GTA: Grateful Dead – 11/20/1971

We’re back for the second day of Grousing The Aisles week and we’ve got a doozy for ya. Today, we’re featuring a new-to-circulation recording of the Grateful Dead from the fall of 1971. Fall ’71 is one of my all-time favorite Grateful Dead tours thanks to the energy new keyboardist Keith Godchaux brought to the band. Keith’s rollicking ragtime style added a new dimension to the Dead’s sound and, at the beginning, gave Jerry Garcia a worthy foil.

Grateful Dead 11/20/1971 Remastered SBD [FLAC, MP3, STREAM]

Since the beginning of the digital age, deadhead Charlie Miller has turned a number of sub-par recordings into gold by remastering them. Charlie’s latest masterpiece is a soundboard recording of a show from UCLA’s Pauley Pavilion on November 20, 1971. At that point Godchaux had been playing with the Dead for a little over a month and he was starting to get more comfortable with the material. In the past, unconnected Deadheads like myself were only privy to tapes from the FM broadcast of this show, but this outstanding download comes directly from the band’s vault.

The members of the Dead must’ve partied hard the night before, because it takes the band a good sixty minutes to find their groove. While the first set is a bit of a snoozer the second set more than makes up for it. From the minute the band starts the second set with a raucous version of Truckin’ you can tell that these guys were on top of their game. The killer Truckin’ jam dissolves into a quick drum solo before Phil kicks off a massive Other One. Other highlights include a gorgeous Ramble On Rose and a rare reading of You Win Again. You gotta download this show now.

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