February 2, 1970: Fox Theater, St Louis

GRATEFUL DEAD MAKE ROCK FANS COME ALIVE 

The Grateful Dead were a long time getting started last night, but they made up for it with a powerful performance that had rock fans dancing in the aisles of the Fox Theater. 

Owsley Stanley, the well-known alchemist, prowled about the stage for an hour after the concert had been scheduled to begin, twisting knobs, cursing microphones, and scowling at the loudspeakers. Stanley built most of the Grateful Dead's massive array of sound equipment, but he was unhappy with the theater's public-address system. 

He must have adjusted everything properly because the sound was just fine, blasting clearly into the far reaches of the second balcony. 

 

CROWD MILLS AROUND 

The concert, which was part of the homecoming festivities of St Louis University, got underway with a middling performance by a Chicago group, Aorta. It was not until 10:15 that the Grateful Dead began to play. While waiting, many in the crowd of about 2000 milled around in the neo-Babylonian lobby of the theater. 

The crowd was about half clean-cut students and about half the sort of group one would expect for a concert by the original San Francisco acid rock band - explosions of hair, clothes from the Salvation Army and Goodwill stores. There were few of the boutique bohemians who haunt the more polite rock concerts. 

The Dead opened their set with several songs of a heavy country flavor, including a rollicking version of Merle Haggard's "Mama Tried." At times, Jerry Garcia was twanging away as if he were playing a pedal steel guitar rather than a simple electric one. 

 

BOY STARTS IT 

The crowd was pleased but fairly subdued at first. Then, the six-man band began a long, slow blues that featured some electronic games with feedback and tape loops. In the middle of the blues, they broke into the heavy rock spiritual sound of "St. Stephen." A boy near the front leaped to his feet and yelped in approval, and soon most of the rest of the crowd followed suit. 

For the rest of the concert, perhaps another half-hour, the crowd was on its feet, shaking and twisting. Many hands were raised high with the victory sign. 

After a slower number, the Dead came on stronger than ever with a pounding rendition of "Turn On Your Lovelight." Ron (Pigpen) McKernan, a cowboy hat pulled low over his eyes, drove the crowd into a frenzy with his gutsy vocal. The two drummers kept the beat rolling, and Garcia threw in snappy blues asides. 

 

SCREAMS FOR MORE 

At the end, in a crescendo of cymbals and screeching guitars, a tall girl in an Afro hair style jumped up on the stage and hugged and kissed "Pigpen." The crowd cheered and screamed for more. 

For an encore the Dead did an a cappella version of "Goodnight." They seemed as happy as everyone else about the way the evening turned out. 

The Fox, which seldom has live performers, seems to be a fine setting for rock concerts. The acoustics are good and the elegantly gaudy decor is perfect. 

The delay was not the fault of the theater staff or the band. Several members of the Grateful Dead were among 19 persons arrested early Saturday at what reportedly was a marijuana party in a New Orleans motel. They and their equipment did not arrive in St Louis until nearly 7 p.m. 

(by Harper Barnes, from the St Louis Post-Dispatch, February 3 1970)  

See also Harper Barnes' 1973 article on Pigpen: https://deadsources.blogspot.com/2021/09/placeholder-ii.html

http://www.archive.org/details/gd70-02-02.sbd.cotsman.17809.sbeok.shnf (partial show)

February 1970: Fillmore West announcement

THE GRATEFUL DEAD TO PLAY FILLMORE

The Grateful Dead, Taj Mahal, and Bigfoot will appear at Fillmore West, 1545 Market, Thursday through Sunday, February 5 through 8. Lights will be by Brotherhood of Light.
The Fillmore West dance-concerts begin at 8:30 p.m., end at 2 a.m. Admission is $3 Thursday and Sunday; $3.50 Friday and Saturday.

The Grateful Dead, since 1966 one of San Francisco's best and best-loved bands, are on the charts with their fourth Warner Brothers LP, "Live Dead". The new album, according to Ralph J. Gleason, "far and away the best thing the Dead have offered," includes live tracks which display the spontaneity, improvisational and musical brilliance which characterize the group's in-person performances.
On national tour during much of 1969, the Dead have steadily grown in both popularity and musicianship. And, as Fusion Magazine recently noted, "this is their year. Whether it be from a growing musical acumen on the part of their audience, a starring role in Tom Wolfe's "Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test", or simply that they are one of the only living reminders of the Summer of Love," Fusion said, "suddenly great gobs of people have turned on the group, giving them a series of packed houses, screaming audiences, and fans whose devotion borders on the mystical."
Prior album releases by the Grateful Dead include: "Grateful Dead", "Anthem of the Sun", and "Aoxomoxoa".

Also on the charts with his third Columbia LP, "Giant Step", is blues specialist Taj Mahal. "Giant Step", a double record set, displays many facets of Taj's musical abilities: as a writer, arranger, singer and musician, a master of both urban and country blues styles. Previously released LPs include "Taj Mahal" and "Nach'l Blues".
Taj's engaging vocals, relaxed stage manner and warm personality have established him as one of rock music's most enjoyable and entertaining performers. A natural musician, he sings and plays guitar, piano, harmonica, bass and several other instruments.
Besides Taj, the group also includes Cherokee Indian Jesse Edwin Davis on lead guitar and keyboards; Gary Gilmore, bass; and Chuck Blackwell, drums.


(from the Fremont News-Register, January 29 1970)

1969: Live/Dead Reviews #2

FOUR EXPLOSIONS: THE GRATEFUL DEAD

This flight did not begin on earth, no: Dark Star is an opening poem to the colors from the void. Side one of a total of four begins to this most beautiful of melodic explorations. Even as the band shuffles into position they have departed planet limitations. Phil is propelling even as he prepares to soar, imparting visuals of silent space, probing here, thrusting there, threatening to connect and depart, but first for a moment of self-inspection, yes I is right, Jerry are you there???
The guitar murmurs in sleepy reply as the rhythm flows from in behind the theme and all is motion. Yes, I am here, the sun is always sleepy at dawn, but it is singing in eight minutes. Like a cat awakening, energy is half-scale but a moment before it becomes full-tone. On, then, and the plane is not just one: it is a boggling quantity on an ever-ascending series of plateaus.
Outer space has an infinity of wonders. Like the silken gold flow that must be the passing, in an inaudible distance, of molten fire - the stream of a comet, no a family of comets - the organ is this. And more. It is the color of space, the pure seeingness of purples and scarlets that we see but rarely only because there is so much else to drink.
And there is a terrible vocal, but that is all right, the instrumental voyage is so stunningly beautiful that nothing can obstruct it. The band leads you into constantly unfolding worlds of magic, dark and light, there is no distance, that has lapsed long since, all is within your reach, and all that remains is for you to touch...
The Grateful Dead are a family of diverse powers, but ecstasy is their chief calling. Their fourth album is entitled Live-Dead, a two-record set that collects in one package all the essence of their various beauties. The first side is a boiling radiance of almost excessive melodic joy that furrows the mind for 23 minutes. Jerry wrote Dark Star, and for me it is the ultimate expression of classical aesthetics and balance, fused miraculously into a climbing and darting structure of dynamics that somehow imparts the fervor of rock, while sacrificing none of its exquisite loveliness.
We greet the band's new organist, Tom Constanten, in clearer light than ever before. His involvement has grown and spiraled, at least to my ear, very subtly. Maybe a strange, maybe a wholly mistaken flash, but he appears a magnificently patient man and musician both. His first appearances in the group with public performance were times of patient learning and adjustment (to be sure, still true, but then more so than now). Until the present, when we hear him as an understated energy level, perhaps such because the ensemble emphasis of the Dead is and has always been the guitars. But in Dark Star, when Bob and Jerry retreat to quiet for periodic spells, there is Tom, in easy, airy flow, as tasteful on his instrument as anyone in the band.
Physical presence comes two steps more immediate as everyone wanders into Saint Stephen, gathering its breath within itself only to lose it in a great gasp of power, the magnificent drums marching the path to release from borderlines, tumbling like maverick children down an endless hillside, the guitars singing like sunlight down on them, but yes, quiet again as energies again gather, and the cycle repeats again, then launches itself into full-blown odyssey that is suddenly become The Eleven, which ends the side, but not before you can hear welling up, and then away, the drive of the band into Lovelight.
The flow of these first two sides is like a river that is running up its banks, but almost too slowly to perceive with the eyes, or the ears. You are borne aloft from all-in-harmony softness and color in Dark Star to poetic mischief and underpinned strengths and lulls in St. Stephen to the unceasing waves of The Eleven and its velver hammerheading from both instrumental and vocal perspectives, with the voices in ragged outpourings of earthy masculine ebullience so typical of these incredible human beings, to the first traces of the 15-minute Lovelight excursion.
Which occupies the entire third side, as monstrous as we all expected, with its tidal-strong punctuations and phenomenally eclectic yet individual soloing by Jerry, each musician turning, molding, shaping the directions to travel. Phil hinting at the theme in the middle of some weird digression, almost as though to scold in his freaky way that things are getting loose boys, let's bring it on up, the drummers doing the same when the rhythm tends to lax, tightening things together, everybody caring for everybody and the whole being as pure and as strong as imaginable.
The fourth side I won't speak of. The rest is enough. Death Don't Have No Mercy, Feedback, and Goodnight are the titles, but the other three sides to this gift have drained me dry. There is nothing left to say, it is all too sacred.

