Dave's Picks Volume 31 is a three-CD live album by the rock band the Grateful Dead. It contains the complete concert recorded on December 3, 1979 at the Uptown Theatre in Chicago, Illinois. It was released on July 26, 2019, in a limited edition of 20,000 numbered copies.[1][2][3][4]
Dave's Picks Volume 31 also includes three songs performed at the same venue the following night. Additional tracks from the December 4 Uptown Theatre show can be found on Dave's Picks Volume 47.
Uptown Theatre
Uptown Theatre in Chicago, ca. late 1970s
The Uptown Theatre is a large, very ornate theater that was built in 1925 and was originally used for showing silent movies. It seats about 4,400 people. From January 1978 to February 1981 the Grateful Dead played there 17 times.[5] Still standing, the theater has been closed since 1981.[6]
Critical reception
On AllMusic, Timothy Monger said, "Plucked from a Chicago run at the end of 1979, Dave's Picks, Vol. 31 features a jaunty trio of sets from the Grateful Dead, who were at the point still in the honeymoon phase with their newest recruit, keyboardist Brent Mydland."[7]
In Glide Magazine, Doug Collette wrote, "In front of close to forty-five hundred attendees, the Grateful Dead were opening a three-night run... and proceeded to blend together tried-and-true material like "Brown-Eyed Women" and "Wharf Rat" with fairly new compositions such as "Alabama Getaway", "Althea" and "Fire On The Mountain"."[8]
^Scott, John W.; Dolgushkin, Mike; Nixon, Stu (1999). DeadBase XI: The Complete Guide to Grateful Dead Song Lists. Cornish, New Hampshire: DeadBase. p. 230. ISBN1-877657-22-0.
