Grateful Dead - New Year's Eve 1981 (2023)

• The Grateful Dead played a Bay Area New Year’s Eve show every year from 1976 through 1991 (and several more in the early 70’s). Among Dead Heads favourites is the gig presented on this new Three Disc Set, their 1981 effort. Joan Baez opens the show with the Grateful Dead as her backing band. If you like Joan Baez, you’ll dig this performance. If you don’t like her, this show isn’t going to convert you. Her set isn’t included herein anyhow! The Dead’s first set starts with an incendiary Shakedown Street that gives one a pretty good indication of where this evening is headed. Even the short songs are booming tonight, ‘Cold Rain and Snow’ and ‘Beat It On Down The Line’ being good but not exhaustive examples from the opening set. • There’s a break at the end of the set prior to the New Year’s Countdown. At this point, Ken Kesey, one of the Dead’s first champions, gets on stage and just goes hog wild, blowing on his harmonica and ranting for five or six minutes, injecting a very heavy dose of 1966 into the heart of the Reagan era. When the clock strikes midnight (actually a couple of seconds before), the band launches into a furious Iko Iko to ring in 1982. • What follows is a pretty epic 70+ minutes of music, some of the best the Dead played in the early 80’s. Check this out: ‘Playing In The Band>Terrapin Station>Playing In The Band>Drums>Space>The Other One>Not Fade Away>Goin’ Down The Road Feeling Bad>Morning Dew’. John Cippolina from Quicksilver Messenger Services sits in for the last four of these tunes, adding even more fireworks to this conflagration. • Although the exact timing of things is a little unclear, it appears that after the Dead’s second set, Jerry Garcia married his long-time consort, Mountain Girl, backstage. This must have been inspiring, because the band comes back onstage and busts out the first ‘Dark Star’ of the 80’s and only the 4th performance of the song since their 1974 hiatus. Post ‘Dark Star’ the band ramps things up with high energy versions of ‘Bertha’ and ‘Good Lovin’ before an encore of ‘It’s All Over Now Baby Blue’ with Joan Baez singing along to conclude the event.