Musings on the Most Ridiculous Band I Can't Stop Listening To

A Deeper Shade Of Solstice

The Dead played Alaska only once, 6/19,20,21, 80 in Anchorage, which means they played Alaska three times. The shows were in West High Auditorium, which is a high school auditorium that seats 2,000; until 1984, it was the largest hall in the state and the Dead’s appearance there was not a show biz anomaly. Ray Charles and Ozzy Osbourne and Itzhak Perlman played West High Auditorium, too.

I posted the show from the 20th a while ago, so here’s the 19th. It’s a consistent run, and unlike most three-show stints there’s no clear winner, just three big, energetic, and boppy performances. The run would make a great box set, but–of course–it’s not in the Vault. Go listen, anyway: there’s the cowboy song, and the long song, and the song with just the drums, and the song about America, and the song about Jesus.

You don’t actually remember any of this show, do you?

I listened to 6/20 the other day and was going to post that, but I typed it into the “Tag” box and saw that I had already posted it. So I just flipped a coin between the 19th and the 21st. They’re all good.

The effort you put forth is staggering.

The ladies call me the Human Dynamo.

5 Comments

  1. Tuesday Jackson

    Cancel the meeting … I’m goin’ down to Minglewood.

  2. hugh.c.mcbride

    “The Dead played Alaska only once … which means they played Alaska three times.”

    So much to love about a sentence that begins & ends this way — an about a band for whom such and apparently-but-yet-not-quite-self-contradictory sentence is perfectly appropriate.

    • Thoughts On The Dead

      That sentence made me very happy when I wrote it.

  3. hugh.c.mcbride

    “… AND about a band for whom …”

    AND, dammit.

    #TypoShame

  4. hugh.c.mcbride

    “… AN apparently-but-not-quite …”

    I need to either stop writing, stop reading what I’ve written, or both.

    I liked the post, is what I was trying to say. You write good words about a good band and you put those words in a good order.

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