Grateful Dead: Shakedown Street (indie exclusive, 2024 reissue, blue vinyl) [RHINO]

Why you'll love it

This 2024 indie exclusive reissue comes on limited edition blue vinyl. The title track, "Fire on the Mountain" and "Stagger Lee" all became staples of the Dead's live shows.

This edition

• Indie exclusive
• Blue vinyl
• Limited edition
• Stereo mix

About the album

Toward the end of their mid-70s hiatus, the Grateful Dead rented a warehouse on Front Street in San Rafael, and Jerry Garcia lobbied to install recording gear and make the next album right there. For a producer they wanted a fellow musician, so they hired Little Feat's Lowell George, with John Kahn as associate producer.

Mickey Hart had a bigger hand than ever, nudging Garcia and Robert Hunter's title track toward his love of the Bee Gees and disco, and his reggae-flavoured "Fire on the Mountain" grew into one of the band's great jamming vehicles. Bob Weir brings the rave-up "I Need a Miracle" with Matthew Kelly on harmonica, plus fresh arrangements of "Good Lovin'" and "All New Minglewood Blues," and "Stagger Lee" is a Garcia and Hunter original built on the old folk tale.

It was the last album with Keith and Donna Jean Godchaux, and Donna's "From the Heart of Me" makes a lovely farewell. Hunter said he and Garcia wrote the torch song "If I Had the World to Give" on a lark, after someone noted they mostly wrote songs about guys for guys; consider the matter settled.

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Tracklist

Listen

On Arista / Rhino (cat# RCV1 526253), a reissue of the 1978 album.