us, so he’s going to play a few he wants to talk about and then some “best of” GDLP songs. 

He thanks you in advance and from afar for understanding that sometimes you just get punched in the face with grief. 

These first two are ones he heard in Andy Cohen’s apartment. 

A gentle Althea from Barton Hall, but not the most famous one. It’s from 1981 (and he’s gone on a 1981 spiral which he’ll share in a future show). 

Althea - 5/16/81 - Barton Hall, Ithaca, NY

John: How grief works continues to flumoxx scientists. 
Every once in a while you have a dream that you’re playing on stage with the band and you wake up and there’s no band. It’s just going to hit you some weeks. He’s not trying to avoid working, it’s just been a gut-punch kind of week. It’s probably like that for you too some weeks. He doesn't want to be crying all over us. He wants to be dancing in the streets!

When he was with Andy Cohen in NYC this week, he and Andy agreed that the only Dancing in the Streets that matters is from Cornell University 1977. He’s not the biggest fan of Dancing in the Streets, but he is a fan of THIS version of Dancing in the Streets.

Dancing In The Street - 5/8/77 - Ithaca, NY

John: He realized part of why he likes doing the show so much is because it reminds him of writing a setlist with the guys, but he misses having Bobby push back with “well. . .” and Bobby was always right because he was the guy that wrote the songs. 
This is widely regarded by Deadheads as the best performance of 1990.
It is one of the most satisfying tunes to play for the artists, and it’s satisfying for the listener. 

Ramble On Rose - 3/29/90 - Nassau, NY

Where was I when memory? Lost Sailor into Saint of Circumstance is one of John’s favorite Bob Weir compositions. 
He was at Hotel Cafe in LA and his back went out. He went back to the hotel (where he was living at the time) and took a pain killer which did nothing for his back but much for his wellbeing (at least temporarily). He stood in the bathroom since he was without an amp and he had a phone on the sink recording him figuring these songs out. 
Lost Sailor is one of the moments he’ll miss the most with Bob being gone as Bob had this dreamy place he went to when he played. 

Lost Sailor > Saint of Circumstance - November 30, 1980 - Fox Theatre, Atlanta, GA

John: John: It’s Dead & Co. archives - he notes that it’s the first time he’s recognizing this as an archive now, but he’s holding onto the honor and not the sadness of this being an archive.
Saratoga Springs was a very important place. They never played a bum tune there. It’s a Thunderdome of groove and love. (and the place John once threw out his back playing wiffle ball).
This tune was often a second set tune. John loved kicking it off knowing that they were going to be there awhile (so settle into your beanbag chair). The end of it would become a kind of sermon and John could answer with little guitar bits. 

He’s Gone -6/17/23 -SPAC

John: He thanks us for letting him play GDLP songs from the past. 
Getting hit with the realization of it just happened in January. And we have to be kinder to ourselves and ride those waves. We’re going to something he’s always loved, Jack Straw from 1974. It’s a shortie and he thinks we need that right now. 

Jack Straw - 6/16/74 - Des Moines, IA

John: Pigpen is about sing for us. Great singer and harmonica player. He was in the band until 1972. This is while the Dead in ‘69 was still a rollicking blues band. There’s something about hearing a band that is about to create a catalogue that is colorful and melodic. 
Sometimes he thinks to himself, “they have no idea.” 

Hard to Handle - 12/12/69 - Los Angeles, CA

John: Occasionally there’s a song he can play for us that he thinks will be a mindchanger.
On this next instrumental track, Jerry is doing Clapton/BB King things. This is really more of Jerry with a band and Merl Saunders. It’s a Stevie Wonder cover. 

John discovered this when he took a seaplane to the Hamptons and Andy picked him up there and reminded him it existed. The song is blazing. 

I Was Made to Love Her - 5/21/71 - San Francisco - w/ Merl Saunders

John: What’s better than a real good Bertha? 

For that matter, what’s better than a bad Bertha? It’s like pizza.

This is from the very famous week of May ‘77 that produced the Cornell recording. He’s an expert on May ‘77 Dead. This is a great mix. There's lots of drums, a waterfall of rhythm and Phil's bass sounding great as well.
Bertha - 5/3/77 - New York, NY

John: Next week’s guest host is Eric Krasno! He’s a talented guitar player. John first met him when he was in Soulive. He preceded John in the existence inside the GD universe. He and John have stayed friends. John says next week’s playlist is very clever and something for us to look forward to. 
He’s leaving off with a song so important to him and to others. John did sing Standing on the Moon the first two or three times Dead & Co did it, and then Bobby decided he wanted to sing it, so John let him. It was just how it should be. John believes it was Jerry speaking through Bobby’s signing. John’s guitar-playing toward the end of them playing this was him communing with Jerry and Bobby. John played it a little like sax lines. He played repeated lines like a soprano sax with the idea that he was sending the lines up to the moon. 
He and Bobby were on Artemis -1/Artemis 0 to visit a guy up there named Jerry. 

Thank you for helping him move forward and he hopes he’s helped us move forward. 

Standing on the Moon - 7/3/23 - Boulder, CO

Not Fade Away - 7/3/23 - Boulder, CO

We have a treat tonight with Don Was hosting the listening party. I’m thinking we’ll get some great insights from Don given his connections to both John and Bobby and Don’s skills as a musician. See you all soon!

John: Says he admires Don Was very much and Don is crucial to John’s career and to the music of the Dead. 

Don: Recognizes this is an opportunity that every Deadhead would want to have – to turn people onto their favorite performances of the Dead.
 He claims John is the person who most turned him onto the Dead - even though Don first saw them before John was even born! 
It wasn’t until they started working on Born and Raised that he got into the depth of the Dead. John was a fan back then and he could tell Don what era each song on Sirius was from by Jerry’s sound. 
The influence crept into the B&R album. If I Ever Get Around to Living is one example of the influence. John turned Don onto the nuance of the Dead’s music. It led to Don rekindling his relationship with Bob Weir and lots of other amazing experiences. 
Don’s first time seeing them live in Detroit 1973, but there isn’t great recordings of that show, so he’s going to play the first song from that night (Bertha) but from a show six months earlier. 

Bertha - 4/26/72 - Frankfurt, DE

Don: For bands who have played a lot of shows, it can be refreshing to cover someone else’s songs. It frees you from the psychic baggage of having written and recorded them. The Dead were fantastic at covering Bob Dylan’s songs. 

Don was bass player in Bobby Weir & The Wolf Bros., and they used to cover Dylan’s When I Paint My Masterpiece. 

During lockdown, Don was helping Dylan with his album and brought up that they’d been covering the song. Dylan said, “Oh, yeah. Been meaning to bring that up. Tell Bob Weir he’s singing the wrong lyrics on the bridge.”
Don and Dylan went back and forth for a moment because Don was sure the lyrics were right, and Dylan finally said, no, he’s wrong because I rewrote them. He went over to the typewriter and wrote out the lyrics. They used to be, “Sailing round the world in a dirty gondola, oh to be back in the land of coca-cola” and he changed them to, “Sailing round the world full of crimson and clover, sometimes I feel like my cup runneth over.” Though, Weir never adopted the new lyrics. 

