Each week, nugs.net founder Brad Serling brings his long-standing radio show to SiriusXM Jam On, debuting choice tracks curated from the week in live music. Check out this week’s playlist below, featuring professionally mixed recordings from Sturgill Simpson, Greensky Bluegrass, moe., and more.
The #WeeklyLiveStash premieres each Friday at 6pm ET on SiriusXM channel 309, with encore airings on Saturday at 11am ET, Sunday at 3pm ET, and Monday at 9pm ET.
nugs subscribers can stream this week’s tracks from the #WeeklyLiveStash in the app (playlist will only open on mobile, but can be saved to your Library for desktop playback). nugs subscribers can also visit their My Account page to check their eligibility for four months of SiriusXM All Access. Offer details apply.
We’re excited to bring you another edition of the “Gratefully Deadicated” playlist, a regular compilation to showcase the continued impact and inspiration drawn from the Grateful Dead catalog. Focusing on August 2024, we’re featuring performances from Counting Crows, Greensky Bluegrass, The String Cheese Incident, as they celebrate the legacy of the legendary songbook.
Subscribers can stream this month’s playlist now, or sign up for a free trial to listen. The playlist is only accessible in the nugs mobile app, but you can save it to your library to listen on desktop. Explore the songs and the artists included below, and know that the music never stops!
We’re excited to bring you another edition of the “Gratefully Deadicated” playlist, a regular compilation to showcase the continued impact and inspiration drawn from the Grateful Dead catalog. Focusing on June 2024, we’re featuring performances from Holly Bowling, Orebolo, moe., Counting Crows, and more as they celebrate the legacy of the legendary songbook.
Subscribers can stream this month’s playlist now, or sign up for a free trial to listen. The playlist is only accessible in the nugs mobile app, but you can save it to your library to listen on desktop. Explore the songs and the artists included below, and know that the music never stops!
We’re excited to bring you another edition of the “Gratefully Deadicated” playlist, a regular compilation to showcase the continued impact and inspiration drawn from the Grateful Dead catalog. Focusing on June 2024, we’re featuring performances from Goose, The String Cheese Incident, Counting Crows, and more as they celebrate the legacy of the legendary songbook.
Subscribers can stream this month’s playlist now, or sign up for a free trial to listen. The playlist is only accessible in the nugs mobile app, but you can save it to your library to listen on desktop. Explore the songs and the artists included below, and know that the music never stops!
We’re excited to bring back the “Gratefully Deadicated” playlist, a regular compilation to showcase the continued impact and inspiration drawn from the Grateful Dead catalog. Focusing on the winter and spring of 2024, we’re featuring performances from Orebolo, Umphrey’s McGee, Dogs in a Pile, Gov’t Mule, and more as they celebrate the legacy of the legendary songbook.
Subscribers can stream this month’s playlist now, or sign up for a free trial to listen. The playlist is only accessible in the nugs mobile app, but you can save it to your library to listen on desktop. Explore the songs and the artists included below, and know that the music never stops!
This Saturday, March 2nd, everyone is invited to join us in the nugs app for the annual KPFA Grateful Dead Marathon! From 9AM-midnight PT, David Gans and Tim Lynch spin rare, unreleased Grateful Dead recordings, interviews, and more. Enjoy 15 hours of Grateful Dead and Grateful Dead related material, “putting the FUN in fundraising for KPFA”
The stream is free for everyone. To listen…
nugs subscribers: Listen here. If on the web player, click the ‘nugs radio’ icon in the upper right hand corner.
non-subscribers: Get the app now for iOS or Android. It’s free to use, and in addition to the 24/7 radio player you also get access to all live audio streams and select shows curated from the archives.
About KPFA
KPFA was the first community-supported radio station in the United States, so as you listen, please consider donating to support their cause and keeping public radio free and righteous. Contributors will have a chance to receive a number of prize packages, including free nugs subscriptions, Dead & Company CD box sets, and more.
