Grateful Dead – Dicks Picks, Vol. 1 – Tampa, FL (12/19/73)

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I find myself fascinated by Dick’s Picks and why he chose the shows he chose. I’m especially fascinated by This first one. It must have been both a wonderful opportunity and immensely stressful. You’ve got the keys to the vault; you can release any show you like. But which one do you choose? It must have felt important to him. Like that first pick would define who he was as a Deadhead. And if it failed, there wouldn’t be any more picks. He might lose his job. That’s a lot riding on one single show.

Dick was clearly a big fan of 1970s Dead. Almost all of his picks come from that decade. I wonder if he looked at the chronology of the releases that had come out by that point. There was Live/Dead from 1969 and Europe 72. Bear’s Choice came from 1970, and then you’ve got a release from 1974 (Steal Your Face) and another from 1975 (One From the Vault). Did he figure he needed to fill in that 1973 gap? Or did he think about something from the legendary May 1977 shows?

Who the heck knows? I tried to do a little research on this Pick, but the Internet sucks now, and I was unable to come up with much. 1973 is a colossal year for the Grateful Dead, so it certainly makes sense he’d choose a show from here.

The band members each had veto power over Dick’s choices. My understanding is Phil was especially difficult to please, so it’s possible Dick had several other shows in mind but, for one reason or another, was given a “no” for them. They also say that Phil demanded his solo be edited out of “The Other One” for some reason.

Unlike other Dick’s Picks, this is not the complete show, and the songs have been widely rearranged. Most of the first set is missing, and parts of the second set have been moved about onto the first disc. To a degree, I understand this and don’t really have a complaint about it. To have put the entire show out would have taken at least three CDs, probably four. That’s a lot of additional cost to produce. Narrowing it down to discs seems much more manageable. Especially at this point when they didn’t know how well these things would sell.

I’m old enough to remember the days of CD trading. Figuring out how to fit the music onto discs was always a challenge. First sets could usually easily fit on one desk, but second sets, with their massive jams, often ran over. But you didn’t want to cut up those massive jams either. Or all those songs that ran right into each other and got a “>” notation on the j-cards. Sometimes if there was extra room on the first disc, a song or two from the middle of the second set, or even the encore, might be thrown onto it. That beat having only one or two songs on a single disc or tape.

I’m less enthused about Phil’s bass solo getting cut out. That seems downright rude.

It is fascinating too seeing what did make the final cut. Why is “Big Railroad Blues” included and not “Dire Wolf”? Why did they keep “Around and Around” and lose “Jack Straw?” I certainly would have nixed the Chuck Berry cover.

But whatever, this shouldn’t be a what’s wrong with this release? post (I imagine Dick got more than a mouthful of that from Deadheads at the time). Let’s talk about what is here.

“Here Comes Sunshine” is actually the tenth song of the first set, but it starts our CD out here. It is a phenomenal version and makes it worth the price of admission alone. It is also a great example of what I love about the Grateful Dead.

I have to make an embarassing admission here. I don’t generally like it when the Dead jams a song deep into the cosmos. There is a point when their biggest jams leave all semblance of a song, and things get wonky. Those moments are often filled with dissonant notes, and extended noodles and I tend to start tuning it out or pressing the skip button.

I love the Dead’s improvisational jam style, but sometimes they go a little too far for my tastes. “Here Comes Sunshine” is the perfect blend. They start with the song, which is a good one. It has a wonderful, slightly odd rhythm to it, some great harmonies, and some classic opaque Robert Hunter lyrics. The song had just been released on their Wake of the Flood album in October of 1973, so it was relatively new, though they had been regularly playing it live since February of that year.

But after a couple of verses, they start to jam on it. At first the bones of the song are still there. Jerry is soloing all over the place, and Keith Godcheaux is getting down on the keyboards. But the rhythm section is still keeping the beat, but they are playing with it. They are adding in some extra notes. Slowly the song stretches and stretches until it no longer sounds like “Here Comes Sunshine.” I bet if you started playing it here and asked an average fan to name the song they wouldn’t be able to.

But it still sounds like what most people would consider to be music. It still sounds like a song. It has a nice beat, and my feet keep tapping, and I’m shaking my bones to it. I love these moments. I love feeling the band slip into something new and exciting, but not feeling like I need to plug my ears.

It is an all-time version of the song.

