VIA PRESS RELEASE | Trying to decide which Grateful Dead concert to reissue on vinyl is kind of like ordering from the menu of a three-star restaurant: no matter what you pick, it’s not just going to be good, it’s also going to be unique and memorable.
Faced with such an embarrassment of riches, and trying to remain true to our vision of hitting a different year with each release, we decided to do what any sensible Dead Head would do: go BIG. Hence, our 8-LP release of Dick’s Picks Vol. 33! Fresh from a year-and-a-half touring hiatus, and back to full, two-drummer strength, the Dead opened for The Who as part of Bill Graham’s historic Day on the Green concerts in 1976.
This Pick captures both dates in their entirety, and features one of the most monumental medleys (and that’s sayin’ something!) in band history with a 60-minute, 10-song journey through “St. Stephen”/ “Not Fade Away”/ “St. Stephen”/ “Help on the Way”/ “Slipknot!”/ “Drums”/ “Samson and Delilah”/ “Slipknot!”/ “Franklin’s Tower”/ “One More Saturday Night” on the first day.
Day two offers excellent takes on two solo Garcia favorites, “Might as Well” and “The Wheel,” that were new to the concert repertoire and a particularly fine “Ramble on Rose” among other highlights. Bill Graham had honored the Dead by selecting them to close the year’s stellar series of Day on the Green concerts, and that—perhaps coupled with the presence of formidable co-headliners The Who—sparked some of the band’s finest performances of the period.
But it’s not just the performances, or the fact that we hadn’t done a 1976 vinyl reissue, that drew us to this concert. This “Betty Board” is one of the cleanest recordings in the whole series, and with a fresh mastering for vinyl by Jeffrey Norman at Mockingbird Mastering, lacquer cutting by Clint Holley and Dave Polster at Well Made Music, and a pressing on 180-gram black vinyl by our friends at Gotta Groove Records, this is—dare we say it—the best-sounding Dead vinyl release we’ve done.
Seriously…the test pressings (which were reviewed by Jeffrey Norman, Dead archivist David Lemieux and Real Gone’s Gordon Anderson) were just fantastic, so present and crisp. We’ve included a 4-page, full- color, LP-sized insert that captures all the extensive graphics that were on the CD release, too. It’s our biggest Grateful Dead album ever…limited to 6,000 hand-numbered copies!
