Grateful Dead- Dick’s Picks Volume 23 Reissue

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Baltimore Civic Center, Baltimore, MD – 9/17/72

As the first set of this September 1972 show in Baltimore closes, notes peal from Jerry Garcia’s guitar while Bill Kreutzmann kicks the band into a gallop, both actions emblematic of the surety permeating the playing of the Grateful Dead captured on this reissue of the 2001 Dick’s Picks Vol. 23. To say the band sounds inspired is to understate the precision and passion with which they play on this recording of Owsley “Bear” Stanley.

Little wonder the group next launches into a near twenty-minute exploration of “Playing in the Band.” and makes it sound succinct. With a collective confidence rooted in their innate sense of improvisation, the Dead performed like they could do no wrong at this point in their career and rightly so: having returned earlier in this same year from a conquest of Europe, their first visit to the continent, the group had every reason to feel sure of themselves. For one thing they possessed a wealth of new material to choose from, some of which Garcia/Hunter pieces, like “Mississippi Half Step Uptown Toodleloo,” wouldn’t be recorded till the next year. That tune is, nevertheless, as much of a piece with originals like “Jack Straw” as covers such as “Big River” and “Me & My Uncle.”

As with their grasp of composition, The Grateful Dead had elevated the sophistication in their musicianship too by teaching themselves to carefully navigate that ever so fine line between structure and spontaneity. That balanced approach lent itself to memorable jamming, as in the segue from “China Cat Sunflower” into “I Know You Rider,” but numbers such as “Tennesee Jed,” which didn’t accommodate much stretching, still helped maintained the necessary overall discipline

But that’s not to say the inclination to take chances had disappeared. During the segues near show’s end that envelope “The Other One” and “He’s Gone,” the Dead performed with a purpose and this focused approach manifest itself on “Casey Jones,” as well as the colorful highlights Keith Godchaux supplied, equally on electric and acoustic piano. Slightly over twelve minutes, this robust version of “Truckin'” might well serve as a microcosm of the elevated level of the group’s chops this autumn in the early 1970’s.

Real Gone Music’s reissue of the Dick’s Picks series began late in 2011 (starting at the of the archive series), by which point it was de rigeur, through input from the band’s current archivist David Lemieux (then an apprentice to Dick Latvala), to design the graphics with the inclusion of print articles from the period in which the performance took place. Those reflections within this 3-CD package reaffirm the impact of its music, rendering the Grateful Dead’s progression through their thirty-year career sound all the more wondrous.