Vintage Dead Album Review

VINTAGE DEAD; HISTORIC DEAD

I think I liked it better when rock didn’t have a history. These days record companies seem to be the victims of some Tutankhamen-like curse, obsessively searching for buried treasures, long forgotten tapes that they can buy cheap and sell dear. I can see what’s in it for them but it makes life hard on a reviewer.
Take these Grateful Dead albums. What could be more exciting than a tape of the Dead playing San Francisco’s mythical Avalon ballroom in the acid year of 1966? And what could be more shoddy than the package that Polydor actually gave us? Here are two full priced albums, with the minimum of information and, in the case of Historic Dead, the minimum of music (total playing time 29 minutes). There is excessive surface noise throughout and the mix is eccentric, often reducing the band to guitar and bass, and putting the vocals so far back that they’re only semi-audible.
Worst of all, the music doesn’t even sound live. There’s applause at the end of each track but there’s no trace of that hum of excitement that gives live albums their edge. No, if you still don’t know what the Dead are about, listen to the Live Dead album. If you want to know about San Francisco ballrooms, stick to Big Brother’s Cheap Thrills.
Unfortunately these Dead albums are also history. Can I dismiss them so easily? I’m supposed to be searching for origins and portents, for explanations. Like what did San Francisco mean? Why were the Dead so special? How did just another blues band with a fine guitarist become legendary? Are these records filled with answers?
Well, they reveal that the Dead could be very ordinary. The version of ‘Good Morning Little Schoolgirl’ on Historic Dead lacks Pig Pen’s lecherous presence and is only saved from complete monotony by Jerry Garcia’s virtuosity. It sounds like Paul Butterfield’s 1966 Blues Band on a very bad day. ‘It Hurts Me Too’ (on Vintage Dead) is nicer but still sounds like a thousand other sub B.B. King white blues groups. Meanwhile, the long tracks on the same album, eighteen minutes of ‘The Midnight Hour’ and eight of 'Dancing in the Street,' are actually embarrassing. The Dead weren’t aggressive enough to do this sort of material; they weren’t into the necessary clipped discipline. They would have been cut by any satin-suited English disco group.
The source of the Dead’s magic lay elsewhere, in their relaxation, their complete lack of self-consciousness. There’s a lovely, affectionate, version of ‘It’s All Over Now Baby Blue’ on Vintage Dead, complete with mock Dylan sneer and Al Kooper organ. No one except Manfred Mann has covered Dylan with such a driving ease. An even sunnier track is ‘Lindy’, vibrato vocal on rebel-rousing guitar. It’s odd to think that the Dead are rated a ‘heavy’ group. Even in these early days they were doing their ‘country’ rock, with jerky melodies and harmony singing, though it’s difficult to judge the two examples here (‘Stealin’ and ‘I Know You Rider’) as they’ve been mixed into a state of muffled inarticulacy.
But the Dead’s real glory lay in their combination of the blues framework and their own looseness to create the San Francisco version of acid rock. Good trip music has to be a mixture of security and anarchy. It has to lead you on without ever threatening to get you lost. This was the form the Dead mastered. On the most fascinating track here (Willie Dixon’s ‘The Same Thing’) you can hear this form being developed from its very raw beginnings. What starts out as a straight white blues rhythm section underpinning Garcia’s lyricism, ends up as a Dead special, everyone roaring down their own individual paths without ever shaking the basic pulse. At the end of such a track all I can do is open my eyes and smile. It does bring back memories: stoned in a dark hall, enveloped in the rhythm of a thousand other people, alone in my own mood. Once upon a time acid rock was fun.
The Dead weren’t just the source of good trips. They symbolized the original hippie ideals, the naive attempts to combine total individual freedom with a loving community. Their music achieved the dream. It allowed each musician an individual freedom based on a complete instrumental trust. These albums were recorded at a time when the trust was still being established. Only on ‘The Same Thing’ is there any individual creative expression.
The Dead are still strangers to the suspicious English tradition of super-stars plus backing (if Jerry Garcia had been in a different sort of group he would have been boss white guitarist for the last five years), of excitement built on the tension and conflicts between musicians. But, not very long after this music was made, it was Cream and their successors who captured the rock audience. San Francisco’s search for community found psychedelic fascism, the individual trip became a downer. The Dead are an old group now, not a new one.
I hate historical records. They bring back too many faded expectations. ‘School days are the happiest days of your life,' they used to say, lying. Now they say, ‘They don’t make records like that any more.’ I don’t believe that either. It’s too depressing.

