Europe 72' To Be Released In Its Entirety!!!

[Weirdness]

...A tad pricy @ $299US, but a pretty neat prospect all the same. 55 discs!!!!

The Tour: European Dead, 1972

650 Tracks

75 Songs

22 Concerts

11 Dark Stars

8 Jam Sessions

6 Soundchecks

1 Midnight Mediterranean Beach Party

AND…

Plenty’O’Bus Music (Bolo or Bozo? You decide!)

Thirty-three years in the making and assembled from a score of sources, Grateful Dead Productions is proud to release, in its entirety, the European Tour of 1972. Spanning 55 discs and including every scrap of music that anyone present was able to record, this will stand as one of the greatest sonic documents of all time. It captures one of the world’s most intrepid bands playing at its absolute peak. Folded into this amazing boxed set is all the material previously released on Europe 72, Hundred Year Hall, Rockin ’ The Rhein, and Steppin’ Out With The Grateful Dead: England ’72.

Beyond the stunning concerts themselves (including a pristine multi-track of the long-missing 4/17 Tivoli Gardens Dark Star), we’ve rooted out exceptional recordings from a variety of sources:

Soundchecks: Listen as the band fine-tunes not only songs in regular rotation, but also hilarious rarities such as Paper Moon and Smoke On The Water.

Jam Sessions: Whether on the bus or in the hotel room, these tracks provide exceptional glimpses into interactions between band members. Check out Bob and Pig Pen on an acoustic Turn On Your Lovelight, or Jerry and Phil drilling into a Bach-inflected duet. And did we mention that a few of their friends showed up? Keep your ears peeled for Keith Richards, Paul McCartney, Steve Winwood, and many more.

Beach Party!: With a weekend off in late May, the gang headed for the south of France and lit a bonfire at the edge of the Mediterranean. Great music ensued, and technically savvy hippies were there to capture it. Prepare yourself for an hour of the most intimate (and unusual) Grateful Dead you have ever heard.

Beyond being a true high-water mark for the band, this tour also saw both human and dynamic changes taking place. It was Pig Pen’s last tour, and Keith and Donna’s true coming-out. At the beginning of the tour, Playing In The Band contained a six minute jam, by the end of the tour the jam was over twice as long. And, last but far from least, it was deep in the heart of Europe that the Tiger Jam was born.

Get it all in one enormous boxed set that also includes a 98 page booklet

(book?) containing 75 never before published photographs as well as contributions from every person, bolo or bozo, who went along for the greatest tour of the twentieth century.

Available June, 2005

US: $299 In Canada: $399

Second post:

David Lemieux:

We wanted to do something really spectacular for the 40th anniversary. So, in keeping with our steady evolution from early Dick's Picks and archival releases (the best parts of a show) to later releases (the entire show, warts and all), we decided to make the big leap to an entire tour. Conversations about which tour to release proved to be endlessly exciting and often highly provoking. Everybody has a favorite era, and within that era a favorite year or month. But favorites were all over the map.

Long story short, though, we realized that 1972 was either a list-topper or a runner-up for almost everybody, and that within 1972 it was the European tour that the dominated conversation. It had a lot of unique story lines: Pig's last tour; Keith's true arrival (if you count late '71 as his shakedown period); Donna's first tour, Jerry "invents" the Tiger jam; a boatload of new material that really comes into its own (including the crack-out of He's Gone). The more we considered it, the more it looked like a tour that had true historical significance. And then there was the realization of just how much unreleased material there truly was, from missing chunks of shows to…well, read on.

As I think all deadheads who are tape collectors know, there are a lot of recordings held by band insiders that simply don't circulate. And the European tour seemed to be the mother lode of uncirculated material. It sometimes felt like everybody who went along on the tour had carried a high quality deck at all times, as well as killer microphones with perfect placement.