(by Raymond Lang, from the "Viola" column in the Daily Californian, January 20 1970)

* * *

LIVE/DEAD - THE GRATEFUL DEAD
WARNER BROS. 2 W.S. 1830 (IMPORT)

This album is truly beautiful. It consists of a non stop, four side, live set by the Grateful Dead; excellently packaged and presented. In all ways it is the definitive Dead album, in which the Dead prove themselves to be one of those groups, who, in common with the Jefferson Airplane and The Band, are able to play together with almost supernatural rapport and empathy.
In terms of material, the album contains a fifteen minute version of 'Turn on your Love Light' (an amazing piece of rock and roll improvisation), a twenty-three minute version of 'Dark Star', a Rev. Gary Davis blues, 'Death don't have no Mercy', 'Saint Stephen', 'The Eleven', 'We bid you Goodnight', and 'Feedback', an eight minute track which is exactly what the title claims.

(by Mick Farren, from the International Times (London), 27 February 1970)

* * *

LIVE DEAD

I wasn't expecting too much from this, having been bored silly by the Dead on their previous three albums. But all the fuss is clarified on this double-album, recorded in person, which allows them to stretch out and take their time layin' the licks down.
'Dark Star' is almost worth the price of the album, as Phil Lesh brings his bass guitar up to join the guitars of Jerry Garcia and Bob Weir in the front line for some surprisingly delicate and inventive interplay.
Pigpen gets off some nice backup organ behind the stunning Garcia on 'Death Don't Have No Mercy', while the unusual choice of 'Turn On Your Lovelight' works well. Listening to this, you can glimpse what all the fuss has been about.

( by Richard Williams, from Melody Maker, 14 March 1970)

December 20-21, 1968: Shrine Hall, Los Angeles

THE FISH, GRATEFUL DEAD IN SHRINE ROCK CONCERT

In a Shrine Exposition Hall almost cold enough to form icicles on the amps, Country Joe and the Fish, Spirit, and the Grateful Dead headlined Scenic Sound's pre-Christmas week-end pair of rock concerts.
Scheduled as an "extra added attraction," the flu-ridden Sir Douglas Quintet was inadequately replaced by both the Comfortable Chair and the Mint Tattoo.
Produced by Doors duo Krieger and Densmore, the six men in the Comfortable Chair displayed no particular individual brilliance nor any cohesive group identity.

BLAND, DIFFUSE
The Mint Tattoo unwisely offered lengthy over-ambitious improvisations, and this quasi-blues trio seemed bland and diffuse in the Shrine's vast chilly reaches.
On Friday, the Grateful Dead was plagued by sound system deficiencies on the main stage that particularly weakened vocal contributions. Nevertheless, the Dead's "Good Morning Little Schoolgirl" and "Turn On Your Lovelight" - the latter a particularly effective example of tightly-organized ensemble playing - produced the evening's first real excitement.

Back on the better-sounding sidestage, Spirit earned the concert's most enthusiastic response with their instrumental variety, creative use of feedback, and sheer performance power.
Less an actual unit than a showcase for individual members, Spirit's only weakness is its rather flat vocals.
Rather remote in his one-man center-stage set, percussionist "Pulse" showed the impressive ability to operate his own blacklight and sound effects equipment while executing a complex series of sonic maneuvers on the congas and bongos. With more careful pacing, his act should really develop into something astounding.
The evening ended with a long set by Country Joe and the Fish, not the most reliable of performers, but here in exceptional good form.

NEGLIGIBLE AMOUNT
With a negligible amount of their frequently emphasized protest material and a concentration on instrumentals (given the present sound system, a good idea) Country Joe provided extended variations on such material as "Not So Sweet Martha Lorraine," "Here I Go Again," and "So Nice to Have Love," the last a surprisingly commercial-sounding pop ditty handled with evident sensitivity.

(by Lewis Segal, from the Los Angeles Times, Dec 24 1968)

Thanks to snow & rain at the Transitive Axis forum. 

http://www.archive.org/details/gd1968-12-20.sbd.miller.89663.sbeok.flac16 

*

GRATEFUL DEAD - COUNTRY JOE - SPIRIT

SHRINE, LOS ANGELES - It was like World War III last Saturday evening at the Shrine with three rock groups, The Grateful Dead, Country Joe and the Fish, and The Spirit. The Spirit, a jazz-influenced rock band, simulated the sounds of marching soldiers, gun battle, and an air-raid siren during their numbers.
Ed Cassidy (he used to be Cass Strangedrum with the Rising Sons) is hip beneath glowing baldness and an unbelievably good drummer. Heavy on the tin, his foot creates crashes and banging solid beats. Each musician plays around the talent of Cassidy, and he sits, like the Mr. Clean of Musicland.
The Grateful Dead, whose live performances used to be disappointing, were excellent. The double drummers create an unusual, interesting sound, which distinguishes the San Francisco based group. The lead singer, a small Buffalo Bill wailer, somehow manages to sing above the throbbing beats of the seven members group. Oblivious to the audience (sadistic indifference), they seem to be performing for themselves. But their self-satisfaction brings great delight to the young crowd, decked out in rented costumes, grooving on the chairless floor of the huge auditorium.
Country Joe and the Fish are neither unusual nor individual. Country Joe and Banana, the only stars of the group, liven what would otherwise be a dull performance. But when left alone, the rest of the group functions as a lifeless automatic unit, free from singular identity. Billed as the starring group, Joe and the Fish were the last performers. By this time, the crowd, which wasn't large to begin with, dwindled rapidly and seemed just as bored by the Fish as the group was about their performance.

(from Cash Box, 4 January 1969) 

Thanks to Dave Davis.

https://archive.org/details/gd1968-12-21.sbd.miller.89718.sbeok.flac16

See also this review of 12/20: 

https://deadsources.blogspot.com/2024/10/december-20-1968-shrine-hall-los-angeles.html

July 31, 1967: O'Keefe Centre, Toronto

KIDS DANCE IN THE O'KEEFE'S AISLES

Marty Balin smiled with delight as he looked over the 300 people dancing on the O'Keefe Centre stage last night, and just for fun he acted out the fear on Hugh Walker's face when the whole thing started.
Balin's group, the Jefferson Airplane, rock 'n' roll exponents of the San Francisco hippie-freedom, got the kids dancing in the aisles in a joyous freewheeling happening.
Ushers frantically tried to return them to their seats because, after all, other paying customers might want to see, and besides that sort of thing just isn't done at the O'Keefe. "Disregard the ushers," the leader of one of the three rock groups on the bill shouted. Hundreds of them did and that's what bothered Walker, the Centre's managing director.
Over at the side, he had a hasty discussion with Bill Graham, the San Francisco dance hall baron and producer of the show. Graham pointed out that the crowd was peaceful and happy and wouldn't think of tearing up those soft seats or anything else. "Let's just say it turned out all right," he said afterward, a few minutes before disappearing into a back room for more discussions with five gray-suited O'Keefe managers.
Most of the near sellout crowd last night just watched. Dozens more sat out in the lobbies discussing the whole thing over a few more cigarettes. But maybe 300 others danced to a pounding, driving, throbbing and oozing trip of sound and color supplied by three bands and two light shows.
Here's how it happened.

Before the opening dim of the lights, the three screens on stage were already giving an appetizer. Centre screen carried the encircled, upside-down Y peace symbol, its colors slowly changing; green on blue, blue on two greens, tan on green and yellow. This screen was filled by Headlights, a group that adds the visual impact to the rock 'n' roll shows at Graham's Fillmore Auditorium in San Francisco. They work with liquid projections - colored oils swirled on a dish and projected - and rotating color wheels and loops of live-action film.
At stage right and left were two extra screens carrying color projection by a New York group called Sensefex Inc. Their work involves the projection of paint-splotch slides, electric motors that twirl the whole thing around. A movie projector showed its contents through a chute of angled mirrors that was also rotated by a motor. On the screens the multi-hued splotches revolved slowly forming a kaleidoscope resembling some protoplasm. Its colors were hard and deeply defined; white Headlights projected soft, gentle colors like early morning.
The audience was liberally sprinkled with hippies - in army shirts and commando hats, in beads and capes, and even in ties and jackets.

First Band: Toronto's Luke & the Apostles started off with their hard blues-rock sound. Lead singer Luke Gibson hugged the microphone crooner-style as he belted out "My Soul."
The peace symbol started dripping colors and eventually melting away shapelessly under the liquid colors that were applied above it. Bizarre globes turned green, red and back to green and ended like a red sky with stars.
The Apostles did two standard blues, "You Can't Judge a Book By Looking At the Cover" and "Good Morning Little Schoolgirl," both in a tough, heavy lumbering tone, filled with science-fiction and monster noises that were interesting to hear but out of place.

