1971-04-27 | Grateful Dead

Playback	Listens	Hours
48h	104.8k	13.1k
7d	207.4k	26.2k
30d	1.3M	162.2k

Playback	Listens	Hours
48h	20.5k	3.1k
7d	37.7k	5.8k
30d	273k	41.7k

Playback	Listens	Hours
48h	130	8
7d	210	13
30d	2.2k	139

Playback	Listens	Hours
48h	21	3
7d	44	7
30d	632	92

Playback	Listens	Hours
48h	1	4m
7d	31	2
30d	273	24

Playback	Listens	Hours
48h	19	3
7d	67	11
30d	492	86

Playback	Listens	Hours
48h	10	2
7d	4	37m
30d	107	14

Playback	Listens	Hours
48h	4	18m
7d	4	30m
30d	183	22

Playback	Listens	Hours
48h	82	7
7d	184	16
30d	622	51

Playback	Listens	Hours
48h	83	7
7d	52	4
30d	1.1k	95

Playback	Listens	Hours
48h	52	6
7d	142	13
30d	700	74

Playback	Listens	Hours
48h	181	22
7d	148	21
30d	2.2k	281

Playback	Listens	Hours
48h	28	5
7d	97	17
30d	604	109

Playback	Listens	Hours
48h	215	20
7d	147	16
30d	1.7k	157

Playback	Listens	Hours
48h	17	3
7d	25	8
30d	398	84

Playback	Listens	Hours
48h	117	13
7d	189	25
30d	1.5k	181

Playback	Listens	Hours
48h	3	21m
7d	27	3
30d	228	25

Playback	Listens	Hours
48h	191	22
7d	294	38
30d	1.8k	226

Playback	Listens	Hours
48h	0	0m
7d	3	7m
30d	39	2

Playback	Listens	Hours
48h	15	2
7d	102	13
30d	894	111

Playback	Listens	Hours
48h	0	0m
7d	0	0m
30d	92	15

Playback	Listens	Hours
48h	7	50m
7d	56	9
30d	570	68

Playback	Listens	Hours
48h	7	1
7d	15	2
30d	108	14

Playback	Listens	Hours
48h	75	10
7d	87	12
30d	799	108

Playback	Listens	Hours
48h	235	30
7d	379	53
30d	1.8k	244

Playback	Listens	Hours
48h	6.6k	665
7d	13k	1.3k
30d	113.5k	11.7k

Playback	Listens	Hours
48h	90	6
7d	288	21
30d	2.3k	166

Playback	Listens	Hours
48h	33	3
7d	27	2
30d	400	40

Playback	Listens	Hours
48h	117	13
7d	337	39
30d	2.5k	278

Playback	Listens	Hours
48h	494	67
7d	935	120
30d	8.1k	1.1k

Playback	Listens	Hours
48h	0	0m
7d	0	0m
30d	20	5

Playback	Listens	Hours
48h	0	0m
7d	0	0m
30d	21	3

Playback	Listens	Hours
48h	60	10
7d	117	18
30d	1.1k	178

Playback	Listens	Hours
48h	16	2
7d	7	39m
30d	257	28

Playback	Listens	Hours
48h	39	4
7d	107	10
30d	1.2k	117

Playback	Listens	Hours
48h	87	9
7d	60	7
30d	1.3k	135

Playback	Listens	Hours
48h	52	3
7d	120	6
30d	983	57

Playback	Listens	Hours
48h	18	2
7d	73	9
30d	890	117

Playback	Listens	Hours
48h	19	1
7d	40	2
30d	805	56

Playback	Listens	Hours
48h	0	0m
7d	0	0m
30d	0	0m

Playback	Listens	Hours
48h	0	0m
7d	2	5m
30d	18	3

Playback	Listens	Hours
48h	0	0m
7d	0	0m
30d	63	6

Playback	Listens	Hours
48h	87	16
7d	256	50
30d	1.6k	336

Playback	Listens	Hours
48h	36	7
7d	62	11
30d	679	128

Playback	Listens	Hours
48h	71	6
7d	41	3
30d	1.4k	117

Playback	Listens	Hours
48h	11	2
7d	118	17
30d	1.7k	239

Playback	Listens	Hours
48h	322	45
7d	406	58
30d	4.8k	718

Playback	Listens	Hours
48h	400	54
7d	850	118
30d	6.8k	919

Playback	Listens	Hours
48h	0	0m
7d	0	0m
30d	42	10

Playback	Listens	Hours
48h	14	2
7d	72	8
30d	404	41

4:21:00

SBD

SHNID:

gd1971-04-27.sbd.gadsden-oleynick.5165.shnf

Taper Notes:

View NotesGlitches:
d1t09 0:36-1:08 - reel splice patched from same source as GD sets (Sailin')


-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*- The Story of the Tapes *-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-


"Who's the Dead freak?" With that innocuous question the story of these tapes 
begins. It was the summer of 1973, between attending 6/10/73 at R.F.K. 
Stadium and the Watkins Glen soundcheck. A friend of mine was listening to 
Live/Dead at his parent's house. A local cabinetmaker was working at the 
house and asked the question. He mentioned that he had a bunch of Dead tapes 
from the Fillmore East back at his house. For about a year, three 90 minute 
composites of the 4/71 shows had made their way around taping circles in the 
Princeton, N.J. area, but not the complete shows.
Within hours, Peter Kafer and I were at the cabinet shop with our reel to 
reel decks. What we found when we got there were 11 master reels of the 4/71 
shows, along with a host of other 1st and 2nd generation tapes from the 
Fillmore East of other bands, but also including 9/20/70. Also there were the 
1st generation reels from 11/23/70 at the Anderson Theater.

