David Lemieux

See, this is a fascinating topic.

And actually, we had an email from one of our listeners who suggested that maybe a future episode of the show, we could have David Lemieux, who's the vault guy for The Grateful Dead on, and you and David could just kind of geek out over tape formulations and...

And preserving all this stuff, which is a lead in to ask about the freak out stereo master tape, which is preserved on acetate tape.

So for the for the benefit of Luddite type people like myself who don't know, what is acetate tape essentially?

Dark Star, Eyes of the World, Mind Left Body, Spanish jams, pretty much all their best stuff.

David Lemieux, the Dead's archivist, explained what happened.

It went from an opener to the jam table setter, a gateway into anything.

Dark Star, Eyes, even Morning Dew.

Yeah

... make this, that, and the other thing." And so I've worked my way up the ladder, met David Lemieux, met Mark Pincus, met- Bernie Cahill, met all these guys that manage and, and are responsible for the legacy of this band, and, and [clears throat] kind of pitched this idea of what I wanted to do.

They didn't get it at all, and so- [laughs] ... going, going back to Mammoth and my relationship here, it was like it would have never happened had I didn't convince Mammoth.

Well, for, for one, I had to be a little bit delicate on what was actually happening, 'cause I was doing a collaboration with the Grateful Dead, but I wasn't necessarily making a film quite yet.

And so his, his assistant sees my name, brings it out of the deleted folder, and he's like, "Bill, you should read this again," and Bill reads it again, and he's like, "I don't like the cold.

I don't like skiing.

I don't get it." [laughs] So what Bill does is calls Mark Pincus and David Lemieux, and he's like, "Hey, is this Chris kid real? Like, is he actually making a film with you guys?" And they're- Yeah ...

like, "Yes.

Oh, man.

I asked David Lemieux why that show is never a Dick's Picks or a Dave's Picks.

He said, we didn't have a soundboard tape of it or it would have been one of the earliest Dick's Picks because it's that good of a show.

There's just a lot of great memories, but I've been very fortunate to have a career outside of the Grateful Dead and photographing the Grateful Dead and working with, you know, bands like the Chili Peppers and, and the Flaming Lips and Jane's Addiction and, you know, on and on and sort of captured.

He played over 100 shows with them.

So for me, I think he's a definitive... you know member of the band and this is a really really great showing from him one of the things that um in the liner notes dave lemieux talks about is the fact that he and vince have been in the band for over a year at this point and he feels like this show is an example of them really having figured it out i completely agree with that especially because the times that bruce goes to the accordion it really fits in and there are some shows earlier in the run where it feels like he's Playing the accordion to give the different sound and to give Vince some shine on his keys, but it feels a little bit like a square peg.

I feel like the songs that he used it on this one, it worked really well.

So I'm very excited about this show.

Its legs are mid-marching or mid-dancing.

So it is like a real-looking bear.

uh brown bear but it it does also it's it's very dead themed you've got beautiful flowers all throughout the background and it's kind of walking up a craggy little area but you have roses and begonias and sunflowers and daisies in the background um so pretty simple bit of artwork but an effective one i think it looks really good the the release itself is just pretty clean too um good pictures of the band at the time kind of all throughout the the liner notes and the the backing discs you know you get your little relics of the time um Like, you know, including the ticket counts and lists from all these nights.

Each night was 7,000 plus seats sold.

The song had become this vehicle for Garcia to explore different emotional registers, to balance sadness with something like acceptance.

David Lemieux, the Dead's archivist, described high time as feeling like drifting along in a canoe in summer.

He tracked the statistics, played in 69 and 70, dropped completely until 76, then performed almost every year after that except 78, 83, and 89.

The last performance was March 24, 95, at the Charlotte Coliseum.