Conference rdvax::grateful

Like, wow, man.

    well, the light shows in Denver this year were some of the best I've
    seen ata deadshow. I liked the giant screen tours of a couple of
    summers ago, when the last show of the summer tour ended up being in
    Denver too, at Mile High Stadium, but the indoor lights this year were
    intense! Esp. during drums/space and corrina, eyes, and Terrapin.
    rfb

In the early days the band members's positions onstage, from L to R (facing
the stage) were: 

           Bill
Pigpen, Jerry, Bob, Phil

Keith was on the right of Jerry, when he joined in 71, and was always on the
right side of the stage as far as I know.
Photos of the Wall of Sound in 73 and 74 show the boys in the basic
Jerry, Bob, Phil, Keith configuration

The big earth-shaking news was when Phil and Jerry switched sides.  I think
they may have switched sides more than once.

When was this?  _Somewhere_ I know I read an article about the chronology of
the stage positions.. anyone know of this, or have it?  (post it please!).

My 10-19-74 tape (DAT) has reversed stereo for about 1/2 the tunes: Keith 
piano left, Jerry's guitar right:

   Songs with * are reversed stereo (KG left, JG right!):

   Set 1:                                 Set 2:
   Mississippi 1/2 Step *                Uncle John's Band *
   Me & My Uncle *                       Big Railroad Blues
   Friend of the Devil *                 The Race Is On
   Beat It On Down The Line              Tomorrow is Forever
   It Must Have Been The Roses *         Mexicali Blues
   El Paso *                             Dire Wolf
   Loose Lucy                            Sugar Magnolia *
   Black Throated Wind *                 He's Gone *
   Scarlet Begonias *                    Truckin' -> *
   To Lay Me Down                        Caution -> *
   Mama Tried *                          Drums -> *
   Eyes of the World -> *                Truckin' *
   China Doll *                          Black Peter *
   Big River *                           Sunshine Daydream

Anyone else's tape like this?

I started listening carefully to 2-9-73.  It seems to start out reversed:
Jerry on the right.  But about 2/3 of the way through Sugaree, Jerry's
guitar pans to dead-center, almost mid-riff!  Tip: use headphones.  By few 
songs later, its on the left and seems to stay there the rest of the show.

So I guess the all-new PA stood up and grew some hair during Sugaree :-).
The tiny diagram I have of the Wall of sound shows the Lead Guitar speaker
stack (and I do mean STACK!) right behind Jerry's mike, on stage left.

I can't imagine things being so messed up that first night that Jerry was
blasting out of Wier's stack, I'd guess that it was more the board mixdown
for the tape recorder had the pan-pots set funny for a few tunes.
But then again, they quote-unquote blew out the tweeters on the first note,
so they opened up the cross-overs and faked it the rest of the night" :-)
Any speculation? 

 Josh

    Does anyone have the Healy et.al. interview(s) that had all the juicy
    details about the time-aligned sound system...
    
    I remember someone posting a pointer (maybe Fog?), and I even got
    myself a copy, but I think I accidentally-like deleted it in a fit of
    disk space reclamation. %-)
    
    - jeff
    

Yop, its still there:

cscma::d_sna:[m_peckar]pearson.txt

    THANKS, Fog!!!!!!  :-)
    

From rec.music.gdead, an interesting bit of info on the frequencies the
Dead alledgedly use for their wireless communication gear.  Now you no
longer have to ask "Whats the frequency, Dan" only to be told "Fuc* YOU!" ;-)

 - Josh
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: jpruett@vulcan.com (Jerry Pruett - BLS)
Newsgroups: rec.music.gdead
Subject: Re: Roadcrew talk bootlegs
Date: Tue, 30 Nov 93 11:18:37 CST
Organization: Vulcan - Live Long and Prosper!

elm@netcom.com (ed markowitz) writes:

>
> sorry about the previous post. (vi sucks).
>
> If someone could post the frequencies, I'll try to tape at the upcoming
> Oakland shows.
>

Try:
 469.5000
 469.5500

That's what they where using last I heard...........

