December 2018
  We still have a few copies left of Dave's Picks Vol. 28 from Passaic, NJ, 6/17/76. As always, an excellent show in unparalleled sonic quality, thanks to Betty Cantor (mixing, 1976), Rob Eaton (salvage operation, 2017) and Jeffrey Norman (mastering, 2018). Read more about DaP 28 here. A few 2019 subscriptions are still available. Details about the first two of this year's four releases have already been leaked:
   - DaP 29: 2/26/77 San Bernardino, CA
   - DaP 30: 1/2/70 Fillmore East, NY (+ 1/3/70 bonus disc)
   The first of the two shows in particular is awaited with some excitement. Here, the newly recorded "Terrapin Station” suite was played for the first time ever, as the opening number! "Estimated Prophet” also had its debut in this show.
   The Grammy-nominated boxed set "Pacific Northwest 73-74" can still be ordered. The sound quality is top notch, not least the three "Wall of Sound" shows from 1974, and the band is in high spirits throughout. And the packaging, with native American imagery, tells its own story. But remember: The 15,000 copies won't last forever.
   A few newly arrived "unofficial" releases: A mini-boxed set with three concerts from 1987, 88 and 89 respectively, with the common theme that they contain songs from the "In the Dark" album. 6 CDs at a very affordable price.
   Lastly, a single CD from a highly improvised concert in France, June 21, 1971 at Chateau d'Herouville, called "Honky Chateau". The Dead were scheduled to play a local music festival which was canceled due to torrential rains, leaving the band to pass the time at the castle where they were staying. It comes as no surprise that they decided to stage a concert on the lawn, for the benefit of the local mayor, the fire brigade, and a few hundred other citizens. The sound quality is reasonable and special notice must be given to the very long and hot jam sequence in "Hard to Handle".

September 2018
   "Long Strange Trip" is coming in November on DVD and Blu-ray. The 4-hour documentary produced by acclaimed director Amir Bar-Lev - in close collaboration with Grateful Dead Productions and Rhino - has until now only been available for streaming on Amazon Prime. The main features are interviews with the surviving members of the band (among many others), rare video clips, and many other music samples. The selected music tracks can also be heard in their entirety on the soundtrack album that was released in May. The version offered by Dancing Bear is the 3 CD or 2 Blu-ray Deluxe Edition.
   This year's exclusive boxed set, Pacific Northwest 73-74, is still available. If you need an extra nudge before making the decision to buy, you can view an animated unpacking of the box on Youtube here.
   Dave's Picks Volume 27: Grateful Dead visited Boise, Idaho for the first and only time on September 2, 1983. This vintage has only yielded a single release so far - Dick's Picks Volume 8. But as usual Dave has unearthed a solid show with plenty of highlights including the classic sequence of Help-Slip-Franklin's.

March 2018
  We are entering the seventh consecutive year of "Dave’s Picks” - a year that looks to be as exciting as ever, with a number of celebrated - and/or overlooked - shows from “the golden age” being released in superior technical quality. For the first release of 2018 - Dave's Picks Volume 25 - Dave has picked the fabulous show from 11/6/77 at Broome County Veterans Memorial Arena in Binghamton, New York. This is truly a gem, with Garcia on fire and ready to jam it out at the slightest provocation. Get it while you can! For Volume 26 we shall be returning to another banner year - 1971. More about this when we approach the May release date.
   Dancing Bear still has a few subscription packages left if you want to make sure you don't miss any of this year’s releases. Four 3-CD sets + the subscriber’s bonus disc, one set delivered to your doorstep every 3 months. What’s more, you save about 26 EUR, compared to buying the four sets separately. But don’t wait too long - when the last copy of Volume 25 is sold, the subscription deal is gone, too.
   On May 14th, 2015, Merriweather Post Pavilion hosted a tribute concert in honor of Jerry Garcia, featuring musicians and bands such as David Grisman, Jorma Kaukonen, Jimmy Cliff, Peter Frampton, Widespread Panic, moe, Los Lobos, and many more, with all surviving members of the Grateful Dead helping out. The concert, "Dear Jerry", was recorded and released on both CD, DVD, BluRay, and combined packages. You can check out the full lineup and setlist here.
   Lastly, a small batch of live shows from historic FM broadcasts. They are from Capitol Theatre, Port Chester, 1971, Kezar Stadium 1975 (first glimpse of the “Blues for Allah” material), and a rousing New Year’s Eve 1986 in Oakland.

November 2017
   Photographer Susana Millman has just released a beautiful book called "Alive with the Dead, or A Fly on the Wall With a Camera". Through her marriage to Dennis McNally, press spokesman and author of the biography "A Long Strange Trip", Susana Millman had free access both front- and backstage, and also photographed the Dead in more private settings, from the eighties onward.

September 2017
  When Jerry Garcia, Mickey Hart, Bill Kreutzmann, Phil Lesh, Brent Mydland, and Bob Weir rolled into D.C. in July 1989 for the Dead’s two-night stand at RFK, the band hit the stage running with a stellar rendition of “Touch Of Grey,” the group’s biggest hit from its only Top 10 album In The Dark, which was released in 1987. The following night, the band returned to its double-platinum commercial breakthrough when it opened the show with a fiery version of “Hell In A Bucket.”
   "RFK Stadium '89" fell right in the middle of one of the best tours of the last 15 years of Grateful Dead performances, with these shows being the sixth and seventh of an 11-show tour. This tour is widely considered the start of a nine month period of sustained excellence, which ran from Summer '89 through Spring '90.
   The RFK shows are as good as any of the more famous shows from this period, including July 4 in Buffalo, July 7 in Philadelphia, and the Alpine run,” says David Lemieux, Grateful Dead archivist and the set’s producer. “When Bob Weir has asked me to provide copies of Grateful Dead songs to give to his bandmates to learn and rehearse, he almost always requests Summer '89, and I've often drawn upon the RFK shows for this purpose. It's really that good!”   Pianist Bruce Hornsby — who briefly joined the band between 1990 and 1992 — is featured on both shows. He played accordion during “Sugaree” and “Man Smart (Woman Smarter),” with a touch of keyboard-tinkling, on July 12, and then played more accordion the following night for “Tennessee Jed” and “Stuck Inside Of Mobile With The Memphis Blues Again.”
   For fans of Mydland’s tenure with the Dead – which began in 1979 and ended in 1990 with the keyboardist’s tragic death – these stellar shows capture that incarnation in peak form. Among the long list of highlights are performances of live staples such as “Eyes Of The World,” “Wharf Rat” and “I Need A Miracle,” along with rarities like “To Lay Me Down,” which was played only a few times in 1989. The July 13 show also features the band road-testing “I Will Take You Home,” a track Mydland wrote with Dead lyricist John Perry Barlow that would appear later that fall on Built To Last. The Box will be released November 10th - pre-order now!

