Vinyl Me Please Anthology

MikeH said:
Workingman's and American Beauty MoFi's are still available on the Music Direct site (currently on backorder but they are NOT out of print and you will get them if you place an order on backordered MoFi stuff through them). I believe they are $50 each. Some of the others are more expensive but for $450, you can make your own starter kit of similar GD records at equal or better quality for cheaper. If you need Without a Net, then sure--those are around $125+ but it hardly seems like a must-have Dead record.

The Anthology got me to explore the Dead more which I'm grateful for (eh eh see what I did there??) but you could get way more bang for your buck not through the Anthology. I am glad the people who bought it are mostly enjoying it though!
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This is facts. I didn't dig through the internet too deep but I couldn't find a place to purchase these. Most of the anthology is likely irrelevant to new Dead listeners but these two appear to be the staples from what I've gathered.

I did not personally buy the anthology so I'm not trying to justify the cost for any real reason. Based on discogs alone these prices seem to have inflated but if they are purchasable somewhere else at reasonable rates I'm all ears.
 
MikeH said:
Workingman's and American Beauty MoFi's are still available on the Music Direct site (currently on backorder but they are NOT out of print and you will get them if you place an order on backordered MoFi stuff through them). I believe they are $50 each. Some of the others are more expensive but for $450, you can make your own starter kit of similar GD records at equal or better quality for cheaper. If you need Without a Net, then sure--those are around $125+ but it hardly seems like a must-have Dead record.

The Anthology got me to explore the Dead more which I'm grateful for (eh eh see what I did there??) but you could get way more bang for your buck not through the Anthology. I am glad the people who bought it are mostly enjoying it though!
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I've been playing 'Fantasy Grateful Dead Boxset' quite a bit since I ordered mine. It's good fun.

And I agree. You can definitely do something a bit more exciting for less. Unless you're in the UK and want Europe 72 or anywhere and want Without a Net.
 
What's the appeal of Without a Net? The rarity of the OG given its only been pressed in the 90s?

I'll admit the setlist looks great, but it's also a comp from late 1989-90 and those were not the best years for the Dead, well not for me anyways.

Plus it is a digital source, correct?
 
zdkaiser said:
What's the appeal of Without a Net? The rarity of the OG given its only been pressed in the 90s?

I'll admit the setlist looks great, but it's also a comp from late 1989-90 and those were not the best years for the Dead, well not for me anyways.

Plus it is a digital source, correct?
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It's fine. On vinyl, it had one run during the time that CDs were paramount and vinyl receding.

Its not a bad comp, but its not a must own - there are so many better ways to explore the era. For this era Dead, Wake Up To Find Out and Spring 1990: So Glad You Make It are better vinyl bets. Every live album from this era is going to be digitally sourced, so if that matters just get the flacs or hi-res streaming.
 
wmeugene said:
It's fine. On vinyl, it had one run during the time that CDs were paramount and vinyl receding.

Its not a bad comp, but its not a must own - there are so many better ways to explore the era. For this era Dead, Wake Up To Find Out and Spring 1990: So Glad You Make It are better vinyl bets. Every live album from this era is going to be digitally sourced, so if that matters just get the flacs or hi-res streaming.
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Amazing cover of Dear Mr Fantasy though.

Agree on Wake Up to Find Out. The 2nd set is immense
 
zdkaiser said:
What's the appeal of Without a Net? The rarity of the OG given its only been pressed in the 90s?

I'll admit the setlist looks great, but it's also a comp from late 1989-90 and those were not the best years for the Dead, well not for me anyways.

Plus it is a digital source, correct?
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Without A Net was the album to try to get Deadheads to buy the box. It’s the “deep cut” that’s hard to find that VMP usually tries to include in each anthology. I saw lots of fans of the band justify buying the anthology despite owning good copies of most of the albums simply because they want Without A Net.
 
MikeH said:
Without A Net was the album to try to get Deadheads to buy the box. It’s the “deep cut” that’s hard to find that VMP usually tries to include in each anthology. I saw lots of fans of the band justify buying the anthology despite owning good copies of most of the albums simply because they want Without A Net.
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I had that thought for a hot minute and then realized I'd be paying $450 for E72 (which i recently got for 60 bucks), Terrapin Station, and Without A Net - already having the others (or in the case of Reckoning, the recent RSD acoustic release from the same tour). That was a big no thanks.
 
roffle24 said:
This is facts. I didn't dig through the internet too deep but I couldn't find a place to purchase these. Most of the anthology is likely irrelevant to new Dead listeners but these two appear to be the staples from what I've gathered.