One thing that kept happening over and over during our quest to decide which tour to release was that we would find ourselves in someone’s living room, listening to something good, and we would slowly realize that not only was the music really good, and the recording excellent, but it was a song we had never heard the band play! And the source of the material was nearly always the European tour. Not only were the hotel rooms veritable sound studios, but the busses had been wired for both broadcasting and recording, a la Further.

Another factor that came into play was the realization that although the band’s reputation with the European public was low-profile (the gigs in Europe never sold out), the band’s reputation with the musicians of Europe was huge: they were banging on their hotel doors, wanting to jam. And all those jams, it seems, were recorded.

Then there was the beach party. It happened on the night of May 20th in Antibes, France, during a five day stretch when the equipment was being transported back to England. I had heard about it over the years, but never really thought much about it. All the California beach party tapes I had heard were either too sloppily played or poorly recorded to lead me to believe that this one would be any different. But then I heard, playing in the background on a Marin County porch, two banjos playing, “Dueling Banjos” style, the melody to Birdsong. It sounded so live that I assumed the players were just around the corner until I heard Jerry’s distinctive chuckle. The hair went up on the back of my neck and I didn’t leave that day until the complete hour of spectacular acoustic material was in my pocket.

So, it’s been a real labor of love, under intense layers of secrecy, to assemble all this material (not everyone wanted to part with it and a lot of the permissions were not easy to get) but the final result is, I think, a true singularity in the annals of recorded music. I’m sure everyone who decides to take the trip back in time with us will agree.

Let Tomorrow Be

[paisley]

sweet!

that is pricey but I'd love to sit down with this collection

thanks for sharin the word weirdness

[Guest Low Roller]

As neat as this may sound for Grateful Dead completists, I believe we can safely rollout the term 'overkill' with this puppy.

[Tenenbaum]

ah man, and I bought Europse 72 double disc for nothing!

[MoMack]

Wow... 55 hours straight.

You're really have to put your forehead into that eh Esau?

[Esau]

You know it Laforge....just plowin'

[Gr8FuL]

I love the dead, this would definetely be a collectors item, but with 650 track how long is it? it'd tak eya days of str8 listenin to get through it, it'd benice to have though, i doubt i'de ever get fully through the entire thing for a long long time though

[backbacon]

Sweet! That's only like eight something per disc (CDN - w/ tax). About the cost of a cup of coffee a day for a year. I think that since I spend zero a day on coffee every day, I can quite guilt free go ahead and buy this. Well, that settles it then.

55 disc box set!! Reminds me of the 100 disc box set of Zorn/Eye from their 1995 China tour. (with cd's of variable length - shortest one being one second long!) Not sure if that ever got released even. I wanted that too when I heard about it ten years ago or something.

[Davey Boy 2.0]

I'm hoping to listen to it in it's entirety when i take a month off for the world cup next year

[Booche]

This is all that is beautiful.

[MarcO]

It's not really overkill because no-one will just casually buy it. It's only for a certain, obsessive market.

If I could afford it, I'd drop $400 on this in a heartbeat. This is the apex of the Grateful Dead's creative curve as far as I'm concerned. It would be a right pleasure to work my way through the entire set.

I'm going to be listening to the Grateful Dead for the rest of my life anyway, so who cares if it takes years to get through this set?

[Davey Boy 2.0]

Hell yeah, $400 is a steal for what you're getting

actually i heard it's already up on Kazza and that the average download time is 3 years

[Rossolee]

Are we sure this is a real release, it looks like on the DNC that it was a April prank?

[MarcO]

no, no-one is sure.

I just want it to happen, even if I can't afford it.

[Esau]

Are we sure this is a real release, it looks like on the DNC that it was a April prank?

Thats what I was thinking since there is no mention on any GD site about this being released.

The price was sorta a give away in my opinion...given that the complete Dicks picks collection (#1-34) is only 610 USD.

[paisley]

Are we sure this is a real release, it looks like on the DNC that it was a April prank?

damn you, Wierdness!!!

I'm still waiting for The Slip to play Guelph!