tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5195590583641426943.post360562584802944109..comments2024-03-26T23:10:34.814-07:00Comments on Grateful Dead Sources: June 1967: New York CityLight Into Asheshttp://www.blogger.com/profile/06943335142002007213noreply@blogger.comBlogger17125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5195590583641426943.post-35670763504838377072019-07-23T23:33:38.053-07:002019-07-23T23:33:38.053-07:00The same UPI story ran in the 6/2/67 Windsor Star ...The same UPI story ran in the 6/2/67 Windsor Star (an Ontario paper) with the headline "Anti-hippie mob cools New York happening, man." <br />It added an extra final paragraph: <br />"Allan Katzman, an editor of an east village newspaper, said Thursday night's friction would be nothing compared to what happens when an estimated 50,000 hippies migrate to the village from all over the country this summer." Light Into Asheshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06943335142002007213noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5195590583641426943.post-602855656717840232018-08-28T19:51:56.972-07:002018-08-28T19:51:56.972-07:00An announcement for the 6/12/67 Cheetah show, in t...An announcement for the 6/12/67 Cheetah show, in the 6/15/67 East Village Other, p.7: <br /><br />"On Monday, June 12, from 8 P.M. to 3 A.M., the religious art of the new tribal society will be revealed at Cheetah, 53rd & Broadway. <br />Music will be provided by the Grateful Dead of San Francisco, and by the Group Image. Environmental lighting will be provided by the Third World and Pablo. <br />This performance will inaugurate a series of Monday nights at the Cheetah. Proceeds will go to various tribal community service funds, such as the Jade Companions bail fund and the Communications Company. <br />Tickets are available at Cheetah at three dollars per person. Two-for-the-price-of-one tickets will be made available for Indians... For further information, contact Communications Company." Light Into Asheshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06943335142002007213noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5195590583641426943.post-13387104657805578742018-07-03T20:27:50.087-07:002018-07-03T20:27:50.087-07:00Oh, and the Daily News also ran a very brief artic...Oh, and the Daily News also ran a very brief article on the June 8 Central Park show: <br /><br />PARK DUNK-IN COOLS HIPPIES<br />An Indian-in staged in Central Park yesterday by the Tompkins Square Park hippies developed into a dunk-in when about 35 wildly costumed dancers, overheated by their gyrations, plunged into the park lake with their clothes on. <br />The plungers swam around and between startled boaters, some of them clambering aboard the boats to dive back into the water amid wild whoops. <br />Before the swimming party, 500 hippies and other young people danced to the music of The Grateful Dead and The Group Image. <br />(Daily News, 9 June 1967) Light Into Asheshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06943335142002007213noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5195590583641426943.post-62467942966349107212018-07-03T20:23:29.984-07:002018-07-03T20:23:29.984-07:00I added some Daily News articles about the Tompkin...I added some Daily News articles about the Tompkins Square Park scene. Despite the so-called "hippie riot" and mass arrests of May 30, and the disapproval of elderly neighbors, concerts continued in the park more or less peacefully (by New York standards). <br />The annoyance of local residents, and the fear of a massive hippie influx, are striking. <br /><br />The Daily News chronology differs a bit from what was reported in the Village Voice - the News has some unnamed group playing in the park the night of May 31, the Group Image scheduled to play the evening of June 1 (after the Dead), and the Fugs scheduled to play the day after. <br />It's possible the Village Voice was mistaken in placing the Group Image show on Wednesday the 31st. The Daily News' description of the band playing that night is very vague, so perhaps it was them; but the memory of a riot and assaults ending the show better fits the evening of June 1, as reported in a few places. (For instance, the UPI article in the comment above, which describes the violence on the night of June 1 and states that it was the "second" such incident, following the fight of May 30. The Daily News on June 1 also fails to report any violence in the park on May 31, which would certainly have been reported if it had happened