Grateful Dead Live at Fillmore West on 1970-08-19 : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive (original) (raw)

Monkey & The Engineer, How Long Blues, Friend Of The Devil, Dark Hollow, Candyman, Ripple-> Brokedown Palace, Truckin', Cocaine Blues, Rosalie McFall, Cumberland Blues, Wake Up Little Susie, New Speedway Boogie, Cold Jordan, Swing Low Sweet Chariot Cold Rain & Snow, Me & My Uncle, Easy Wind, China Cat Sunflower-> I Know You Rider, Saint Stephen-> Sugar Magnolia, Good Lovin', Minglewood Blues, Casey Jones, Not Fade Away-> Turn On Your Love Light

Notes

* with David Nelson
** with David Crosby

Missing several songs (see info file).

--a quote from deadlists: "The Taper's Compendium seriously misrepresents the quality of this AUD master, and of the previous night's."
--many songs have a minor clip at the beginning due to taper conservation
--dropout/blemish in Truckin' @ 3:03
--Truckin' cuts out shortly before the end

comment

Reviews

Reviewer: batcaver -favoritefavoritefavorite - June 6, 2008
Subject: Mis-Handled

Wow, An entirely flubbed beginning to Hard to Handle. Otherwise this has great Cryptical/Other One, I Know You Rider and Black Peter.

Reviewer: familiarfan -favoritefavoritefavorite - January 1, 2006 (edited)
Subject: soberly reconsidered

This show is high spirited.Rare Cocaine Blues which I most definetly can appreciate.

Reviewer: beckettwatt -favoritefavoritefavorite - September 2, 2005
Subject: Historic Run, Above Average Quality... NFA > Lovelight Saves Set From Mediocrity

This August 1970 stint received quite a bit of media coverage, including a contemporary Rolling Stone article which waxed poetic about the Dead's changing sound. A more impressionistic interpretation of the events that went down can be found in Ed McClanahan's "Grateful Dead I Have Known", which also includes interview material with Garcia shortly after the Fillmore West closed a year later.
The acoustic set is slightly chopped up, but overall sound fidelity is pretty strong--Pigpen's piano comes through very strongly on the songs he plays on, though the organ is (as is commonplace for these early audience recordings) barely audible. I point out Pigpen's piano in particular because it adds a completely different feeling to those American Beauty songs--he certainly adds a little bit of grit to the otherwise saccherine sweetness of Ripple, and the boogie riff he contributes to Truckin' defines the song for me. Why they had to bring in Howard Wales and Ned Lagin for the studio record is beyond me--Pig could certainly hold his own on these fairly simple songs.
The electric set is about equivalent in clarity to the acoustic set--at least to my ears, your mileage may vary. There is a tad bit of high end distortion at certain points so you may need to fiddle a bit with the EQ. The boys are clearly spent from three days of marathon sets, and thankfully Crosby and Nelson enter the picture on NFA and begin to resuscitate things (due to the quality of the tape they're practically inaudible but are clearly influencing the direction of the jams, as is duly noted in the accompanying notes). If you're just cherry-picking, the Lovelight is an absolute keeper--pure primordial Dead and easily one of the top five versions they ever played. Pig's wild exhortations drive the crowd into a state of sheer frenzy; for about two minutes after the twenty minute mark he simply raps solo to the crowd, just accompanied by the handclaps of the other band members and the audience. One of the band's most unparalleled moments.
The NFA > Lovelight alone is a 5+, but with the audience fidelity quality, the incomplete (though stellar) acoustic set, and the generally mediocre electric set taken into consideration, I'm forced to give this no more than a 3.

Reviewer: disgruntledgoat -favoritefavoritefavoritefavorite - February 18, 2005
Subject: Smoking August Show

Nothing in this show reaches the height of the previous night's Man's World, but overall the electric set is much hotter. The Cold Rain & Snow kicks things off nicely, the Easy Wind is a classic version, and the rest of the set is characterized by high energy and tight, concise jamming. Although the audience recording doesn't pick up the acoustic portion of the show very well, the electric set comes through loud and clear. This show gets plenty of airtime at my house.

There are 4 reviews for this item. .