When I Paint My Masterpiece - 3/29/90 - Uniondale, NY

Don: Visions of Johanna is another Dylan song the Dead performed on occasion. He thinks the fans tend to gravitate to the performances of the song from the 90s, but the one we’re going to listen to next is one Don gravitates toward as he thinks Jerry dug deep on the vocals for this performance. 

Visions of Johanna - 3/19/86 - Hampton, VA

Don: In June of 87, Dylan joined the Dead in the studio on San Rafael Front Street Studio to run through the material for the shows. The Dead and Dylan are well-known for playing their songs differently every night. Here’s a recording of them both covering a Rolling Stones track with great reverence and keeping with the original (contrary to how they usually were). They sang the melody note for note with all the original chords too. 

I’m Free - Grateful Dead and Bob Dylan

Don: John mentioned a few shows ago about John and Don driving up to San Rafael to have the jam session with Bob, Billy, and Mickey. They played through the catalogue for three days. 
After playing through for those couple of days, they decided to form Dead and Company. 

Mike Gordon from Phish was sitting in for the first two days, but couldn’t be there for the third day, so they asked Don to sit in. If Don would have prepared the way John did for the encounter, there’s no telling what could have happened. When Bobby broke into Tennessee Jed, Don couldn’t keep up. He felt like his playing on that made them sound like a crummy tribute band in a bar.
But he learned his lesson and was prepared when Bobby called him about playing with Wolf Bros. 
This next version is the one he practiced too prior to playing for Bobby in the audition for Wolf Bros. 

Tennessee Jed - 9/16/90 - New York, NY

Don: Once he started playing in Bobby’s band, he got so deep into the songs, he got to thinking of the songs as his friends. It’s like the songs would meet up with the band and go on cool adventures. It makes him sad to think that he’ll never get to play them again with Bobby. The other day, Don was missing his friend, Lost Sailor. The version we’re listening to is the studio version. 

Lost Sailor - Go to Heaven - April 28, 1980

Don: His first exposure was on the radio in 1967 and it was the first single, Golden Road. They only played it 4 or 5 times. It was last played July 4, 2015 for the Fare Thee Well concert 
It was a studio classic that captured the band’s classic, early sound. 

The Golden Road (To Unlimited Devotion) - The Grateful Dead - 1967

Don: Now if one were to generalize, the early 80s is not usually a fan favorite, but there are some shows that challenge that notion. This next track is from one of those shows. 

Jerry really swings in this performance and is weaving some exquisite jams and the transition into Rider is well-known. 
We’re not going to hear Rider on this one because it goes for another 10 minutes. . .

China Cat Sunflower - 8/7/82 - Alpine Valley Music Theatre, East Troy, WI

Don: His band, The Pan-Detroit Ensemble, started last January to perform Blues for Allah in its entirety and as they were learning these, he was looking for the best versions to learn from. This next version of his favorite, The Music Never Stopped, rocks really hard and it might have to do with the way Phil was laying down the eighth notes. He wishes he would have heard it earlier as it would have changed the way Don played it in Wolf Bros. 

The Music Never Stopped - 2/3/78 - Madison. WI

Don: This next track is his second favorite Weir-Barlow track (Music Never Stopped being the first). When Bobby first gave him this song to learn for Wolf Bros, it was confusing to Don how the groove actually worked. He lost his place in the groove at least once every time they played it. Losing your groove is one of the best things to happen because when you can’t count anymore, you have to just go with it. He was originally going to avoid the Barton Hall shows, but this is just worth the trip. 

Estimated Prophet - 5/8/77 - Ithaca, NY

Don: May ‘77 is considered one of the peaks of Dead performances. We’re going to play a Row Jimmy from that era. It’s one of those songs that you have to count in your head until you internalize all the twists and turns of where the song is going. 

This version has looseness and warmth and confidence all wrapped up in it. 

Row Jimmy - 5/21/77 - Lakeland, FL

Don: We could have done ten years of shows from 1977, so here’s one more. This next track displays the brilliance of Phil Lesh. He’s zooming around and through Jerry’s playing. He was really redefining bass playing and 1977 was a good year for Phil’s playing. 

They Love Each Other - 5/8/77 - Ithaca, NY

Don: We’re going to close tonight’s show with a song that has a deep, emotional connection for Deadheads - Black Muddy River. It’s the last song Jerry sang at his last show before his death. It’s tough to hear how weary Jerry sounds in that last show. The first time it was performed was Jerry’s first show back after his diabetic coma. 

Don prefers one in the middle, when the song is done at its musical peak, without the historical overlay. 

Don hopes you dug the show and realizes we could have approached this a dozen different ways. And intros Dinner Party with Don that’s coming up next. 

Black Muddy River - 4/2/90 - Atlanta, GA

Howdy ya’ll. Looks like we have another listening party tonight. 

I saw a Florida Dead tribute band, Dead All Over, a few weekends ago. Great group of guys and haven’t been playing together long but are solid musicians. It was nice being in that type of space again. Got me thinking about all the smaller, local Dead scenes throughout the country. If you’ve got a lead on a place to hang with other Deadheads, drop it in the comments. Might be nice to meet up.

John: He had so much fun listening to Elijah Funk’s show last week. Elijah’s picks showed how the catalog of the Dead can be used to express who you are as a person.John’s choices are usually “listener friendly” but listening to Elijah’s picks, John has learned that you can go out a little farther, but when you’re not the one cooking, you’re not worried about the salt content in each bite.

We’re starting with Sugar Magnolia. When he heard this Sugar Magnolia earlier this week, he thought about Bobby’s right hand. He can picture Bobby’s hand with his bracelets and Apple watch. You can get old, but when you’re playing, you’re 16 forever. 

Sugar Magnolia - 2/24/74 - San Francisco, CA

John: Nothing like a “Sugar Mag” to display the interplay between Bobby and Jerry’s guitars. 
Big Boss Man is the next tune. It was played in the early 70s when Pigpen was on vocals.
Jerry was doing his barrelhouse, Freddie King, thick-neck-pick up type thing. It made for some great guitar tones.
John was talking to Eric Clapton at one of the Crossroads festivals and embarrassed himself a little.He thought for sure Clapton would have been into Jerry’s guitar playing, so he asked if Clapton ever listed to the Dead.”
Eric said, “No, right around that time, I was in The Cream, and we never really got a chance to cross paths with them.” John was like, “oh of course totally forgot you weren’t just a music fan. Thought you were working as a bank teller.” (He also notes Cream is one of those bands who likes to take “the” out of their name like the Eagles.)

Big Boss Man - 4/13/71 - Scranton, PA

John: They Love Each Other is a theme this week because he was at Elijah Funk’s wedding and they celebrated the music of Grateful Dead together. The venue really made the music sing to John and of course one of those songs was TLEO. 

Next, he’s playing an uptempo version that they played around 1973. John’s theory on this tempo  is that Jerry, Bobby, and Phil thought they were playing They Love Each Other and the drummers thought they were playing China Cat Sunflower. 
It’s kind of how the waffle cone was invented at the World’s Fair, guy serving ice cream, runs out of plates, folds up a waffle, and, bam, waffle cone. He might be making that up. 

