Grateful Dead – 30 Trips Around the Sun: The Definitive Story (1965-1995) (2015)
FLAC (tracks) 24 bit/192 kHz | Time – 04:37:06 minutes | 10,44 GB | Genre: Rock
Studio Masters, Official Digital Download | Front Cover | © Grateful Dead – Rhino
30 year spanning collection of essential live tracks + an early “pre-Dead” Emergency Crew track featuring Pig Pen! 30 Trips Around the Sun: The Definitive Story (1965-1995) serves as an introductory sampler to the Dead’s live canon, including 30 unreleased performances — one from each concert in the boxed set – along with the 1965 recording of “Caution”.
Initially released as a limited-edition box set so lavish it was on the verge of being absurd, 30 Trips Around the Sun is a deep exploration of a simple idea: tell the Grateful Dead’s story through unreleased live performances taken from every year of their life. This concept reaches its full fruition in its 80-CD incarnation, containing a full unreleased show for every year between 1966 and 1995, but the four-CD distillation operates in a similar fashion and may seem more attractive to Deadheads unwilling to immerse themselves in a monthlong listening session. The closest analogy to 30 Trips in their discography is 1999’s So Many Roads (1965-1995), a five-disc box heavy on unreleased live material, but that set wound up skipping over the fallow periods a chronological march inevitably hits. Aware of this pitfall, the archivists behind 30 Trips selected the finest unreleased shows from each of these 30 years and, for this set, chose to showcase songs that rarely appeared in the Dead’s repertoire. This turns out to be a fairly broad category, encompassing Pigpen singing Lightnin’ Hopkins “The Rub” in 1971 and Donna Jean Godchaux debuting with the band in 1972 via a duet with Jerry Garcia on Dolly Parton’s “Tomorrow Is Forever,” as well as Phil Lesh singing Robbie Robertson’s “Broken Arrow” in 1993 and a bittersweet “Visions of Johanna” from 1995 that closes out the set. As its considerably shorter than its parent, the four-disc 30 Trips Around the Sun never lingers upon the eras of the Dead that cause consternation among fans — here, Brent Mydland’s synths don’t seem quite so prominent and Vince Welnick’s penchant for sambas is hidden — yet this shorter box still illustrates how these eras bled together or echoed throughout the Dead’s history. Most of all, 30 Trips illustrates how the Dead kept circling back to their folk and blues beginnings no matter who supplemented the core quintet of Jerry Garcia, Bob Weir, Phil Lesh, Bill Kreutzmann, and Mickey Hart. While the four or five main keyboardists brought their own signatures (particularly Pigpen, whose rough-hewn growl provided a gritty counterpart to the band’s spacy early explorations), come 1971, the year after the twin masterpieces of Workingman’s Dead and American Beauty, the Dead maintained a groove more psychedelic in spirit than sound. Although this truncation emphasizes this continuity, it’s still possible to hear how the band’s first 15 years were a rapid progression while the second 15 were about reliability, but perhaps the most affecting thing about 30 Trips is the simple passing of time. By the end, Jerry’s voice sounds rough and fragile, Weir’s confidence surges, Lesh’s lines are elastic, and the “Drums” showcase for Kreutzmann and Hart turns exploration into schtick — it’s a mix of emotion and show that’s endearing and even moving. If you take all 30 trips, the Dead’s journey feels long and sweet and unlike anything else in rock.
Tracklist:
1-01. The Emergency Crew – Caution (Do Not Stop On Tracks) (03:17)
1-02. Grateful Dead – Cream Puff War (Live at Fillmore Auditorium, San Francisco, CA 7/3/66) (05:09)
1-03. Grateful Dead – Viola Lee Blues (Live at Shrine Exhibition Hall, Los Angeles, CA 11/10/67) (15:16)
1-04. Grateful Dead – Dark Star (Live at Greek Theater, Berkeley, CA 10/20/68) (10:31)
1-05. Grateful Dead – Doin’ That Rag (Live at Dream Bowl, Vallejo, CA 2/22/69) (06:52)
1-06. Grateful Dead – Dancing In The Street (Live at Winterland, San Francisco,CA 4/15/70) (11:30)
1-07. Grateful Dead – Ain’t It Crazy (The Rub) (Live at Fox Theater, St. Louis, MO 3/18/71) (04:42)
1-08. Grateful Dead – Tomorrow Is Forever (Live at The Palace Theater, Waterbury, CT 9/24/72) (05:32)
1-09. Grateful Dead – Here Comes Sunshine (Live from San Diego Sports Arena 11/14/73) (12:59)
2-01. Grateful Dead – Uncle John’s Band (Live from Parc des Expositions, Dijon, France 9/18/74) (09:28)
2-02. Grateful Dead – Franklin’s Tower (Live From Lindley Meadows, Golden Gate Park, San Francisco 9/28/75) (07:52)
2-03. Grateful Dead – Scarlet Begonias (Live at Cobo Hall, Detroit, MI 10/3/76) (12:00)
2-04. Grateful Dead – Estimated Prophet (Live at Capital Theatre, Passaic, NJ 4/25/77) (07:59)
2-05. Grateful Dead – Samson And Delilah (Live at Providence Civic Center, Providence, RI 5/14/78) (10:20)
2-06. Grateful Dead – Lost Sailor>Saint Of Circumstance (Live at Cape Cod Coliseum, South Yarmouth, MA 10/27/79) (12:27)
2-07. Grateful Dead – Deep Elem Blues (Live at Lakeland Civic Center, Lakeland, FL 11/28/80) (04:59)
3-01. Grateful Dead – Shakedown Street (Live at Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 5/16/81) (16:31)
3-02. Grateful Dead – Bird Song (Live at Manor Downs, Austin, TX 7/31/82) (09:42)
3-03. Grateful Dead – My Brother Esau (Live at The Centrum, Worchester, MA 10/21/83) (05:21)
3-04. Grateful Dead – Feel Like A Stranger (Live at Agusta Civic Center, Agusta, ME 10/12/84) (10:06)
3-05. Grateful Dead – Let It Grow (Live at River Bend Music Center, Cincinnati, OH 6/24/85) (12:38)
3-06. Grateful Dead – Comes A Time (Live at Cal Expo Amphitheatre, Sacramento, CA 5/3/86) (07:51)
3-07. Grateful Dead – Morning Dew (Live at Madison Square Garden, New York, NY 9/18/87) (11:21)
4-01. Grateful Dead – Not Fade Away (Live at Oxford Plains Speedway, Oxford, ME 7/3/88) (08:02)
4-02. Grateful Dead – Blow Away (Live at Miami Arena, Miami, FL 10/26/89) (07:52)
4-03. Grateful Dead – Ramble On Rose (Live at Zenith, Paris, France 10/27/90) (07:32)
4-04. Grateful Dead – High Time (Live From Madison Square Garden 9/10/91) (07:38)
4-05. Grateful Dead – Althea (Live at Copps Coliseum, Ontario Canada 3/20/92) (07:30)
4-06. Grateful Dead – Broken Arrow (Live at Knickerbocker Arena, Albany, NY 3/27/1993) (06:03)
4-07. Grateful Dead – So Many Roads (Live at Boston Garden, Boston, MA 10/1/94) (07:30)
4-08. Grateful Dead – Visions Of Johanna (Delta Center, Salt Lake City, UT 2/21/95) (10:21)