Bust-outs, covers, costumes, guest sit-ins, tricks and treats…a Halloween show just hits a bit different. Explore some of our favorite Halloween concerts from years past, all available to stream with a nugs.net free trial. There’s a lot more out there too, so do some discovery and find the show that’s sure to shake your bones.
The Wizard of Oz themed three-night run concluded with debut covers of the Rolling Stones, The Doors, Elton John, and more. Billy was dressed as the Scarecrow.
‘Away from the Shire’ was a three night celebration of The Lord Of The Rings, culminating with special-guest drummer Duane Trucks of Widespread Panic and tributes to Led Zeppelin, Jimi Hendrix, and Black Sabbath.
From one of the most well-regarded tours in the band’s history, and their last Halloween concert to-date, this show has long been hailed a classic and every performance is a highlight.
Dressed as different eras of Elton John, Eggy went undercover and performed nine songs by Elton John, while welcoming special guests from Doom Flamingo to join on keytar and vocals.
This was the first show Dead & Company played together after the passing of lyricist Robert Hunter, and the first two sets featured songs that Hunter had co-written. The show began with the four original Grateful Dead members performing an emotional rendition of “Ripple,” one of Hunter’s many masterpieces.
By 1977, Frank Zappa’s Halloween shows were already the stuff of legends, and this special night capped off six historic shows over a course of four nights
One of the many special Mule-O-Ween’s, this 2013 show featured Robby Krieger of The Doors for all of set 2, with a setlist focused on The Doors catalog reimagined.
The band returned from set break in full costume, inspired by the 1984 rockumentary Spinal Tap. Warren Haynes and co. then ran through tunes from the classic film, with seven debuts and help from The Levee Horns.
In a venue where the Grateful Dead spent many nights, Greensky Bluegrass went with a Dead themed Halloween set at The Warfield, dressing as the band had in white garb for their 1980 album cover of Go To Heaven.
After three months off the road due to health issues, Jerry Garcia was welcomed by a crowd of 17,000 at the Oakland Coliseum Arena in Oakland, CA. He greeted the crowd with a heart-felt “How Sweet It Is” as his first song back on stage.
Dubbed “Protein Pills in the Labyrinth”, members dressed up as several David Bowie characters including Ziggy Stardust, Thin White Duke, and Jareth. The band performed 8 Bowie songs that night.
A “Halloween Star Wars rock fest” with the band members dressed as the movie characters and the show was comprised of Star Wars songs, altered themed lyrics, puns on moe. originals, and never before played covers.
The final night of a four-show run at the Spectrum, a massive double encore where in the final set the band came out dressed as Devo and performed live debuts of “Whip It” and “Sweet Lew”.
The “Talking Radioheads” show featured mashup of originals weaved in and out of songs by the Talking Heads and Radiohead. Members of Dogs In A Pile joined throughout the night to add to the fun(k).
First Time Played: Peace Train (Cat Stevens), Rock The Casbah (The Clash), I-Feel-Like-I’m-Fixin’-to-Die Rag (Country Joe), Rockin’ in The Free World (Neil Young), Revolution (The Beatles) & Take The Power Back (RATM)
Dressed as Presidents, a VP, and a First Lady, Umphrey’s McGee threw down in Maryland for a Halloween show for the ages where UM fans got to vote on a full set of covers for an ‘All Night Wrong’ set II.
The band debuted 4 covers including “Dooley”, “The Fishin’ Hole”, “Have A Cigar” and “Young Lust”. Fiddle Player Nicki Sanders joined the band on stage for several songs.
Donned in Wizard of Oz costumes, the show pulled from the film’s storyline with a heavy dose of Ozzy and Black Sabbath covers intertwined. In total we heard seven debuts, ranging from Ozzy tracks to Pink Floyd, Grateful Dead, Neil Young, Talking Heads and more.
Every Friday at 5 pm ET, nugs.net founder Brad Serling hosts “The Weekly Live Stash” on nugs.net radio, nugs.net radio – SiriusXM channel 716. Tune in to hear his selections of the best new live music, and check out this week’s playlist below featuring professionally mixed recordings from Grateful Dead, Gov’t Mule, Greensky Bluegrass and more. Subscribers can stream this week’s tracks from the #WeeklyLiveStash, only in the mobile app.
