Into The Eighties

I don’t know if it has something to do with the way I built my collection of Grateful Dead tapes, but I am endlessly impressed with how great the band was in the early 80’s. Of all the eras that I listen to, this one seems to be able to wow me more often than others after so many years of listening. I think it has something to do with the fact that I built up hundreds and hundreds of hours of tapes before ever going after shows from the 80’s at all. In some ways, that caused me to encounter the 80’s Dead as something of a new band when I finally took the plunge.

I think it also has to do with the relative obscurity of the early 80’s Dead music. Not that the music can’t be found, but that there are very few dates that ring out as historic events from the 80’s, while the 70’s produced all kinds of classic dates (Europe ’72, Watkins Glen, Englishtown ’77, playing at the pyramids in Egypt in 1978, etc..). Someone not in our obsessive compulsive little world of collecting wouldn’t generally think of 1983 when they think of the Dead. They think 710 Haight Ashbury in the Summer of Love, or 70’s classic rock or something. In the 80’s there are all these amazing musical journeys quietly sitting in nondescript corners of nondescript years. Somehow, this makes the good stuff all the more satisfying to me, adding to the pleasure to be found there.

My tape collecting started off with a focus on the early 70’s and 60’s. Early on, I met what for me became a natural road block with the 10/21/78 show. I was so underwhelmed by that tape that it soured me to anything from 1978 or after. Also, I was finding it hard to fully fall in love with 1977 like every other Deadhead and their brother. Oh, I dappled into the 80’s (as I described in the 02/21-22/82 review – when I found Rango Keshavan’s webpage nothing stopped me from doing a four show trade for copies of his 82 masters), but for the most part my world centered around 1973 and the few years that circled it in each direction.

When I did finally recognize that I must be missing something - from the high regard given the early 80’s by many folks in my trading circle - I force-fed my way into the decade. Trusting my trading partners’ recommendations, I probably gathered a dozen shows (20 plus tapes) or more within the span of a week, all from the period of ’81 to ’84 (I know coming into possession of a dozen shows over a week means nearly nothing now – we can download that in a day now. But it was a lot of deck spinning, bubble mailers, and trips to the post office back in the late 90’s) . Included in that first batch was 08/28/81, which, of them all, had the a most piercing impact on me, as did some 1984 shows. There was something about the actual sound of the band from this time period that oozed Grateful Dead-ness to me. I can’t really place why. It sounded very different from the 70’s (let alone the 60’s), but portrayed something that spoke the very language of the Dead all the same.

Even now – in fact, maybe more so now that back when I was heavily collecting – I catch a special thrill off of really good early 80’s shows. Maybe it's because historically I don't expect these shows to impress me like, say, 1974. While the songs and power of Grateful Dead lyrics provided an unmistakable continuity between the decades, the Dead were absolutely an ever-changing band as each time period came and went. While it was not part of their own design, when the band was *on* in the 80’s, they sounded like a more mature, polished, and developed group of musicians than they ever did in the two previous decades. This is not to say that they were *better* in the early 80’s, which is why you didn’t catch me using that word. :-) It is more about how they seemed to have honed their craft in ways they hadn’t in earlier years. There might have been more fat to trim from show to show (although, one could argue that there was a ton of needless music played in the first sets from 1972 to 1974), but time and time again the early 80’s can reward even the most jaded fan.

In the online Grateful Dead community, we have the ability to rub shoulders with young and old ‘heads alike. And it’s interesting to hear how a number of older heads tend to discredit much of what happened after the 1974 retirement, or perhaps post-1977. To many, shows in later years (i.e after 1974 and sometimes even earlier, as discussed in Primal Dead - The Early Years) completely paled to what came before. The Dead had sold out, given up, disappeared. The disco Dead of the late 70’s were enough to cause some to consider walking out on the band. Strong sentiments, which somehow the passage of time brings into different perspective. For most folks, all eras of the Dead have something to offer, and it is hard to understand how some older fans could dismiss vast amounts of the archive – “after Pigpen, it was over!” . Personally, I can tell you that if it happened after 1984, I am hardly interested. And shows in the 90’s? It’s really hard for me to embrace them as I do the earlier decades. So I’m as jaded as the next guy. I often wonder if the late 80’s and 90’s are waiting out there for me to show up. Will I someday fall in love with the later years as I eventually did with the early 80’s?

I guess the point is that it is worth allowing yourself to meander into as many corners of the Grateful Dead’s musical history as you can. There is always something special just around some corner. For me, the early 80’s have been an ever opening flower of delight that I found tucked in the back of a garden I once thought ended at 1979.