The Free Counterpoint

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The New Sounds (10/20)

Agnes Martin, Untitled (1960)

It’s unofficial birthday month around here. Mine was 10/8. My big kid’s was 10/9 (and so was John Lennon’s and PJ Harvey’s, fwiw). My bigger kid’s was 10/17. My sister in-law, 10/6. I grew up with a guy who was born on 10/19. I went to college with a guy who was born on 10/16 (like Grateful Dead guitarist Bob Weir, fwiw). And there are more that I don’t need to list, except Bret Favre … 10/10. Libras, ftw. Rocktober rules.

Agnes Bernice Martin also rules. She was born in 1912 in Macklin, Saskatchewan and died in 2004 in Taos, New Mexico at age 92. Her life was one of accomplishment over struggle. She moved to Bellingham, Washington in 1931 to help a pregnant sister and took classes at Western Washington University. Then she moved to New York City and graduated from Columbia University in 1942. While in NYC, she became interested in modern art, but relocated to New Mexico for some time. She returned to NYC for her master’s degree in art, and then fell in with a group of artists at the Coenties Slip in Lower Manhattan – Robert Indiana, Ellsworth Kelly, Barnett Newman, and Betty Parsons. There, she explored her sexuality, but also experienced her schizophrenia (aural hallucinations, catatonia), undergoing electroshock therapy at Bellevue Hospital. In 1967, she disappeared and stopped creating.

Martin reemerged in the early-to-mid 1970s to some acclaim. Per the Wiki, where I ganked most of the bio info, she said in a 1989 interview, “Beauty and perfection are the same. They never occur without happiness.” She was elected to the Royal Canadian Academy of Arts in 2004.

An oft- and lazily-repeated 2015 Financial Times article called her body of work “an essay in discretion on inward-ness and silence.” The beginning of the quote is headily and obnoxiously overwritten. Come on: an essay in, or an essay on, pick one. And discretion might abide by an adjective (hushed or sly discretion, e.g.), but not if it’s already in service to another noun. (And honestly, wtf is up with the hyphen in inwardness. Huh?) Lemme edit. Anges Martin’s art is a discretionary essay about (or assay at) inwardness and silence.

I agree, and relate to both in both positive and negative ways. The former? I’m thoughtful and quiet. The latter? I’m self-directed/centered and uncommunicative. So I have a music blog, which feeds both sides. What’s the LN tag line? It’s not we write, you read. That’d be gross. It’s we write, you listen. Descriptive, not prescriptive. I’m mostly out of that equation, unless you pause long enough while you’re scrolling through these dumb intros for the important stuff. Which, why? I do them because it’s fun (to me) to mess with words. Skip the words, hear the sounds.

Like these. The New Sounds from October…

More soon.

JF

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Grateful Dead Monthly: Melkweg – Amsterdam, Netherlands 10/16/81

On Friday, October 16, 1981, the Grateful Dead played a concert at Melkweg in Amsterdam, Netherlands.

Melkweg is a legendary venue. From the Wiki:

“In the 19th century a sugar refinery was established on Lijnbaansgracht. In 1920, the milk company OVVV bought the factory and used it until closing in 1969. The building was closed for a year, but reopened as a cultural centre in 1970. It was only open for the summer; it featured a café, a restaurant and one hall for music and theatre. This was a success: Melkweg reopened in the summer of 1971 and 1972 before becoming a permanent venue since 1973.

In the years that followed, Melkweg became one of the most important pop venues of Amsterdam and the Netherlands. A meeting place for hippies in the 1970s and 1980s, the Melkweg embraced all music styles and has evolved into a multidisciplinary center for all music styles.”

Melkweg has several performance spaces, including the Max and the Old Hall (Oude Zaal), where the Dead played. The venue also features a cinema, a restaurant, and an art exhibition space. Melkweg has been run by a nonprofit organization since 1970.

Melkweg, Amsterdam; Avondopname met nieuwe zaal

When I said legendary, I meant it. Melkweg has hosted a plethora of famous bands over the past 50 years. I searched this a bunch of ways and couldn’t find a definitive list, but (trust me here) such a list would be long and distinguished. Here’s a start: The Ramones, Nirvana, Fugazi, U2, Prince, The Byrds, Hawkwind, David Byrne, The Cure, Ween (hey, BH), Rage Against the Machine, and Sonic Youth. (Sonic Youth rules. And, yes, Lee Ranaldo loves the Dead.)

And, of course, the Good Ol’ Grateful Dead. Ja veneer! (Google Translate tells me that that means ja wohl in Dutch.) In 1981, the Dead were in Europe again after a nine-year absence. After a sorta-typical, left-coast summer tour that included a Las Vegas date at the Alladin, as well as three nights at the Greek Theater in Berkeley, the band headed east for shows Bethlehem, PA (Lehigh University); Buffalo, NY; and Landover, MD before jumping across the pond to Edinburgh, Scotland on 9/30. From there, they headed to London for four shows at the Rainbow Theater, then to Copenhagen, Denmark. Then Bremen, Munich, and Russelsheim, West Germany.

The next show was supposed to be in France. It wasn’t. I’m gonna tap out and let the boss explain. Ladies and gentlemen, a hearty LN Grateful Deaditor, ECM…

[Some Dutch artist’s rendition of ECM circa 1981 when he was a young wizard with a hella strong beard game.]

The OOPS Concert. The Grateful Dead. Playing an acoustic and electric set. With instruments that were bought, rented and/or borrowed. In a tiny, 1,500-person-capacity nightclub that was once a milk factory (Melkweg = Milky Way). In Amsterdam, the hashish capital of the world. On Bobby’s 34th birthday. Oh yeah, and the band busted out the first and only “Hully Gully,” the first “Gloria” since the 60’s and the first “Lovelight” since 1972 – a sacred Pigpen song that nobody thought the band would ever play again. It doesn’t sound real. But it was….on this day [tomorrow, actually] 40 YEARS AGO! 

[Happy Birthday, Bobby. Does that digital watch have a calculator?]

There are a handful of shows that are so epic and legendary that we all wish we could have attended. Veneta, Cornell and the closing of Fillmore East & Winterland are a few that quickly come to mind. This show at the famed Melkweg Club in Amsterdam falls in that elite category. Rock Scully wrote that this was the Dead’s “last great adventure.” He probably is right.

But before we get into this legendary show at the Melkweg, let’s acknowledge the band’s storied history with The Netherlands. They played two legendary shows there on the great Europe ’72 tour. The May 10th show in Amsterdam has an otherworldly 35+ minute “Other One” with “Bobby McGee” sandwiched in between and the May 11th show in Rotterdam has a massive 47+ minute Dark Star that is probably the longest version ever played. To put the headiness of that show in perspective, here is what one reviewer had to say on headyversion.com: “If u put me on the show, “Naked and Afraid,” Let’s say in the Amazon…and I can take one item…knife…fire starter…etc. I’m bringing 5/11/1972.”

Nearly a decade later, the band returned to the Netherlands for these shows in 1981 at the Melkweg. Unlike the shows in 1972 with marathon-long, mind-bending psychedelic jams, these shows at the Melkweg have virtually no jamming which is surprising when you consider that the Melkweg is a hash bar. By the way, am I the only one who thinks that the band missed a huge opportunity to play “High Time?” Anyway, perhaps the reason for the lack of jamming had something to do with the fact that they didn’t feel comfortable getting “weird” because they were not playing their own instruments. We will get to the music soon.

From a historical perspective, this would be the last time the Grateful Dead ever played in the Netherlands. Here is the backstory of how the Melkweg shows happened.

With a day off between the gigs in Bremen and Munich, Bobby and Jerry played a short, seven-song acoustic set at the Melkweg on October 11th. A 17-minute video of the first four songs can be viewed on YouTube. They had so much fun that they were eager to return with the rest of the band. As luck would have it, the planets aligned and an opportunity arose. Flooding rains cancelled the band’s two shows in the south of France, so after the show in Russelheim on October 13th, they now had a few free days open in their tour schedule. Jerry and Bobby, with Scully’s help, talked the rest of the band and their crew into returning to Amsterdam to play two impromptu gigs at the Melkweg. The one condition the crew had was that they travel light, leaving their heavy load of instruments and equipment behind. That is the reason why the band played with different equipment. According to photographer Bob Minkin @minkinphotography, who attended this concert, Jerry and Bobby bought guitars in Amsterdam for these shows. For the gear nerds out there, Jerry was on a Yamaha SC1200 (looks like a Stratocaster), and Bobby on a Fender Telecaster. Phil apparently brought his own bass guitar with him to these gigs. I am assuming that the drums were rented/borrowed. I can’t tell from the video whether Brent is playing a baby grand piano or an electric piano. Given the small stage, I’m guessing that it was an electric piano that was also probably rented/borrowed.

Since these shows were put together at the last minute, there was very little notice to the public other than the scattered “OOPS” posters in Amsterdam’s Leidplein district and there were no advance ticket sales. It was first come, first serve at the door. The ticket price worked out to be about $7 USD(!). Back in the late 80s, a tape-trader friend of mine told me that his sister was one of the lucky fans who attended this legendary concert, while she was in college studying abroad for a semester. Gosh, talk about feeling jelly!

Fortunately, like Veneta, the Melkweg show is well documented. Good copies of a soundboard audio source have been in circulation for a long time. I had a low-generation cassette that I acquired sometimes in the mid-80’s when I started my collection. To my surprise, I recently discovered that a video of this legendary performance now circulates! What we have looks like a single-camera house shoot. The only downside is that the lighting is very poor. A single spotlight shines down on the middle of the stage which illuminates Bobby only. Jerry and the rest of the band are largely in the shadows. Finally, famed Dead photographer Bob Minkin (@minkinphotography on Instagram) attended this show, took many of the pictures featured here, and even wrote an incredible review of his experience in the Taping Compendium Vol. 2, some of which I used in my write-up.

[The Grateful Seconds blog has a post about the two Melkweg shows, featuring pics of the Compendium reviews and even better pics from the shows. Worth a peek.]

Now let’s get into the music…

Cindy Peress, an acoustic blues guitarist opened the show at about 10:00 PM. Her set was well received. At 11:00 PM, the Dead came onstage after squeezing through the audience to get there. As the band takes the stage and is tuning up, Phil starts clowning over the PA saying “Oooooops, Oooooops” and that this was an informal evening. The audience sings “Happy Birthday” to Bobby who is celebrating his 34th birthday and serenades him with a bouquet of daisies to which Jerry replies, “touching, touching.” None of this is on the video. The video picks up as the house PA system is turned on.

The first set is a delightful eight-song acoustic set with the full band. It is very much like the ones they played in the fall of 1980 at the Warfield Theatre in San Francisco and Radio City Music Hall in New York City (the acoustic live album Reckoning from those run of shows had been released on April 1, 1981). It’s a fun, feel-good set of music that is highlighted by splendid versions of “Bird Song,” “Oh, Babe it Ain’t No Lie, “and of course, “Ripple.” Speaking of “Ripple,” this is the second to last time the Dead would ever play it. The final performance was seven years later (played electric) at the Capital Centre on September 3, 1988. And speaking of final performances, this was the last time the full band performed an acoustic set like this. It is interesting to note that the band’s last official acoustic set until the acoustic/electric shows in 1980 was played on November 8, 1970 at the Capitol Theatre. That show has a similar magical vibe as the Melkweg show in that both shows had unusual setlists that included songs the band performed only once – “Mystery Train” and “My Babe” (11/8/70) and “Hully Gully” (10/16/81). That leads us to the Melkweg’s second set.

[Photo credit: Bob Minkin]

The second set, which is electric and does not include the usual Drums/Space segment, clocks in at just a little more than 70 minutes. Instead of playing long, weird jams, the band opts mostly for straight-ahead, garage-band rock and roll which works perfectly. Also notable is the fact that the band turns in a set of mostly old-school, classic Dead songs from their repertoire. Other than “Samson & Delilah,” which entered the repertoire in 1976, the rest of the set consists of songs that have a vintage no later than 1971 (I consider “The Wheel” to be part of Garcia’s first solo album which was recorded in 1971). In addition, the set includes unusually placed jams and some exciting bust-outs that either were never performed before or had not been performed in a long time.

The set opening, “Playing in the Band,” which is one of the band’s pinnacle songs for stretching out seems like a promising start but it clocks in at only a meager 11 minutes(!). Jerry is without his effects pedal and Brent is without his B-3 organ so it’s interesting to hear how they work around it throughout the set.

[Photo credit: Bob Minkin]

As things in “PITB” begin to wind down we get the first surprise of the evening when Bobby somewhat abruptly leads the band into the first and only performance of The Olympics’ 1960 hit, “Hully Gully.” It is loose and is probably an unrehearsed birthday indulgence…but it is also big fun for sure.

Next up, making a rare appearance in the pre-“Drums” slot of the show, is an equally rare stand-alone version of “The Wheel.” A luscious introduction followed by some nice three-part vocal harmonies help serve the intended purpose of slowing things down so that everybody can catch their collective breath in the packed, sweaty club. As the last chords wash out, Bobby turns to the drummers to signal “Samson & Delilah.” This is a tight, speedy version.

