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Featured in Michael Fremer's Heavy Rotation in the April 2012 Issue of Stereophile!Numbered, Limited Edition! Half-Speed Mastered from the Original Master Tapes: Invite the Dead Into Your Living RoomYou Wont Believe How Good This Pressing Sounds!
Rolling Stone 2015 Readers' Poll: The 10 Best Jam Bands: The Grateful Dead Rated 1st!
Precedent-Setting 1969 Release One of the Five Best Live Albums Ever Recorded
Pinnacle First-Era Grateful Dead Record Captures Best of Both Worlds: Bands Improvisational and R&B-Based Blues Sides on Display
Part of Mobile Fidelitys Amazing Grateful Dead Reissue Series: Wake Of the Flood (MFSL 1-366), Skull and Roses (MFSL 2-367), and In the Dark (MFSL 1-369) also available on 180g LP!
If you want to experience why on any given night the Grateful Dead was the best live band going in 1969, you need to hear Live/Dead. If you want to understand how personal chemistry, symbiotic interplay, and otherworldly energy can lead to a near-extinct onstage combination of soulfulness, surprise, and suspense, you need to hear Live/Dead. Ranked by Rolling Stone on the magazines list of the 500 Greatest Records of All Time. Universally acclaimed by both Deadheads and non-devotees alike. The perfect synthesis of the legendary groups first-era vital characteristics and cosmic faculties. A gorgeously recorded sonic artifact and more, Live/Dead is outright essential.
Half-speed mastered from the original master tapes with the utmost care, and part of Mobile Fidelitys unprecedented Grateful Dead reissue series, this numbered limited edition 180g 2LP version of Live/Dead raises the iconic albums lofty prestige even higher. Recorded at three San Francisco concerts in early 1969 with a mobile 16-track studio, the 7-song set has always possessed excellent fidelity in large part because of a mic splitterspecially created for the projectthat fed both into the PA system and record inputs, allowing the engineers to capture the shows without any loss in quality.
Seldom have venue dimensions, acoustic properties, spatial characteristics, low-frequency resonances, amplifier tonalities, soundstage balances, and vocal timbres been so faithfully reproducedor enhanced. Mobile Fidelitys version elevates Live/Dead into the revered pantheon of the most respected reference audiophile LPs. Close your eyes and youre dead center, ten rows back in two of the Bay Areas most beloved halls: Fillmore West and Avalon Ballroom. The degrees of realism are utterly staggering; no, you dont need any, ahem, chemical assistance to facilitate the transcendent experience.
Renowned for contagious communication between its members, the Dead operates on a interstellar plane throughout Live/Dead. Witnessing the ebb-and-flow manners in which guitarist Jerry Garcia, bassist Phil Lesh, and drummer Billy Kreutzmann respond to one anothers passages and blur the lines between jazz, psychedelia, and rock disciplines. Meandering jamming this is not. Solos burn, rhythms thunder, bass lines roll, melodies twist. Dark Star remains the touchstone for whats possible in epic frameworks, with notes climbing, darting, and skittering amidst a dark canvas seared with mystic vibes and punctuated with blossoming instrumentals. Along with the inseparable pairing of St. Stephen and The Elevena sequence that highlights the raw gospel beauty of Garcia, Lesh, and Bob Weirs harmonies as well as breathtaking tightrope seguesthe explorative excursion epitomizes the Deads progressive inclination, cohesion, and ability.
Live/Dead isnt all about the art of the improvisation. R&B-driven electric blues comes courtesy of organist/vocalist Ron Pigpen McKernan, still in excellent health, and pianist Tom Constanten, who departed the band shortly after these shows occurred. The latters counterpoint playing and spiritual accents shadow the shivering ballad Death Dont Have No Mercy and underscore a rousing, percussive-laden marathon take of Turn on Your Love Light. Call-and-response segments, spontaneous exchanges, and joyous merry-making doesnt come any better. Live/Dead is a landmark in every sense; it remains the first 16-track album released. Its impact is still felt today.
From the illustrative cover art (hint: the word Dead subtly spells out Acid on the back cover) to the gatefold graphics and the extraordinary sonics, Mobile Fidelitys 180g 2LP edition ranks among the labels best releases. Ever.
"After two expensive studio albums put the Dead $100,000 in debt, this live set was more than just cheap, it was pivotal. For the Dead, the magic happened onstage, as demonstrated by the glorious twenty-three-minute jam-outs on "Dark Star" and the band's cover of "(Turn On Your) Lovelight." - www.rollingstone.com
Features:
Numbered, Limited Edition
Half-Speed Production and Mastering by Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab
Specially Plated and Pressed on 180 grams of High Definition Vinyl
Special Static Free - Dust Free Inner Sleeve
Heavy Duty Protective Packaging
Mastered from the Original Master Tapes
Selections:
LP 1
1. Dark Star
2. St. Stephen
3. The Eleven
LP 2
1. Lovelight
2. Death Don't Have No Mercy
3. And We Bid You Goodnight
