Band Grateful Dead
Venue Fillmore East
Location New York, NY
Date 5/15/70a - Friday posters tickets, passes & laminates
One [58:21:00] ; Intro [0:58] ; Don't Ease Me In [2:52] ; [0:58] ; I Know You Rider [7:56] ; [1:06] ; The Rub [3:06] ; [3:08] ; Friend Of The Devil [3:16] ; [0:32] ; Long Black Limousine [4:30] ; [0:53] ; Candyman [5:23] ; [1:41] ; Cumberland Blues [4:27] ; [0:22] ; New Speedway Boogie [6:00] ; [0:46] ; Cold Jordan [2:30] ; [0:51]
Two [45:04:00] ; Intro [1:23] ; Six Days On The Road [3:33] ; [0:44] ; Watcha Gonna Do [4:09] ; [0:33] ; I Don't Know You [3:50] ; [0:33] ; Henry [3:25] ; [0:31] ; Portland Woman [4:30] ; [0:20] ; Fair Chance To Know [4:11] ; [0:45] ; Last Lonely Eagle [2:01#] % Mama Tried [3:00] ; [0:09] ; Sawmill [3:22] ; [0:39] ; Me And My Uncle [3:35] ; [1:25] ; Connection [5:06] ; [0:10] %
Three [59:04:00] ; Intro [0:06] ; Casey Jones [4:20] ; [1:30] ; Easy Wind [7:52] ; Attics Of My Life [5:13] ; [1:22] ; Saint Stephen [5:49] > Cryptical Envelopment [1:56] > Drums [6:54] > The Other One [11:09] > Cryptical Envelopment [4:22] > Cosmic Charlie [7:31]
Encore Tuning [2:28] ; New Minglewood Blues [3:20] ; [0:54]
Comments This is the Early Show. Early Show total time 2:49:01 +. On the structure of mid-70 Dead shows see Comments under 05/02/70b. SET 1 is the Early Show acoustic Dead set. Bill Graham Intro. On Cumberland and New Speedway David Nelson joins in on acoustic guitar while Jerry shifts to electric. On Cold Jordan Nelson switches to mandolin. Marmaduke adds harmony vocals to the last three tunes. Pigpen plays organ on New Speedway. SET 2 is the Early Show NRPS set with Garcia, pedal steel. Everything after the Last Lonely Eagle fragment is missing on the surreptitious master of this show. Evidently it has been supplemented from another master on the newly circulating Cds, which now add different versions of the tunes following Eagle. One wonders if this other master could also complete the Eagle, which usually features a big pedal steel solo. SET 3 is electric Dead. Before Saint Stephen Pigpen says "Alright you people, you know who you are."

Enterprising Fillmore East stagecrew patched a reel-to-reel machine underneath the stage into the PA feed and saved most of this show for us and eternity. They were busy setting up for the Early Show electric Dead set and blew their flip during the Early Show NRPS set, losing the second half of that set as a result, but the rest of this enormous evening's proceedings are recorded in their entirety. The master has only the left channel through the middle of Candyman (there are also splitter-generated 2-channel mono copies circulating). Around 4 hours of this show were broadcast by KPFA-FM Berkeley in 1971, further speeding the propagation of this tape (some early FM copies are dated "6/21/71;" this may be the date of the broadcast). For many years 5/15/70 was THE representative 1970 Dead tape -- Harpur College 5/2/70 and Winterland Arena 10/4/70 its only rivals for wide circulation. Recently a version of the NRPS set for this Early Show has come into circulation, as noted above, apparently supplemented by a second SBD master, presumably from the vault.
Recordings 360 SB (total for 05/15/70a&b)
Master recording source(s): 10inch Master Reels@7.5ips 1/2trk
Download Sources
Contributors Jim Powell Alan Mande
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