In my younger years I was told I needed to do a book report on a biography of somebody who I admired. Naturally, I chose a memoir of Grateful Dead bassist Phil Lesh entitled Searching for the Sound. Recently I’ve been listening to more live Dead and this time I might not re-emerge. Through the Grateful Dead Archive and a sweet live recordings app called Relisten I’ve been reliving the only cool period in my life, the pubescent deadhead period. Looks Like Rain in particular has really grabbed me, and I thought I’d post this footage from their 06/19/1976 performance from the Capitol Theater in New Jersey because it’s pretty representative of what I love about this song. There are a couple other recordings I’ve been digging, including one from the early 80s, which is a Dead period I haven’t really explored at all. Beautiful guitar work from Garcia and nice vocal work from Donna Jean Godchaux and Weir, who can both get shouty at times in my opinion. On the Europe ’72 recording of this song, Weir introduces it by saying it’s a “crying song,” which it certainly is. Weir also released a version on his 1972 record Ace. The lyrics were penned by John Perry Barlow, a frequent Dead collaborator who also wrote A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace in 1996, which has become something of a rallying cry for groups like Anonymous. You can see a video of him reading it here or read the full text here. It was released with musical accompaniment by Department of Records, who also produced the video. The full footage Dead show that this recording comes from can be found on Youtube.

There’s no need to add another Dead blog to cyberspace, so I probably will not post live Dead very often, but I can’t guarantee it won’t happen again.