They Love Each Other - 3/24/73 - Philadelphia, PA

John: He’s chuffed that we’re sitting alongside him staring at the speakers watching the bass subwoofers go “wuf wuf wuf.” 

He had a thought the other day about Jack Straw and Cassidy. (And buckle up for what’s coming next anytime he says he had a thought lol). One is a man’s name and one is a female name. He thinks Jack Straw has a more masculine composition and Cassidy a female one. He’s going to play a Cassidy now. A song that he knows has named many humans. It’s more of a pink think (if you believe in gender colors like that) and Jack Straw more blue. 

Cassidy - 4/24/78 - Normal, IL

John: After hearing it again, he stands by Cassidy as a pink Jack Straw. 

Weather Report Suite is one of two that the Dead played (Terrapin being the other). Dead and Co never got to play a full suite. Partially because of the difficulty. Maybe it’s in the name? Maybe it’s hard to learn a suite of anything? Maybe he should have done his homework on this, but you always gotta leave a little on the table, right? 

Weather Report Suite - 7/19/74 - Fresno, CA

John: He was at Elijah and Moira’s wedding and he can’t wait to hang out with them as a couple because now you have two friends and you can say they’re family friends.
Who’s in his family? He’s got a couple nice jackets. He’d like to exchange them for people at some point, and it’s not for a lack of trying that he has nice things rather than people in his life. 
He thinks he might be more idea than man. He recognizes he’s making this moment about him. . .

You find yourself at a wedding an hear, That’s What Love Will Make You Do by JGB. He hears something this simple and finds himself standing alone in a corner staring at his shoes. He’s busy reassessing his entire life wondering why he doesn’t make it easier on himself to make this kind of music. 
He’s been listening to the Dead for over a decade but he still gets found by the music. 

That’s What Love Will Make You Do - 2/28/80 - Jerry Garcia Band, Kean College Union Township, NJ

John: Next week’s guest host is Don Was! 
He was there when John played his first note with Bobby and Billy and Mickey. John asked, “does this mean I’m in the Dead?” and Don said, “I think it means you’re in the Dead.”

Johnny B. Goode - don’t sleep on Jerry’s and Bobby’s ability to play rock n’ roll. And when they did it together, sparks flew. 

Johnny B. Goode - 3/20/81 - London, UK

John: That was Jonny B Goode. This is Johnny B Wierd. 

Last week, Elijah said a standalone Scarlet was good because it forced the band to be intentional about the song. John loved that take. He’s not going to follow suit, though. Tonight, he’s playing us a musical mullet. Estimated Prophet into Eyes of the World. Cosmic in the front. Terrestrial in the back. 

Get yourself a cold Coke Zero and ride the rainbow road. 

Estimated Prophet > Eyes of the World - 5/26/77 - Baltimore, MD

John: When he first got into the Grateful Dead, one of the things he enjoyed was looking up a song like Tennessee Jed on Spotify and running down the list listening to the first 10 seconds of each one and hearing the differences in the way the song begins. 

When you hear the opening of this next one, you know it’s going to be a good one. The mix is also fantastic. It’s a calliope it’s like a carousel with the horses going up and down as you hear Jerry then Bobby and Phil bringing in this bass line. 

Tennessee Jed - 3/24/73 - Philadelphia, PA

John: Next we’re going to Terrapin Station. Whenever he hears that beautiful chord strum out of the mist. You know that leaf is going to bloom into a beautiful flower. He’s teary-eyed just thinking about it. 

How lucky were you if you went to college in the 70s? The Dead would have played somewhere near you. 

Terrapin Station - 11/2/77 - Seneca College Field House, Toronto, ON

John: We’ve come to the end of another listening party and you might realize you haven’t heard and Dead and Company song yet, but you’re about to. He was emotional listening to Standing on the Moon. It was a mix of sadness and gratitude. If you 

He wants to go out on a high note in the spirit of summer. He wishes we were out singing this at each other, but encourages us to sing it out in our kitchens, rooms, cars, places of worship. Summertime is on its way. 

US Blues - 6/9/23 - Wrigley Field, Chicago, IL

We’ve got another listening party tonight hosted by Elijah Funk from Online Ceramics. You might also remember the G-Shock collab between Hodinkee, and Online Ceramics (curated by John).

Online Ceramics has been known around the lot. Has anyone wanna share meeting Elijah or Alix or cool merch you got from them?

Hope you're all doing well.

Before the listening party started, there was an intro bump for “Cherish” by Madonna. John shared he had this playing on his bluetooth speaker the last time he was in Mexico with Dead and Company. Thought it was a fun thing to include.

John: As Dead and Co was making it’s name, OC was in the lot at Shakedown Street, telling the story of the band through artwork and giving fans of the music - young and old - the ability to express themselves. It really helped tell the story of the band. 
He is a very studied deadhead, a true original, so we’re in for a treat. 

Elijah: He’s the designer and artist behind the brand. He did a few tour announcements for the band as well and it’s been an honor. He gives thanks to John for having him in his Sirius studio. He says the studio will probably smell like patchouli and he sends his apologies for that.
He’s been listening to the Dead for his whole life. It really became solidified in college after a fateful afternoon with his roommate’s bong. 

There was never a studio version of Bertha, but this is probably as close as we’ll get to one. 

Bertha - 4/27/71 - New York, NY

Elijah: 
Two Sundays ago he was listening when Andy hosted and he realized Andy was selecting two of the exact same songs Eliijah was planning for tonight. Confirms they have great taste, but Elijah would have to go back to work and pick something else. 

Dick’s Picks 18 is one of Elijah’s all time favorites. Andy picked The Music Never Stopped, which Elijah had on his list for tonight, so Elijah decided to switch to Brown-Eyed Women. This is his favorite Dead song. It’s his most listened to track on his most listened to show. 

Brown Eyed Women - 2/3/78 - Madison, WI

Elijah: 
He doesn’t think the country element gets enough shine so we’re going two in a row without commentary. 

Starting with “Dark Hollow" written by Bill Browning in 1958, which was relatively unknown until the Dead covered it. Followed by “Rosalie McFall” written in the late 1940s by Charlie Monroe. 

These are kinda spooky and not territory where John ventures, and maybe that’s why Elijah is here? 

Dark Hollow - 9/20/70 - New York, NY
Rosalie McFall - 9/20/70 - New York, NY

Elijah: Both songs were recorded at the Filmore East.
NY is his favorite place to go to a show. West Coast shows are relaxed and sunshine.People don’t think a dark, stressful shows as quintessential Dead, but they exist. 

At East coast shows, he’s sustained injuries, almost been arrested for selling tshirts.
His favorite was CitiField in ‘22 and they’re hanging in the parking lot after, as you do. There’s a challenge that develops. Essentially a race back to the city. One team takes a taxi, one takes a train, Elijah’s team decides on Uber. They see a bright, white light and like bugs, they’re drawn to it. Frank Sinatra’s New York, New York starts as they get to the light and the group starts dancing. And everyone starts dancing. As do the cops. 
Train won, Uber came in second, the taxi came in last. His buddy in the taxi was convinced he was being kidnapped by an undercover cop. 

