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Warren Oates's Collection

Grateful Dead   07/31/1973

Roosevelt Stadium, Jersey City, NJ
Source AudMC > DAT > CD > EAC > SHN > CD
Media cdr   3 discs
Notes AUD. Recorded by Jerry Moore with AKG 1000 mic > Sony 110 deck TDK C-120SD master cassettes. "Honey, Jer! Honey!"
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Tech Notes Audience Devotional Tree
Round 12 - October, 2002

GRATEFUL DEAD
Tuesday, July 31, 1973
Roosevelt Stadium - Jersey City, NJ
Audience Recording

AudMC > DAT > CD > EAC > SHN
Recorded by Jerry Moore with AKG 1000 mic > Sony 110 deck
TDK C-120SD master cassettes

EAC & SHN transfer by Noah Weiner (noahbw@attbi.com) - October, 2002
Soundforge was used for cross fades in various crowd passages on disc
one to remove just over two minutes of tape so to enable the show to
remain on three discs.

DISC ONE [79:14]
set one-a:
01 [07:34] crowd & Phil
02 [08:34] Ramble On Rose
03 [03:46] Me And My Uncle
04 [06:18] Don't Ease Me In
05 [04:31] Beat It On Down The Line
06 [06:15] Brown Eyed Women
07 [04:03] Mexicali Blues
08 [08:23] Loser
09 [05:10] Jack Straw
10 [07:25] They Love Each Other
11 [09:00] Looks Like Rain
12 [08:15] Tennessee Jed

DISC TWO [74:32]
set one-end:
01 [01:31] crowd
02 [05:20] El Paso
03 [08:59] Row Jimmy
04 [02:21] crowd
05 [22:49] Playin' In The Band
set two-a:
06 [04:38] crowd, Happy Birthday To Jerry
07 [09:25] China Cat Sunflower >
08 [05:53] I Know You Rider
09 [02:49] Promised Land >
10 [05:49] Bertha >
11 [04:58] Greatest Story Ever Told

DISC THREE [57:34]
set two-end:
01 [00:43] crowd
02 [10:43] Black Peter
03 [05:18] Big River
04 [08:17] Loose Lucy
05 [07:05] Me And Bobby McGee
06 [12:10] Truckin >
07 [08:29] Goin' Down The Road Feelin' Bad
08 [04:49] Johnny B. Goode

Microphones AKG 1000 mic > Sony 110 deck
J-Card Comment 07/31/73

"The Dead are AMAZING!!!!!!"

After seeing a post requesting more show/tape reviews here today, I thought I'd toss in one for this rarely talked about gem: 07/31/73

Here's a show that comes straight out of what I feel was about the most powerful segment of the great year, 1973. The months from May to July are filled with shows that contain some of the highest energy of the year. During the summer of ?73, the band mainly toured large
stadiums, with that year's version of the Wall of Sound.


A slightly hard to find AUD tape, 07/31/73 more than typifies the energy form that summer. The quality of the tape (my copy, at least. Thanks again, Darren) is fantastic, proving again, to me, that good quality AUDs can be better than SBDs.
Don't know if I'd say the recording is amazing still. But it was done in the sweet spot, and during the jams you'd swear Billy's hi-hat was in your lap.


So here you have it; all 220 minutes:

Set I: Opening with a super Ramble On Rose (a nice break from your standard Promised Land), one can hear that Jerry is already in fine form. He's finding every note he looks for, and the band, and audience are brimming with that perfect balance of laid back/high energy.
As the first notes are struck, a guy in the audience yells "Here we go!" It's perfect.


Then a tight "Me and My Uncle." You can really tell that the band is on already. The "Don't Ease Me In" that follows has Jerry busting through the ceiling on his solo. I mean, WOW! He just kicks out masterful lick after lick.
There's this dude who calls out "The Dead are AMAZING!!!" right after this song. It's just more of a good AUD tape thing!


Before "BIODTL" I think I recall hearing Jerry suggest they do like a 54 count intro. This doesn't happen. They do a standard 5 count which completely falls apart, only to have Bobby hit the vocals alone right on cue, with the band perfectly behind him. Nice. Next are nice versions of "Brown Eyed Women", and "Mexicali." Lots of people calling out for Casey Jones and Sugar Mag between songs. "Loser" follows. The audience loves it, and Jerry is right on the solos again.
The audience, which is active and alive through a lot of the show, becomes transfixed during Loser. It's like the Jam going into El Paso out of Nobody's Jam on 7/28/73. Everyone turns their eyes front and takes it all in.


"Jack Straw" rolls along, followed by a tremendous "They Love Each Other" It has a great tempo and energy reminiscent of 02/17/73 (one of the best, IMHO). "Looks Like Rain" is perfect after TLEO. Soaring.
Hypnotic in fact.


"Tennessee Jed" and "El Paso" cook right along too.

Now we hit the first discrepancy with my Deadbase IX. After "El Paso" the tape contains a great "Row Jimmy" that really seems to come from the very same source tape. I'd bet that it was played this night. If it were the only set list anomaly, I might doubt the possibility, but it's not. Next on my tape comes "Playin." The jam herein is precisely that which was the summer of 73. About 20+ minutes more of what goes on during 06/26/73, 06/29/73, 06/30/73 and 07/01/73. Man, I live for this stuff!!! Words can't come close. It's the highlight of the show. They completely fly off into space without the faintest clue of tempo, and then back into a killer 73 jam, then back to "Playin". Ahhh. End of set.
This Playin' is really it. I've tried over and over to place a definitive order to my top three Playin's from 1973. And I just can't. 07/01/73, 07/28/73 and 07/31/73 are all cut from the same cloth. 7/31 is the most ferocious. Billy is a master.


But then on the tape come the China>Rider which is listed in Deadbase before the Playin'. And it kinda sounds like the opening of set two, in as much as one can get that feeling from an AUD tape. This can open a can of worms worth of debate that we need not open now.
On the CDR we even get the Audience singing Happy Birthday to Jerry before the set starts. A nice touch.


Next is a "Promised>Bertha>Greatest Story Ever Told" that build such energy that once they hit GSET, the flood gates are opened, and the roof is ripped off once again. A very nice set two versions of "Black Peter" is followed by a fast "Big River."
I've been most taken by Jerry's solo in Black Peter since getting the discs. It is haunting. All his reverb bounds around the stadium with a sensation garaunteed to be lost on the SBD, like much of the glory of the Playin too, I'm sure. The solo is one of the best Black Peter solos I've heard, along with 1/17/79.


"Loose Lucy" has a great feel, although I don't remember Jerry doing any great vocal wailing on this version, and "Me and Bobby McGee" is also everything it should be, and had been, all summer long.
Me and Bobby McGee was never better than it was in 73.


To close the show, they pull out "Truckin'" which also fits the mold of any great version of the summer with one exception. It does NOT go into the "Other One" as listed in Deadbase IX. Yes, in the long jam they do hint a little bit at the tempo and riffs of O1, but not enough to merit even a true "tease." The songs go "Truckin'>GDTRFB>Johnny B. Goode. There's a lot of good explorations in the Truckin jam, and when they arrive at GDTR it smacks of "Why didn't the do that more often?" No encore is listed for the show.
Bobby does say "That's all the time we have, folks."


Happy Holidays!

Noah Weiner
Trades Allowed Yes
Owned by Warren Oates · Last Updated May 23, 2023