"Schoolgirl" was also done by the next group, the Grateful Dead, but in a looser, freer version, and in the Chicago blues form it came from. It was symbolic of the free music the group plays. They take it easy and put in their improvisations naturally. That characterizes both the Jefferson Airplane and the Dead, the latter lesser known and less inventive.
But the Dead are the true spokesmen for the San Francisco hippie scene and former resident musicians with the LSD Trips Festivals run by novelist Ken Kesey. (They also have an album that its Canadian distributor can't keep in stock, though the Dead have had no radio hits).
Leader Jerry Garcia's group doesn't have as much substance as the Airplane, but they work together as precisely as parts of a machine. Two-hundred-pound Pig Pen (Ronald McKernan) gives a happy undertone to the music, while Phil Lesh plays complex bass.

It took the Jefferson Airplane after intermission to get the dancing started. The taped sounds of a jet heralded their arrival. The group fills to stage front with Grace Slick's torchy vocal, "Somebody to Love." The Airplane captured that crowd without effort. The quality of their music, its intelligence and imagination superimposed on the necessary beat, drew them out to experience total involvement with sound and color. This music appeals to the older rock 'n' roll lovers. The young kids can't dance with the tempo transitions. The older ones do a free-form, improvised dance.
Leader Balin sings in a clear voice. Grace booms and lashes out with hers. Guitarist Jorma Kaukonen puts substance into the group's improvisations, while Jack Casady puts down a solid bass line. Spencer Dryden adds excitement with his drums, and Paul Kantner plays guitar, and sings. They project the spontaneity & freshness of youth. Their music is alive, and communicates clearly despite its complex arrangements and structure.
After the concert-dance, another dance occurs right on stage. This one planned as all three bands jam for a straight 50 minutes.

(by Volkmar Richter, from the Toronto Star, August 1 1967 - reproduced in the 7/31/67 entry of deadlists.com)

The front page leader for the story:
"The normally staid O'Keefe Centre - a hotbed of Toronto culture - took on a mod look last night as young hippies danced in the aisles to the music of the Jefferson Airplane, a rock group in the San Francisco style. Later 300 youths danced on the stage as three groups jammed for 50 minutes."

See also:
https://deadsources.blogspot.com/2017/10/august-5-1967-okeefe-center-toronto.html

November 23, 1966: Thanksgiving at the Fillmore

Something went on last week at the Fillmore Auditorium which dramatizes the difference between the avant garde of the New Generation (the "Love" generation, if you will) and its elders.
The Fillmore Auditorium gave a party for its patrons.
Thanksgiving Eve, over a thousand regular patrons and friends and rock bands and their friends gathered at the Fillmore to enjoy an elegantly catered dinner, soft drinks and music. Free.
Bill Graham had sent out the invitations previously with a request that no publicity be given. Couples who had been coming to the hall regularly ("I know almost all their faces," Graham says) were given tickets, and the bands were asked to invite their friends.
The result was something absolutely unique in my experience in the world of entertainment.
The bands - Wildflower, the Quicksilver Messenger Service, the Grateful Dead - all played beautifully, and the light show was the best I've seen at the Fillmore.
Midway in the evening, Graham went on stage and asked for a few minutes' indulgence and then introduced all the Fillmore employees, from the hat check girls to the cops. ....
The lines going past the tables of free food lasted until midnight and, like all the other evenings I've spent at the Fillmore, there was no tension, no trouble, and not even the arguments you get at a football game.
The reasons are many and complicated but they rest in the fact that a different set of assumptions is the basis for attitudes.
"It's such a beautiful thing I can't believe it," a long-haired girl said, and her bearded, suede-shirted escort added "It's just too much." ....

(excerpt from a Ralph Gleason column in the SF Chronicle, December 1966 - reprinted in Crawdaddy, issue 8, March 1967)

June 1969: Radio Documentary

A radio documentary of the Dead was produced in 1968/69 by Michael Wanger and Vance Frost, and broadcast on KSAN-FM San Francisco in June 1969.
The band was interviewed in December 1968, as well as Ralph Gleason and members of Jefferson Airplane and Quicksilver Messenger Service. Excerpts of the 1964 Mother McCree's show and 7/3/66 were used.
The transcript, with the producers' notes, is available on their site:
http://www.vidkid.com/GDdochome.html

For its historical value, I am reproducing their transcript here.

(Brackets [ ] indicate producer's notes.)

JOHN CIPOLLINA: The Grateful Dead. The Grateful Dead, by John Cippolina. The Grateful Dead go to my head, even though I've been sick in bed.

PHIL LESH: Well, if you want coherence, gentlemen, you've come to the wrong place.

PAUL KANTNER: Well, Mrs. Freiberg, what do you think of the Grateful Dead?

MRS. FREIBERG: I think they're fantastic.

RALPH J. GLEASON: I'm certainly grateful they're not dead!

MRS. FREIBERG: They always make everybody feel good.

JOHN CIPOLLINA: It's sin, it's sin, it's sin, I know it's sin!

RALPH J. GLEASON: Because it's so groovy.

JOHN CIPOLLINA: Chuckle, chuckle, giggle.

MRS. FREIBERG: I don't know. They're groovy.

RALPH J. GLEASON: The whole world of music owes a great debt to the Grateful Dead it seems to me because…

(*Music - "Born Cross-Eyed")

MICHAEL WANGER: Grateful Dead is a rock band. They've been playing around together in one form or another since 1964. In the 5 years that they've been playing together, they've released 2 albums and 2 singles. They were one of the first bands that played in what was later to be known as the San Francisco rock ballroom scene.

RALPH J. GLEASON: They're everybody's favorite band. It's the most consistent musical turn-on out of the whole rock scene.

VANCE FROST: If any one person in the band could be called leader, it would be Jerry Garcia, the lead guitarist and big cheese.

JERRY GARCIA: When I was a kid, I wanted an electric guitar really badly, for some reason. Not sure exactly why. I think I liked the way they looked. It's like my earliest trip, ya know, wow!

VANCE FROST: He got his first guitar when he was fifteen. For the next two years he played rock and roll, and then got involved in folk music during the early '60s.

JERRY GARCIA: …just because rock and roll was getting to be pretty limp. Ya know, for about five years there it was really lame.

MICHAEL WANGER: During this time he learned folk style guitar and fingerpicking, which led to 5 string banjo. He became fairly famous in the Bay Area as a red hot banjo picker.

(*Music, from the album "Wheatstraw Suite," Elektra Records, EKS-74035 by the Dillards. Herb Pedersen, banjo; Dean Webb, mandolin - "Bending the Strings")

JERRY GARCIA: Like, that's what really turned me on and that's what I devoted all my time to and all that, but then at no time was it ever possible for me to make any bread playing music, ya know, or make a living, even, playing music or anything. And I didn't want to work either. So I just hung out and played.

VANCE FROST: He hung out in Palo Alto, mostly at Dana Morgan's Music Store where he taught guitar and banjo. He also hung out at a local folk house known as the Tangent where he performed occasionally, often on the same bill with Jorma Kaukonen.

[Kaukonen became lead guitarist for Jefferson Airplane and Hot Tuna.]

MICHAEL WANGER: It seems that he was always in one bluegrass band or another, the most successful of which was made up of David Nelson, Eric Thompson and Jerry. But everyone knew them as the Black Mountain Boys.

VANCE FROST: Dave Freiberg of Quicksilver Messenger Service remembers that…

DAVID FREIBERG: During that time I was helping to run this place called the Offstage in San Jose. I remember Garcia from that and the Black Hill Boys… Black Mountain Boys, he used to play banjo with them. Good ol' Jerry.

(*Music - "Bending the Strings" continues.)

MICHAEL WANGER: Late in 1963, when everyone else was first turning on to the Beatles, another local folky, Bob Weir, discovered the ultimate aesthetic satisfaction found in a good ten cent jug band.

VANCE FROST: After he met Jerry Garcia, he decided to found his own ten cent jug band.

BOB WEIR: It was in the back of Dana Morgan's music shop and Jerry had come to teach guitar lessons and it was New Year's Eve and nobody was interested in going getting guitar lessons. Myself and a friend of mine dropped by and we just sat and rapped and decided that we had enough talent amongst us, or questionable talent amongst us, to start a jug band. And the jug band got rolling very shortly thereafter. And I, of course, played hyperventilated jug and wash tub bass.

VANCE FROST: They called themselves Mother McCree's Uptown Jug Stompers and played at the Tangent throughout the summer of 1964.

[The jug band was called Mother McCree's Uptown Jug Champions. A self-titled CD, compiled from some of their July of 1964 Tangent performances, is available through Grateful Dead Records. The recordings, made by Peter Wanger and Wayne Ott, are some of the jug band's last performances.]