then.) <br />So my theory is that the Village Voice was in error, and the Group Image played the night of June 1, not the night before.Light Into Asheshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06943335142002007213noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5195590583641426943.post-35818596075621992902018-06-20T15:10:48.258-07:002018-06-20T15:10:48.258-07:00The New York Daily News (June 2, 1967) had a criti...The New York Daily News (June 2, 1967) had a critical perspective of the Tompkins Square Park show: <br /><br />"Police were nowhere to be found as some 500 weirdly dressed patrons of love-ins clapped their hands in rhythm as they marched behind 'The Grateful Dead,' a guitar playing group of mangy hippies from the West Coast. <br />Older residents sat trying to enjoy the park but it was impossible as the hippies all sang and danced along with the group." Light Into Asheshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06943335142002007213noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5195590583641426943.post-5074713608801412502018-02-20T14:54:35.694-08:002018-02-20T14:54:35.694-08:00A UPI story about the Tompkins Square Park battles...A UPI story about the Tompkins Square Park battles, from the Columbus Republic, June 2, 1967: <br /><br />HIPPIE HAPPENING GOES HAYWIRE (by Howard Crook) <br />New York (UPI) - A flower-pelting, love-nutty invasion of Tompkins Square Park by more than two thousand "hippies" was counter-attacked by anti-hippie youths Thursday night in a riotous chase in which one young woman was stripped down to her panties. <br />The stripped hippie girl was rescued by police after being chased by a howling mob of several hundred youths. <br />It was the second wild, fist-flying, beercan-bouncing climax to a hippie happening at the park in three days. The first took place on Memorial Day when police tried to get 200 bongo-banging hippies off the grass when they were in the middle of a Buddhist love chant. <br />Bearded, belled, and wearing garlands in their hair, the hippie horde began their exotic spring rites in the park Thursday with blaring rock 'n' roll band music at 2 p.m. <br />By 1 p.m. [sic], with hippies thinned down to about 500, the new riot had begun when the youths attacked the 29-year-old girl. A woman tavern owner across the street from the park who witnessed the attack told a reporter: <br />"It was just awful. The poor thing was just standing there when she was surrounded. They lifted her off the ground and started tearing her clothes off. She didn't scream and seemed in a daze." <br />During the girl's rescue fistfights broke out between the hippies and the anti-hippies. Police reinforcements were summoned to control the situation. <br />A few minutes later two women got in a fistfight and the crowd went haywire again. Police Commissioner Howard R. Leary brought in two more busloads of officers. One motorcycle patrolman was knocked to the ground by a flying beer bottle and was taken to a hospital for treatment... <br />A 20-year-old was pulled from his motorcycle as he tried to make his way through the melee. He abandoned the cycle and ran when a knife-wielding anti-hippy threatened him. <br />Earlier in the day as the hippies gyrated in the warm sun to the ear-thumping music of a rock 'n' roll group called the Grateful Dead, a minister compared them to the early Christians. <br />"There you see what may be the only hope that mankind may have to keep from blowing itself up," the Rev. Michael Francis Itkin shouted above the din. <br />"They have the same values the great mystics talked about for so long. The only group you could identify them with are the first century Christians," said the Rev. Itkins of the Church of the Brotherhood of the Love of Christ.Light Into Asheshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06943335142002007213noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5195590583641426943.post-59074063473644738732017-05-12T19:46:30.848-07:002017-05-12T19:46:30.848-07:00I'm intrigued by Jim Fosso's comment that ...I'm intrigued by Jim Fosso's comment that the Dead jammed with the Group Image. They were on friendly terms; the Dead visited the Group Image loft, and played shows with them at the Cheetah and (later that December) at the Palm Gardens. Rock Scully mentioned, "The Cheetah was a bit of an Acid Test kind of experiment with the Image (more a 2nd Ave. tribe than a music outfit)." <br /><br />Descriptions of the Group Image's sound circa '67 are tantalizing: <br />"the Lower East Side's answer to white noise."