tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5195590583641426943.post5837554788552642688..comments2024-03-26T23:10:34.814-07:00Comments on Grateful Dead Sources: August 20, 1969: Band InterviewLight Into Asheshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06943335142002007213noreply@blogger.comBlogger5125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5195590583641426943.post-43907016662387315292013-06-13T07:42:03.771-07:002013-06-13T07:42:03.771-07:00Yes, that's what I think he's talking abou...Yes, that's what I think he's talking about. The Common.Fate Musichttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05648291938690043423noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5195590583641426943.post-49997326105280164352013-06-12T21:31:58.395-07:002013-06-12T21:31:58.395-07:00Actually, now that I think about it, Garcia may be...Actually, now that I think about it, Garcia may be referring to the plans being made at the Family Dog to open it up for daytime jams, as discussed here: <br />http://lostlivedead.blogspot.com/2010/04/family-dog-at-great-highway-august-13.html <br /><br />At a meeting at the Family Dog on August 19 (just the day before the Seattle show), Garcia was saying, "Nights? What about during the day? We got musicians running around looking for a place to jam – why not here?" <br />This seems to have started happening immediately. <br />(I haven't seen the relevant articles, though.)<br /><br />Also, note that Garcia & NRPS were playing at the Family Dog with the New Lost City Ramblers on August 13 (or thereabouts) - and here in this interview he mentions talking to John Cohen about the possibility of a musician-owned recording company.Light Into Asheshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06943335142002007213noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5195590583641426943.post-78159561963201130002013-06-12T19:34:26.814-07:002013-06-12T19:34:26.814-07:00I have another hypothesis about the thing that was...I have another hypothesis about the thing that was cooking after the WWF fiasco (and, as importantly, the Light Artists Guild strike), more local than London, but let me keep that one dry for a bit.Fate Musichttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05648291938690043423noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5195590583641426943.post-15196710682312548962013-06-10T22:36:58.873-07:002013-06-10T22:36:58.873-07:00(continued)
The interviewers express alarm at th...(continued) <br /><br />The interviewers express alarm at the large "Dead family" on the back of Aoxomoxoa, but the Dead reply that it was just a few people who happened to be there, and the actual family's much bigger. (Seems to me the Dead just picked all the women & children who were handy!)<br /><br />The Dead admit they're deep in debt, spending money outrageously & supporting lots of people. Lydon's article stated: "Trying to combine their own music-lifestyle with the rock & roll business, they have missed living the best of either. Their dealings with the business world have been disastrous. Money slips through their fingers, bills pile up, instruments are repossessed and salaries aren't paid. The group is $60,000 in debt, and those debts have meant harm to dozens of innocent people... They have never gotten along with Warner Bros., reacting distrustfully to all attempts at guidance." <br />We certainly see a lot of this distrust in the interview - a common theme of Dead interviews going back as far as '66. (Their '66 Mojo interview also had some complaints about the union's lack of helpfulness.) <br /><br />It ends with a discussion of "people's music" which ties right into Garcia's 1973 declaration to Cameron Crowe: "Fuck people's music!" <br />His feelings on this didn't change in these years - for all the free concerts Garcia gave, he felt that musicians should get some support: "It's work; there's dues you have to pay to become a musician. So it becomes an expense of the people who dig music. I don't think that costs very much, because musicians aren't really asking for a fuck of a lot... It seems to me worthwhile to support a cat who's doing something..."<br /><br />The Motherfuckers referred to at the end were the New York activist group Up Against The Wall Motherfuckers, whose slogans were borrowed by Jefferson Airplane for the song "We Can Be Together." <br />One thing the Motherfuckers believed in was free music - they'd cut fences at Woodstock so thousands more could attend for free, and for a time persuaded Bill Graham to give them free use of the Fillmore East for one night a week. <br /><br />The Dead would be at the center of another collision between a planned festival and the music-should-be-free crowds again the next year in the Festival Express. (Not to mention the ticketless hordes that crashed into many of their New York shows.)<br />As Garcia sighs, "If you play for money, the revolutionary [groups] will bad-rap you for that... Nobody's ever willing to support the musicians." Light Into Asheshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06943335142002007213noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5195590583641426943.post-22021641757836515852013-06-10T22:36:28.241-07:002013-06-10T22:36:28.241-07:00In general, the more Dead are involved in an inter...In general, the more Dead are involved in an interview, the more chaotic & jokey it is. Garcia still does most of the talking here, though Weir & Lesh also contribute. Garcia usually speaks on behalf of the group, giving careful 'straight' answers & explanations while the others joke around.<br /><br />I think the interview was most likely done on August 20; there are a few photos from the rained-out event that day. But the authors, clearly early Dead fanatics (given their high praise of the band), also went to the show on the 21st and have an interesting perspective: <br />"There's not a lot to be said about the gig. Conditions were terrible, the Dead weren't at their best, and the audience was largely responsive but uncomprehending." <br /><br />The Rolling Stone article mentioned is Michael Lydon's excellent article in the August 23 issue (so it must have been fresh on the newsstands). Today it's most easily found in Rolling Stone's Garcia tribute book; and it has more than held up over time.<br /><br />The planned followup Helix article on the Dead's music sounds great - unfortunately, as far as I know, it was never written. <br /><br />Garcia also talked about assassination while on a plane ride in Lydon's article: <br />"Maybe it'll happen today, the first rock & roll assassination. Favorite fantasy - sometime we'll land, and when we're all on the stairs, a fleet of black cars will rush the plane like killer beetles. Machine guns will pop from the roofs and mow us down. Paranoid, huh? But, fuck, in a way I wouldn't blame 'em."<br />So when Garcia talks about being paranoid that year, he wasn't kidding...it's the same feeling we see represented at the end of Easy Rider (which had recently opened in theaters). <br /><br />McNally has a lengthy account of the Wild West Festival fiasco in his book, p.322-25. In short, unrealistic plans collided with skeptical activists, who cried that the festival was going to be a rip-off run by the establishment. The Light Artists Guild went on strike at a Dead show; there were quarrels between the producers of the festival (especially Bill Graham); as Garcia says, the whole idea had no community support; so finally it was canceled. "The San Francisco music community lay in ruins."<br />Garcia here hints that "out of the ashes of that there seem to be a couple of things rising" that may or may not happen. He could be referring to a plan by the Dead, the Airplane, and Crosby Stills & Nash to have a free concert at Hyde Park in London (where Blind Faith & the Stones had recently played free shows). Rock Scully flew to London in September to arrange it - the plan fell through, but the seeds of Altamont were sown.<br /><br />When the Dead insist that Woodstock was "no disaster," clearly they're not referring to their own performance. At this point, just a few days afterward, no one's interested in how WELL anyone actually played, they're still marveling that it happened at all. <br />Apparently there was an immediate media backlash about the hellish horrors of this drug-infested youth gathering. The New York Times ran an infamous editorial titled "Nightmare in the Catskills" - "The dreams of marijuana and rock music that drew 300,000 fans and hippies to the Catskills had little more sanity than the impulses that drive the lemmings to march to their deaths in the sea. They ended in a nightmare of mud and stagnation..." - as well as this insightful classic: <br />http://graphics8.nytimes.com/packages/pdf/topics/Woodstock/19690817Groove.pdf Light Into Asheshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06943335142002007213noreply@blogger.com