Vinyl Me Please Anthology

Lol well thankfully I can pass on this set. Without a Net will be out soon enough to purchase on its own, I can only hope. I have everything else. I have absolutely no idea why this box set is a thing though. Colored vinyl is cool I suppose but I would still recommend finding original pressings or recent Rhino reissues of these albums.

I’m pretty these will all be available individually on black vinyl in a year or so. No way they are going through the work to do these and not making a wide release on black vinyl through Rhino.
 
I pitched this to a couple deadhead friends and they seemed to think this was a good deal. Looking at Discogs, I don't see any reason to pick this up.
Deadheads are used to just paying whatever the Dead tells them to in order to get that Workingman's Dead commemorative shop apron, so they're kind of a perfect market for VMP to corner...
 
I do like how they posted that Live Dead photograph with Pigpen in the car, Tom Constanten holding a giant stick, and Mickey with an acoutsitc guitar. That should confuse some people.


If you look at the list of names of the guests they brought in to comment on the Dead, you can see their target audience. Members of the Decemberists, Dirty Projectors, Animal Collective. VMP has their demographic.
 
I do like how they posted that Live Dead photograph with Pigpen in the car, Tom Constanten holding a giant stick, and Mickey with an acoutsitc guitar. That should confuse some people.


If you look at the list of names of the guests they brought in to comment on the Dead, you can see their target audience. Members of the Decemberists, Dirty Projectors, Animal Collective. VMP has their demographic.
I'm confused about the demographic tho and who this box set is for. It's not for people getting into the Dead for the first time because it's too expensive but it doesn't have enough exclusive content for Dead Heads to drop $450. Do Dead Heads love the bands in the liner notes?
 
Either own or have routinely passed on these except for Without a Net. I was real worried I'd spend the evening talking myself into this.

Still, for that much money, I'd recommend collecting a few live shows/comps for roughly the same price:
  • Live Dead
  • Europe 72 (and Vol. 2 if you can find it for a good price)
  • Cornell
  • Dead Set/Reckoning combo
  • Wake Up to Find Out (Nassau 3/29/90 w/ Branford Marsalis).
You might spend close to $450 with flippers, but you'll get more LPs and a much better snapshot of the Dead throughout the years. (And IMO the best Eyes of the World with Branford Marsalis.)
 
I get why they chose the albums they did too, but they definitely could have chosen either Workingman’s Dead or American Beauty and included something from pre Live Dead. Also, Blues for Allah is a stronger album than Wake of the Flood, and Reckoning is just an all acoustic live compilation from fall 1980 shows which is good but they could have done a full show too or mixed recordings from that and Dead Set. Maybe they should have included In the Dark too.
 
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