the new riders of the purple sage: the first studio demo from 1969, embryonic riders from 1968, the backwards recordings, and some bonus tracks featuring marmaduke, jerry garcia, dave nelson and all the others

 

recorded way back in 1968 and 1969 these recordings of some early line-ups of the new riders (of the purple sage with pink and yellow flashes) have been released on a relix cd in 1986, and though there was a second edition of that cd at some time in the nineties these performances are rather hard to find.

the new riders for their first demo session in november 1969 were john "marmaduke" dawson (guitars and lead vocals), david nelson (guitars and vocals), jerry garcia (pedal steel and vocals), phil lesh (bass), mickey hart (drums), and bob matthews sat in as the engineer. additionally included are two tracks that marmaduke recorded with garcia and members of the doug sahm band in 1968, and "the backwards tapes", some experimental noise david nelson produced using and processing rehearsal room recordings and other relics of the new riders. some more information on before time began can be found on discogs.

for your listening pleasure i took those backwards tapes and played them backwards again.

so here we go:

the first studio demo of the new riders, recorded in san francisco in november 1969:

01 - henry (listen directly)

02 - all i ever wanted

03 - last lonely eagle

04 - cecilia

marmaduke and friends, recorded in san mateo on the 31st of july 1968:

05 - garden of eden

06 - superman (listen directly)

the backwards tapes by dave nelson:

07 - deh rominap

08 - a handful of brains (listen directly)

09 - i'm through with the fish, harve

10 - och tamale (listen directly)

11 - a handful of brains part 2

12 - where discipline comes in

bonus tracks: 

the backwards tapes played backwards:

13 - deh rominap (listen directly)

14 - a handful of brains

15 - i'm through with the fish, harve

16 - och tamale (listen directly)

17 - a handful of brains part 2

18 - where discipline comes in

plus:

19 - the grateful dead - dark star (live at fillmore west, 01.03.1969) 

20 - the new riders of the purple sage - henry (live at fillmore west, july 1971) (listen directly)

download the new riders

(mp3 / all scans included / direct download)

download a rough and ready version as flac
(tracks 01-12 and 20 as flac; tracks 13-18 as mp3 due to technical reasons; omitting track 19 to reduce the filesize)