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Anybody else here who traded Dead bootlegs via the internet back in the late 90s early 2000s???
Back when we used to obsess over tape quality and what generation bootleg you were getting?

I've since lost all of mine, but I think my first tape trade was some show from Winterland in the early 70s.

At some point I discovered mail-ordered Dick's Picks, and then discovered Sonic Youth, and eventually my tape collection was lost one way or another.

my first tapes weren't trades per se...i met a mid-level taper who befriended me in 1981 and let me plug in and copy anything i wanted. i believe the first was the full-length version of the 1975 Great American Music Hall "One From The Vault" show, 10 or 15 years before the official release. he was very good to me over the years, but we lost touch when i left California and disappeared into the worst level of depression i ever had. coincidentally, i e-mailed him yesterday hoping to reconnect, which i hope works. i still have five or six hundred CDs of their live material, but they've been languishing in milk crates for a decade now because other music took most of my interest and because there isn't enough floor/wall space in a small 4-room apartment for all those shelves. but it sure was exciting when something new and wonderful arrived...i miss that everyday-is-Christmas feeling of ripping open the padded mailer and seeing what lovely surprise was here. it was quite an enjoyable time to be alive in certain ways.

I torrented a collection of dick picks this year

I think mine was also something like Winterland '78? Or one of the Europe things. I was very confused because I liked it much less than the live album I grew up with (Live/Dead). Quickly realised that the different eras were very much a thing (I still don't like Europe '72 all that much).

imho winterland '78 is just kinda bad in general

I think this is perhaps the take.

I listened to the entire thing at work once and like the first three songs are awesome with the flying joint and all then afterwards it just feels like "they will never put up with 4 hours of this shit"

D.o.S. wrote:I think mine was also something like Winterland '78? Or one of the Europe things. I was very confused because I liked it much less than the live album I grew up with (Live/Dead). Quickly realised that the different eras were very much a thing (I still don't like Europe '72 all that much).

Live/Dead still my favorite.

qersty wrote:"they will never put up with 4 hours of this shit"

dubkitty wrote:other music took most of my interest and because there isn't enough floor/wall space in a small 4-room apartment for all those shelves. but it sure was exciting when something new and wonderful arrived...i miss that everyday-is-Christmas feeling of ripping open the padded mailer and seeing what lovely surprise was here. it was quite an enjoyable time to be alive in certain ways.

there was something about it that kind of became like a mono-culture....like the Dead just abosorb everything and you can't hear anything fresh after awhile. and all of these tapes piling up. But is still get that christmas kinda feeling everytime i get new gear in the mail, i posted this 'cause trading or buying pedals always reminds me of getting new tapes in the mail.

qersty wrote:imho winterland '78 is just kinda bad in general

it's OK until the end of the 3rd set, where the fact that they played LA the night before caught up to them. everything from "Good Lovin'" on just falls apart.

the_bright_undead wrote:
there was something about it that kind of became like a mono-culture....like the Dead just absorb everything and you can't hear anything fresh after awhile.

that's exactly what i'm talking about...the Dead were my favorite band from 1973 till the mid-90s but eventually i wore them out and needed something different as is the case with most of the music i listened to before the turn of the century. that was also the time where my listening expanded to include shoegaze, techno/IDM, and 80s-90s UK post-punk. the only stuff i listen to regularly from back then is Neil Young and Jefferson Airplane/Hot Tuna. it still shocks Deadheads when i tell them that my favorite musician is Jack Casady and my favorite album is Loveless.

I had a bunch of tapes in the late 80s but someone smashed the window of my sister's car in philly and took them. Only ones i remember were cornell 77 and anchorage 80. i think those were good.

I was of the era where I "torrented" about everything tape wise, since Spotify tho many of the good ones have ended up on there thankfully enough

i downloaded everything from the Internet Archive i could when it became apparent the Dead organization was taking SBDs off the table. i got to mid-1978 before they pulled the plug. so now i have literal crates of GDCDs i'll probably never listen to, and no energy to weed through them to find the shows i think are best. things change, and apparently so do i.

I've been way into that album that is all Dark Stars. I need to find that other one like it that is drums and feedback.

Wish there was an album like that but with fire on the mountain tho

dubkitty wrote:i downloaded everything from the Internet Archive i could when it became apparent the Dead organization was taking SBDs off the table. i got to mid-1978 before they pulled the plug. so now i have literal crates of GDCDs i'll probably never listen to, and no energy to weed through them to find the shows i think are best. things change, and apparently so do i.

It would be awesome, and a complete waste of time and hard drive space, to take all of those CDs any layer them into a single mp3 or WAV file just to hear what it sounds like. You could hear like 10+ years of the Dead in about 70 minutes.