GRATEFUL DEAD Shakedown Street VG++ 1978 Arista 1ST PRESSING JERY GARCIA

$

43

Vinyl:  VG++  Play Graded. Sounds Great!   Arista Labels are Clean and Bright.   This is the 1978 Arista AB-4198 1ST PRESSING!!    Bashed by the critics, this is a popular album with Deadheads on account of it including some of those most legendary In-Concert fave raves:  the Title song, Stagger Lee, Fire On The Mountain and All New Minglewood Blues!  A primer for Deadhead candidates and easy listening for Everready Dead-o-philes; a starting point inviting deeper exploration.  A frontier of experience awaits!  Tip of the iceberg! Dancing bears peaking around the corner...!!  Side note:  Forward, Never Straight!!!

As an aside...I recall driving back to LA from a Dead show in Berkeley and my friend, who was driving, pulling over and asking if I could drive..."What's up?", says I.  Says he:  "The freeway just turned into a giant Dead Ticket" ...now where were we??  
See Review Below!
In The Dead Wax:  On both sides:  matrices, etched and stamped on side 1 and etched on side 2.   Complete Dead Wax info cheerfully provided upon request.
Cover: VG++ (see photos).  Album Cover Art by Gilbert Shelton of Furry Freak Brothers Fame!!!!  Nice gloss on cover.  Front and back of cover artwork and text are rich, clear and bright, with minor shelf wear.  Seams and spine are solid and clean with minimal wear.  No splits.  No writing.  Spine print is crystal clear. 

Goldmine Standards.   I play grade every record that I sell on eBay as I have found you can't rate a record accurately by just visually inspecting it.  I wipe the dust off of every cover with clean, unscented baby wipes.  I professionally clean the vinyl.  (I also operate a Vinyl Record Cleaning business for your dusty/dirty records--if interested, send me a message).
U.S. Shipping:  $4.99 Media Mail.  Tracking included.  50 cents additional shipping per additional item, when the shipment is combined.   If you wish to take advantage of my COMBINED SHIPPING deal, simply select your items by clicking on "ADD TO CART" on the main listing page.  Do this for all of your selections and then go to your cart to checkout. Your combined shipping discount will be computed automatically.  Free domestic shipping if you spend $100 or more!  
All records are packaged securely with the vinyl outside the jacket (to avoid seam split in transit). The vinyl and jacket are sandwiched between two cardboard stiffeners and shipped in a custom cardboard record mailer box. 
INTERNATIONAL BUYERS!  EBAY'S PLATFORM DOESN'T ACCOMMODATE FOR COMBINED SHIPPING FOR INTERNATIONAL BUYERS---BUT DON'T LET THAT STOP YOU!!!---I CAN COMBINE SHIP FOR YOU AND MINIMIZE SHIPPING COSTS!!!  TELL ME WHICH ITEMS YOU WANT TO BUY, AND I WILL WEIGH THEM AND THE SHIPPING BOX TOGETHER AND THEN I WILL CREATE A "LOT OF 2..." OR "LOT OF 3...", OR "LOT OF 4...", ETC WITH THE ITEMS YOU WANT, AND CREATE A LISTING WITH THE EXACT WEIGHT OF YOUR LOT.   THIS WILL SAVE YOU A LOT OF MONEY!!!  IF YOU'RE INTERESTED IN THIS, SEND ME A MESSAGE TELLING ME WHICH ITEMS YOU WOULD LIKE TO PURCHASE AND WE'LL GO FROM THERE.  OR, FEEL FREE TO ASK QUESTIONS.
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Once you're satisfied with your purchase, please leave positive feedback and I will do the same for you.  If you're unsatisfied, please let me know so we can resolve it.  I do not give partial refunds.  Take a look at my previous feedback and buy with confidence.   I've qualified for the "Top Rated Plus" seal from eBay, awarded to the most reputable sellers who consistently deliver outstanding customer service.  Check my other items this week, check back often & CLICK ON "SAVE THIS SELLER" at the top of my listings page to be notified of New Listings as I will be adding more Rare items in the coming weeks!  Thanks!

Why buy a first or early pressing and not a re-issue or a ‘re-mastered’ vinyl album? 
First and early pressings are pressed from the first generation lacquers and stampers. They usually sound vastly superior to later issues/re-issues (which, in recent times, are often pressed from whatever 'best' tapes or digital sources are currently available) - many so-called 'audiophile' new 180g pressings are cut from hi-res digital sources…essentially an expensive CD pressed on vinyl.  Why  experience the worse elements of both formats?  These are just High Maintenance CDs, with mid-ranges so cloaked with a veil as to sound smeared.  They are nearly always compressed with murky transients and a general lifelessness in the overall sound.  There are exceptions where re-masters/re-presses outshine the original issues, but they are exceptions and not the norm.  First or early pressings nearly always have more immediacy, presence and dynamics. The sound staging is wider.  Subtle instrument nuances are better placed with more spacious textures. Balances are firmer in the bottom end with a far-tighter bass. Upper-mid ranges shine without harshness, and the overall depth is more immersive.  Inner details are  clearer.   On first and early pressings, the music tends to sound more ‘alive’ and vibrant.  The physics of sound energy is hard to clarify and write about from a listening perspective, but the best we can describe it is to say that you can 'hear' what the mixing and mastering engineers wanted you to hear when they first recorded the music.   

Shakedown Street Review

by Stephen Thomas Erlewine

Since the Grateful Dead were notorious for recording awkward studio albums, it always seemed that the answer to their problem was simply getting the right producer to coax magic out of the band -- and nobody would seem better suited for the position than Little Feat leader Lowell George, whose own band shared the Dead's tendency to wander and jam in a live setting, yet made almost nothing but good studio records. But 1978 was not a great year for either camp, as the Dead were drifting in their attempts to score a crossover hit for Clive Davis' Arista Records, while George was pushing Little Feat toward disbandment as he was inching closer to his premature death in 1979. Add to that the Dead's sudden, inexplicable fascination with disco, a desire to have Donna Jean Godchaux be an integral part of the record, plus no new songs ready to go at the beginning of the sessions, and it's little surprise that Shakedown Street wound up as a mess. It rambles and wanders all over the place, as the Dead cover the Rascals' "Good Lovin'" before they revive "New Minglewood Blues" (which they originally cut for their debut), as Jerry Garcia and Robert Hunter write their own "Stagger Lee" while Mickey Hart and Bill Kreutzmann get a percussion workout on the brief instrumental "Serengetti" and Bob Weir affects a bluesy growl on "I Need a Miracle." In George's hands, this is all given a smooth gloss not all that far removed from such latter-day Feat LPs as The Last Record Album, but since the Dead favor hazy, lazy grooves to Feat's laid-back but tight New Orleans funk -- and since George didn't produce so much as he created an appropriate atmosphere in the studio -- Shakedown Street meanders mercilessly, and its indulgences wind up overwhelming the album as a whole. And there isn't just one kind of indulgence here; there's a plethora of them, ranging from the disco pulse of the title track to the fuzziness of the two songs sung by Donna Jean. This can make Shakedown Street a bit of a difficult, dated listen, since even the good songs boast bad arrangements ("Shakedown Street" and "Fire on the Mountain" were later reworked and revitalized in concert), yet it falls short of flat-out disaster, partially because it's a fascinating listen due to the very things that make it a severely flawed record. The disco flirtations, subdued funk, misguided commercial concessions, and overarching Californian slickness do make Shakedown Street fascinating for at least one spin, even if they'll keep even hardcore Deadheads -- maybe especially hardcore Deadheads -- from coming back to the record more than once every decade or so.