Crazy Fingers

Last week Oliver posted a list of Allman Brothers songs (and links to mp3 files) he used to entertain himself on a road trip to New Haven. I love the Allman Brothers as much as the next gay boy in Chelsea (I’ll be at the Beacon in March, hopefully with my boyfriend, and if my iPod isn’t playing the Grateful Dead, it’s as likely to be playing the Allman Brothers as it is Neil Young or the Jerry Band). But I really love the Dead. I think I’ve mentioned here that on several occasions, I’ve accosted Oliver on the street and announced the date of the show I was listening to at the time.

So for the past week, I’ve been obsessing about a particular show, 10/27/79 (Cape Cod Coliseum). When I saw Oliver’s “Free Music Tuesday” post last week, I realized I wanted to share two songs from that show which are particularly hot. Dancin’ in the Street > Franklin’s Tower. In total, the two songs run over 30 minutes, because the jams are so smoking hot. The entire show is amazing, but I keep listening to Dancin>Franklins again, especially on the StairMaster or Arc Trainer, which is unusual for me (usually, I listen to shows end-to-end). These two songs are also excellent driving music.

Unlike Oliver, who’s afraid of getting sued because he’s sharing Allman Brothers songs, it’s ok to put these Grateful Dead recordings out there. The Grateful Dead allow us to trade recordings of their concerts, as long as no money changes hands, and as long as its for noncommercial use. After a protracted controversey last fall, which I shall not rehash, it was established that it is ok to trade, online, audience recordings (made from a location in the audience, with microphones and taping equipment the taper brought into the show), but not soundboard recordings (made by plugging in to the band’s sound system, either by someone who bought a ticket to the show, or by the band itself, for archival reasons; many of the Grateful Dead soundboards in circulation were made by the band itself, and put into circulation by Dick Latvala, the band’s archivist, or other people affiliated with the band).

So here it is, for your listening pleasure: Dancin’ in the Street > Franklin’s Tower. It’s about 35 megabytes in all, but it’s worth it. Download both, listen to them back-to-back.

Although I love sharing this music, and turning people on to it, I’m not sure this is something I’m going to do all the time. I’ve only got so much bandwidth.

However, if you want more:

• Dead on Friday — pointers to download sources and interesting commentary.
• The Live Music Archive on archive.org.
• Email me. If you give me a USB drive, I’ll give you all the shows I have in mp3 format (about 600), and it’s all noncommercial and it’s all perfectly legal.

The images in this post are from the Grateful Dead Tickets, Passes, & Laminates site.