Out June 21st via Rhino, six days before the album’s original release on June 27th, 1974, The Grateful Dead will release “From The Mars Hotel” (50th Anniversary Deluxe Edition) which features remastered audio by Grammy Award-winning engineer David Glasser, with Plangent Processes tape restoration and speed correction. Eight months after the release of “Wake Of The Flood”, the Grateful Dead followed up that masterpiece with the second album on their Grateful Dead Records label, “From The Mars Hotel”. To this day, most of the songs on From The Mars Hotel are played frequently by the band members as they continue to bring the music to the people, and during the Grateful Dead’s touring career, more than half of the songs were important parts of their live repertoire. Although “Loose Lucy” had a 15 year hiatus 1975-1989. Phil’s two songs on the album are often played live these days when Phil performs with his rotating cast of Friends, and these songs, “Pride Of Cucamonga” and “Unbroken Chain” are elicit ecstatic responses. These would be the final two Phil-sung songs on a Grateful Dead studio album.
Produced for release by Grateful Dead Legacy Manager and Audio Archivist, David Lemieux, the deluxe edition also includes demos of “China Doll” and “Wave That Flag” – the song that became “U.S. Blues” – as well as a previously unreleased live performance of the Grateful Dead at University of Nevada-Reno on 5/12/1974.
As the band filled an outdoor football stadium with epic highs like a huge “China Cat Sunflower”, “I Know You Rider,” “Mars Hotel” cuts including “U.S. Blues” and classics such as “Brown-Eyed Women,” “Tennessee Jed,” “Mississippi Half-Step,” “Truckin’” and “Sugar Magnolia,” a massive wind storm was no match for the Wall of Sound.
Designed to improve the listening and performance experience at what were becoming larger gigs and longer, more dynamic and varied sets, the Wall of Sound required 21 stage hands, and underlined the resounding effect the Grateful Dead were having on American audiences and culture at the time, even as the entire operation remained homespun and humble.
In addition to the 50th Anniversary Deluxe Edition, “From The Mars Hotel Remaster) will be released on June 21st as a single 180-gram black vinyl LP, limited edition Neon Pink vinyl, limited edition “Ugly Rumors” custom vinyl exclusive to Dead.net, and a specially-designed picture disc created in partnership with zoetrope pioneer Drew Tetz. When viewed with a camera or strobe, the zoetrope LP will appear to animate, and can be pre-ordered along with the rest of “From The Mars Hotel (50th Anniversary Remaster”) the Dead’s nearly complete, previously unreleased show from May 12th, 1974, at the University of Nevada in Reno, playing an outdoor football stadium during a huge wind storm.
The Fat Angel Sings 