2/20/2024 0 Comments Grateful dead album art fontsThe band was accompanied by Nubian Oud player Hamza El Din and other Nubian musicians for a few songs, which turned into a cross-cultural jamming session fusing Egyptian folklore music with American rock tunes. The first night was also attended by at-the-time first lady Jehan Sadat, who sadly died earlier this year. They were accompanied by, as music photographer Adrian Boot puts it, “a bunch of bemused Bedouins and their goats.” The concert is said to have been attended by around a thousand people these included many devoted The Grateful Dead fans who could afford the long plane ride to Cairo. Put simply, the band members were not in peak form. Bassist John Kahn fell down the stairs of the recording truck and had to take a lot of pain medications. To make matters worse, Kreutzmann cracked a bone in his wrist when he fell off a horse and ended up having to play the drums with only one arm. The piano tuning technician also backed out at the last minute, so the piano was out of tune for all three performances. However, the band members persevered and worked with the material available from the second and third concerts to create their album. ![]() The recording gear made the first night’s recording sound odd, with distorted and missing vocals, therefore rendering the entire first night’s work useless. To start off, an equipment truck ended up getting stuck in the sand and had to be dragged by camels. Set to record the album Rocking the Cradle: Egypt 1978 and perform three consecutive nights of shows, the band members continued to encounter one logistical hurdle after another. The band’s trip to Egypt can be described in many ways, but “smooth” isn’t one of them. “Egypt instantly became the biggest, baddest, and most legendary field trip that we took during our entire 30 years as a band,” The Grateful Dead drummer Bill Kreutzmann explained in his book titled Deal: My Three Decades of Drumming, Dreams, and Drugs. The American rock group claimed that they were not there just to perform they were there to record an album, “harness the ancient energy” of the location, and “levitate” the Great Pyramid off the ground.Īlthough they weren’t able to levitate the Great Pyramid, the trip proved to be a memorable one for the band members, fans, and locals alike. Many international artists have performed by the pyramids of Giza over the years, but their experiences cannot be compared to that of The Grateful Dead in September 1978. Photo capturing the progress of the lunar eclipse.
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