<br />"The kind of full throttle runaway tuning up raga blast that the Group Image plays is very formless."<br />"The Group Image are a mixture of the Soft Machine and A.M.M. – heavily experimental, heavily amplified."<br />"Five electric guitars plus drums achieved a sound at times that suggested a derailed freight train plunging over a cliff."<br />Fosso says that they "were known as the loudest band in New York" with their stacks of Marshalls, and were influenced by free jazz. "We were wild, primitive, unstructured...and the music sprang from that roughly organized chaos." They told the Dead, "We don't have any songs. We just play free." <br />There are references to audiences "freaking out" and "frenzy dancing" at their shows (Fosso muses, "The crowd went insane, as they usually did at our shows.") Crawdaddy gave the most balanced report: <br />"The Group Image has been a particularly important influence on the scene. The Image are an amorphous bunch who produce music, posters, confusion, and other useful items. As yet, their music is nothing very good, but their performance is very enjoyable - the audience makes as much noise as the Image, and it's all very tribal and very real."<br /><br />Unfortunately I don't think they were recorded in '67, and they tamed down a lot by the time they recorded their 1968 album, which was more song-based and conventional.<br />https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oC0zqyMJ8J8 <br />Perhaps coincidentally, the Dead were getting more aggressively noisy in June '67, with Alligators and feedback starting to show up in their sets. So it's fun to imagine what a musical interaction between the two groups might have sounded like.... Light Into Asheshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06943335142002007213noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5195590583641426943.post-85249171512574852822017-04-06T21:04:10.129-07:002017-04-06T21:04:10.129-07:00I've added the full UPI article on the Tompkin...I've added the full UPI article on the Tompkins Square Park show. Much of it is the same as the Newsday report, but this article adds more details on the battle for the park the previous weekend, and the hippie crowd. In fact, this reporter seems obsessed with the appearance and clothing of "the longhaired ones" - you could read either contempt or amusement at "the dropout generation" when he describes the hippies "lolling on the [grass] playing bongo drums and reading poetry unmolested." <br />One old woman expresses her support, though, and there's an unspoken parallel between the hippies sitting, swaying, and "gathering here to be in the sun," and the "oldsters sunning themselves."<br />The Dead are just noise, of course, but it's hilarious to read of them "loosing a blast...with amplifiers turned up to infinity," stunning the helpless elderly people in the park. Light Into Asheshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06943335142002007213noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5195590583641426943.post-78965409983057855802017-01-15T13:02:33.112-08:002017-01-15T13:02:33.112-08:00the soundtrack of film has 'viola lee blues...the soundtrack of film has 'viola lee blues' from the first album - there is no GD.<br /><br />I-)Blogger profilehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13517655813452300837noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5195590583641426943.post-74159393988280984512017-01-14T09:40:56.226-08:002017-01-14T09:40:56.226-08:00some more footage from 06-01-67, but, no gd:
http...some more footage from 06-01-67, but, no gd:<br /><br />https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_-TUTYcCwu4 Some 3,000 "hippies" found a place for themselves in the sun of Tompkins Square Park to show police<br /><br />there is a film 'tompkins square park' from 1967 by karl cohen that was shown on 09-11-84:<br /><br />https://books.google.com/books?id=aeUCAAAAMBAJ New York Magazine - Sep 17, 1984 - Page 146 - Google Books Result: September 11, 8 p.m.: The Lower East Side on Film: "Tompkins Square Park" (1967) by Karl Cohen, with the Grateful Dead<br /><br />I-) ihorBlogger profilehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/13517655813452300837noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5195590583641426943.post-88693796783457173812015-07-14T17:55:55.401-07:002015-07-14T17:55:55.401-07:00A great find. It looks like NBC/Reuters footage to...A great find. It looks like NBC/Reuters footage to be used in a news report, with text: <br /><br />"New York hippies quietly relaxed or danced in a city park yesterday (Thursday) to a live show of "underground" music - a contrast to the disturbance on Tuesday when 38 hippies were arrested. Only one policeman was in sight yesterday and it was peaceful despite differences in musical taste between young and old, hippie and square. <br />Some of the hippies, who say they are "cool," wore far-out clothes, including Hindu and African prints, bells around the neck, and American Indian headbands. But most wore what most Americans put on when they want to relax - blue jeans, Bermuda shorts, or a shift dress.