[photo courtesy of Dino Perrucci Photography]
In the vocabulary of live Grateful Dead nomenclature, certain songs take on specific identities. Among the song labels are “jam vehicles” (“Dark Star”, “Playing in the Band”, “The Other One”) and then there were songs that were pejoratively described as “throwaways”. Among Jerry Garcia’s vices was a lazy streak. He neither wanted to play extended versions of songs he didn’t particularly like, nor did he enjoy playing complicated songs. One of the positive aspects of Phil Lesh’s live interpretation of the Grateful Dead catalog is that he corrects these two shortcomings. Phil and Friends do not play throwaways — every song played is given a full interpretation, and no song from the GD catalog no matter how difficult, is off limits. At Mountain Jam, the Phil and Friends set opened with a neat jam that segued effortlessly into “Cosmic Charlie”, a complicated and multi-layered song that the Dead retired in 1976 in large part because Garcia just didn’t want to have to play it. And former throwaways “Cold Rain and Snow”, “Midnight Hour”, and “Box of Rain” were given full workouts. Indeed, Cold Rain clocked in at nearly 20 minutes, five times longer than the standard GD version. Even Lesh’s own composition “Unbroken Chain” (streaming below), played only a dozen or so times on the last Dead tour in a perfunctory manner, was extended to nearly twenty minutes. Each segment of the song offered the opportunity for the quintet to explore and with the addition of Warren Haynes to the band for this show only, the guitar work in Unbroken was simply stunning. The audience at a Phil and Friends show also definitely gets their money’s worth — this show clocks in at nearly four full hours of music. For a 73 year old band leader, that’s a pretty amazing feat.
I recorded this set from the right side of the soundboard cage but otherwise in the same manner as the Govt Mule recording and the sound quality is excellent. Enjoy!
Stream “Unbroken Chain”:
Download the Complete show in MP3 and FLAC at Archive.org [HERE].
Phil and Friends
2013-06-09
Mountain Jam
Hunter Mountain NY
Digital Master Audience Recording
Neumann TLM-102s > Edirol R-44 (Oade Concert Mod) > 24bit 48kHz wav file > Soundforge (level adjustments, EQ, set fades) > CDWave 1.95 (tracking) > TLH > flac (320 MP3 and tagging via Foobar)
Recorded and Produced
by nyctaper 2013-06-17
Setlist:
[Total Time 3:50:20]
Set One [1:38:44]
01 Jam
02 Cosmic Charlie
03 Sunshine of Your Love
04 Loose Lucy
05 Cold Rain and Snow
06 She Said She Said
07 Just a Little Light
08 Franklin’s Tower
Set Two [2:11:36]
09 Shakedown Street
10 Low Spark of High-Heeled Boys
11 Crazy Fingers
12 Low Spark (Reprise)
13 Unbroken Chain
14 Dark Star
15 While My Guitar Gently Weeps
16 The Other One
17 Wharf Rat
18 In the Midnight Hour
19 [encore break – donor request]
20 Box of Rain
If you email nyctaper for access to this recording, we expect that you will PLEASE SUPPORT Phil Lesh and Friends, visit the website, and purchase the official releases at the dead.net Store [HERE].
Old hippies don’t die, their tie dye just fades a bit.