July 2017
Summer or not - Dancing Bear is always working tirelessly to convey the hottest news and releases from Grateful Dead and surrounding areas. In May, we got - at long last - the “big four" shows from the beginning of May 1977, in a beautifully designed box and in superior technical quality. "Get Shown The Light" is still available in the un-numbered "All Music" edition, which still retains the intricate inner covers and the booklet of Nicholas Meriweather's thorough review of the history of these landmark shows.
  "Long Strange Trip", the new four-hour documentary about the Grateful Dead, can only be seen on the Amazon Prime streaming service, but of course we hope that some day it will find its way to DVD. For now, we have to settle for the movie's soundtrack, which can be viewed as another Greatest Hits collection on 3 CDs. Most songs are from official releases, both studio and live albums. Thus, Live Dead, Workingman's Dead, American Beauty and Cornell 5/8/77 are each represented with multiple numbers. In addition, there are unpublished live versions of, among others, Dark Star, China / Rider, Stella Blue and Days Between. The overall impression is that the producers have taken the trouble to find good and representative versions of the individual songs. Please observe that "Long Strange Trip" can be found elsewhere in a 2-CD version where only the first two CDs are included.
  Early August will see the release of No. 9 in the “GarciaLive” series, a show from August 11, 1974 at Keystone Club, Berkeley. Appearing as "Garcia & Saunders”, the name signals a slightly different lineup from the "normal" Jerry Garcia Band, as it features Bill Kreutzmann on drums and Martin Fierro on sax and flute. And, of course, Merl Saunders on keyboards and John Kahn on bass. When Garcia had a sax player in his band the setlist was always a bit more jazzed, as with "Legion of Mary", but there was still room (and plenty of it!) for songs like The Harder They Come, Roadrunner, and The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down.
  One of Grateful Dead's relatively few visits to Canada took place in 1984, where on June 21st they shared the bill with The Band at Kingswood Music Theatre in Maple, Ontario. It was an excellent concert in front of an enthusiastic audience, and we get it in great audio quality on a double-CD, with radio commentator and all. Being in Canada, they also play "Might As Well", known as Robert Hunter's homage to the famous "train tour" across Canada in 1970. Rick Danko and Levon Helm play on the encores, but you have to listen very carefully to hear their contributions.
  The year 1995 has never been high on the wish list of GD concerts, being chiefly remembered as the year we lost Garcia. But, as the few lucky ones who have heard the mega boxed set "30 Trips Around The Sun” will know, it was possible to find bright spots where every bandmember played to their usual standard throughout a whole concert. Well, okay then, throughout the better part of a concert! Now, everyone will have the chance to experience the last Grateful Dead tour with the newly released "Visions of the Future", a 2-CD from March 18, 1995 at The Spectrum, Philadelphia. Interpret the title as you like (!), but the music is actually OK, and the recording quality is too. Granted, they didn’t play any of the original songs that never made it to a studio album (Days Between, So Many Roads, etc.), but we get a rare cover of Dylan's "Visions of Johanna" as well as George Harrison's "It's All Too Much” from “Yellow Submarine” and “Rain", two of the Beatles songs that Vince Welnick managed to sneak into the repertoire.

February 2017.2
“I need a miracle - every day!”
You could almost start believing in miracles when you read the press release about The Grateful Dead's next boxed set. This is far from the first time we touch upon May 1977, both in single releases ("To Terrapin", Dick's Picks 3 and 29, Dave's Picks Vol. 1) and a 5-show boxed set. But the four almost legendary shows, 5/5 in New Haven, 5/7 at Boston Garden, 5/8 at Cornell U., 5/9 in Buffalo Memorial Auditorium, which have been making the rounds on cassettes for years, have until recently been missing from "the Vault" and thus not available for release in the superior technical quality we have grown accustomed to. But now, the master tapes have been returned and restored along with about 100 other "Betty Boards" which we - in Dave's words - will hear much more about in the coming10-20 years! You can read more about the contents and creation of this forthcoming release here. The release date is May 5 - on the 40th anniversary of the first of the four shows. The main attraction, Barton Hall at Cornell University 05/08/77 (often touted as the Grateful Dead's best concert ever), will also be released as a 3-CD or 5-LP set. All versions can be pre-ordered now.

February 2017.1
A new year in Dead-land has begun. Dave's Picks Volume 21 has hit the streets and we still have a few copies left, either retail or as the first installment of the annual subscription. As previously announced, we find ourselves at Boston Garden, 2 April 1973. The band is on fire from track one - "Playin 'In The Band" goes over 17 minutes, and there is a long and unique jam out of "Here Comes Sunshine". And whenever the show ends with "We Bid You Goodnight" sung á capella, we and the band know that it has been an exceptional evening.

