Road
Trips Vol. 1 No. 4: From Egypt With Love (October '78)
From the Grateful Dead website
Road Trips Vol. 1 Number 4
Since we’ve all been in deep Egypt Mode the last couple of months
preparing the new Rhino release Rocking the Cradle: Grateful Dead,
Egypt ’78 (which you can learn more about and order here), we
thought it would be cool for the new Road Trips (that’s Vol. 1,
No. 4 for those of you keeping score at home) to be a companion to
that release, compiled from the band’s famous October 1978 “From
Egypt With Love” shows at Winterland in San Francisco, just a
month after their return from the desert.
Here’s the deal: The group was feeling totally
jazzed when they got back from Egypt, and Bill Graham, who had been
on the trip abroad as a spectator, rather than as promoter, wanted
to give the band’s hometown fans a taste of the Egypt experience
by hosting a series of five shows at Winterland that would include a
slide show depicting the group’s amazing adventures in Cairo and
beyond. As it turned out, the Dead Heads got more than that, too: At
two of the concerts, their good friend Hamza El Din (a Nubian
musician living in the Bay Area) reprised the Egyptian song he’d
sung at the Sound & Light Theater in Gizah—called “Ollin
Arageed”—which had been a jumping–off point for some
fascinating cross-cultural explorations between the Dead and a host
of native singers and percussionists. It proved to be magical at
Winterland, too, as the crowd joined in clapping the song’s
unusual and hypnotic beat. War’s exceptional harmonica player, Lee
Oskar, dropped by the last two nights of the run, and the final
concert brought a surprise appearance by ex-Quicksilver guitarist
John Cipollina.
This new Road Trips was culled from the the last
two concerts of the series, October 21 and 22, 1978. There’s
plenty to dig here, including a really dynamic extended take on the
aforementioned “Ollin Arageed” which eventually lands at “Deal”
(of all songs!); a stunning sequence featuring "Got My Mojo
Working">"The Other One">"Stella
Blue"; a generous and free-flowing “Scarlet Begonias” >
“Fire on the Mountain”; and a “Not Fade Away” > “Goin’
Down the Road” combo that’s sparked by the presence of Mr.
Cipollina and his vampire bat Gibson SG, and which goes into some
very interesting jamming spaces between songs.
The limited edition Bonus CD contains a number of
other hot numbers from those shows, from a charged
"Bertha">"Good Lovin'" to a typically hot
take on the "Estimated Prophet">"He's Gone"
sequence, as well as one of only three live versions of "If I
Had The World To Give" ever performed by the Grateful Dead.
Clearly, this band was inspired! As always, too, the discs have been
mastered in HDCD.
by Barry Small
Grade N/A
Order:
GDM