(by Simon Frith, from Cream, June 1972)

https://archive.org/details/gd66-09-16.sbd.vernon.9127.sbeok.shnf 

Garcia Album Review

JERRY GARCIA, SOLO, GETTING IT ON

If you have never seen Jerry Garcia playing guitar in front of a live audience, you might snicker when I say that he's probably the finest rock guitarist working in an American band today.
Listening to his lead work on any of the 7 currently available Grateful Dead albums won't give you much of a clue, either. The albums range from too-perfect to too-bad and the glimpses of the Garcia genius which glimmer through the album cuts are few. In fact, I suspect that the albums are purchased by Dead freaks who use them as a pale reminder of how good the band can be on the right night.
In an album released in January and in another released some months back, we have an opportunity to see Garcia working outside the context of the Dead. The results are not up to Garcia in concert, and in some ways they fail terribly, but they are fascinating experiments.
In his most recent work, an album simply titled "Garcia" on Warner Brothers label, Jerry joins drummer Bill Kreutzmann and Dead lyricist Bob Hunter in what amounts to a one-man tour de force. It's Jerry and his 16-track recorder against the world, with Kreutzmann sitting in because Jerry can't play drums. He plays everything else on the album and Hunter writes the words.
Although I expected experimentation on the solo Garcia album, I found a sound very similar to the Dead's - sort of the Dead without the Dead. On keyboards, Garcia double-tracks his own leads much like Pig Pen McKernan would. His bass work isn't as good as Phil Lesh's, but it's similar in style. Ditto on the rhythm guitar work.
On Side Two, the first cut, entitled "Late For Supper," uses electronic gadgetry and is out of context from the loose, country-style swinging on Side One. The 2 very different styles don't work together, and if you're not a fan, you might put the whole thing down as a 16-track ego trip.
The earlier Garcia album is experimentation in quite another direction. Titled "Hooterool?", it features Jerry with jazz keyboard man Howard Wales and his side men. The album came about as kind of a pleasant goof between Garcia and Wales, who have been known to stay up until all hours jamming in certain San Francisco Bay area saloons.
This is most definitely not a rock album, but it is an almost-unrecorded side of Garcia, the jazz guitarist playing some perfectly astral lines. Although Garcia's contribution is subtle on some cuts, his work on a piece called "One A.M. Approach" ought to put to rest that old bromide about rock musicians being helpless in the face of "real jazzmen."
Jerry is still tops on my list among American rock guitarists. In a musical world filled with hype and nonsense, too many value the wrong things among lead guitarists. They seem obsessed with technical aspects, the sheer fingering speed of a Johnny Winter or an Alvin Lee, and they never seem to ask, "Is that guy just showing off or does that particular speedy line really mean anything to that song or that particular lyric phrase?" Like most everything else in this world these days, technology seems to be valued over feeling.
Garcia avoids this kind of speedy showmanship, and the incredible power of his best work is astounding because of its understatement. Where three notes would overwhelm you, he'll hang one or two up there and they're the right ones. Like a good race driver, he wins the race at the slowest possible speed.

(by Jon Clemens, from the "Pop Scene" column, Salina Journal, 19 March 1972)

Thanks to jgmf.blogspot.com

April 29, 1972: Musikhalle, Hamburg, West Germany

Translated from German. 

A GURU AND A NEW SOUND

The “Grateful Dead” on a European Tour

No, says Jerry Garcia, at that time everything was quite different from what has since been cooked up in the media. Tom Wolfe's report on the now famous "Acid Tests" of the years 1964 to 1966 in no case reflects what was actually happening at that time. His book “The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test” is itself already part of the creation of legends which took place in the media from 1966-67. Wolfe was indeed a brilliant writer, but the truth about the Trips Festivals of those years eludes a merely verbal description.

