Recordings released by the Estate of Jerry Garcia...

[laughingwillow]

So I've been picking up commercial releases of full Jerry shows as well as those by the dead. Yesterday I bought the JGB live at Merriweather Post Pavilion, 9-1 and 2-89. I was excited at the prospect of hearing a couple of shows from that era mastered in HD, as we have a HD player. However, upon further scrutiny, I'm not real impressed by the muddy sound quality. And at normal output levels, there is an almost constant STRONG vibration that I can feel when a finger is placed lightly on the edge of the subwoofer cone. This particular release was made by the estate of Jerry Garcia. And after my first time through the four discs, there isn't really anything that's so special musically to warrant the release, imo.

Awhile back I bought another show by the JGB from 2-28-80 that was also released by Jerry's estate. However, that show basically just plain sucks, imo. For all intents and purposes, there was a substitute drummer and keyboard player on that little tour and the playing leaves a lot to be desired, imo.

On the other hand, the Jerry released a two disc live performance from 1990 that is sonically and musically pleasing, at least to my ears. Granted, they used a mobile recording studio to capture the music for that release. But it had Jerry's stamp of approval.

The part that I don't understand is how grateful dead productions can be releasing shows from the early 70's in HD that sound just stunning in their clarity and B Koontz and the Estate are releasing material that is sonically inferior to some audience tapes we have of the same era?

lw

[laughingwillow]

Ooops...

I took a critical listen to a commercial release of da dead from 10-19-1973 yesterday after being drawn in by the show's Stella Blue. The recording is clean and Phil's bass adds sparse but loud punctuation marks to the ballad. My first few listens were from the computer room while the music played in the living room. Everything sounded great. But when I moved in for a closer listen yesterday some crazy things happened. The sound stage wasn't cohesive at all. (Except for the vocals and bass.) Jerry's guitar was in the left channel only, keyboards and drums were in the right channel only. Well, snare high hat and higher toms were in the right channel. The lower toms and maybe a cymbal were in the left channel only.

So, jrl, wtf happened to this one, in your professional opinion?  

lw

[JRL]

Maybe it was an Owlsey mix live to stereo?? His early mixes, for the bands reference had all the vocals on one side and the band on the others. I think it was his "subtle" way to get them to work on their singing. Some of them are on the Phil Zone compelation.

I don't know if he even was around in those days, so who knows.