Grateful Dead - Mega-rare restored vinyl "Nights Of The Living Dead" 1970?-xx-xx prob various dates, read notes - speed corrected, a Lossless Legs exclusive!
General disclaimer: If all you insist on Grateful Dead recordings is the absolute best in sound quality then you'd best move on. This torrent isn't for you. That isn't even what this is all about. Read on...
For those of you who don't know me, I've uploaded over 1,000 torrents, mainly on Dimeadozen.org. I have a passion for restoring bootleg vinyl. In fact, my first introduction to the Dead's music was through a New Riders Felt Forum disc, bought new in 1972. Since then I have been all over the United States and Europe looking for more. Although some trading tapes have been around since before that, during the early 1970's the only access to bootleg material for us was through vinyl or off the radio. The first Grateful Dead trading tape I ever saw was in the mid 1980's (I'm older than I look), before that it was only records.
Which brings me to the current offering. Some vinyl remains the only listed source for some material. This is an extremely rare record. Every known discography states "material unavailable from other sources" with no other information.
Well maybe yes, maybe no. That's where YOU come in. Do NOT approach this record thinking "it's just another copy of so and so and I have it in much better quality". That may or may not be true.
I'm asking for you, the greatest Dead knowledge base on the planet, to join with me in trying to figure out the source material for this recording. If we succeed, or even if we don't I expect to have a great deal of fun along the way. It has happened to me before where the material on a given record could not be sourced at all by that artist's experts, that is to say that it didn't match any known recordings.
There's a good chance this could happen again. Your DeadBase will not help in this instance, you will probably not be able to piece together which date this is by the order of the songs as clearly this is taken from more than one source.
Now, on to the music. The setlist is as follows:
Big River
Cold Rain And Snow
Reelin' and Rockin'
Good Lovin'
Jet To The Promised Land
New, New Minglewood Blues
Easy Wind
Too Hard To Handle
And We Bid You Goodnight
My notes: The first five tracks appear to be board recordings, either from the radio or from the soundboard. The last four tracks are an audience recording. Pig Pen is audible, I do believe the sources that state these recordings are from 1970 as this album appeared around 1971. The playing on "Good Lovin" is as intense and beautiful as this guy has ever heard from the Grateful Dead. The performances on most of the tracks are standouts, and truly enjoyable.
But then we come to "Cold Rain And Snow", the most out-of-tune Dead piece I have ever heard. The Dead's tuning seems off on other portions of the SB section, lending credence to the fact that it may in fact be part of the same show. But "CRAS" stands out as being especially jangly. Pitch-correct it to the instruments you say, which one would you like me to use? None of it matches. The singing sounds like it's in tune, I used that. In fact, the entire album was mastered at the wrong speed and it ran way too slow. That could be another reason why the tracks couldn't be identified. A uniform correction was applied which seemed to suit everything else just fine. When I returned to "CRAS" for individual adjustment afterward, the vocals were on pitch.
And there you have it.
Man, I'm gassed. Let's have at it!
Doinker 2014-01-25
Lineage: LP on Blinding Light Records ->Technics SL1200MK2 with major speed-correcion on turntable -> Echo Layla 3G -> Sound Forge 6.0 ->click and crackle suite, no noise reduction was applied ->FLAC via TLH level 6, sectors aligned and verified, FLAC integrity checked
Do NOT bring this as an unidentified torrent over to another tracker without checking with that tracker's admins first!
Enjoy!
A DoinkerTape