Why It Truly Was Summer Magic 1985 For The Grateful Dead
1985 is the year most Grateful Dead retrospectives skip. Jerry Garcia was arrested in Golden Gate Park that January on drug charges, and the headlines wrote the year off before the music got a hearing.
But the twentieth-anniversary tour sent the band back through its own catalog for material it had not touched in years. Nassau Coliseum brought back High Time and Smokestack Lightnin’. The Greek Theatre debuted Keep On Growing, revived Stagger Lee, and returned Cryptical Envelopment to the stage for the first time in thirteen years.
Days later at Riverbend in Cincinnati, during an actual thunderstorm, the band played the full Cryptical Envelopment / The Other One / Cryptical Envelopment sandwich, a structure it had not performed since 1971. The tour carried on through Merriweather Post Pavilion, a heat wave in Houston and Austin, Richmond Coliseum (later released as Dick’s Picks 21), and Kaiser Convention Center in Oakland.
Chapters
- 0:00 Why 1985 Isn’t On Anyone’s Peak List
- 1:31 Jerry’s Bust and the Nassau Bustouts
- 2:34 Keep On Growing Debuts at the Greek
- 3:26 Cryptical Envelopment Returns After 13 Years
- 5:22 The Riverbend Thunderstorm Sandwich
- 6:57 Merriweather’s Documented Tempo Surge
- 7:34 Heat-Wave Shows in Houston and Austin
- 8:44 Richmond Becomes Dick’s Picks 21
- 9:24 Kaiser Oakland and the Underrated Verdict
Sources
- https://theshakedownarchives.com/observatory
- https://www.dead.net
- https://archive.org/details/GratefulDead
- https://jasobrecht.substack.com/p/jerry-garcia-the-complete-1985-frets
- https://jerrybase.com/events/19850624-01
Watch the full documentary: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SpQONuMDrpc
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