Now let’s move onto “Playing in the Band.” It officially closed the first set, and ended the first disc on this album. It is a song that often finished the first set, and it became a powerhouse jamming launchpad. Often the band will drive it headlong into the deepest, darkest parts of space. They don’t quite go that far in this version. I’d say they leave the stratosphere, but don’t venture much farther out. Not even to the moon.

Like “Here Comes Sunshine” they definitely break the confines of the song and stretch it into something else. They get close to completely breaking it, venturing into me pressing that skip button. But before my finger gets there, they bring it back down. There is plenty of good stuff here, but I’d argue it slips just slightly out of “great” territory for me.

The “Jam>The Other One>Jam” that sits right in the middle of the second disc does fall into that skip territory for me. It’s just a little too much for my tastes.

Weirdly, the band skips the “Across the Lazy River” section at the end of “Mississippi Half-Step” but it is otherwise a very good – if rather mellow and slinky – version. “Weather Report Suite” is also quite good with some excellent slide work from Mr. Garcia.

The rest ranges from quite good to fine. Nothing is bad. As I said, 1973 was a great year for the Dead, and they are firing on all cylinders. This does seem like a slightly mellow show. That’s actually borne out on the full tapes with all the songs. It is a very fine show, but probably not the one I would have picked if I were Dick. Not even if all I had was 1973 to choose from.

But it makes for a great start to this series, and obviously it did well enough to continue these releases, and for that we can all be happy.

Here’s the track list for Dicks Picks, Vol. 1

Disc one

Here Comes Sunshine
Big River
Mississippi Half-Step Uptown Toodeloo
Weather Report Suite
Big Railroad Blues
Playing in the Band

Disc two

He’s Gone
Truckin’
Nobody’s Fault but Mine
Jam
The Other One
Jam
Stella Blue
Around and Around

And here’s the full setlist:

Set 1:
Promised Land
Sugaree
Mexicali Blues
Sugar Shack
Dire Wolf
Black Throated Wind
Candyman
Jack Straw
Big Railroad Blues
Big River
Here Comes Sunshine
El Paso
Ramble On Rose
Playin’ In The Band

Set 2:
Mississippi Half-Step
Me And Bobby McGee
WRS Prelude
WRS Part 1
Let It Grow
He’s Gone
Truckin’
Nobody’s Fault But Mine
The Other One
Stella Blue
Around And Around

Encore:
Casey Jones

Picking on the Grateful Dead: The Dicks Picks Series

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Dick Latvala was the original Deadhead. He first heard them play at the Trips Festival in 1966 and remained a massive fan until his death in 1999. He was one of the earliest tapers and collectors and reportedly he amassed one of the biggest collections of Dead tapes in the world. In the early 1980s he started working for the Dead’s organization, just odd jobs mainly. It sounds like he basically just started hanging around, and eventually they put him to work.

The Dead had been recording their concerts from the earliest days, but they weren’t particularly organized with them. Dick changed that. He convinced the band that those recordings were a treasure trove and they needed to be organized and safely stored. This led to the creation of the infamous vault.

Dick’s management of the vault and his enthusiastic desire for more officially released live albums led to the Dick’s Picks series. The band was no stranger to live albums, having released Live/Dead in 1969 and a double album covering their legendary tour of Europe in 1972, plus several others. Those had been professional recordings on multitrack tapes. They were good and edited, mastered, and on at least one occasion, overdubbed.

The Dick’s Picks series would be pulled from two-track tapes, and took a warts and-all approach to the music. No edits, no overdubs, and if there was a flaw on the tape, that’s what you got. Most volumes included one entire show, though some contained complete second sets of two different shows, and others might just be highlight reels.

The band had the final say which caused some delays in the releases in the early days but eventually they seemed to just let Dick do what he wanted.

Between 1993 and 2006, they released 36 volumes in the Dick’s Picks series. Over half of them were released after Latvala’s death in 1993. After Dick’s death an actual archivist, David Lemiux, became keeper of the vault and he began a similar series, appropriately called Dave’s Picks, in 2012.

I thought it would be fun to listen to and then review each of the 36 Dick’s Picks. This will become the page I’ll link to all of those reviews. I hope you enjoy it.

PS that cover image is of the first Dicks Picks I ever bought. I remember it being a rip-roaring classic. I can’t wait to revisit it and talk about it.

Vol. 1 – Tampa, FL (12/19/73)

More Music, Please

I’ve been thinking a lot about what I want to do with this blog. I know you all are probably tired of me whining about how I no longer get very many visitors, so I’ll spare you that this time. I will say that Google recently announced it is completely changing the way they do search. Gone will be the days when you searched for something and you got a series of links to websites that would likely provide you the information you were looking for.  Now it is all going to be AI chatbots, which is both dystopian and depressing. It will also kill the biggest way visitors come to the site.

