Grateful Dead Announces “Summer Magic 1985” Box Set

The Grateful Dead’s “Summer Magic 1985” box set is slated for release on September 18. The collection commemorates the band’s 20th-anniversary “Twenty Years So Far” tour and spans 20 CDs. It includes seven previously unreleased concerts—three nights at the Greek Theatre in Berkeley, California (June 14-16, 1985), a show at Saratoga Performing Arts Center in New York (June 27, 1985), a rainy performance at Hershey Park Stadium in Pennsylvania (June 28, 1985), and two nights at Merriweather Post Pavilion in Columbia, Maryland (June 30-July 1, 1985). The set is limited to 10,000 copies; the Merriweather 6/30/85 concert will also be offered as a three-CD or four-LP edition.

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The “Twenty Years So Far” tour marked the band’s two-decade milestone, featuring a blend of classic repertoire and the fresh energy that many fans associate with the mid-1980s era. Highlights include a celebrated rendition of “Shakedown Street” from the June 30 show, which archivists and longtime listeners frequently cite as a peak performance.

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David Lemieux, the Grateful Dead’s legacy manager and archivist, describes the 1985 shows as a turning point. He notes that the “Shakedown Street” performance is “widely considered one of the greatest single performances of any song by the Grateful Dead,” placing it alongside historic recordings such as “The Dew” from *Europe ’72*, “Viola Lee Blues” from Harpur College, and “Eyes of the World” from March 29, 1990. Lemieux, who began collecting recordings of the tour as a teenager, says the 1985 shows felt “like a band now celebrating 20 years, but still just getting started,” prompting him to pursue every available 1985 recording.

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• “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.” — David Lemieux, Legacy Manager, Grateful Dead

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• “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,” — David Lemieux

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• “From that moment on, I was on a mission to collect as much 1985 Dead as possible.” — David Lemieux

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