Dead Destinations

I'm no Deadhead myself- the one time I saw them with Jerry was on the Dylan tour in July '87 at Giants Stadium and it was easily one of the worst concerts I've ever witnessed.  But I did see them w/o Mr. Garcia at Madison Square Garden in April 2009 and it was not only a huge improvement but also almost as transcendent as a 'Head would have hoped for.

So as a semi-fan/semi-agnostic, I was at least curious when I started reading David Fricke's Rolling Stone piece detailing his favorite Grateful Dead shows.  For some of the shows he details, I already knew about it, heard and enjoyed them on official releases or read about as 'legendary' shows, so I was at least curious.  The problem was that there weren't many links in the online version and only one embedded Soundcloud stream of one of the shows to hear the 20 concerts he detailed.  Music obsessive that I am, I wanted to track down as much as I could hear myself and thanks to the amazing archive that the band and its management has set up at the Internet Archives site, much of it is sitting out there, ready for you to hear it for free.  Most of the rest are also available to hear on Spotify too.

So for you 'Heads and general Dead curiosity seekers, I'd like to share all of the links that I found to the shows that Fricke details in his article.   I've just got started myself but I'm already loving it and can't wait to continue listening in the coming days and weeks and months... Some of the ones I've heard as faves are in bold below too.

• The Matrix on 1966-12-01

• Winterland Arena on 1967-03-18

• Dance Hall on 1967-09-03

• Live at Dream Bowl on 1969-02-22

• McFarlin Auditorium, SMU on 1969-12-26

• Fillmore East (Late Show) on 1970-02-13

•  Also see Dick's Picks Volume 4: Fillmore East, 2/13-14/70 (earlier show, same evening, Spotify)

• Dick's Picks Volume 8: Harpur College, Binghamton, NY 5/2/1970 (at Spotify)

• Capitol Theatre, Port Chester, New York, February 19th, 1971 (embedded in the middle of the Rolling Stone article) 

• Philadelphia Civic Arena on 1974-08-05  

• One From The Vault: August 13, 1975 at the Great American Music Hall  San Francisco, (on Spotify)

• Beacon Theatre on 1976-06-14

• Augusta Civic Center on 1984-10-12

• Madison Square Garden on 1987-09-18

• Hampton Coliseum on 1989-10-09

• Nassau Coliseum on 1990-03-29

• Madison Square Garden on 1991-09-14

• Dick's Picks Volume 9: Madison Square Garden, New York, NY 9/16/1990 (on Spotify)

Also see these official Dead releases (not at Archives or Spotify, sad to say)

• Road Trips Vol 2.2
• Three From the Vault
• Europe '72 #5: Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark 4/16/72