This is best Midnight Hour I have ever heard. The scale work is 12 to 14 frets of movement like a master jazz man with all balzy blues, and high speed bluegrass scales one song. To this day I new I never would witness Jerry at his finest hour which is this recording. It is a classy design.I first heard this recording in 73 (releases by Pride Records in 72). Other than that the album sounds fine, is well centered and has, again, that clever GD interpretation of the Arista Records logo of the period. It was nothing terrible mind you but I was conscious that the vinyl was there (as opposed to some recordings in which the noise floor all but disappears,which is the ideal). Curiously this pressing had a fair amount of surface noise audible. As we’ve noticed before, some colored vinyl can - for lack of a better word - color the sound of a recording. There may be any number of reasons for this including (just guessing here) possible decisions to EQ it in the physical disc mastering stage and perhaps even the effect of the colored vinyl. It sounds like Terrapin only the high end seems a bit crisper. Putting on the new Vinyl Me Please version the first thing I noticed was that the recording sounded quite a bit brighter. All sounded good, and cut from similar cloth, if you will. Then just for yucks I played the 192 kHz, 24 bit version on Tidal and the 96 kHz, 24-bit version on Qobuz. In preparing for listening to this new version, I first played my white label promo DJ copy of the album, which is about as close to the original vinyl presentation as one can get this side of hearing a test pressing. It is easily their last great studio release with a number of instant classics which remained in the Dead’s live shows for the rest of their careers including “Estimated Prophet,” “Samson & Delilah” and portions of the side-long title epic. To me it sounded like a natural evolution of the band.
Personally, I love this album and never understood why some were taken aback by it. Tight and well produced by Keith Olsen (still fresh from his success producing Fleetwood Mac’s eponymously titled 1975 number one hit), the new production values threw some, notably the epic title track with orchestral strings arranged by no less than Paul Buckmaster (responsible for many of Elton John’s classic album arrangements).
This 1977 release shocked some older Dead Heads but won new fans as the album garnered quite a bit of airplay (at least in markets like New York where The Grateful Dead were enormously popular). Construction wise, it employs a slight gloss flat paper stock and thick cardboard (the originals are decidedly non gloss, some even a bit textured). The cover art is quite accurate to the first pressings without the track-listing on the back cover. Phil Lesh’s bass percolates like a bee bounding from flower to flower on “Eyes Of The World.” The acoustic guitar at the start of “Weather Report Suite” is gorgeous! I really like how the cymbals sound on “Here Come Sunshine,” with a nice sense of decay that is longer and more shimmery than the original pressing. The translucent coke-bottle green vinyl is dead quiet and well centered and that may be adding to the crispness of the sound (as I’ve written about in the recent past, click here). First off, it sounds very much like my original vinyl pressings, albeit a bit brighter but not offensively so (as might happen with poor digital mastering, for example). My favorite Grateful Dead album, Wake Of The Flood may also be my favorite in the Vinyl Me Please boxed set, for numerous reasons.
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