I just got a delivery from UPS today of the box set release of the entire Grateful Dead Europe '72 tour. 22 shows on 73 CDs. It's a great testament to the ingenuity and hard work of the Alembic crew back then. There's a bunch of documentation of some of the technical issues they had to deal with and lots of great stories. The sound is wonderful. Yes, there's some tape hiss, but the instruments and vocals are captured with wonderful clarity and immediacy. The mix is really nice and certainly a shout-out to my friend, David Glasser, is due for the excellent job of mastering.
It's my favorite era of the band and the sound quality is way above and beyond anything I've ever heard from those years. Without Alembic's attention to detail and creativity in putting together a rig capable of traveling Europe and capturing the sound so clearly, it never would have been worth releasing like this, even with the level of musicianship captured here. Even the customized tape machine, an Ampex refitted into a video recorder frame, that stood 5 feet tall and spun 14 reels, was an amazing creation on the level of their instruments.
Thanks, guys and gals!
