The high-quality Peter Corrigan action photos of the Grateful Dead on stage adorning the graphic design of Dave’s Picks Volume 51 may indeed be a rarity. Still, delineations of the iconic band’s history around the period of any on-hand recordings are probably at the immediate disposal of Dave Lemieux, chief archivist and namesake of this ongoing vault endeavor.
Accordingly, it would benefit future issues if such discerning ruminations of his that appear in this three-CD set could be included continuously. The same goes for pertinent prose like that composed by self-described ‘audio purist’ Peter Kimble: his essay describing the great lengths to which he and his technical team went in devising optimum sound for the Dead highlights one of the preeminent concerns of the group for virtually the duration of their career.
The music upon which all this writing is based comes from unusually diverse, multiple sources. Notably not the two-and-a-half hour duration of most performances of the period (clocks in at slightly less than one-hundred twenty-minutes), the primary content was captured in the somewhat incongruous setting of a venue called the Scranton Catholic Youth Center; the vague generalities of the ‘review’ reproduced inside the triple-fold package from a local publication reaffirms the countercultural schism of the era (and explains the shortfall of playing time was based on equipment issues).
In contrast, the sound on five selections from 10/24/70 that fill out the second disc lacks both definition and depth. This handful of tracks is significant, however, as it completes a concert that appeared almost in its entirety in Dave’s #48. In addition, it is only here that drummer Mickey Hart augments the core quintet documented everywhere else in this release (he would leave the group for an extended period after the turn of that year).
The third compact disc of Volume 51 derives from the second half of a concert the night before the main entry. The casual but confident air of the musicianship becomes more winning as it proceeds: hear the vibrant set closer, “Casey Jones,” among others. This second set at the Civic Arena in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, is indeed a microcosm of the Grateful Dead repertoire of the period (as Lemieux references more than once).
Most songs that would grace the Skull & Roses double LP released that autumn are featured in these setlists. An exquisitely cinematic “Wharf Rat” emerges from “The Other One.” At the same time, the dramatic effect purposefully sets the stage for what would become the perpetually rousing set-closing segue of “Not Fade Away” and “Goin’ Down the Road Feeling Bad.” Before the Chuck Berry cover of “Johnny B. Goode,” “Bertha,” as well as “Mama Tried,” “Big Railroad Blues,” and “Playing In the Band,” populate the initial compact disc alongside “Me and Bobby McGee.”
Eleven-plus minutes of “Turn On Your Lovelight” ultimately completes the circle of Pigpen showcases such as “Hard To Handle,” presented near the outset of this title. Fittingly, in yet another element of continuity, the Steve Vance cover art also references another tour-de-force of the late co-founder Ron McKernan’s “Big Boss Man.”
With their range of choices for Dave’s 51, the curators seem to say improvisation took many forms within the oeuvre of the Grateful Dead. There certainly isn’t much extensive jamming on the first set of 4/13, but the second set is perfectly scintillating from start to finish. There may be no tighter take extant of “Truckin’,” and the snappy, emphatic “Drums” will convince any skeptics Bill Kreutzmann is a great drummer. Meanwhile, the nearly nineteen minutes of “Good Lovin'” is a romp from start to finish.
Indeed, the sequence of this track listing itself manifests the agile collective intelligence of all great instrumentalists, culminating with an “Uncle John’s Band” as precise instrumentally as it is vocally. In contrast, the “Attics Of My Life” from the previous autumn suggests the Dead’s attention to singing was intermittent.
‘Magic is what we do…music is how we do it’ the late Jerry Garcia once stated and, based on the results of these particular efforts by the keepers of the Grateful Dead archives, they are working a sorcery all their own as they head toward the century mark of Dave’s Picks.
