Best Bobby songs

They are all Bobby songs now....

Cassidy 

Playing in the Band

Lot's of them, Hell in a bucket is my probably my least favorite.Was a bummer when they opened with it.

Weir said on the Dan Rather interview that Cassidy was his favorite.

TMNS

Estimated

Throwin' Stones

Weather Report Suite

Lazy Lightnin' (is this a Weir song?)

I DO LIKE Victim or the Crime

And many more I can't recall or care to recall at the moment. 

Maybe a thread on Bobby songs you hate to see him play!

Other One

Let It Grow

Music never Stopped

Two of the few Weir/Hunter tunes are classics:  
Jack Straw and Greatest Story Ever Told.  

Feel like a Stranger 

Lost Sailor/Saint

Miracle

Black throated Wind is Ok

let it grow, cassidy, other one, victim or the crime

Because we heard Truckin so many times and it became part of everyday  cliche vocabulary

it's easy to dismiss but it's a good tune

and they loved it in Turlock Ca.

Not one voe for Sugar Mags ?

Salt Lake City

Estimated Prophet !!! Hello... Estimated. I think it’s the best thing he’s written. Fantastic groove and structure, distinct melody, great bridge, and has room to jam. An absolute masterpiece.

Jack Straw is another favorite, for the melody, the lyric, the shifting dynamics. A very well-written song. 

Lost Sailor, absolutely gorgeous song. I love it much more than Saint. If they had to drop one, I wish they would have dropped Saint and kept Sailor. The bridge is gorgeous. I just think Bobby got shy doing ballads. 

Weather Report Suite, the full version. 

Picasso Moon, this is actually one of Bob’s most inventive melodies. It’s something unique to Weir, nobody else writes music like that. It’s angular as hell but it rocks. Love it. I was always very stoked when they played Picasso. Kept Jerry on his toes playing those guitar lines.

Finally... Eternity, big fan of Eternity. Love the Dixon lyric, the bridge, the feel of the entire song is masterful. Love won’t ever die, y’all.

Jack Straw

Sugar Magnolia

The Music Never Stopped

Estimated Prophet

Cassidy

The Other One

Throwing Stones

Let It Grow

Hell In A Bucket

Victim Or The Crime

New Potato Caboose

My Brother Esau

Eternity

New Potato Caboose was sung by Bob, but not written by him. It’s a Phil Lesh & Bob Petersen song alongside Unbroken Chain, Pride of Cucamonga, and Revolutionary Hamstrung Blues. 

Robert Hunter interview from 2015...Why did you stop writing with Bob Weir?

There wasn’t a good close inter-relationship. It’s not Weir’s fault and I don’t think it’s my fault either. It just didn’t quite work. From my perspective, he wasn’t easy to work with. We’d write something and then he would want to rewrite it or add lines, which I didn’t care for. Jerry never did that. He liked what I gave him, and he did it. Bob and I both tried hard but he didn’t really care so much for hard, elaborate images that I used in songs. He wanted the songs to say something simpler. He voiced that. I said, “That’s what everybody writes. My own style is what I write.” There are some songs that Weir and I did that worked darn well: “Playing in the Band,” for instance. But we would sometimes work really, really hard only to have what we did disappear, which was frustrating. Like I remember working for days on a song, and then he didn’t like it and called his friend Barlow in. Barlow wrote the words for “Cassidy,” which is a beautiful and classic song, so I had no problem with him at all, but… I think he found it easier to work with Barlow, and with my blessing that’s what he did.

From dead.net....The tension between Weir and Hunter finally came to a head backstage at the Capitol Theater when, after an argument, probably about Bob’s addition of a line to ‘Sugar Magnolia’—‘[she] jumps like a Willys in four-wheel drive’—Hunter turned all responsibility for Bob’s lyrics over to Barlow, with the words, ‘Take him, he’s yours.’

Do I include Passenger as a Weir tune?  Music: Phil Lesh  Lyrics: Peter Monk aka Peter Zimels.

Peter Monk per the archive....In the late 60's acted as a spiritual figure in the extended Grateful Dead family, attending births and performing wedding ceremonies.  Carolyn "Mountain Girl" Adams Garcia on marrying Jerry: "We thought it would be a good idea. We thought it would work out and getting a place together in Marin was the plan. I’d been planning to get married for really a long time, it just hadn’t happened. So finally we found a time and a place and I don’t know, it just kind of came together. It was a beautiful ceremony. My friend Peter Zimels was a Tibetan monk. He did the whole thing in full Tibetan regalia with brass bells. It was delightful. We were backstage at the Oakland Auditorium under the stairs.

E S A U

I always loved Esau's slinky rhythms.

Oh snap, forgot that Phil and the other Bobby wrote New Potato Caboose.

This is an informative read on the song I found, including a photo of Pigpen's handwritten lyrics for it.  

https://www.dead.net/features/greatest-stories-ever-told/greatest-storie...

Not sure why Pigpen would have needed a set of lyrics?  Was he being considered for the lead vocal Weir got?  Was he adding background vocals?

Always thought the lyrics were poetic and intriguing and that the music had a psychedelic sense of wonder and possibility.  Wish it had hung around in the rotation of the repertoire.

I'm kicking myself for leaving Playing In The Band off my initial list.  Might be the most important tune Weir (with an assist from Mickey Hart) ever brought to the Grateful Dead.

Feel Like A Stranger, I Need A Miracle, Lazy Lightning/Supplication, and Greatest Story Ever Told are also very worthy Weir songs.

It's bizarre how much of his catalogue Dead & Co. don't perform.

Best Esau  of what I've heard and was at was 4/7/84

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/hzU7mjkOWn4

And rhe whole show is perfect studio playing!

Lets try again

https://archive.org/details/gd1984-04-07.146012.sbd.GEMS.flac1648

Incredible Playin' in the Band into UJB Mikey!

> Playing In The Band...Might be the most important tune Weir (with an assist from Mickey Hart) ever brought to the Grateful Dead.

And with an assist from David Crosby too.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PwwU_Pi93gM&t=354s

I thought Bobby's 2015 album "Blue Mountain" was spectacular, songwriting-wise. He had lots of help from Josh Ritter of course, but there are some really strong songs on that album, I think it's some of Bobby's best work (best studio work, certainly). Worth a listen if you haven't done so already. Not a stinker on the whole album, in my opinion.

I never get tired of P I T B when it's well played and not rushed. The 7-13-90 version from Raleigh (sbd) is a favorite latter day version.

1977 Fox Theater PITB  into UJB , Drums, Wheel, China Doll the slowly, quietly they go into

the Playing Reprise . It's so well done.