[LazyLightnin]

any of you guys know why St. Stephen was never performed after 10/31/83? ive always wondered why such a classic was left out of their sets. were they juss burned out on the tune or what? Is their any interview or commentary on this from Jerry or the Boys? If ya dont got the final St Stephen, a good aud fob is avaliable @ archive. love to hear some feedback or opinions.

LaZy

[phreaker]

There are tons of songs the Dead slowly dropped over the years. Alligator, Hurts Me too...now that I think of it, most dropped songs that I like were written by Pig, which I can understand why they didnt play.

But some songs the Dead played in like 66 could have stayed in the lineup for at least a few more years. I would have like to heard them keep "Pain in my Heart" played through 72, when Ronny passed away.

St. Stephen is the typical Dead song for me. They always went into an awesome jam afterwords (the eleven, and good lovin) and the few times they did bring it back in the 70's and 80's, it sounded great!

[strumminsix]

Another theory is that it was too technically difficult to pick back up after being on the shelf for so long. Think of the construct and timing. I love it live but rarely did it come off very well done. Now the jam afterwards was great but the song itself, eh.

[ebick]

I think I heard somewhere that Jerry didn't really care for it and couldn't understand why everyone liked it so much.

They played Steven at my first show 5/5/77, and I had no idea what it was at the time. On 7/28/82 they did a NASTY tease before bailing into NFA.

Luckily, I caught the 10/15/83 one.

[amyjared]

Rumor that I heard was the Garcia didn't like singing the part where he played the guitar line ("Lady finger, dressed in..")because he felt it was either a) too trite or b) too annoying.

[tigerstrat]

The first final Stephen was 10/21/71. This was the end of the Live Dead/Aoxomoxoa arrangement, with the fast tempo but a slow spacey 4/4 bridge.

Then 6/9/76 they brought out the updated (maybe you say "adulterated") version with the slower tempo but a faster waltz-time bridge and longer inter-verse jams. On 1/10/79 they put it back on the shelf, and broke out the same version again for three more tries in Oct 83. I recall two of those are really sloppy and one is pretty decent, I forget which one.

[Billbbill]

I was at the msg and Hartford Civic center SS's in '83. The msg version had incredible energy (I believe it was the first of the three) but a major train wreck going back to the instrumental refrain coming out of the jam. Even so it was more memorable for me than the hcc version as I don't recall much of that version at all.

[Billbbill]

I recall being repeatedly chased from the aisles at Hartford as being somewhat of a distraction. Security sucked there. They were not well schooled or open to the ways of the deadhead.