Dave has already revealed a bit about Pick no. 22. It will be the third night of four in Ney York City's Felt Forum, also known as the bottom floor of Madison Square Garden. In 2016 we presented a radio transmission of the December 5, 1971 concert, and now we shall have the complete show from the 7th + the second set from 6th of December. The remainder of December 6, or at least most of it, will comprise the bonus disc.

March 10 shall see the release of "Garcia Live" Volume 8, a double-CD from November 23, 1991 at Bradley Center, Milwaukee. The final line-up of the Jerry Garcia Band, 1986-1992, was one of the best and by far the most stable; in addition to Garcia and John Kahn it consisted of Melvin Seals on keyboards, David Kemper on drums, and the two vocalists Jackie LaBranch and Gloria Jones. The setlist is unconventional, gathering in this one concert a number of rarely played songs.

November 2016
Now is the time to sign up for the 2017 subscription to Dave’s Picks - four 3-CD sets delivered quarterly, plus the exclusive subscriber’s bonus disc. The limited editions of 16,500 copies sell out fast, sometimes in less than a day, so a subscription is the only way to make sure you don’t miss out. The subscription price is unchanged from the last couple of years. As usual, the selection of shows for Dave’s Picks 2017 is not fully decided at this time. But we know that Volume 21 will be the show at Boston Garden on April 2nd, 1973. But in a year where a large batch of master tapes long considered lost have been returned to the vault and digitized, we can permit ourselves great expectations.

Meanwhile, Dave’s Picks Vol. 20 is now available at www.dancingbear.dk, even though it is long gone at dead.net. For the first time in the series, Dave has ventured into the eighties - the Brent Mydland era - with a solid show from Boulder, Colorado 9 December 1981.

A rare recording from 1962 has turned up featuring one of the very young Garcia’s many folk- and bluegrass ensembles: Hart Valley Drifters. Besides Garcia on vocals, banjo and guitar, the band consists of David Nelson on guitar, Robert Hunter(!) on upright bass, Ken Frankel on banjo, and Norm van Maastricht on dobro. The repertoire is mainly folk standards as we know them from Old & In The Way and the Jerry Garcia Acoustic Band.

The Grateful Dead’s 50th anniversary is still being celebrated with special releases. 2017 will see a new deluxe edition of the band’s eponymous debut album as a 2 CD set, the second CD being dedicated to the complete 29 July 1966 show padded with four cuts from the following night. The album will also be released as a vinyl “picture disc” with the entire surface displaying a mirrored section of the original album cover. The release date for both versions is 20 January 2017, but we accept preorders starting now.

Starting in February, the Grateful Dead’s 7” singles, 27 in all, will be re-released. They will be offered in subscription with 4 yearly releases, just like Dave’s Picks. The mix will closely resemble the original versions, but all other aspects of the sound will be elevated to contemporary standards. The series will be limited to 10,000 copies of each release, with the first single, “Stealin’/Don’t Ease Me In”, to be released 1 March. The remaining three 2017 releases are “The Golden Road/Cream Puff War”, “Dark Star/Born Cross-eyed”, and “Dupree’s Diamond Blues/Cosmic Charlie”. Dancing Bear will not be offering these releases separately, but only in subscription with an annual renewal option.

The unofficial releases of concerts originally broadcast live on FM radio keep on coming at a fast clip. Vi don’t have the time or space to review them all in these newsletters, so how do you choose? Some of our customers go for specific periods or years, but you might also direct your attention to the Grateful Dead’s traditional New Year’s concerts in San Francisco. They were always long, high-spirited, and frequently featured guest musicians. We already have 1976, 1978 and 1987(DVD) as official releases; New Year’s 1971 and 1972 appeared recently, the latter under the cryptic title “Hogmanay” (a spirited Scotch New Year's celebration), and in the near future 1990, 1982 and 1986 will turn up.

We do have time for one last recommendation: The closing of Bill Graham's venerable Fillmore West was “celebrated” with a full week of all-nighters. The Grateful Dead closed the third night with a full-length show, but the two opening acts, The Rowan Brothers (Peter Rowan’s younger siblings) and the New Riders, both had Jerry Garcia sitting in on pedal steel guitar. The entire performance can be enjoyed via the 5-CD boxed set “Fillmore West Closing Week, night 3”.

June 2016
Several Grateful Dead band members have stated in interviews that the hoved their legacy of songs would live on, after the packed it in as a touring and recording unit. In the course of the Anniversary year, numerous bands included a dead song or two in their shows and albums, and quite a few tribute albums were released. Now comes the most ambitious tribute release so far: A large and varied roster of musicians and bands from the Indie world have got together and contributed to the 5-CD boxed set “Day of the Dead”. The Dessner brothers, Aaron and Bryce, of “The National” have curated and coordinated the whole thing and play on several of the 59 very different interpretations of Grateful Dead originals and covers. I freely admit that I know very few of the many individuals and band names, even if many of the latter sound like they were put together exclusively for this release. Among the more well-known names are Wilco, Mumford & Sons, The Flaming Lips, Stephen Malkmus, Cass McCombs, Bela Fleck, and Lucinda Williams. Bob Weir and Bruce Hornsby also make appearances. Part of the proceeds from this release will benefit AIDS and HIV research. Even so, the price tag of the 5-CD box is fairly reasonable.

November 11th, 1971 the Grateful Dead played Atlanta Municipal Auditorium. The show is famous (or notorious) for the heavy-handedness of the local police force, rather than for its spectacular music. The raid (or "fracas" as the track list has it) took place partly on the stage, which allows us to listen to four minutes of Atlanta's finest in action, captured and transmitted live in glorious hi-fi. Several very exciting FM-transmitted shows are announced but not yet released - more information about this will follow in late July or early August, where we should also be able to reveal Dave’s Picks Volume 19.

