Angie Martoccio
Contact Angie Martoccio on X View all posts by Angie Martoccio July 15, 2026
Grateful Dead. BOB MINKIN PHOTOGRAPHY Remember the summer of 1985? Well, if you don’t, good news: Summer Magic 1985, the Grateful Dead‘s upcoming box set, arrives Sept. 18.
Summer Magic 1985 looks back on the band’s 20th anniversary run, dubbed the Twenty Years So Far Tour, across 20 CDs. It features seven previously unreleased shows: three evenings at the Greek Theatre in Berkeley, CA (6/14/85-6/16/85), Saratoga Performing Arts Center in New York (6/27/85), a rainy night at Hershey Park Stadium in Penn. (6/28/85); and Merriweather Post Pavilion in Columbia, MD (6/30/85-7/1/85). You can hear “Sugar Magnolia” from the June 30 date below.
David Lemieux, the Dead’s legacy manager and archivist, said in a statement that the momentous “Shakedown Street” from that same show is “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.”