JERRY GARCIA (live at the Tangent, July, 1964): I got an idea. I know everybody comes to these places and I don't know what everybody expects or... Yeah, they come and they listen… Everybody listens and says, "My, my." And says, "My, my." And, ya know, and scratch their head, ya know and kind of wonder. And, ya know, half the times a lot of people don't enjoy, you know, you come here over a certain amount of years, you build up a lot of sort of unenjoyment. You wind up unenjoying a lot of things. So, as long as you're here, and as long as some of you may be unenjoying this all, and have unenjoyed things in the past, you can all have a little Boo Break. And if you want to, you can just boo us. Everybody can boo us. Go ahead. BOO!

(*Music (live at the Tangent) - "Yes She Do, No She Don't" (aka "I'm Satisfied with My Gal").

MICHAEL WANGER: As you could probably tell, Mother McCree's Uptown Jug Stompers borrowed heavily in style and content from the Jim Kweskin Jug Band.

VANCE FROST: Borrowed!? You mean "stole."

MICHAEL WANGER: There was, however, other material which later influenced their change from acoustic to electric styles of music.

JERRY GARCIA: Back when we were doing the jug band, we were doing a few, like, rhythm and blues numbers. We did some, like, Jimmy Reed tunes.

VANCE FROST: One reason for this blues influence in the Jug Band was another member, Ron McKernan, better known as Pigpen.

MICHAEL WANGER: Mr. Pigpen.

BOB WEIR: And the nucleus of the jug band really was sort of me and Jerry and Pigpen. Pigpen has a really rich and varied background particularly in blues. I think he started out playing blues piano. His father was a rhythm and blues disc jockey for a while, and I think that's what got him into it. And so, anyway, he was just perfect for the jug band. He was the inspiration behind our rhythm and blues singing, which catapulted us into the rock and roll phenomenon.

JERRY GARCIA (live at the Tangent): We'd like to have Mr. Pigpen McKernan here, known in the more esoteric circles... Mr. Pigpen McKernan would like to sing a Lightnin' Hopkins song…

PIGPEN: I wouldn't like to, but I will anyway.

JERRY GARCIA: He's gonna sing a song called "the Rub" and we're not going to be responsible for it's contents. Or his.

[Pigpen was fairly nervous about getting on stage and performing, and would often consume a bit of alcohol before singing in front of a live audience.]

(*Music (live at the Tangent) - "The Rub")

VANCE FROST: After being a jug band for over a year, and not tasting the sweet wine of success…

[The jug band lasted no more than seven months. As mentioned earlier, this July, 1964, performance at the Tangent is one of their last.]

MICHAEL WANGER: They didn't even sniff the cork.

VANCE FROST: …they longed for a new medium of expression.

JERRY GARCIA: Ya know, it was getting to be time to start playing electric music, that's all.

BOB WEIR: Louder, you mean.

JERRY GARCIA: Right, to play louder.

MICHAEL WANGER: Time to play louder!

JERRY GARCIA: Right, time to play a little louder.

BOB WEIR: And we decided to become a rock and roll band.

(*Music - "Don't Ease Me In")

JERRY GARCIA: The step was really a lot like what, the way the changes really happened in the blues, like when they went from acoustical instruments to electric instruments. Ya know, and then blue records like, long about the forties, all those blues records started having electric instruments, ya know. And, you know, it's just like we went through that same change, from a jug band, which is like a really early trip, into, like, the next step, which is like a sort of early, a sort of primitive blues 'cause that's all we could play, right?

VANCE FROST: To be a real rock and roll band, they needed more than Jerry and Bob on guitars and Pigpen on organ. They picked up two more local musicians from Dana Morgan's music shop. First was Dana Morgan Jr. who, aside from helping to run the store, played bass.

MICHAEL WANGER: The other member was Bill Sommers who taught drums there. They called themselves the Warlocks.

["Bill Sommers" is the name Bill Kreutzmann used at the time he joined the band.]

JERRY GARCIA: Warlocks is just a word that means male witches.

VANCE FROST: So, I guess it was just a male witch band.

MICHAEL WANGER: Chocolate Witch Band?

[Chocolate Watchband was a San Jose, California band.]

JERRY GARCIA: No, not really. It was mostly a rock and roll band. It was pretty elementary. It wasn't very far out, really. It was just that we really enjoyed doing it. We didn't start really getting pretty weird until we started working in bars.

(*Music - "Don't Ease Me In" continues.)

VANCE FROST: Two of the bars they played in were the In Room and the Fireside, both in Belmont.

MICHAEL WANGER: During their barroom days, Dana Morgan left the group and was replaced by bass player by Phil Lesh, who had never played bass before.

VANCE FROST: Ever.

(*Music - "Stealin'")

BOB WEIR: It'd be Saturday night and be real crowded and the whole scene would get into sort of a pressure cooker system with all these drunk people on the floor and we were just really, we were merciless, like I say.

JERRY GARCIA: Yeah, we had quite a shoot 'em up show for that time, ya know.

BOB WEIR: The bartenders, they were good and crazy, they were potheads. And, like, for instance, we'd be playing and they'd line the bar up with ashtrays and fill the ashtrays with lighter fluid and light 'em. The whole bar would go up in flames, seemingly, and the place would get pretty crazy for a minute. And we'd just pick louder and more intense.

JERRY GARCIA: There was two factions. The was the bartenders who were crazy, and they wanted us to turn up, and the customers wanted us to turn down.

BOB WEIR: I was 17 and looked 12, and I had a phony ID that said I was 21.

JERRY GARCIA: We worked there for like, oh, I dunno, two months, three months, something like that. Ya know, like, the people that came, the attendance gradually got tinier and tinier until there was, like, nobody there, man. There was just no fuckin' body there but they would never fire us for some reason.

BOB WEIR: The owner of the place always told us, "You guys gotta turn down, man, you gotta turn down. The people are leaving." And we turned up and up and up.

JERRY GARCIA: That was our chance to get crazy, playing in bars.

(*Music - "Stealin'" continues.)

JERRY GARCIA: Our playing in the In Room was about contemporary with the first Family Dog shows at the Longshoreman's Hall.

VANCE FROST: It was immediately after those first Family Dog days that the Grateful Dead began climbing the ladder of success.

MICHAEL WANGER: They moved from Belmont bars to places like the Matrix in San Francisco.

BOB WEIR: It was also our barroom days that taught us the, more or less, science of, or art of playing to dancers. And so, we were pretty into playing for dancing crowds. That was pretty much what the scene in San Francisco was and so we grew with that.

DAVID FREIBERG: I ran into them at the Matrix a few times and noticed that there they were, by God, almost the entire Mother McCree's Uptight… Uptown, whatever it was, except, by God, they were electric, man. And there was…

JOHN CIPOLLINA: Electric and fuzzy.

DAVID FREIBERG: …Garcia playing a guitar, playing blues, and fast and everything. They really impressed me. And then came the Acid Tests. I heard 'em play at one or two of those.

JERRY GARCIA: Oh yeah, well, there was the Acid Tests, which, like, took us a lot of new places, and that's when we adopted the name the Grateful Dead and people started calling us that. Like, the name didn't take for a while. We offered it as a suggestion, ya know, I mean, it was like, and some of the guys in the band didn't like it, ya know, and, it was kind of creepy, ya know, and everybody, ya know, "Wow, the Grateful Dead is sure weird." And even Bill Graham, he'd hired us a couple of times as the Warlocks for the Mime Troupe things, ya know, and we told him that we changed our name and we were now the Grateful Dead and he wouldn't bill us as the Grateful Dead 'cause he thought it was too weird.

VANCE FROST: In the Land of the Dark, the Ship of the Sun is led by the Grateful Dead.

MICHAEL WANGER: That verse from the Egyptian Book of the Dead is thought by many to be the source of the group's name. Others feel the source was a large, meaty prune.

JERRY GARCIA: No, no. It might be incidentally, but that's not the source. The source was a dictionary, great big dictionary. It was either an Oxford or the Webster's, the Oxford New World…

BOB WEIR: Yeah, it was the Oxford New World.

JERRY GARCIA: Great big dictionary. We went through millions of incredibly funny variations.

MICHAEL WANGER: Like what?

JERRY GARCIA: Oh, like Mythical Ethical Icicle Tricycle… was one of the more conservative ones.

JOHN CIPOLLINA: Whatever happened to the good ol' Grateful Dead?

(*Music (live at the Fillmore, 1966) - "Sittin' On Top of the World")

BOB WEIR: The good old Grateful Dead was trips.

JOHN CIPOLLINA: It started out with the Acid Tests, and the Acid Tests really made a lot of people think differently. I think it set the trend, anyway, for the rock state as it is now. The Grateful Dead were right there. They were together, they were the Grateful Dead. And for the most cases, the Acid Tests went off just super smoothly. This is when Bill Graham came in.

