Listening Trail - 1980's Grateful Dead

Another installment in the GDLG Listening Trails Series

Any fan who begins travelling down the road of Grateful Dead concert tapes will often find the 60’s and 70’s to be the most open entry points. It makes sense since this band was famous for being a pioneer of the “psychedelic 60’s sound,” and then a stadium-rock titan that played 3 plus hour shows of cosmic exploration in the 70’s. For those folks exposed only to this elevator pitch story of the band’s history, the 80’s mark some sort of black hole from which nothing emerged until Touch Of Grey got into Billboard’s top ten in 1987, and of course the 90’s were a time when everyone and their brother were into the Dead (and we all attended the “last show” in Chicago – at least that’s what everyone around Chicago retells when discussing where they were that day).

Eventually, any tape collector will notice the 80’s out of the corner of his/her eye, and ponder traversing this most nearly blind alley of the band’s concert history. Sure, there are many of us who first started seeing the Dead in the 80’s, and we feel a special fondness for those personal times. But considering the band’s output and historical significance in the 60’s and 70’s , the early 80’s just don’t stand out. It is important to note that this mass assumption is entirely misguided.

Even at this point, arriving at the Grateful Dead Listening Guide and trying to “figure out” the 80’s can be a cauldron of confusion. There are already enough shows from this period on the site to easily consume the better part of a month trying to digest them all, and more keep coming all the time. Where on earth should one start? I feel a listening trail devoted to jumping into the first half of this decade is well worth it, as the highpoints from this era are not to be missed.

Here are some no brainers as far as I am concerned. Start anywhere and take them one step at a time. There’s plenty to soak in at each stop along the way. After this, you should take comfort in the fact that nothing shows up on the Listening Guide by chance, and every show you stumble across (80’s included) is well worth your ears time. Just gotta poke around…

Please follow the links below to fully enjoy this Listening Trail.

09/17/82 – With strong highlights throughout the show, and a second set that begs repeated listening, this is oddly one of those tapes you might not otherwise stumble across until you had gone a good number of years into the world of tape trading. A stellar introduction into why the early 80’s are so worth checking out.

06/21/80 – 1980 is a year so often missed when considering this decade, let alone the Dead in general. Proving that the evolving musical style of the band was firing on all cylinders, even in a truly transitional year, this show from Alaska rivals most any comers.

06/30/84 – Lauded as containing some of the best music from all of 1984, this show will serve very well to demonstrate how explorative the band was during this somehow forgotten era. Generally, we think of Garcia spiraling down a slope of drugs and physical decline in ‘84. That makes the magic pouring out of this show’s highlights even more special to behold.

02/26/81 – It may as well be plastered on bumper stickers – “There was never a bad Uptown show.” Things are so good on this night, it renders that phrase a nearly catastrophic understatement. This is the 80’s cranked to eleven.

06/30/85 – We can’t talk about the 80’s without paying at least some attention to a year many people feel was the peak of the entire decade. This show finds the band reaching some skyrocketing highlights in an already pretty elevated year. Don’t miss it.