3/21/70 Capitol Theater, Port Chester NY

GRATEFUL...DEAD...GRATEFUL...DEAD

After our performance on Sat. night, a few Pageant Players went up to Portchester to catch the Grateful Dead doing a late show at Howard Stein's Capitol Theater. We got in free since someone in the group knew someone on the inside. The Grateful Dead are generally considered to be one of the grooviest rock groups, in terms of the cultural revolution: the most political, the most freaky, doing free shows whenever they can, supporting communes, doing a more relaxed kind of jamming show, rather than a slick series of arranged numbers. And they're really great musicians. They were my favorite American group. I hadn't seen them perform for over a year, and was looking forward to it when we went up there. But in the back of my head, I was wondering how I would respond to them now that I have a much more complete consciousness of women's liberation, and a strong awareness of how Male the whole rock scene is.
We came in just as a Busby Berkeley film was ending. The Grateful Dead were to go on next. And the crowd was hollering for them. I thought I was imagining things, but the atmosphere seemed hysterical, more than I've ever seen at a rock concert. I found out later that the Dead the night before had given the audience free acid, and this crowd wanted the same. The Dead came on, and opened up with a few fast numbers. The audience, or a large part of it anyway, was up on its feet shouting, dancing, screaming, waving. That was beautiful. It was a nice change from the usual stoned stupor of rock concerts. But the audience was so high strung and crazy that they couldn't wait for the Dead to tune their instruments in between numbers. They would start hooting and screaming. Then someone from the Dead gave the finger to the audience, and this started the playful hostility which continued all evening between the audience and the Grateful Dead, and between the audience members themselves. It reminded me a bit of a nightclub, with the hostile drunks yelling comments at the performers. I did feel that the energy of the audience had nowhere to go in that theater, with all the seats. It was very frustrating to try to dance, and let loose, and you began to feel like a caged animal.
I felt sorry for the Grateful Dead at different moments, having to contend with a bunch of nuts everytime they tried to tune up. But, then I thought, they agree to play at those theaters, they agree to play for those prices, they agree to play under those blue lights, that go off completely in between each number, And the audience is in darkness the whole time, so you can't possible relate to anyone near you, only the STARS on stage.
Jerry Garcia and Phil Lesh did some beautiful blues, spiritual numbers on acoustic guitar. I was digging it. Then on comes Pigpen, and in his mellow lyrical voice sings about Cala May, who some people say is built like a Cadillac, but I know she's just a Model T, by her shape, and she can't take the weight, etc., etc. Something inside me went boom. There I was digging this beautiful voice, beautiful guitar, but with words about some woman's box. And I knew it would happen. I felt pretty sullen for the rest of the concert. I was also getting turned off by the fact that the audience just seemed to be waiting for the hits, like they didn't come to hear great music, great jamming, just the hits, which they were screaming for in between each number. The Grateful Dead just seemed like another commodity.
Everyone flipped out when Pigpen launched into "Turn on Your Love Light." It was what they were waiting for. Pigpen's riffs for that night included a little story about how his baby calls him when she wants him, first softly daddy, then he says yeah, real cool, then louder Daddy, him still cool yeah baby, then she screaming DADDY, and he's still real cool, says yeah baby, yuk, yuk. The predominantly male audience naturally flipped out over this. I flipped out inside.
The men in the Pageant Players who went, said they felt funny themselves about the concert, the songs, etc. In fact, it was my boyfriend, who pointed out to me that the audience was mainly men, and they seemed to be flipping out over the Dead more than the women. Weird atmosphere.
I thought about it all the next day, and realized the whole concert seemed like a hippie stag party.
We all know that the rock scene is male dominated, as are most other areas of creative work. But no other area is so totally male, as music. Has anyone reading this article ever met a woman bass player, a woman electric guitarist, woman drummer? I doubt it. And if you have, it's one or two, and maybe you had to think about it for a few minutes. Women write, paint, do theater, etc. But men make music, and this goes for classical, jazz, rock.
When I was in Brooklyn College majoring in music, I spent many hours around musicians, jazz and classical. And in the last few years, to some extent around rock musicians. And I tell you that musicians incorporate the hangups of straight society regarding men and women, more than men in the other fields. I know there are exceptions. But I found that in general guys who were poets, painters, were much more willing to see women as intellectual creative people, than were musicians, who thrive on a male ego, subservient "chick" relationship, which the whole hippie rock culture reinforces. And the fact that musicians spend so much time together playing music and that they are all men, makes their relationships with women purely sexual. It's exactly like the straight world where the man has his work outside the home, his main interests, outside the home, away from his woman. But he comes home to get fed, get laid, and maybe dig his kids.
I think that rock music has changed a lot of things, released a lot of energy, created some good images for young people, emphasized enjoyment, sensual pleasure, relaxation, freaking out, looking weird, turning on. But I also think as far as the male-female relationship goes, as far as women's liberation goes, and the image a woman should have of herself, it is totally reactionary, and must be changed. A woman can relate to rock music now only if she is a groupie, if not literally, then figuratively. As the drooling sex hungry little girl dying for IT from Pigpen, Jim Morrison, or Peter Townshend. I can't relate to that bullshit.
I don't think music should be asexual either. I think music is communication on a very emotional, sexual level. That's why I've always dug it so much. But sexual not in a male chauvinist context nor narcissistic display. Women and men should be playing in groups together. Women playing the instruments, writing the material. And not just having a "chick" sex object singer, in a male group. There's nothing new about that. But women playing drums, or electric guitar, is somehow very threatening to our images of what is feminine and masculine.
To me the whole image of the rock scene is an image of a mod, "pretty," long-haired, mini-skirted, or bell-bottomed passive, sweet chick, nice enough to be at the side of any strong manly rock musician or business man. Or an image of a braless, long-skirted, sweet, mother earth commune hippie chick. Both of those are distortions. And accepted roles. Just as the aggressive, dominant, creative genius is the role that men play, and what women LOOK UP to. And that's not my revolution, nor any of my sisters'. Women unite. Let's start making music. Revolutionary music.