From Dick’s Picks 8 

Friend of the Devil - 5/2/70 - Binghamton, NY

Elijah: We’re going in the opposite direction of chaos in the city to find a little chaos in the music. They’re not a boring, noodling band. 80’s Dead is way more high octane. This is one of the most frantic Jack Straws. Jerry goes off the rails at one point and Phil is dropping bass bombs. If you’re driving, make sure everything is secure bc it might blow the wheels off. 

Jack Straw - 4/6/87 - Rutherford, NJ

Elijah: This next track  is a China Cat Sunflower into I Know You Rider.
This might be one of his all time favorite jams. It’s definitely 
It might be the most joyful thing the Dead ever played. If you’re having a bad day, it will turn it around. Write it down to remember this for later. It has his favorite jam - the feeling groovy jam - in it. 

China Cat Sunflower>I Know You Rider - 11/11/73 - San Francisco, CA

Elijah: His unique role in the Dead world as the guy making shirts, he gets to go to all the shows and it’s his job but he gets to just enjoy. Part of enjoying the show is getting to be with the community. That community is as important as the band. We feed the band and they feed us and we feed each other. And thinking of that community, he was in San Francisco for Wavy Gravy’s birthday. Immediately getting to Haight Street, he was reminded of all the wonderful things about the people who make up our community.He got to meet Wavy for the first time. He’s not sure he believes in gurus, but if he did, Wavy Gravy is one. Online Ceramics has just released a collab with Wavy to support his charitable endeavors. 

Next is a Dylan song performed by Jerry and Merl Saunders. 

Positively 4th Street - Merl Saunders and Jerry Garcia - 1973

Elijah: Next is Dark Star. This is the same weekend as the Dark Hollow and Rosalie McFall from earlier in the show. The night before in fact. 

This is his favorite Dark Star. It doesn’t get enough credit as it was not commercially released. It’s a reminder of all things beautiful. It’s life affirming. He implores you to take the time and quiet your mind. He’s never heard the crowd or the band be quieter. It’s a beautiful ramp up at the end and worth the ride. 

Dark Star - 9/19/1970 - New York, NY

Elijah: The other day, he’s driving home to Altadena from his office and he sees his good friend Nick, driving his VW van, and unprompted, Nick sends him a Scarlet Begonia. It was perfect. Elijah had about 5-7 minutes of this party to fill and it did just that. 
Then Andy picked an incredibly similar Scarlet Begonias, so Elijah pivoted once more to the one we’re about to hear. It’s a stand alone, which might get him in trouble with Deadheads, but he likes that the song itself gets a little more shine. You’re not waiting on the transition into Fire. 
The first solo has a little foray into the bluegrass sound Jerry loved so much. 

Scarlet Begonias - 3/16/90 - Landover, MD

Elijah: Up next are two Dead and Co tracks. 
It’s the world he got to live in and one of his favorite parts of the night, once you’ve learned the rules of engagement, is that when you get toward the end of the show, you check your hat and glasses and other belongings and you find you lose some of your favorite things. It’s just the price of admission.
He got to ride out a lot of shows with John in his van which meant he always had to run at the end. Either to his booth or to John’s van, Elijah was running. You have to be on time in rock and roll. This next song, Standing on the Moon, much like Black Muddy River or Morning Dew, it prompts you to start hugging people, and for him, it’s time to start running. He’s not going to be the guy that screws up the motorcade and makes them late. One night, his dear friend, Romeo insists he has to pee. He bails and decides he’s going to pee behind this giant sculpture behind Shoreline Amp. Security decides they’re going to go get him, but are quickly discouraged from that because they’re told it might not be a good idea because he’s a pro football player and they switch their tactic to very politely asking him to come down. He eventually does and they make it out. 

Standing on the Moon - 6/25/23 - Fenway Park, Boston, MA

Elijah: 
This is the end of the night. Dead and Co had a select bag of songs, that they superseded the original Dead by making the songs their own. Standing on the Moon is one of the songs where Bob took the reins and made it his own. He and John have a habit of texting each other, “that’s my friend” when they’re proud of one another and when it comes to the solo at the end of that Standing on the Moon, Elijah is proud to say, “that’s my friend.”

Next is one of the most beautiful parts of the end of a Dead show to hear and chant along with Not Fade Away. Elijah was just married (yesterday as of the original air date) so love is on his mind. 

Our love is real and will not fade away. 

Not Fade Away - 7/3/23 - Folsom Field, Boulder, CO

Hey now! There’s another listening party scheduled for tonight. 

I think John's hosting has been insightful. Andy Cohen's hosting put the "party" in listening party. That leads me to this week’s question: who else would you like to hear hosting this little listening party and what do you think their vibe would be?

[Note: John was all over the place in the storytelling this episode. I kept up as best as I could but I definitely missed some things. lol]

John: This is like cooking for a dinner party, he’s watching us wondering if it’s too salty or if the chicken is too dry, but it’s not and he knows that now having sat back and listened to Andy’s hosting last week. 

He’s locked back in wanting to please us even more with the picks this week. 
There’s another guest host next week. . .

Brown Eyed Women is the song that stood the best chance of being on the radio should they have wanted that. When it’s played with the light kind of lilt. (And for all the naysayers who said Dead & Co played too slow, they played it faster than the one we’re about to hear!) 

John loves when Jerry fires off the intro to the song and he can tell just what kind of tune it will be. 

Brown Eyed Women - 11/17/73 - Los Angeles, CA

John: That quick Brown Eyed Women reminds us the Dead could have been a pop band. Pop changed definitions throughout the years, and in the 70s was still pulling from [John singing] “do you love me” and saying things like “woolly bully.”

Do you remember the beginning of Splash? That’s where John heard “woolly bully” for the first time. And John got to sing during Mr. Charlie and it’s so fun to do just that. Fun thing to sing. 

We’re going to hear Pigpen sing it here. 

Mr. Charlie - 3/26/72 - New York, NY

John: Woolly bully indeed. He wanted to say something relative to the song and that’s what came out. It’s like saying, “I love that for you.” It’s what you say when you don’t know what to say. His version is “gotcha” and thumbs upping a text. 

This is another first for the Listening Party. John loved playing this next tune with the guys. It plays like a meditation. John thinks Bobby likes the space and room, the plane of music you can move across. The guitar solo in the song allowed you to take your time with it. 

In 1987, Jerry’s guitar tuning was typically more distorted. In the next version was as plucky as it was back in the 70s. 

West L. A. Fadeaway - 3/27/87 - Hartford, CT

John: Playing one of his favorite tunes - Here Come Sunshine
It’s an amazing insight to Jerry and Bobby’s guitar interplay (which you’ll hear shortly). They’d kind of make a barber pole of guitar playing. A Fibonacci sequence of music. 

Here Comes Sunshine - 11/17/73 - Los Angeles, CA

John: It was so effortless of Jerry to sing probably because he wrote it. It was always a little outside’s John’s range. He found himself trying to tell himself to relax and try his best to sing it. 
Under critical comments on IG, he wants to write that he’s doing his best. 

