As Grateful Dead HQ continues to prep their 50th Anniversary Edition of Skull & Roses, the team has shared a fiery take on “Bertha,” captured on April 27, 1971 at the legendary Fillmore East.
Writes GD legacy manager/archivist David Lemieux, “Kicking off Skull & Roses, ‘Bertha’ is the first official recording of a Garcia-Hunter song since the remarkably strong batch of 1970’s double bill of Workingman’s Dead and American Beauty, and it certainly keeps up the A-level songwriting from the previous year’s magnificent output. Bertha remained an important part of the Dead’s live repertoire, played consistently from 1971 to 1995, a testament to both how much the band loved playing it, and how much Dead Heads loved hearing it.”
The 50th anniversary edition of Skull & Roses will drop on June 25.
Listen to the 4/27/71 “Bertha” below:
2 Comments comments associated with this post
Trein
April 27, 2021 at 2:36 pmHow sweet! Today is my 65th birthday and this week in Fillmore East History I attended both of these shows, along with (day before?) Ten Years After (late show) with J. Geils Band and Procol Harum (late show) with Teagarden and Van Winkle. Didn’t get much school work done that week…
Wow, you were there!
April 27, 2021 at 3:58 pmHappy B-Day Trein !
awesome you saw these shows, wow!
This CD was one of the first introductions I had with the Grateful Dead in my high-school era. My first introduction were tapes of the double “What a long Strange Trip” compilation. First two tunes I ever heard were Ramble on Rose, and Playin’, from a fellow boarding school mate who had older brothers that got him into it. He played me one “Jerry Tune”, and then one “Bobby Tune” to give me a little sampling.