The Grateful Dead - Wake Of The Flood: The Angel's Share

Another November 2nd (Day Of The Dead) - another Grateful Dead offering for you all!

In celebration of the original album's fiftieth anniversary, The Dead's vaults were thrown open to provide Wake Of The Flood: The Angel's Share, the third installment of the celebrated Angel's Share series, featuring more than two hours of previously unreleased studio chatter, outtakes and alternate versions recorded during the band's August 1973 Wake Of The Flood sessions, held at the Record Plant in Sausalito, California. Some great additions to this release include:

• Takes of “Let Me Sing Your Blues Away,” Keith Godchaux’s first and only vocal on a Grateful Dead studio record;
• Bobby Weir’s continually evolving “Weather Report Suite”; and
• The track “Phil’s Song (Unbroken Chain)”, released on the group's later album The Mars Hotel.

In case you're curious, here's the track listing:

1. Mississippi Half-Step Uptown Toodeloo (Take 9) [Not Slated] [8/6/73]
2. Mississippi Half-Step Uptown Toodeloo (Take 10) [Slated] [8/6/73]
3. Mississippi Half-Step Uptown Toodeloo (Take 11) [Slated] [8/6/73]
4. Mississippi Half-Step Uptown Toodeloo (Take 16) [Slated] [8/6/73]
5. Stella Blue (Take 1) [Not Slated] [8/7/73]
6. Stella Blue (Take 2) [Not Slated] [8/7/73]
7. Stella Blue (Take 4) [Slated] [8/7/73]
8. Stella Blue (Take 5) [Not Slated] [8/7/73]
9. I Am The Rain (Weather Report Suite) [Take 2] [Slated] [8/7/73]
10. I Am The Rain (Weather Report Suite) [Take 3] [Slated] [8/7/73]
11. I Am The Rain (Weather Report Suite) [Take 4] [Slated] [8/7/73]
12. Pistol Shot (China Doll) [TAKE 1] [SLATED] [8/8/73]
13. Pistol Shot (China Doll) [TAKE 2] [SLATED] [8/8/73]
14. Pistol Shot (China Doll) [TAKE 3] [SLATED] [8/8/73]
15. Pistol Shot (China Doll) [TAKE 4] [SLATED] [8/8/73]
16. Row Jimmy (Take 1) [Not Slated] [8/10/73]
17. Eyes Of The World (Run-through) [Not SLATED] [8/10/73]
18. Eyes Of The World (Take 1) [SLATED] [8/10/73]
19. Eyes Of The World (Take 6) [Not SLATED] [8/10/73]
20. Eyes Of The World (Take 15) [Not SLATED] [8/10/73]
21. Eyes Of The World (Take 16) [Not SLATED] [8/10/73]
22. Let Me Sing Your Blues Away (TAKE 1) [Not SLATED][8/15/73]
23. Let Me Sing Your Blues Away (TAKE 2) [SLATED] [8/15/73]
24. Let Me Sing Your Blues Away (TAKE 3) [SLATED] [8/15/73]
25. Let Me Sing Your Blues Away (TAKE 4) [SLATED] [8/15/73]
26. Let Me Sing Your Blues Away (TAKE 13) [Not SLATED] [8/15/73]
27. Phil’s Song (Unbroken Chain) [Take 1] [Not SLATED] [8/16/73
28. Phil’s Song (Unbroken Chain) [Take 2] [Not SLATED] [8/16/73]
29. Phil’s Song (Unbroken Chain) [Take 3] [SLATED] [8/16/73]
30. Phil’s Song (Unbroken Chain) [Take 4] [Not SLATED] [8/16/73]
31. Phil’s Song (Unbroken Chain) [Take 5] [Not SLATED] [8/16/73]
32. Phil’s Song (Unbroken Chain) [Take 6] [Not SLATED] [8/16/73]
33. Phil’s Song (Unbroken Chain) [Take 7] [SLATED] [8/16/73]
34. Phil’s Song (Unbroken Chain) [Take 8] [SLATED] [8/16/73]
35. Weather Report Suite (Take 10) [Not Slated] [8/16/73
36. Weather Report Suite (Take 11) [Not Slated] [8/16/73
37. Weather Report Suite (Take 16) [Not Slated] [8/16/73]
38. Weather Report Suite (Take 8) [Slated] [8/17/73]