But I’m not going to complain. What I am going to do is talk more about music. There is a realization that I spent over a decade providing music on this site, and that is all. Then out of the blue, I switched things up and started talking about music. Then I killed the music completely.

I’m sure many of you were like, WTF? Who cares about movies? I want music! Now, I will still not be providing music downloads on this site in any public way. But I would like to talk about it. I figure I’ll write some reviews of officially released live albums. I’ve been thinking about doing a series on the Grateful Dead’s Dick’s Picks releases for a while now, so that seems like a good place to start. And maybe I’ll review some unofficially released music.  That sounds fun.

I do realize that I’ve gotten pretty good at reviewing movies, but I’ve not done a lot of music reviews. Certainly not in a long while. I haven’t worked that muscle in a long time. It has gotten flabby. Movies are easy. You can talk about story and plot. You can dive into a movie’s themes and talk about what the camera is doing. Or how scary, or funny it is. I know a little technical information about movies, and can impart that information. But I’m not a musician. I know nothing about the technical parts of a song.

There isn’t a plot to a song either. Not usually anyhow, and I’m not really a lyrics guy anyway. I dig on the melody and what the instruments are doing and pay little attention to the words. Music is about how it makes me feel, and that is hard to describe. It is very difficult to write down in something resembling a review.

This will be doubly hard when talking about live albums and bootlegs. Those songs won’t be new. They will have appeared on studio albums and played in concerts many times. So I’ll have to concentrate on the music.  That will be a challenge.

But a fun one, I think.  

Anyway, I hope you enjoy.

Charade is the Pick of the Week

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I love Charade. I mean, it has Cary Grant and Audrey Hepburn, which is enough on its own to make me love it. But then add in Walter Matthau, and I’m all in. It is the perfect movie to watch on a boring Sunday afternoon or to take to the in-laws and watch it over family gatherings. Criterion is putting it out on UHD and it has become my pick of the week. See me talk about it and other interesting things coming out this week by clicking here.

We Bury the Dead (2025)

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I love me a good zombie movie. We Bury the Dead is a very good, if not particularly original, zombie movie. Daisy Ridley stars as a woman who goes to Australia, where some kind of massive bioweapon was released, killing almost everyone but leaving a few in a zombie-like state. She’s there to help with the cleanup but also to find her husband, who she hopes is still alive (even if he is a zombie). It is a pretty slow-moving film, but I dug it. You can read my full review at Cinema Sentries.

The Thief of Bagdad (1924)

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I feel like every time I talk about silent films, I note that I still struggle with watching them. I guess it is an evergreen statement because I keep watching them, and I keep having a difficult time with them. The Thief of Bagdad is a classic filled with stunning visuals and a spectacle-filled story. But I’d be lying if I didn’t have to keep focusing my attention on it because my mind kept wandering off. Still, it is a great movie, and you can read my review here.

The Friday Night Horror Movie: Whistle (2026)

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I get pretty spoilery in this post so if you don’t like those stop reading.

ted me. It begins with a scene that takes place before the real movie sets in, designed to give you a little fright before it has to do the boring work of developing characters and building a plot. 

There is a high school basketball game. Our presumed heroes are down by a few points, and there are only a few seconds left. Our presumed main character takes the ball and makes a basket, narrowing the margin to one more point. Then he sees something in the stands. Smoke billows, and there is a strange figure standing there.  He shakes it off and gets the ball again. He runs. He shoots. He…the basketball does that thing it always does in basketball movies where it bounces back and forth around the rim in slow motion before it goes in. While it is doing that, a smoky, charcoal creature appears before the boy.

He runs to the locker room, takes out some kind of relic, and begs for his life. The creature appears again, and the boy smashes the relic. The creature disappears. Hurrah. The rest of the team comes in, and our boy takes a shower. Then he’s burnt to a crisp by the monster.

Flash forward three months. Nobody cares about that dead kid. He isn’t our hero. Neither are any of his friends or family. He exists so we can so the film can start with a bang.  Oh, and I guess so our actual main character can easily find the relic.

She’s Chrys Willet (Dafne Keen), and she’s new to the school. She gets the dead boy’s locker, and even though it has been three months since he died, and presumably that was a tragic event for the school, no one has bothered to clean out his locker. She grabs the relic and puts it in her bag.