We are talking about the years in which the US government tried the effects of the newly discovered synthetic drug LSD on volunteers in a test program. Poor writers and loose musicians were among the first who made experiences with the new hallucinogens and the still-legal LSD popularized in the artistic circles of the American West Coast in the following period. The music that was played during the multi-media parties was later called “Acid Rock.” So when the news magazines of the United States invented the "Hippie," discovered Haight-Ashbury, and spread the cliche of the supposedly typical "San Francisco Sound," this scene had already degenerated into a tourist attraction, just like Carnaby Street and "Swinging London" a few years before.

San Francisco became the gathering point for young people who had bought the media cliche of "flower power" and "flower children." Nothing stood in the way of the commercialization and culture-industry analysis of this new Beatnik movement. A clever promoter named Bill Graham combined the most spectacular innovations of the Trips Festival in his rock music events. And that, says Jerry Garcia, was the beginning of the end.

He tries again and again to destroy the legends about the events of those years. He should know, because he is the head of the rock band which initially under the name The Warlocks and later as The Grateful Dead was itself a part of the legend. Next to the Jefferson Airplane and the Quicksilver Messenger Service, The Grateful Dead is still widely regarded as the archetypal Acid Rock group.

The Grateful Dead are also associated almost automatically with the high point and the most fatal disaster of the American rock music "movement," namely the festivals of Woodstock and Altamont. Many critics after the disaster of Altamont – four dead and countless seriously wounded, bad trips and physical terror – made the Grateful Dead responsible for the failure of this music event, because they had recommended the California Hell’s Angels as a security force to the management of the Rolling Stones. Today Jerry Garcia thinks that Altamont had to follow Woodstock almost inevitably; such "high energy trips" have basically released what is immanent in the extreme poles of rock music. For the crisis of this music, so much spoken and written about lately, these events would have the function of catalysts.

Jerry Garcia is one of the few musicians who have understood all this and processed it in their musical practice. That is why he is considered the "guru," as a kind of prophet among colleagues and fans. He says this, which will probably soon stop many American young people from 18 and 20 from going to the polls: that politics is not "soulful," is not communicative, and not even "real." “It’s already happened, we live after the turning-point. This is a post-revolutionary era, the change is over. The rest is a big mop-up.”

After countless trips and many years of work "on the road" the Grateful Dead have now found a stable economic basis for the realization of their ideas. They were the group that gave free and benefit concerts again and again; now they are trying to keep the prices of their US concerts and records as low as possible. Their "politics" is music as the most universal way of peace. That is why a Grateful Dead concert is not a rock show in the usual sense, but an intensive form of communication that typically lasts between three and five hours. In America, the group is an institution; it is considered by many as the most typical rock band the US has ever produced. In Germany, they were more of a myth, known only by records, from which no one knew whether they should now be regarded as the usual "Underground" or as a tip for connoisseurs. The live performances could have meant the disenchantment of a myth, but the opposite happened. Even the cool and somewhat snobbish Hamburg pop audience let itself get carried away to thunderous applause after just the first few numbers of the concert last Saturday night.

The Grateful Dead had the most spectacular success again with "Dark Star," a composition lasting more than thirty minutes, grazing the limits of atonal improvisation. This piece gains - like most of the group - ever new musical aspects on stage. Just as the Grateful Dead generally determine each concert spontaneously in the moment, so voltage and musical communication between the band members spontaneously develops in the individual numbers again and again.

What is interesting about songs like "Dark Star" especially is that they do not go into the traps of merely naturalistic sound imitation or arbitrary sound-impressionism. Effects play no role such as in the Pink Floyd. Melodic themes condense and dissolve again in a constant flow, changing from rock over to a strong jazz-influenced playing style (drummer Bill Kreutzmann plays perhaps the most important role). There are almost no solo spots at all, the group is a lesson in collective music-making. This form of experimental rock music has nothing to do with the cliche of "acid rock," even if the long pieces of the Dead have been called the typical examples.