He recounts on Spinal Tap when the character goes off on the hotel clerk saying, “this shriveled prune of a man” and the clerk says, “I’m just as God made me.” 

And John wants to say this to fans of the Dead as well. He’s just as God made him. 

And if you’re a fan of the Dead, you’re going to love this St. Stephen as it just comes up and there’s a rolling cascade of rhythm between Billy and Mickey and Jerry just climbs the stairs they made. 

St. Stephen - 1/22/78 - Eugene, OR

John: This next track is a  live Jerry Garcia Band track recorded at the Merriweather Post Pavilion, which John has played. It has seats and lawn space and gets packed.

John wants you to imagine you’re there, it’s packed and you’re with your friends and you have half a beer (whether because you already drank half or spilled it from having such a good time) and this starts playing throughout the pavilion. It starts reverberating through the crowd.

It’s a cover of Van Morrison’s And It Stoned Me. 

And It Stoned Me - 9/2/89 - Jerry Garcia Band - Merriweather Post Pavilion, Columbia, MD

John: Also Jerry’s hitting all the chord changes, soloing in each key on that And It Stoned Me. That’s very studied, prepared guitar playing. 

There’s four different live versions of this next song (Friend of the Devils or Friends of the Devils? Attorneys General of the Devil?): Uptempo, half time uptempo, double time slow, half time slow. 

John goes on a tangent on how often the band would shower while touring, basically only getting truck stop-style showers three times a week. John asserts that if Bobby were here he would ask what year the song was from and then say, “yeah, it was more like twice a week.”  

Friend of the Devil - 6/17/76 - Passaic, NJ

John: 
Mama Tried is one of those country quickies helmed by Bobby Weir. It’s a Merle Haggard tune and has always been one of John’s favorite country songs from the Dead. It’s a story about taking accountability for one’s own actions (and perhaps crimes lol). 

Mama Tried - 2/26/77 - San Bernardino, CA

John: 
Deadheads have certain portmanteaus for suites of songs: 
China rider
Scarlet fire
Help slip frank (which we’re about to hear) and -disclaimer- this version is Dead and Company from Folsom Field in Boulder, CO. John doesn’t believe there is a Grateful Dead Listening Party where he hasn’t played a song from this particular show. He’s thrilled to have such a great show to pull from. That might be arrogant, but as he gets older, he feels that he would benefit from a little arrogance to correct the divot he has in his self worth. 

Help on the way is what they’d shout at the end of the Marx Brother’s Duck Soup and now he wonders if that is what they pulled from and he wishes he could call Bobby and ask. He’s going to call Mickey instead and hope the answer isn’t “what are you talking about?” 

Help on the Way>Slipknot>Franklin’s Tower - 7/3/23 - Boulder, CO

John: Next week’s guest host is ELIJAH FUNK. He’s responsible for Online Ceramics and the resurgence of tie-dye and selling shirts on the lot. So whatever story Dead & Co was telling on the stage, Elijah was supporting that storytelling on the lot. 

This is part of Robert Hunter’s writing. It’s a funky assemblage of words kinda of like “half-step, Mississippi uptown toodeloo” which John used to mistake for boogaloo. 

New Speedway Boogie - 12/26/69 - Dallas, TX

John: How good is an Estimated Prophet? It’s really, really good. It’s a spacebound Bob Weir tune. A lot of Bobby’s tunes are very earthbound. This could have an extended jam and Bob was the one who would decide when to come out of the jam and where to go. John would have to look to Bobby to know when to come out of it and there were times when Bobby would have John play longer than John thought he should be, but sometimes that’s nice because it brings out some interesting ideas. 

Great lead up to a song not played by Dead and Company. This is the Grateful Dead in 1983. 

Estimated Prophet - 9/2/83 - Boise, ID

John: We’ve come to the end of our metaphorical setlist.

Black Muddy River has ended plenty of shows, both Dead and Company and the Grateful Dead. 

It comes from Bruce Hornsby on a cover album called Day of the Dead. If anyone is qualified to sing a Dead song and imbue it with all the qualities of the original, it’s Bruce Hornsby. 

Black Muddy River - Bruce Hornsby & Deyarmond Edison

Hey y’all! 

Andy Cohen will be hosting and picking the songs for tonight’s party. I know John has attributed some absolute gems from past shows to Andy.

I’m thinking we’ll probably get some good behind the scenes stories about John too.

Update: It's 9:11pm and there's no Dead tunes. I've double checked Insta and the Sirius app with both say it's supposed to be Andy on LWJM (Channel 4) at 9pm EST. I'm gonna keep listening for a bit either way.

IT'S STARTING! 9:17PM

John: Introduces Andy
Andy: We’re having a Dead hang tonight. He’s been a Deadhead since high school and has a lot of memories of shows and community to share. 
We’re starting with Dead and Co. Andy thanks John for bringing the music back to the stadiums. When Jerry died, Andy believed he would never experience the music the same way. 
John and Andy drove up to Levi stadium for GD50, and while they were there, listening to the band that way made him feel like he was 25 again. He of course still listened to Dead music after Jerry’s death, but it wasn’t quite the same as being there. 
He’s enjoyed hearing John shine with this catalog of music. He loves John on Aletha, Deal, Terrapin, Bertha. 
It’s John’s ripping at the end of Morning Dew that caused Andy to take a second look. It hit him differently and he experienced it in a new way. 

Morning Dew - 6/22/23 - Citi Field, New York, NY

Andy: Going back to the Grateful Dead. Scarlet Begonias was one of his two first favorite Dead songs. 
The song hit him real hard in Chicago sometime in the late 80s. 

Scarlet Begonias - 9/20/74 - Paris, France

Andy: This is the second, “first favorite" Dead song - Terrapin Station. If one starts when he’s out in the crowd, his hands go flying in the air with total abandon– beer spills, he hits the lady’s hair in front of him, it’s chaos. 

He saw the Dead at Red Rocks and lost his friend Jackie in the crowd. They were the last ones in the parking lot waiting to find her. Jackie is also the godmother of Andy’s son. 

Terrapin Station - 7/8/78 - Red Rocks, Morrison, CO

Andy: This next is Andy’s current favorite GD song. He’s heard it so many times, but it’s really hit him in the last few years listening to GD from the 70s. This is from Dick’s Picks Vol. 17

The Music Never Stopped - 2/3/78 - Madison, WI

Andy: We’re going to Alpine Valley Wisconsin for another song that is always, always a banger. We could have taken it from any era but he just picked one because trying to listen to a lot of them and pick one was too crazy. 

I Know You Rider - 8/7/82 - Alpine Valley, East Troy, WI

Andy: Alpine Valley was the first place he ever saw a Dead show. He drove from St. Louis at 18 years old with his best friend and slept in the lot for 3 days. 

It’s always exciting seeing Dead and Co pretty much anywhere - Folsom Field, Shoreline. . .