JERRY GARCIA: If it all happens right, there gets to be a point where there gets to be so much stuff happening that you can't ignore it anymore. You know, it's like bringing some alternative to sitting in front of the TV. And among the alternatives are, not only can you go to the circus, but you can be the circus yourself. You can make your own circus, you can do your own thing. And that's like a, ya know, doin' the thing of dancing or just standing up in front of a bunch of people and hollering and screaming, ya know, like the freaks that testify, ya know. They get stoned and get up on stage, man, and they, ya know, and it's like, that's something, man, that's a groove, it's, like, a place to star, ya know, it's like you do that and you've done it. They get to stand up and deliver, ya know, like anybody. They can be the star and, man, I would dig…

BOB WEIR: It was really stupendous. I mean everybody uh, everybody… it turned into a party.

JERRY GARCIA: Right, a big party.

BOB WEIR: And we just kept going and going and it was… we did about a two and a half hour set, and uh, when we were over, it was over. Everybody got some.

RALPH J. GLEASON: The whole rock thing is a group-ish experience.

JERRY GARCIA: Right, it's just so much bosser when everybody dances, man. It's just so much more joyous. I would rather accompany the place than be the star of the show, ya know.

DAVID FREIBERG: …about the time when the Grateful Dead raided us out at our farm, dressed up in war paint and wearing feathers and bows and arrows. And we all came in and got stoned, after they raided, circled our house. We surrendered…

JOHN CIPOLLINA: Very begrudgingly.

(*Music (live at the Fillmore, 1966) - Changes to "Big Boss Man")

DAVID FREIBERG: But we were caught, ya know, with our proverbial pants down.

JOHN CIPOLLINA: Oh, they couldn't have picked a better time to get us…

DAVID FREIBERG: The pants down and the pot out, right?

JOHN CIPOLLINA: Yeah, we were lying around on our floor. I remember we were listening to "Music of the Planets." It was after dinner.

DAVID FREIBERG: We were listening to the Planets, man.

JOHN CIPOLLINA: Right after dinner we used to always listen…

DAVID FREIBERG: And never got to "Neptune, the Mystic."

JOHN CIPOLLINA: And then, plow plow!!

DAVID FREIBERG: Woo hoo!! Whah hah!!

JOHN CIPOLLINA: You know how it started, they were sitting around their camp. They went on this big Indian trip, naturally, 'cause they had camp crafts, they had an archery range, and, uh, they were the Grateful Dead. And one night they were sitting around with, uh, make-up. Jerry Garcia was beautiful. He had "Tippy Canoe and Tyler, Too" written across his nose. And they got themselves all done up, ya know, had…

["Tippy Canoe and Tyler, Too" aka "Tippecanoe and Tyler Too," an 1840 presidential campaign slogan of William Henry Harrison.]

DAVID FREIBERG: Worked themselves into a frenzy doing a war dance.

JOHN CIPOLLINA: …the psychedelic processes. And they said, "Let's go get the Quicksilver." And they really got us. We were just, we were loose.

PHIL LESH: I feel that we did a horrible job of raiding the Quicksilver because if we had been really Indians and we had really been raiding 'em, they would have killed us all. 'Cause they had guns and we didn't!

JOHN CIPOLLINA: They're really good sports, man. You shoot a Grateful Dead and he'll die!

(*Music (live at the Fillmore) - "Big Boss Man" continues.)

SPENCER DRYDEN: It was at the Avalon Ballroom about, oh, two and a half, three years ago, and they played the fastest tune in the world that I wouldn't believe. And Owsley had this speaker system that looked like a giant set of monoliths or something. I mean, it looked like a big sculpture. And here were these weird cats, man, just pumping it out faster than the speed of light. They've always been a good band.

RALPH J. GLEASON: See, there's nothing like the excitement of the first times in any of these things, and there's nothing like, there has never been anything like the experience of that whole thing exploding, when it exploded and everybody realizing, "Oh, my God, there are others!"

JERRY GARCIA (live at the Fillmore, 1966): It's called "Viola Lee Blues"

(*Music (live at the Fillmore) - "Viola Lee Blues")

RALPH J. GLEASON: I remember the Dead playing at the Fillmore, one of the first times I heard them at the Filmore, playing "Viola Lee Blues" and it was a tribal stomp. I mean, it really was, and the audience was stomping and the band was stomping and in the breaks the sound of the feet went stomping right on. It was really unbelievable.

VANCE FROST: In March, 1967, the Grateful Dead went to the RCA studios in Hollywood to record their first album for Warner Brothers. Essentially what they did in their first album was to document what they'd been doing in the San Francisco ballrooms for the past year.

JERRY GARCIA: Well, yeah, that stuff is kinda like folk rock and roll. I mean it was dance music, ya know, 'cause like all the places that we played all along were dance scenes and that was our whole trip.

MICHAEL WANGER: Although the material went down easily enough, the spontaneity of live performance was lost in the sterile environment of the studio.

JERRY GARCIA: Ya know, we didn't know anything about it, ya know, so we went down and ground out the first record in four nights. We were inexperienced about recording and about where to record and who to record with. But, when we went into the studio, it was like, there we were for the first time in the studio world, ya know, and there was the whole thing, "OK, what's next?" ya know, and engineers…

BOB WEIR: It was dry.

JERRY GARCIA: …and guys looking at their watches, ya know. And that's that whole scene, that's the business world again, ya know, doing its business and definitely not concerned with music. And so, ya know, we just did it, ya know, we didn't know what the fuck, ya know.

(*Music - "Cold Rain and Snow")

BILL KREUTZMANN: Yeah, it was a good first record, but nothing new in the drumming world, just rock drumming with a back beat. Nothing special.

SPENCER DRYDEN: I always loved Bill Sommers' playing, ya know, when he was the one drummer with the band. And I was always amazed at what he could do, technically-wise.

BOB WEIR: He really excels, by the way, in a sort of a Motown thing. He has a sort of a swing to him that's uh, he can get, like, different rhythms going that sort of ride over each other. And they all have a sort of a different little, just a different little feel to them, a different little swing. And, uh, Bill's, like, the best rock drummer I've heard at that.

SPENCER DRYDEN: I always thought he was like Philly Joe Jones of rock, 'cause it never looked like he put any real effort into playing, and yet his sound came out, ya know, just very booming and piercing and cutting and just used to kick the band along.

(*Music - "Cold Rain and Snow" continues.)

(*Music - "Good Mornin' Little School Girl")

RALPH J. GLEASON: Well, I dig Pigpen singing the blues, I mean, I enjoy that.

DAVID FREIBERG: Pigpen's vocals are perfect Pigpen's vocals, which means he sounds like Pigpen, not like anybody else. You can say some funny things about critics who think they have to criticize because he doesn't sound like something else that they've heard.

RALPH J. GLEASON: Yeah, I dig him. I would like to hear him more when I hear the band. The last two times I heard the band, he didn't really sing very much.

DAVID FREIBERG: I like Pigpen's singing, see. And I like his harmonica playing. Good harp player.

(*Music - "Good Mornin' Little School Girl" continues.)

(*Music - "New, New Minglewood Blues")

JOHN CIPOLLINA: And then Bob Weir, who plays, uh, God knows what.

BOB WEIR: I'm more or less trying to develop a style of guitar-playing that incorporates the use of maybe several lines at once.

JOHN CIPOLLINA: Bobby Weir's considered a rhythm guitarist, whether he is or he isn't. He has a certain area that he covers musically.

BOB WEIR: Jerry plays lead guitar and he plays really good, ya know. And it would be redundant, and perhaps superfluous to have, in my opinion, to have two screaming lead guitarists in the group. And anyway, my mind doesn't think like Jimi Hendrix.

[Short excerpt of Jimi Hendrix' guitar break from Bob Dylan's "All Along the Watchtower"]

PAUL KANTNER: His function is sort of the same thing as the drum essentially is. It's to set up a support for Garcia to play. He's not supposed to be out there playing Eric Clapton to Jerry Garcia. It's not what his gig is. He could no more do that than I could step up to Jorma on an equal footing.

(*Music - "New, New Minglewood Blues" continues.)

(*Music - "Beat it on Down the Line")

JOHN CIPOLLINA: I would describe Jerry Garcia by saying "taste."

RALPH J. GLEASON: See, I can listen to Jerry Garcia play the guitar and get my mind hung up the same way that I can with jazz guitar players who are developing a theme as opposed to just making sounds and patterns.

JERRY GARCIA: You know, like, I got a lot of my guitar ideas from country fiddlers, too. Scott Stoneman particularly.

(*Music - "Beat it on Down the Line" continues.)

RALPH J. GLEASON: One of the things that's good about both Jerry and Jorma, as guitarists, is that when you hear them, you can tell it's them. They have an individual voice on the instrument.

JOHN CIPOLLINA: …because it is fresh and it's original and he's really just being himself.

JERRY GARCIA: Country guitar players I listen to a lot. 'Cause they're the ones with the most chops.

MICHAEL WANGER: They're fast.

JERRY GARCIA: Yeah, right, right, right. I originally heard the tune off a Carl Perkins record and he was, like, a good country guy, country guitar player, and he played finger style, and he did a kind of a rockabilly version of "Sittin' on Top of the World."

