This week's musical treat is a return to the world of the Grateful Dead, with an alternate version of Dylan and the Dead from their 1987 tour, presumably from a tape made by or for Jerry Garcia. I came across a review of it in one of my social media feeds and immediately gave it a listen. As the review states, it's mostly superior to the lacklustre official release.
This is a frankly better tape than the seven tracks released under Dylan and the Dead. Some of these songs are from the same show but the quality is improved vastly. Such is the dedication of bootleggers across the globe. You may catch glimmers of Dylan and the Dead from this performance – particularly the sluggish Joey towards the end – but it is more than made up for with punchy revisions of classic material, of rekindling the dramatics and intensity of those songs. The Wicked Messenger and bootleg closer It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue, more than make up for it. Close to stellar on some of these songs, the collaborative impression certainly revises the rather lacklustre sense of meandering stage presence heard on the official release. This is why bootlegs are still key. They unlock the quality buried deep within what, at first, sounds like a disaster.
If you like this, try finding a copy of the rehearsals for the Dylan and the Dead tour. Somewhere in my music collection, I have a five or six CD set culled from the rehearsals and they're far superior to either the official release or the tape linked above.
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