He saw them at Shoreline after his birthday where he saw them at Hollywood Bowl for his birthday. Andy was high on LSD and everyone was wishing him happy birthday because of an IG post from John, which was incredibly kind of the crowd but also made him feel very exposed. He had also booked the wrong Four Seasons (in SF) and John had booked the one in Palo Alto and so John set up a cot in his room for Andy to recover, though Andy took off and decided to go to the other Four Seasons in San Francisco. John was basically like, "okay, buddy, let me just get you transport." [ed note: think of it being said really gently like negotiating/calming someone.]
Andy did stay for the next Shoreline show, which is the show where the next track comes from. 

Franklin’s Tower - 6/4/17 - Shoreline Amphitheatre, Mountain View, CA

Andy: Dead and Co really got Andy back into the song Casey Jones - he feels like they put a lot of extra sauce. It’s supposed to be phrenetic at the end, but Dead and Co went extra phrenetic. 
He loves the rhythm John and Bobby get into in the following track: 

Casey Jones - 7/1/17 - Chicago, IL

Andy: How ‘bout that sweet, sweet, way John and Bobby landed that plane after a capital “J” jam? 
We’re moving to Jerry Garcia and Merl Saunders covering Stevie Wonder. [ed note: IIRC, vocalist is Sarah Fulcher].

1/23/73 - I Was Made to Love Her - San Francisco, CA

Andy: We’re going back to the mothership of GD concerts. This is such an especially good Sunday night jam from Cornell ‘77. It made him think of Dancing in the Streets differently. It’s groovy and vibey and one to sink into. 

Dancing in the Street - 5/8/77 - Ithaca, NY

Andy: We’re gonna land this plane by listening to Dead and Co because we’re on John’s channel. We’re at Wrigley Field, a very American venue for a very American band. We’re ending with US Blues. Bobby is so fun and the band so tight on this track. 

US Blues - 6/30/2017 - Wrigley Field, Chicago, IL

You can check out more of Andy's musical picks (Dead and otherwise) on his Sirius channel, Andy Cohen's Kiki Lounge on Ch. 302.

Hey now! We’ve got another listening party tonight. Looking forward to jamming out with everyone tonight! 

For the ice breaker/place holder comment discussion, what's your favorite icon/symbol of the Dead? Are you team dancing bears (or are they marching bears?), a classic stealie, a terrapin, or something else?

John: This is the 10th week of GD listening party! 
If you remember, last week, John said he was getting access to all of Dave’s Picks. 
He now has access to all of Dave’s Picks via Rhino Records. He wasn’t asked to say anything else about this, but on his own, John says it’s easy to find things on Spotify, but this is a whole other glimpse at the music of GD. 
You can’t just buy them anymore since they’re limited edition, but you can hear them on Sirius channel 23 and on the archive.
We’ve broken the glass of Spotify and are running out in the field with this Sugaree. 
Jerry’s voice is on point and the guitar playing is still in the early Freddie-King-esque style. 
From Dave’s Picks Vol. 3: 

Sugaree - 10/22/71 - Chicago, IL

John: This is a first time for the next song - which just shows the expanse of the catalogue.

This is probably also one of the most famous in the phrases in Dead history
-What a long strange trip it’s been- 

It’s kind of Bob’s magnum opus performance-wise
It had to be slow enough to accommodate Bob singing all of these lyrics. Bob would say that lyricist, Robert Hunter, purposefully put that many words in to make Bob’s life difficult. 
Singer calls the tempo. 

Truckin - 9/9/72 - Los Angeles, CA

John: If you are auditioning one of these songs to see if you might be a fan, then this next one is for you. 
They Love Each Other is the kind of song you play for someone trying to feel it out and see if they like the Dead. 
This performance is a great throw back to the spring before their big ‘77 run. 
It’s also a great endorsement for two drummers. Billy and Mickey create a sound like a slinky going down the stairs. 
It’s from Dave’s Pick’s Vol. 29.

They Love Each Other - 2/26/77 - San Bernardino, CA

John: Another first for this week. Pigpen is about sing for us. Great singer and harmonica player. He was in the band until 1972. 
This next track is while the Dead in ‘69 was still a rollicking blues band. There’s something about hearing a band that is about to create a catalogue that is colorful and melodic. 
Sometimes John thinks to himself, “they have no idea.” 

Hard to Handle - 12/12/69 - Los Angeles, CA

John: The original writer of the song Hard to Handle  is Otis Redding. John feels he has now fulfilled the bare minimum of his duties here.

Last time, he played Shakedown Street from 1979, now he’s playing one from 2023. 
Citi Field is one of the only sports fields he’s okay with being named for a bank since it’s literally Citi[y].
There’s something about the playing on the guitar on this between John and Jerry that makes it work for him. One of the only songs that if he tries to listen to it blind he might confuse himself for Jerry. 
John’s had a blast playing this in a way that gets people to bop. John has a rubbery neck so it’s not a problem for him (he’s doing it now) as he’s describing it. He remembers Bobby’s notes as whispers. 
Until the very end of D&C, he’d have to purposefully remind himself of the difference between Shakedown Street and Feels Like a Stranger. Sometimes he’d forget and launch into the wrong one.

Also, John says this is what he sounds like when he’s hanging out at home so now we’re getting the full experience. 

Shakedown Street - 6/21/2023 - Citi Field, Queens, NY

John: This is a deep cut - might even be deep for Deadheads. 

Beat It On Down the Line is the track. He thinks they did play it in Dead & Co. because he remembers it starting with varying numbers of hits at the beginning decided by each band before the show. 

From Dave’s Picks Vol 16. 

Beat It On Down the Line - 3/28/73 - Springfield, MA

John: What’s better than a real good Bertha? 

For that matter, what’s better than a bad Bertha? It’s like pizza.

This is from the very famous week of May ‘77 that produced the Cornell recording. He’s an expert on May ‘77 Dead. 
Bertha - 5/3/77 - New York, NY

John: Now we’re really hanging out.
There’s a small list of songs that they used to play in Dead & Co and didn’t touch after a while.
Candyman might have been one they put down after a while and the reason might be because it’s one that “belongs” vocally to Jerry. There’s a lilt to his voice that sells Candyman more than the song itself. 

[at this point John has said “candyman” twice] If you’re a child of the 90s, you know he can’t say it a third time. The song Candyman predates the movie, so we’re probably grandfathered in to saying Candyman more than three times. That’s power that there are adults who would rather pay you money than look in a mirror and say “candyman” three times. That’s a powerful film.  

That’s art. 

And this is Candyman. 

Candyman - 12/9/1981 - Boulder, CO

John: Cumberland Blues is always a fun tune for him to do his chicken pickin’ on. He liked to go back and forth with Jeff Chimenti and his honky tonk keys playing. It’s also an interesting arrangement and none of the chords go where you think they’d go.
John came across his binder where he’d clip in the songs he was working on. Cumberland Blues is in there too since it doesn’t go where you think it would. 
Anytime he relistens to a show close to July, it’s special to him because it was always more fun near July 4. We knew how good we had it and we’d come together and celebrate because we knew that it was special. He never complained about any of it because he knew it was special. Even on his worst day, at his most anxious, he still believed it was the best. 

Cumberland Blues - 7/7/23 - The Gorge Amphitheatre, George, WA

John: It’s been far too long without Good Lovin’.