--
Jerry Pruett - BellSouth Telecommunications

Internet:                 jpruett@vulcan.com    (preferred)
                          kd4cim@amsat.org

Southeast Ham Radio IP:   kd4cim@kd4cim.ampr.org  [44.100.113.19]
AX.25 Packet Radio:       kd4cim@kd4cim.#bhm.al.usa.na
                                                                  

Jerry Pruett adds to his posting:

Slight addition, that is narrowband FM modulation. Narrow FM is OK
for talking, but don't expect no great shakes if you want to hear
the tunes.

The latest round of shows have been a mono mix, except for during
drums/space. Apparently the new folks at the board haven't been
"orchastrating" the sound as healy used to, and just sort of hang out
during the show. The tapers are circulating petitions at shows to bring
back the stereo mix. 

>The latest round of shows have been a mono mix, except for during

WHATTTTTT??????????????????  whatta freakin' ripoff!!!

>during the show. The tapers are circulating petitions at shows to bring
>back the stereo mix. 

I'll bet they are!

    
    Yeah, Healy used to really tool with the the streophonics....usually 
    only on 2nd sets though.
    
    Deane_who_recalls_a_Stella_Blue_at_RFK_in_1991

    Just a couple of observations of the lighting at the west coast shows:
    
    Cal Expo - they had the same set-up as last year, with the circular
    screen above the drummers.  They also had 5 guys in a row on each side
    of the overhead lights, which seemed like a lot to me.  The lighting
    show was amazing....
    
    Seattle - there was no circular screen and the only lights they had
    were stationary white lights.  It was the first time I've seen
    drums/space without a light show, but it was still cool....
    
    Eugene - The show started early (Cracker went on at 2, the Dead around
    3:30), so there was no need for the lighting crew, and the set-up was
    the same as Seattle, stationary white lights...
    
    :), d               

    CRACKER???? i guess they DO do a dead tune....
    
    rfb

    >> CRACKER???? i guess they DO do a dead tune....
    
    Yeah, that was a little weird...I guess the weird thing to me was
    people waiting in line at 10:00/10:30 to get into a 2:00 show, when it
    wasn't that hard to get up close for the Dead anyway....
    
    I never ended up seeing Cracker.  We could hear it pretty well,
    though...I think I heard them play Loser?  Is that the Dead tune they
    cover?  

Re: light shows...	

I remember years ago, probably in the Philly Spectrum, hearing a Dark Star
with little in the way of 'special effects' lighting, but there was one
of those disco-ball thingies hanging from the ceiling and a pencil-spotlight
on it as it spun.  Gradually, almost imperceptively, the ball began to 
slow down  until it finally came to a complete halt - spotlight still on it.

Then it backed up about one turn, very, very slowly.  I thought I could 
hear half the audience's heartbeats stop dead right there, and it returned 
to it's original direction and gradually accellerated back to the original 
speed.  Cracked me up. Obviously, someone was paying close attention to 
the 'mood' of the crowd. They cheered for a couple minutes at this clever 
little twist....

Goes to show, you don't ever know....;-)

tim

Speaking of mirror balls, Pink Floyd has one it is using on its current
tour that has to be the Mother of All Mirror Balls.  It shows up in the 
last part of the show, quite possibly during the encore, so you know 
how unplanned that is ;-)  It's probably about 20ft across if not more, 
and rises from the center behind the sound booth.  It's spinning slowly
on this riser with many lights shining on it.  But, instead of being 
a solid surface, you can see that it is cut into many different
sections shaped like petals.  At the top of its climb, these petals
open up, half up and half down, revealing the inside, also mirrored, and
a blinding arc light in the center.  It's pretty impressive, but I must
admit, sitting about a little past centerfield away from the stage, 
I was just about on the same yard line as this ball, and as this massive
silver object spun around with half it's petals hanging down and half 
pointing up I kept thinking how much the damn thing probably weighed and
what would happen if one of those petals broke loose....

But I had fun anyway ;-)

PeterT

    cracker does Loser....
    
    rfb

    Seems to me that their sound man has gotten a lot better... the Vega$
    shows seemed to be quite clean... anybody else notice this?
    
    ...mike
    

    ya, sound is better, except that it wasn't LOUD enough...
    
    rfb