Our final years with the Grateful Dead: Chapter 5

Nobody likes belaboring a point more than deadheads, so I'll continue to address the 'compromised songbook' of 92-95 in the following article. 

Really, I had wanted to put this subject to rest because I continue to stand firm on my position concerning the question of whether the show was hot or not due to the 'sacred set list' for that evening. My belief is that the show's level of quality should not be held hostage by the black-or-white factor of whether they played a new song (or three) that any one deadhead did not like.

Without apologies, I'll say that anybody who dismisses a show exclusively due to it having Vince playing keyboards, Donna singing, or because a particular song (or three) was performed is a fucking idiot!  Yes, that is how strongly I feel about this brand of criticism which I continually encounter on the internet.  It literally reminds me of people who say that they 'hate [fill in the city] because they gave me a parking ticket'.  Get over yourself!

But one of my best sources for GD conversation fodder, EVOp, threw down the gauntlet with my approach to the 'compromised songbook'.  The following paragraphs were in an email that I received from him.  In some places I have made slight edits and/or paraphrased:

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I'm not sure you get that in your explanation you pretty much said every time they go into a new song you could see the wind completely come out of the sails.. So I absolutely 1000% understand your take.  But I also think that you're splitting hairs with the semantics.

In other words, by bringing up Karina or Easy Answers, there is somehow the implication that the show suddenly is not hot anymore, or that it probably will not regain any traction, or that it is more or less a throwaway.  I think a better experiment might be to find some shows from 1992 through 1995 that do not have all the new songs in them or at least a combination of the new songs, but also would be noted as a crappy show?

I think that 3/8/92 would be an absolutely fantastic example to refute naysayers of shows that had new songs.  I'm in love with the first set and I stand by that statement.  I wonder who else is going to agree with me.  Probably nobody, but that is their loss.

However the second set, after drums, is majestic.  It is like they came out to open the second set and they were determined to play the new songs whether it was going to be hot or not, and frankly, I was megadosed at the show and I thought it was fucking awesome!  But now we look at the setlist and the entire pre-drums is basically new songs so this show will go down in history as a throwaway despite one of the most ripping 'All Along the Watchtowers' you're ever going to hear, despite the fact that the 'Throwing Stone's is one of my top five of all time, and despite the fact that I'll put the first set up against any set from the 80s...easily.

And it also bears mentioning that those new songs in spring of 1992...well, nobody was sick of them yet.  And it was kind of refreshing because we hadn't had a batch of new songs since 1989 or something like that (Foolish heart, Just a Little Light, Built to Last, etc).  So by spring of 1992 we were not sick of these songs yet!  Of course, Wave to the Wind turned out to be a prime conversation-piece for the worst Grateful Dead song ever.  And, well, Long Way to Go Home also got brought into the conversation for worst Grateful Dead song ever too.

Yet those two songs were played in that 3/8/92 pre-drum segment, and they were new, and they were fresh, and it was fantastic to actually hear a new Phil Lesh song.  'Wave to the Wind' is certainly a musically sophisticated song (kind of like 'Unbroken Chain') when you look at the arrangement.  I mean the arrangement was definitely the reason they stopped playing it. It is hard to play!  We all know Phil has no problem beating songs into the curb.  Obviously, he didn't think Jerry had the chops to follow along, so he wasn't going to play his song anymore.

To me, 'Long Way to Go Home' was like a statement that Bruce had just left the band (or was considering leaving), and that Vince was going to stand on his own two feet and start contributing. Now we were going to have a good rock band without two keyboardists and two drummers!  It was already a jamboree with way too many artists on stage.  This was the turning point where I thought, 'OK - Vince has some material of his own and Bruce is going to go touring away from the Dead.'

So I hope you could move that March 8 1992 forward into your listening rotation. I know you're backlogged on your listening, but if you could put that show in there and move it up, we could have a serious conversation about that show.  I consider it an all-timer for that era.  But the set list, back to your original point, really isn't all that much.  Although the first set (if you look at it song for song) is actually pretty good, but the second set you would probably just turn the page.

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Wow!  Quite a lot to address here.  Thank you to EVOp for a pretty extensive (and credible) take.  I will move 3/8/92 forward in the rotation.  Working through the two 'A Day on the Green' shows from October of 1976 at the moment (Dick's Pick #33), but I will re-prioritize. 

For those of you who continue to believe that 'new songs' ruin a show, I give you this list to work though.  These are the shows played during 1992-1995 that have NONE of the new original songs.  So there is no version of Liberty, So Many Roads, Lazy River Road, Days Between, Easy Answers, Corinna, Eternity, Long Way to Go Home, Samba in the Rain, Wave to the Wind, If the Shoe Fits, or Childhood's End at any of the following shows:

3/2/92
3/20/92
5/20/92
5/21/92
5/23/92
5/25/92
5/29/92
6/6/92
6/11/92
6/18/92
6/22/92
7/1/92
12/5/92
12/6/92
12/12/92
12/16/92

1/24/93
1/26/93
3/24/93
5/16/93
6/15/93
12/12/93

3/4/94
4/1/94
9/29/94
10/13/94
12-18-94

3-18-95
7-2-95 

Part of me wants to say, 'choke on them', but instead I'll just ask a favor.  If you listen to these shows and find that one or more of them is really awesome...or extremely crummy, please let me know.  I'd like to hear your thoughts.  BTW - a great number of these shows do have the new cover songs like 'I Fought the Law', 'Baba O' Riley',  'Broken Arrow', etc.  We're leaving the new cover songs out of this particular facet of the conversation for now.  Happy Trails!