He thinks this is the most feel-good tune at least in Dead and Co. if not in the wider Dead catalogue. 
Bobby led the charge into a tie-dye, frozen drink, good time. You can’t hear this and not have a good time. This version is an interesting one where they must have worked out the intro before going on stage and just agreed to keep changing the key.

Music was designed to be a celebration, sure it’s a lament sometimes, but you always come out of that into a celebration. Not sure who he’s pointing that but music is better when it’s universal. 

From Dave’s Picks Vol 57

Good Lovin’ - 2/1/78 - Chicago, IL

John: He’s the “hooded” John Mayer. He’s wearing his hoodie with the hood up and he’s gonna post it on the LWJM account. [editor’s note: it was after the show and posted to stories. Screenshots are in the comments.]

Brown-Eyed Woman is another tune that you could play for anyone. They’d ask how it wasn’t in the pop cannon. The answer is the Dead didn’t want it to. 

In retrospect, keep your head down, write pop songs, and hide it behind a culture people think they can’t get it into and when they say they like it, open the door and say, “well, here’s 6,000 more.” 

Brown-Eyed Women - 12/18/73 - Tampa, FL

John: In addition to Dave’s Picks access, he was also sent a reel to reel tape with Workingman’s Dead. He’s totally buying a reel player now. He loves that (not joking) having to go buy something to make something he’s been given work. 

You’re about to hear why Bob’s rhythm guitar playing is praised. It’s perfect rhythm. 

That’s what this is about. Telling you why you should love this or reinforcing why you do. 

From Dave’s Picks Vol 33

Sugar Magnolia - 10/29/77 - Dekalb, IL

John: We’ve come quickly to the end, but that’s what happens when you have 15 minute songs. 

If you’re new to this music, you should listen to the Grateful Dead on your commute. Standard radio has 4 minute slices and it feels so long. If you cut the songs into 15 minute slices, it’s just two songs and you’re there baby! 

We’re ending with He’s Gone, in the early years of playing it, it was a ballad. This allowed Jerry more room to take flight over the tune.

John doesn’t plan on being gone. He might have surprises lined up for us in the future. 

From Dave's Picks Vol 57

He’s Gone - 2/1/78 - Chicago, IL

Happy May! 

Listening party starts a 9pm Eastern tonight with a replay on the Grateful Dead Channel (23) tomorrow at 4pm Eastern. You can find past episodes here: Grateful Dead Listening Party with John Mayer

We’ve enjoyed John’s stories behind what we heard, but what about what we saw? Do you have a favorite visual (e.g. costumes, drones, Sphere)? Drop it in the comments and I’ll see y’all later.

John: He’s getting all of the Dave’s Picks in his archive. GD archivist, David Lemieux, has shared his files with John for use on the show. 

One thing he hasn’t done yet is open with a Dead & Co song and going back farther than he has yet. He likes this because it has both Billy and Mickey on drums. When John thinks about this tune, he retains all of Bobby’s instructions from when they first met up as a band.
Drink all day and rock all night - the band was told to go all out for one bar. It’s a fond memory for John. 

“The ball game is underway” (Hat tip to the Mets)

Tennessee Jed - 6/1/2019 - Shoreline Amphitheater, Mountain View, CA

John: There are a couple of songs that he always used as workouts for guitar playing when he was getting ready to go out on tour with Dead & Co. New Minglewood Blues, he would start with in this attempt to reconnect with Jerry’s playing before tour season. 

It would become a point of contention in Dead & Co when it came to Bobby not wanting to play the V Chord (five chord). It’s kind of the payoff chord. One way to do it was to never hit that last chord. Oteil and John would beg Bobby to play the chord. John thinks there’s at least one night Bobby acquiesced and let them do it. 

The version that follows includes the V chord. 

New Minglewood Blues - 12/29/77 - San Francisco, CA

John: One thing he loves about checking in on performances is when you catch a live performance of a song that’s fresh off being recorded for an album. 
For about a year, the song is performed as it is on the album. It’s the same spirit, the same groove. It’s spiritually the same band who recorded the album.
This Shakedown Street is a killer version because the band is fresh out of the studio from putting it on the album and it carries that fresh energy with it. 

Shakedown Street - 12/26/79 - Oakland, CA

John: He can’t pretend there’s not an album that endeared him to this music. Dick’s Picks Vol. 29 is that album. The Peggy-O on it has an incredible guitar solo. All the guitar solos on Vol. 29 are singable in John’s opinion (though you could say that about anything if you listen long enough) The playing is so lyrical. John would often draw from these performances to play with Dead & Co. This has beautiful playing and beautiful singing from Bobby [edit: though not on this version - this version was Jerry]. 

Peggy-O - 5/19/77 - Fox Theatre, Atlanta, GA

John: Day of the Dead is a great cover album that came out around 10 years ago. It’s by one of his favorite bands, The War on Drugs.
If you had a bias about Touch of Grey, because of how it came out or how it got popular, perhaps all that will wash away for you after hearing this cover. 

Touch of Grey  - The War on Drugs - Day of the Dead album

John: We’re all the people with the memories as we listen together even if John is the one with the microphone. 
If a Grateful Dead or a Dead & Co set were a day at school, Birdsong would be art class. 
“Miss Lippy, I drew a blue duck because I’ve never seen a blue duck.” from Billy Madison
Birdsong was the place you could draw blue duck.

Bobby loved to rock but he loved the gentle rendering of songs like Birdsong. It’s where John thinks Bobby felt like he was doing the most for these songs. Bobby would say to take more time on these songs. 

Bobby would enjoy singing the lyrics how he felt; knowing that the audience would be singing it the way they knew (example on snow and rain). 
It took some time, but eventually John would abandon his classicist nature and join Bobby in singing the lyrics differently – it was kind of a way for them to sort of muss up the audience’s hair. 

Birdsong - 6/22/73 - Vancouver, BC

John: We're hanging out, just chillin. He’s like the teacher sitting on the corner of the desk making up for snow days at the end of the school year by playing Lord of the Flies on the combo TV VCR he wheeled in from the AV room. 
Big River is one of John’s favorite shuffles to play on the guitar. He guesses you could consider it a cowboy song. It’s on the list of “shorties” and works as a palate cleanser. “Speaking of cleansers, Neutrogena . . .just kidding but leaving it in because we’re just hanging out.”  

It got my mojo working [vocal riffing ensues]. It had a little Family Feud in it (or did Family Feud draw from pop music?). The amazing members of the rhythm section of Grateful Dead and Dead and Co have really made this song magical. 

Big River 8/13/75 San Francisco, CA

John: He’s decided he would link his washing machine to his phone. He found out that you can name what LG calls the washtower, so his is named All Along the Washtower. 
Dave Matthews joined Dead and Company on the All Along the Watchtower you’re about to hear. You’ll hear John quote the guitar solo from Stairway to Heaven. 
The whole thing is pretty unhinged musically, tbh, but there are no rules in music. 

All Along the Watchtower - 7/3/23 - Boulder, CO (ft. Dave Matthews)

John: This is a great album:  Cats Under the Stars 
It could serve as a way to get someone into either Grateful Dead or Jerry Garcia because it’s just that good. 
Nobody knows what it means. It’s provocative. 