<br />The music - the first in a series of summer concerts - came from a New York electronic group that gained fame and fortune in California.<br />Many of the non-hippie residents from around the lower east side park muttered disapproving comments about the "wild drug addicts' music" coming from the park soundshell.<br />A park employee said many complaints had been received from older residents in the area about noise in the park.<br />But the concert organizer told the audience at the start of the program: "This is your theater, this is your community, and this is set up to prove it." Light Into Asheshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06943335142002007213noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5195590583641426943.post-13876463953534475872015-07-14T02:15:07.013-07:002015-07-14T02:15:07.013-07:00A clip from the concert: http://www.itnsource.com/...A clip from the concert: http://www.itnsource.com/en/shotlist/RTV/1967/06/02/BGY506190017/Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01889473556624291839noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5195590583641426943.post-24815737390639045582013-08-26T20:34:32.125-07:002013-08-26T20:34:32.125-07:00I added an article about the Tompkins Square show,...I added an article about the Tompkins Square show, "Return of the Hippies" from Newsday 6/2/67.Light Into Asheshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06943335142002007213noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5195590583641426943.post-33144885760066962852013-07-27T02:10:11.558-07:002013-07-27T02:10:11.558-07:00David Sorochty from deadlists writes:
A UPI wire...David Sorochty from deadlists writes: <br /><br />A UPI wire story appeared in many newspapers which said "The explosion burst on Tompkins Square Thursday afternoon when a rock 'n' roll band, "The Grateful Dead" from San Francisco, with amplifiers turned up to infinity took over the bandshell and loosed a blast that could be heard blocks away. Oldsters sunning themselves in the normally quiet park looked stunned." <br />Mike Bobrik, an eyewitness, recalls they played: The Golden Road, Dancin' in the Streets, Midnight Hour, BIODTL, Schoolgirl, Cold Rain & Snow, Morning Dew, and Viola Lee Blues.<br /><br />(Note that the Village Voice article mentions the Dead's show being shut down by a noise complaint...)<br /><br />Gene Santoro wrote in the book Highway 61 Revisited that he saw the 6/1/67 show - he'd heard about them doing a free afternoon concert: <br />"The park looked full. The sweet thick scene of pot wafted over, but though there were plenty of cops dealing with outraged Ukrainians from the neighborhood, we couldn't see any busts. The Diggers seemed to be keeping things together... The Dead were playing 'Dancing in the Streets,' with Pigpen the anti-hippie, a greasy, ugly, beery biker centerstage." (p.197-8)Light Into Asheshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06943335142002007213noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5195590583641426943.post-88635575499444151152013-07-27T01:38:28.078-07:002013-07-27T01:38:28.078-07:00A memory of the Tompkins Square Park show from Wal...A memory of the Tompkins Square Park show from Walter Karmazyn: <br /><br />"Seems like only yesterday that my friends and I went <br />off to Tompkins Sq Park in the East Village to see this band from SF called<br />the Grateful Dead, making their first east coast appearance, a freebie with<br />a local band you may've heard of, the Fugs...<br />I don't remember a damn thing they played, nor do any of my friends...<br /><br />A few things... Anybody walking through the park today may wonder *where*<br />they played, as the bandshell is long gone. It was at the south end of the park<br />(7th st) towards the east, nearer ave B. If you ever go there, you'll figure<br />its exact location. At that point in time, smoking banana peels was the thing <br />to do ;-) and you had people rolling banana peels, cigarettes and joints and <br />smoking whatever out in the open, taunting the cops who wouldn't bust <br />anybody because they didn't know just who was smoking what. First time I <br />ever smoked a joint in the open and asked a cop looking at me if he wanted a<br />toke.