Grateful Dead Dave's Pick's Volume 48 ......time to put a fork in this !


I am a collector of this band's material and have been since the 70's. Fast forward about 20 years and bought all of Dick's Picks volumes and really enjoyed them all. Rhino pushed out '' Road Trips '' series which was when the Grateful Dead had Rhino distribute their live shows which were made up of partial shows and were okay at beat. I have all of those as well. Then picked up all of the box sets and there are a lot of those and some were mixed and recorded by Dan Healy which all of them sound like they were recorded under water or by a 12 year old. A lot of them were terrible sounding and he should have been sent to Siberia.

Then David Lemiux picked up the series after Dick Latvala passed and has put out 48 volumes of complete shows and most of them aren't too bad if they were recorded by Kid Candelero or especially by Better Cantor Jackson ........you can tell her stuff right off the bat or even Owsley Bear's stuff.

But the last one and a bunch before volume 48 are just bad.....it seems like they may have got to the bottom of the barrel and are just pushing these put now. I did although reluctantly sign up for the 2024 subscription but just can't help but feel that the quality in sound or the show itself was just not in the same league as others when this journey for them began doing this.

The mid year big box sets have been pretty good for the most part and maybe they should concentrate on just doing those for now. Also, the Dead and Rhino could skip all of the elaborate and sometimes just silly art work on those box sets and bring the price down on them. Some of that stuff is just unnecessary. 

So would like to hear from other's on what their thoughts are on if the Grateful Dead Dave Pick's Series has run its course .......thanks and stay well.  

     

garebear

Showing 6 responses by larsman

I have every one of the annual GD box sets, and they all sound great as far as I'm concerned. Not all the performances were great (the St Louis box set was kind of a waste as far as that's concerned),

But the sound quality has been fine, except for a few occasions where the problem was the PA in the venue, and they generally got these fixed after a few songs.

I also have all the Dicks Picks on CD, but none of the Dave's Picks - I can only go for so much.... but I've lately been buying the live vinyl LP boxes...

If I had to pick a favorite, it would be one of the annual boxes, and my #1 is '30 Trips Around The Sun', with 1 show for every year, and they picked some real winners.... 

They've released a number of complete shows from May '77 on CD and LP boxes, but no full boxes of that Florida one from DP3; I'd like to hear that, too.

From Wikipedia:

Dick's Picks Volume 3 is the third live album in the Dick's Picks series by the Grateful Dead. It was recorded on May 22, 1977, at the Sportatorium in Pembroke Pines, Florida. It was released in November 1995 on Grateful Dead Records.[1]

Dick's Picks Volume 3 was again released, by Grateful Dead Productions, in November 2005 as a digital download.[5]

The track "Sugaree" was also used on the promotional sampler A Glimpse of the Vault, released in 1996.[5

@mahler123 - The reason why people who like the Grateful Dead have multiple versions of so much is that like jazz, there is a great deal of improvisation; some of it is entirely improvisation. Some are very similar, though ever identical, from night to night, and some versions go in entirely different directions, so I'd expect that multiple versions of the same classical work would be for different reasons? 

@stuartk - ah yes, Donna; she could be very good, like on 'Sunrise', but I've always got my finger on the volume button when a version of 'Playing In The Band' starts up that she's on; before she joined, I never thought, 'what that song needs is some tuneless caterwauling'.... I know why I never thought that. If ya can't hear yourself in the monitors, ya shouldn't join in with the singing, 'cause the audience CAN hear you! 

@zlone - I was at one of those Winterland '73 shows; first Dead shows I went to after moving to San Francisco. I was dosing and was very alarmed when Jerry came out minus his beard - it was really bumming me out. 🤣

Got some good photos, though...