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"During the [6/14/85] press conference, one reporter asked the Stupid Question, and happened to be standing next to photographer Susana Millman when doing so, resulting in this startling portrait of the Grateful Dead gazing directly through the camera’s lens to judge you, the viewer." –Jesse Jarnow
The Grateful Dead (And Friends) - Ace's, Mill Valley, California, March 17, 1975
The Good Ol' Grateful Deadcast recently returned for its twelfth (!) season — and somehow, it's just getting better and better, as all the years combine. A podcast beyond description!
The latest round sees host Jesse Jarnow digging deep into 1975, the Dead's "hiatus" year. (PS: I recently dug much less deep into this era with a quick '75 listening guide over on Aquarium Drunkard.) Not many live shows, but a lot of jamming behind the scenes.
Episode two of Deadcast season 12 focuses in on "Slipknot!" but the overall vision is vast, taking us from enormous San Francisco stadiums to the intimate environs of Ace's, Bob Weir's Mill Valley studio, where the band worked up their new Blues For Allah material. A fascinating listen from start to finish, and one that sent me back to those heavy/heady Ace's tapes — including the famous "Ned's Birthday Jam" on March 17.
Ned is Ned Lagin of "Seastones" fame, of course. "Since it was my birthday I got to call the shots, as it were, and I wanted to jam on a bunch of tunes," Lagin reveals. "David Crosby I called that morning; he had a habit of showing up for some of these jams and rehearsals."
What follows is loose and range-y, naturally, but it's incredibly cool, too, with all kinds of interesting and imaginative moments emerging from the mist. After you've tuned into the Deadcast, tune into this!
Oh and hey: As I mentioned, Prairiewolf had the honor of playing three (count 'em!) east coast gigs with Jesse Jarnow's band Sloppy Heads this past month. And you can hear one of them (via legendary Colorado taper Lance Stack) in its entirety now ... here's Sloppy Heads, Prairiewolf and Organs Obsolete! A beautiful night 'neath the BQE ...
New from Da Capo and music historian Jesse Jarnow, Wasn’t That a Time: The Weavers, The Blacklist, and the Battle for the Soul of America.
"i think it's nice that so many flags will be at half-mast for donna"
—Jesse Jarnow (via Mastodon)
All One Song: "Sedan Delivery" w/ Jesse Jarnow
We're back again with All One Song, my Neil Young miniseries podcast thingamajig! Thank you to everyone who has tuned in so far!
This week’s All One Song guest is the definition of a multi-hyphenate — your friend and mine, Jesse Jarnow. Jesse is an incredible writer, having penned such essential books as Big Day Coming: Yo La Tengo and the Rise of Indie Rock, Heads: A Biography of Psychedelic America, Wasn’t That a Time: The Weavers, the Blacklist, and the Battle for the American Soul and the forthcoming epic, The Invisible Hit Parade: A People’s History of Recorded Music.
You’re probably going to recognize Jesse’s voice. He’s a longtime DJ over at WFMU, the world’s greatest free-form independent radio station, hosting the Frow Show every Tuesday night, bringing strange and wonderful sounds to the masses.
He’s also a podcaster, writing and co-producing the amazing Good Ol’ Grateful Deadcast, which recently kicked off its 12th (!) season. The Deadcast’s depth of research, insight and sweet vibes puts pretty much every other podcast to shame — including this one.
Finally, Jesse is one-third of Sloppy Heads, a long-running Brooklyn-based band with two excellent albums, Useless Smile and Sometimes Just One Second under their belt. (And holy crap, Prairiewolf just so happens to be going on tour with Sloppy Heads for a couple days starting ... tomorrow????)
Now that we’ve gotten Jesse’s bona fides out of the way … which Neil Young song did he select to talk about with us on All One Song? Well, Jesse dug way down in the rust bucket for “Sedan Delivery,” a raucous number that first appeared on the classic 1979 Crazy Horse LP Rust Never Sleeps.
“Sedan Delivery”’s history stretches back several years, though — Neil and the Horse first tried it out during the Zuma sessions in 1975, giving it a somewhat lumbering lope. You can hear that version these days on Chrome Dreams. But with the subsequent dawning of punk, Neil and the crew injected this weird, semi-sci-fi with a dose of pure, demonic energy. Though it was hard to find in setlists for a little while there, by the mid-90s, it became a mainstay in Crazy Horse’s live repertoire, giving the band a chance to gleefully drive 90 miles an hour down a dead-end street.
Listen wherever you get your podcasts.
Bonus Track: As Jesse and I discuss, "Sedan Delivery" is that rare song that Neil has only performed with Crazy Horse. No solo version, no Promise of the Real, no nothing! Does that mean that we've seen the last of "Sedan Delivery"??? These days, I'm not feeling especially confident that the Horse will be back, but who knows ... until we do know, here's the last time the song was played, at Forest Hills last year. And hey, Jesse was there!
Deadcast: The Dead and the Sufi Choir, 3/71
Let's give it up (once again) for the Good Ol' Grateful Deadcast, which recently wrapped its latest season and hit an impressive 100-episode milestone. The Grateful Dead is usually front-and-center, of course, but — like Deadcast host Jesse Jarnow's always recommended book Heads — the band is often a leaping-off point for, er, heady trips into deep countercultural history. To wit! This fascinating episode about the Dead's brief early 70s encounter with San Francisco’s Sufi Choir. Jesse's kaleidoscopic narrative includes Duke Ellington, John Ashbery, the origins of improv comedy, author Erik Davis, underground Bay Area spiritual newspapers ... even Arthur Russell?! Unreal. And hey, we get to hear (parts of) a newly unearthed tape with Dead members jamming with the Sufi Choir at Winterland, too — which is a little rough at first but builds into something genuinely cool/unique. Here's to another 100 episodes!
Sloppy Heads - TV Eye, Ridgewood, New York, January 27, 2023
Is there a new Sloppy Heads record out? Yes, there is a new Sloppy Heads record out! Sometimes Just One Second just dropped on the Shrimper label and — dare I say it — it's the best Heads yet! Ariella Stok, Bill the Drummer, and Jimmy Jumpjump (AKA your friend and mine Jesse Jarnow) have crafted a sprawling masterpiece this time around: 75 minutes of sweet jams, fuzzed-out pop, cracked balladry and even a delicious Dead boogie.
Extra props to Yo La Tengo's James McNew, Ladybug Transistor's Gary Olson, Pee Wee's Playhouse artist Gary Panter and legendary animator Al Jarnow for making this a truly special collection. For a little more detail, check out this recent Jarnow + Jarnow Q&A on Aquarium Drunkard.
I like the RIYL that came along with the Sometimes Just One Second promo, so I'll just reprint it here:
RIYL: WFMU, Mutant Sounds blog, Half Japanese, Yo La Tengo, The Fugs, Seastones, Kluster, Crazy Horse, The Godz, Yoko Ono's Approximately Infinite Universe, Bonzo Dog Band, Pep Lester, Spotted Dick, X, Jefferson Airplane, The Vaselines
You like all that, don't you?! I do. I also like this short live video via the great Roolin YouTube channel of Sloppy Heads out in Ridgewood. Loose as a goose, right as rain.