<br /><br />The Electric Circus was getting ready to open on St Marks Place.<br />Across the street from the park on Avenue A was the Peace Eye bookstore,<br />run by Ed Sanders of the Fugs. Also on the block was the offices of the <br />East Village Other, the local Underground Newspaper. At the Northwest<br />end of the park and a few doors up were the Psychedelicatessin (sp) and<br />a few doors from that the Cave, a neat basement club.<br /><br />Weir was still a teenager.<br />The New York Times did a front page story on the show and the scene the <br />follwing day, and if there was a kickoff event to New York's version of <br />the Summer Of Love, this was it, although none of us knew it at the time.<br />The Dead by the way if I remember right, got only a brief (one sentence)<br />mention.<br /><br />Throughout the summer, you could catch some dynamite music at the bandshell<br />on most Fridays.<br />A few days later, I paid to see my first Dead show, at the Cafe Au Go Go<br />on Bleeker St, a basement club that only held a couple hundred and was <br />quite cozy. The Dead played there a few other times, the last in 1969.<br />You got to sit in a seat at a table and have waitresses hustle you for a<br />non alcholic drink. During that first run, upstairs at the Garrick <br />Theater, you could catch the Mothers of Invention and 2 blocks away at the <br />Players Theater you could catch the Fugs doing their thing. If you timed <br />it right, you could catch all these acts in one evening for under $15."<br /><br />http://www.oocities.org/sunsetstrip/gala/8574/6167.txt <br /><br />Some interesting details - he remembers the Fugs playing with the Dead at the 6/1/67 show. (The NY Times article he remembers must be the one above, though, of the 6/8/67 Central Park show with Group Image.) <br /><br />Garcia also later recalled it was the Fugs: "Somebody picked us up at the airport in VW buses. We hit town and there was a little parade. The hippies from the East Village came, and we took our gear to Tompkins Square Park and played with the Fugs. It was fun." (interview with Richard Gehr in Newsday, 9/9/91) <br /><br />McNally in his book doesn't mention the Fugs, but says Richie Havens opened! (p.198)<br /><br />Another Fugs detail - Barry Miles (who wrote the review of a Cheetah show above) wrote to deadlists in 1998: <br />"I visited New York in July 1967 and went with Ken Weaver of the Fugs, who I was staying with, to see the Grateful Dead who were playing, if my memory is correct, at a place called The Cheetah. After the set Ken introduced me to Pigpen, who was a big friend of his and he came with us to see a Fugs show."<br /><br />There is another account of the open smoking in Tompkins Square Park that day: <br />"It was at a Grateful Dead concert at the bandshell in the park in the Summer of 1967 that the first “Smoke-In” can be said to have taken place. According to the tale, Provo Dana Beal took a bunch of weed and rolled up a bunch of joints and passed them around at the concert. Some say he got the crowd going when he threw joints in the air from the stage, a tried-and-true tactic." <br />http://cannabisparade.org/index/history-of-the-parade/ Light Into Asheshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06943335142002007213noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5195590583641426943.post-14408625115947596022013-06-27T19:36:51.993-07:002013-06-27T19:36:51.993-07:00From Richard Goldstein's column in the 6/22/67...From Richard Goldstein's column in the 6/22/67 Village Voice: <br /><br />SAN FRANCISCO BRAY<br /><br />It was inevitable enough to actually happen. With every slick magazine in God's domain proclaiming the rise of the San Francisco sound, it is risen. The Jefferson Airplane made the top ten nationally, and their new single "White Rabbit" is bound to soar unless somebody finds something subversive in all that harmless talk about pills and hookahs and magic mushrooms. If I had to pick a new American group with the best chance of achieving the diversity and artistic integrity of the Beatles I'd choose Marty Balin's flight crew, if they stay together long enough.