On the soundboard recording (not the video, which is edited) you can hear a band discussion in the background leading to the next surprise – “Gloria,” the garage rock song written by Van Morrison for his band, Them in 1964. You can hear the crowd going nuts as they recognize the classic 3-chord riff. The band played a loose, instrumental-only version of “Gloria” during a long jam out of “He’s Gone” on December 1, 1979 in Pittsburgh but this was the first full version with vocals since the 1960’s (1965?), This is balls-to-the-wall rock. Jerry’s guitar is cranked up with distortion, Bobby is growling the lyrics, Billy’s shaking maracas(!) and the audience is screaming the chorus. 

As “Gloria” slows down, there is a little free-form jam that follows where Phil becomes more prominent and appears to be leading the band. At one point he suggests the “Lovelight” riff which is taken up by all and leads to a magical transition into the first post-Pigpen version (last played on the Europe ’72 tour – May 24, 1972). For years, I thought the band accidentally stumbled into “Lovelight” based solely on repeated listenings of the audio recording. But with the video now circulating, we can see how casually Bobby walks to the microphone to sing the first verse leading me to believe that this was probably planned. Either way, it takes nothing away from this incredible moment in Grateful Dead history. It is also worth noting that this performance of “Lovelight” was a one-off at the time. Aside from two “special” performances played with guests (Boz Scaggs on 5/28/82 and Etta James on 12/31/82), it didn’t become part of the band’s repertoire again until 1984.

[Photo credit: Bob Minkin]

The Melkweg performance of “Lovelight” is an interesting hybrid that has vestiges of the way they used to play it with Pig and the way they would play it in the future. One thing is for sure – this version is speedy! Garcia’s fingers are flying during his smoldering solo at the end. And by the way, that’s THREE “Bobby songs” in a row for those who like to keep track of that sort of thing. Certainly not a common occurrence but then again, nothing about this show is ordinary. Perhaps the extra songs were the band’s gift to the Birthday Boy.

As “Lovelight” comes to an end, the final chord sustains but the drummers keep chugging along. Jerry starts picking the notes to “GDTRFB.” This version is so speedy that it threatens to derail at any moment.  “Playin’ Reprise” and “Black Peter” provide a much needed breather for a collective cool-down from the high energy that preceded it.I mentioned it earlier, but it is interesting to hear the difference in how Brent plays these two songs on the piano as compared with the usual B-3 organ. Garcia’s outro heavy solo in “Black Peter” conjures up images of a smokey blues bar.

Bobby leads the band into a celebratory, show-closing “Sugar Magnolia” that brings down the house. Brent takes a rare solo in this song and lays down some of his finest barrelhouse, honky-tonk piano before handing it off to Jerry who brings it on home in the best way possible. 

Although the rabid audience was calling for more, there was no encore that night. None was needed. The house lights came on at 2:00 AM and Rock Scully stepped onstage to make an announcement that does not appear on the video: “The band had a wonderful time here in Amsterdam and this was a very special treat for them and a gift to us from you guys and we’re very sorry but we are beat and we’re playing in the middle of a tour and we’re really pleased that we could do this. So, thank you!”

[Ed mentioned that parts of his listening notes are excerpted from the 2016 edition of the Unofficial 31 Days of Dead, and were posted on December 29, 2016. Dude even footnotes himself. Dayum, respek.]

Transport to the Charlie Miller remaster of the soundboard recording HERE. And transport to a matrix recording HERE. Oh, and the aforementioned YouTube…

Finally, Bob Minkin has a Kickstarter for a new photo book called JUST BOBBY, featuring tomorrow’s b-day boy. Definitely worth a peek!

More soon.

JF  

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The New Sounds (9/21)

René Magritte, Le Banquet (1958)

The setting sun’s sad, oblique light shines through the trees. It’s literal to the surrealists, figurative to the rest of us. But for them, and us, autumn is well and truly here.

René François Ghislain Magritte was a Belgian surrealist painter, and a fave around LNHQ. His work still resonates (or should, anyway) to today’s rock kids and their fascination with the irony of juxtaposition. He was into memes before memes, brahs.

His most recognizable painting is probably “The Treachery of Images” from 1929 – the Ceci n’est pas une pipe one. You know it.

The translation is “this is not a pipe.” And it’s not. It’s a rendering of a pipe. Duh. The title kills. Images are treacherous. They tell you only what they tell you, and nothing more. The rest is gloss. Remember that.

And remember these.

The New Sounds from September…

More soon.

JF

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Grateful Dead Monthly: Lindley Meadows (Golden Gate Park) – San Francisco, CA 9/28/75

On Sunday, September 28, 1975, the Grateful Dead played a concert at Golden Gate Park’s Lindley Meadows in San Francisco, California.

Lindley Meadows

From the Wiki: “In the 1860s, San Franciscans began to feel the need for a spacious public park similar to [NYC’s] Central Park. Golden Gate Park was carved out of unpromising sand and shore dunes that were known as the Outside Lands, in an unincorporated area west of San Francisco’s then-current borders.” Frederick Law Olmsted was the driver. He was the guy who conceptualized Central Park, and later Jackson and Washington Parks in Chicago, as well as the whole shebang for Chi’s 1893 Columbian Exposition and most of the nearby U of C campus. Olmstead “proposed a plan for a park using native species suited for San Francisco’s dry climate; however, the proposal was rejected in favor of a Central Park-style park needing extensive irrigation.” Nice try, man.

The park got a Commissioner in 1871, and the San Francisco Recreation and Parks Department began overseeing its development. Between then and now, it’s been basically urban green space. Per the Wiki, GGP is roughly the same shape as Central Park, but twenty-percent bigger. It’s bounded by the Pacific Ocean on the West and the Haight on the East. And it’s the third most-visited park in the United States, after Central Park and the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C.

So Lindley Meadows?

See the oval on the left side of that sat pic? It’s Golden Gate Park Polo Field. Apparently, Lindley Meadows is the green area that sits just above its northeast corner. Guys, I’ve never been to California, much less SF. I’m not a super-traveled person, so some of these venue write-ups seem poser-y. They’re not intended to be. Apologies for the lack of local knowledge, and feel free to add anything like that below the line.

The Dead played exactly four shows in 1975. On 3/25, they played a benefit for San Francisco Students Need Athletics, Culture, and Kicks (SF SNACK) with the Doobies, the Starship, Santana, Dylan & Baez, and Neil Young. The band’s set was comprised of the Blues for Allah material that everybody pretends to dig (but nobody really does). I’m not familiar with that show. On 6/17, they played at Winterland, and the setlist was also BFA-forward. I’m not familiar with that show, either, but, according to the Grateful Dead of the Day blog, it gets attention nowadays. On 8/13, they played at the Great American Music Hall – that’s One from the Vault, and we’ve covered it before. Finally, on 9/28, they played at Lindley Meadows. Single set show, which clocks in at just under two hours. A lot of BFA material, but a lot of well-toured and well-beloved chestnuts, too.

Photo credit: Alvan Meyerowitz

In a 2008 post about this show, the Grateful Dead Listening Guide blog makes two points. First, there’s an absolutely epic audience recording. To wit: “[T]his is one of the audience tapes that historically was said to have been recorded by the band (Phil Lesh in particular) from the stage itself … It is absolutely one of the very best of the best AUDs. But Phil didn’t tape it. Phil didn’t make any tapes.”

GDLB continues, and this is great:

“[B]efore this century [meaning the ’00s], if you weren’t in the most enshrined trading circles, you couldn’t find a complete copy of this AUD to save your life (and the real deal master itself only just went into circulation in May 2008). When you might have run into this recording (I was lucky enough to score 45 minutes of the show on cassette about 12 years ago), there was no way you could accept that it was an AUD at all. Clearly Phil and the band had to have had a hand in making this tape, right? It just sounded WAY too good. And there was the fact that there were a painful amount of right channel dropouts throughout the tape which allowed you to appreciate the quality, but never really left you wanting to listen to the tape again because of the pain involved in those dropouts.

Then the SBD came on the scene, sounding super duper. Someone digitized the AUD (a multi-gen version) and spent the time patching the dropouts with the left channel – palatable now, the AUD was a dizzying drink from the fountain of audience magic. Well friends, that was nothing…

I’m not going to attempt to document the story of taper Bob Menke here on these pages. Let’s just say that BadBob (his own moniker) bleeds the history of Grateful Dead taping and collecting. He’s one of those fellows whose name lands in the inner circle when playing the dart game of Dead tapers. ‘Nuff said. Menke’s story has been one of clouded half truths, misunderstandings, and mystery in the eyes of tape collectors. Over the last number of years, the real Bob Menke has made his way into the digital scene, so a lot of the mystery has faded. But, it sure did fuel the fires that made this particular tape one of such grand story telling. This is one to tell the grandkids about, to be sure.

So Menke recently digitally transferred his master, and the MOTB crew [dunno] finished it off with heroic editing (glad I didn’t face this task). And now we have this AUD for the ages, in its most beautiful glory.

The recording is so good, it makes the AUD vs. SBD debate seem silly. It’s a little unfair, like bringing an NBA all star off the bench at a junior high basketball game. So much so, that it’s fair for a SBD supporter to cry foul – ‘Oh, well, 09/28/75! You can’t talk to me about that show. That’s not fair.’ Regardless, when you want to know what it might have sounded like pressed up against the stage for this hallmark Dead show in the year after they retired (you may never see them again), this is it my friends. Cripplingly good.”

There’s a link to the Menke AUD below, but on to the second point. Apparently, the band was “high” – as in, their performance was chemically enhanced by LSD. Again, GDLG:

“Then there’s the well enough substantiated story that the band was higher than kites for this show. While it has always been very well understood that this band played under the influence of LSD many many many times, there are some shows that come to mind when Deadheads talk about shows where the band was ‘known’ to have been chemically altered for sure: 08/27/72, 05/11/78, and 09/28/75 among them. So, this places an extra special sparkle to re-living the day’s concert when listening.

Also, there is the fact that a baby was born during the show [check banter after Slipknot!], with the band and stage announcers doing their best to help.”

Acid, a baby, and no deaths? It’s like a good time Altamont. Right, Jerry?

GDOTD offers some listening notes:

“It opens with a sharp and focused Help On The Way before heading into a moody Slipknot!, which rages in the latter half. Rather than transitioning into Franklin’s at that point, as they had during the two other times they had paired those songs, the Slipknot! ends, and they launch into a smoking The Music Never Stopped. On that tune, Donna adds lovely backing vocals, as she does throughout the afternoon.”

More GDOTD:

“[A]fter a bit of banter, they finally hit the Franklin’s Tower, playing in mind-meld form throughout with Phil throwing down and the entire band contributing to a seismic jam after the ‘listen to the music play’ line. Then, Bobby announces that they will be playing a cowboy tune, before rolling into Big River, throughout which Keith serves up some incredible fills. After It Must Have Been The Roses, a marvelous Truckin’ takes off and eventually steers into a blistering jam … [T]he boys slow things up just a notch, Phil rains down a series of bombs, and Jerry streaks around before ceding the stage to the drummers. The Drums themselves are transcendent, but the Stronger Than Dirt that follows is face melting. What’s more, the transition into Not Fade Away is rapturous as the drummers drive on the change, but the rest of the guys resist, teasing out the last of the Stronger Than Dirt theme while slowly falling to the inevitable momentum of NFA. And what a Not Fade Away it turns out to be with serious, imaginative jamming all the way through to the Going Down The Road Feeling Bad, which is itself resplendent. Then One More Saturday Night caps the show in rocking, high-energy fashion.”

That’s cool, but there are listening notes, and then there’s our guy. Without further ado, here’s everyone’s favorite. The master of zero disasters, the king of schwing, the 88’s tickler, the Peloton’s boss, the cherry on top, the sun behind that one annoying cloud, the reason that outside cats come back home, the guy who rolled his eyes at all those Dos Equis commercials b/c #beentheredonethat, the Ig influencer behind @31daysofdead, and the better half of this gotdam thing. Man/myth/legend is just a trope until you meet him in person. He’s handsome; he’s erudite. He’s a man beyond description and, in his rare spare time, a member of Jehovah’s favorite choir. He’ll break it down, fo’realize. Ladies and Gentlemen, LN Grateful Deaditor, ECM…

“Hey now, kids! Today we’ve got some ‘Hiatus Dead’ for you. As most of you know, Hiatus Dead refers to that period of time between 10/20/74 (Winterland) and 6/3/76 (Portland, OR) when the Grateful Dead took some time off from touring. During this period, the band played only four shows, all of them in 1975. The show JF and I are featuring in this month’s edition of Grateful Dead Monthly – September 28, 1975 – is the last of those 4 shows and it would be the last show for over 8 months. This show is unique for a lot of other reasons too. First, it was a free show in Lindley Meadows in Golden Gate Park at a time when that kind of thing didn’t happen anymore like it did back in the 60’s. Another thing the band hadn’t done in a long while was play a show while they were tripping. Legend has it that they revisited that part of their past as well on this day. Although this has never been confirmed, it sure makes for a good story and at least seems plausible given the overall strangeness and looseness of the music compared with their very tight performance at the Great American Music Hall just a month prior on August 13th. In addition, unlike most GD shows where the band is virtually mute, here there is a lot of funny and odd stage banter – Bobby’s joke about getting around to all the old favorites that they can remember, the calls for a doctor to attend to the woman in the audience that was going into labor and Phil clarifying for the crowd that Truckin’ is NOT pronounced Truck-ing.

