Gary,
If you're interested in some 90s Dead, I can easily supply you with some.
"Without A Net" is actually quite a nice compilation, considering how really bad most of the 90s were.
If you want some live shows, just email me.

Cheers,
Michael

Michael,

Thanks.I may well take you upon the offer.

At the moment I'm listening to the 1990s concerts courtesy of Nugs.Net and keeping an eye on the monthly downloads available from the Grateful Dead shop.

I have to say that I'm not very impressed with what I'm hearing. I was shocked by the deterioriation in the voices---particularly Garcia's.

I'm finding that a lot of the music in the 1990s is pretty trashy apart from drums/space. I'm mostly interested in the jazz side of band and their onstage collaborations with innovative jazz musicans.

There is very little critical guidance on this kind of 'pushing teh boundaries (avant garde) music, as most of the rock criticism is populist in orientation, or fan based.

I have ordered Without a Net and InfraRed Roses. I will listen to this material before proceeding further. T'is stepping into the unknown for me ang I'm proceeding cautiously.

3/29/90 is the one with Branford. You WANT this one!

For me, from 1988 to end of summer 1990 is about as good as 1977 (but also VERY different.)

Check out the grateful dead from the vault DVD releases which should be available for rent at most DVD stores (blockbuster, etc.) Then buy what you like.

Steven,
Thanks.

Yes the band is different. It is loose, has a very rough and extremely ragged, and has a hurly burly Dylanesque sound.

I had hoped that Nugs.Net may have had all of the 3/29/90 show with Branford Marsalis, but it is not to be. They have 3/28/90. I will have to rely on the 3/29/90 performance of 'Eyes of the World' on the Without a Net compilation.

What happened after the summer of 1990 up to the last show in Chicago, 9th of July 1995? Was it the pressure of performing on a monstrous stage in front of 60,000 people, night after night, year after year, that made it very hard to let go and improvise? Was it the Grateful Dead staying contained within its own culture? Was it a lack of consistency in the 1990s with just the odd spark here and there?

Why didn't they go back to small venues and play jazz as well as corporate rock?

I thought that Bruce Hornsby (keyboards and vocals) and Vince Welnick (keyboards and vocals) rejuvenated the band? This review of Dicks Picks 9 gives the okay, as does this Music Box review.

Were there any outstanding concerts after 1990? I'm currently listening to 6/25/95 and once again Space is the most interesting music.

Thanks for the suggestion about watching the DVD's of the 'View from the Vault' series. Homescreen, suprisingly, does not have them. It would seem that the digital graphics and video technology have been married to music to create a spectacular visual experience.

I think age had a lot to do with it. By the time Jerry died the band had been together for thirty years. Even allowing for quiet periods, that's an awfully long time for a rock band to keep playing with mostly the same members. It was probably inevitable that, eventually, they'd fall into some sort of rut, as I gather they did during the 90s. Also, I recall reading that after getting off heroin, Jerry had to relearn how to play guitar from scratch. He was pretty screwed up.

If you like the drums/space stuff, you should like Infrared Roses. It's all that sort of improv.

Also, if you're interested, I have a copy (burned from vinyl) of the original mixes for Anthem of the Sun and Aoxomoxoa, both of which were considerably remixed in 1971 and these remixes have been the basis for all later releases of those records. I gather the original Anthem did resurface on the box set of all the albums, but the original Aoxomoxoa has never resurfaced. If you're interested, email me and I'll be happy to send a copy along...

James,
maybe maybe. But that didn't slow Miles Davis down. He continued being innovative during the 1970s. I do not know his work in the 1980s.

But then again Miles kept on using different bands, whereas the Dead remained the one band with changing keyboardists.

Still they bought in different musicians to play with them, and they were far more open to new and diverse musical ideas from a wide range of sources than many other bands.

Maybe we are not hearing what is going on?. Suzanne, my partner, who is no Dead head-- reckons they cannot sing at all---really likes, and relates to the abstract, improvised soundscape music of the 1990s drums/space when she hears played on my computer on a stream from from Nugs.Net

She finds it very interesting (spacey?) and intuitively links the sounds to the Miles Davis of 'In a Silent Way.'

Infrared Roses is on order from the US. It should be here within the next week.

I'm not a huge fan of The Dead's work in the 90s, but step back a year into 1989 and you can find some excellent shows. Check out 10/9/89, The Warlocks show in Hampton. The Playin In The Band and Dark Star that night were truly outstanding.

If you are interested in a more jazzy-Dead, you should check out their 1973-74 shows. This period was one of their most creative.

I'm not too familiar with nugs.net, the best source for all Live Dead is http://www.archive.org/audio/etreelisting-browse.php?collection=etree&cat=Grateful%20Dead. You can find just about any and every show they ever did there (minus the Dicks Picks shows).