u/South-Style-134

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