Another factor making this show unique is the weather which was unseasonably chilly for September. With temperatures down in the 50’s, it felt more like November than September which brings us to another unique aspect about this show – the band’s attire. Instead of Bobby wearing his signature Lacoste polo shirt and cutoff shorts, on this day he is wearing a Pendelton jacket with bell-bottoms. And, Garcia is rocking a leather jacket with Puma sneakers(!) While we are talking about attire, let’s also talk about instruments. This was allegedly the debut of Jerry’s new guitar, Travis Bean. It’s the guitar that he would use until 9/28/77 when he started playing his Doug Irwin Wolf again. Keith plays an electric Fender Rhodes the entire show. These two instruments certainly influenced the sound of the band that day.

Which brings us to the MUSIC…

The Grateful Dead played one set which clocked in at approximately 1 hour and 45 minutes. They opened with Help>Slipknot. It’s the third one ever but just the second with lyrics. Jerry botches the last verse. It happens. Slipknot! is the third one but the first not going into Franklin’s Tower. It is played slowly, but deliberately, and they pull off the complex arrangement with flying colors. However, things come to a rather abrupt end when they call a halt because Jerry apparently breaks a string – he is audibly absent in the closing riffs. This is the point when the woman is having a baby too. 

Once everything on stage is ironed out and a doctor is located for the woman in labor, the band launches into the Music Never Stopped. It is only the second performance and is a mere 6 minutes. Donna crushes her verse. This early version has only a few bars of the drifty mid-jam section and then charges right into the ending jam which only hints at the potential that it would soon become. Once the song concludes there are more stage announcements. A doctor has been located and now there are pleas for a stretcher.

“Oh, man. That’s weird. A stretcher?”

They Love Each Other is up next – perhaps inspired by the woman having the baby(?). Either way, it’s the first in over 1½ years and the first without the bridge section. This performance has a unique sound and tempo that is played somewhere in between the peppy versions from the 1973-74 era and the slower versions from the 1976 and later era. It is almost reggae-like. Jerry gives it a sensitive reading – sweet and subdued in its expressiveness. Afterwards Phil comes to the microphone to tell the father of the newborn child that his help is needed (Help on the Way?). That’s when Bobby comes to the microphone to assure the fans who are calling out requests that ‘we will get around to all the old favorites that we can remember.’ Cheers and laughter ensue to which Bobby responds, ‘you wouldn’t be laughing if you knew what that meant.’

Bobby cameltoe, ftw.

With the the band launches into a spirited version of one of their oldest songs from their first album – Beat it on Down the Line. Maybe this was a musical message to the father of the newborn baby to get moving and help his wife(?) Weir’s old buddy and bandmate from Kingfish, Mattew Kelly joins on harmonica. His playing is faint, but present, and adds a nice counterpoint to Jerry’s guitar. 

The band completes the piece of their musical triptych that is missing due to the equipment and baby interruptions by playing a stand-alone Franklin’s Tower from a cold start. It is the third version ever and it is exquisite. The drums are groovin’ and Jerry’s on fire especially after the ‘if you get confused, listen to the music play’ line. Great call and response at the end. This is the song that made it onto the abbreviated version [featuring one song from every year] of the box-set 30 Trips Around the Sun that appears on Spotify.

There are more calls from the audience for songs – apparently somebody is calling for Truckin’ but Phil does not like the way the fan is pronouncing it. ‘Did I hear someone say TRUCK-ING? That’s not how you say it. You don’t say TRUCK-ING. But anyway, we’re not gonna play that now. We’re gonna play something else.’ Weir then comes to the microphone to announce that ‘Billy would like to make a small point to the fact that we’re playing a cowboy tune.’ That leads into rootin-tootin’ version of Big River which has nice solos from Jerry and Keith. 

A letter-perfect reading of It Must Have Been The Roses follows. Jerry’s voice is at its pure, sweet unaffected peak. Excellent vocal harmonies from Jerry and Donna. Keith’s work on the electric piano provides the perfect accompaniment.

Phil returns to his Truck-ING banter which signals that the band is now ready to play it. Weir warns the crowd that he’s not going to remember the words, and he makes good on his promise by not only forgetting most of them, but also forgetting to sing part of the second verse at all.  No worries. The jam that follows is fantastic thanks in large part to all the tight material the band had been playing over the past year when they were rehearsing and recording Blues for Allah. There is some heated controversy among fans about the jam that comes out of Truckin’. Some have said that it is The Eleven. In fact, the 30 Trips box set refers to it that way. I don’t hear it but it’s an exciting jam for sure! To me, it sounds more like a King Solomon’s/Stronger Than Dirt groove which is what the band segues into following Drums. This is the fourth and final King Solomon’s. It’s definitely the loosest.There are a few rough spots at first it recovers and maintains a solid groove.

There is a loose transition into Not Fade Away. The lead in is funky and rockin.’ Garcia peels off a slide-flavored, acid-drenched solo which is the start of a long, spacey transition to GDTRFB which is also funky with some amazing energy. Saturday Night caps the show in rocking, high-energy fashion. a hoarse-sounding Phil bids the audience farewell, ‘Let’s have another party like this again sometime.’ And with that, the band slipped back into hibernation mode and would not perform again for another eight months.”

As Ed mentioned, this show is part of the massive 30 Trips Around the Sun box set.

And it’s still on the Live Music Archive. Transport to the soundboard recording HERE, a matrix recording HERE, and Menke’s audience recording HERE. According to Menke,

“It was an overcast day and we got there early. About 8:30 in the morning. That is how we ended up about 10-15 feet from the stage. The mics were mounted on broom sticks (handheld) and they were split about 20 feet apart. The upfront vocals I believe are the product of a small (relative to PA speakers) speaker on the floor of the stage next to the right PA column. The vocals seem to be blasting from that speaker. Another very intersting point is the fact that the Jefferson Starship opened and their sound from the same PA absolutely sucked. Nothing approaching the clarity and sound quality the Dead got from the same system.”

There you go.

More soon.

JF

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The New Sounds (8/21)

Paul Cézanne, Study of Foliage (1900-04)

That was quick. Summer. It flew by faster than a Fauci opening pitch. Oh, wait. That was last summer. Duh. You remember, the pandemic summer? Before the vaccines, when we were still trying to figure how to navigate a socially-distanced and mostly-masked season of sun and fun? Those were heady days. Guys, we sacrificed alot. And by alot, I mean ALOT. And we learned even more about ourselves. Like, for example, how to set aside our personal freedoms for the common good.

And once we hit 2021, and Pfizer and Moderna and J&J got approved, we could finally, finally be optimistic. We did it. We made it through the pandemic. We got shots, and we knocked Covid on its a$$. Boom. And everything got back to the old normal. Great job! Seriously, what a great job we did! So dang proud.

Real quick. The header image is by Cézanne. I’m pretty sure that he hasn’t been cancelled yet, though he did hang with Gaugin. (Not being ironic. I’m fine with cancelling bad ppl. Bob Dylan is one of my favorite artists of all time, and I haven’t listened to second of his music since he got provisionally cancelled. There’s other music.) Anyway, MOMA in NYC currently has an exhibition of PC’s drawerings. I’d like to see that, but I don’t live in that city. And delta.

The New Sounds from August…

More soon.

JF

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Grateful Dead Monthly: Gaelic Park – New York, NY 8/26/71

Fifty years ago today, on Thursday, August 26, 1971, the Grateful Dead played a concert at Gaelic Park in New York City.

Gaelic Park is located at West 240th Street and Broadway, five miles north and east of Yankee Stadium, in the Bronx. In 1926, the Gaelic Athletic Association purchased it to host the Gaelic Games. What are Gaelic Games? I’m a sliver Irish (just learned that a few years ago from a cousin who did some DNA stuff), but I didn’t know about such games until I asked the Google machine. Here you go, from the Wiki:

“Gaelic games (Irish: Cluichí Gaelacha) are sports played in Ireland under the auspices of the Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA). They include Gaelic football, hurling, Gaelic handball and rounders. Women’s versions of hurling and football are also played: camogie, organised by the Camogie Association of Ireland, and ladies’ Gaelic football, organised by the Ladies’ Gaelic Football Association. While women’s versions are not organised by the GAA (with the exception of handball, where men’s and women’s handball competitions are both organised by the GAA Handball organisation), they are closely associated with it.”

Some to unpack there. What’s Gaelic football? It’s basically rugby. (The rules are probably way different, but this is a music blog, so don’t judge.) And hurling? Rugby with a small ball and sticks that look like sporty pizza paddles. (Again, don’t judge.) Gaelic handball? Racquetball, except you use your hands and you’re outside, not in some bougie health club from the ’80s. Finally, rounders? It’s actually alot like baseball. Pretty cool.

Why were the Dead there? A 9/2/71 piece in the Village Voice by Carman Moore, now archived on the Grateful Dead Sources blog, said that Gotham promoter Howard Stein, a Bill Graham competitor who booked the Dead to play at the Cap Theater in Port Chester, NY and the Academy of Music in NYC, had turned “the drab little Riverdale soccer field … into a summer rock mini-festival.” (Check out the poster above.) Moore’s writing has an early-70s sizzle, and he refers to his colleague, now-legendary rock scribe Robert Christgau. Here’s an excerpt:

“Last week’s Grateful Dead concert up at Gaelic Park was a usual Dead session, meaning that the band-to-fan-to-band electro-chemical process for which rock music is famed was on like high mass at Easter. Although I think I know most of the time what they are doing musically (Christgau will like this notion); I don’t quite understand them electro-chemically. Like the New York Knicks of two seasons ago, they can do excellent things together though they are not a group of deathless superstars. Garcia gets his songs across, but he can’t sing, and Bob Weir’s voice rises to about average…maybe better when he gets to screaming and the music sweeps him along. I still find it difficult to recognize the Dead songs that aren’t “Truckin'” or “St. Stephen” one from the other. I am not one of their fans, but seem to be one of their admirers. Their music speaks in a special language to their live listeners, and that language has the vocabulary of everybody else, but a convoluted syntax all its own. The note sequences are not completely dependent upon musical factors but are also dictated by how involved the band feels and also upon what kind of heat the audience is giving off. I’m trying to get to some essences of this thing.

The drama of a Dead concert revolves around the fact that wherever the band plays they know that a certain number (several tons) of their partisans will be there and that their crowd knows the Dead potential to excite them, but they also know that the Dead may not get into gear until the crowd begins to apply some heat, and so forth. Both parties also know that the concert will be long enough and informal enough for anything to happen on either side of the footlights, and so audiences improvise (smoke, go to the hot dog stand, kiss and snuggle, cheer, dance, listen like star-struck fools) just like their musician friends on stage (who play light and funny for awhile, retire backstage awhile, stand around, or get lost in a piece and turn on the heavy jets). Like good lovers, the Grateful Dead know the secrets of good foreplay, taking your time, surprising the partner for awhile, and then just reacting for a spell.”

The timing of the show seems odd. The band was on the East Coast in July, but began August back in Cali – LA, SD, Berkeley – before a three-night run at Chicago’s historic Auditorium Theater. Then they trekked back to NYC. Our resident Deaditor ECM explains that aspect: “This show was supposed to be played the day before the Yale Bowl concert on July 30, but some issues with the equipment trucks and/or weather prevented it from happening from the scheduled date. There are a few stories on the web about people who didn’t get the message (no twitter back then!) and dropped some acid only to show up to an empty stadium. Haha!”

Moore said that the show reminded him of “a high school stadium I used to know – low stands, unfulfilled infield grass, mud holes here and there, beer sold at one end in some quantity.” He continued:

“The formal shape of the concert was a general crescendo, light at the beginning and heavy-groovy at the end – not a shooting-star, call-the-law finale, just a heightened physical-emotional climate…the goods delivered as promised…sort of like good preaching in a church known to be a happy place. I did not enjoy their country-westernish opening tunes; maybe they didn’t either, because the pieces were awfully short. But by the three-quarter mark they had involved themselves, the crowd, and me too.

