Road Trips, Vol. 2 No. 2 marks the first complete show to be released as part of the Road Trips series. This heaping helping of “Primal Dead” was recorded at the legendary Carousel Ballroom on February 14, 1968 and is one of bassist Phil Lesh’s favorite shows. Due to a short first set, the first disc of this release ends with a number of bonus tracks recorded just a few weeks earlier during the Dead’s Northwest tour including a mind-blowing Viola Lee Blues from Eureka.
Both Road Trips, Vol. 2 No. 2 and Pure Jerry – Series 8 are available for preorder and are expected to ship out on Wednesday. Road Trips runs $19.98 while the Pure Jerry release goes for $14.98. If you order them both together from Dead.net, they’ll waive the shipping charges. We’re not even three months in 2009 and it’s already shaping up to be the best year for Dead archival releases ever.
- Previously on HT: Dead Release Hartford ’77
One Response
This was a great release. The bonus tracks alone made it worth every penny. it helps a few more songs to some circulating shows that have not been previously avaiable 1/20/68, 1/23/68……..
2/14/68 sounds really nice, but it’s easy to tell where the edit points were made, and the last one in the alligator jam can be easily detected as being from an alternate source. Alligator and Cauttion still have the vocals burried in the mix, so if this was made from the 2-track tapes, then maybe the mic wasn’t hooked up properly??? There’s a small section in the jam where the circulating tapes had a chunk missing. I’ll take a guess that that section was cut out of the original tapes back in 1968 and used when they mixed Anthem of the Sun. They must have has to reedit them back in again to make this complete. I felt the need to tweak the last edit, since it sounded like it was a hair slower than the rest of the CD, and I restored the 2 minutes of tuning/screwing around before Alligator starts, which was removed from this official release.
Having said that, it’s still worth buying, and I hope they continue to keep releasing more 60’s shows. Maybe something from 66 or 67 would be nice. 🙂