Also particularly striking is the constant change of styles. The members of the Grateful Dead have grown up with various phases of American popular music, and their diverse tastes are correspondingly broad, which then breaks through in the music of the band. Organist Ron "Pigpen" McKernan and rhythm guitarist Bob Weir represented the boogie and rock'n'roll faction within the group, while bass guitarist Phil Lesh’s first love was jazz. Jerry Garcia somewhat embodies the country music trend in the band. Drummer Bill Kreutzmann and the newly added pianist Keith Godcheaux are phenomenal virtuosos who master all styles ingeniously. From a country number, the group effortlessly goes to a rhythm-and-blues song, and a longer improvised piece is seamlessly followed by a hard-rock composition like "Big Boss Man." You can really grasp such versatility only while listening.

Almost all rock bands have a member who represents the engine, the musical soul of the group - such as the guitarist Keith Richard with the Rolling Stones. The music of the Grateful Dead on the other hand lives from the consciousness that all members are equally important, and that is what makes the "Grateful Dead" so alive and a completely integrated ensemble, in which there are no ego trips. One of the few comparable counterparts that occurs to me is the folk-rock group The Band, who also worked up in their own way the history of American popular music and because of their stylistic versatility are - in the right sense - one of the most progressive.

In such bands the difficult balance is at risk anew each time, and no concert is like another. So the Grateful Dead played at their concert in Frankfurt not nearly as good as their triumphant Hamburg performance. But even that characterizes such a challenging group, which musically recreates their spirituality at every concert.

(by Franz Schöler, from Die Zeit, no. 18, 5 May 1972)

http://www.zeit.de/1972/18/ein-guru-und-ein-neuer-sound

https://archive.org/details/gd72-04-29.aud.vernon.5250.sbeok.shnf 

Thanks to Uli Teute.

Other reviews from the Germany '72 shows:
http://deadsources.blogspot.com/2014/09/april-26-1972-jahrhunderthalle-frankfurt.html
http://deadsources.blogspot.com/2014/10/april-29-1972-musikhalle-hamburg-germany.html

* * *

Here is the original German article:

Ein Guru und ein neuer Sound

Die „Grateful Dead“ auf Europa-Tournee 

von Franz Schöler

Nein, sagt Jerry Garcia, damals sei alles ganz anders gewesen, als man es dann in den Medien aufgekocht habe. Tom Wolfes Report über die heute berühmten „Acid Tests“ der Jahre 1964 bis 1966 gebe in keinem Fall das wieder, was damals tatsächlich passiert sei. Sein Buch „The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test sei selbst schon wieder Teil einer Legendenbildung, die ab 1966/67 in den Medien stattgefunden habe. Wolfe sei zwar ein brillanter Autor, aber die Wahrheit über die Trips-Festivals jener Jahre entziehe sich überhaupt einer nur verbalen Beschreibung.

Wir sprechen über die Jahre, in denen die amerikanische Regierung in einem Testprogramm die Wirkungen der neu gefundenen synthetischen Droge LSD an Freiwilligen ausprobierte. Brotlose Schriftsteller und stellungslose Musiker waren unter den ersten, die mit den neuen Halluzinogenen Erfahrungen machten und in der Folgezeit das damals noch legale LSD in den Künstlerkreisen der amerikanischen Westküste popularisierten. „Acid Rock“ nannte man später die Musik, die während der Multi-Media-Partys gespielt wurde. Als dann die Nachrichtenmagazine der USA den „Hippie“ erfanden, die Haight-Ashbury entdeckten und das Klischee vom angeblich typischen „San Francisco Sound“ verbreiteten, war diese Szene auch schon wieder zur Touristenattraktion verkommen, so wie wenige Jahre vorher die Carnaby Street und das „Swinging London“.

San Francisco wurde zum Sammelpunkt von Jugendlichen, die den Medien das Klischee von „flower power“ und „Blumenkindern“ abgekauft hatten. Der Kommerzialisierung und einer kulturindustriellen Auswertung dieser neuen Beatnik-Bewegung stand nichts mehr im Wege. Ein cleverer Promoter namens Bill Graham kombinierte die spektakulärsten Neuerungen der Trips-Festivals in seinen Rock-Musik-Veranstaltungen. Und das, sagt Jerry Garcia, sei der Anfang vom Ende gewesen.