First they got the rhythm engaged and finally, courtesy of Jerry Garcia’s lead and interplays with Lesh and Weir, they went into the soloing and jamming which are the real magic music territory of this band. Much is made of the Dead soloists, but it became clear to me by last Thursday that bassist Phil Lesh plus those two drummers create the atmosphere that makes the Dead thing possible. The drummers were exceptionally understated, but Lesh kept bopping and thrumming away, heavily at all times, until his patterns were consistently getting the other players off. In the middle of “St. Stephen” there was a special coming together: Lesh had found a nice ambiguous but compelling set of licks; Garcia eased into a solo; Weir strummed a cross-time lick over all of it; it built; it quieted; Garcia started to play strange classical kind of lines; the drums dropped out; the audience got quiet; nothing at all could be predicted for a minute or so; then Lesh began to grope his way out with two chords and rhythms which began to regularize; audience began to jump and then to clap; guitars began to straighten out; the band came home to the cheers of the fans. Good music-making. The listener goes home without a little tune to whistle, but he hears music. As if they were finishing off some personal solos based over the last riffs heard, the fans went out of Gaelic Park without a thousand encores and without a lot of fuss on the streets outside.

It’s all very interesting, surprising, and I guess mystifying as before. All I know is that the Dead, or their fans, or the combination of both lure you into planning to return when they’re all assembled and back in town again.”

Apparently, there was some grief about bootlegs at this show. The GD Sources blog has a post that archives a 10/6/71 piece by the excellently-handled Basho Katzenjammer (Basho, the 17th Century Japanese haiku master; Katzenjammer, the German word for hangover) that gripes about an army of 200# “muscle freaks” at the direction of tour manager Sam Cutler liberating a handful of tapes from 100# weakling Johnny Lee. It’s a truly fun read. An excerpt:

“The biggest piece of shit spewing from Cutler’s mouth is about the reasons the Dead have for being so pissed off: they don’t like the quality (remember Garcia’s line in “I Got No Chance of Losin”? He says, “I’m only in it for the gold.” Yeah, music has a way of being more honest than the artist intends it to be at times…) The “quality”? Anyone who has bought a bootleg recently will know and agree that the bootleg stereo album called “Grateful Dead” is one of the best underground products yet. The tape was taken from a concert the group did at Winterland, on the coast a few months back. Yeah, Garcia fucks up a bit on “Casey Jones,” and Pigpen’s ego may have been deflated a bit by his voice coming over poorly on “Good Loving” but that was a concert. You do a concert and you stand by your performance, good or bad. That’s show business.

This effete artistic bullshit doesn’t matter anyway … When you’re out to get all the money you can out of your gigs, like the Dead seem to be (like all the groups seem to be) you might be accused of being a bit piggish; when you use strong-arm shit to insure that you get every last penny that you deserve — by making Amerikan standards — you are a Pig. Jerry Garcia, is that you?

Nobody buys that anti-bootleg shit about the artistic integrity of the artist in saying what goes out. One, you stand by your performance; two, even if you don’t want to, Jerry, somewhat, and say “all your private property is fair game for your brothers (especially when they sell records of concerts that don’t compete with coming releases) and your brother (who’s gonna continue to dig you as we live off your comets we’re gonna keep ripping you off because it is possible. As simple as that.” If you and Cutler and Stein continue your shit, though, we’ll just have to sing the song the same old way, you guys being put in the position of being the same old reactionary establishment that we’re all ripping off. It’s all around. You break your back playing gigs for ten years and suddenly success is staring you in the face. Bread: lots and lots of bread. You turn your back on your poor, ripping ’em off roots and start to tighten up. You’re in the biggest rip-off industry around, but no one cares as long as they’re having fun.

Money. That’s the whole story, isn’t it? If these were other times, in another land under a different set of rules maybe you could justifiably complain about the people who want to give your recorded performances out free because you didn’t screen them and pick out the sections you didn’t like and do them over for the cat, ’cause no one charges for their music, and because the means of production belong to the people, and they can turn out all the good sounds they can, and you have a natural right to screen all releases. But we’re here. Now. You guys are making millions — or soon will be. Money is power, especially as the concept of money is crumbling nation-wide and power freaks like Stein are cornering the market on it. The channels that the green-power the Dead bring in travel aren’t the healthiest for the generations of revolution to come. Stein is one of these hopeful images of a freak with a chance to change things positively gone sour, who uses all his power to consolidate his power; who’ll go to any extremes to insure the natural expansion of that power. Fuck him. Fuck you.”

Speak, Basho! Quaint that the beef about bootlegs back then was sound quality, rather than copyright. Stuff got figured out at some point, I think. Like when Bobby shut down the LMA, lmao.

Ed featured part of this show in the 2016 edition of his epcot 31 Days of Dead project. Here are his listening notes, which are typically spot-on (and better than than the not-quite-on-the-bus commentary from Mr. Moore): 

“Less than three weeks after Pigpen’s definitive performance of Hard To Handle at the Hollywood Palladium (8/6/71), the Grateful Dead play the final date of their summer tour in 1971 at Gaelic Park in the Bronx. It will be Pig’s last show until December and the last time the band will ever perform in their original quintet configuration of Jerry, Phil, Pig, Billy and Bobby. By September, Keith will be rehearsing with the band to assume a full-time role on the keys. Perhaps anticipating his absence, Pigpen leads the band through 6 of his songs including the rarely-played Empty Pages and the last Hard To Handle. It is also one of the last performances of Saint Stephen, until the band revived it in 1976 with a major facelift, never to be played the same way again. When you consider these historical milestones along with the departure of Mickey Hart and the closings of the legendary Fillmore East and West earlier in the year it makes you realize that this concert carried a little more weight than anyone could have ever foreseen at the time. It truly was the end of a chapter in the life of the Grateful Dead. As you listen to each song you can’t help but feel a certain degree of nostalgia.

For me, the hidden gem of the show is the outstanding version of Uncle Johns Band. Jerry’s first guitar solo is an absolute joy to hear. His notes sing with irresistible melody and happy sunshine which perfectly capture the nostalgia of those carefree early years. If you listen closely you can hear Pigpen playing the wood claves.”

Speaking of Pig, this show features the second and final performance of Empty Pages. The NYS Music blog, which has a nice write-up of this show, describes it as a McKernan original that “pairs his traditional crooning style with a slow blues jam that’s nicely peppered with fiery guitar licks from Garcia. It’s a true rarity and a shame that the band wouldn’t be able to further develop this one.”

I feel like this was a try-hard post. It might be tl;dr, idk. Here’s the true goodness…

Transport to the Charlie Miller remaster of the soundboard recording HERE.

More soon.

JF

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The New Sounds (7/21)

Helen Frankenthaler, Ocean Drive West #1 (1974)

What’s before dog days? Cat days? Or just the long summer days of a really climate-change-rainy July.

Helen Frankenthaler was a painter, whose career began in the early 1950s. She was initially associated with the abstract-impressionism movement, and later associated with the color-field movement after a starring role in a 1964 exhibition called “Post-Painterly Abstraction.” The header image reminded me of waves and lazy hours thinking deep thoughts and staring at a large body of water. (Take your pick. Mine is Lake Michigan.)

The New Sounds from July 2021. Widget…

More soon.

JF

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A Seasonal Playlist: Summer 2021

Liner Notes Contributing Editor BW is back with another seasonal playlist. (I missed his Spring installment; apologies for that.)

HIs comments, via email:

“Summer, everyone. It’s ball soup here in the NY area today. On that note, here is my seasonal playlist. 100 songs. [Actually, 98, but who’s counting, haha.] 7 hours. You know the drill by now. Enjoy it.”

He also added, “Feedback and hate mail are welcome.” If you need his contact info, lmk below the line

Great job, as always, B. Here’s the widget…

More soon.

JF

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Grateful Dead Monthly: Oxford Plains Speedway – Oxford, ME 7/2-3/88

On Saturday and Sunday, July 2 and 3, 1988, the Grateful Dead played two shows at the Oxford Plains Speedway in Oxford, Maine.

Oxford Plains opened in 1950 as a half-mile track, but was later shortened to three-eighths. According to the Wiki, it’s the largest sports venue in Maine, seating 14,000. The Speedway has hosted events in the NASCAR Busch Series (sort of the minor league for stock cars), but back in the late ’60s, it hosted three NASCAR Cup Series races – two won by Bobby Allison and one won by Richard “The King” Petty.

Yes. That’s Richard Petty in his trademark powder-blue #43 Plymouth. If you had 1960s motorsports figures on your GDM bingo card, right on!

In June of 1988, the Monsters of Rock tour with Van Hagar, die Schorps, Dokken, Metallica, and Kingdom Come stopped in Oxford.

And if you had Van Hagar and/or Dokken on the bingo card, sweet!

The following month, so did the Good Ol’ Grateful Dead for two nights. Our very own GD Editor (and Lester Bangs wannabe) ECM attended. Here’s his extended and incredibly awesome personal reflection.

Thirty-three years ago Deadheads flocked to Oxford, Maine for two days of peace, love and music. The weather was great, the scene was chill and the Grateful Dead played dream set-lists for what would be their last shows in Maine and yours truly was fortunate enough to have been there. It was one of the very best experiences I ever had seeing the Dead and I often wish I could relive it again. So, gather ‘round the campfire and let’s get started, shall we?

PROLOGUE: Summer’s here and the time is right

I had just graduated from college in June 1988 and after treating myself to a 2-week backpacking trip to Europe I dutifully hopped on tour with the Grateful Dead, because like… isn’t that a rite of passage? The mail order Gods were very kind to me which was no small miracle when you consider the huge influx of new fans on the scene in the wake of Touch-mania due to the commercial success of In the Dark. Another factor that contributed to making tickets tough to score was the fact that the band opted mostly for small, outdoor sheds for this tour instead of the ginormous stadiums they had played the previous two summers. I scored tickets for Pittsburgh (6/26), SPAC (6/28, my 22nd birthday) and both nights of Oxford Plains (7/2-3). The latter was a venue the band had never played and it also happened to be the tour closer which raised the stakes even higher. In addition, there was a rumor that the band might add a “surprise” extra show on July Fourth (alas, that never happened). And, of course let’s not forget about the band’s storied history of playing legendary shows in Maine such as 9/6/80 (Lewiston) and 10/12/84 (Augusta). Needless to say, the Oxford shows were highly anticipated by everybody.

Prior to Oxford, I attended Pittsburgh and SPAC with my brother Dan and a bunch of friends. I could write a separate essay on those incredibly fun adventures alone but I will save that for another day. I attended Oxford with my childhood friend, Brad, whose family had a house in Whitefield, New Hampshire which is a tiny, rural New England town near the White Mountains.  We used that as home base to travel back and forth to the shows which is only about an hour and a half drive. The plan was to stay for the July Fourth holiday after the shows and then return home to New York.

BACKGROUND: Jumping queues and makin’ haste, just ain’t my cup of meat

Before I review the shows, I must first describe the scene/vibe since it was such a big part of the overall experience.  Like most of the surrounding area, Oxford is a small, rural, New England town with a population of about only 4,000 people. It is quiet, serene and wooded. Within that setting is an unexpected attraction – the Oxford Plains Speedway, a car racing track that was established in 1950 and seats 14,000 people. In 1988, the Speedway decided to dabble in rock concerts – something the tiny town was ill-prepared for. Here are just a few obstacles that quickly come to mind:  A single, one-lane road was the only access to the Speedway, very few local hotels and a police force of one(!)

On June 25, 1988, Oxford hosted the Monsters of Rock Festival featuring Van Halen, Scorpions, Dokken, Metallica and Kingdom Come. A torrential downpour combined with rowdy fans left the site trashed.

Now, before we get all judgy about metal-heads, let’s acknowledge that the Grateful Dead scene was not without its own problems. As I mentioned, the commercial success of the album, In The Dark, resulted in an incredible influx of newbies known as “Touch-Heads.” The show at SPAC on June 28th was a disaster as ticketless fans crashed the gates and rushed the ramps that led inside the pavilion. As a result, there were scuffles with security and lots of arrests. It turned out to be the last straw and consequently, the Dead never played SPAC again.

The town of Oxford had good reason to be concerned about the Grateful Dead concerts that lay ahead just one week after the Monsters debacle and the news about the Dead show at SPAC just a few days prior. Fortunately, the band and its fans sent around a plea to leave nothing but footprints. The 90,000+fans that descended upon the tiny town of Oxford not only gladly complied with that request but harmoniously co-existed with the residents. Maine papers reported that it was a most enjoyable weekend for all people especially the towns people.

THE SCENE: Strangers Stopping Strangers

Grateful Dead archivist, David Lemieux, had this to say about Oxford:

“It seemed a little out of the way, which is why it was a good place to end the tour. It was a nice mellow place. I was bummed that they never played there again because everybody I knew who went to the Oxford show, to this day, will say it was one of the most fun Dead shows they ever saw. They were great shows musically, but they were just fun…It was extremely easy-going. It was a West Coast vibe on the East Coast. I heard from so many people who said it felt like an Oregon Dead show. That’s the highest compliment for a concert on the East coast.”