Cats Under the Stars - Jerry Garcia Band - 1978 album, Cats Under the Stars

John: We’re listening to Black Peter next.
John loved playing Black Peter. He thinks it’s about a man working in the coal mines who got black lung.  
If you write into chatgpt, “do I have black lung?” means you probably do. No one’s ever been to the doctor and said, "I thought I had asthma, but it was black lung!” 
Lots of mining songs in Grateful Dead.
Bobby would sing and John would play it like a blues horn. Here’s an older version for us to listen to: 

Black Peter - 5/34/72 - London, UK

John: Comments that he’s slightly unhinged today and he likes to think we don’t mind [edit: pretty sure I can speak for all of us, and say we don’t mind].

Estimated Prophet is a special song. It’s “space reggae.” 
He enjoys listening to the recordings of  this song because it’s the one he thinks most about the band playing it when he listens to it as opposed to the music itself. 
He realized that since the beginning of listening to live recordings, he’s visualized his ear on the stage behind the band. 

When you listen, do you hear yourself in the crowd looking at the stage? He visualizes himself with the band looking out over the crowd, but maybe that’s because of what he does and it varies for us based on what we do. He’s curious about that. 

Estimated Prophet - 5/8/77 - Barton Hall, Cornell, Ithaca, NY

John: Thanks for hanging out with him as he works through this. It’s still hard to talk about this as an archive or a memory without being able to pour new experiences into the hopper. 
He’s sending us off with a Wharf Rat. 
If you hear Bobby sing “half of my life I spent doing time for some other fucker’s crime,” that really matched Boby’s spirit. 
Even though Jerry originally sang it, Bobby would sing it in a way that you wouldn’t forget Jerry sang it but you’d think that Bobby had always sung it. 
To hear Bobby sing, “I’ll get up and fly away” is an interesting thing to hear from someone so grounded, then he eventually did fly away, as we all will. 
“Oh, c’mon. It’s not that big a deal” was Bobby’s attitude about death and John is trying to remind us (and himself) of that message. 

Wharf Rat - 6/17/22 - Boulder, CO

It's Sunday night and time for another listening party (and listening thread).

This continues to be a great start to my week and I hope it is to yours as well.

Usually I post a question for discussion, but tonight, I'm leaving it up to you. If there's something on your mind you want to share, feel free.

John:  He’s enjoyed hearing from us what this means to us. This is more than music and more than losing a musician. It’s a dwelling and not just a person.

It’s springtime and this is the time of the year, they’d start planning the shows (esp. The Sphere shows). John said he wished they had more time, but it occurred to him that maybe we did. We might have gotten 10 years when we should have only had 7. Some miracles are invisible. 

There’s a little mistake at the beginning of this Franklin’s Tower. Jerry played a little suspended chord at the beginning of the tune and John plans on trying to incorporate it and make it canon when he gets the chance to play this again. 

Franklin’s Tower - 8/13/75 - San Francisco, CA

John: He’s met several people named after this song. It’s a powerful thing to write a song that “births” human beings. It also contains some very powerful lyrics like “fare thee well.” Written by Bob Weir and John Perry Barlow

Cassidy - 5/6/81 - Uniondale, NY

John: The next song is one by Bruce Hornsby. He’s going to give Bruce “his flower” first. Bruce Hornsby was the first guy to go from pop to the GD when he actually joined the Grateful Dead. This is his version of Lady with a Fan from his own album. Bruce is a one of a kind musician with a one of a kind song and that’s what we’ll hear next. 

Lady with a Fan - Bruce Hornsby & The Noisemakers - from the 2000 live album Here Come the Noise Makers (it’s made of live performances recorded during 1998 - 1999)

John: It’s time for GDTRFB - first time on the listening party. John also starting playing this his band in 2013 on the B&R/PV tour. It’s one of those songs that serves as an equalizer as a musician – something you wish you’d wrote. 

Goin’ Down the Road Feeling Bad - 6/28/74 - Boston, MA

John: Let it Grow is one of those tunes that when he sees it on a setlist, he thinks it’s not a biggie because he goes for the big ones. Bob once called him a classicist and after John looked it up, he said, “true.” There’s kind of a rock opera going on in the middle of the song and he looked forward to hitting the C7 chord in the middle. You know it’s a great song and great band when you think, “this chord’s coming up - wait til they hear this C7” 
Let It Grow - 3/14/90 - Landover, MD

John: So there he was, in a dressing room on one of the D&C tours listening to Tales from the Golden Road (this listening party might exist in part because of that show). They must have been playing a Sunday show, because he heard a St. Stephen with Nels Cline (Wilco) playing the guitar - he’s very angular, geometric in his playing. It’s got the sweat of a St. Stephen, which requires a little “flop sweat” (and no, he won't be elaborating on "flop sweat."). It’s a great rendition. 

Wilco/Bob Weir - St. Stephen (Live 2013)

John: When Dead &Co played Morning Dew, it had become more of a muscular tune (as evidenced by the strong opening chord). He loves the earlier ones because there’s a genteel-ness to it. Jerry doesn’t have distortion or reverb – he just has the notes. 

Morning Dew - 11/30/73 - Boston, MA

John: From dew to snow [John trying to work out if dew is a different element than snow - it’s not they’re both water but he’s going to play this song while he works that out.]
Cold Rain and Snow was definitely in John’s wheelhouse but he wasn’t trying to take it from anyone when he played it. 

Cold Rain and Snow - 12/26/79 - Oakland, CA

John: Thank you for helping me unpack all of my memories and my feelings of Dead and Company and Grateful Dead. He likes to learn from Deadheads about tunes he hasn’t heard. He like to still learn. He advises normalizing saying you don’t know as that helps you learn. In the GD world, there are certain portmanteaus like “Scarletfiire” of one song that is often played into another. “Chinarider” is one of these that John very much enjoyed playing. Bobby would set up this tune with the secondary guitar. Bobby would often start the tune when John was getting a sip of water and it was Bobby’s way of saying, “this is going to be the primary groove on this song” and it gave John the time to get into it and they had a blast playing it. 

China Cat Sunflower > I Know You Rider - 6/27/23 - Noblesville, IN

John: We’re turning our focus to a Bobby Weir solo album track. This was being recorded around the time John met Bobby. He might have played on one of the songs (that probably didn’t make it on the album – but John isn’t sure). Bobby was determined to keep doing what he loved - making music. He'd come off the road with Dead and Co and go right back out with Wolf Bros.

Only a River - Bob Weir - from the album, Blue Mountain, released 2016

John: This show is a labor of love and manner of navigating grief. He’s put together when he talks about these things because that's just the nature of broadcasting. There’s ups and downs to the process. Last week he was sent a picture of him and Bobby and he was just done for the day. We have times where we’re stitched up and others when the suture rips. He wants to go out not on a dour note but the way the shows ended. They ended the show with NFA and he saw at the end of the show, people filing out of a tunnel chanting, “not fade away.” He knew that was still happening out in the parking lot and he would play this next song as if it was happening and knowing that was happening.  

Not Fade Away - 7/3/23 - Boulder, CO