I did not personally buy the anthology so I'm not trying to justify the cost for any real reason. Based on discogs alone these prices seem to have inflated but if they are purchasable somewhere else at reasonable rates I'm all ears.
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The market for MoFi is real silly right now. With that label in particular, I see people all over the place falsely selling some MoFi records as “out of print”. Discogs has lots of MoFi albums for way above MSRP that you can still buy directly from Music Direct. Any MoFi on their site that says “awaiting repress” or “out of stock” is NOT out of print. Blues for Allah, Workingman’s Dead and I believe American Beauty are all still available on backorder at MD for MSRP. They also have lots of other albums that will get represses: MoFi Kind of Blue, Blonde on Blonde and some other sought after titles.

when I learned about that back-order trick, I started placing some orders. 3 or 4 of the albums I ordered have already been repressed and I have gotten copies. Meanwhile people were selling those albums for $100+ on discogs/eBay. You can typically tell when a repress occurs if you follow eBay listings—all of a sudden you’ll see a bunch of copies of that album posted for 3-4x MSRP. In the past few days tons of copies of Santana III went up on eBay for $75-100 for example because MD repressed it and sold it for $25.

as for the other albums in this box, you can get a good amount of them for decent prices or find a suitable album to replace it with from that era. If you want color versions of these specific albums, then the box might be the best way to get them all. But I’d hardly say it’s “good value”.
 
wmeugene said:
I had that thought for a hot minute and then realized I'd be paying $450 for E72 (which i recently got for 60 bucks), Terrapin Station, and Without A Net - already having the others (or in the case of Reckoning, the recent RSD acoustic release from the same tour). That was a big no thanks.
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I know these have been released in the past and a couple are sort of gettable... but can you imagine if they'd swapped reckoning, Terrapin and Live/ Dead for Shrine, Ventura and Cornell.
 
Rowan said:
I know these have been released in the past and a couple are sort of gettable... but can you imagine if they'd swapped reckoning, Terrapin and Live/ Dead for Shrine, Ventura and Cornell.
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A better story would have been told if they had just done a few choice live albums. Imagine the demand if they had pressed some of the Dave's Picks to vinyl! I would have paid the retail price if they had done Dave's 5 (1973), Dave's 1 (1977), Dave's 8 (1980) and perhaps thrown in the 2nd Hampton show (1989). That would have easily told their story better than this box and they would have easily sold 7500 copies to Deadheads.
 
wmeugene said:
A better story would have been told if they had just done a few choice live albums. Imagine the demand if they had pressed some of the Dave's Picks to vinyl! I would have paid the retail price if they had done Dave's 5 (1973), Dave's 1 (1977), Dave's 8 (1980) and perhaps thrown in the 2nd Hampton show (1989). That would have easily told their story better than this box and they would have easily sold 7500 copies to Deadheads.
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It's that middle ground for VMP. Something like that would have solidly brought in the Dead crew but maybe not the VMP lot. I get that they've actually missed both customer groups (myself excluded). I actually sympathise with them to an extent as finding that balance is pretty tricky. But it should have had One From The Vault. They could have pushed to get Buffalo as an exclusive for a year. They've kinda missed a trick by padding the box with Terrapin and Wake of the Flood when they could have chucked at least one big, bad, less accessible show.
 
Rowan said:
It's that middle ground for VMP. Something like that would have solidly brought in the Dead crew but maybe not the VMP lot. I get that they've actually missed both customer groups (myself excluded). I actually sympathise with them to an extent as finding that balance is pretty tricky. But it should have had One From The Vault. They could have pushed to get Buffalo as an exclusive for a year. They've kinda missed a trick by padding the box with Terrapin and Wake of the Flood when they could have chucked at least one big, bad, less accessible show.
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One from the Vault was already getting a repress from LITA though. I grabbed a copy and got it recently--it's great.

The bigger issue wasn't the choice of titles-- it was the choice of titles combined with the price tag. If this was at $300 (even if it had one or two less albums in it) I would have gotten it as someone who never really listened to the Dead much before the set was announced, and I suspect they wouldn't have had much of a problem selling 5,000 copies.
 
wmeugene said:
A better story would have been told if they had just done a few choice live albums. Imagine the demand if they had pressed some of the Dave's Picks to vinyl! I would have paid the retail price if they had done Dave's 5 (1973), Dave's 1 (1977), Dave's 8 (1980) and perhaps thrown in the 2nd Hampton show (1989). That would have easily told their story better than this box and they would have easily sold 7500 copies to Deadheads.
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I know Live Dead records help tell the story of the band and their live shows are the biggest part of the Dead's fan base and collectibility now...but it's also what prevented me from getting into the Dead for so long. I suspect I'm not the only one. I like the live stuff, but I'm also fine having just one or two live Dead albums. I wouldn't have been tempted at all by the Anthology if it was just a bunch of Dick's Picks. VMP was trying to get their built-in customer base on board for this one in the hopes that Deadheads would buy it by including WAN. I also just don't think Dick's would want to or need to include VMP in any releases like this.
 
MikeH said:
One from the Vault was already getting a repress from LITA though. I grabbed a copy and got it recently--it's great.

The bigger issue wasn't the choice of titles-- it was the choice of titles combined with the price tag. If this was at $300 (even if it had one or two less albums in it) I would have gotten it as someone who never really listened to the Dead much before the set was announced, and I suspect they wouldn't have had much of a problem selling 5,000 copies.
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It's totally great. It's also their comeback show after their break though so fits the story. In fact Blues for Allah fits the story line in that context better than WotF and Terrapin.
 
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