Sure recipe for a mob scene - the Jefferson Airplane and the Grateful Dead in a downtown ballroom on a Friday night in June.
The Carousel last night was jam packed, but crowd quantity did not guarantee musical quality, and neither group was at its best form.
These affairs aren't dances, they are concerts. The San Francisco sound is no longer the catalyst for dancing. The fans either don't want to dance or they can't because of sardine-can conditions. So what's happening on stage, through the loud speakers, is the whole scene.
And as a concert hall the Carousel is woefully inadequate. The light show doesn't illuminate enough of the stage; the sound system, last night, was distorting badly; and if 3000 people are going to sit, there might as well be chairs.
Far more bodies would be closer, and more comfortable; maybe the created floor space would then invite dancing. I miss it.
The Jefferson Airplane always comes on strong, and they did last night. But after "It's No Secret" the set I heard became muddled. Grace Slick is singing louder and guttier than in the past but seems to have lost some of her melodic beauty. Her duets with Marty Balin have a sameness and often are hurried and ineffective.
The Airplane's ensemble strength was inconsistent; even the heavy bassist Jack Casady was often lost in the acoustic imbalance. Lead guitarist Jorma Kaukonen, always steady, worked in some nice solos and wah-wah effects with his usual taste.
But the group's long experiments-in-sound, electronic dissonance, drum breaks, etc., failed to come off.
The Dead should be Grateful for guitarist Jerry Garcia. Without him, last night, their set would have been a shambles, a joke. Garcia's astonishing performance consistently places him ever further ahead of his colleagues.
(by Philip Elwood, from the San Francisco Examiner, 8 June 1968)
https://archive.org/details/gd68-xx-xx.sbd.vernon.9426.sbeok.shnf (might include some recordings from the Carousel, June '68)
* * *
An earlier article from the March Airplane/Dead shows...
FUTILE DANCE-REVIVING ATTEMPTS
There were those Friday and Saturday evenings a couple years back when the original Jefferson Airplane, the Great Society, and the Charlatans got together under promoter Bill Graham's roof to hold a dance - not a sitdown affair or a mixture of the two highly unbalanced by the latter - but an uninhibited bash overflowing with perpetual physical motion.
Those were the days in the "dark ages" when curious rock fans left their homes for an evening of entertainment and flocked together to live a few hours with a new breed of music which was still a seedling at the time but threatening to blossom at the first possibility. In the beginning the reaction was slow but progressed naturally and, as a likely response, people danced.
There were a few people back then, though, hardly more than a handful in the crowds, that for reasons of their own risked soiling their bottoms to sit gaping at the bands. Though being stationary wasn't the most positive reaction to this new movement of rhythms, this minority was accepted.
There have been many changes since those early days, the most obvious being the tremendous influx in the number of disciples attached to the ever-expanding music revolution occurring locally. The scene has become a way of life, and each day new recruits discover how beautiful it is.
Another remarkable change is the manner these disciples now react to the entire rock circle at the ballrooms here. People, for the most part, don't dance anymore. Whether the groups performing be English bands, New Yorkers or locals, there's a new philosophy which has risen locally out of rock followers: the majority, reversing the tables of a couple years back, now storm the ballrooms to park their rumps at the most comfortable floor angle adjacent to the stage to become part of a huge mass of "eyes and ears."
Rock bands in the immediate area also seem to be on a 'kick' of trying to revive the old ballroom routine of "everyone dance because it's the thing to do."
A couple weeks ago at the Carousel, pleas to "please dance" coming from both the Airplane and the Dead more or less back-fired with an audience response that was somewhat nil. Most stood up still securing their posts on the floor, a few made attempts to dance, but overall the pleas were futile ones.
Where has dancing gone? Better yet, why is it people prefer to sit motionless hour upon hour in ballrooms just listening?
This writer has reason to believe that the crux of the "problem" lies in the designs of local ballroom promoters who are continually presenting two and sometimes three "big name" bands on the same bill each weekend, thus drawing full house crowds which naturally are unfavorable to a dancing atmosphere. They make great concerts, but rather congested dances.
It seems the only logical solution is for the promoters to "lighten" the bills, that is if they're sympathetic to this "dance drive" currently being undertaken by local musicians and aren't in the scene "just for the money." And until favorable dancing conditions are reached, this writer feels that bands should permit their audiences to sit (or stand) and breathe comfortably rather than strive to have them do the impossible.
