The late Bob Weir extolled the virtues of the Grateful Dead as a five-piece band, and sure enough, Dave\u2019s Picks Volume 58 boasts musicianship absolutely sublime in both its unity and intricacy.<\/p>\n
As is the recorded sound, captured by Kidd Candelario and subsequently mastered by Jeffrey Norman. Granted, the quintet leaves ample space between instruments on tunes both languorous (\u201cTennessee Jed\u201d) and spirited (\u201cMe And My Uncle\u201d), but the band is deliciously patient in wending its way through both tempos and their variations.<\/p>\n
There\u2019s a quiet confidence suffusing the Grateful Dead\u2019s playing here, suggesting the group was still flush with the satisfaction from the tour of the continent the previous year. Indeed, the band was in such command of its career at this time that it only makes sense that its overall surety of direction became manifest throughout its instrumental interactions.<\/p>\n
\u00a0Having satisfied its contractual obligation to Warner Bros. Records the previous autumn with the famous triple-LP Europe \u201972, the psychedelic warriors had inaugurated their own record label the fall of this year with the release of Wake Of The Flood. And, those operational accomplishments were also an adjunct to the wealth of original material at the band\u2019s disposal: at this juncture, the Grateful Dead repertoire was arguably at its most expansive in its history.<\/p>\n
The breadth of reach, all the way back to \u201cDark Star\u201d late in these three-plus hours, follows newer tunes such as \u201cBertha\u201d and \u201cWharf Rat.\u201d And those distinctive originals introduced on the Grateful Dead\u2019s live\u00a0album from two years prior are interwoven with multiple cover songs. traditional (\u201cDon\u2019t Ease Me In\u201d) and otherwise (Chuck Berry\u2019s \u201cPromised Land\u201d).<\/p>\n
On top of those are \u201cThey Love Each Other,\u201d culled from Jerry Garcia\u2019s second solo LP Reflections, and \u201cGreatest Story Ever Told,\u201d a reworked cull from Mickey Hart\u2019s Rolling Thunder project of 1972 (at the time of the tour from which this release comes, the percussionist was still on leave from the band).<\/p>\n
\u201cRow Jimmy\u201d is just one of a small handful from the total twenty-five that reaffirms the understated poise of the fivesome is rooted in the graceful authority of the rhythm section, comprising sole drummer Bill Kreutzmann and indefatigable bassist Phil Lesh. The twinkling colors Keith Godchaux coaxes from his acoustic and electric pianos rise from the other end of the tonal spectrum on, for instance, \u201cBrown-Eyed Women\u201d; closely in tandem with both guitarists, the keyboardist regularly adds to the dynamic range of this streamlined Grateful Dead ensemble.<\/p>\n
It thus only makes sense that the music created by this particular grouping of personnel would benefit from the mythic \u2018Wall of Sound.\u2019 The audio wonder of Owsley Stanley\u2019s massive apparatus would make its debut roughly three months after this concert, contained in its entirety on the three CDs of Volume 58, and would further magnify the detailed nuance of the sound(s).<\/p>\n
The logic in the pairing of technical wizardry and instinctive instrumentation is as inescapable as the progression from comparatively compact arrangements like that of \u201cDeal\u201d to the ambitious stretches such as \u201cChina Cat Sunflower\u201d>\u201dI Know You Rider.\u201d\u00a0 Contrasting passages of that kind mirror the dense yet evocative artwork by Chelsea Housand on this triple-fold Dave\u2019s package.<\/p>\n
And, if the overall impact that is this installment of the ongoing vault initiative is not quite the euphoric experience chief archivist David Lemieux describes in his essay in the sixteen-page booklet\u2013alongside some shadowy stage shots and replications of tour documents\u2013it nevertheless comes pretty close.<\/p>\n
In fact, in yet another occurrence of near-mystical Grateful Dead serendipity, the out-of-order placement of the main show\u2019s encore, \u201cUncle John\u2019s Band,\u201d due to disc space limitations, renders the content immediately following and on CD three as an elongated, suspenseful closing. The ensuing drama becomes especially vivid based on the sequencing of two more excerpts from the same source as this bonus disc\u2019s seven tunes, The Omni in Atlanta, roughly a week prior to the show at Curtis Hixon Hall in Tampa, FL, December 18, 1973.<\/p>\n
Juxtaposing \u201cMorning Dew,\u201d another vintage number that keynoted 1969\u2019s Live\/Dead, with a second rendition of \u201cEyes Of The World,\u201d the alternately sprightly and elegiac half-hour or so magnifies the profundity of Robert Hunter\u2019s lyrics on the latter in such a way that a deeply stirring momentum ultimately suffuses the whole of this latest installment in the Dave\u2019s Picks archival series.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The late Bob Weir extolled the virtues of the Grateful Dead as a five-piece band, and sure enough,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":322285,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[135,137,136],"class_list":["post-322284","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tampa","tag-tampa","tag-tampa-headlines","tag-tampa-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/322284","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=322284"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/322284\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/322285"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=322284"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=322284"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=322284"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}