(by Arlene Brown, from Rat, 4 April 1970)

https://archive.org/details/gd1970-03-21.late.aud.lee.pcrp.21779.shnf

http://seanhowe.tumblr.com/post/159552170872/new-york-city-1970-women-working-at-the

More reviews of 3/21/70:
http://deadsources.blogspot.com/2012/07/march-21-1970-capitol-theater-port.html
http://deadsources.blogspot.com/2014/02/march-21-1970-capitol-theater-port.html
http://deadsources.blogspot.com/2014/03/march-21-1970-capitol-theater-port.html

Early 1967: Dead Praise

THE GRATEFUL DEAD RISE

I first heard them play over a year ago. After the set I wandered up to the bass player (long blonde hair, blue corduroy pants, a yellow velvet shirt) and asked for the name of the group.
"The Grateful Dead."
"What?"
"The Grateful Dead," he said.
It is amazing what this band can do. In a long while of listening to all the "new rock and roll" groups that have come to and from San Francisco, the Dead is the only one (among about 10 in the world) that set after set, weekend after weekend, grabs me out of my chair every time.
The nucleus of the Grateful Dead was a Peninsula band: Mother McCree's Uptown Jug Champions.
Three of the current members were in it: Jerry Garcia, 24, lead guitarist; rhythm guitarist Bob Weir, 19, then a junior in high school and from a social Atherton family (the band played for his sister's debutante party this summer); and Ron McKernan, 21.
Ron is better known as "Pig-pen," an affectionate name having something to do with his rather outrageous appearance. "I began singing at 16. I wasn't in school, I was just goofin'. I've always been singing along with records, my dad was a disc jockey, and it's been what I wanted to do."
He has a rich voice which reaches all the inside places of the pains of life. Noted jazz critic Ralph J. Gleason named Pigpen "one of the major bluesmen in America."
Mother McCree's went on for a while until a year and a half ago they decided to do rock and roll. "Rock is more immediate music; it's closer to what's happening in people's heads."
Bill Sommers, 20, from a Stanford football background, had played in about 10 bands until they asked him to join. Although the best drummer in the Bay Area, he had been holding down a fulltime short-hair job. Bass player Phil Lesh, 28, was the last to join.
The Grateful Dead (look the phrase up in Webster's) spent six months "in the woodshed" between Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Vancouver.
"Woodshedding" was working out new material, tightening arrangements, living, suffering and starving together, a process which, like the Beatles in Germany, brings a group so close in their minds and their music that they can make the group sound a greater total than the sum of five individuals.
It will be difficult to capture the spirit and excellence of this group on a record. (They are now with Warner Brothers.) One of the great pleasures of the group is their incredible stage presence. They have fun.
Jerry sings very sadly and quietly, especially on numbers like Dylan's "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue." Pigpen plays the harmonica and organ, both in a style which is best described as alternatingly marauding and mysterious.
Phil and Jerry do most of the writing.
"The lyrics are nonsensical and banal," they explain.
"You just do what you do," Phil says, "and we all kind of fell together. We orbit around a common centre. It is impossible to define but it has something to do with making good music of any kind. That's the Grateful Dead."

(by Jann Werner, from the Ottawa Journal, 5 May 1967)

Thanks to Dave Davis.