Grateful Dead of the Day's Daily Nugs
At Grateful Dead of the Day, we like to think of February 1st as our birthday. It was on that day back in 2015 that we wrote our first show review for the site. And now, nearly ten years later, we are celebrating the anniversary by beginning a new daily Grateful Dead of the Day newsletter, The Daily Nugs, to bring more Grateful Dead music and stories into your life and inbox. Welcome to the inaugural issue.
The February 1, 1978 show was the last of a three-night run at the Uptown Theater, beginning a long string of appearances at the Chicago venue over the following three years. Highlights include the Sugaree, where Jerry’s vocals are particularly resonant, and a very fine Estimated kicking off an alternatingly smoking and exploratory second set. Apparently, before the show, there was a guy out front of the theater on the small Shakedown Street yelling ‘lunchmeat,’ which he had hanging from hooks inside his trench coat. So there's that too. Listen to the show and read more about the Uptown Theater at Grateful Dead of the Day.
On February 1, 1970, the Dead were still recovering from the fateful New Orleans police raid and arrests ("busted, down on Bourbon Street...") that had went down the night before. In the wake of this, on the evening of the first, the band shared the bill with Peter Green and Fleetwood Mac on a bust fund benefit. The Lovelight, with Peter Green, rocks, and it is pretty hard to say anything bad about the rest of the tunes. Check it all out over at the site.
There are also two studio recordings from this day in Grateful Dead history, back on February 1, 1971, and in 1983 at the Stone House Studio, a large Girl Scout camp where Mickey, Betty Cantor, Rex Jackson, and Dan Healy had previously recorded Zakir Hussain for his album Venu.
Thanks for checking out the first issue of The Daily Nugs. Please share this with friends and have them sign up for the newsletter. And support Grateful Dead of the Day on Patreon.
Until tomorrow, spread the love and enjoy the music!