My wife is upstairs nursing our 7-week old, and I’m decompressing after a night of little sleep and a day of lots of screaming. I go to YouTube and start looking for some 80s dead. Sugar Magnolia > Scarlet Begonias 7.16.90 pops up. 1990 vs 80s, whatever, it’s close enough. The Sugar Magnolia is pretty straitforward, and the video shows the band seems to be enjoying it. They get through the verse section, and Mickey drum rolls into liftoff for the jam section. One bar goes by, and then I’m already hearing the Scarlet intro. My ear isn’t perfect, but I think it’s Bobby and Phil sticking to the rhythm for sugar mag and its Jerry and Brent hitting the opening scarlet notes, but it’s layered perfectly on top of Bobby’s playing. I’d always been impressed with some of the famous transitions like China>Rider from the Winterland 74 and Scarlet>Fire from Cornell, but I’d never heard this segue before. This one is right up there with the best.
Props to the dead, very sad for fans of Travis Scott. I don’t know who’s necessarily to blame for it other than the organizers. Tragic.
Today we get a really nice pre-Fire Scarlet Begonias. The jam has a Supplication Blues feel to me in the second half.
Scarlett Begonias holds a special place in my heart. My daughter’s name is Scarlett and I frequently sang this to her when she was little. She’s four now and still lights up when she hears this song even if she’s mostly dismissive of pretty much everything else I play. 😊
https://www.dead.net/30daysofdead
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MFZnHdteaHc
Recently stumbled across this performance and I'm such a sucker for this scarlet. I know 90's dead can be a somewhat polarizing topic, especially for the synth sounds Vince (not by his decision) used. However, for a song like this, the carnivalesque key tone beautifully emphasizes the tune's cheerful yet mystical feel and I love it. I feel those pungent keys work really well in general with the Dead's upbeat tunes (Sugar magnolia, Rubin and Cherise, Eyes). Gives me a reason to appreciate an era when the band was generally not totally up to shapes.
So it seems Jerry has an effect/pedal in this scarlet that he uses. And I was curious if anyone knows of any other songs in which he uses this effect, cause it makes my brain orgasm?
Title says it all
