Grateful Dead Hour no. 1056

Week of December 15, 2008

Part 1 20:03
Grateful Dead, Road Trips vol 2 no 1: MSG September 90
MISSISSIPPI HALFSTEP
TO LAY ME DOWN

Part 2 36:22
Grateful Dead, Road Trips vol 2 no 1: MSG September 90
DARK STAR->
THROWING STONES->
TOUCH OF GREY

The Grateful Dead played six shows at Madison Square Garden in September 1990, introducing their new permanent keyboardist, Vince Welnick, and with pianist and accordionist Bruce Hornsby along for the ride to help Vince get oriented. All my friends who attended were really impressed with what they heard, and my friend Dan Levy has been saying for years that the whole run should be released. That hasn’t happened yet, but the new Road Trips release takes a nice deep drink from this musical well.

“Mississippi Halfstep” and “To Lay Me Down” are from the bonus disc, recorded on 9/18/90. Some of disc 1 is from 9/19; and the rest of disc 1 and all of disc 2 (excerpted in the second part of this week’s program) is from the second set of September 20, the last show of the 6-night run.

Here’s an excerpt from the liner notes, written by the aforementioned Dan Levy:

After the interplanetary “Dark Star,” I stood there completely stunned—not just by that explosion of spacey creativity, but by the cumulative effect of all I’d experienced that week. I had been throughly shaken out of my sometimes jaded Dead Head torpor. No doubt about it: Something new and promising was happening.

The set closed on a very energetic note, with “Throwing Stones” unexpectedly charging into a triumphant “Touch of Grey.” The long instrumental section in the second half of “Throwing Stones” had never sounded more like a new American anthem than it did with the addition of Bruce Hornsby’s piano, steeped in the songbooks of Stephen Foster and John Philip Sousa. And “Touch of Grey” could not have been a more appropriate way to close this epic series—after Brent’s tragic death, the Grateful Dead’s survival suddenly seemed assured.

I’ll have more samples from this amazing compilation in next week’s Grateful Dead Hour.

Support for the GD Hour comes this week from:

Reclaim Media.com, converting your cassettes and records to digital CD and MP3 files. More information on how to transfer your cassette tape and LP collection is available at reclaimmedia.com.

Grateful Dead Productions, announcing Road Trips volume 2 number 1, MSG September 90: two CDs and a bonus disc with great musical moments from the 7-man lineup with Bruce Hornsby and Vince Welnick on keyboards. More information, sample audio, and ordering link on the official web site, dead.net.