tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5195590583641426943.post7080948157341645251..comments2024-03-26T23:10:34.814-07:00Comments on Grateful Dead Sources: January 26-27, 1968: Eagles Auditorium, SeattleLight Into Asheshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06943335142002007213noreply@blogger.comBlogger1125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5195590583641426943.post-68487536080555106052019-02-06T21:38:47.704-08:002019-02-06T21:38:47.704-08:00I was looking through this excellent collection of...I was looking through this excellent collection of Helix scans from 1967-68: <br />https://pauldorpat.com/category/helix/ <br />And, visiting vol. 2 no. 10, noticed that I got the headline of the first article wrong: it's just printed "AND THE DEAD," not "The Quick and the Dead." (Actually the word "STING" is printed in big letters up above for some reason, but it was 25 years too early to be "Sting and the Dead.") <br />There's also a nice show photo, and an accompanying article ("Pop-Cycle") about a visit to Seattle by Vanguard producer Sam Charters. Along with Ed Denson, he made a quick visit one evening to three clubs: the Happening, the Eagles, and the S.F. Sound. First stop was the Happening, "the place in Seattle [for] the aspiring jet set (quick and cool and over 18)...in an environment of semi-hip paisley-lit titillations.<br />Sam had come to hear local bands for possible recording on the Vanguard label. The Magic Fern was one of these. He murmured something about 'second-rate S.F. bands' and left near the end of the first set. <br />At the Eagles The Dead were meandering through its second set while Sam wandered through the scene and decided there was one...unlike Pittsburg, Houston, Richmond Virginia, and the fast deteriorating S.F. ... <br />Anxious to see to what extent the Dead would be a drain on the San Francisco Sound, we visited the latter last. Attendance at the Sound is always in flux. Two weeks before some 500 filled the floor...dancing. Last weekend there were perhaps 50...sitting. (It is our hope that the S.F. Sound's excellent dance facilities will be made better use of and that some of its internal problems will cool.)" <br /><br />Charters also produced Country Joe & the Fish's records, so no doubt he was familiar with the Dead from San Francisco. It's funny that he leaves one club where a "second-rate SF" imitation is playing and heads to see the real thing at the Eagles...and then goes on to an actual ballroom called the "San Francisco Sound" in Seattle! (It would seem Seattle's own rock-music scene was going through an identity crisis.) <br />For me, it's amazing to think of Charters seeing the Dead, because he had recorded & released so many older folk & blues musicians who had a huge influence on the Dead - for instance, he recorded a Lightnin' Hopkins album in 1959 with 'She's Mine,' which Pigpen would play in Dead shows in 1970. Even more startling, ten years earlier in 1958, he had first taped Joseph Spence, whose recording of 'I Bid You Goodnight' (in 1965, with the Pindar Family) the Dead started covering in early '68.Light Into Asheshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06943335142002007213noreply@blogger.com