Songs Of Their Own - #8 "It Must Have Been The Roses" Alex Bleeker & The Freaks video free download

To celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Grateful Dead, JamBase teamed with Telefunken to produce the Songs Of Their Own video series. We began with a list of 100 Grateful Dead original songs (exclusively their tunes, not covers they often played) and tapped many of our favorite artists to record a cover version either at the JamBase office in San Francisco or at one of the many venues around town and beyond. No song was allowed to be covered twice, and today’s participants Alex Bleeker & The Freaks delivered “It Must Have Been The Roses.”

After its debut at the Winterland in San Francisco on February 22, 1974, “It Must Have Been The Roses” regularly remained in the band’s rotation throughout the rest of the 1970s and 1980s, though gradually becoming more and more rare, only being played once in 1989 and never more than four times in any single year after. The Robert Hunter/Jerry Garcia written song saw its final and lone 1995 performance on June 22 at the Knickerbocker Arena in Albany, New York.

Real Estate bassist Alex Bleeker brought along the members of his solo band Alex Bleeker & The Freaks to the JamBase offices to tape his session. They were in town to play a show with Woods at The Chapel in San Francisco, a gig that was serving as a warm-up for the annual Woodsist festival down in Big Sur. This session came together very last minute, and Alex and his bandmates drove straight from Los Angeles, sat in Bay Bridge traffic - got the take down on video as quickly as they could and then headed over to soundcheck.