The Good Old Grateful Dead Blog

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By Jeremy D. Goodwin in the Boston Globe.

"A tribe of like-minded believers, with nomadic tendencies, who assimilate into the broader culture but then congregate together for ceremonies seeking spiritual fulfillment - it’s a description that might fit, broadly speaking, for the Jewish community.

Or the community of Deadheads, those most faithful fans of the granddaddy of jambands, the Grateful Dead.

A link has long been posited between the worlds of Judaism and of the band. One professor presented an academic paper on the perceived connections at a 2007 symposium on the Dead held at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst.

Now it’s the topic of a weekend event commencing tonight at the Isabella Freedman Jewish Retreat Center in Falls Village, Conn. Playfully called “Blues for Challah’’ (a pun on the 1975 Dead album “Blues for Allah’’), the confab will feature Grateful Dead-inspired meditation and prayer, an examination of Jewish themes in Dead lyrics, and guest rabbis who will muse on their experiences straddling both worlds. Organizers are expecting 50 or more attendees, mostly (if not exclusively) Jewish, who will bunk down at the compound and make connections between their religious and musical lives in the woodsy setting of the Connecticut Berkshires.

Is there really a connection here?"

Full piece on BostonGlobe.com

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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

The Pizza Tapes - Extra Large Edition
Classic Grisman/Garcia recordings released in expanded format for download.

Long before Napster, bit torrent, and free Wilco albums, David Grisman’s Acoustic Disc label had an interesting window on the strange intersection of stolen music and record promotion.

It began with an informal, once-in-a lifetime jam session that brought guitar icons Jerry Garcia and Tony Rice together with their mandolin-picking host David Grisman at Dawg Studios on two successive evenings in February 1993. But from there the tapes lingered as Rice and Grisman returned to recording the now classic Acoustic Disc project, Tone Poems, and Garcia got back to the Grateful Dead’s hectic touring schedule. It’s hard to say what might have happened next, with the three collaborator’s entrenched in recording and touring behind other projects, if not for a pizza delivery driver with light fingers and good taste in music who, as the legend goes, pocketed Garcia’s copy of the rough mixes while making a delivery.

Almost immediately after the entire tape was mysteriously aired on WBAI in New York City, fans started to approach Garcia asking him to autograph their copies of the unreleased sessions and the Grateful Dead soon confiscated boxes of bootleg CDs at concerts. Perhaps most infuriating to Grisman was the fact that the bootleg contained rough mixes, purloined from his studio archives, that didn't realize the full potential of the tracks. After several years, the “official” Pizza Tapes CD was finally released in 2000 and soon became an acoustic classic and one of Acoustic Disc's most popular releases.

Now Acoustic Oasis, Grisman’s download based label, has released the Extra Large 170-minute edition of this legendary session, including 16 previously unissued alternate takes in addition to the original master takes in their original sequence. This unique collection also features more of the personal repartee, which made the original release so endearing and insightful - the anatomy of this very special jam.

Founded in 2010, www.acousticoasis.com is a download based record label and distributor focused on Grisman’s various collaborations, including other Grisman Garcia releases and a selection of hand picked guest artists.

For review copies, images, and/or additional information, please contact: XXXX.XXXXXX.XXXXXX@gmail.com