Er bemüht sich immer wieder, die Legenden über die Ereignisse jener Jahre nach besten Kräften zu zerstören. Er muß es wissen, denn er ist der Chef der Rock-Band, die zunächst unter dem Namen The Warlocks und später als The Grateful Dead selber ein Teil der Legendenbildung wurde. Neben dem Jefferson Airplane und dem Quicksilver Messenger Service gilt The Grateful Dead immer noch weithin als die archetypische Acid-Rock-Gruppe.

Mit den Grateful Dead assoziiert man auch beinahe automatisch den Höhepunkt und das fatalste Desaster der amerikanischen Rockmusik-„Bewegung“, nämlich die Festivals von Woodstock und Altamont. Viele Kritiker machten nach dem Desaster von Altamont – vier Tote und zahllose Schwerverletzte, Horrortrips und physischer Terror – die Grateful Dead für das Scheitern dieser Musikveranstaltung verantwortlich, denn sie hatten dem Management der Rolling Stones die kalifornischen Hell’s Angels als Ordnertruppe empfohlen. Heute meint Jerry Garcia, daß Altamont auf Woodstock fast unausweichlich folgen mußte; solche „high energy trips“ hätten im Grunde das freigesetzt, was der Rockmusik in ihren extremen Polen immanent sei. Für die Krise dieser Musik, über die letzthin so viel gesprochen und geschrieben wurde, hätten diese Veranstaltungen die Funktion von Katalysatoren gehabt.

Jerry Garcia ist einer der wenigen Musiker, die all das begriffen und in ihrer musikalischen Praxis verarbeitet haben. Darum gilt er als „Guru“, als eine Art Prophet unter Kollegen und Fans. Er spricht das aus, was vermutlich viele amerikanische Jugendliche zwischen 18 und 20 demnächst davon abhalten wird, zu den Wahlen zu gehen: daß Politik nicht „soulful“ sei, nicht kommunikativ und auch nicht „wirklich“. „Es ist schon passiert, wir leben nach der Wende. Dies ist ein postrevolutionäres Zeitalter, der Wandel ist vorüber. Der Rest ist ein großer Aufwasch.“

Nach zahllosen Trips und jahrelanger Arbeit. „on the road“ haben die Grateful Dead jetzt eine stabile ökonomische Basis für die Verwirklichung ihrer Ideen gefunden. Sie waren die Gruppe, die immer wieder Gratis- und Benefizkonzerte gab; jetzt versuchen sie, die Preise ihrer US-Konzerte und Platten so niedrig wie möglich zu halten. Ihre „Politik“ ist die Musik als universalste Möglichkeit von Befriedung. Darum ist ein Grateful-Dead-Konzert auch keine Rock-Show im üblichen Sinne, sondern eine intensive Form von Kommunikation, die in der Regel zwischen drei und fünf Stunden dauert.

In Amerika ist die Gruppe eine Institution; sie gilt für viele als die typischste Rock-Band, die die USA je hervorgebracht haben. In Deutschland waren sie eher ein Mythos, bekannt nur durch Platten, von denen man nicht wußte, ob man sie nun als üblichen „Underground“ oder als Tip für Kenner ansehen sollte. Die Live-Auftritte hätten die Entzauberung eines Mythos bedeuten können, aber das Gegenteil geschah. Selbst das kühle und ein wenig snobistische Pop-Publikum Hamburgs ließ sich schon nach den ersten Nummern des Konzerts am vergangenen Samstagabend zu tosendem Beifall hinreißen.

Den spektakulärsten Erfolg hatten die Grateful Dead wieder mit „Dark Star“, einer mehr als dreißig Minuten dauernden, die Grenzen atonaler Improvisation streifenden Komposition. Dieses Stück gewinnt – wie die meisten der Gruppe – auf der Bühne stets neue musikalische Aspekte. So wie die Grateful Dead überhaupt jedes Konzert spontan aus dem Moment heraus bestimmen, so spontan entwickelt sich bei den einzelnen Nummern immer wieder Spannung und musikalische Kommunikation zwischen den Band-Mitgliedern.