Sort of not much else left to say here about this album - so I'll just shut up and offer up the music. Here for your Dias De Los Muertos listening pleasure, here's Wake Of The Flood: The Angel's Share, released by Rhino Records on August 18, 2023. This one's for all the Deadheads out there!

Enjoy, and... well, you know!

Please use the email link below to contact me, and I will reply with the download link(s) ASAP:

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The Beatles - Shea! Stadium Ultra Deluxe (5-disc set); plus concert film

Sixty years to the day since The Beatles played Shea Stadium in New York on their second American tour... hard to fathom that it's been THAT long since that watershed moment in rock history.

I was going to pen one of my extended screeds in celebration of and in relation to this day... but it appears that Rolling Stone magazine beat me to it. I don't think I can improve upon this article, which contains the following summation:

"...Shea was more than just the first high-profile stadium concert. It showed everyone how huge, untamable, crazed pop music could be. It destroyed the hopes of everyone who still thought the Beatles — and their young female audience — were just a passing fad, which was still the conventional adult wisdom in 1965. The Fabs couldn’t be dismissed anymore, and neither could the girls. It shattered all the cliches about how show-biz was supposed to work. Never before had that many humans joined together in one place to celebrate music — and on a deeper level, to celebrate each other. That’s why “Shea Stadium” is still the two-word code for the culmination of pop dreams at their loudest, lustiest, scariest, and most deranged."

Can't add much else to this phrase, or the overall writeup in general... so I'll just shut up and provide the music!

I was thinking about posting the venerable Purple Chick Sheaken Not Stirred two-disc set - but I think that the one offered here is better. Here's the Shea! Stadium Ultra Deluxe set, a fan-generated compilation that popped up on a Beatles bootleg site a couple of years ago. This set features the ENTIRE concert, with music from opening acts including King Curtis, Brenda Holloway, Sounds Incorporated and Cannibal & The Headhunters; 1991 stereo versions and 2003 remix/remastering of the Fab Four's set; and bonus tracks.

And speaking of bonuses...

Knowing that the Shea Stadium show was going to be a big deal, NEMS Enterprises (band manager Brian Epstein's holding company) and Sullivan Productions (television host and show presenter Ed Sullivan's firm) arranged for the concert to be intensively documented on film. More than a dozen cameras were deployed in and around the stadium and backstage to capture the frenzy of the moment. The hours of tape generated were then edited down to a fifty-minute-long documentary, The Beatles At Shea Stadium, which premiered in England in early 1966, but not shown in America until January 1967.

The Beatles At Shea Stadium should not be considered a "true documentary", however. A couple of songs played that night were not included due to concerns about the film's length. The remaining songs were heavily edited.in post-production - some being overdubbed, and a couple replaced with studio versions already existing on record or rerecorded by The Beatles at a London session in early January 1966. The Shea! Stadium Ultra Deluxe set includes the soundtrack from this movie (in mono format)... and I included the film here as well, for your review and amusement.

So, again, for this post, I'm providing:

• Shea! Stadium Ultra Deluxe, a five-disc bootleg set released in 2023; and
• The Beatles At Shea Stadium concert film, released to television and theaters in 1966

I hope these offerings help you to either relive or experience for the first time the revelry, euphoria and hysteria from one of the landmark shows in music history! Enjoy, and as always, let me know what you think.

Please use the email link below to contact me, and I will reply with the download link(s) ASAP:

• The Beatles- Shea! Stadium Ultra Deluxe (5-disc set): Send Email
• The Beatles - The Beatles At Shea Stadium: Send Email