Grateful Dead - Mama Tried > Big River, Shoreline Amphitheatre 06/16/90
Today marks the anniversary of my first Grateful Dead concert, July 22, 1990. I had wanted to see them since around 1982 or so, but could never find anyone to go with me to a show. I didn't have the wherewithall just to go it alone. I attended 13 more shows over the next five years before Jerry Garcia's passing, and managed to see both Jerry and Bob solo shows in that time as well.
I got turned on to the Dead in an odd way: When I was 14, I was arrested three times over one summer; after the third time my parents had me under house arrest for nine months. No friends visiting, no television, no leaving the house other than school or the public library. I could listen to music, as I had paid for my stereo myself. It was at the library where I found a copy of Dead Set and checked it out. It wasn't a monumental listening experience in the way that, say, The Wall or Zen Arcade was; but it stuck with me and I often found myself listening to it, often noticing more and more nuances about their music that couldn't be found elsewhere.
Detractors will roll their eyes, or make some uninformed remark about how boring their music was at the mere mention of this band. Most people I've encountered with this mindset haven't even heard their music let alone seen a show, but at the same time there is a grain of truth to this: their records (aside from an exception or two, and officially released live recordings) come off as very uninspired. But their live shows were a whole other experience; that was where their musical strength was displayed, and they toured relentlessly for three decades. Through the eighties and early nineties, their live shows consisted of two sets. The first would be about an hour or so, mostly shorter tunes but would grow a little longer and spacier later in the set. They would play some of their own material, a blues tune or two, maybe a country tune and always a Bob Dylan cover in there. The second set was the showcase: a two-plus hour set of their longer tunes with plenty of jams in between, broken up by a percussion duet / improvised "space" segment mid set and concluding with another handful of their more rocking numbers (Sugar Magnolia comes to mind) and a ballad or two. The sets were always different from night to night, and they often mixed things up by opening their shows with songs usually reserved for the second set. I saw them three nights in a row and never heard the same song twice.
I could go on forever, espousing the varied talents of the band, the benchmark technical advances of their sound crew (best sounding live band ever, even in the most acoustically unfriendly venue) , sharing my own experiences and discussing the sociological phenomenon of their very loyal audience. But the truth is, if you weren't there you may not understand. The tunes attached are "Mama Tried, a Merle Haggard cover paired up with the Johnny Cash classic, "Big River" from their summer 1990 tour. Both were staples of the first set throughout their history, and this performance in particular is amazing. You can't help but think, "Damn, those guys could play."
Interesting fact: the Grateful Dead were the first band ever to perform live with stereophonic sound.
