The Fat Angel Sings

“P.N.E. Garden Auditorium, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada 7/29/66 marks Grateful Dead’s debut performance outside of the United States. Their complete July 29th, 1966 performance is being released in a limited edition, 2-LP, 180 gram vinyl-set, with four bonus tracks from the ensuing 7/30 performance at the same venue.”

In an interview, Grateful Dead archivist David Lemieux said that he had wanted to release this concert as an album, but it was too short for the Dave’s Picks series. He said that since the concert was an early one, from before the time of CDs, that made it seem like a good choice for an LP. He added, “As a vinyl release it works extremely well where you get three or four songs per side and they’re all really short songs – anywhere from three to five minutes.”

This is a great recording. Its interesting to see how they mixed these older sets. This was (obviously) a huge growth period and they were really pushing the envelope as for as what they could do electronically. Interesting how they distribute the different tracks to right and left speakers

The Dead go through much of their standard repetoire for this time but do it very well. Bob may be low in the mix, but the other guys, especially Pigpen and Jerry are tearing it up. Pig’s early organ playing is a delight, he was really good and with Jerry is the main instrumental voice in the band. The real surprise here though are two songs I’m not that familiar with: “You Don’t Have To Ask” and “Cardboard Cowboy”. Both are excellently played examples of mid sixties psychedelic rock. I think “Cardboard Cowboy” may have been played at one other show. The crowd are either lame or not miked as they’re barely audible and it sounds like there may be 10 people in attendance. For example the band do a great ripping version of “You Don’t Have To Ask” that stops on a dime after a great Jerry solo and there’s… silence,

Original cover art by Canadian poster artist, Bob Masse. The iconic 60’s poster artist has designed original works for artists such as Jefferson Airplane, Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, Doors, David Bowie, Fleetwood Mac, Steve Miller Band, No Doubt, Fiona Apple & Smashing Pumpkins to name a few. The show was mastered from the original audio recordings by GRAMMY winning sound engineer Jeffrey Norman at Mockingbird Mastering in Petaluma, CA. This audio was first made available in January, 2016 as the bonus disc in the 2-CD The Grateful Dead (50th Anniversary Deluxe Edition) as it features most of the tracks that would make their way on to the first official Grateful Dead album. It was previously unreleased before this year and is only available as a stand-alone show in this limited edition vinyl set.