Finally got my pre-ordered Dead Ahead DVD. Because I ordered thru the Dead's Official Store, I got the bonus CD of the additional songs included on the DVD release.
Sound quality is very good. Video is decent...but belies it's 1980 vintage video tape origins. The Franken-Davis stuff is pretty awful...thank God it's brief. Are/were those guys actually Dead Heads? Was it John Scher's idea to make those guys MC's and include skits in the video?
Wow, has it really been a quarter of a century since those historic Radio City shows? I was there during the run...the acoustic sets in particular were great. Unfortunately, there is very little in the way of acoustic material on the disk. The bonus material adds a little more, but there's still not enough to satiate all you Reckoning fans.
While I was never a big Brent Mydland fan, he more than acquits himself decently here, and the majority of shows I've been to were Brent-era anyway. I prefer Pig Pen and even Keith/Donna Godchaux to Brent, but then again, Brent was more consistent in his singing and playing than the others were, IMHO.
While I used to dismiss most of the Goes To Heaven material, excepting Althea and Alabama Getaway (neither of which are on this disc), the two sound-alike tunes from that disc represented here (i.e., Lost Sailor and Saint Of Circumstance) have held-up exceedingly well after all these years. Hell, I went back a few times to ck em out! Almost like a more modern Weather Report Suite...almost.
It would have been nice if they had recorded more material, say enough for a full-length concert, but it was not to be. I imagine the time limitations of VHS tape, along with added cost, was what kept the quantity of documented songs down. It's a shame that there isn't any more...they were great shows.
After seeing that vid, I'm wondering what happened to my Radio City tee-shirt? It was heather gray with (what became) the Reckoning cover art on the front, and the marquis with Sold Out over the dates with ma and pa SN'R skeletons leaning on it on the back. I bet I still have it somewhere...and I bet I can still fit in it, LOL!
BTW, am I the only one that was there that thought the renditions documented on Reckoning and Dead Set weren't the best of the best? I distinctly remember being disappointed that, depite my decent hi-fi, the versions on the albums weren't as good as the ones I had witnessed personally at the shows when those albums were first released. To me, the Dead had a knack for never picking the best versions of tunes for their 'official' live releases. Just my $0.02.
There is still NOTHING like a Grateful Dead show!