April 2016
The Grateful Dead's European tour in April and May 1972 has been available on CD as individual shows since their release in 2011, but right at this moment the sets are selling out fast. Probably helped by a 25% discount on the remaining shows. If you are unfamiliar with this outstanding tour, or if you prefer complete shows to compilations (Europe '72 Vol. I and Vol. II, still available!), you should act now. We try to keep the catalog on www.dancingbear.dk updated, but the inventory is dwindling day by day. So, which one should you pick? The '72-tour was rather unique by not having any weak shows, but among the remaining shows are a few of my personal favourites:Wembley Arena 4/8/72, a lively show, second on the tour, with one of the best and most inventive Dark Stars you're ever going to hear. L'Esplanade de Lille 5/13/72, free open-air spectacle in a city park, substitute for a cancelled show a few weeks before. No easy-listening set list for the strollers-by, but a true Grateful Dead show with a deep and spacy Other One as the centerpiece. And finally, getting both personal and patriotic: Tivolis koncertsal 4/14/72 - my first show. Still singled out for praise in the dead.net chatrooms, not least on account of the Dark Star>SugarMagnolia transition and Pigpen's unique workout of Caution>WhoDoYouLove>Caution, sleazy rap and all. Plus the funny sequence where Bob og Jerry makes a bet whether the audience understands anything they're saying, complete with a show of hands!

March 2016-2
July 1978 - The Complete Recordings:
The new boxed set from the Grateful Dead consists of 5 complete shows from July 1978, including the two phenomenal - and widely circulated - shows at Red Rocks, Colorado. This release is not just great news on its own terms, it could (and should) be the first installment in a long line of future releases from a source that deadheads have fantasized about for years: 'The Betty Boards'. The nickname Betty Boards refers to the collection of master tapes that Betty Cantor-Jackson made of more than a thousand Grateful Dead- and Garcia Band shows between 1971 and 1980. The account of how the tapes were sold, hidden away, rediscovered in varying states of decomposition, restored, and little by little returned to 'The Vault', reads like a crime thriller, except for the fact that there are no real criminals involved.You can read the full story here. Or you may whet your appetite on this condensed version: For the longest time, live recordings of shows were not in high esteem in the Grateful Dead organisation; the activity was regarded as Betty's private hobby. She had to buy tapes and recording equipment herself and consequently maintained right of ownership to the tapes, although the rights did not extend to releasing the music. The tapes, mostly packed in road cases, were kept in a storage facility after Betty had to move out of her house, and when she couldn't afford to pay the storage fees, they were auctioned off. Most of the tapes were in three lots that we know about: One (big) lot was bought by an avid collector of bootleg recordings, wo promptly started making cassette copies and distributing them to fellow collectors. That is why high-quality board tapes of such gems as Barton Hall 5/8/77, Port Chester 2/18/71, and Red Rocks 7/7 and 7/8/78 can now be found in a great many deadheads' collections. The second lot was acquired by an individual who was only interested in the road cases and left the tapes in a damp barn for a decade, where the tape boxes slowly disintegrated from rot and mold. Fortunately, in 1995, he decided to try and make some money from the tapes and contacted studio engineer Rob Eaton, later guitarist in the Dark Star Orchestra, who took on the job of trying to restore and identify the recordings. The job took a lot of skill as well as time, but most of the recordings are now digitized and stored safely in the vault at Rhino Records. The last collection of tapes has been hidden away from the start. Rob Eaton managed to track down the owner, who offered to sell the tapes to the Grateful Dead organization for a price in the neighborhood of a million dollars. The band is, understandably, not very keen to pay for their own music, but secret negotiations are known to have been going on. We expect to see many more releases of Betty Boards, praised for their sonic warmth and stereo separation, in the years to come. Producer David Lemieux has - as usual - uploaded A video to YouTube where he goes on (and on) about the delights of this release and the individual shows. Watch it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hUa3ggtoTbw

Lastly, we have a concert from 1976 by Kingfish which, from 1974 to 1976, had Bob Weir as a band member during the Grateful Dead's extended touring break. The band includes Matthew Kelly (harmonica) and Dave Torbert (bass), both known from various Grateful Dead projects and records.

March 2016
For once, this far into the year, we still have a few Dave's Picks subscriptions left. The first installment has already been published and can also be had separately - DaP Vol.17 is a great show from the Wall-of-Sound tour in 1974.

The 'Fare Thee Well' shows in Chicago 3-5 July are still available in all configurations: The complete boxed set on 12 CDs + 7 DVD/Blu-Ray, The last show, 5 July, 4 CDs+2 DVD/Blu-Ray, and the "Best of FTW" compilation on 2 CDs.

In the course of the last year, a sizeable number of live concerts have been released on various small record labels, with the common feature that they have all been broadcast live on local radio stations. A change in copyríght laws might explain this abundance of live material which also includes releases by the Rolling Stones, Bruce Springsteen, Allman Brothers, and many others. The Grateful Dead releases from 2015 have already been announced in previous Dancing Bear newsletters. Recently, a fine concert with Jerry Garcia Band, "Midnight Moonlight" from 1982, has been added to the catalog, as well as a very interesting show from 1978 by Robert Hunter and the band Comfort, led by Rodney Albin from Big Brother. Right now, we are waiting for the arrival of three concerts from 1971: Harding Theater 7/11, Northrop Auditorium 19/10, and Felt Forum (Madison Sq. Garden) 5/12. They are scheduled to arrive around mid-March, but can be pre-ordered now. A portion of the Felt Forum concert is known to many through bootlegs and tapes, not least because of one tune: ?(I washed my hands in) Muddy Water" which was played by the Grateful Dead on that night for the first, last and only time. But now we get to hear the whole concert.

Finally, let me repeat the advertisement for our revived T-shirts catalog. The production series are small and when they are gone, they are gone, probably just in the size you wanted. But such are the terms. The same is obviously true of Dave's Picks and other limited edition CD releases.