David Lemieux thought so highly of the Oxford shows that he included July 3, 1988 as the show to represent the year of 1988 for 30 Trips Around the Sun, the special 50th anniversary box-set that featured one complete show for each of the thirty years the band performed. Note that the box-set also includes a second Maine concert – the Augusta Civic Center show on October 12, 1984. Supposedly, the Lewiston show on September 6, 1980 would have also been included if a better audio source existed.

My friend, Brad and I arrived in the town of Oxford in the early afternoon on July 2nd. Getting there was slow. There was a lot of traffic congestion because of the one-lane road leading to the Speedway. Many people abandoned their cars and opted to walk. Enterprising locals let Deadheads camp and park on their lawn for a small fee.  As our car inched along we were able to check out the scene. And what a scene it was! The town of Oxford had been transformed into a little Dead village. The vibe was incredible – perhaps resembling a latter day Veneta or Woodstock.  Deadheads were grooving everywhere — swimming in streams, hanging out in fields, playing hacky sack, tossing Frisbees, hiking along the local route through the small town. Everybody was friendly, smiling and having fun together. Strangers stopping strangers just to shake their hand…

The parking lot itself was nothing more than a giant, dusty, plowed dirt field but the scene was outrageously good. The weather was perfect and the Speedway parking lot circus was in full swing – thousands of happy people, tents, cars, hissing nitrous, tie-dyed flags, loose dogs running around, fireworks going off, Hibachis, ice chests and goo-ball hawkers everywhere.

The “Shakedown Street” was enormous – two huge avenues of merchandisers selling everything legal and illegal from bagels to ‘shrooms. Everything was “kind.” Kind beer for $1, kind water for $1, kind cigarettes and kind bud… Kind, kind, kind.

Cops ignored just about everything. To be fair, they were greatly outnumbered. Supposedly, the town’s sole police officer was aided by about 30 officers from the Maine State Police and neighboring communities, but the sheer number of people was overwhelming.  

Fortunately, the Dead had the foresight to set up a field office out in the parking lots. People from the Grateful Dead office were out in the trenches all weekend long handing out garbage bags, keeping their pulse on the rhythm of what was going on and even scolding destructive trouble makers when necessary. This turned out to be crucial in keeping things peaceful, clean and safe for everybody.

SATURDAY JULY 2: Life may be sweeter for this, I don’t know

The scene inside was mellow – a giant field surrounded by a racetrack and bleachers. Delay PA towers placed behind the soundboard made hanging out in the back of the field pleasant – you could dance or lie down on a blanket and hear the concert perfectly. In fact, a lot of tapers set their rigs up directly behind these towers and were able to get very good audience recordings of these concerts.

We went into the show early so that we could see the opening act – Little Feat. They had recently reformed after being inactive due to the death of Lowell George in 1979. Now in 1988, they were opening for the Dead to support the release of their new album, Let it Roll. It was exciting to see them rekindle their magic for fans both old and new. Some clever vendors sold bumper stickers on the lot that said “DEAD FEAT.” The band was in fine form and they turned in a really strong set consisting of everything you would want to hear from their live album, “Waiting for Columbus” mixed in with songs from the new album.

After Little Feat finished their set, Brad and I decided to upgrade our spot. Unfortunately, between the sea of people and the big open space, we got separated. I knew that finding him would be almost impossible and I wanted to get some good real estate for the show so I decided to make my way up towards the front. It was still early and there was plenty of space. I eventually settled in front the soundboard where I knew the sound would be perfect. I mingled with some friendly Heads while we waited for the band to take the stage. They were a bit older than me and took me in when they heard that I got separated.

At one point, we noticed a hippie girl in a long flowing dress gracefully floating through the crowd. She was wide-eyed, smiling and clutching a single red rose. She eventually made her way over to our area. She stopped and stood directly in front of me, staring and smiling. She was in a state of euphoria, radiating beauty and kindness but not saying a word. I stood there paralyzed with awkwardness not knowing what to do except smile back. Ever so gracefully, she held the rose out for me to smell, which I did, and then she was off. It was a beautiful moment that encapsulated the entire weekend at Oxford.

It was still daylight when the band took the stage for the first set. Since I was up so close I could see how relaxed they looked. The beautiful scenery was clearly agreeing with them. I remembered what Phil said at the beginning of the Veneta show – “This is really where we get off the best.” I hoped and prayed that this was one of those times.

The band surprised us by opening with “Iko” which juxtaposed the mellow vibe we were feeling with a celebratory one. I looked around and watched people laughing, dancing, and hugging. This was not a typical high-energy East Cost rocking version. Rather, this was band easing into the first set in the late afternoon on a summer day in Maine with a “feel-good” purpose.

The band continued that easy-going vibe into the next song – Jack Straw. It started out almost too mellow. However, by the second jam we have lift-off as Phil carpet bombs  the Speedway, taking no prisoners.

Next up is a copacetic West L.A. with a slinky groove that acknowledges the “Speedway.”

While the band is tuning for “Memphis Blues,” the audience starts a “Let Phil Sing” chant. This was the norm at most shows following the “Box of Rain” bust out in Hampton in 1986. However, what wasn’t normal was for Phil, who is notoriously reserved on stage (at least in the latter years), to respond to those requests as he did on this occasion.  Cleary in good spirits, Phil has some fun with the audience:

Phil: “Don’t you think the guys in the band are going to get jealous if you yell for me all the time? I want you guys to yell for Mickey, Bill, Jerry and Brent, alright> Next time you see somebody yell ‘We want Phil’ you yell ‘We want Brent’ or ‘We want Mickey’ alright? Thank you.”

That brings Jerry and Bob to the microphone, who add that we should extend our requests to the crew – “We want STEVE! We want KIDD!” – and even to volunteers from the audience(!) This naturally draws lots of laughter and applause. Everybody was having a good time.  

With that that band tears through one of the best renditions of “Memphis Blues.” Bobby’s Pepto-pink Strat lit up the Maine sky. Once again, the crowd begins to chant Phil’s name.

Bobby: “Phil can’t hear you. He’s been stone deaf for eight or ten years now. If you hold still he can read your lips. Brent can’t hear you ‘cause he’s run for it.”

Jerry: “Don’t listen to Weir. He’s been crazy for years.”

“Row Jimmy” is superlative. Although it was played at SPAC just three nights earlier, who could complain when such a great song is repeated? Jerry’s notes blissfully echoing into the cosmos. The audience gently swaying to and fro…not too fast and not too slow…it’s the common way to go. Weir uses his guitar to do his paddling shtick during one of the choruses. Classic Bobby.

The band closes the first set with three of the new songs that were introduced earlier in the tour – “Blow Away”, “Victim of the Crime” and “Foolish Heart.” All were well received. Everyone listening intently.

The setlist for the second set is of what dreams are made. Although nothing the band played could be considered a “best of” performance, everybody who attended would agree that this was a delightful set of nighttime, outdoor music.

The sun begins to set behind the band as they gently ease into the opening notes of “Crazy Fingers” creating a breathtaking visual and aural landscape. “Life may be sweeter for this, I don’t know…” The outro jam was everything you could want in “Crazy Fingers” starting with Phil’s lead lines on the high neck of his bass as Jerry picks away in the background. The instrumental journey builds to the next level as Jerry takes over with a delicate lead that flows into the Middle-Eastern flavored jam.

The “Playin’ > Uncle John’s > Terrapin” sequence that follows is divine. Bobby delivers the verses in Playin’ with oodles of confidence and then the band drops into a luscious spacey jam led by Phil’s bouncy bass lines. This drifts into an anthem-like version of “Uncle John’s Band.” Garcia’s mid-song solo is pure bliss. Smiles abound everywhere. The song oozes with kindness and joy and melts into “Terrapin” – Counting stars by candlelight…and eventually we come to the Drums/Space segment of the show.

Supposedly, all the fans that had travelled without tickets were “miracled” when the doors opened as the band went into “Drums.”

Post-Space, the band finishes in fine form with short, but solid versions of “The Wheel  > Gimme Some Lovin’ > Watchtower.” The audience cheered when the band sang, “so glad you made it” since Oxford was not easy to get to.

Then, we get the Holy Grail – Morning Dew. Jerry goes deep with his vocals – especially the final Anywaaaay…Phil and Jerry trading melodic licks in the quiet part…the song building momentum… and then the kind of triumphant, powerful  ending  that makes your hair stand on end….Magical, Electric, Spiritual.

Instead of ending the show, we are treated to a rocking “Sugar Mags’ as a bonus show closer. Rock Star Bobby strutting around the stage with his long, shaggy hair and getting the crowd all fired up. The “Quinn the Eskimo” encore is basically an audience sing-a-long that leaves a big smile on everybody’s face.

There is a video of Set 2 on YouTube if you are interested.

The post-show parking lot scene picked up where it left off. Fireworks and bonfires burned, lost dogs wandered everywhere, people were passed out in the dirt and thanks to the Dead’s crew, a slew of Deadheads scurried around with garbage bags trying to clean up.

SUNDAY JULY 3: All I know she sang a little while and then flew off

On Day #2 the band turned in two sets of music that were inspired and full of energy but the game ball rightfully goes to Brent Mydland for his outstanding performance. Over the two days at Oxford, he played some of his best songs and was a very conspicuous presence in the 2nd set on this evening.

The band comes out raging with “Hell in a Bucket” complete with the same motorcycle effects that were used on the album, In the Dark.  Bobby thoroughly enjoys this ride and gets off on Healy’s vocal effects. “Sugaree” is competently performed. Brent lights up “Walking Blues” with a fierce B-3 organ solo.

Bobby then steps to the microphone and continues the joke from the day before by saying: “There’s a guy down there saying let Mickey sing. Now he’s obviously never heard that. You can have it if you want it.”

Garcia delivers the first real highlight of the day – a funky and twangy “Jed” which benefits greatly from Brent’s bouncy keyboard work. Garcia growls some of the lyrics.

Queen Jane fills the “Dylan slot” nicely and features heavenly solos by Jerry and Brent.

The set-closing “Bird Song” at sunset is easily the highlight of the show, and perhaps of the entire weekend.  This one gets jazzy and goes way out there into a scary meltdown before building to a huge peak. An added bonus to those who were in attendance was the ultra-light plane that appeared during the jam and circled around overheard. The audience cheered in delight and started pointing up to the sky. The band looked confused as they noticed the audience’s attention being diverted from the stage to the sky. Alas, the distraction probably killed the jam. However, the pilot took a perfectly timed graceful swoop over the stage as Jerry sang the last verse.

Like most people, I was expecting one more song since “Bird Song” rarely was a set closer (at least in 1988), but I’m guessing that the distraction of the plane combined with the potential danger it presented caused the band to err on the side of safety and prematurely end the set after just 6 songs. However, they would make up for that in the second set by playing 6 songs before “Drums ,” which was also pretty unusual. Another unusual aspect of that set was the absence of a Garcia ballad but I am jumping ahead of myself.

In between sets, there was an epic drum circle at the back of the Speedway. Also during the set break Brad and I ran into an old friend from high school, Kevin, who we hadn’t seen in years and we wound up hanging out together for the rest of the evening which was a lot of fun.

As the band took the stage, the audience started a Help/Slip/Frank chant (not played since 9/12/85) but….paradise had to wait until the fall ‘89.

Set two starts off with a highly charged “Touch of Grey” that gets the crowd’s energy going. Immediately afterwards, Bobby strums the chords to “Looks Like Rain” but stops suddenly and instead the band breaks into “Hey Pocky Way.” What a great call! This is an immense version that showcases Brent. The dance party is in full swing.

Bobby eventually gets his way with “Looks Like Rain.” He delivers passionate vocals while Jerry delivers a textbook performance of the noodly musical “raindrops” that was a trademark of this tune in the 80s. The band breaks routine with “Estimated Prophet” by giving us a double dose of Bobby instead of the usual alternating Jerry/Bob sequence of songs. The mid-section jam builds to a nice head and Bobby gives his best screeches before the final jam which is fluid, if not standard.  

“Eyes of the World” is short but sweet. However, the real buzz about this version of “Eyes” is Brent’s piano solo(!) which was fantastic and a very rare treat since that was not a song where he would typically take a solo. He should have done it more often!  Brent really brought his game to Maine. Phil also steps up for the jam. Everyone is pitching in and listening to each other making for some really strong interplay.

Normally, “Eyes” would wash out into to “Drums” but on this evening the band made the unusual decision of tacking on another song. In addition, it was very unusual for the band to play 6 songs before “Drums.” Here, Brent performs his new song, “I Will Take You Home” for just the third time. His vocals and keyboards are delivered tenderly. 

During the “Drums/Space” segment, Mickey ups the ante with The Beam. Just when things can’t possibly get any weirder, Jerry brings us back to earth when he starts picking the notes to “GDTRFB.” Each of the instruments fall into place and soon we are chugging along at an upbeat pace. Brent takes a B-3 organ solo and hands it off to Jerry who builds things to a thrilling peak. Bobby continues the high energy streak with a segue into a raging “I Need a Miracle” complete with audience participation.

