John Hilgart

Happy 4th Day of July to #gratefuldead Heads. The band rarely played the date, but the Save Your Face mixtape curation of their July 4 shows from ’81, ’84, and ’86 has surprisingly chalked up 21,000 listens on YouTube.

You can stream the mix without advertisements on Archive.org:

https://archive.org/details/grateful-dead-save-your-face-4th-day-of-july-1981-1984-1986/01+Jack+Straw.mp3

We’re in that macabre, annual zone called “The Days Between” - between the dates of the last #gratefuldead show and Garcia’s death. WTF is that commemorating among a population that generally reviles 1990s GD? Listen to this and love end-times Jerry Dead. https://saveyourface.posthaven.com/grateful-dead-garcia-sings-1993-1994

Among the 24 hours of #gratefuldead 1975 Ace’s Sessions (circulating) is a gorgeous, gentle, 2.5-minute improvisation (dated 3/21) that has always been marred by massive tape hiss. Grady Don Sandlin kindly de-hissed it, and you can be among the first to enjoy the result.

R.I.P. Bob Weir, my GOAT rhythm guitarist. I got into #gratefuldead via tapes of 1972-1974 improvisation, and the secret sauce for me was Bob Weir’s guitar. His rhythms, interjections, and harmonics were constant elements of surprise and delight to me. I danced to him. He had to create a space for himself in the Dead’s music, and he did so brilliantly and uniquely. I’ve never been able to listen to Dead tapes on which I can’t easily hear Weir’s guitar.

If you haven't already heard, I am pleased to inform you that the #gratefuldead 1975 Ace’s studio sessions have finally been sorted. Choose from everything (24 hours) or a curated selection (11 hours). Amazing music assembled with archival and scholarly rigor. https://saveyourface.posthaven.com/grateful-dead-the-1975-aces-sessions-2026-edition

The #gratefuldead are officially releasing Tampa, FL, December 18, 1973, which is great news.

The soundboard mix of this show is excellent, and the Garcia songs are so consistently good that I compiled them as a 90-minute all-Garcia “album” for the Save Your Face blog.

If you're on the fence about buying this "Dave's Picks," you should read my old notes on the show.

https://saveyourface.posthaven.com/shortlist-december-18-1973-tampa-fl-just-the-jerry-songs

Here’s an excerpt from the 11/12/72 Kansas City #gratefuldead performance of “He’s Gone,” featuring ONLY Garcia and Weir’s guitar parts.

I can’t let June 28 pass without appreciating (for the 1000th time) these six minutes of pure improvisation by #gratefuldead from 6/28/74, in Boston. This is the first thing I play for non-Heads to illustrate jazz Dead. It’s a one-off, but it develops like a planned event, turning corners tightly, orgasming repeatedly. (The tension and release from 2:30-3:00!) Short, self-contained Dead perfection. It should have a name.

Do you have a take on 1981 #gratefuldead? Have you listened to that year recently? One of the cool things about it is a string of great Scarlet>Fires. This mix curates three of them, March-to-September, into a big, 53-minute jam.

Stream:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=86xgE53s9Tg&t=39s

MP3s and notes:
https://saveyourface.posthaven.com/grateful-dead-scarlet--fire-1981

I can’t let April end without my annual recommendation to check out the 1979 #gratefuldead Brent Mydland rehearsals, via the Save Your Face edit.

Numerous wonderful and wildly different explorations unlike any 1979 you’ve heard.

Streaming:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8VGseeRO_P8&t=33s

Editing notes and mp3s:
https://saveyourface.posthaven.com/jamming-with-brent-april-79-rehearsal-remix

Need some springy spring grooves? Here are all seven of the May 1977 #gratefuldead “Dancin’ in the Streets,” edited into instrumentals and glued together into a continuous 67-minute dance party.

Streaming:
https://archive.org/details/grateful-dead-save-your-face-may-1977-dancin-in-the-streets-jams
…or…
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q68tPCA1wRw&t=14s

Notes & mp3s:
https://saveyourface.posthaven.com/grateful-dead-may-1977-dancin-in-the-streets-jams

Forty years ago (4/27/85) in Palo Alto, CA, #gratefuldead played an exemplary “My Brother Esau,” captured powerfully on SBD.

If you’re not familiar with the classic jazz remix craze, circa 2000, here’s my longstanding curation of it - which my daughter asked me to recreate on Spotify. https://open.spotify.com/playlist/2Y6d9bpSfEMHaePQxRe9VP?si=32a2d7aa25bf4bd0

When Save Your Face was an active mixtape project, I cut the blown vocals out of a lot of good Help>Slips and excluded Franklin’s when it was mundane. That produced an abrupt ending to Slipknot. What I didn’t realize until last year is that anytime the #gratefuldead ended Franklin’s with the Slipknot coda, it is possible to land a standalone Help>Slip edit properly.

Here’s an example of that edit from the performance at the Rosemont Horizon, 3/11/93.

I don't know if this is well known, of if anyone on Mastodon would even care, but:

When you post an mp3 to Mastodon, it streams. When you post a link to your Mastodon post on twitter, clicking on the link window creates a player *on twitter*, and you can listen there.

Interesting to me, because twitter itself does not support mp3s.

@paulehoffman@infosec.exchange @livetapes@heads.social It is very reasonable to have negative opinions about periods of unreliable #gratefuldead. I stopped going to shows in 1993, because of it. The final years are definitely best enjoyed through track-by-track curation.

I’ve been having fun making edits from the #gratefuldead “Complete Circulating 1975 Ace’s Sessions.” Here’s one where I took pieces of five short stabs at the EAC/Music Never Stopped theme from 2/28/75 and turned them into a continuous exploration.