Jerry Garcia was one of the greatest musical talents the world has ever seen, though one of the most unconventional suspects in the conversation of “best in history.” His notes were imperfect, his voice you could say raspy, and he wasn’t looking to overly flaunt his chops. What made Jerry special was his ability to bring you into the music, and make you FEEL every note. He could make your eyes light up in excitement, but could turn the mood around in an instant with the most subtle of chord progressions. He could captivate an audience in a way that few have ever done, having us all hanging to his words and lost in the music. Jerry’s playing was heartfelt, vulnerable, and exuded emotion.
Often times that emotion kept us on the edge of tears, and at times send us deep into the abyss of our own personal stories we conjure from the music. As we celebrate the life and times of Jerry Garcia during the ‘Days Between,’ we’ve chosen eight songs with the Grateful Dead that exemplify Garcia’s ability to pluck on your heartstrings. Explore a few of these beloved ballads below, and listen to the playlist here in the nugs mobile app, streaming with a free trial.
This Bonnie Dobson original is one of the oldest songs in the Grateful Dead repertoire, a standout track on the Dead’s first studio album and a consistent staple throughout the lifespan of the band. With lyrics that were written in hopes for peace in a time when nuclear annihilation was an international threat, Jerry Garcia used this song as a launch pad into the hearts of his followers. It’s a haunting song, and this 13 minute version encapsulates the essence of humanity with deep improv and a uniquely punchy ending.
While it didn’t make it to the stage until 1993, and was only played 41 times, “Days Between” has made a name for itself as one of the most sentimental ballads in the catalog and will live eternally in the songbook of the Grateful Dead. It’s a shining example of Robert Hunter’s lyrical style, and this version in particular is devastatingly hypnotic with a powerful and explorative outro-jam.
An integral Hunter-penned song that joined the repertoire months before this show, “Standing On The Moon” was one of the strongest vocal features of latter-day Jerry. By the time the song was in rotation the band was setting up in stadiums and performing for 30,000+ people, but even the massive crowds of the 90’s would plummet into silence to hear Jerry sing “I’d rather be with you.” This take from the final performance at JFK Stadium shines, an exemplary rendition of this Grateful Dead classic.
“Ripple” is one of the most well-known songs that the Grateful Dead ever wrote and for very good reason. Garcia and Robert Hunter found a way to touch people even outside of the Dead world with powerful lyrics and the universal message of finding peace in everyday life. This particular track stands as one of the all-time greatest versions, taken from the iconic live-album Reckoning, recorded on 9/26/1980 at the Warfield Theatre.
Stella Blue Grateful Dead 10/21/78 Winterland 1978 – San Francisco, CA
After making its debut at the Hollywood Bowl on Pigpen’s last show in 1972, “Stella Blue” stayed in the rotation all the way through 1995, appearing 328 times on the Grateful Dead’s setlist. Like many Hunter/Garcia masterpieces, the song tells the story of someone down and out on their luck, but the mood brightens triumphantly when Jerry belts out “dust off those dusty strings just one more time, gonna make ‘em shine.” We want to avoid saying any song here is the best of the best, but this version sees all sides of Jerry at his best, and in epic proportions.
Wharf Rat Grateful Dead 5/22/77 Pembroke Pines, FL
While on the subject of down and out characters in Grateful Dead songs, “Wharf Rat” has to come to mind. A sad but inspirational story, the old man down by the docks will never be forgotten, and Jerry’s rendition here won’t either. This tear jerker has a tremendous Jerry rift in the jam and an eternally beautiful quality to it, with Donna’s backup vocals adding the perfect balance to Jerry’s dire conveyance of the lyrics.
Robert Hunter was in a sentimental mood on his 1970 trip to London, as this is the second song on this list to be written in the same afternoon from his stay, accompanied by “Ripple,” as well as “To Lay Me Down” – which also belongs on this list of ballads. The song was often used to bid the fans goodnight, closing out many shows with the lyrics “Fare you well” ringing throughout the audience. 20+ years after it’s first play, this later take from Pine Knob holds a different weight then earlier versions, and you can hear it in Jerry’s voice and playing.