She makes a few friends who seem to be the only people at this school. Seriously, she goes to her first class, and the only students are like the five people she just met in the hallway. They aren’t really her friends either. She just met them, and two of them were mean to her. One stared at her like she knew who Chrys was, but she doesn’t like her. The other is her cousin. They will become friends in the next scene because the film needs them to be. It needs some characters it can kill off to keep things exciting.

The relic does look cool. It’s kept inside this black crystal-like box, but the real thing has a groovy skull on one side and a little whistle thing on the other. When you blow it, death comes knocking.  You see, when you are born, your death is also born. Death spends its, um, life looking for you. When it finds you at the slated time, it kills you.  But the whistle summons your death early. Each person’s death looks like them at the slated time of their death, and if death comes early, you get killed in the manner you were always going to die.

This makes little sense but does create some fun kills. So, let’s say you are supposed to get run over by a bus in twenty years. You blow the whistle, and death comes calling sooner than expected. When it finds you, your body gets mutilated just like it would if you were hit by that bus.

I’m probably saying too much. I’ll have to add a spoiler tag at the front. But honestly, this film is dumb.  I can’t really recommend it anyway.

Our heroes (and us in the audience) learn this lore through the typical creepy old lady character we always find in this type of movie who collects ancient artifacts and knows all about spooky spells.

This movie reminded me of The Craft. Partially because it is about a weird new girl coming to a school, bonding with some newfound, and fighting supernatural powers. But also because it really isn’t that great, but I fully suspect there’s a group of teenagers who will become extremely nostalgic about it in twenty years. 

At least The Craft took some time developing its characters and developed its story. This film just throws everything together without bothering to make something cohesive.

Nick Frost is in it, and that’s always a good thing.  He plays the teacher who is the first adult to get a look at the relic and figure something out about it. But then he exits the film way too early. So much so I’m surprised someone of his status agreed to the role. Sophie Nélisse is one of the friends who becomes the love interest. That seems to be her thing now.  But I’m here for it.

Whistle is a dumb movie. It doesn’t take the time it needs to tell a good story. Instead it just jumps from scene to scene, advancing the plot in very familiar ways. But it never made me care about these people and their story.  It tries very hard to be cool. Chrys is a goth and a lesbian, and she listens to bands like The Cure and Iron Maiden on vinyl. At one point the film has her lying on her back, the camera shooting her from above, her super cool records neatly laid out around her head like a halo. Like I say, this is a film a certain type of teen will identify with, and I look forward to their essays on how misunderstood it was when I’m a much older man.

But the thing is, I kind of had a good time. The actors are decent. The directing does what it needs to do. The kills are pretty fun, even if they do use too much CGI. I won’t watch this again, and I certainly won’t feel nostalgia over it in a couple of decades, but I don’t hate myself for watching it.

Death Ship (1980)

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Death Ship is one of those movies that kept showing up in my feeds. Every time I went looking for a horror movie to watch, there it was. It looked fun, but I kept putting it off. Then the Blu-ray landed in my lap, and here we are. It isn’t a particularly good movie, and for a movie about Nazi ghosts on a death ship, it is rather dull for its first half, but things do pick up, and it becomes pretty fun in its back half. And it has George Kennedy in it, and that’s never a bad thing. You can read my full review over at Cinema Sentries.

Kill Me Again (1989)

kill me again

Kill Me Again is an overlooked neo-noir gem. Val Kilmer stars as a down-on-his-luck private eye (is there any other kind?) who is hired by a sexy femme fatale (Joanne Whalley-Kilmer) to kill her.  Well, not really kill her, but make it look like somebody did and thus keep her abusive boyfriend from looking for her. 

Naturally, she is lying, and things get complicated in lots of interesting ways. It is by no means a perfect film, but it is a very good one, and it is nice to see it on Blu-ray. You can read my full review here.

The Angry River (1971)

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I talk a lot about Shaw Brothers Studio in these pages, but there was another Hong Kong studio that was knocking out kung fu movies around the same time – Golden Harvest. I tend to think of them as second-rate to Shaw Brothers, and that isn’t really fair. They made some good movies, and Shaw Brothers made some atrocious ones.  I’ve just seen more Shaw Brothers films so I think that makes me lean more towards them.

The Angry River was Golden Harvest’ very first film, and it’s a good one. It is also the debut film of Angela Mao, who would become a big deal in Hong Kong cinema. 88 Films just released it on Blu-ray, and you can read my review at Cinema Sentries.