Grateful Dead - Sunshine Daydream: Old Renaissance Faire Grounds, Veneta, OR 8/27/72 (DVD)
Grateful Dead - Fillmore East, San Francisco 2/14/70 (DVD)
If the owners of the Veneta tapes were, to say, realize an entire frame of film was missing from the Sunshine Daydream video, you could almost expect an upgrade within days. I think this version, now a two-discer, might be my third or fourth version of this, and it is indeed one worthy enough to spend that type of care with, as I’m one of many who find this to be if not the best Grateful Dead show ever, at least on the top 10 list. And it’s a good example of the quirky nature of this band, as they were not only dealing with the heat and its effects on tuning, but were apparently on a trip at the same time. I suppose if it demonstrates anything it’s that the Dead didn’t need to be perfect or even close to be incredible. The Bird Song and Playin’ in the Band are possibly the best versions ever, although, of course, you don’t get all of both here. Instead, you get the Woodstock movie sort of viewpoint of the event with lots of crowd scenes and such, which I suppose might be more beneficial to the historian of the period. For my ears, I hold out hope that maybe the whole show exists on video and that we’ll eventually get to see it.
The DVD of the Fillmore tapes are even more of a mess, although it’s great to even see what’s there surface finally, even despite extremely poor quality. I forget how much is here, maybe 20 or 30 minutes of tape and most of them are in bits. In fact if I’m not mistake there’s even a bit of Love playing at the end. The audio version of this show or at least part of it is officially released now and rather legendary in its own right, so this isn’t really anywhere near that sonic level. But given that this show was one of my earliest purchases, it was good to get the reminder that I need to go and give it a listen as the clips captured here are quite brilliant.