China Doll Grateful Dead Pacific Northwest ’73-’74: Believe it If You Need It
It’s chilling, haunting, and an emotional story that was initially coined “The Suicide Song” by Robert Hunter. There’s a can’t miss acoustic version from the Reckoning album, but with this version from the University of Washington in Seattle on 5/21/74, Jerry’s heart is in it and every note sung and played hits your emotions hard, but leaves you with that sparkling glimmer of hope at the end.
We’re back with another edition of the ‘Gratefully Covered’ playlist, featuring live tracks from the gamut of bands streaming on nugs, covering the Grateful Dead catalog. This month we’re focused just on covers from concerts in June 2023, as we’ve heard new takes on Grateful Dead classics from Gov’t Mule to Orebolo, Goose, moe., The String Cheese Incident, Dogs In A Pile and more.
Subscribers can stream this month’s playlist now, or start your free trial to listen. The playlist is only accessible in mobile app, but you can save it to your Library for desktop playback. Explore the songs and the artists included below, and know that the music never stops.
The Grateful Dead is back for the highly anticipated annual event “Meet-Up At The Movies,” screening in select theatres worldwide on June 22 and 24.
A year after Brent Mydland’s passing, the Grateful Dead returned to the summer stadium circuit, playing Chicago’s Soldier Field for the first time, with two keyboard players filling the seat Brent left vacant. Bruce Hornsby and Vince Welnick’s presence and musical contributions reinvigorated and revitalized the Grateful Dead, and the inspiration of the Dead’s playing was palpable. On a Saturday night in front of 60,000 fans, the Dead played what is often considered one of the greatest shows of the Bruce-Vince era, up there with the second Giants Stadium show from a few days earlier. The Soldier field show was filled with favorites, including “Shakedown Street,”“Brown-Eyed Women,” “Playing In The Band,” “Terrapin Station,” and “Dark Star.” From the original six-camera video feed that appeared on the stadium’s big screens and the pristine soundboard audio, Chicago 6/22/91 is an incredible performance start-to-finish.
Tickets for “2023 Meet-Up At The Movies” are now on sale, find your theatre and get your tickets here.
The Grateful Dead are bringing their live concert experience back to cinemas worldwide for the 2022 Meet-Up At The Movies.
In addition to today’s archive release of Madison Square Garden 1981,tickets are now on salefor this this year’s Grateful Dead Meet-Up At The Movies! Celebrating the 50th Anniversary of the legendary Europe ’72 tour, this year’s Meet-Up brings to the big screen the previously unreleased Tivoli Concert Hall performance from 4/17/72.
The sixth show on the Grateful Dead’s famous Europe ’72 tour was a return engagement to the Tivoli Concert Hall in Copenhagen, Denmark, on April 17, 1972. This ground-breaking concert broadcast event was the Dead’s first major live concert broadcast, and a first in Danish television history. Now, fully restored and color corrected in High Definition with audio mixed from the 16-track analog master tapes by Jeffrey Norman and mastered by David Glasser, Tivoli 4/17/72 features nearly an hour and a half of the Grateful Dead at a peak of their performing career. The show’s many highlights include an overview of the Dead’s 1972 touring repertoire, including magnificent versions of “China Cat Sunflower>I Know You Rider”, “Big Railroad Blues”, “Truckin’”, and many more of the Dead’s classics, as well as the first live performance of “He’s Gone”, and other new songs including “Ramble on Rose”, “Jack Straw”, and “One More Saturday Night”. Pigpen, on what would prove to be his last tour with the Grateful Dead, is well-represented by three songs, including the broadcast’s opening number, “Hurts Me Too”.
The 2022 Grateful Dead Meet-Up at the Movies is set to hit big screens worldwide on Tues., Nov. 1, with additional screenings across the U.S., Canada, and select territories on Sat., Nov. 5. Tickets can be purchased here.