<br />Meanwhile, the Frisco sound has hit New York with all the hype and circumstance worthy of a renaissance. Some of it is a revival of the lost dialogue between performer and audience. As Chett Helmes [sic] told Billboard: "San Francisco groups have had little studio experience, and they're not inclined technically, but they are inclined musically." <br />So the Grateful Dead open at the Cafe Au Go Go, which has become an Ellis Island for West Coast hip groups of late. The Airplane suffocated on that tiny coffin-stage; they faced that coffee-sipping, hippy-dipping audience with more of a glare than a glint in their eyes. The Dead have been eluding claustrophobia by performing in the parks and streets (thus learning too what a summer festival Fun City really is). They shared billing at Cheetah with the Group Image, which is the Lower East Side's answer to white noise - and they will return to San Francisco just in time to witness the construction of Kama Sutra Records' new $25,000 studio right inside the Avalon Ballroom. The investment will insure the preservation of spontaneous performance, and may eliminate the reason Bay Area groups sound so much less spectacular on record than they do live and lit.<br />Meanwhile the list of studio approximations of the magic sound grows. Country Joe and the Fish are on Vanguard (the record hasn't arrived for review yet). And Moby Grape...[are on] Columbia Records. All this cash has gone into a massive ad campaign proclaiming what a great bunch these guys are... <br />No matter. The album is nice, if you like lots of rock energy, with a touch of the Airplane and the Dead, but a hefty chunk of original work. All the instruments coalesce impressively, the vacuum cleaner sound (otherwise known in the trades as psychedelic music) is kept to a merciful minimum, and the tunes show - which is nice because they deserve the exposure. Skip Spence plays guitar with a romping, stomping grace, and if the group ever starts to smother in hype, I'd give him a more than even chance of coming out alive. [!!! - ed.] The best cut on the album is "Omaha" (credited to Spence), and the pieces that stand out in my mind as I write (too late to play the album without earphones) are "Hey Grandma," "Naked if I Want To," and a wailing "Changes." <br />You can buy Moby Grape on 45 rpm since Columbia has released five singles from the album. If this doesn't convince you the group is important (and I hope it won't) you should give a listen. It's no assault, no revelation; it isn't even hip. But it's got a beat, and you can listen. And like the best San Francisco music, it sounds like fun.<br /><br />http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=KEtq3P1Vf8oC&dat=19670622&printsec=frontpage&hl=en Light Into Asheshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06943335142002007213noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5195590583641426943.post-34567384723383125182013-06-01T20:30:46.590-07:002013-06-01T20:30:46.590-07:00One thing that struck me was that in mid-1967, the...One thing that struck me was that in mid-1967, the Dead were considered legends before they even played in New York City. They have a parade greeting them on the street (!) - one of the cool local DJs says he's been hearing about them for a year: "I hear a lot of beautiful things about you, you have a lot to live up to" - the Village Voice calls them "missionaries of the San Francisco sound [and] emissaries from the Haight" - and Rock Scully's comment about New York being years behind the Haight gets quoted in two articles, like the word of a prophet.<br />This kind of word-of-mouth couldn't have come from their first album alone! <br /><br />Miles, visiting from England, is notably less starry-eyed - he's more impressed by the Fugs & Zappa (by their "performance art" in particular) - but the Dead & Group Image just get wan comparisons to London underground bands, and he's more curious about their light show. <br />Soft Machine & AMM were more on the weird avant-garde side of the musical pool, so the experimental Group Image could be aptly compared to them. (One reviewer calls their music a formless "full throttle runaway tuning up raga blast," another a "derailed freight train," & special attention is paid to the excited audience reaction.) <br />Tomorrow, though, were a Beatles-esque light-psych-pop group on their 1968 album; they must have been quite different in live shows, for Miles to call the Dead "a more electronic version of Tomorrow."Light Into Asheshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06943335142002007213noreply@blogger.com