How common was it for the Grateful Dead to gig songs on a new album before that album came out? Perhaps I can’t get the 1980s out of my mind because they played some of the In The Dark tracks for years before making that record.

I guess when they were making studio albums regularly letting the cat out of the bag early was more frowned upon? By late 1980 Feel Like A Stranger was still a brand new song. They’d only played it a couple of dozen times live by the show under discussion today. Go To Heaven was released on 4/28/80 and they only played it twice in the weeks before that show. This version jumped out at me because it was a bit longer than most of the others in my collection, which made me want to hear it and I’m glad I did. A solid take all around in one man’s opinion.

This is a set opener and the band warms up a bit before launching into the song. Bobby’s percussive chords during the warm up sound really good if you ask me. Within the first couple of minutes of the song I find myself drawn to Brent’s playing here. His standard parts sound great, and his improvisation is very nuanced, but that’s what makes it so great. In the third minute is seems like Jerry is going to tear into a solo but instead he belt outs the chorus and the three vocalists work their way through the chorus a few times, laying their vocal parts and taking some risks as well. It’s seems pretty clear to me that this wasn’t planned. The jam follows. Brent seems to be on some sort of clavinet or at least a clavinet type of patch on his keyboard. Jerry sounds like he’s got his envelope filter switched on and drops some fittingly funky lines. Brent moves to a more typical keys sound for him in is period and it sounds like a conversation between a couple of Star Wars droids. I mean that as a compliment because I find the jam to be very interesting here. There’s a lot going on and so a lot to pay attention to. This is definitely a track that benefits from multiple listens. Around 9:15 Jerry plays a tasty ascending lick that leads into a relaxed segment with some keyboard flutters from Brent. Finally, just past the 10 minute mark you can hear the band go into the outro, the tell-tale sign is the minor chord they sneak in there, before bringing this bad boy home.

Complete Setlist 9/3/80

Previous Feel Like A Stranger DFAY Selections

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