Deadheads will be excited to hear a newly remastered and expanded version of the Grateful Dead’s classic 1973 album Wake of the Flood is set to be released on CD, LP and digital formats.
Out on September 29th via Rhino (the catalog development and marketing division of Warner Music Group), Wake of the Flood (50th Anniversary Deluxe Edition) appears as two-CD and digital sets.
Disc one features the album’s seven original songs plus previously unreleased demo recordings of “Eyes of the World” and “Here Comes Sunshine.”
Disc two comprises six live tracks recorded on November 1st, 1973 at McGaw Memorial Hall, Northwestern University in Evanston, IL.
For Deadicated vinyl junkies, further special 50th Anniversary Wake of the Flood releases that will also appear on September 29th include a single 180-gram black vinyl LP; a limited-edition 12-inch vinyl picture disc; a limited-edition “coke bottle clear vinyl” exclusive to Barnes & Noble; and a Dead.net-exclusive, limited-edition “Watermark” Custom Vinyl.
Recorded by Jerry Garcia in early 1973, these rare demos are thought to have been given to the rest of the Grateful Dead. The raw rendition of the setlist mainstay "Eyes Of The World" is available to listen to below.
All of the above pressings of Wake of the Flood feature Plangent Processes tape restoration and speed correction and are newly mastered by Grammy Award-winning engineer David Glasser.
Grateful Dead Legacy Manager and Audio Archivist, David Lemieux, had this to say: “I was enthralled with the beautiful arrangements of some of the Dead’s greatest songs, everything so clear and present. The songs and vocal treatments all sounded so mature, like these were guys who knew things and they wanted to share what they’d learned in the eight years since forming the Grateful Dead.
“And what really caught my ear were the many additional sounds that were striking at first, but I can’t imagine these songs, on this record, without these many additional contributors.”
Meanwhile, former UC Santa Cruz Grateful Dead archivist Nicholas G. Meriwether writes that with Wake of the Flood, the Grateful Dead were, “not only building a musical microcosm, a unified narrative that described the state of the Dead’s project, but also providing an example of what that project could accomplish, what it was designed to do: to create a viable alternative, an artistic vision of the beauty that could be created within and despite the sad, messy strife of the world.
“And they let that message speak for itself,” he adds. “In an album rife with religious imagery and overtones, they never preached; they just revealed.”
For more info visit the Grateful Dead website.
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