we were discussing some obscure, and heretowith untraded, shows (i.e. everyone got to ask 'surely you have the xxx from yyy?') and how they have surfaced and how shows are getting patched up and etc. well, i got this as a response...
reposted with permission. I-) ihor ---------- Date: Tue, 19 Mar 2002 20:54:25 -0500 From: "Stev Lenon" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: Re: surely you have this one? Doesn't everyone? Show: 9-21-78, Kibbutz Ein Gedi, Israel Sound Check: Promised Land First Set: Promised Land, Cold Jordan, Havah Naghilah tuning, Bird Song, Turn, Turn, Turn (only time ever played - weir acoustic), Children Go Where I Send You (only time ever played - weir acoustic),Greatest Story Ever Told, Samson & Delilah, Visions of Johanna Second Set: Scarlet > Fire Estimated Prophet>Eyes> Terrapin >PITB>Drumz>Bill Graham Part the Red Sea Rap>Drumz> I Need A Miracle>Stella Blue>St. Liebowitz Jam> (only time played)>PITB Reprise>Morning Dew Encore: Shalom Aleichem (only time played) > U.S. Blues. Source: AUD, Quality: B Length: ca. 2:10, Taper: Ze'ev Yaakov Ben Aryeh HaLevi. There is little known about this particular taper. His name pops up occasionally in taping circles and more frequently in trading circles. He is usually associated with some relic of Dead Arcana or Apocrypha. He is reachable only by Internet post. Place a call for him on alt.Rec.music.gdead and wait for him to see it. If you are looking for real rarities he is your source of last resort. Comments: The tape quality has been affected by the age of the source tape and has suffered some generational loss. There is some hiss, marked at times, nearly absent at others. There is also some environmental noise contamination. Given the location and the proximity to the IDF bases nearby; this is unavoidable. I was in Tel Aviv doing some clinical research at the time of the Egypt shows. By the time I learned they were happening, the first show was over. There was no way to get from Israel to Egypt in time due to the necessity of flying to another country to enter Egypt instead of being able to go directly from Israel. I was horribly disappointed, not having seen the band in over a year. You can imagine my joy when a colleague working with me heard from a cousin in Ein Gedi that there was going to be an un-announced show. My project was winding down and I had only some data reduction left to do for completion. With no experimental demands, we were free to try to make it to the show. Hitchhiking is a recognized means of transport in Israel. We hit the road; and looking so obviously American, we made it to Ein Gedi with little difficulty but much road dust. The venue is incredible. Ein Gedi is a socialist Kibbutz hard on the banks of the Dead Sea. This is the lowest geological point on the earth's crustal surface, The Dead Sea is 1300 feet below sea level. Sulfur springs, moonscape-like terrain, blue water, blue skies, oasis, waterfalls, nature carried to extremes. This is the border between two tectonic plates. Farther south it is called the Great Rift Valley. Here, it's a wonderful tourist spot and a great venue. We gathered around an open stage with some of the strange salt formations on the audience left and the brilliant blue of the Dead Sea behind. It was hot, almost oppressive until the sun slid behind the hills. Then Ein Gedi like all desert communities gets chilly. Jackets were appreciated. A bottle or two of Israeli brandy slid by and the warmth provided was enjoyable. The band slowly took the stage. The crowd was noisy but very subdued compared to the crowds at home. There may have been 1500 of us sitting or standing on the lakeshore. Almost a private show! From the crowd noise I think that less than a tenth of the crowd were American. The lights went up, as the stars grew brighter. >From the first audible notes, the show possessed a life of it's own. Promised Land as a sound check; Bobby taking no prisoners. Fervent applause from the crowd who understood the significance of Chuck Berry's song. Then we were amazed when they played it as the Set opener. Back-to-back Promised Land, a fitting opener for the Twice Promised Land. Cold Jordan slowed the pace a bit and drew locally fervent applause. Bobby began fiddling with his equipment and Jerry, apparently bored fell back to his early folkie days and launched the one and only Havah Naghilah tuning that the band ever played. The show was becoming more memorable by the minute. The crowd went wild at this point and the boys had the audience in their pocket the rest of the night. Bird Song, a standard reading; no major shakes, just some nice Jerry work. Then another salute to the host nation and its literature appeared from nowhere. Turn, Turn, Turn, a selection I never expected to hear from The Grateful Dead lay there in front of us. Weir strapped on an acoustic guitar and laid down some nice chord patterns. Jerry did a little noodling at the end and then the accapello talents the band too seldom exhibited were fully displayed as the hit some wonderful harmonies on Children Go Where I Send You. Weir stepped in with a hard driven Greatest Story and then decided to keep going as if no one else had a say in the set. He kicked the tempo up to overexcitation as he took center stage for real screamer Samson & Delilah. There was little strength left in Bobbie's voice at