Welcoming Jerry "back from the jaws of death"

**** UPGRADE UPLOADED ****

Hey Now!
An upgraded copy of this show was just uploaded this morning (Tue, Jan 20.)

The one originally uploaded yesterday afternoon was an unremastered copy with gaps here and there. This one should be better. This has gaps filled and provides the end of the show in AUD form so you can hear it through to the encore.

To the best of my knowledge, the best copy available at the time is the one that we always make available to you to download . . . but I made a small mistake this time and the older one was put up. Whoops. Sorry about that.

Grateful Dead -- January 17, 1979
Veterans Memorial Coliseum
New Haven, Connecticut
.
rescheduled from 11/25/78 due to Jerry's throat

1-17-79 aka 01-17-79 aka 1/17/79 aka 01/17/79 aka 79-01-17

1st Set: Shakedown Street, Me & My Uncle-> Big River, Peggy-O,
Beat It On Down The Line, Stagger Lee, Minglewood Blues,
Brown-Eyed Women, From The Heart Of Me, I Need A Miracle

Set 2: Scarlet Begonias-> Fire On The Mountain,
Estimated Prophet-> Eyes Of The World-> Drums-> Jam->
Not Fade Away-> Black Peter [sbd ends],
Around And Around-> Good Lovin'

Encore: Casey Jones

This is an imperfect recording in many ways and that's too bad considering there aren't too many Soundboards from this tour in January of 1979 or the following mini-tour in early February. Out of 18 shows there are only a couple soundboards and neither one is complete: this and 2/7/79 Carbondale, Illinois. Thankfully a soundboard isn't really needed to experience the music from this specific period of time in nearly exceptional quality: check out 1/15/79 Springfield and 1/20/79 Buffalo for SBD-like Front-of-Board Audience sourced recordings. Springfield might be perhaps the greatest Grateful Dead Audience recording there is (and Buffalo ain't too bad either!)

Anyway, as of this posting, this show has not yet been remastered and patched with the Audience source to make it complete. If you're gonna listen to it, you'll hear horrible gaps in the beginning and near the end of Shakedown. There's also, in places, a whole lot of useless blank space at the end of tracks, most of which would be edited out, plus there's a significant layer of noise (hiss) throughout which isn't too bad but makes me suspect there's an additional cassette generation here (or just that the Cassette Master has degraded a lot over time.) It might only be around a grade of B- or so but it's not too terrible and I'm able to dig it just fine.

(Maybe I jumped the gun on posting this and should have waited until it's remastered someday? But then again, it's not an exceptional show by any means so a remaster isn't going to get me too excited.)

UPDATE: sorry, I didn't properly keep track of all the sources for this show. This has been remastered. See text file (link below) for info.

The performance itself isn't the best but it's got some pretty good moments to be sure (as well as a bunch of sloppy lyric flubs scattered here and there.) Peggy-O in the first set is nice but Jerry really comes alive during Stagger Lee. As first it felt so stale but the vocal flourishes added by Jerry make this worth a listen! By Brown-Eyed Women I think everyone's feeling a lot looser and the feeling of the show is a lot freer, versus during some of the earlier tunes when they kinda felt more rigid. Unfortunately, From The Heart of Me (making its debut here on Inspiration, Move Me Brightly...) sort of puts that free-flowing, true first set Dead feeling on hold for a couple minutes while it lags sadly along. There's gotta be a better version than this 'cause this just sucks. Bob's songs are all very good and Jerry plays nicely so crank it up, especially during Minglewood when the volume of the recording gets a bump for whatever reason and the band here is really plowing full steam ahead. It's then somewhat interesting (I think) the way they all cooperatively wind Miracle down to a non-climactic end to the set.

Set 2: I'm diggin' Scarlet a lot as the band is once again definitely in tune with each other, fully, completely. The transition into Fire has such a cool moment with Jerry and Bobby and Keith just playing away in the brief jam they're in when Phil all of a sudden steps up and signals (announces) the first notes before everyone else comes on board just a moment later. Very cool. And man, this is Phil's song almost more than anyone else's on this night. So many times his bass is clearly leading the way while Jerry's voice is clearly straining here more than in the first set, but he reaches for every line.

While Jerry's guitar may have been a little subdued on Scarlet-> Fire, he comes alive a whole lot in Estimated. Here the transition to Eyes is interesting because of the brief burst of franticness right at the point of transition: Bob's strumming away on rhythm, Jerry is just goin' on and on seemingly in his own place for a bit, while Phil and Keith are doin' their thing, but then Bob's the one who makes an abrupt left turn and explodes with the first notes of Eyes. Unfortunately, this is lyrically sloppy at times but musically it's pretty nice.

Drums has an open mic for a couple minutes or so and you can hear Mickey asking for something in his monitor to be turned up. The following Jam is definitely a lot less like Space and more held together than it being everyone doing their own thing.

The rest of the show flows along nicely. Nothing's really out-freakin'-standing but it's all pretty good. Sadly the Soundboard is all done for during Black Peter but the Aud patch isn't bad.

Enjoy!

Source: Soundboard> Cassette Master> Cassette x2> CDR> SHN [info file] Audio Quality:	1/17/79 New Haven @ Archive.org: the AUD for downloading and the Soundboard for Listening Only
Download The Soundboard Here New Haven - 1/17/79 - First Set Set 2 - Part 1 - 1/17/79 1/17/79 - Part 2 - Set 2