The Monkey and the Engineer
Little Sadie
Long Black Limousine
I’ve Been All Around This World
The Master’s Bouquet
Black Peter
Uncle John’s Band
~
Casey Jones
Hard to Handle
Cold Rain and Snow
China Cat Sunflower->
I Know You Rider->
High Time
Me and My Uncle
Dark Star
Turn On Your Lovelight – Grateful Dead 12/26/69 McFarlin Auditorium, SMU, Dallas TX
Note: “New Speedway Boogie” deleted because only a fragment was present on the tape.
Boxing Day in Dallas, Texas! The band played New Year’s Eve in Boston a few days later, but after this they stayed home and did their New Year’s Eve shows in the Bay Area.
The first set is an impromptu acoustic performance. You’ll hear Jerry mentioning that Bill Kreutzmann hasn’t arrived at the venue so they’re going to play a few songs without him.
There are seven songs in this set, two of which are pretty rare in the Grateful Dead canon. According to the Grateful Dead discography at deaddisc.com, “Gathering Flowers for The Master’s Bouquet” is a Stanley Brothers song first recorded in 1949. “Long Black Limousine” was first recorded by Glen Campbell in 1962 and was also covered by Elvis Presley, Merle Haggard, Connie Smith, and others.
The mix on this set isn’t just exactly perfect, and there’s an out-of-tune guitar here and there, but this is a really fun recording.
I wonder if the band was having an issue with punctuality at the time. I saw them exactly one week earlier (12/19/69) at the old Fillmore, and at the beginning of the tape of that show you can hear Jerry saying that Phil was “stuck somewhere” and that he and Bobby would regale everyone with some acoustic tunes until Phil got there. If my memory is correct, they then couldn’t find Pigpen when they were ready to go electric. Some hog-calling ensued, and they found him.
–Dave Spitzer