The show has an unusual close to it. The double-barreled rocker, ”Dear Mr. Fantasy/Hey Jude” ends with some very funny, over-the-top vocal stuff. Bobby and Brent trade incoherent screams/yelps that may be technically deficient, but the energy is amazingly high.

The “NFA” encore has a cold start with just the vocals before the music kicks in which makes for yet another unique aspect of this show.  Full crowd participation goes on for five minutes long after the band has left the stage and probably the Speedway

Mmm-bop mmm-bop bop bop…

Epilogue: Never had such a good time

Brad and I returned to the White Mountains in New Hampshire to celebrate the July Fourth Holiday with his family. We stopped in Springfield to check out the Basketball Hall of Fame on the way home. A few weeks later I traveled to Boulder, Colorado to visit some more friends in the mountains. We visited Red Rocks even though there was no concert. I wanted to experience the vibe and imagine what it would have been like to see the Grateful Dead perform there.

A month later I was working at a “Big Eight” accounting firm in New York City. It certainly was a reality check but it didn’t stop me from attending 7 of the 9 shows the band played at Madison Square Garden in September. The memories of Oxford and that summer are some of the best in my life. Ah, to be 22 years old again…

Thanks, Ed. That was great!

Transport to 7/2/88 on the Live Music Archive HERE.

Transport to 7/3/88 on the Live Music Archive HERE.

Video Sources:

7.2.88 – Set 2 (voodoonola2)

7.2.88 – Set 2 (Kevin Tobin)

7.3.88 Lot Scene

Finally, if you had bad fan dvd art on the bingo card, you’re welcome.

And if you had “the original” Jerry plane dropping a Phil-bomb on your bingo card, you win. Seriously!

[Ed, we sent GDM bingo cards to all the blog followers, right? Right? Dude, idk. I didn’t, did you?? Omg. This was a thing in a zoom meeting mid-Covid. You don’t remember that. Ok. Cool. I know that 31 Days gets way more likes than LN on the ‘gram, and that’s great, really. But bingo was my idea to juice the audience. And now what. What? We are so busted. Corporate is gonna be pissed. WFH is totally over. I hope the bathroom remodel is done at HQ.]

Bingo plan aside (apparently), I will send something random – could be a snapshot, a stick of gum, a two-dollar bill, or basically anything that fits in an envelope and requires one first class stamp – to the first three people who post something substantive about this show below the line. Get to work, hippies! Free sh!t is the best

NOT kidding. Mail will be sent.

More soon.

JF

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The New Sounds (6/21)

Ellsworth Kelly – Spectrum Colors Arranged by Chance II (1951)

Hey, guys. Happy June. Happy Pride.

I don’t have alot to say. Ellsworth Kelly is one of my favorite artists of all time. And that colorful painting seems appropriate.

The New Sounds from June …

More soon.

JF

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Grateful Dead Monthly: Fillmore West – SF, CA 6/4-7/70

On Thursday through Sunday, June 4-7, 1970, the Grateful Dead played a four-night run at the Fillmore West in San Francisco, California.

We’ve covered that venue before, but here’s a pic.

[ECM and I have a solid agreement that these GDM blogposts will publish on or before the actual date of the shows, so he can do a corresponding Instagram post. I’m pulling rank and doing a Crazy Ivan to rewind a few days. Sorry, buddy.]

The Dead recorded Workingman’s Dead in February 1970. And they recorded American Beauty in August and September 1970. Inbetween, they did what they always did – concerts. The February Fillmore East run is legendary (parts of 2/13 & 14 are Dick’s Picks #4). The March visits to Travelodge Theater in Phoenix, Kleinhans Music Hall in Buffalo, and Pirate World in Dania, FL are not so much. The April visits to Mammoth Gardens in Denver and York Farm in Poynette, WI are not legendary, but the 5/2 show at Harpur College (Dick’s Picks #8), the 5/6 show at MIT, and the May FE run kinda are.

On 5/24, the band played a show at the so-called “Hollywood Festival” in Newcastle, England. Deadlists calls the venue Ted Askeys Lower Pig Farm in Leyette, Newcastle-Under-Lyme. That sounds weird, but definitely cooler than a place called Pirate World. On the trip, his first across the pond, lyricist Robert Hunter wrote Ripple, Brokedown Palace, and To Lay Me Down on a single day, while staying at the apartment of Alan Trist – a Brit, who met Garcia and Hunter in the early ’60s Palo Alto folk scene and eventually ran the Dead’s in-house Ice Nine music publishing company.

Pshew. Long sentence. Anyway. Most of that info comes from the Good Ol’ Grateful Dead Podcast, which I mentioned last month and highly highly recommend. My point is not to give another dumb itinerary, like I did last month, but to say that, in mid-1970, the band was still becoming established nationally and globally (the latter thanks to Sam Cutler). And Jerry Garcia was a true force at that time. He lived with his word-guy, wrote songs to fit around poems like it was nbd, and played nearly constantly. In the studio with whomever wanted a hand (CSNY, e.g.), and on the stage with the Dead.

When the Dead had a rare night off at that time, Jerry went to the Matrix.

The Matrix was a club that hosted a Monday night jam. Here’s how Jerry described that in a 1991 interview:

“[Jerry Garcia Band bassist John Kahn] and I have been playing together since – we started working together for Howard Wales at a little club in San Francisco called the Matrix on Monday nights, right around ’68, ’69, somewhere around there. When the Grateful Dead isn’t working, I like to keep playing.

So they used to have this Monday night jam session, but Howard gradually sort of took it over. Howard’s this amazing organ player – difficult person, but wonderful musician. And for some reason he liked our playing, John and mine. We didn’t know each other, John and I. In fact we played with Howard for almost a year before we even actually started talking to each other. Really. We would just show up, plug in, and play. About half the set I’d be whispering to John, I’d be saying, ‘Hey, man, what key are we in?’ Howard didn’t have tunings or anything, he just played. Sometimes he would do these things that were so outside that you just couldn’t – unless you knew where it was going, you had no idea where to start. Sometimes they’d turn out to be just these things like four-bar blues turnarounds, relatively simple musical things, but they were so extended the way he’d play them – ‘God, what is this?

Anyway, I learned a lot – both of us learned a lot about staying awake and listening to what’s going on, playing with Howard. It was a real experience. We played with him for a couple of years, and then Howard went off and kinda – periodically he gets this thing of where he just can’t deal with the music world any more, and he just disappears. So we were there, stuck there, and we were supposed to play Monday night, and we didn’t have a player. John said, ‘Well, I just did some sessions with this guy Merl Saunders.'”

So there’s the genesis of the JG+MS material from the early/mid ’70s. (That’s a box checked, Ed, right?) And one of the nights with Wales (5/18/70) is memorialized as Side Trips: Volume One. So good. Basically an embryonic version of the more well-documented stuff that Jerry and Merl did in ’73-74. Wales also contributed to AB – he played organ on Candyman and Truckin’, and piano on Brokedown Palace. And he and Garcia collaborated on the 1971 record Hooteroll?.

By early June, the band was back home for some sweet Frisco love at the FW. All four nights are fun listens. And they feature early versions of some WD and AB classics.

Transport to 6/4/70 HERE.

Transport to 6/5/70 HERE.

Transport to 6/6/70 HERE.

And transport to 6/7/70 HERE.

More soon.

JF

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The New Sounds (5/21)

In certain light, the Colorado River looks that color of blue, and its bank looks that color of green, as it cuts through Southeast Utah near Moab. The rocks are not white next to the river, but they are nearby.

I took an old fashioned driving roadtrip with my best friend late last month to Arches National Park and Canyonlands National Park. Both were breathtakingly beautiful. And I can’t decide which was moreso.

And then I took another roadtrip with my siblings early this month to Great Smoky Mountains National Park. Also breathtakingly beautiful. The Little River and its streamy tributaries wind around rocks through the park, just like Georgia O’Keefe said about another place. And clouds settle into valleys in the morning, just like she said.

So one image, three NPs. That’s your Liner Notes travel log from a guy who doesn’t travel much.

The New Sounds from May 2021…

More soon.

JF

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Grateful Dead Monthly: Hollywood Sportatorium – Pembroke Pines, FL 5/22/77

On Sunday, May 22, 1977, the Grateful Dead played a concert at the Hollywood Sportatorium in Pembroke Pines, Florida.

The Sportatorium was built in 1968 in a then-sparsely-populated and unincorporated area of Broward County southwest of Fort Lauderdale and northwest of Miami. The developers were a couple of guys – Stephen Calder and Norman Johnson – who opened a horse track and later a motorsports track nearby. The plan for the venue sounds like a proto Florida Man’s fever dream. From the Wiki:

Among the plans for the Sportatorium were sports events, ice follies programs, auto and boat shows, and eventually a “Gold Coast State Fair”. The Sportatorium was constructed as a hangar-like facility constructed out of concrete, a steel roof, an asphalt floor, and no air conditioning. Originally designed to seat 18,000 for stage events and 15,000 for arena events, it opened in December 1969 with only 6,000 seats.

“The idea was to have a facility which could have entertainment and events out of weather”, said Bruce Johnson, Norman Johnson’s son, who managed the arena until 1980. At first, it hosted indoor rodeos, indoor motocross events, wrestling, boxing, and some concerts.

According to the Wiki, the first event in the Sportatorium was the 1969 Miami Rock Festival on 12/27-29. The Dead played that Fest on 12/28, but Deadlists indicates that the venue was the International Speedway (the aforementioned motorsports track?), so the Wiki is likely inaccurate. The Sportatorium ultimately did become the premier concert mecca in South Florida, fulfilling the Johnson family promise of something something inside. Here’s a list of who played there in the early/mid-’70s: ELP, Zeppelin, the MC5, Fleetwood Mac, and Spirit in 1971; ABB, Floyd, and Yes in 1972; Uriah Heep, Zappa, Elton John, and Chicago in 1973; Dylan and King Crimson in 1974; the Doobies and Skynyrd in 1975; and the Eagles, ZZ Top, Clapton, and KISS in 1976. Yeah, the ’70s were eclectic and amazing, and dominated by duuudes.

By the late ’80s, the Miami Arena was the main stop for big acts, and the Sportatorium was reduced to booking stale metal bands like Iron Maiden and Judas Priest. (Zero shade: I’m fine with Maiden and Priest, but they were past their primes at that point.) The last show there was on 10/21/88 – some country and western unknowns. In 1992, the land was zoned residential. In 1993 after Hurricane Andrew, the Sportatorium was leveled.

The Dead played there for the first time in 1977. (They returned in ’78, 80, and ’85.) Let’s get to the tour and the show. Caveat: I am a complete ’77 geek. I don’t think that the band played a bad show that entire year, and most of them were exemplary.

The band started the year with a handful of Cali shows – San Bernardino (2/26), Santa Barbara (2/27), Winterland (3/18-20) – before heading to the other coast. By then, the weird/cool segue-happy ’76 approach had been jettisoned for something leaner, setlist-wise. The 1977 template was basically the one that the band would use until 1995: A crowd-pleaser opener or openers; Bobby stuff (sometimes cowboy, sometimes blues, and Dylan in the ’80s-90s) interspersed with Jerry stuff (mostly ballads); a big first-set closer; a big second-set opener; a song or two leading into something sorta jam-able; drums and space; a vaguely-segued, three-to-five-song, crowd-pleaser ender that could/would include Bobby energy and Jerry gravitas; and encore that might be fun. Shit was predictable, but it worked.

In April, the band landed in Philly (4/22), traveled up to Springfield, MA (4/23), traveled back down to Passiac, NJ (4/25-27), camped out for five nights (4/29-30, 5/1, 3-4) at the Palladium in NYC, then jumped from New Haven, CT (5/5) to maybe the best three consecutive nights in their history – Boston (5/7), Ithaca, NY (5/8), and Buffalo (5/9). The tour then wound its way around the eastern half of the country: St. Paul > Chicago > St. Louis > Tuscaloosa, AL > Atlanta > Florida (two places, including the Sportatorium) > Richmond, VA > Baltimore > Hartford, CT. My recitation of that itinerary isn’t gratuitous. Like the setlist architecture, the tour structure was starting to take shape. The only reason that ’77 didn’t become the template for the latter was Mickey’s June 20th car accident, which gave the band a summer break that extended until September.

On a recent road trip, my best friend and I deep-dived into the Good Ol’ Grateful Deadcast, the “official” podcast from Rhino Records, who owns the vault. The first season was a track-by-track dissection of Workingman’s Dead. The second season was a track-by-track dissection of American Beauty. Those records celebrated 50th birthdays last year. Somewhere in the second season, main talker Jesse Jarnow mentions that touring wasn’t really a thing in the late ’60s and early ’70s. His point, which comes across with great aplomb in an interview with road manager Sam Cutler, is that the Dead had to create the tour concept for themselves before they could draw ‘heads into following them across the country year after year. Anyway, I can’t recommend that podcast highly enough – it’s been fantastic so far, and I’m excited to hear when it goes next. Well worth a listen.