(*Music - "Sittin' on Top of the World")

JOHN CIPOLLINA: He's got a very unique style for electric guitar.

RALPH J. GLEASON: See, he's a one man band because, in the first place, he knows where he's at and he's got absolutely perfect time. Now you'll notice every once in a while when they'll get into something that sort of diffuses in a way, it's Jerry's time that brings them back. He holds it together. Remove Jerry from the band and it disintegrates.

(*Music - "Sittin' on Top of the World" continues.)

RALPH J. GLEASON: I also have come to really dig Jerry's singing. I didn't really dig it in the beginning. I thought he wasn't a strong singer. And I suppose by some standards he may not be a strong singer. I find what he does, vocally, in the band, to be very enjoyable.

(*Music - "Sittin' on Top of the World" continues.)

VANCE FROST: Of all the songs on the first album, it's "Morning Dew" which sounds the most together. Each member of the band, on his own, develops a line which contributes to the overall musical figure.

(*Music - "Morning Dew")

(*Music - "Viola Lee Blues")

MICHAEL WANGER: A lot of people wonder what the words to "Viola Lee" are.

VANCE FROST: Yeah, I wonder.

MICHAEL WANGER: Bob Weir tells it as it should be.

BOB WEIR: That was
'Read it and eat it, turkey crowed it
Down de levee, candy coated
Read it and eat it, candy coated down
If you miss jail sentence, it's your own damn fault'

(*Music - "Viola Lee Blues" continues.)

JERRY GARCIA: When I got the idea for that arrangement, for that whole way of doing "Viola Lee Blues," it was, uh, it was about the same time that… The thing that inspired the ideas for it, the riffs in it, was, um, uh, that, what the hell, what's that guy's name…?

[darn]

(*Music - "Viola Lee Blues" continues.)

MICHAEL WANGER: In lettering the cover for the Dead's first album, Stanley Mouse designed some hieroglyphs in the form of a sentence across the top.

VANCE FROST: Many thought this was the quote Egyptian Book of the Dead.

WILSON BURROWS: That's what I thought. (door slams)

JERRY GARCIA: Well, that's what it originally was, see, but we didn't like it because we thought it was a taste pretentious. So we talked to Stanley who did the lettering and said, "Could you do something that, like, almost says something but doesn't quite?" And so, that's what it is. And like, and the result of that has been that all the places we've been where people have had that album, they've been able to… we've been able to hear the translations, you know. Fantastic ones, incredible ones.

(*Music - "Viola Lee Blues" continues.)

RALPH J. GLEASON: The first Dead album is one of the most effective collections of nostalgia that I know of for the whole scene. It's absolutely beautiful. I still love it and I can play it and I've worn out a couple of copies and enjoy it because it has a sound that you just don't get anymore. They're kind of…they're very special songs of the realm of a very special time.

JERRY GARCIA: We felt very bad about it. We thought it was unfortunate.

VANCE FROST: Really?

JERRY GARCIA: Yeah. And we did it, and that was it, ya know. And then we had all the time afterwards, and after it was released, and listening to it hundreds of times to really regret it, ya know, because it was mediocre performances of material that we were able to do much better. It was uninspired completely. Never again, ya know, we'll never go about it that way again.

(*Music - "Viola Lee Blues" continues.)

JERRY GARCIA: After we recorded the album they said, "Well, we still haven't got anything here that'd be a strong single." So we said, "Ah, a strong single, sure!" So we went home and wrote a song, ya' know. "Wow, this'll be a good single." We just did it and that was it.

(*Music - "The Golden Road (to Unlimited Devotion)")

MICHAEL WANGER: Their first single, "the Golden Road," wasn't exactly a jukebox monster. The album, however, was gratefully received by you and I.

VANCE FROST: The following June, they played at the Monterey International Pops Festival and continued to play throughout the summer in the San Francisco Ballrooms. They also played many free concerts in the Park.

[Golden Gate Park, San Francisco.]

MICHAEL WANGER: In September, 1967, Mickey Hart, a drummer, saw the Dead for the first time.

MICKEY HART: How it happened was, we were down at the Fillmore. I was with a friend down there at the Fillmore, I'd never heard the Grateful Dead, and um…

BILL KREUTZMANN: Tell it like it really was…

JERRY GARCIA: Tell it like it was!

MICKEY HART: …and someone said, "There's the drummer for the Grateful Dead." And being so impressed, I walked over to him and I said, "Oh my, your record was so wonderful. I love your record, it was just great."

ALL: Whew…

VANCE FROST: Do you sleep at night?

MICKEY HART: And I really liked the record… I must have been very stoned when I heard it.

BOB WEIR: The next day I heard that Mickey and Bill had moved their drums together into Bill's basement, and had been working together. Or something like that.

BILL KREUTZMANN: So we thought at that point we'd try two drummers and get something new.

MICKEY HART: Yeah, we set up one day at the Straight Theater. Actually, it was playing for the dance classes, remember?

[The Straight Theater was the old Haight Movie Theater on Haight Street. The name was changed in the late sixties.]

BILL KREUTZMANN: Yeah.

BOB WEIR: And so, that night Mickey sat in with us and it was a gas.

MICHAEL WANGER: After Mickey Hart joined the band, they began work on their second album ["Anthem of the Sun"], which took, in all, eight months to finish. It was during this work that they released their second single, "Dark Star."

VANCE FROST: It was a departure from their past recorded performances, but quite indicative of what the Dead were doing at that particular time, both in the studio and live. Although "Dark Star" was not included in their second album, it was more or less a sample of the things to come.

(*Music (studio) - "Dark Star")

VANCE FROST: In the tradition established by their first single, "Dark Star" didn't exactly jump up the charts.

MICHAEL WANGER: Yeah, what happened?

JERRY GARCIA: I don't know. We put it out thinking that maybe someone would play it, you know.

VANCE FROST: Tony Bigg played it.

[Tony Bigg was a local radio DJ, one of the few who would consider the Dead for "Top 40" airplay. He later joined KSAN and changed his name to Tony Pigg.]

MICHAEL WANGER: What a strange idea.

JERRY GARCIA: Right, but nobody would and that's been our whole story all along behind the record company and it's relative apathy about us in terms of promotion and all that. And it's, like, partly our fault 'cause we don't really go out and hustle.

(*Music - "That's it for the Other One")

MICHAEL WANGER: While recording their second album, they devised the concept of blending studio recordings with live performances in order to create a new form of continuity. This had an effect on their live performances in that instead of playing separate songs, they combined them together in a type of musical collage.

JERRY GARCIA: On the second album, ah, we were… we wanted to make a record. We didn't want to record songs, we wanted to make a record. You know, something that was in the medium of being a long playing record, that you put it on and it played out it's length of time and that's how long it lasted and that's what it did to you. And uh, we began to see that as being a form and it's akin to drama, ya know, to being able to start a thing and just going with it rather than having interruptions and breaks and so forth and so on. And we wanted to learn how to do that, so we learned the whole process of recording. We learned all about it, and we spent… and we had ideas that we wanted to do and we didn't know of any way to do them. We had to invent most of the technique that was used on that record just in the studio. You know, like, how can we make it sound as though the world's coming to an end. Or how can we make it sound like purple, you know, shit like that, stuff that's that far out. And we had to extract the shit from our head and figure out some way to implement it, if you know what I mean. It's mostly a matter of logistics, like three dimensional chess.

(*Music (studio) - "Cryptical Envelopment")

JERRY GARCIA: When we recorded some of those things, we recorded some of them using an 8 track machine for the band, and then using a 4 track machine for the room, so that we had 4 tracks of the room, various parts of the perspective of the room, you know like one corner of it over here, one corner over here, one in the middle, done lots of different places, some at the Carousel, some on tours that we were on. And then we'd do things, like, in mastering we had the 8 track and the 4 track playing simultaneously. We'd be mixing them together, and cross fading them, you know, so as to get partly the sound of the band, partly the sound of the hall, reverberating you know. And it's just, like, extremely subtle and the only thing it does is give you a sense of enfolding space.

(*Music (studio) - "Cryptical Envelopment" continues.)

VANCE FROST: In producing the second album, "Anthem of the Sun," the group augmented their sound with the help of a classically trained musician, Tom Constaten (sic).

MICHAEL WANGER: ConSTATen.

[All this misguided emphasis on the pronunciation of Tom's last name is due to a misprint in the liner notes of the vinyl version of "Anthem of the Sun."]

VANCE FROST: After finishing his tour of duty with the Air Force, in November 1968, Tom became a full time member of the Grateful Dead. He plays keyboards, which lets Pigpen devote more of his talent and time to singing and harp playing. ConSTATen.

TOM CONSTANTEN: I knew Phil seven years ago when I was going to Berkeley. And we both got into a class with Luciano Berio. I was looking around for something to do and this the most interesting thing for me to get into. Mainly because I knew Phil, I knew Jerry. I knew what they were into musically and there was kind of a musical rapport.

