Grateful Dead Music Forum

Not sure if this is the right sub-forum for this comment/topic, but I'm listening to Capital Center 11-23-78 right now. US Blues is the Encore. I know Bobby has taken a lot of guff over the years for his slide playing, and particularly the fact that he basically learned slide during shows on the 78 tour, with often-painful results. As I listen to this song, though, Bobby's slide parts actually are pretty good, technique/performance-wise. I wonder if the problem is that his amp/rig is set to a kind of brittle/metallic rhythm tone that sounds good in the Dead mix when he's using a flat pick or his fingers, but just grates too much with slide. If he'd dialed in a warmer/rounder tone perhaps it wouldn't have been so grating? Thoughts?

Good observation. I find his late 70s slide playing to be solid. But in the 80s gotta super shrill and weird sometimes. Think the tones he went for in the 80s didn't match well with slide.

His tones for slide were definitely awful and even worse in the 80's. His slide playing was a mixed bag. Some good some bad, nothing great.

I hate it when "Bobby" and "slide playing" are found in the same sentence.

In my opinion Bobby's rhythm slide playing is far better than his lead slide playing. He does some cool subtle slide rhythm work on Althea, Black Peter, Samson and Delilah, Casey Jones, U.S. Blues, Esau, Minglewood, and probably a few others that I missed.

I find Bob's slide playing to be as inspired (and idiosyncratic) as his fretted playing. And I loved it when he & Jer both broke out the pipes.