Every Friday at 5 pm ET, nugs.net founder Brad Serling hosts “The Weekly Live Stash” on nugs.net radio, SiriusXM channel 716. Tune in to hear his selections of the best new live music, and check out this week’s playlist below featuring soundboard recordings from Dead & Company’s final night of tour and more.
Subscribers can stream over 100 of the officially released shows from The Grateful Dead Vault, organized for the first time with Deadheads in mind — browse by show date instead of album title or release date. Each show is streaming in standard and CD-Quality lossless formats, and hi-res MQA where available. We’re thrilled to partner with Rhino Entertainment, the keeper of Warner Music Group’s legacy catalog, to stream many of the previously released iconic concert recordings including Fillmore East ’69, the entirety of Europe ’72, The Field Trip ’72, Cornell ’77, Winterland ‘77, Egypt ’78, Nassau ‘81, Alpine ‘82, MSG ‘90, and a whole lot more.
nugs.net will be updating our Grateful Dead catalog with the entire studio album collection and other live releases in the coming months — follow Grateful Dead in the app to see new additions first. Additionally, we are adding some of the Crown Jewels of classic rock including album catalogs from Led Zeppelin, Neil Young, The Doors, and Yes.
Last week, Steven Hyden and Rob Mitchum launched 36 From The Vault, a new podcast exploring the Grateful Dead’s celebrated Dick’s Picks live series. The show takes a deep dive into the 36 Dick’s Picks entries, the history of the Dead organization, and popular culture around each show. We caught up with Steven and Rob to find out more about the new series.
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nugs: What makes Dick’s Picks unique amongst other official releases from the Grateful Dead?
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Rob Mitchum: One of the joys of doing the podcast so far is doing a deep dive into who Dick was and how he came to be associated with the Dead organization. His background and the whole process in selecting the shows is really sort of fascinating early on. The key thing about Dick, I think, is that he came to the Grateful Dead organization already a huge tape trader and fan. He had that fan’s perspective and brought it to the organization. Everybody who was working for the Dead from the band to the crew to the people running the business had been inside for so long that they kind of lost perspective about what the outside world wanted from them. And that’s especially important for this kind of archival release series.
Dick was giving the fans what they want. He had his own sort of peculiar pov on what needed to be put out there. He talked a lot in early interviews about the fact that the band, by ‘93 certainly, never listened to the tapes. The only one who was interested in even participating in choosing or rejecting shows was Phil and he was doing all rejecting and no choosing basically, so he really slowed down the release in the early days. But Dick was super enthusiastic about all this music and would come across something like the “Here Comes Sunshine” that’s on Volume One and say, “We have to get this out there! Deadheads have got to hear this.” He would just argue and argue that it needed to be put out there and finally ended up winning some of these arguments with Phil. We’re all very lucky to have had his perspective on the inside at that point. Certainly, they wouldn’t have put out as much without Dick advocating for it and what they would have put out maybe wouldn’t have been as satisfying.
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Steven Hyden: I think what makes the Dead unique in a lot of ways in terms of how their archive is handled is that they are probably the biggest example of fans stepping into the place of the band as stewards of the band’s history. The fans of the Grateful Dead have had such a big role in ultimately shaping the perception of how this band is perceived and I think mostly for the better. I think Dick is an example of this and there are lots of other people, lots of the Deadheads, who have much better taste in Dead music than the members themselves. If not for them there’d be a lot of great music that wouldn’t have been put out there for whatever reason. I think it’s a really interesting aspect of their history, the role that fans have played in writing and maybe correcting it in a lot of ways.
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nugs: You guys mention in the podcast that the Dick’s Picks shows are a sort-of medium between the studio sound of early official releases and the DIY sound of bootleg tapes. What is it that distinguishes the sound of a Dick’s Picks show?
