September 20, 1973
In need of an upgrade
September 20, 1973
Date Listened
January 21, 2025. This one checks in at just over 2 hours, which makes it an easy show to finish.
Sources
This is where things become interesting.
Lossless Legs and the Internet Archive only list two sources for this show: SHNID 9845, which is a partial soundboard, and SHNID 11618, a composite recording of the whole show consisting of an audience tape of unknown lineage and the soundboard.
Nobody has uploaded the audience tape that forms the audience copy of SHNID 11618 — which, by the way, is in SHN format and appears to have been completed back in 2002. In other words, this is a show that has been pretty neglected.
The entry in The Deadhead’s Taping Compendium Volume I mentions only the audience recording, which apparently was not very widely circulated. Unfortunately, there is no genealogy listed for that particular version of the audience tape. The description makes me believe that the tape used there may have been a higher generation copy than what we have in SHNID 11618, since the reviewer mentions the taper messing around with microphones at the start — something not present in the version we have.
I doubt we’ll ever see a full soundboard release. I’m assuming that we would have already seen an official release of this if the full soundboard existed in the vault. However, I wonder if there isn’t a higher generation version of the audience tape hiding somewhere.
Reputation
This show basically has no reputation.
I’ve searched high and low, but have found practically no mentions of it on Reddit. I did find a brief discussion of September 1973 shows in this thread:
Part of the issue is that this is one of those shows featuring Martin Fierro and Joe Ellis on horns in the second set. I haven’t listened to them all yet, but I believe every show between September 11, 1973, and September 26, 1973 feature the brass section.
The mixed emotions for the brass section is obvious when you see how the show is treated on Heady Version:
It makes me wonder whether this is the ugly stepchild of 1973.
Discussion
How much of a show’s reputation is due to the recording, and how much is due to the actual performance?
The audience recording used for SHNID 11618 is actually not bad. It ranges from listenable during the first few tracks to quite clear and enjoyable in songs like the uptempo rendition of They Love Each Other. While I wouldn’t recommend this for somebody who has never been exposed to the wild world of handheld audience recordings, it absolutely is listenable, and actually sounds pretty warm in several places.
The performance itself does have a few issues. Loser, Row Jimmy Row, and Deal all drag on and feel lethargic. However, the China Cat Sunflower > I Know You Rider here is underrated (even with a tape glitch), Around And Around catches fire near the end, and Greatest Story Ever Told is high energy. If you came to this show after listening to a lot of 1994 or 1995 Dead, you’d feel like it was a breath of fresh air.
The inclusion of brass is a bit harder to judge, and seems to divide the community. As a jazz fan, I appreciate it, but I can see why others wouldn’t. To me, the segue from Truckin’ to Eyes of the World is simply sublime, and the horns add a lot of depth to the jam in Eyes. And Stella Blue sounds absolutely fantastic with the horns, even despite the scratchy audience recording.
I seriously wonder if this show would be rated higher if the recordings were better quality. The soundboard we have, which is a third generation recording, is a bit shaky in places. I’d actually be really interested in listening to a master recording or second generation copy of the audience tape, if that even still exists somewhere.
As it stands, though, this is a good show that is terribly underrated. It’s not going to make a list of the top 25 shows of 1973, but it also isn’t a show you should skip. And that includes the audience recording portions.