Grateful Dead Summer Magic 1985

20CD Boxed Set Celebrates The Band's Storied 20th Anniversary Tour With Seven Previously Unreleased 1985 Concerts Arriving September 18 From Dead.net

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Merriweather 6/30/85 Will Be Available The Same Day From Rhino On 3CDs And 4 LPs

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"Sugar Magnolia (Live at Merriweather Post Pavilion, Columbia, MD 6/30/85)" Available Digitally Today

LISTEN HERE

LOS ANGELES – Members of the Grateful Dead begrudgingly acknowledged the band's 20th anniversary during a rare press conference at the Greek Theatre on June 14, 1985. Backstage, the media focused on the past, even as the band was selling out shows across the country. Onstage, the band delivered a powerful reminder that it was no nostalgia act, opening a high-octane anniversary tour full of spellbinding moments that fans still talk about more than 40 years later.

Arriving September 18, Summer Magic 1985 is a new 20CD boxed set featuring seven previously unreleased concerts from the "Twenty Years So Far" Tour. Limited to 10,000 individually numbered copies, the collection will be available exclusively from Dead.net. Pre-Order HERE. ALAC and High Res FLAC downloads will be released the same day. 

The set includes all three official Grateful Dead 20th anniversary shows at the Greek (6/14-6/16/85); Saratoga Performing Arts Center (6/27/85); Hershey Park Stadium (6/28/85); and Merriweather 6/30/85. All the performances were recorded by the band’s longtime sound engineer Dan Healy and mastered by GRAMMY® Award-winning engineer David Glasser at Airshow Mastering.

Celebrating the magical and spiritual fusion of communal energy, musical improvisation, and psychedelic style, this high concept boxed set visually captures the transformative "concert alchemy" of the Grateful Dead's summer 1985 tour. Multidisciplinary artist Marcos Alvarado, known for incorporating alchemical symbolism in his surreal figurative drawings, guides us through an allegorical journey, introducing an array of new characters through striking original artwork that draws inspiration from classical illuminations. The 96-page book features new essays by Nicholas G. Meriwether and David Lemieux, photos and more original artwork from Alvarado. Clever design features in this boxed set and its bonus items add a sense of continued transformation and discovery that honors the Grateful Dead's enduring legacy.

Grateful Dead Legacy Manager and Archivist Dave Lemieux became a fan of the 1985 summer tour as a teenager after trading for a copy of the second set from June 15 at the Greek. "I had a few tapes by this time from 1983 and 1984, but this 1985 Grateful Dead was something entirely different, a freshness that sounded like a band now celebrating 20 years (!), but still just getting started. From that moment on, I was on a mission to collect as much 1985 Dead as possible."

Also on September 18, Rhino will release 3CD and 4LP versions of the legendary Merriweather 6/30/85 concert from the set. Pre-Order HERE.

Lemieux says the show's biggest moment is a version of "Shakedown Street" that's "widely considered one of the greatest single performances of any song by the Grateful Dead, up there with the 'Dew' from Europe '72, 'Viola Lee Blues' from Harpur College, and 'Eyes Of The World' from 3/29/90. Yes, it's that good."

The anniversary tour began in Berkeley, CA at the Greek Theatre (June 14-16, 1985), one of the band's favorite venues since its debut there on October 1, 1967, a day before the police famously raided their home at 710 Ashbury Street. Opening night, the band surprised with the debut of Eric Clapton's "Keep On Growing" with Phil Lesh and Brent Mydland sharing vocals. The following night they opened with "Touch Of Grey," a song whose success two years later would make it impossible for the band to return to the Greek after 1989. They saved a special bust-out for the final night, playing "Cryptical Envelopment" for the first time in 13 years. Jerry Garcia's eerie vocals and funhouse guitar once again provided a bookend around Bob Weir's thundering anthem, "The Other One." 

Moving East to Saratoga Springs, NY and the Saratoga Performing Arts Center (June 27, 1985), the band faced a dangerously over-capacity crowd where fans hanging from the balcony forced an early-show warning from the stage. As cooler heads prevailed, the crowd was rewarded with a rare first-set appearance of "Crazy Fingers" that tapered gently into the jam from "Supplication," Weir's 1976 gem with Kingfish. The second set closed with "Turn On Your Lovelight," originally a showcase for Ron "Pigpen" McKernan, who urged members of Mother McCree's Uptown Jug Champions to go electric in 1965 and was a member of the Grateful Dead until his death in 1973.

The momentum carried into Hershey, PA and Hershey Park Stadium (June 28, 1985) for a challenging, rain-soaked performance where Bill Kreutzmann and Mickey Hart drove a powerful and sweeping "Terrapin Station" to its crashing climax before launching into "Drums" and "Space." Sound engineer Dan Healy joined in, using new electronic gear to manipulate the PA and shape a three-dimensional soundscape in the venue. A short drive away, the band took over Merriweather Post Pavilion (June 30–July 1, 1985), an outdoor amphitheater in Columbia, MD originally designed by Frank Gehry for the National Symphony Orchestra. After a showstopping "Shakedown Street" on the first night, the band closed the second night with a double encore, pairing the Rolling Stones' "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction" and Bob Dylan's "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue"—the perfect grace note for a show that many raved was the best of the tour.

Lemieux adds, "Certain things are indicative of the Grateful Dead being 'on,' and a rare double encore always means they're having a blast and don't want the show to end. This boxed set's seven gigs feature THREE double encores, and it's those 'little things' that reveal a band still having more fun than a frog in a glass of milk."

In the Summer Magic 1985 liner notes, Nicholas G. Meriwether (Executive Director, Grateful Dead Studies Association) writes: "The seven shows this box presents... offer a snapshot of the artistic process that was the Grateful Dead, making a powerful statement of the band's project as they marked their 20th anniversary. ...this box not only lets us revisit what these shows sounded like at a peak of the band's PA prowess, it lets us finally hear what these shows meant, the alchemy of time and memory finally revealing the gold of those concerts."

Ahead of the full set, "Sugar Magnolia (Live at Merriweather Post Pavilion, Columbia, MD 6/30/85)" is available digitally today. Listen Now.

Merriweather Post Pavilion, Columbia, MD (6/30/85)

4LP Track Listing

Side A

“Mississippi Half-Step Uptown Toodeloo”>

“C.C. Rider”>

“Brown-Eyed Women”

Side B

“Mama Tried”>

“Mexicali Blues”

“Keep On Growing”

Side C

“Big Railroad Blues”

“Looks Like Rain”>

“Don't Ease Me In”

Side D

“Shakedown Street”>

“Samson And Delilah”

Side E

“Gimme Some Lovin'”>

“He's Gone”>

“Cryptical Envelopment”

Side F

“Drums”

“Space”>

Side G

“The Other One”>

“Stella Blue”>

Side H

“Around And Around”

“Sugar Magnolia”

“U.S. Blues”

For more information, please contact teamrhino@shorefire.com at Shore Fire Media,

718-522-7171