The 4/26-29/71 master reels were recorded by an individual named Buddy 
Miller, a local N. J. area musician. Buddy has become a very well respected, 
and recorded, Nashville guitarist. He is currently touring with Emmy Lou 
Harris, and can be heard on her current CD, Red Dirt Girl. Buddy was a friend 
of the cabinetmaker and, since he travelled a great deal, the tapes resided 
at the cabinet shop. Buddy was set up to record these shows by a friend who 
was a member of the Fillmore East soundcrew.

These shows were NOT recorded in the same manner as the February '70,the
May 15, '70 show, and  the material from the September 18, 19, and 20,
'70 shows. For the April '71 shows, a feed was run off the soundboard,
which was upstairs in a balcony box, stageleft. There is a good picture
of the soundbooth in Amalie Rothchild's book, Live at the Fillmore
East. The feed went from the soundboard into a broomcloset nearby,
literally a broomcloset. Buddy remembers a bucket and mop! The feed was
mixed down on two little Shure line mixers and recorded on a middle of the
line Sony deck onto BASF 90 minute reels at 7 1/2 ips. There was also a
little consumer Dolby B unit used, which is why these recordings seem so
'bright'.

We taped everything that summer of 1973 onto BASF reels. The following fall, 
Peter took his reels with him to California to begin his freshman year at 
U.C., Berkeley. From here he met various West coast tapers such as Bob Menke 
and Rob Bertrando, and the tapes began their circulation on the West coast. I 
took mine to Trinity College in Connecticut and began to circulate them out 
East.

Two years later, we wanted to retape the original masters, since we now had 
somewhat better decks and Maxell reel to reel tape had come on the market. We 
recopied everything. At this time, Buddy Miller simply gave us many of the 
Fillmore and Anderson Theater reels for essentially the cost of blank tape. 
His own musical interests had moved on. Of the 4/71 masters, we were given 6 
of the 11 reels and Buddy retained the other 5. I've had these reels in my 
possession since then.

Why has it taken so long for these reels to enter the digital world? 
Basically because I dropped out of the whole tape collecting scene about 1980 
due to family, career, etc. 

However, two of my old taping buddies, Bernie Tenenbaum and Chris Zingg, 
implored me to get my reels digitized before the analog reels degraded. 
Fortunately they had been safely stored in cardboard boxes, away from heat 
and light, in the back of a closet. I knew nothing of the digital world, 
didn't have a DAT or CD machine, had no idea what a tree or a 'B and P' was, 
and was absolutely amazed at how big the community of collectors had become. 
When I effectively left it at the end of the '70s, it was really only a 
handful of people.

This past Spring I reconnected with Buddy Miller for the first time in over 
20 years. He actually was able to dig up 2 of the 5 original BASF masters 
that he had hung onto, and mailed them up to me. With 8 of the original 11 
now in hand, and my complete set of Maxell 1st gen. copies  to fill in the 
blanks for the still missing 3 masters, I digitized the shows. The missing 
reels, #'s 4, 5, and 6,  run from 4/27 Hard to Handle through the pre-break 
portion of Bird Song on 4/28. For this I used the Maxells. Along the way, I 
was directed to Jim Wise for advice and assistance in digitizing and getting 
the shows out into the community.

I transferred the shows to CD incorporating the New Riders sets, instead of 
treating them discreetly. I really believe that the performances should be 
considered in their entirety. Back in the '70s when these shows got 
circulated, the Riders sets got ignored after awhile, which was a shame. They 
are a lot of fun to listen to, and a great warmup for the Dead show to follow.

The reels were played on a Revox A77 and digitized directly onto an Alesis 
Masterlink ML9600, sampling at 16 bit, 44.1 k. The Alesis was a wonderful 
solution for someone in my position, sitting on a bunch of reels. It removed 
the intermediate step of re-recording everything onto DAT. For those who are 
curious about the Masterlink, check it out at www.alesis.com.

One final bit of information that makes this whole 27 year story all the more 
fascinating is that these 2 track masters were used for the recent 16 track 
release, Ladies and Gentlemen....The Grateful Dead. While the 16 track 
recordings had Bill Graham's introduction and his tribute/tirade speech 
before In the Midnight Hour on 4/29, it was not nearly as strong and present 
as it was on the 2 tracks for some reason.Through an introduction facilitated 
by Jim Wise, Jeffrey Norman and David Lemieux asked if I could send out the 2 
tracks to be used on the release. With 5 days to go before the production CDs 
were due at the printing plant, I FedEx'ed them out and they were used for 
those two Bill Graham pieces. A wonderful chapter after all these years.

There has always been a question about 4/25/71. The BASF master labelled #1 
begins with Big Boss Man from 4/26. Back in 1973 we saw nothing of any taping 
of 4/25's show. I have asked Buddy about it and, after 29 years, he doesn't 
believe he recorded it, which would be consistent with 4/26 being #1. Just a 
guess: since the record company was there to record the run, our 
surrepticious broomcloset tapers just lay low the first night to make sure it 
was clear to try to tape. I know there has been a high-gen fragment of 4/25 
that has circulated for years that supposedly came from cassette masters that 
were also made of these shows. While anything is possible, if this were true 
one would have to wonder why no material from cassette has ever surfaced of 
any of the other 4 nights. The mystery remains, but one day I am gonna have 
to put this mystery to rest.

I hope everyone enjoys these new and improved versions of the 4/71 Fillmore 
East shows.  They have always been the heart of my Dead collection and many 
others as well, I suspect.

Bill Gadsden, 11/23/00


About three months ago I discovered that the New Riders' sets, just the 
Riders, from all five nights had been taped on a reel to reel, separately and 
distinctly from Buddy Miller's taping effort.  With this alternative source I 
can now supply the missing first half of the NRPS set from 4/27, and the 
complete sets from 4/25 and 4/26.

Bill Gadsden, 2/20/01