So. 5/22/77. It must be alright if Dick Latvala picked it as the third release in the vault series that bears his name? Yep.

The show starts with a fun Funiculi Funicula wiggle, then drops into a funky The Music Never Stops. Next is a fantastic Sugaree that seems to go on forever. Is it the longest of the tour? No. According to a post on the Dead for a Year blog, there were seven versions of Sugaree in 5/77. (I confirmed that.)The longest is 5/28 (18:43, per Deadlists); the next longest is 5/19 (17:02). The rest, including 5/22, fall into the 13-15 minute range. This one is 15:38, and it doesn’t disappoint. The rest of the first set is a trade off between Bobby and Jerry. El Paso, Peggy-O, Minglewood, Friend of the Devil, Lazy Lightnin’ > Supplication, Ramble on Rose. All excellent. The first set-closing Dancing in the Street is just slightly less great than the Cornell version.

The second set-opening Help on the Way > Slipknot! > Franklin’s Tower is just slightly less great than the Buffalo version. (Hey, DW. Just checking if you’re awake.) The Samson & Delilah pops, and Donna isn’t a minus, until she is. After a so-so Brown-Eyed Women and an even more so-so Good Lovin’, she’s back to lead Sunrise. Whatever. The Estimated > Eyes ticks all the boxes for me. Estimated is big and round, and Eyes is plenty fast. The segue from Eyes into Wharf Rat is an honest >, noodly and smooth. (Deadlists calls it Space, but it’s better than that.) A short Terrapin and a long Dew ends the set. And Sugar Magnolia is a suitable encore. That’s my take.

Here’s everybody’s favorite Deadhead with his listening notes. Ladies and Gentlemen, Emcee ECM…

When GD archivist, Dick Latvala unearthed a damaged analog tape of 5/22/77, it was probably one of best finds/surprises in Grateful Dead taping history. Of course, the story of Rob Eaton acquiring the Betty Boards of 5/8/77 (among many other shows that were missing from the vault) takes first prize, but most people in the taping community already knew about Cornell from audience tapes that circulated. With 5/22/77, nothing circulated. It was a completely unknown show, which made it’s mystery all the more intriguing. Latvala and crew painstakingly restored the damaged analog tape and released it for all of us to hear as Dick’s Pick Volume 3 in 1995. The show opens with a mind blowing Music > Sugaree combo, the latter being an all-time version. Listen to the way Garcia weaves a hypnotic spider web of notes in Sugaree. Later in the set we get a sizzling Lazy>Supplication and a tender Peggy-O. The set closes with a groove-a-licious version of Dancing In The Street that gives Cornell a run for its money.

In Set 2, we get our faces melted with a spellbinding Slipknot! and a joyous Franklin’s Tower. Eyes of the World starts with a gorgeous lengthy opening jam before the verses and ends with an otherworldly jam that leads into a stunning Wharf Rat. Then we get to the reason why Dick Latvala released this show. It’s one of those magical Grateful Dead moments where everything seems right in the universe. Here, somehow, Wharf Rat finds its way into Terrapin Station WITHOUT the Lady With A Fan section. It’s the only time this ever happened. From there we get another incredibly rare treat: Morning Dew. The last version the band played was at Cornell two weeks before this performance. Dew was only played five times in 1977, and all of the versions are astounding including this one. Also, this is the third of only four performances ever of the TerraDew combo. Wish they would have played it more just as I wish they would have performed the Playin’ Palindrome more often. A legendary Grateful Dead show in the legendary month of May 1977. Time to revisit this Dick’s Picks if you haven’t done so already.

As Ed mentioned, most of this show is an official release, Dick’s Picks #3. (Idk why they opted to include Sunrise over BEW or Sugar Mags.) Here’s the Spotify widget…

And if you’re not on Spotify, or just want the whole show, transport to the Charlie Miller remaster of the soundboard recording HERE.

More soon.

JF

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The New Sounds (4/21)

Hey. guys.

Are we still doing this? We’re still doing this. It’s COVID 2.1 (year two, month one, since the WHO declared a pandemic), and I feel fine. I’m fully vax’d, and supposedly fully immune.

I really figured that my super sweet post last month would be the tipper. All those vax undecideds would get the point, and get the shot(s). That was not the case. But, and this is cool, Indiana is now weeks free of its really onerous “mask mandate,” so I can keep grocery shopping with a mask. Awesome.

It is what it is, tautologically speaking. Kinda figured that herd immunity would be a collective pull, not a collective push, anyway. I’m a Fauci fan, but the dude’s salesmanship could use some Kurt Russel. Nothing sells a car better than a car, right? Car being shots; shots being normal life. Sorta tautologically speaking.

And nothing sells a way-too-long playlist better than a long intro and an even longer inventory of what’s on it. Right? OM says that I don’t know how to “seal the deal.” Pfft. Check this out, corporate overlord. I’m not even gonna do a list. Res. Ipsa. Loquitur. Microphone. Drop.

The New Sounds from April 2021…

The header image is by my friend (and stepdaughter), Jade Leetz, whose birthday was earlier this month. You can see more of her photography @j______z on Instagram. And her new venture is amazing ceramics, so you can see some of her wares (and DM her to purchase them) @homebody_ceramics on the ‘gram.

More soon.

JF

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Grateful Dead Monthly: Manhattan Center – New York, NY 4/4-6/71

On Sunday through Tuesday, April 4-6, 1971, the Grateful Dead played a three-show run at Manhattan Center in New York City.

The Manhattan Opera House opened in 1906, as Oscar Hammerstein’s cut-rate competitor for the hallowed Metropolitan Opera. The Met lost business, freaked out, and paid Hammerstein to stop for ten years. (I’m cribbing the Wiki.) The payout was $1.2M back then, which would be $31.8M now. Hammerstein pocketed the cash and sold the building to Scottish Freemasons, who held it until 1939 when it changed hands and names to the Manhattan Center.

The Center has since served as a multipurpose venue. Still from the Wiki, it has hosted “radio broadcasts, recordings, and performances by such acts as Bunny Berigan, Paul Robeson, Judy Garland, Harry Belafonte, Perry Como, Leonard Bernstein, David Bowie, Bob Marley, Evanescence, Tool, and Alison Moyet,” as well as WWF events and America’s Got Talent. Diverse bunch. Oh, and the Good Ol’ Grateful Dead visited for the first and only time in 1971 for a dance marathon in that ballroom.

Four songs (Big Railroad Blues, Playing in the Band, NFA > GDTRFB) from the three-night run appeared on live album Grateful Dead (a.k.a. “Skull & Roses” and “Skull Fuck”), which turns 50 this year.

Wiki explains the album’s title:

When the band submitted “Skull Fuck” (a contemporary euphemism for “blow your mind”) as the album title, it was rejected by the record label. Ultimately the agreement was made that the album would be published without the title appearing anywhere on the record labels or cover artwork. Though the band refers to the album by this title, and it has long been known to fans (through interviews with band members, the Deadhead network and other outlets), the alternate, descriptive title “Skull & Roses” developed among distributors, music buyers and reviewers as a graphic incipit from the cover artwork.

Drummer Bill Kreutzmann explained the lack of a title on the artwork and labels, “…the original name was going to be “Skull Fuck”. This was a time long before rap artists like Eminem numbed concerned citizens to the idea of offensive language in music. Warner Brothers [the band’s label] freaked out on us. They said stores would boycott it and we wouldn’t be able to get it on shelves.”

Inside the gatefold of the original LP, the band reached out directly to its burgeoning fan base, which had begun to attend multiple concerts in a row and collect live audio tapes of each concert, with a message reading:

DEAD FREAKS UNITE: Who are you? Where are you? How are you? Send us your name and address and we’ll keep you informed.

Dead Heads, P.O. Box 1065, San Rafael, California 94901.

The mailing address is no longer extant.

ECM loves an anniversary, so he suggested this album as our focus. Here are his brief listening notes…

4/4/71:

Final “Easy Wind” has a nice jam. Not sure why it was dropped from the repertoire. A rare, mid-first set Morning Dew is every bit as good as we would expect it to be.  St. Stephen was starting to become rare in 1971 but the ending jam in this one packs a big punch. There is some squealing feedback at the end of NFA that leads into a lovely show-closing Uncle John’s Band. However, overall, the band sounds a little tentative. Maybe it’s a case of the first night jitters or maybe it’s just that the soundboard is too clean(?)

4/5/71:

Big Railroad Blues and GDTRFB. Both appear on the Skull & Roses album and are extremely hot. If you listen to the version on LMA you’ll notice some differences in the vocals compared with what we are familiar with on the album version which is due to overdubs. Also, I was always curious why the NFA reprise was left off the album. Well, the reason is because the band broke tradition and didn’t play it that evening. If you listen to the recording on LMA, the band teases the NFA reprise but just as they are about to play it they surprise us by charging into Lovelight. This is a monster version with wild, electric, unhinged jamming and a drunken-sounding Pig screaming and shouting at the audience like a maniac. A person who attended the show described it in a review he wrote on LMA: “Lovelight – it was only a red spotlight on Pig and I swear it was like Dante’s Inferno.” The jamming about halfway through the song is especially fierce as the boys land on a unique theme. Towards the end Phil brings the house down with some thunderous bass playing that is just unbelievable. An all time, 5-star version of this song, possibly the best of 1971. Other highlights include the debut of “Sing Me Back Home, China > Rider, a solid Truckin’ > Other One, Garcia’s solos in this early version of Deal and his yodeling in Bobby McGee (check it out!).

4/6/71:

The rare songs in the first set…Oh Boy (Debut. Played only one other time – 12/12/81), I’m a Hog For You, Baby (Bust-out; last played 3/25/66. Played only 4 times ever. This was the last) and Dire Wolf, which was only played 3 times in 1971. A mid-first set appearance of Midnight Hour was also a pretty rare occurrence. Playing In The Band is the version used on the album Skull & Roses. The second set is highlighted by a chunky Greatest Story > Johnny B. Goode (a pairing that occurred 14 times and only in 1971), a raucous Good Lovin’ where Pigpen tells the audience to turn to the person next to them and say “Howdy” and then to take off their clothes and have a good ol’ time. The show closes with a rocking NFA>GDTRFB sandwich (played every night of this run) and then the band pulls out a show-stopping version of Truckin’ that is more reminiscent of 1977 than 1971.

Transport to the Charlie Miller remaster of the 4/4 soundboard HERE.

Transport to the Charlie Miller remaster of the 4/5 soundboard HERE.

And transport to the Charlie Miller remaster of the 4/6 soundboard HERE.

And if you want to check out Skull & Roses before it gets the deluxe reissue treatment, here’s the widget…

The Playing in the Band is the 4/6 version with studio organ overdubs by Garcia pal Merl Saunders.

More soon.

JF

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The New Sounds (3/21)

One year. We had one year, when most of the normal rules of everyday life were paused. What did we do?

Mostly get by? Sometimes, that’s good enough.

Early-Covid (like March-April 2020), I did a series of posts called Day Today. Remember them? Eh, it’s ok. I barely do. The concept was a song a day, and a little blurb about it. (There’s a playlist, fwiw.) The inspiration was a Instagram Live thing by Courtney Barnett and Lucius on 3/24/20. They messed around and played covers requested by the unruly commenting rabble. Their last song wasn’t a request; it was a planned closer. “Strangers” by the Kinks. “Strangers on this road we are on / We are not two, we are one.” (The whole stream is on YouTube – it’s great, and Kurt Vile shows up at some point. “Strangers” is at 3:57:45.)

At that moment, when we were just settling into this new normal, and making it to Summer 2020 (everything would surely return to the old normal by then, right?) relatively unscathed seemed like a big, but not impossible, societal ask, that song struck a cord. Still does. Turns out, and this is still weird to me, it was a big ask. Things got worse. Way worse. We got real scathed, and we’re not done. The collective hardship continues. The new normal is still the old new normal. And the new new normal isn’t here yet.

Appreciate this weird time. Tell your people in your bubble that you love them because you do even if they drive you crazy. Step outside of that bubble and feel the sadness, at least (actually, at most) because that’s just basic empathy for the enormous loss that we’ve experienced personally or at a distance. Feel happiness because there have been moments that were good. Look at pictures – the ones on your phone and the ones in albums, if you do that sort of thing. And remember. Where were you a year ago, and what did you feel? Where were you five, ten, fifteen, twenty years ago, and what did you feel? Different, right? Remember that and remember this. And tell the stories. Because that’s the only way this whole pandemic thing – this whole life thing, honestly – makes any bit of sense. What’d we do, what’d it mean. Lessons, pass em on.

I have a hunch that the most important ones boil down to love of some sort, but what do I know. I’m just your friendly neighborhood music blogger. With very little power (and an even littler audience), comes very little responsibility. So mostly, I just riff. OM and ECM don’t complain too much. JTB does, but she’s cool. These posts are like the editor’s note in print magazines. Nobody reads them, so just don’t offend and gfto the way for what the people really want. Check.

