Massive box due Sept 23rd
Grateful Dead are capturing six concerts from their home away home, Madison Square Garden in New York City, in a new 17 CD box set. In And Out Of The Garden: Madison Square Garden ’81, ’82, ’83 celebrates the band’s rich history at “the world’s most famous arena,” introducing six previously unreleased shows recorded at MSG between 1981 and 1983. The collection will be released on September 23rd exclusively through dead.net. Production of the set is limited to 12,500 individually numbered copies. Full audio will also be available in its entirety as a digital download exclusively at Dead.net in Apple Lossless and FLAC 192/24.
Madison Square Garden was a reliable sanctuary where the band would ultimately play 52 shows, a record at the time. The venue’s fine acoustics, combined with the fans’ unbridled energy, consistently brought out the best in the Dead. At the band’s 2015 induction ceremony into Madison Square Garden’s Walk Of Fame, Bobby Weir said, “This place was both horrifying and titillating with an audience that was discerning but ravenous. We had to rise to the occasion every time.”
The boxed set includes six unreleased concerts recorded at Madison Square Garden on March 9 and 10, 1981; September 20 and 21, 1982; and October 11 and 12, 1983. The set features newly restored and speed-corrected audio by Plangent Processes, was mastered by Jeffrey Norman and produced for release by Grateful Dead archivist and legacy manager David Lemieux.
On the same day, the March 9, 1981 show from the boxed set will be released separately at all regular retail outlets. Madison Square Garden, New York, NY (3/9/81) will be available as a 3 CD set and digitally.
A previously unreleased performance of “Feel Like A Stranger” from the March 9, 1981, MSG show is now available on all digital download and streaming services.
In And Out Of The Garden (aptly named after the line in “St. Stephen,” which the band played live for the first time in four years at the October 11, 1983, MSG show) offers a front-row seat to the Dead in the early 1980s, an overlooked and underestimated era of rebirth for the band. At the time of the recordings, the group consisted of singers-guitarists Jerry Garcia and Bobby Weir, bassist Phil Lesh, drummers Bill Kreutzmann and Mickey Hart, and, on keyboards and vocals, Brent Mydland.
Mydland’s vocal power and colorful keyboard palette energized the band, invigorating older material like “The Wheel,” “Truckin’,” and “Eyes of The World.” He also gave the band more musical flexibility, which encouraged them to dust off rarely aired treasures like “Dupree’s Diamond Blues” and “Crazy Fingers.”
The new box touches on the three-year period after 1980’s Go To Heaven was released, a time when the Dead were constantly on the road, playing more than 200 dates. While they were in no rush to return to the studio during this time, they continued to write new music. In 1982 and ’83, the band performed most of the songs that would appear on 1987’s In The Dark, a Top 10 2x Platinum album that stands as the group’s biggest commercial success. The new collection includes performances of four songs from that album – “Touch Of Grey,” “Hell In A Bucket,” “Throwing Stones,” and “West L.A. Fadeaway” – plus the B-side, “My Brother Esau.”
The set comes in a custom box featuring new artwork by Dave Van Patten celebrating the band’s eclectic fanbase, with a cavalcade of illustrated Dead Heads. The collection also includes detailed liner notes by award-winning music journalist David Fricke, who explores the band’s connection to the Big Apple.
The band’s official podcast, The Good Ol’ Grateful Deadcast, will also be deep-diving into the MSG shows and is currently collecting stories from concertgoers at stories.dead.net.
