Hear “Sugar Magnolia (Live at Merriweather Post Pavilion, Columbia, MD 6/30/85)” now

Remember the summer of 1985? Well, if you don’t, good news: Summer Magic 1985, the Grateful Dead‘s upcoming box set, arrives Sept. 18.

Summer Magic 1985 looks back on the band’s 20th anniversary run, dubbed the Twenty Years So Far Tour, across 20 CDs. It features seven previously unreleased shows: three evenings at the Greek Theatre in Berkeley, CA (6/14/85-6/16/85), Saratoga Performing Arts Center in New York (6/27/85), a rainy night at Hershey Park Stadium in Penn. (6/28/85); and Merriweather Post Pavilion in Columbia, MD (6/30/85-7/1/85). You can hear “Sugar Magnolia” from the June 30 date below.

David Lemieux, the Dead’s legacy manager and archivist, said in a statement that the momentous “Shakedown Street” from that same show is “widely considered one of the greatest single performances of any song by the Grateful Dead, up there with the ‘Dew’ from Europe ’72, ‘Viola Lee Blues’ from Harpur College, and ‘Eyes of the World’ from 3/29/90. Yes, it’s that good.”

Trending Stories

He added that he became a fan of the tour as a teenager, when he traded for a copy of the second set from 6/15/85 at the Greek. “I had a few tapes by this time from 1983 and 1984, but this 1985 Grateful Dead was something entirely different, a freshness that sounded like a band now celebrating 20 years (!), but still just getting started,” Lemieux said. “From that moment on, I was on a mission to collect as much 1985 Dead as possible.”

Summer Magic 1985 is limited to 10,000 copies, while Merriweather 6/30/85 will be available as a 3-CD or 4-LP set.