Grateful Dead - Rocking the Cradle: Egypt 1978 CD/DVD

The Grateful Dead played at the Sound and Light Theater just outside of Cairo in Egypt on September 14, 15 & 16, 1978. the orginal plan was to record the series of shows to release a live CD set as well as portentially making a concert movie out of it. When they returned to the United States they discovered that the first night and half of the second nights shows were flawed and not able to use for recordings. So the project was shelved and now 30 years later here we are and we get to hear what survived of those recordings as well as a DVD filled with some of the performance as well.

The packaging is quite unique as well with the fold out pyramid and the moon and stars. See picture in the blog related to this.The CD/DVD set package is pretty cool in itself. Still to me it's fun, but after they get loaded to the iPod I don't usually see that stuff unless I'm loading up the DVD.

It would have been great if they came back with all the recordings intact, but without the first night and part of the second,, we can be happy that we still have some pretty awesome footage to hear and see.

Some of the highlights of the recordings are the unique Ollin Arageed that shows on Road Trips Vol 1, No 4 as well. Overall, there's some great tunes on this. Jack Straw, Row Jimmy, LLR & Deal highlight the first CD.

The second CD brings us a always favorite Shakedown Street. Iko Iko is a good one as well. Fire in the Mountain is awesome as always. There really isn't anything bad with this whole CD. It's fun and worth owning.

The DVD adds a little different flavor to the song selection and you get a bonus extra called the Vacation Tapes which gives you an inside look to what was going on.

Overall, a nice piece of history to be had. Too bad they didn't capture the whole thing to give us another limited edition set of the who trip along with that cool DVD as well.

You can get this on line or you can pick it up at www.dead.net. I believe if you order directly you get the Bonus CD that I forgot to list the songs below. I will pull those and add them later so you can see them. For me it was worth the extra money for shipping, etc. to get the bonus CD.

Pick this one up however you can, but it's well worth it and you get both audio and video of shows that took place over 30 years ago.

Track List:

Disc: 1
1. Jack Straw
2. Row Jimmy
3. New, New Minglewood Blues
4. Candyman
5. Looks Like Rain
6. Stagger Lee
7. I Need A Miracle
8. It's All Over Now
9. Deal

Disc: 2
1. Ollin Arageed
2. Fire On The Mountain
3. Iko Iko
4. Shakedown Street
5. Drums
6. Space
7. Truckin'
8. Stella Blue
9. Around And Around

DVD:
1. Bertha
2. Good Lovin'
3. Row Jimmy
4. New, New Minglewood Blues
5. Candyman
6. Looks Like Rain
7. Deal
8. Ollin Arageed
9. Fire On The Mountain
10. Iko Iko
11. I Need A Miracle
12. It's All Over Now
13. Truckin'
14. The Vacation Tapes(DVD extra)