September isn’t exactly around the corner quite yet, but if you’d like a taste of the forthcoming Grateful Dead Europe ’72: The Complete Recordings box set, due to ship in September, you’re in luck. The band offers up a teaser in the form of this downloadable version of “Playing In The Band,” recorded on April 14th, 1972 in Copenhagen, Denmark.

The gig was interestingly enough, the band’s first paid show in front of a foreign language crowd.

Download “Playing In The Band” via the below widget. Details on the complete 72 CD (!!!) box set follow after the jump.

GRATEFUL DEAD UNVEIL
EUROPE ’72: THE COMPLETE RECORDINGS

Dead.net Packs Replica Steamer Trunk With 72 Discs Capturing
Every Note Recorded From The Dead’s First European Tour,
Produced From The Original 16-Track Tapes

Individually Numbered, Limited Edition Collection
Is Available Exclusively At Dead.net And Will Ship In September

LOS ANGELES – Grateful Dead slipped the shores of America and crossed the pond for its first-ever major European tour in April 1972. The legendary 22-show run spawned Europe ’72, a live triple album that remains one of the band’s best-selling and most beloved releases. A tour this momentous deserves a boxed set of historic proportions and Dead.net has stamped your passport to relive every note from the European tour with EUROPE ’72: THE COMPLETE RECORDINGS—an individually numbered, limited edition collection that includes 72 discs with over 70 hours of music featuring every show from what is arguably the Grateful Dead’s greatest tour.

EUROPE ’72: THE COMPLETE RECORDINGS is housed in a replica steamer trunk reminiscent of the ones prevalently used at the time. Along with the music, a vast majority of which is previously unreleased, the travel chest contains tour memorabilia, a coffee-table book with never-before-seen photos, and a comprehensive essay by noted Dead author Blair Jackson. Each performance will also be accompanied by an essay specific to the show written by top Dead scholars including David Gans, Gary Lambert, Nicholas Meriwether, and Steve Silberman.

Jeffrey Norman, the primary mixer of the Dead’s archival multi-track material for the past 15 years, is mixing each show from the original 16-track recordings, with the high-tech Plangent Processes transfer and restoration tools used to bring the master tapes back to life. Two-time Grammy®-winning engineer David Glasser is mastering the music to HDCD specs. While many of the recordings heard on Europe ’72 were sweetened in the studio after the tour, those tracks will be included in this collection without overdubs, where possible.

Due to ship in September, the boxed set is available exclusively from Dead.net. While its sheer size is formidable, what makes EUROPE ’72: THE COMPLETE RECORDINGS such a landmark set is that it captures a defining moment in Grateful Dead history filled with its share of firsts and lasts.

The tour offers a snapshot of a band at the top of its game, still ascending in the wake of three straight hit albums—Workingman’s Dead, American Beauty, and the live Grateful Dead (“Skull & Roses”). It had been a year since the lineup had gone to its single-drummer configuration, six months since Keith Godchaux had been broken in as the group’s exceptional pianist, and this marked the first tour to feature Donna Godchaux as a member of the touring band.

There was a ton of new, unreleased material that came into the repertoire in the fall of ’71 and during the spring of ’72, including “Tennessee Jed,” “Jack Straw,” “Mexicali Blues,” “Comes A Time,” “Ramble On Rose,” “One More Saturday Night,” “Black-Throated Wind,” “Looks Like Rain” and Pigpen’s “Chinatown Shuffle,” “The Stranger (Two Souls In Communion)” and “Mr. Charlie.” (Sadly, this was Pigpen’s final tour.) All those future classics were interspersed with songs from the aforementioned “hit” albums—such as “Uncle John’s Band,” “Casey Jones,” “Sugar Magnolia,” “Bertha,” and “Not Fade Away”—and then were topped off by loads of big jamming numbers—the Europe ’72 tour produced spectacular versions of “Dark Star,” “The Other One,” “Playing in the Band,” “Truckin’,” “China Cat Sunflower” > “I Know You Rider,” “Good Lovin’,” “Lovelight,” and even the early Pig chestnut “Caution.”

GRATEFUL DEAD EUROPE 1972 TOUR DATES
All shows included in their entirety

April 7 Wembley Empire Pool, Wembley
April 8 Wembley Empire Pool, Wembley
April 11 Newcastle City Hall, Newcastle
April 14 Tivoli Koncertsal, Copenhagen
April 16 Aarhus University, Aarhus
April 17 Tivoli Koncertsal, Copenhagen
April 21 Beat Club, Bremen
April 24 Rheinhalle, Dusseldorf
April 26 Jahrhundert Halle, Frankfurt
April 29 Musikhalle, Hamburg
May 3 Olympia Theatre, Paris
May 4 Olympia Theatre, Paris
May 7 Bickershaw Festival, Wigan
May 10 Concertgebouw, Amsterdam
May 11 Rotterdam Civic Hall, Rotterdam
May 13 Lille Fairgrounds, Lille
May 16 Theatre Hall, Luxembourg
May 18 Kongressaal – Deutsches Museum, Munich
May 23 Strand Lyceum, London
May 24 Strand Lyceum, London
May 25 Strand Lyceum, London
May 26 Strand Lyceum, London