Interessant ist an Stücken wie „Dark Star“ vor allem, daß sie nicht in die Fallen bloß naturalistischen Klangnachahmens oder willkürlicher Sound-Impressionismen gehen. Effekte spielen da keine Rolle wie etwa bei den Pink Floyd. Melodische Themen verdichten sich und lösen sich wieder auf in einem ständigen Fluß, vom Rock wechselt man über zu einer stark jazzbeeinflußten Spielweise (Schlagzeuger Bill Kreutzmann spielt dabei die vielleicht wichtigste Rolle). Solospots gibt es fast gar nicht, die Gruppe ist eine Lektion in kollektivem Musizieren. Mit dem Klischee vom „acid rock“ hat diese Form von experimenteller Rockmusik nichts zu tun, auch wenn man die langen Stücke der Dead als typische Beispiele dafür genannt hat.

Frappierend ist auch der ständige Wechsel der Stile. Die Mitglieder der Grateful Dead sind mit verschiedenen Phasen der amerikanischen Populärmusik aufgewachsen, und entsprechend breit sind ihre Vorlieben gefächert, die dann in der Musik der Band durchschlagen. Organist Ron „Pigpen“ McKernan und Rhythmusgitarrist Bob Weir vertreten die Boogie- und Rock’n’Roll-Fraktion innerhalb der Gruppe, während Baßgitarrist Phil Leshs erste Liebe der Jazz war. Jerry Garcia verkörpert ein wenig den Country-Music-Trend in der Band. Phänomenale Virtuosen sind Drummer Bill Kreutzmann und der neu hinzugekommene Pianist Keith Godcheaux, der alle Stile ingeniös beherrscht. Von einer Country-Nummer geht die Gruppe mühelos zu einem Rhythmus-and-Blues-Song über, und auf ein längeres improvisiertes Stück folgt bruchlos eine Hard-rock-Komposition wie „Big Boss Man“. Man kann solche Vielseitigkeit wirklich nur beim Hören begreifen.

Fast alle Rock-Bands haben ein Mitglied, das den Motor, die musikalische Seele der Gruppe darstellt – wie zum Beispiel der Gitarrist Keith Richard bei den Rolling Stones. Die Musik der Grateful Dead dagegen lebt aus dem Bewußtsein, daß alle Mitglieder gleich wichtig sind, und genau das macht die „Dankbaren Toten“ so lebendig und zu einem vollkommen integrierten Ensemble, in dem es keine Ego-Trips gibt. Als eines der wenigen vergleichbaren Gegenstücke fällt mir die Folk-Rock-Gruppe The Band ein, die auf ihre Weise ebenfalls die Geschichte der amerikanischen Popmusik aufarbeitet und wegen ihrer stilistischen Vielseitigkeit zu den – im richtigen Sinne – progressivsten gehört.

Bei solchen Bands ist die diffizile Balance jedesmal aufs neue gefährdet, und kein Konzert ist wie das andere. So spielten die Grateful Dead bei ihrem Konzert in Frankfurt längst nicht so gut wie bei ihrem triumphalen Hamburger Gastspiel. Aber auch das charakterisiert eine solch schwierige Gruppe, die ihre Spiritualität bei jedem Konzert musikalisch neu schafft.

March 21-28, 1972: Academy of Music, New York City

WHY IS THAT HAIRY MAN GRINNING? 

GRATEFUL DEAD, MOST BELOVED FREAK BAND ON EARTH

Perhaps when the day March 29 dawned on Necropolis, blessing with preemptive spring warmth and sunshine, there was no connection between that sudden burst of life and the fact that as thermometers rose in Central Park dark during the night, the final note of “Saturday Night” and seven days of Grateful Dead music was booming like a rainbow surfer’s dream through a synchronated mass of human energy contained by the pulsating walls of the Academy of Music. Matters of cause and effect are liable to take strange turns in the minds of the faithful when consciousness-expansion passes through town on that good old tried and true Grateful Dead tribal bandwagon.

At that precise moment in time, the point where Bob Weir struck his last blow into glowing pink air positively reeking with the barnyard scent of the universal tool, guitar falling like some thunderous flashing celestial hammer, stopping frozen at the bottom of its arc, then wheeling back up and away over his head, anything seemed possible; the rush was on the riding wild; the earth was turning and you could feel it, like you had just jumped off a bike at 100 mph and you were standing there, still traveling but suspended, body and brains reeling madly between perfect free-floating connection and scrambled sensory overload…the usual, in fact, the normal Dead-induced high point.