It's not that people don't want to dance anymore, but this beautiful thing called rock music seems to draw massive crowds as if it were a living magnet.
According to a spokesman for Headstone Productions, which is now putting on the shows at the recently "revamped" Carousel Ballroom, dance-concerts "will become a very regular thing" at the Carousel, quite possibly on a steady weekend basis. This weekend the Grateful Dead and the excellent showman, Chuck Berry, will headline.
Country Joe and the Fish, Steppenwolf, and the Flaming Groovies are at the Fillmore this weekend while Jeremy and the Satyrs, Sons of Champlin, the Fourth Way, and Al Alexander's Timeless Blues Band are at Avalon.
(by Martin J. Arbunich, from the Guardsman, March 27, 1968)
Fleetwood Mac was also supposed to play these shows (they were on the poster & listed in the papers), but they canceled at the last minute, unable to travel to the US. They would play at the Carousel with Big Brother a couple weeks later.
ReplyDeleteElwood got grumpier each time he reviewed the Dead. From being a fan back in '66, he'd started griping about their dull, too-long sets in '67, and now he calls them "a joke," a band that would be nothing without Garcia. His praise for Garcia was always consistent (back in October '67 he'd said, "other than Jerry Garcia's wonderful guitar variations there wasn't anything very interesting in the Dead"), and here he says Garcia is "ever further ahead" of the rest of the band.
Maybe the Dead's set was a shambles that night. But it's also telling that Elwood deplores the lack of dancing in the Carousel. In '66 he'd praised the Dead as being "especially good for dancing," and it seems the less people danced, the lower his opinion dropped. He's upset about the "jam-packed...sardine-can conditions" in the Carousel, and fans who "don't want to dance" and just sit. He's sad that concerts nowadays are "no longer the catalyst for dancing...I miss it."
This was a social shift which had nothing to do with the quality of the music, but it definitely affected his mood.
Elwood also complains about the Airplane's "muddled" set, but when he mentions their unsatisfactory "long experiments in sound [and] electronic dissonance," I get the feeling their music was changing from what he wanted it to be.
This is also the only contemporary review I've seen stating that the Carousel was a "woefully inadequate" concert hall - other reviewers loved the place. (And the Carousel's soundman, Owsley, probably wouldn't like to hear that "the sound system was distorting badly!")
See also the comment here:
http://deadsources.blogspot.com/2018/09/october-1-1967-greek-theatre-berkeley.html
I was there that night 6/7/68. There was no mention of the fact that the Airplane opened and the Dead Followed. That was not planned. Jerry Garcia's daughter was born that night. This caused him to very late. I was standing in behind the audience. I remember very clearly watching Bill Graham running around frantically working on the sound problems. He was muttering about how all the speakers were not operating well AT ALL! So maybe that explains why this was not the best concert.
DeleteAn interesting memory! I have no doubt Garcia may have been late, however he didn't have any daughters born between 1963 & 1970.
DeleteAlso, I would be shocked if Bill Graham was running a show at the Carousel, since he was not a manager there and had shows going at his other theaters on that date.
Part of a Ralph Gleason article is also pertinent here:
ReplyDelete"Fewer and fewer people seem inclined to dance. This became obvious last year and is increasing. It is now at a point where, at The Fillmore or Winterland, a very small percentage of the audience, sometimes no one at all, dances. There is more dancing at the Avalon and the Carousel...
[At] the Fillmore and Winterland...people come to see the scene. People come to see the bands, the singers, and the audience. They stand in front of the bandstand and they sit on the floor. They do not dance. When the crowd is large, all the dance floor is covered with human bodies, prone, seated, etc.
[At the Avalon and Carousel] the attendance, most times, is proportionately smaller. Hence there is more actual room in which to dance. The vibes in both the Avalon and the Carousel are different, too. There is more of a sense of audience participation than at either the Fillmore or Winterland, both of which seem to make the audience into spectators rather than participants.
There's a feed-back here. The bands are getting more complex. Given the changing audience, they are affected by the change as well. It is noteworthy that when the Airplane and the Dead last played the Carousel, the house was jammed but people stood, rooted by the physical proximity of others, and danced from the ankles up...
The San Francisco affairs are now labelled 'dance-concerts.' They are really concerts. They are still much better than the night club atmosphere, freer, more informal, and with much better vibrations (and not only from the absence of booze). But they are a long way from being dances, except occasionally."
