When The Dead Came Alive

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by Jeff Wilson
Mar 22, 2025

There’s much to be said for live albums that present an entire concert from beginning to end. Typically live records either contain excerpts from different parts of a tour or the highlights of a single show. But if there happened to be a night where everything gelled, and the concert evolved in such a way that, by the time the final encore ended, the whole far exceeded the sum of its parts, wouldn’t you want to hear the whole thing from beginning to end?

That line of thought long ago took root with Grateful Dead fans, whose recordings of Dead shows were, during the Analog Age, distributed on cassette. These recordings were sanctioned by the band, and eventually the Dead started to release full shows on their own. This was the perfect group to go deeply archival with live material because, while some of their peers tended to play the same songs the same way throughout a tour, that was never the case with the Dead. Not only did their setlists and song order differ considerably from night to night, but their interpretations of individual songs kept changing. Also, the character of the shows changed in ways that setlist don’t reveal. To give just one example, group improvisations played a larger part in some Dead shows than others—and there were those nights, when the Dead played without a net, that everything came together. The trick, then, when documenting an entire Dead concert, would be to capture one of those nights when that elusive Dead magic came alive.

These were thoughts that ran through my head while listening to Duke ’78, Rhino’s new 4-LP/3-CD box set that includes inserts with photos and extensive liner notes. Recorded at Duke University’s Cameron Indoor Stadium on April 12, 1978, Duke ’78 was mastered by Jeffrey Norman, who worked from tapes recorded by Betty Cantor-Jackson, an engineer whose extensive history with the band included the famous “Betty Boards.” Although the recording quality is generally good here, there are some blemishes. At some points the lead vocals of Jerry Garcia or Bob Weir don’t blend in with the instruments—and that’s also true when the lead singers harmonize with the background singer, Donna Jean Godchaux. Also, both the lead vocals and the harmonies are an issue on the first two cuts, particularly with regard to Garcia. That wasn’t Betty’s fault, by the way—the sound system was having trouble picking up the vocals.

Those are minor issues, however, compared to what you normally hear during an almost three-hour performance. You hear how drummers Mickey Hart and Bill Kreutzmann left more room for nuanced interplay than many rock drummers do with a single drum set; the fluid bass lines of bassist Phil Lesh come through clearly; the rhythm guitar of Bob Weir is also clearly audible; and yes, you can clearly hear Garcia solo to his heart’s content. Although it’s low in the mix, you can hear Keith Godchaux’s acoustic piano, and happily so—I liked his playing with the Dead. I also liked Donna Godchaux. My first Dead show took place seven days after this concert, and to me, seeing Donna standing up at the front of the stage with Jerry and Bob added something to the Grateful Dead experience. Obviously a hippy, she looked like many of the women in the crowd, and in my mind her presence enriched that tribal sense of community that was so endemic to the Dead…plus I liked her voice.

As was normal for Grateful Dead shows, the first set of Duke ’78 is more contained than the second. Also, as tended to be the case in concert, the vocal duties are split almost evenly between Garcia and Weir. In the first set, Garcia pours his heart and soul into “Peggy-O” and “Loser”—expect to have your heart torn out. Weir’s earthier style helped balance out the band, and the fact that “Jack Straw” and “New Minglewood Blues” sound a little rough around the edges works to their benefit.

The second set opens with a spirited version of “Bertha” that segues into “Good Lovin,” followed by “It Must Have Been the Roses.” “Estimated Prophet” leading into “Eyes of the World” is where things really began to open up, and a 22-minute performance of “Rhythm Devils” is both spacey and primal. “Truckin’” then gives way to “Wharf Rat,” which is the emotional peak of the concert. Although he was not yet 30 years old, there’s a frailty to Garcia’s voice that, when he’s singing about characters who’ve been bruised by life, made each note, and each word, all the more convincing.

After that long, strange musical trip, the Dead close the second set with Chuck Berry’s “Around and Around.” Clearly bringing it all back home with some straight-ahead rock ’n’ roll after all the wandering is the perfect way to end the second set. The adrenaline is still flowing as the band encores with a rendition of “U.S. Blues” that’s much more energetic than their Mars Hotel version.

In the liner notes to Last Days of the Fillmore, Bill Graham writes, in stream of consciousness fashion, “the Dead—oh boy, the Dead—on any given night the greatest of them all.” Those words came back to me as I listened to Duke ’78. Were the Dead the greatest band of all on April 12th of that year? That’s hard to say. I’m not sure who else was playing that night, but I’ll go ahead and say that, at the very least, the Grateful Dead were contenders for the throne.

Tags: MUSIC ROCK GRATEFUL DEAL

By Jeff Wilson

This will take some explaining, but I can connect the dots between pawing through LPs at a headshop called Elysian Fields in Des Moines, Iowa, as a seventh grader, and becoming the Music Editor for The Absolute Sound. At that starting point—around 1970/71—Elysian Fields had more LPs than any other store in Des Moines. Staring at all the colorful covers was both tantalizing and frustrating. I had no idea who most of the artists were, because radio played only a fraction of what was current. To figure out what was going on, I realized that I needed to build a record collection—and as anyone who’s visited me since high school can testify, I succeeded. Record collecting was still in my blood when, starting in the late 1980s, the Cincinnati Public Library book sale suddenly had an Elysian Fields quantity of LPs from people who’d switched to CDs. That’s where I met fellow record hawk Mark Lehman, who preceded me as music editor of TAS. Mark introduced me to Jonathan Valin, whose 1993 detective novel The Music Lovers depicts the battles between record hawks at library sales. That the private eye in the book, Harry Stoner, would stumble upon a corpse or two while unraveling the mystery behind the disappearance of some rare Living Stereo platters made perfect sense to me. After all, record collecting is serious business. Mark knew my journalistic experience included concert reviews for The Cincinnati Enquirer and several long, sprawling feature articles in the online version of Crawdaddy. When he became TAS music editor in 2008, he contacted me about writing for the magazine. I came on board shortly after the latest set of obituaries had been written for vinyl—and, as fate had it, right when the LP started to make yet another unexpected comeback. Suddenly, I found myself scrambling to document all the record companies pressing vinyl. Small outfits were popping up world-wide, and many were audiophile-oriented, plus already existing record companies began embracing the format again. Trying to keep track of everything made me feel, again, like that overwhelmed seventh grader in Elysian Fields, and as Music Editor I’ve found that keeping my finger on the pulse of the music world also requires considerable detective work. I’ve never had a favorite genre, but when it comes time to sit down and do some quality listening, for me nothing beats a well-recorded small-group jazz recording on vinyl. If a stereo can give me warmth and intimacy, tonal accuracy, clear imaging, crisp-sounding cymbals, and deep, woody-sounding bass, then I’m a happy camper.