Grateful Dead - Boston Music Hall 6/12/76
For quite a while now, I’ve found Saturday and especially Sunday afternoons and evenings to be absolutely perfect for Dead shows and very rarely miss playing one full show a weekend, as I tend to find this music extremely relaxing and perfect for weekend moods. So when I chose this Boston Music Hall show (and I seem to be playing a lot of Dead shows from this venue lately) for Sunday afternoon, I wasn’t quite expecting it to be as good as it was, partially because of the condition but also because I didn’t realize it was the last of a stint and, as such, the culmination of the week.
While the sound quality issues means this is not up to usual Dead shows standards, it’s still well within the listenable category thanks to the FM broadcast, although at times it’s a bit dimensionless. But in terms of song selection and performance it’s as good as any that year. Set 1 starts with a strong “Samson and Delilah” before a really strangely placed “Row Jimmy,” as passionate and intense as one would hope. The “Looks Like Rain” is as powerful as any version existent and the “High Time” is also way up there, in fact this is a set 1 that often looks like a 2, and this may be one show where the 1 is the better set, although the suite with the “Wharf Rat” and “Comes a Time” makes it a bit of a tough call. But overall this is band playing near perfectly, and I had some bizarre flashes during the listen that made me feel the band was getting surprisingly technical in spots.
Anthony Braxton Quartet - Stefaniensaal, Graz, Austria 10/28/76
An excellent sounding and very strange Braxton set. It’s always tough for me to tell on what side of the improvised/preplanned divide this sort of thing is on, as the music sounds quite spontaneous and there’s a lot of solo horn spots. Definitely one for the free jazz fanbase as there is a lot of interaction involved in the group play, although I tend to like more polyphony than what’s at work on this particular date.