Grateful Dead - Beat Club Bremen West Germany 4/21/1972 - Amazon.com Music (original) (raw)

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Reviewed in the United States on December 3, 2013
Sometimes there are surprises you need to discover and grow with.
The Grateful Dead rolled into northern Germany on a Friday morning and brought a little magic into a cold TV studio where a show entitled: "Beat Club" emanated from. The last show had been played in Copenhagen on Monday night and the vacation was fueling mighty noises that blasted forth upwards to brand new places. All of this was winning over brand new faces to ride the bus with our heroes.
A TV studio with no audience in the morning? All of this spelled disaster for The Grateful Dead...Or did it?
Errrrrrrrrrrrrb..."Were rolling!...."Bertha" is crystal clear and on fire as the band is in tune and playing their best notes and singing like choirboys. Betty has gotten the perfect sound here and the boys step up their game in Bremen. Jerry has only "Bertha" and "Sugaree" featured today where he is the lead singer and when Jerry doesn't sing he plays a lot more guitar and now you have the proof of that fact. "Playing" is gentle and smooth as a road made of silk. Garcia is right at home now in Germany and finds some crisp air and lifts everybody up to some really nice areas of exploration. Jerry has some real fun with his wah-wah pedal making some cool weird noises with it and floats above for a few minutes with the rest of the band right there with him.
It's not often that The Grateful Dead gets a do-over but on this set they get three of them. Jerry stops "Sugaree" after a minute as he hears the wrong changes played and they start again from the top to play a "Sugaree" that is now as perfect as it will ever be. "Playing" gets played for a second time and Bobby flubbs the first line and once more the band starts over and when they do the whole show goes up to better places as they are determined to get it right and now Jerry is about on fire with some fantastic licks and runs that showcase his mighty skills. I like both of the "Playing In The Band" that can be found here but the things Jerry plays towards the end of the second one must be heard as they are amazing.
The best vesion of "Beat It On Down The Line" that I have heard is found here and it is a prize on a disc that is so full of them. Next up is "Truckin" and Bobby makes a mistake once more and the band responds with a discordant crashing before they once more start over. "Truckin" has that wonderful Europe jamming laying within it and Jerry pulls and tugs at it for the playout. At times I wasn't sure where the band was headed but Billy fights into the mix and the band lets him cut-loose for about a minute and a half before Phil rolls his fingers into the opening of "The Other One." Well, here is where Jerry and the band play to forget they are in a TV studio and they head for deep space and play things that have no chance to see any broadcast time. "The Other One" is a statement that THIS IS The Grateful Dead and this is what we do and it must have freaked-out the Germans in proper fashion.
This is a disc of wonderful sound and clear separation of a band playing as good as they ever will anywhere else.
You wouldn't have thought it possible.
FIVE STARS !!!
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Reviewed in the United States on September 17, 2015
Everyone is familiar with the triple-LP, double-CD, Live Europe 72 from the Grateful Dead. The songs selected for this collection represented a mere fraction from their 1972 European Tour. The tour covered twenty venues. Rhino Records released the complete recordings from this tour, in seventy-three CDs, in 2011, in a limited edition suitcase, and later as an ordinary box set. These collections instantly became a collector’s items, and if one is lucky enough to find one online, the collector’s suitcase edition alone will run almost one thousand dollars. Rhino released individual concerts on CD, but even these are becoming difficult to find. Finally, these concerts are now available for download.
This “concert” represents a change of pace. After beginning the first leg of the Continental portion of their European Tour, the band appeared on German television. The occasion was an appearance at the Beat Club, in Bremen, Germany. The telecast last a little in excess of one hour, and it featured many of the songs they would perform, had performed, in other concerts in their European tour, but in abbreviated form. Without the luxury of playing a stadium or an audience for upwards of three hours and more, the band largely performed tight, economical versions of those same songs, without the occasional jamming or improvisations. What improves were executed were understated and pointed.
There were some bumps along the road, however. The band experienced a false start with Playin in the Band where there erupted a shrill burst of feedback emitting from one of the speakers. Then, later, with Truckin there was another false start. Sensing that something wasn’t right, and also that they were on television, JC deftly plays the chords of a melody from William Tell before stopping the song. Oh, the virtues of live television! The band soldiered on with Truckin, however, leading the way to a twenty-minute rendition of The Other One. What kind of a Grateful Dead concert would it be without an extended jam of Dark Star, The Other One, or both?
The jam ends abruptly on the tape and does not reflect any banter between the band and whatever audience happened to be there. No doubt there were some songs not recorded for posterity. The band had played Loser and Black Throated Wind during the soundcheck. These songs are not on this CD. What is, however, on the CD is a good capsulated version of the band during this tour.
Before purchasing other concerts from this tour, newcomers purchase or download this CD to get a good flavor of what is to come.

Reviewed in the United States on May 14, 2017
Sort of a dream come true for those who don't associate a Dead concert with a large live audience. This is more of a "fly on the wall" view of the band at an undeniable peak. If you're looking for long, exploratory jams, the other volumes in the "Complete Europe 72" series will satisfy you. There IS a long version of "The Other One" here, but for the most part, brevity is the soul of wit on this show. There are a couple of technical glitches like false starts, but there's no getting away from the fact that this is 100 proof Jerry Garcia, in fine voice and fluid playing. As much as a fan of this band as I am, I'll never understand Donna's painful Tarzan yell in "Playing In The Band." It's not the fact that she did it once...it's the fact that it became her "solo," but that doesn't prevent this from being an essential show. I appreciate all eras of the Dead in varying degrees, but nothing touches 1969 (which spawned "Live Dead") through the "Europe 72" shows. 1969, 1970, 1971, 1972...take your pick. That's where the legend lives.
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