Praise Bob!

Grateful Dead - It's All Over Now

OK, I wasn't planning to do this, but things happened so I did.

The first thing that happened was that Bob Weir from the Grateful Dead passed away from lung issues at 78.

The second thing that happened was that I said to myself, well I am not a Deadhead -- full disclosure: I only marginally like a very small minority of their output -- but those people, given the timbre of the goings on in the world in general right now, must be really hurting and in grief, now that the last of the main guys holding the guitars onstage have gone.

The third thing that happened was that a livestream of a tribute concert then came over my YouTube feed from Chicago, and the poor guy singing the songs was essentially weeping between tunes, confirming what I imagined was happening when the news broke a few days previous.

Then the fourth thing happened -- it's always the fourth thing, ain't it? -- and I somehow came across an online article about how, 48 years ago at the start of 1978, The Dead performed some concerts at which Jerry Garcia's laryngitis prevented him from singing, and that for these concerts Bob Weir had to come out and front the band center stage, handling all the lead vocals.

Well, I shouldn't say all the vocals. In another entropic coincidence, this was during the time they also had Donna Jean Godchaux singing with them. She also passed away recently, at the beginning of November.

So anyway, as we know there are nice soundboard captures of who knows how many GD shows -- are they the most recorded Rock band, if you include concerts that exist in highly listenable, semi professionally recorded form? -- and lo and behold! this entire January tour exists that way.

It seemed all the dominoes were set up for me to sort of do my thing, so my thing I sorta did.

The thing in this case was to make a representation of these five sets -- is that the fifth thing? -- where Bobby Weir took over, and mash them up into one long thing that might sound unified and all of a piece, even though all the recordings of each night were slightly different sonically.

What I ended up with was basically chronological, and contains all the tunes they played in the three nights Jerry was muted and left to go absolutely bonkers, letting his guitar do the talking.

As for the shows themselves, it could be drawn down to the old adage with bands, about how when the status quo is disturbed and someone leaves or is missing, there can be a tendency to amplify the collective focus and everybody plays better and hotter, trying to fill the hole in what they are used to hearing.

It's at these moments that groups often get to a next level, with the customary complacency they may have been feeling traipsing like sleepless gypsies all over the Earth on permatour startled awake by the need to not completely go off the rails in the absence of the familiar framework.

For a case in point, we have these 4 1/2 hours in this folder right here.

Grateful Dead

"Praise Bob!"

California tour

January 1978

01 Bob Weir intro story

02 Playin' In the Band

03 Estimated Prophet

04 Drums

05 The Other One

06 Truckin'

07 Johnny B. Goode

08 New Minglewood Blues

09 Cassidy

10 Sunrise

11 Passenger

12 Mexicali Blues

13 Me & My Uncle

14 Looks Like Rain

15 El Paso

16 Let It Grow

17 The Promised Land

18 Jack Straw

19 Dancing In the Streets

20 Samson & Delilah

21 Playing In the Band

22 Drums

23 Not Fade Away

24 Around & Around

25 Mama Tried

26 Big River

27 It's All Over Now

28 Lazy Lightning

29 Supplication

30 Good Lovin'

31 "Happy Birthday Uncle Bobo"

32 One More Saturday Night

33 Sugar Magnolia

Total time: 4:22:53

disc breaks go after Tracks 07, 18 & 24

Tracks 01-08: Swing Auditorium, San Bernardino CA 1.6.1978

Tracks 09-24: Golden Hall, San Diego CA 1.7.1978

Tracks 25-31 & 33: Golden Hall, San Diego CA 1.8.1978

Track 32: Civic Auditorium, Bakersfield CA 1.14.1978

Jerry Garcia - guitar (no vocals due to laryngitis)

Bob Weir - guitar & vocals

Keith Godchaux - keyboards

Phil Lesh - bass

Bill Kreutzmann - drums

Mickey Hart - drums

Donna Jean Godchaux - vocals

Tracks 01-08 are from 1st generation soundboard cassettes

Tracks 09-33 are from master reels of the master soundboard cassettes

assembled, denoised, edited & remastered for unity by EN, January 2026
1.79 GB FLAC/direct link

Just to explain myself, I used the one track from Bakersfield that dates from a week after the laryngitis wore off because that song was cut off when the tape ran out at the end of the 2nd set on the 7th, leaving but a fragment. So to get a full representation of all the tunes they played from the 2nd set of the 6th to the end of the 8th, I went that way.

If this violates sacred texts in some untoward and forbidden way, I apologize, but when I do what I do I try to do it with some kid that has never heard of the music before in mind. Hence the effort to supply complete songs and performances that, presented in some cohesive way, don't come off as a shoddy bootleg to the uninitiated.

I will be back in a few days to continue the winter, but I thought this would help make some folks feel better about the end of an iconic era in music, for which this passing -- and that of Donna Godchaux, too -- is but one piece of the Mortality Pie currently being served, as age claims so many standout musos and pivotal cultural avatars of our epoch.

And besides, there isn't a moment in this whole 251 minutes where the drummers fall into their classic Two Cats In A Clothes Dryer bag, which in turn enables Jerry to soar and Bob Weir -- R.I.P. -- to command the stage like never before. Leading, dare I say, to some of The GD's finest moments in a legendary and underrated January 1978 run.--J.

10.16.1947 - 1.10.2026
the music never stopped