Grateful Dead is looking back at the summer of 1985 with a new 20-CD box set.
Summer Magic 1985, dropping Sept. 18, celebrates the band’s 20th anniversary tour. It features seven previously unreleased full concerts, including their three 20th anniversary shows at the Greek Theatre in Berkeley, California, June 14-16.
There are also recordings of concerts at Hershey Park Stadium in Hershey Park, Pennsylvania; Saratoga Performing Arts Center in Saratoga, New York; and Merriweather Post Pavilion in Columbia, Maryland. The set also includes a 96-page book with essays, photos and original artwork.
“The seven shows this box presents … offer a snapshot of the artistic process that was the Grateful Dead, making a powerful statement of the band’s project as they marked their 20th anniversary,” Nicholas G. Meriwether, executive director of the Grateful Dead Studies Association, writes in the set’s liner notes. “(T)his box not only lets us revisit what these shows sounded like at a peak of the band’s PA prowess, it lets us finally hear what these shows meant, the alchemy of time and memory finally revealing the gold of those concerts.”
And The Dead is giving fans a little taste of what to expect with the release of a performance of “Sugar Magnolia” from the Merriweather Post Pavilion show. It is now available via digital outlets.
Summer Magic 1985 is limited to just 10,000 numbered copies and is available for preorder now on Dead.net.
In addition to the box set, the Merriweather Post Pavilion show, which took place June 30, 1985, will be released as a standalone three-CD or four-CD set. It is also available for preorder now.
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