(*Music - "That's it for the Other One" continues.)

RALPH J. GLEASON: Yeah, the way to listen to Phil Lesh on the album is to listen with stereo earphones.

JOHN CIPOLLINA: He's bridging the gap between the rhythm and the instrumentation.

BOB WEIR: He plays over a great deal of equipment, and pretty loud and very complex, very intricate and fast. About the most complex, intricate, and fastest of the bass players…

RALPH J. GLEASON: What they do is to play a continual solo.

BOB WEIR: (ahem) …goin' these days.

RALPH J. GLEASON: He's like a lot of the young jazz bass players of the last 7 or 8 years, in that he has no interest in playing 4/4 time. He plays a whole line which, of course, is in rhythm, but it's a whole line which is sort of contrapuntal to the theme of whatever is being done by the band at any given time.

BOB WEIR: And, uh, anyway, so, you can gather from that that Phil, at, at least one point, was a student of classical music.

PHIL LESH: I learned music theory in high school and college. I played instruments since I was 8 years old.

RALPH J. GLEASON: He's a fascinating musician to hear.

(*Music - "New Potato Caboose")

JERRY GARCIA: Like in a lot of those places, we have some things like two or three different performances, live performances, all happening at the same time and we're cross fading. That's why some of that stuff is like a dream, you know. Like, you listen to a guitar run and it's, like, it goes somewhere and all of a sudden it ..like there's another part of it that's almost a continuation but not quite, you know, comin' from another place. We did that a lot in "The Other One," particularly.

(*Music - "New Potato Caboose" continues.)

(*Music - "Born Cross-Eyed")

BOB WEIR: My song-writing career has been slowed up because I can't think of any decent words to sing. That's kind of gotten to me after the last album. You come to that particular point where you've written a song, and you hear it on the album and the words are so "nada." They don't really say anything, they're just, like I say, they're just a, they're something with which, a handle with which to carry a tune. And they could be ever so much more.

(*Music - "Born Cross-Eyed" continues.)

(*Music - "Alligator")

JERRY GARCIA: Well, "Alligator" starts out studio. The whole first part of "Alligator" is studio. And as soon as… right at the end, as soon as the drums come in, that goes into live.

(*Music - "Alligator" continues.)

RALPH J. GLEASON: The drums have been a prisoner in rock bands. The drums have been a prisoner of 4/4 time with a back beat. And the Grateful Dead have solved this by adding another drummer. Now these two drummers take off and engage in incredible rhythmic interchanges and variations, not only with the other members of the band, but with each other and on the basic tune itself. It's a very free thing.

SPENCER DRYDEN: Each one of them are in their own bag. They're playing their own thing, and it's somehow related to what the original was, but they're not directly related to each other. Once you make the original statement, and you've got that nucleus going, then you can, like, start branching out of that and you can get very, very free. You don't have to play the time all the time to have the time moving.

JOHN CIPOLLINA: Their two drummers are really… spend all their time complimenting each other, becoming a unit.

DAVID FREIBERG: There aren't many groups that can play music that lift people off the floor. Whether they're sitting down or standing up, they're still about three inches off the floor.

(*Music - "Alligator" continues.)

SPENCER DRYDEN: And they're beautiful. And they're not afraid to look at each other. A lot of musicians today, they get on the stage and they're afraid to look at the next cat playing because they're uptight or they don't want to communicate with the other cat. They think it's all in their fingers. They're not using their head at all.

RALPH J. GLEASON: But rock music is a kind of music that you can get to play in the context of a group and get to play at an extraordinary level of communication.

SPENCER DRYDEN: And I see Mickey and Bill, or when I play with Mickey, we dig each other. You listen to what you're doing and you're smiling at each other, and it's like a good rapport, a good feeling between people. You're not afraid to play what you feel.

(*Music - "Alligator" continues.)

JOHN CIPOLLINA: Bill and Mickey really work together.

DAVID FREIBERG: They hang out together even.

JOHN CIPOLLINA: Yeah, they hang out together. There's a basic fundamental, right there. Those two.

BOB WEIR: And they get in phase together and they become like one drummer with eight arms, so to speak.

BILL KREUTZMANN: See, we're not trying to be two drummers.

MICKEY HART: Right.

BILL KREUTZMANN: We're trying to be one drummer with how many limbs there are amongst us.

JERRY GARCIA: Eight limbs.

RALPH J. GLEASON: And what they do with them is, as far as I'm concerned, add another dimension to the rhythmic possibilities.

(*Music - "Alligator" continues.)

RALPH J. GLEASON: The second album is a testimony of how the Grateful Dead progressed from a group of guys who were having a ball doing something, just really having a ball doing it, into a bunch of very serious musicians who are doing something musically very heavy. It may not please everyone to the same degree, and it may also be that everyone isn't interested in hearing heavy music. But that's a heavy album.

JERRY GARCIA: It's a stereo record.

VANCE FROST: Yeah, we know!

JERRY GARCIA: We worked on it to get you high, ya know, and that's what it's supposed to do, really. And that's what that record was about.

RALPH J. GLEASON: And whether or not, from their own standpoint, they successfully executed everything they thought to do in that album, the concept of that album is magnificent. Just like the concept of the [Jefferson] Airplane album, "Bathing at Baxter's" is a magnificent concept. Those things are very heavy albums. All of that music is serious music, but some of it is not taken as seriously in the doing as others. I thinks these albums are very serious albums. These people were down to serious business. Just as serious as Stockhausen.

(*Music - "Caution (Do Not Stop on Tracks)")

JERRY GARCIA: And this next album ["Aoxomoxoa"] is going to have lots of songs on it 'cause we've been into lots of songs lately. It's going to be mostly a vocal trip, really, just 'cause we've gotten into lyrics this time. And, at this point it's pretty amorphous. Like, we have lots of material, and we have much of it recorded, but we haven't decided exactly how to put it together, or exactly how we're going to present it, or whether it's gonna be a double album or a triple album or… 'Cause we've got, like, lots of different kinds of material. We have jam session stuff, we have all kinds of live scenes. Our material, at this point, is getting to be so interchangeable, that we can… it's getting to where we can do almost anything inside of anything else. What would be nicest would be able take one complete show with no editing and just say here it is, man.

MICHAEL WANGER: The perfect night.

JERRY GARCIA: Right, right. And it could happen and on the chance that it might happen sometime, we record.

BOB WEIR: And invariably, the really, the really good, perfect performances are never on tape which is, of course, the way it should be.

JERRY GARCIA: Like the latest trips that we're on is to do a thing that's like, uh, ya know, get some large unspecific sort of room and say, we're gonna do four hours, man, we're gonna do four or five hours of whatever we do, ya know, of everything that we can pull out of our hats. Like, really do a huge number that just goes on and on, man. It has millions of changes and goes millions of places.

(*Music - "Caution (Do Not Stop on Tracks)" continues.)

VANCE FROST: Credits!

MICHAEL WANGER: For their voices, we thank Jerry Garcia, Bob Weir, Tom Constanten, Phil Lesh, Bill, the Drummer, and Ralph J. Gleason.

VANCE FROST: Mickey Hart, Mr. and Mrs. David Freiberg, John Cipollina, Spencer Dryden, Paul Kantner and Ralph J. Gleason.

MICHAEL WANGER: Special thanks to Baron Leo De Gar Kulka, Golden State Recorders, and Mike Larner.

VANCE FROST: This thing was written, produced and lovingly pieced together by Vance Frost and Michael Wanger.

(*Music - "Caution (Do Not Stop on Tracks)" continues.)

RALPH J. GLEASON: I mean, they're not going to go on playing the same tunes the rest of their life, ya know. No musician can. It's built into music that you want to play different things and you want to have new experiences in the playing of music. Now, I think it's useful, in thinking of this kind of music, to consider the fact that these are musicians who are entering a new sphere in music. These are the real electronic composers. These are the people who are learning how to function in a combination of live performances, live recording in studios, and electronic application and electronic extensions of these things. And the Grateful Dead are experimenters.

DAVID FREIBERG: I love 'em! And that's far out.

SPENCER DRYDEN: Oh, I don't know. What about the Dead? It's a good band…

RALPH J. GLEASON: And that's because when you go to hear the Grateful Dead, it's almost guaranteed that you're gonna have a good time.

JOHN CIPOLLINA: And that's why, uh, I think a lot of people really go and see the Grateful Dead, time after time after time, is because they're really having fun.

SPENCER DRYDEN: Grateful Dead is like an attitude.

PAUL KANTNER: Well, that's what I… my general feelings are that you should go and listen to them and not talk about them.

JERRY GARCIA: Too weird.

1969: Live/Dead Review

THE GRATEFUL DEAD - LIVE/DEAD

Live Dead explains why the Dead are one of the best performing bands in America, why their music touches on ground that most other groups don't even know exists.