The New Sounds from March 2021: Nils Frahm, Bing & Ruth (Pixies cover), Lost Horizons, Wolf Alice, beabadoobee, Anna of the North, Lucy Dacus, Phoebe Bridgers (John Prine cover), Lana Del Rey, Helado Negro (David Bowie cover), TESSEL & Amber Arcades, Perfume Genius (Planningtorock ‘Jason there’s no rush’ Remix), Nana Yamato, St. Vincent, Japanese Breakfast, Jane Weaver, Crumb, Buzzy Lee, Built to Spill (The Delusions cover), Homeschool & Samia, The Obsessives (The Breeders cover), Max Jury & Fenne Lily, Alice Phoebe Lou, The Ladies, Aldous Harding (Deerhunter cover), U.S. Girls (The Birthday Party cover), Eve Adams, Hayley Williams, Bryde (Tori Amos cover), Ethel Cain, Taylor Swift (self-cover), Skullcrusher, Moontype, Ratboys, Another Michael, Buck Meek, The Underground Youth, Typhoon, Julien Baker, Danielle Durack, The Weather Station, Lightning Bug, Katy Kirby, Sun June, The Boys With the Perpetual Nervousness, Tangled Shoelaces, dad sports, Trunky Juno, Carl Renshaw, Adult Mom, Francis of Delirium, Bachelor, CMAT, Wallace, Coach Party, Pale Waves, EUT, girl in red, Payday, Claud, Dayglow, FRITZ, HUSHPUPPY, Guided by Voices, Maximo Park, Blanketman, Enumclaw, Lande Hekt, The Sonder Bombs, Mannequin Pussy, Camp Trash, Sydney Sprague, Winter, New Pagans, Jaws the Shark, Fake Fruit, Courting, Pardoner, Sprints, CIVIC, TV Priest, FACS, Iceage, NRCSSST, Dry Cleaning, Floatie, Mush, Big Scary, Madlib, Goat Girl, POSTDATA, Mogwai, Valley Maker, Gerry Glazerr, Lindsay Munroe, Maripool, PJ Harvey, Yung, The Besnard Lakes, Bernice, Ben Howard, San Holo, Erika de Casier, Jordana & Ryan Woods, MICHELLE & Arlo Parks, mimi bay, Pearl Charles, Jane Inc., Foxes, Zara Larsson, Lily Konigsberg, ella jane, Temptress, Islands, Dua Lipa, CRITTER, London Grammar, Yaya Bey, Drake, BROCKHAMPTON, Noname, Emi Wes, Sal Dulu & Fly Anakin, Smerz, Claptone, Brijean, Gilligan Moss, Doss, India Jordan, Vegyn, Overmono, Colleen, Gacha Bakradze, Pino Palladino, Elori Saxl, duendita, The Notwist, Anna B Savage, Madeline Kenney, Indigo Sparke, Bright Eyes, and Wild Pink. And more. It’s a long one.

Widget…

The header image is by my dear friend Roberta Aylward. She has produced some of the most vital work that I’ve seen during the pandemic. Please follow her @robertaaylward on Instagram.

And R.I.P., NS. There aren’t too many people in my circles who’ve known me almost every day of my life anymore. She was one of them, and one of the kindest. I loved her, and I will miss her.

The last track is another cover of “Strangers” by Lucius and Black Pumas. Full circle, mic drop. I’m half-vax’d. And I’m excited for part two next month. As the kids say, let’s go.

More soon.

JF

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Grateful Dead Monthly: Academy of Music – New York, NY 3/28/72

Before Europe ’72, there was Academy of Music ’72. Between March 21 and 28, 1972, the Grateful Dead played seven concerts at the Academy of Music in New York City.

That’s the original Academy of Music. It opened in 1854 as a 4,000 seat opera house on the northeast corner of East 14th Street and Irving Place in Manhattan. The Dead didn’t play there. They played across the street at a 3,400 seat movie palace also named the Academy of Music, which opened in 1927.

That’s the latter Academy of Music. It shifted from a cinema toward a concert venue in the mid-60s. The Rolling Stones played there on their first U.S. tour in 1965. Around the closing of the Fillmore East, some eight blocks south and east (if my dodgy NYC geography is correct), the former movie palace was a full-on rock palace, hosting the Allman Brothers Band (8/15/71), Aerosmith opening for Humble Pie and Edgar Winter (12/2-3-71), and the Band (12/28-31/71 – those shows were excerpted for the 1972 live album Rock of Ages and featured in their entirety for the 2013 box set Live at the Academy of Music 1971).

The Academy of Music was renamed the Palladium in 1976. And on 9/20/79, this happened there.

The guitar smash, not the album, obv. #paulsimononftw The venue was converted to a nightclub by Studio 54 guys Steve Rubell and Ian Schrager in 1985. In 1992, they sold it to Peter Gatien, who kept it open until 1997. The last concert at the Palladium was Fugazi on 5/1/97 (Red Medicine tour, I think). It’s now an NYU dorm with a gym in the basement.

The Dead visited the Academy/Palladium twice – once in 1972 and once in 1977. In ’72, they were workshopping material that they would soon take across the pond. In ’77, they were solidifying material that they would soon take upstate for the ne plus ultra. Fun fact, the fourth night of the ’72 run was presented by Hells Angels. Here’s the full poster.

[The lessons of Altamont ’69 apparently had been learned, then put to rest. Quick replay, tho, from less than three years earlier.]

The New York Daily News summarized the run like this: “Seven concerts in one week at the Academy of Music, every one of them sold out within hours, more by ESP than advertising… The week’s series will help finance the Dead’s traveling expenses for a two-month, seven-country tour of Europe beginning Saturday.” That quote appears in an excellent and exhaustive recap of all the shows (and their recordings) by someone called “Light Into Ashes” on the Grateful Dead Guide blog. There, LIA posits:

“Musically, this run falls midway between the honky-tonk vibe of the fall ’71 shows, and the smoother Europe ’72 tour. Probably one of the Dead’s plans for the run, aside from raising money for the Europe tour, was to hone their performances for the upcoming live-album recording – after a two-month break from playing shows together, they would need to get back in the groove! 

People who saw them at the time were probably struck by the changes in repertoire. (They only played two songs that had been on Live/Dead, one time each; few songs from Workingman’s Dead or American Beauty were played at all; and many of their newer songs were not on any albums yet.) Pigpen was also singing and playing more than he had in ’71 (singing five or six songs a night); a new piano player had altered the band’s sound quite a bit; and some unknown longhaired lady would come onstage to sing for a song or two. New Yorkers would also have noticed that the Dead no longer played til dawn, as they had done so often at the Fillmore East!

The average show length was three and a half hours, as they played through most of their repertoire each night. (Any audience members who went to several shows in the run would hear most of the same songs a LOT of times.)”

The Grateful Dead Sources blog has a 1972 newspaper review from Toronto’s Grapevine. Pretty funny, it’s worth a look.

Betty Cantor-Jackson recorded the shows, but the tapes disappeared until some guy from Northern California bought them at an auction in 1987. The tapes sat in his barn deteriorating. When Jerry died in 1995, one of the guy’s friends, who must’ve known a thing or two about the Dead, contacted Dark Star Orchestra’s Rob Eaton. Eaton cleaned and restored the tapes at his own expense, and returned them to the guy.

(^ Rob Eaton)

From LIA’s post, which quotes Eaton from an interview with Katie Harvey:

“‘The collection was really unique. Half of it was Garcia-Saunders from ’73, 74, 75. It was just nothing anybody had ever seen. And all the Academy of Music tapes from the Dead in ’72, which no one had ever heard a tape of: really bad audience tapes were the only thing [from that run], nothing was in the Vault. So I knew it was really important.’

Eaton kept DAT copies of the reels, although the buyer made him sign a contract not to copy or distribute the recordings. ‘He drew up this contract that I was liable for $100,000 in liquefied damages if I released the contents of the collection without his written authorization. And I wasn’t allowed to keep a copy according to this thing. All the copies had to be in his possession. Of course I’m keeping a DAT master of everything I’m doing. I’m not that stupid. I was a deadhead and protecting the music was my first and foremost thought. Legally, I wasn’t really that concerned with it. Because I was sort of in with the Dead office at the time, they found out that I had these. They wanted to get a hold of the guy. So I got them in touch with this guy who wanted a million dollars. They just told him to fuck himself. They came back to me and they go, “Look, we know you’re smart. We know you probably kept a set of DATs. What would it take to get that set of DATs from you?” And I said, “Well, first of all, I signed this contract.”’

But according to Hal Kantor, the Dead’s attorney, ‘He can’t claim rights to what’s on the tape. He has rights to the actual physical tapes, but what’s on the tape is our rights, not his.’ So Eaton copied his DATs (including Dead shows from 1971-76) and gave them to the Vault. And as Harvey writes: ‘They prohibited him from distributing copies because they planned to commercially release the material.'”

Parts of all seven nights in 1972 are scattered across various official releases, but the archivists have unloosed only two complete shows – 3/26 (Dave’s Picks #14) and 3/28 (Dick’s Picks #30). The latter also contains the Bo Diddley sit-in from 3/25, so ECM and I decided to focus on that one.

According to the DP#30 Wiki, the 3/25 show was a “semi-private party” billed as Jerry Garcia & Friends. In reality, it was a GD with the band backing Bo Diddley for the first set, then playing its own second set. The entire show has sound quality issues, but the first set is quite poor. The “jam” is the most notable part. It’s essentially a slower version of the “Hard to Handle” wig-out, and not super interesting.

The Dead opened their set with a couple rarities – How Sweet It is (To Be Loved by You), on which Donna Jean reaches a truly wicked level of caterwaul, and Are You Lonely for Me Baby?, from which Bobby must’ve gotten inspiration for Black-Throated Wind. Are You Lonely was later a staple of Garcia/Merl Saunders sets in ’72-74.

3/28 is better, and offers more typical Dead fare. The first set features an extremely hot China Cat Sunflower > I Know You Rider duo, and some funny stage banter from Phil Lesh. After the band played Mexicali Blues, some audience members chanted for Alligator. Phil responded, “Hey, for all you Alligator fans out there, we done – ah alright alright alright. We understand that there’s a lot of Alligator fans out there, but we done forgot it, see. And so ah, we’re gonna have to remember it sometime later, you know.” The second set showpiece is an extended version of The Other One that offers a preview of what the band would do in Europe.

Ed reminded me that this show was Pigpen’s last in NYC. And he added that it contains Donna’s first Playing in the Band wail. Awesome. His listening notes are more robust than mine, as usual:

The Europe ’72 tour began on April 7th, but the boys played a preparatory seven-night run at the Academy of Music in NYC in the days leading up to their flight across the pond. 

The festivities open with a rockin Truckin.’ All the first set songs are played with gusto and feeling especially the “new” songs such as Tennessee Jed, Chinatown Shuffle, BT Wind, Mr. Charlie, You Win Again and Mexicali Blues.  After Mexicali, the audience is calling out for “Alligator” and Phil tells them that “we done forgot it.” A rare, mid-set Brokedown follows and it is a pure joy. It just might be my favorite song from the entire first set. Next Time You See Me is perfectly executed. The band tears up Cumberland. Bobby is high in the mix and it is exciting to hear his guitar part. Next, Bobby introduces LLR as a “cryin’ song.” It’s a gorgeous version that has Jerry on pedal steel and Phil on backing vocals.  and China->Rider really stands out. The segue jam in China->Rider is especially interesting as the band seems to struggle at first to find the groove behind Bobby’s solo, then they just roll with it, and then Jerry locks into a cool riff before diving into Rider. The only minor complaint is that after 6 shows, Garcia’s voice is beginning to show signs of strain (You Win Again, Big Railroad Blues and China Cat). 

The setlist for Set II pretty much speaks for itself. Playing in the Band continues to progress. This performance marks the the first time that Donna lends her vocal contributions. The jam section starts off drifty like Veneta with that big psychedelic bubble. By the 6-minute mark Jerry is in full guitar psychosis mode. They cool down into drifting, mournful ribbons of sound only to bring it to another peak around the 10-minute mark before entering the reprise. A few songs later we get a high-energy Sugar Magnolia. Jerry goes nuts on the wah pedal during the coda. Donna has not yet found her way into the arrangement yet). This segues directly into a brief drum intro that leads into a 28-minute version of The Other One. The entry is surprisingly laid back as is the entire performance. By the 7-minute mark there are no traces of the song. The band has entered uncharted territory…deep space. This is pretty experimental stuff…atonal notes and peals of feedback. Things begin to become melodic again at about the 14-minute mark as the band prepares to deliver the first verse but it takes them 2 more minutes to eventually get there and after dispensing with it they return to the same misty pastures where they once were. The concert ends in fine form with their standby crowd pleasing closer of NFA>GDTRFB>NFA. The jam at the end of NFA leading into GDTRFB especially shines. 

The only version of the Sidewalks of New York is just a half-minute tuning.

Here’s the Spotify widget.

I’ll add LMA links at some point.

More soon.

JF

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