Jerry Garcia, lead guitarist, explains: “In relating to somebody who is seeking more space, the basic thing is being able to open a window, to let them see that there is more space before you can even think about it. I think we’re just a first step in that whole progression, and on a good night we can illustrate that there is more space.” (Rolling Stone, February 3, 1972) 

How do they do it? Art and science and magic all adding up to advanced expertise in cosmic trickery, fancy-fingered tripping along the road to the grail; random historical accidents bringing them together at the start of the psychedelic revolution, spearheaded by them and Kesey’s Pranksters, Owsley and his acid, Golden Gate Park, Summer of Love, the Acid Tests, the fabled brotherhood of Dead and Angels on the streets of San Francisco, Altamont, multi-colored, multi-media mind-blowing emporiums of crazy, terrifying, ecstatic new world visitations upon conscience-stricken America. Where are your children, parents? They’re out on an evening with the Grateful Dead, blitzed on acid and changing overnight while you worry about them being raped or something. Everyone who heard them in the halcyon days of hip has his or her tale about the start of something big, about the first night Jerry and his troupe of Cosmic cowboy philosophers hit town…

Now, after seven “official” albums and six years of music ranging from the incredible atmospheric excursions of “Anthem of the Sun” and “Live Dead” to the sweetly bubbling torrents of new-style country-rock that grace “American Beauty” (a delicate rose of an album, as its title implies), they are stars with money and fame; they sell whole stacks of albums; they’re beginning to make “solo” albums – Garcia’s is out already, and Bob Weir has one coming under the title of “Ace,” by all accounts a work liable to impact with the force of 10,000 atom bombs, strings and horns and choruses and all. As yet they have not made it to the cover of Time, or played the Garden or Shea Stadium, but that’s not their style. Who knows, though; one day somebody up there on Madison Avenue may just catch onto what’s been happening in this country for the past six years or so; maybe someone will realize that the Dead are the most beloved freak band on earth.

Their style is self-effacing to the point of invisibility; what really matters is the music and what they can do with that potent tool. Whereas the Stones have an acute understanding of the power of theatrics, and employ their knowledge to the full, the Dead treat that side of the rock ‘n’ roll life with circumspect caution, draping themselves in the denim of the masses while they blast out music which is both amazingly complex and delightfully, dancingly simple. It’s all in the coordination of instruments, the exquisite rightness of a harmonious blend of two guitars, bass, organ, piano, and drums (groundwork driving by Phil Lesh on bass and Bill Kreutzmann on drums, middle-ground shifting fill by Weir on guitar, Pigpen on organ, and Keith Godcheaux on piano, flights of fancy courtesy of Captain Trips (and now, occasional vocals by Keith’s wife Donna).

A scene from long ago before the bullets and the onset of grisly reality. A Manhattan party is buzzing to the tune of acid punch; a monstrously fat female scumbag resident, still beautiful unto herself, coils her rolls around a bearskin rug, all but smothering the frail male she clasps to her heaving acid-ripped bosom. “Alligator” by the Grateful Dead is flowing from everywhere; Jerry has just finished a flight. The Blob reveals a Truth to her captive companion: “He’s Gandalf, man.” A long pause while the Pig grunts and groans and the alligator slithers in and out of his slime, then a contradiction: “No, no, no, no, man – he’s Bilbo!!!” “Ooooh, OOOOOOOOH, he’s both, man, he’s Captain fuckin’ Trips!!”

Backstage at the Academy of Music, Jerry Bildalf Trips, the homey dwarf with the lightning at his fingertips, picks organic orange out from between his teeth lost somewhere in a riotous sprouting of wiry locks, and mutters something cryptic about rock ‘n’ roll stars-cum-spiritual leaders; it’s a position he has to acknowledge, but finds difficult at times, especially when he gets to thinking about just who his audience is these days.