November 2014
Black Friday is coming, and Dancing Bear goes all-in! This week-end, Friday, November 28 thru Sunday, we will have a truly breathtaking Sale with 25% discount on all Grateful Dead CDs and DVDs (including boxed sets!), and 40% on other items in the shop including stickers, patches, and CDs and DVDs by other artists (including bandmembers' solo CDs!). For products already on offer at a lesser discount, the discount is raised to the aforementioned percentages. EXCEPTIONS: There is no discount on books, nor on the subscription for next year Dave's Picks. Remaining stock discontinued by the supplier, which therefore can't be reordered, is offered only while supplies last. And remember: your e-mail order must be submitted between 28 Nov. 00:01 and 30 Nov. 23:59.

A couple of new items: The Grateful Dead library has long since passed 50 titles but now, finally, we see the first in-depth treatment of the Jerry Garcia Band. The author has selected the - in his opinion - top 13 shows from the 1972 to 1984 period, which are analyzed in depth with lots of background information. The second part of the book offers memories and anecdotes from his years of following the JGB on tour, attending as many shows as possible, all described with great enthusiasm and insight.
Another new book is a heavy tome, Live Dead, devoted to the photography of Bob Minkin, who followed the Grateful Dead on tour from the mid-seventies to the ending, in 1995. A truly great book from a master photographer.
To celebrate the jubilee year of 2015, we once again present the colorful Grateful Dead Wall Calendar. This time around, the usual collection of band photos has been replaced by colorful full-page illustrations by artist Mike DuBois.
Another radio broadcast from 1988 has surfaced, this time from the Saratoga Performing Arts Center (SPAC) on June 28, 1988. The setlist looks quite promising: the days of half-hour long jamfests were long gone, but the entire second set is a continuous flow of songs. And we get to hear the relatively rare performances of "Victim or the Crime" and "Crazy Fingers".

October 2014
There have been several new and not-so-new releases since our last newsletter. The "GarciaLive" series has reached no. 5, recorded New Year's Eve 1975, where the Grateful Dead for once did not play Bill Graham's New Year bash at the Fillmore or Winterland. Instead, some of the band members spent the evening at the somewhat more intimate Keystone Berkeley club where the Jerry Garcia Band were consequently able to present their musical friends Bob Weir and Mickey Hart, plus Matthew Kelly (harp), Greg Errico (drums) and Nicky Hopkins on keyboards. The 2-CD set will be released October 21 and can be pre-ordered now.

The small record label Klondike specializes in publishing shows, including some by the Grateful Dead, that were transmitted live on FM-radio, frequently on small local radio stations. The footage is often known by collectors already, and you cannot expect quite the same careful mixing and tweaking as on the Dead's own releases. Our first offering is from 8 April 1988 in Worcester, Massachusetts. There is only one official release (Road Trips Vol. 4.2) on the books from 1988. It is obvious that Garcia plays with renewed fervor and energy after his coma a few years before, and the concert sound, especially in the highly experimental Drums> Space > the Other One, gives clear indication of the grand vintages that followed in 1989 and 1990.

Our second Klondike offering is an early version of Old & In The Way, as recorded in the Record Plant studio 21 April 1973. There are several cuts that were not found on the "Live at the Boarding House" release, from August of the same year. Moreover, they have not yet recruited Vassar Clements to the team; Instead, we hear violinist Richard Greene of Peter Rowan's old group, Seatrain.

Donna Jean Godchaux Band with guitarist Jeff Mattson last year published a new album, "Back Around", which we have only recently added to the Dancing Bear catalog. Several of the songs are written by Donna Jean, alone or with Mattson. There are also cover versions of songs by the Rolling Stones and the Beatles, and a single Grateful Dead number has slipped in, namely Crazy Fingers. Donna Jean is not prominent in the mix and sings in a lower range than in the 70s with the Grateful Dead. All in all, an excellent album with great sound.

We have some old news on the DVD front. The "View from the Vault" series, which numbered four volumes, was based on live video tapes recorded for the stage monitors, which were - and are - an indispensable part of any large stadium concert. The series has been discontinued from the catalog for years, but now the whole series has been reprinted, at a lower price than the original issues. The same goes for the DVD from the New Year Concert 1987/88, "Ticket to New Year's". Please be aware that the DVD is encoded for Region 1, and thus requires a "region free" player.

Further, we have started the countdown to the "Jubilee Year" 2015, the 50th anniversary of the debut of the Grateful Dead. In a "live chat" a few weeks ago, where David Lemieux answered questions from viewers, he, as usual, would not reveal very much in advance. But he did drop a hint that they have some very exciting things in the pipeline to be revealed throughout the year. It will be "really cool".

Soon, we shall start taking orders for next year's subscription to the "Dave's Picks" series. If you have already decided to subscribe, we would appreciate an early indication by e-mail to orders(at)dancingbear.dk. Due to the fact that, when the official subscription is announced, it may be necessary to act quickly. We will also try to ensure more copies for sale to non-subscribers than we had this year.

July 2014
Back in 2012, while preparing the first "Spring 1990" box set, producer David Lemieux realized that the shows from the spring tour, which was forced to pass by, were much too good to remain in obscurity. Consequently, we shall now (come September) get 8 more shows, the lavish box set "Spring 1990, The Other One", lovingly remastered from 20 tracks by Jeffrey Norman. Combined with the previous releases "Dozin' at the Knick" and "Terrapin Limited", both of which are still available, we can now listen to the complete tour, often referred to as "the last great Grateful Dead Tour".

One of the shows in this box set has gained almost legendary status, namely 3/29/90 with tenor sax player Branford Marsalis as guest musician. As a tip of the hat to those who won't be able to obtain the complete box, GDP has elected to release this show as a separate 3-CD set entitled "Wake Up To Find Out". The box will contain several types of memorabilia, detailed here. Plus a 144 page book with essays by Nicholas Meriwether and Blair Jackson.