the end of the song. Jerry seemed not to want to leave the stage and before I realized what was happening he was mumbling his way through Dylan's Visions of Johanna. He blew half the words, there was little in the way of solo performance. But hey! Visions of Johanna! That was the set end. We sat there on the ground amazed at so many breakouts in one show, in one set! This was going to be a show to remember for many reasons. The band took a long set break, over an hour. Several bottles of brandy passed back and forth where I was sitting. There was the faint smell of something more enticing in the air but I didn't go looking for it. There were more than a few IDF troops around. There were also quite a few police. I had no desire to run afoul of Israeli law. Twice during the set break I hit the ground as a pair of F-4's, wings heavy with ordnance streaked low overhead. Training mission? Real mission? Didn't have an answer. Hadn't seen a Phantom going that fast and that low since 1969. Took a few more sips of brandy and blew away what flashbacks I could. Time for Set 2. Scarlet > Fire was the set opener. There was a tasty but not very long jam out of Scarlet. All too soon the familiar opening riff of Fire signaled that this was going to be a fast set. Fire sort of bounced to a stop and with almost no tuning we were treated to an equally fast Estimated Prophet > Eyes Of The World. Again, no spectacular solos, no spectacular jams. This was solid musicianship but not horribly inspired. I figured Drums and Space were next and was considering stretching my legs a bit. But Jerry kicked into Terrapin and kept on rolling. Everything was slightly too fast for them to open up the music. Just straightforward readings like they were practicing for a studio session. Terrapin didn't end like it should. It wandered from the repetitive final riffs into an absolutely unexpected Playin' In The Band. This show was proceeding under it's own control and at this point not even the band had a suspicion of where it would end. Drumz finally appeared about 2 minutes out of PITB. Billy and Micky banged out some marvelous polyrhythms and all of a sudden Bill Graham walked on stage. He was rather glassy -eyed and was wearing a burnoose. He raised his hands and the drummers stopped. This is when his "Part the Red Sea Rap" actually took place, not at Giza. While Bill was telling an abbreviated version of the Exodus we suddenly heard Jerry exclaim over an unsuspected open microphone " Damn, Man! I think I stepped in some camel shit or something!" Bill lost his concentration and stopped his tale. He was still belly laughing when he made his way offstage. An austere and unsettling Space of about 4 minutes, mostly feedback and Philbombs led suddenly into the heavy opening chords of I Need A Miracle. This was more like it. The tempo was where it belonged. A really powerful reading that called to mind the host nation again. A short melodic jam full of descending triplets led into the most nearly perfect Stella Blue I have ever heard. The poignancy in Jerry's voice was matched by the magic in his fingers. Phil dropped bombs where needed and chords where indicated. This alone was worth the trip. Stella ended in those lovely discordant harmonies I loved from '73. Then another breakout. The one and only St. Liebowitz Jam, Phil shuddering the Judean hills with bomb after bomb and ending with the pathognomic line "Blessed St. Liebowitz, pray for us." It left us wondering what the hell we had just heard. The band didn't give us time to wonder as they quickly rocked back into another Weir screaming session PITB Reprise. After all this there was little Jerry could do but Morning Dew. He did it. But they were tired and it went by in that too fast tempo that for me made it less than perfect. Absolute silence greeted the end of the set as the moon rose over the Dead Sea. To thunderous applause Jerry came on stage alone and performed the first encore on an acoustic guitar, Shalom Aleichem. Then the whole band came out for an up-tempo U.S. Blues. I guess they were getting homesick. I'm sure Jerry was jonesing for a cheeseburger. So was I. What a show, all those breakouts and the penultimate venue for the Grateful Dead, The Dead Sea! Get this tape if you can. Ignore the decidedly less than sterling quality of the source tape and even generational degradation. Don't let someone make you a cleaned DAT copy. This is a show that demands the ambiance of an analog Aud. You can hear an entire audience "get it" for the first time. You can hear them grow from polite applause for a strange group doing somewhat familiar songs in a foreign language to full-throated appreciation of the phenomenal band that they were hearing. For most of the audience this would be their only show. If you had to choose to see only one show, this would be a good one to see. That's the way I recall it. I was so damned tired by the time I hitched from Tel Aviv to Ein Gedi ( soldiers got the first rides and civilians had to wait as you know) Then the time spent begging for a miracle ticket there in the shadow of Masada, still it was an event to remember. And the lights there in the desert night! Then there was the IDF helicopter flying remote security that made several of the songs hard to hear All in all, a long strange trip into the desert! Review by Stev Lenon, [EMAIL PROTECTED]