(from "Changing Role of Ballrooms," the SF Examiner 6/30/68)
The Carousel was getting into trouble with The Man right at this time. I post my notes below.
ReplyDelete"The Dead, who were scheduled to open for the Airplane, were late, because Jerry's daughter was being born, so the Airplane went on first!" NB this doesn't square up, since daughters were born in 1966, 1970 and 1974. A report from the next day says that the ballroom was shut on this Friday by a Superior Court injunction, but obviously this injunction was stayed. The Sunday show is listed in the Datebookas if there's nothing amiss, and Gleason was in attendance. I have an entry for this in my big non-JG spreadsheets, as follows: "Superior Court Judge Charles S. Peery grants a restraining order to building owner City Center Ballroom of California against the lessees, Headstone Productions, closing the ballroom. The owner had alleged that Headstone owed $11,000 in back rent, was allowing dance concert attendees to damage furnishings and fixtures, that it lacked proper insurance, and had "caused a lewd and lascivious word," so "lewdly repugnant" that the lawyers would only reproduce it in documents upon need, to be displayed on the marquee over Market Street. An update published June 11 says that Headstone posted a $5,000 guarantee and that the order was stayed, but it does not say when." Elwood 19680608 gives ex post.
! ad: San Francisco Express Times, June 6, 1968, p. 12;
! listing: "Hey," San Francisco Express Times, June 6, 1968, p. 14;
! ref: URL http://dead.net/show/june-7-1968#comment-8215;
! ref: "Court Shuts Carousel Ballroom," San Francisco Chronicle, June 8, 1968, p. 3;
! ref: "Carousel Ball," San Francisco Chronicle, June 11, 1968, p. 3;
! expost: Elwood 19680608.
what was the word?
DeleteDennis McNally describes the event:
Delete"On May 1, the Diggers threw the Free City Convention... When the Diggers put their philosophy into action at the Carousel, all hell broke loose. At one point someone started a fire in a giant seashell, and Rakow demonstrated his objection to the idea by pissing on it... Led by Jefferson Poland, the founder of the Sexual Freedom League, the evening dissolved into a large-scale sexual encounter... That night someone snuck up and changed the marquee to read FREE CUNT, with predictable reactions from the city, local citizens, and police." (LST p.263)
A Berkeley Barb article on the event is included here:
http://deadsources.blogspot.com/2018/08/1968-carousel-ballroom-san-francisco.html
I added an article from the Guardsman (the student newspaper at the City College of San Francisco) Even though this article was from the Dead/Airplane shows at the Carousel in March '68 three months earlier, it pairs up well with Elwood's & Gleason's comments that people are sitting and not dancing much anymore. Back in March, the bands were pleading with the audience to dance, in vain!
ReplyDeleteMany people noted that the enthusiastic SF dancers of '66 were increasingly becoming planted to the floor to watch the bands (see Gleason's observations quoted a few comments above) - the Dead themselves did not feel this was a positive development.
It's notable that all three reviewers said that the Carousel was so jammed at the Dead's shows, there simply wasn't room for dancing.
Elwood: "The Carousel last night was jam packed... These affairs aren't dances, they are concerts. The San Francisco sound is no longer the catalyst for dancing. The fans either don't want to dance or they can't because of sardine-can conditions."
Gleason: "When the Airplane and the Dead last played the Carousel, the house was jammed but people stood, rooted by the physical proximity of others... [When the crowd] is smaller, there is more actual room in which to dance."
Arbunich: "Full house crowds naturally are unfavorable to a dancing atmosphere. They make great concerts, but rather congested dances."
Other than weekly show listings, the Guardsman didn't report much on the Carousel. Arbunich only reviewed one show there, Dr. John in the May 8 issue (the headline sums it up: “Dr. John Is A Nauseating Joke”).
A couple other tidbits from the Guardsman:
“Weekly jam sessions with members of San Francisco bands have become a regular thing at the Carousel. Each Tuesday night rock musicians will jam to the tune of $1.” (5/29/68)
“The Quick and the Dead: Note to Martin J., who failed to make note of Quiksilver Messenger Service’s album on Capitol, and hence missed one of this town’s best recordings. The Quick’s album captures the group’s vibrant stage sound which is so often lost in the recording studio. The Grateful Dead’s first album lost the intensity of a live performance. However, the Dead’s second album, which may be out within the week, has portions of it recorded at the Carousel Ballroom.” (6/5/68)