Sometimes the best mix tapes are the songs that one of your favorite bands selects for a live performance. I can't even remember when this cassette turned up in my yellow '72 Beetle; but I have a suspicion that a friend of mine got it from another friend, who probably forgot to return it to someone who borrowed it from someone else. So the stories often went in the days before jam base and digital download; the time when you met this guy who dropped a hot show on you. You can't remember his name and you can't remember the city, or the circumstances surrounding the moment you met him. The hiss evaporated moments after you hit play regardless and, if only for a dreamy ninety minutes you were carried away to another time; another place. Some other city where the magic happened without you. This one is a soundboard recording from April 22, 1971, in Bangor, Maine. The cover art is hand-drawn and quite remarkable. It's the original line-up of the Grateful Dead, and it's got cowboy songs, great covers, and funky originals. Side A: Bertha, Me & My Uncle, Lied & Cheated, Loser, Playin' In the Band, Cumberland Blues, Hard To Handle (Ron 'PigPen' McKernan on vocals for this cover, as well as Lied & Cheated) Side B: Deal, Me & Bobby McGee, Casey Jones (II) China Cat Sunflower, I Know You Ryder, Greatest Story Ever Told, Beat It On Down The Line, and Sing Me Back Home.
I hadn't heard it in fifteen years until tonight, when I popped it in the old bug and puttered downtown.
J. Brown, Raleigh NC