A list of song titles would mean very little in terms of what actually goes on inside the album. Like the early Cream, the Dead in concert tend to use their regular material as a jumping-off point, as little frameworks that exist only for what can be built on top of them. In "Dark Star," for example, they give a token reading of the song itself, waiting patiently until the vocal drops and Garcia's guitar comes out front to begin the action. About ten minutes later, if you can manage to look up by then, you might realize that what is happening bears as little resemblance to "Dark Star" as all that rollin' and tumblin' stuff did to "Spoonful." But of course, by that time, it just doesn't matter, and when the Dead slowing bring the song back around to "Dark Star," each change made with care and a strange kind of tact, you can only marvel at the distance you've traveled in such a short period of time.

Live Dead also exhibits the group's quite considerable ability in tying together differing song-threads, letting them pass naturally into one another, almost if they had been especially designed for such a move. A jamming band (and the Dead are that, if nothing else) has to rely on its sense of Flow, on its talent in taking that small series of steps which will ultimately bring it to some entirely different place from where it started. On side two, they begin with "St. Stephen," working at that until they magically appear in "The Eleven," and then, just before the final tape cut-off, you can hear them changing again with "Turn On Your Lovelight." It's beautifully conceived and done, each piece clicking together perfectly.

One of the finer things about the record is that the cuts seem to have been chosen with a great deal of care. Even on the best of nights, the group as a whole has a tendency to be spotty, with the many good moments intermingled with the bad. This is not necessarily a minus factor; when you work on such tenuous ground as the Dead, where each note means holding a balance between seven very different people and a less concrete mass out front, it's only logical to expect a large number of misses. If you've ever seen them live, you know that there are times when they simply can't do it, when the thread that has been so carefully nursed is suddenly snapped apart, when they amble around, trying to find the key that will unlock the door again.

Live Dead contains none of this searching. It's all there, up moment after moment, everything snugly tucked in place, "Turn On Your Lovelight," the usual Pigpen show-stopper, is right to the point here, all the different sections coming together in a nice ripe whole, moving quickly with nary a jerk or piece left hanging. Even a long eight-minute section of feedback on side four is handled well, each individual howl pinpointed with unerring accuracy. And as in concert, a piece from the Incredible String Band's "A Very Cellular Song" is a perfect way to close out the show.

I'm not going to end this by using some overworn phrase about how this is possibly the best live album ever a must for your record collection something no fan should be without etc. etc. But if you'd like to visit a place where rock is likely to be in about five years, you might think of giving Live Dead a listen or two.

(by Lenny Kaye, from Rolling Stone, February 7 1970)

* * *

GRATEFUL FOR 'THE DEAD'

"Live Dead explains why the Dead are one of the best performing bands in America, why their music touches on ground that most other groups don't even know exist," [states] The Rolling Stone, with whom all hearers agree, understanding the truth in this statement. Picture San Francisco in the summer of 1968 at the peak of the psychedelic-love revolution, with the Airplane, Country Joe, and the Dead, the hippies, and all of the beautiful people that sent their message directly to every person under thirty, whether they care to admit it or not. Go and see the Dead and for a couple of hours you are there, with the music they are playing you feel every note until every muscle in your body is just itching to get up and dance, clap, just make any sound to try and move with the Dead. Ask anyone who saw them at Kleinhans last month and they'll tell you that what has just been said is not enough.

The titles of the songs are just a point from which they roam in the most incredibly together, flowing jam of which they are in perfect control at every moment - this is the miracle of the Dead. With seven excellent musicians, including two drummers, an organist, Pig Pen, who plays congas and organ, and also sings, three guitarists, and gong-like huge cymbals that give a curiously surrealistic effect. The guitarists are led by Jerry Garcia who is an underrated musician of rock, [who] holds them together with his floating, soaring leads that guide the direction they take. He also plays a great steel guitar. Being aware of the musical popularity of the seven, it is hard to comprehend their co-ordination when they jam (which is all they do as each cut runs from 6-25 minutes, reminiscent of the Cream).

The album opens with the 23-minute "Dark Star" in which all seven get together, and feel where the others are at that night. The beautiful "St. Stephen" sort of starts The Dead and the crowd taking off. Pig Pen's great vocal show on "Turn on Your Love Light" has everyone moving, with The Dead getting louder, faster, and harder. It reminds me of what sociologists try to learn from the communal, physical aspect of rock concerts. "Death Don't Have No Mercy" completes the trip with the circular, winding rhythm of The Dead. Without trite banalities of "how much you'd like it," or "why you should buy it," I refer again to The Rolling Stone, "if you want to know where rock music is going to be in five years, listen to this album."

(by Kevin Lovett, from the Griffin, Buffalo NY, 17 April 1970) 

Thanks to Dave Davis. 

November 1969: Show Announcements

Friday and Saturday, November 7 and 8, at 9 pm at the Old Fillmore Auditorium, corner of Fillmore and Geary Streets, you will have a chance to hear the band that put San Francisco on the map -- the N.Y. Times says, "They may make the greatest rock of all."
THE GRATEFUL DEAD!
Thrill to the electrifying guitar wizardry of Jerry Garcia.
Gasp at the audacity of the legendary Pig Pen, to whom shame is but a word in the dictionary.
Grope to the exotic jungle rhythms of Mickey Hart and his sidekick, Bill ---
in one of their final Bay Area appearances of the decade
THE GRATEFUL DEAD!
Bop on down to the old Fillmore, Friday night where anything can happen and usually does.
Fun for kids from 2 to 82...
Only $2.50

From a GD press release.
A similar release was used for the November 15 Moratorium Day show in Crockett:

You will have a chance to celebrate the hope of peace with the band that makes unity seem like music--
The N.Y. Times says, "They may make the greatest rock of all."
THE GRATEFUL DEAD
Thrill to the electrifying guitar wizardry of Jerry Garcia.
Breathe with the booming bass of Phil Lesh, the fastest bass player of them all.
Gasp at the audacity of the legendary Pig Pen, to whom shame is but a word in the dictionary.
Grope to the exotic jungle rhythms of Mickey Hart and Bill Kreutzmann.
THE GRATEFUL DEAD
and appearing with them,
THE BLACK DIAMOND BLUES BAND

September 27, 1969: Fillmore East

COUNTRY JOE & THE FISH / GRATEFUL DEAD / SHA NA NA

FILLMORE EAST, N.Y. - It was Avalon Ballroom revisited time last weekend as Country Joe And The Fish appeared along with Grateful Dead at the Fillmore. But what should have been a joyous occasion and a musical treat wound up being only a fairly good evening, with moments of brilliance and genuine excitement coming far too infrequently.
Country Joe brought three new Fish to the Fillmore stage. They are Greg Dewey on drums, formerly of Mad River; Doug Metzner (bass) from Group Image, and Mark Kapner on the keyboard from the Peace Corps, a Washington based group which has been around for about eight years.
With Joe and guitarist Barry Melton leading the charge, they soon were into a rocking set and it wasn't long before Barry had launched into "The Love Machine," a number which was accompanied by his frenzied thrashing about on the edge of the stage - activity which, while not always wholly convincing, was consistently pretty funny. More mirth was provided by Mark Kapner's bit wherein a Tiny Tim type ukulele received the full Jimi Hendrix treatment. This has to be some sort of first - going down on a uke!
But such moments of madness and first rate satire were scattered and one couldn't help but wonder whether Country Joe And The Fish were, in general, departing from this type of entertainment in favor of just playing good rock music. Let's hope not. They do both so well.
As for Joe McDonald himself, he completely charmed and cracked up the audience with his hilarious and outrageous "Quiet Days" song, delivered deadpan, with only his own guitar accompaniment, and from the score which he did for a Danish movie which, he confided, "will never be released in the States." In this number, as in no other (and certainly not in his James Brown imitation, which came later) Joe displayed what a really marvelous head he has and how he can reach an audience in a straightforward, good humored way - something which was always a hallmark of the Fish and one of the chief reasons for their impact on the music scene.

Now a word about Grateful Dead. It seems kind of ridiculous at this point to say that Jerry Garcia plays a very fine lead guitar and has a unique ability to capture the essence of a song and render it with remarkable vocal quality. We know this. Suffice to say then that Jerry did not disappoint anyone, particularly with his version of "Don't Murder Me," surely one of the finer blues renditions to be heard around these parts in some time.
We wish we could give equal praise to the amplifiers at the first show Saturday night; however, unless you are really into humming as a necessary part of a good group, then the less said on this subject, the better. Nonetheless, the Dead played their usual brand of uncompromising rock and did it well enough to make it look easy, which of course is far from easy.

Rounding out the bill was Sha Na Na, which recently received an extensive review in these pages. Upon witnessing their act, we weren't sure where they were coming from. We're still not, but someone says it was El Morocco. Okay.
E.K.

(from Cash Box, October 11 1969)

http://www.archive.org/details/gd69-09-27.aud.hanno.14857.sbeok.shnf (the Saturday early show)

See also the Billboard review:
https://deadsources.blogspot.com/2017/10/september-27-1969-fillmore-east.html