The Deadcast’s overstuffed season finale unpacks Blues For Allah’s oft-misunderstood title track, the unlikely story of its album art, & the remarkable coalition that manifested the Dead’s September 1975 Golden Gate Park show, officially the New Age Bio-Centennial Unity Fair.

Guests: David Lemieux, Ron Rakow, Al Teller, Ned Lagin, Steve Brown, Bill McCarthy, Larry Weissman, Gary Lambert, Ed Perlstein, Joan Miller, Geoff Gould, Dan Hanklein, Raymond Foye, Nicholas Meriwether, Shaugn O’Donnell, Chadwick Jenkins, Keith Eaton

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The Deadcast explores Bobby Weir’s guitar étude, “Sage and Spirit,” speaking with one of the song’s namesakes, Sage Scully, before taking an extended trip to legendary Dead show at the Great American Music Hall in August 1975, where the song received its only full live performance.

Guests: David Lemieux, Donna Jean Godchaux MacKay, Sage Scully, Ron Rakow, Al Teller, Steve Brown, Roger Lewis, Lee Brenkman, Steve Schuster, Gary Lambert, Deb Trist, Ed Perlstein, Danno Henklein, Joan Miller, Steve Silberman, Michael Parrish, Keith Eaton, Shaugn O’Donnell, Benny Lander

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We explore how the dreamy delicacy of Crazy Fingers came about at a time of great tumult in Grateful Dead history, with visits from new record company boss Al Teller of United Artists and Seastones composer Ned Lagin, plus a stop at Winterland for the Bob Fried Memorial Boogie.

Guests: David Lemieux, Al Teller, Ron Rakow, Ned Lagin, Gary Lambert, Michael Parrish, Danno Henklein, Ed Perlstein, Geoff Gould, Jay Kerley, Blair Jackson, Shaugn O’Donnell, Chadwick Jenkins, Christopher Coffman, Nicholas Meriwether

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Bobby Weir & John Perry Barlow’s classic “The Music Never Stopped” came into being when the music was briefly in danger of stopping, the song transforming from live jam to final form as the Dead struggled to solve the financial difficulties that came with a retirement from the road.

Guests: David Lemieux, Ron Rakow, Steven Schuster, Steve Silberman, Sean Howe, Shaugn O’Donnell, Chadwick Jenkins, Christopher Coffman, Graeme Boone, Eric Lindquist, Benny Lander

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The Deadcast unpacks the two-part extra-heady “King Solomon’s Marbles”/’Stronger Than Dirt or Milkin’ the Turkey,” using the instrumental to get into the Dead’s 1975 dalliances with holography, as well as Phil Lesh’s other unfinished pieces from Blues For Allah.

Guests: David Lemieux, Ned Lagin, Ron Rakow, Eugene Dolgoff, Michael Parrish, Ed Perlstein, Keith Eaton, Nicholas G. Meriwether, Shaugn O’Donnell, Chadwick Jenkins

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The Deadcast examines how Franklin’s Tower bucked every trend on Blues For Allah to become one of the Dead’s all-time classics, including a tape of its studio creation, a look into the multi-tracks, & a rare line-by-line breakdown by lyricist Robert Hunter himself.

Guests: David Lemieux, Geoff Gould, Jürgen Fauth, Shaugn O’Donnell, Chadwick Jenkins, Will Backstrom, Max Ritchie, Hannah Grabbenstein

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The Deadcast uses Blues For Allah’s complicated instrumental Slipknot! to explore the musical and creative ambiguity the Grateful Dead pursued in early 1975, when there both was and wasn’t a Grateful Dead, & their public reemergence at Bill Graham’s S.N.A.C.K. benefit that March.

Guests: David Lemieux, Ned Lagin, Ron Rakow, Steve Brown, Gary Lambert, Joan Miller, Jay Kerley, Chadwick Jenkins, Shaugn O’Donnell, Melvin Backstrom

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The Grateful Deadcast points itself towards 1975 to begin a song-by-song celebration of Blues For Allah’s 50th anniversary, loaded with raw session tapes, early lyric drafts, & the story of how the Dead built a new studio, musical language, batch of songs, & LP from the ground up.

Guests: David Lemieux, Donna Jean Godchaux-MacKay, Ron Rakow, Stephen Barncard, Ned Lagin, Steve Brown, Gary Lambert, Keith Eaton, Shaugn O’Donnell, Chadwick Jenkins, Matt Campbell

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