Grateful Dead’s 30 Trips Around the Sun 80 CD Set

Type

Music CD set

30 Trips Around the Sun is an 80-CD live album, packaged as a box set, by the rock band the Grateful Dead. Announced for the celebration of their 50th anniversary, it consists of 30 complete, previously unreleased concerts, with one show per year from 1966 through 1995. Comprising 73 hours of music, the box set is individually numbered and limited to 6,500 copies. It was released on October 7, 2015. I am the original purchaser of this remarkable boxed set, and it has the Serial Number of 6,074. It has always been in a smoke-free home. I received this in December of 2015. Because I heard rumors that some of the sets were missing CDs or other items that were supposed to be included, I opened the package and inspected the contents. [You can look online and see the amount of people that have complained about sets not being complete – for that reason I would be cautious about buying a set that has NEVER been opened. Thankfully everything was included in my set. I must admit, while I had it open, I looked at the liner notes and playlists of some of the concerts. Other than that, I put everything back together and placed the set into storage. It was just today, 12/22/24, that I reopened the box to take these pictures. Obviously, I cannot claim that this set has never been opened, I did open it twice, but I can state that this set is as close to Mint/New/Like New condition as possible – it has never been used. The package also includes a gold-colored vinyl 7-inch single which bookends the band's career. The A-side is "Caution (Do Not Stop on Tracks)" from the band's earliest recording session in 1965, with a B-side of the last song the band ever performed together live, “Box of Rain” " recorded during their final encore at Soldier Field in Chicago on July 9, 1995. Also contained in the box set is a 288-page book that include ass an extensive essay about the history of the Grateful Dead by band archivist Nicholas Meriwether, and a scroll that has "a visual representation of how the band's live repertoire has evolved through the years". All of the concerts were essentially previously unreleased. However, two tracks from the July 3, 1966, performance ("Gangster of Love" & "Don't Mess Up a Good Thing") previously appeared on Rare Cuts and Oddities, and one track ("Candyman") from April 15, 1970, is a bonus track on American Beauty. The seven-inch B-side, "Box of Rain", was previously released on the CD accompanying early prints of Phil Lesh's book Searching for the Sound, while another track from that July 9, 1995, performance ("So Many Roads") was released on So Many Roads. Feel free to ask questions. Upon request I can furnish a list of the 30 concert dates and locations.