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SH: It was kind of like the best of both worlds in a way where you could get something that sounded pretty good but it wasn’t overly professional or it didn’t have a ton of overdubs on it. It is interesting doing this show and realizing how much actually was done to these tapes in terms of just cutting songs out or like resequencing songs. The first Dick’s Picks record I ever got was Volume One and I wasn’t aware of how much had been taken out of there until I did this podcast. I heard you could stream the shows that they took that from and pretty much the whole first set is gone from Dick’s Picks Volume One. So it wasn’t quite as unedited as I assumed it was but still much less polished than a regular studio record would be.
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nugs: On the note of live albums missing sections or being re-sequenced, what makes the six-song uninterrupted section in the second set of Dick’s Picks Volume One so special?
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RM: One of the cool things that I think Dick’s Picks allowed the Dead to do is put out some of these hour-long song suites that they used to do regularly live. For a lot of reasons, they hadn’t really represented that on their official “live” albums. I think Live Dead probably gets the closest to it but even that one is spliced between I think two or three shows. A lot of their other live albums were sort of grab bags of best versions from a particular tour or run. If they’re edited together it was done in the studio later on by combining versions from different shows and things like that. What was sort of revolutionary at time was finally having a pretty solid unabridged hour of music and segues from the show on an easy compact-disc format. Usually, that was the domain of tapes and not something you could get your hands on in official quality.
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SH: It really is amazing how spoiled people are now with this kind of stuff. I was just thinking about myself with Phish for instance. I only started listening to Phish in the 2010s. I’m used to an era where the show ends and within a couple of minutes there’s an instant show to stream online that’s a master and sounds great. At your fingertips, there’s an entire show. We’re so used to that now. Revisiting the series is a reminder that even getting part of a show that sounded this good was kind of a unique thing. it was a much harder thing to attain than it is now.
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RM: That’s going back to before a time nugs.net spoiled music fans. But yeah, I think one of the interesting things I’ve learned from the start of the series is how the Dead organization was very nervous about whether this would actually work, which is crazy in retrospect. Now the Dead put out like eight to ten live releases a year or something like that between Dave’s Picks and the other box sets they do.
Dick, Kidd Candelario and a couple of other people that were involved in the start of the series really had to argue with the band, the organization, and the record label to do this. Even the permission they got was only to sell it through mail order and do a very low run for the time of only 25,000 copies each volume. Dick wanted to do complete shows but they wouldn’t commit at the time because they only wanted to do, at most, 2 discs. Of course, you can’t get a complete show on two discs. There were all these handicaps put on the project from the start just because they were worried that it might be a commercial bust.
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SH: I guess maybe the Dead’s defense back in the early ‘90s was that putting out something that’s pretty unvarnished risks being picked apart. Especially by a fan base as critical as the Dead’s. So I understand their trepidation from that perspective, they didn’t want to put out something that was maybe less than perfect. And in the show that we just did, there’s this whole thing about editing out this terrible Phil Lesh bass solo. When you listen to the show it’s actually kind of good that it’s not there because that part of the album flows so well, it’s like really the best part of the whole release. But there is a part of you as a purist that’s like “oh I wish that was in there because that’s actually what happened.” The fact that they were willing to release Dick’s Picks as they did is a little bit of a leap of faith, to expose yourself in that way.
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nugs: You guys have hinted that the show could explore some other artists along the way, what can we expect down the line from the podcast?
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RM: Steven and I are both fans of the live album format in general and the Dick’s Picks series is such a revelation in how live albums can work for a band, doing more archival releases than polished live album releases. So I think we’re interested in those types of archival releases from other bands. Like Steve was talking about earlier, telling the story of the band through this very particular kind of release is a concept that fits the Dead perfectly and they were the ones that set the template for that. But there are other bands that do that as well and that’s the kind of thing we’d like to explore down the line or in special episodes
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nugs: In the first episode, you guys go deep into the context around the show. You even dive into how the venue was named after a corrupt Tampa mayor. Is that something we can expect more of in future episodes?
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SH: Part of the appeal for us doing this show was that it’s a chance to talk about the Grateful Dead, but it’s also an excuse to explore music history and pop culture history in a fun way. You could time travel back to December of 1973 and look at what’s happening in the world at that time and get a sense of what it would have been like to be at that show. Rob and I were both born several years after this show and I never got to see the Grateful Dead live at all. I’ve only ever experienced them through recordings. The time travel aspect of listening to live tapes is enhanced when you can look at the rest of the world at that time and see how that influenced what was going on.