A new release in the "Garcia Live" series, volume 4, is just around the corner. The March 22 1978 show with the Jerry Garcia Band featured Keith & Donna Godchaux and guest vocalist Maria Muldaur. The "Cats Under the Stars" album was just about to be released, and from this we get extended treatments of the title cut plus "Gomorrah" and "Love in the Afternoon". You can peruse the entire set list here.

With these announcements, it seems unlikely that we shall see more new releases this side of summer. Dancing Bear wishes all customers a great holiday time!

April 2014
Dave's Picks No. 10 was announced for pre-ordering last week - and sold out in a day. Luckily, this does not concern our subscribers, and as usual we will have a few extra copies for sale without a subscription. So, what's all the fuss about this time?

On December 12, 1969 the Dead played three gigs in a small - now long gone - club on Sunset Strip in Los Angeles named Thelma. The last night of the three has long been on the wish list of producer David Lemieux, but unfortunately the tape with the first part of the concert was missing. It re-appeared a few years ago, in a batch with a bunch of others that I talked about in a newsletter last January. And a major show it is, with Pigpen in great form doing eight of his signature tunes: "Hard To Handle," "Good Lovin'", "Turn On Your Love Light," "Alligator", "Easy Wind", "I'm a King Bee", etc. Plus electrified versions of most tracks from "Workingman 's Dead", which was released a few weeks later. You can listen to Dave's own words (when he is not being distracted by an eagle in a treetop!) by following this link. It is also that time of the year when there's a bonus CD included in the package, and not only for the subscribers. It consists of hand-picked numbers from the night before , December 11. The setlist has not been published, but "Dark Star" is a distinct possibility!

In 1973 Jerry Garcia, David Grisman and John Kahn launched the acoustic country and bluegrass group Old & In the Way, along with guitarist Peter Rowan, known from the band Seatrain, and veteran country fiddler Vassar Clements. In October the band played two gigs at "The Boardinghouse", a small portion of which became the album " Old & In the Way " (1974 ), released to great acclaim and creating a renewed interest in bluegrass music. The album was released on CD in 1986, followed ten years later by two more CDs with material from the same shows, "That High Lonesome Sound " and " Breakdown".
The three CDs together contained all the different songs that were played. The new 4-CD set, "Live at the Boardinghouse", presents the two shows exactly as they were recorded, 55 tracks in all. If you already own the previous three releases you may not have reason to want more, but otherwise, at DKK 343 this set is a bargain!
The playing is at a very high level, not least thanks to veteran Vassar Clements and as you know, bluegrass and the banjo were Jerry Garcia's first musical obsessions. The two concerts mix traditional bluegrass and folk standards with original tracks, mainly by Clements, Rowan and Grisman and inspired cover-songs from various sources, including Jagger/Richards "Wild horses", to name just one example. If you love hot acoustic music with a nerve, you should give "Live at the Boarding House" a listen.

In a completely different vein, we present the fourth album from the duo "Dose Hermanos" entitled "Batique". Dose Hermanos are old and not so old friends, namely Tom "T.C." Constanten and Bob Bralove. T.C. played keyboards (harpsichord and piano) with the Grateful Dead 1968-69 and was a major inspiration for the experimental and improvisational style that the band developed in those years. Bralove was hired by the group in the late eighties as a MIDI technician, but since he, like T.C., had classical and avant-garde piano training, he ended up during the Dead's last years to deliver pre-recorded MIDI effects to the "Space" segments , and sometimes even played along on keyboard behind the stage.
The tracks on "Batique" are improvisations for two pianos, yet cover a lot of ground. Some tracks lean tqwards jazz , others are reminiscent of TC's "prepared piano" effects on "Anthem of the Sun" , still others are more in a classic and melodic vein. There?s nothing that comes close to rock, but with two such intelligent musicians you know you are in very capable hands. You can hear short excerpts of all the tracks on Amazon.com.

December 2013
Even though 2013 is drawing to a close, there is still a little more in the goodie bag. In the fall of 1989, the Jerry Garcia Band was on top of their game, as witnessed by releases such as Merriweather Post Pavilion and Shining Star. On some parts of the tour the concerts featured an acoustic section by Bob Weir and Rob Wasserman, a precursor to their cooperation in Ratdog. Two of these concerts will be released as a 6-CD box set on December 17th: 9/5/89 September in Hartford Civic Center and 9/6/89 in the Nassau Coliseum. Title: "The Long Island Sound" Pre-ordering starts now.

Rosie McGee was born as Florence Nathan in France, grew up in San Francisco, became Phil Lesh's girlfriend, and experienced the local music scene with a vengeance from 1964 to 1974. All the way (except for the European tour of 72), she had her camera out and ready, and the result is a highly personal and richly illustrated memoir. The title "Dancing with the Dead" is to be understood literally; Rosie spent most of the Grateful Dead concerts dancing on stage or in it's immediate vicinity. With this we wish all Dancing Bear customers a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year. Expect to hear from us again in 2014 - there will surely be ample opportunity!

November 2013
Now is the time to order your subscription to next year's releases in the "Dave's Picks" series. As usual, Dave has only unveiled the first release of the year - #9 in the series - which will be another show from the "Wall of Sound" tour, University of Montana, 14 May 1974. This show was, according to Dave Lemieux, in the running to become the very first Dave 's Picks release, so it is high time it comes out. Release dates for next year's four releases are February, May, August and November, and as usual there's a bonus CD included with the May release. Once again, Dave 's Picks 2014 will be limited editions, but the limit has been raised to 14,000 individually numbered copies. The price of the subscription is the same as last year: 1088 DKK plus standard shipping charge.

