Dick's Picks Vol. 35: 8/7/71 (Golden Hall, San Diego, CA) & 8/24/71 (Auditorium Theater, Chicago, IL)

❤️

Although I'm a huge fan of early seventies Dead, with its liquid trippy sounds, this Pick has to be my favorite of the whole bunch. I'm old enough to have seen the Dead with Pigpen once, in 1970. After Mickey Hart left the band in '71, they were forced to strip back their arrangements to their raw heart and soul guts. What Dick's # 35 captures perfectly is the raw, pure, and LOUD sound of essential Grateful Dead. And this sound was soon to be lost forever - in less than a month Pigpen's failing liver forced him off the fall tour. He would return, but only as a thin and dying man, who was gone by early 1973. In fact, these are called the "houseboat tapes", because these were live tapes given by the band to Keith Godchaux, so he could learn the tunes when he first joined the band to take Pigpen's place. These tapes were only lately discovered by the Godchaux family when they cleaned out Keith's old houseboat in Sausolito - they had been lost all those years (Keith himself died in a car crash in 1980). With some "digital dishwashing" these tapes have been cleaned up into a full blown miracle recording. This is the last and the VERY best of the early Grateful Dead. Play this LOUD and blow your mind, the way God intended !

I really do not understand why this track has not appeared on any of their other works. Its really, really good.