Grateful Dead to record final shows

By Scott Munro
( Classic Rock )
published

They’ll showcase next month’s Fare Thee Well concerts with series of releases including box set spanning 12 CDs and 7 DVDs

The Grateful Dead will record next month’s Fare Thee Well shows for a live package to be issued on November 20.

Mickey Hart, Bill Kreutzmann, Phil Lesh and Bob Weir will play three concerts at Chicago’s Soldier Field on the weekend of July 3, 4 and 5 – and they’ll mark their swan song with a series of releases.

A standard ‘Best Of’ double CD featuring highlights from the three shows will be joined by a 4CD/2DVD, Blu-Ray edition which will include the final gig in audio and video formats.

In addition, they’ll release what the band call “the complete Chicago experience” in a 12CD/7DVD, Blu-ray box set. A total of 20,000 will be made available, each individually numbered and will contain full audio and video from all three performances, along with a disc showing behind-the-scenes footage.

The live packages are available to pre-order directly from the Grateful Dead’s website.

The band set up an extra two dates this weekend in Santa Clara, California after ticket prices for the trio of Chicago shows soared on the secondary market.

Scott Munro
Scott Munro
Louder e-commerce editor

Scott has spent more than 30 years in newspapers and magazines as an editor, production editor, sub-editor, designer, writer and reviewer. After initially joining our news desk in the summer of 2014, he moved to the e-commerce team full-time in 2020. He maintains Louder’s buyer’s guides, scouts out the best deals for music fans and reviews headphones, speakers, books and more. He's written more than 11,000 articles across Louder, Classic Rock, Metal Hammer and Prog and has previous written for publications including IGN, the Sunday Mirror, Daily Record and The Herald covering everything from daily news and weekly features, to video games, travel and whisky. Scott grew up listening to rock and prog, cutting his teeth on bands such as Marillion and Magnum before his focus shifted to alternative and post-punk in the late 80s. His favourite bands are Fields Of The Nephilim, The Cure, New Model Army, All About Eve, The Mission, Ned's Atomic Dustbin and Drab Majesty, but he also still has a deep love of Rush.