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RM: Yeah, I think a lot of times people tend to consider the history of the Dead in sort of a vacuum. They were always an oddball in the music industry so people tend to consider the Dead and their different eras in a silo without thinking about the cultural context of the time. What was going on in the music industry? What was going on in film? What was going on in the news?
Each show kind of gives us an opportunity to do that which is really fun. Looking at the different venues they played and seeing who else was playing that venue around the same time, It’s fun to be like “You know they played this show in Tampa not long after David Bowie was there on the Diamond Dogs tour.” A bunch of the shows in the ‘70s were within a month or two of like an Elvis appearance at the same venue. The other things that were sort of bobbing around in the culture at the time, of course, were going to have an influence on the Dead. They might have been doing their own thing but there’s certainly some bleed over you can hear from the bands, arts, and society that was around them.
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SH: Another thing for Rob and I with this show was to approach it as huge fans of the Grateful Dead without being too clinical or scholarly about it. I think that we both want to have a sense of humor about the band. They’re a brilliant band, but they’re also kind of a goofy band. Craziness and brillance always co-mingled with this band and it’s part of what makes them so much fun to talk about.
I think that spirit of fun and reverence that’s inside the Grateful Dead is something that we wanted to have on this show and I think that’s a pretty big part of what we’re doing. I always feel like the best kind of music criticism should feel like listening to music and I hope that we have a little bit of that element of the Dead in our show.
We are kicking off our new blog by diving into the archives to surface some of our favorite high-quality downloads available on nug.net. With 895 downloads in the archives, it’s hard to choose just one show that encapsulates what Widespread Panic does. Widespread Panic has been a heavy hitter in the Jam community for 30 years and are the heart of southern improvisational music. After narrowing down the many choices of killer shows, we found one that has all the right goods to bring to you. Holiday shows are always a special time with Widespread Panic but nothing comes close to their Halloween runs , which seem to be filled with a never ending supply of sit-ins, covers and rockin’ setlists.
New Orleans, 10/30/10 and the days surrounding it, exemplify what Widespread Panic does best. With great song selections from their own catalog and even a sit-in from Dr. John, the Night Tripper himself; only in New Orleans. This show has it all, with covers of Talking Heads “Papa Legba,” JJ Cale’s, “Ride Me High” and a blazing “Spanish Moon” originally by Little Feat, that is jammed out to extensive proportions.
The show also features Jimmy Herring on lead guitar. While Jimmy was still fairly new to the band after the passing of original guitarist, Michael Houser, Herring took to Panic like a fish in water and he shows his masterful guitar work throughout this entire performance and so does each member of the band, making this show a classic on nugs.net.
Stand out original songs include: a first set, “Dirty Side Down,” a newer song from that performance that has since become a classic. It’s very interesting to hear the development of these songs throughout the years and we can hear these changes within the hundreds of shows in the archives. “Henry Parsons Died” shows jazz flavored solos and incredible bass playing from Dave Schools. The second set opens with an always welcome, “Climb To Safety” as the band says, “climb aboard!” Into “Chilly Water.”
Dr. John enters the stage and plays a great rendition of “Right Place, Wrong Time” that has raw energy and those voodoo vibes that only he can bring. They continue with, “Dream Warrior.” Here Widespread shows what they do best while playing with the jazz/blues legend. The 12 minute “Arlene” is relentless and anytime Panic plays this song watch out, you’re going somewhere! The spectacular show closes with a Grateful Dead staple, “Creampuff War.”
It really doesn’t get much better than this and I am positive there will be many more shows from Widespread Panic in the upcoming posts.
Be sure to check out this recording of Halloween 2010 and so many more on nugs.net. This soundboard recorded professionally mixed show is available for purchase as downloadable mp3, lossless, and CD shipped to your door. It’s also available on demand. Rock ON!