New, previously unknown, concert tapes continue to emerge from the strangest hiding places and find their way home to "The Vault". Recently, Jerry Garcia's (and Ken Kesey's) former girlfriend Carolyn Adams, a.k.a. Mountain Girl, found a bunch of tapes of which the most interesting is a purely acoustic performance from 1970 at the concert venue "Family Dog at the Great Highway" in San Francisco. The Grateful Dead performed this evening - for reasons unknown - not under their own name, but as a combination of the two splinter groups "Mickey Hart and his Heartbeats" and "Bobby Ace and the Cards from the Bottom of the Deck". The repertoire is typical of the acoustic opening sets common to the 1970 GD shows. What's atypical indeed is the last 6 numbers, which is a solo section by Pigpen on guitar, harmonica and vocals. And yes, he could actually play the guitar!

To wrap things up, we present a DVD (or Blu- Ray), "Move Me Brightly". On 3 August 2013, 3 days after what would have been Jerry Garcia's 70th birthday, there was a 5-hour concert at Bob Weir's TRI studio where a variety of musical friends paid tribute to Garcia's memory in music and speeches. The whole thing was captured on film by Justin Kreutzmann (son of Bill the drummer) and this footage has since been cut down to 159 minutes, to go on sale late November.

All these items are pre-orders, but please be aware that the subscription must be ordered soon to ensure that we are able to get the desired number of copies. Therefore, both old and new subscribers, please order soon to confirm your continued interest in our live releases!

Oktober 2013
An extraordinary thing has happened in Dead-land: Two weeks after its release, "Sunshine Daydream" occupied number 5 on Billboard's rock album chart! The only comparable precedent took place in 1987, where the album "In the Dark" reached ninth place, while the single "Touch of Grey" was #1, aided by a highly popular video on MTV. This achievement, obviously, was not made by the limited collector's edition of "Sunshine Daydream", but rather the 'bare bones' CD+DVD version without the box, booklet, and bonus material, which this week reached an equally impressive 18-place of all box- sets and #186 of all music sales on amazon.com. Not bad for a 41 year old concert by a long-defunct band! Note also that the Blu-Ray version is ONLY available from dead.net, Dancing Bear, and a few other mailorder outlets.

The third release in the GarciaLive series is just around the corner, featuring the short-lived version of the JGB from 1974-75 called Legion of Mary. Here Jerry Garcia was able to live out his jazzy side in the company of sax player Martin Fierro, in addition to "the usual suspects" - Merl Saunders, John Kahn and Ron Tutt. The triple CD joins two concerts from December 1974.

The third new item this month also features Garcia without the Dead. In 1970, the countryfied hippies of the New Riders of the Purple Sage - colloquially NRPS - released their first - and, arguably, best - LP, with Jerry Garcia playing pedal-steel . He still did shortly after the album release, in the broadcast concert which is now being released on CD under the title "Glendale Train". Many of the best tracks from the debut album are played here, in addition to several which would surface on the band's following albums where Garcia had long since been replaced by Buddy Cage on pedal-steel guitar.

Finally, it should be noted that Dancing Bear (finally! - some will say) has got its own corner on Facebook - all in Danish, alas! It features a brief introduction to the Grateful Dead, links to great performances on YouTube, and a prize competition, which probably will not cause our regular customers major headaches. It will be most welcome if you give it a "thumbs-up" (= "Like" ), since this sort of thing means a lot on Facebook. Searching for "Dancing Bear" will yield several hits, but only one with the famous teddy bear logo. See you on Facebook!

August 2013
For many years, a frequently recurring query and discussion on www.dead.net has been whether the movie "Sunshine Daydream" would ever be released officially. A bootleg version of mediocre quality has long been available on amazon.com and other places, but now things are speeding up at last! Grateful Dead has approved the project and Rhino have worked their magic with the cleaning and editing. On the first of August (Jerry Garcia's birthday) the movie saw it?s first and only performance in theatres across the U.S., and on 17 September it will be released on DVD and Blu-Ray, combined with the audio in a separate 3-CD set. The bonus material includes several videotaped interviews, and as usual there is a booklet with essays by David Lemieux and several others. Check our website www.dancingbear.dk for more details.

And what is all the hoopla about, then? The concert, commonly known as "Veneta, Oregon" or "The Springfield Creamery Benefit" or ?The Field Trip?, took place 27 August 1972 to support the author Ken Kesey's brother Chuck, who ran a dairy in the town of Springfield. Ken Kesey and the Grateful Dead were, of course, old acquaintances since "The Acid Tests" around 1965. The venue was a park in Veneta, and the film takes a lot of time showing the preparations done by a bunch of amateurs, accompanied by audio from the actual concert. It was an unusually hot day - the band had to take several water- and tuning breaks - and there are a ton of pictures of dancing hippies clad only in varying degrees of sunburn. And then the music! The band does not slack off in any way felt on account of the heat - quite the contrary. I will limit myself to highlighting Dark Star and Playin ', both of which are played with an incredible density and drive, rarely heard on other versions of these tunes. This release is - again - a limited edition of 12,500.

July 2013
Pre-announcement of Dave's Picks Volume 7: The Grateful Dead may have wrapped up the final show of the first leg of their 1978 Spring Tour in a town called Normal, but this night was anything but! Yes, on this fine evening, the Rhythm Devils shook the room with an exotic tribal assault. Bob found his groove with the slide guitar, contrasting nicely with Keith's block chording, Phil's thundering and swooping bass-lines, Jerry's articulated leads. Heck, they even dabbled in disco, teasing the audience with an unmistakable riffs from "Stayin' Alive.." What does all this juiced-up, cranked to the max, sonic savagery add up to? Top-level deliveries of fan favorites like "The Music Never Stopped," "Scarlet Begonias>Fire On The Mountain," and "Ramble On Rose," a jungle-vibed 14+ minute Rhythm Devils interlude, an over-the-top take on Warren Zevon's "Werewolves of London" and much, much more. Limited to 13,000 individually numbered copies, this super-charged 3-CD set featuring the complete show from 4/24/78, ships August 1st.

