The Grateful Dead

Band/Artist: Grateful Dead 
Date: April 16th, 1979 
Venue: Studio Rehersal, Club Front 
Location: San Rafael, CA

Studio rehearsal with Brent. Interesting to hear how quickly Brent was fitting in.

1st Jam - Fades into a very nice jam with Jerry wandering at ease. Brent does nice job of providing a unintrusive background. Overall jam is somewhat impressive and extended at around 10 minutes. Jerry provides some nice bluesy flavor. Overall, quite spacey and nomadic. Near its conclusion Jerry spackles the jam with a psychotic and chaotic twinge. Brent does a nice job of keeping up. 

1st Drums - 1st Jam flows into short 1st Drums.

NFA - NFA is entered after the 1st Drums. The jam is bluesy. Jerry's NFA solo isn't too flavored. Bob enters a slide solo that is alright. After second verse, Brent takes a solo that indicates his prowess as a soloist. After Brent, Weir does a slide solo. The jam slowly drops in pace to a near stand-still. 

2nd Jam - NFA wanders into this brent/drums hybrid. Brent tries out his spacey sounds (similar to post verse two of the Other One on 10.27.1979). After a short drums, the band melted into a very spacey feedback session with Jerry ripping some nice meltdowns. 

2nd Drums - following the wig-out feedback session of the 2nd Jam, another drums segment occurs.

3rd Jam - heads into a Truckin'-ish sounding jam with no real leads. This fades out.

4th Jam - Fire On The Mountain-ish space. This dwindles into only drums, and eventually blends into a pre-Passenger tuning.

Passenger - very tight with nice Brent vocals. Clearly this had been rehearsed. Jerry's solo was very well done. Brent's harmony was flawless.

Passenger x2 - A second passenger. Similar to the first. Not as tight though as some timing flubs occur.

I Need A Miracle - actually this was just the start of it, and the band quickly stopped it.

Bertha - pretty standard.

Good Lovin' - aborted entry.

Bertha - tail end.

Good Lovin' x2 - aborted entry

Bertha - tail end

Good Lovin' x3 - finally worked. Standard version.

I Need A Miracle x 2 - very solid version, with very interesting Jerry licks inbetween the strong Weir vocals.

5th Jam - careful wandering; enters Fire space

Fire On The Mountain - interesting playing around the Fire theme; fades out.

Scarlet Begonias - tight version; band sounds ready to tour. Jam goes into Fire space

Fire - very extended version with long and spacey Jerry led jams.

6th Jam - more deep space with extended feedback and chaotic messes of notes. Very well done and quite interesting stuff here. 

Gloria Jam - very tight, interesting jams.

Hully Gully - very tight, interesting jams.

7th Jam - mellow flowing jam; very extended and interesting.

Jack Straw - tight, nicely jammed

8th Jam - more interesting jamming.

Overall, this was the second set that we all dreamed about but never heard. This is by definition among the loosest Brent era Dead around. The band certainly sounded ready for touring.
Rob Goetz ©