Here's a 6 CD box set taken from soundboard tapes recorded across a two night run at the Hartford Civic Center and the Nassau Coliseum.
The Weir/Wasserman sets are entirely acoustic, and are just phenomenal. Wasserman's bass lines are so crisp and clear, it's unbelievable, and Weir is in top form vocally.
The two Garcia Band shows find Jerry in good spirits, playing his ass off, and it sounds like he and his band are just having a blast. Grab this set if you find a copy around.
Grateful Dead - Road Trips Volume 4 Number 1: Big Rock Pow Wow '69
originally released by Grateful Dead Records, 2010 - this CD by Real Gone Music / Grateful Dead Productions, 2018
This set was recorded at a three day festival that took place in 1969 on the Seminole reservation in Hollywood, FL. The Dead were originally slated to play at a club in Miami that summer, but after the fiasco around Jim Morrison's arrest, the conservative city council started putting heavy pressure on the local rock scene and the club owners decided to stage the festival on the reservation beyond the reach of the local authorities, not to mention the FBI, who were paying pretty close attention to Owsley's chemistry experiments by this time. The Dead headlined the first two nights, and that's what's presented here.
The sound is not exactly stellar, but it's not too shabby, either. This was mastered from one of Owsley's soundboard reference tapes, so there are plenty of worse recordings that I've heard. The whole scene was jazzed up on some electric orange juice that made its way around, and it shows in the music. Disc one features one of the most sinister Dark Stars the band would ever play, and then it's capped off with a 30 minute run through Lovelight. The other two discs don't let up. There's another epic Lovelight on disc two, and the third starts off with a gorgeous Morning Dew and continues the blissed out run all the way through the ending couplet of Feedback and We Bid You Good Night.