May 2013
Dave´s Picks No. 6, which was previewed in the last newsletter, has been sent to the subscribers, and it appears that Rhino this year have chosen to put the bonus CD inside the seal. This means, of course, that purchasers of the (very few) extra copies will also receive the bonus CD.

A CD which has long been missing in the catalog is "Rare Cuts and Oddities" from 1999. It was re-released on the occasion of the worldwide "Record Store Day", April 20, and we have managed to get hold of a few copies. It contains a mixture of demos, recordings from rehearsals and live performances, recorded by Owsley "Bear" Stanley in 1966. Some of the highlights among the many odd rarities are: The only "Promised Land" with Garcia on vocals, a triple-speed "Good Lovin ´", the traditional "Betty and Dupree" which a few years later inspired Robert Hunter to write "Dupree´s Diamond Blues", and Bob Weir´s perfect Mick Jagger imitation on "Not Fade Away". The 18 cuts are preserved in a more than decent quality, but the reconstructed ´stereo´ sound is better suited for car radio than for headphones!

In another department, we offer the first in an announced series of jig-saw puzzles featuring Grateful Dead LP cover art. The first release is Rick Griffin´s iconic cover for "Aoxomoxoa". The 300 pieces are printed on both sides, so you can also complete the back cover with the big "family picture". Or maybe you should prepare yourself for the coming summer days on the beach with a new "Lightning Bolt" Frisbee?

And finally - last but not least - we can unveil this year´s big box set:
There must be a special affinity between the Grateful Dead and springtime: in 2011 we had the European tour, April and May 1972, last year it was "Spring 1990", and now we can look forward to 5 shows from the magical month of May 1977. The unique status of this spring tour is amply evidenced by the previously released Picks from the dates 19, 21, 22, 25 and 28. The legendary shows from the beginning of the month: New Haven, Cornell, Buffalo, et cetera, are absent from "the Vault", but copies have circulated for many years. The forthcoming box set fills the gap with 5 concerts in a row: 11th, 12th, 13th, 15th, and 17th of May. They were recorded by Betty Cantor-Jackson and bear her trademark warm and natural stereo sound, and have been honed by Jeffrey Norman using the latest HDCD technology. It doesn´t get much better than that! The box will - no surprise there - be a limited release of 15,000 copies. The release date is set to 11 June and we accept pre-orders as of now. The familiar warning must be given: Do not wait too long!

January 2013
A new year has begun and that means 4 new releases in the Dave´s Picks series, offered here both singly and on subscription. At this point in time we are able to reveal details about the two first instalments, no. 5 and 6 in the complete series. Over to Dave Lemieux himself: "The first show, 11/17/73 at UCLA, is a major, heavyweight Grateful Dead show, one of the best of any year, and being top-of-the-heap from the 1973, that's saying a lot. It's one of these shows that every time I've heard it in the past decade+, I've wondered why it's not been released. I almost feel a need to apologize for taking so long -- 40 years! This is really prime Dead. First set material worth noting is one of the hottest, most inspired versions of "Here Comes Sunshine" ever, and a "China>Rider" that's up there with the best of 1973-1974, and that's saying something. The second set features the best of the three "Playing>UJB>Dew>UJB>Playing" musical palindromes, with every second of it exciting and interesting. And they top that off with a late-show "Eyes Of The World" that is remarkably hot and energetic. I say this without hyperbole, but to my ears and many others, this is a top-40 Grateful Dead show of all time. And the sound quality of this one is perfect, full, clear, great bottom end, and overall terrific."

"Unveiling Dave's Picks Volume 6: We're really bad at keeping secrets around here, so just imagine how hard it's been for us to contain our excitement about the 2 now complete shows, once missing reels for more than 40 years, that have been selected to make up Dave's Picks Volume 6. The first major return of material to the vault since 2005's Houseboat Tapes, Dave's Picks Volume 6 will feature 2 complete shows with never-before-heard material from 2/2/70 Fox Theater, St. Louis, MO and 12/20/69 Fillmore Auditorium, San Francisco, CA. Long a mystery, the riddle of the 2/2/70 set list has now been solved and the music restored to its proper - and spectacular - sequence. 2/2/70 is also notable as the first show without Tom Constanten. Tom, however, makes his return to give his first-hand perspective on 12/20/69 in this volume's liner notes. Pigpen fiends, ask and you shall receive. Both shows feature loads of Pigpen including a major 35+ minute "Lovelight" from 12/20/69. Recorded by Bear with an excellent mix and sound quality, this very special release feels like a return to the classics."

"If you've been curious about the subscribers-only bonus disc, this one is the stuff of lore as well. Like Dave's Picks Volume 6, the last-ever Grateful Dead show at the Fillmore Auditorium - 12/21/69, was once missing reels, but we've acquired the elusive first reel to go with the end of the show that we've always had. This jam-packed CD, featuring 75 minutes of music (almost 40 minutes of never-before-heard), includes one of only three versions of "Smokestack Lightning" from 1969. You most certainly won't want to miss out on this highly collectible Dead!"

Thank you Dave! In older news, Rhino has quietly started re-issuing a few items in the "Dick´s Picks" series that have been absent from the catalog for a long time. ##2, 3, 4 and 16 are now available again, whereas #15 only appeared for a short while before it was sold out again. We advise you to keep a sharp eye on the website, as things may change pretty fast. The unique box set "So Many Roads" from 1999 has also surfaced again - while the supply lasts - but it's quite costly compared to other 5-CD sets. Nevertheless, it's back in the Dancing Bear catalog in case some of you avid collectors might be missing it.

We are still waiting for the pre-announced first release in the new "Jerry Garcia Live" series, but the wait should be over before the end of January. The Garcia store has also re-released a few older live sets, most notably the brilliant "Don´t Let Go" 2CD set that was recorded during Keith and Donna Godchaux's brief stint wiith the Jerry Garcia Band. This set has some Grateful Dead tunes that we don't normally hear from this band, and Donna's vocal contributions have never been better!

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