The truth of the matter is that when a six-day New York concert sells out in less than that number of hours, the audience is likely to contain an overwhelming majority of Seconal pubelets (this after the commercial success of the Dead’s last three albums and, of course, the explosion of Hip). The teentsy hedonists react to the Dead like so many Pavlov doggies, bouncing their plump butts from first note to last, openly imbibing the most noxious brews available at the cheap end of the druggie market, while the music mood shifts from easy-rolling rock-country-blues, then into the heaviest rock ‘n’ roll currently available to mankind, and then on and out into the space music stuff – an optional extra on almost any Dead number, usually reserved for the last hour or two when audience heads are open and the band themselves are fully in synch. Jerry is careful with his charges, knowing he can accomplish something beautiful, maybe ease some tensions, transcend some contradictions, cut a few knots and let the Flow take over.

Above all, the Dead are a road band; try as they may, they have not yet been able to reproduce their amazingly pure live sound on record. “Live Dead” was badly recorded, too muddy on all but the very best stereo equipment. “Anthem of the Sun” was similarly flawed but nonetheless brilliant, and “Grateful Dead,” their latest double live album, lacked something almost undefinable, some fullness that must have been there from the start. With the ultimate live-recorded work in mind, they are taking a 60-track ABC recording unit (containerized for air travel) with them on their first tour of Europe – that and a permanent sound system which truly boggles the mind. It’s an earthbound spaceship, nothing less, attended with loving devotion by a whole itinerant tribe of technician heads. And while that mighty recording mother gobbles up the notes for their next double live album, the European natives will feast their eyes on the Great Garcia t-shirt (still the garb of C.T. despite a visit to Nudie’s meant as a concession to English foppery). The lights will be slewing all over the walls, and those who gave birth to the Stones will come face to face with a phenomenon they still don’t really understand. They will.

Besides the sound equations, though, there is the color of the concert experience, the scarlet midnight hour when the theatre of the absurd mingles and warps with joyous inspiration, grisly reality, and a whole mess of the most freaky little flashes; Mickey Mouse by R. Crumb all dolled up in polished tinsel and an old workshirts, while onstage the band plays out fire and rain and sunshine into a hallful of feelers waving crazily in the dark. Octopus feeding time.

The Dead played seven nights with one night off; Saturday was their benefit for the Hell’s Angels. Then they played as backup band for Bo Diddley, ranged in a grinning line behind Big Bo’s black silk bulk, the best band he’s ever likely to play with. It was party night, and their own set was loose, nothing too strenuous. The first night and the last were the musical high points, but Sandy Alexander, president of the New York chapter of the Hell’s Angels, was ecstatic, and why not, indeed? He’d come with his brothers from 3^rd Street and all over the USA, riding shotgun to the Angels stagecoach on their gas buffalos. They pulled up to the curb on 14^th Street in a ragged but impressive line (what else can you expect in Saturday night traffic – “The Wild One?”), and after they’d all been filmed by Geraldo’s Hipnews Concession, the Grateful Dead their old buddies went and threw a monster of a party for them. What a fuckin’ night!!!

As the boogie progressed, tasty party mayo splashed all over the green leafy stuff – hard cash for bail money, spark plugs, chrome polish, and all the other expenses of high style Angel living. The Breed never showed up (luckily for them), and the party was cool. No Rolling Stones to slide that little extra manic hysteria in there; no Altamont, no stabbings, just party time, everyone awash in a frothing sea of vile foamy liquids, psychedelic beercans, innocent but potent macrobiotic cookies, weed by the ton, coke by the ounce, speed by the pint, Boone’s Farm strawberry wine…

“Let’s get it on for the Hell’s Angels of the USA!” yelled Bob Weir into the mike, and while some more impressionable brothers almost swooned away from sheer excitement, the band launched into their first number – “How sweet it is, to be loved by you…”

WATCH OUT FOR THE FUNNY-LOOKING JUG, they had told me by way of warning, but the intrepid drugger in me took over, and in the twinkle of an eye, while the Dead launched into their best-ever “Dark Star” (this being Tuesday night, the last show), a jabbering circle of groupies, writers, chemists, and Angels dissolved into misty dayglo abstracts to the festive tinkle of discarded nitrous oxide cylinders plinking onto the floorboards like so many spent shell-cases. If only it had been like this at Verdun; it probably was like this at Da Nang. Is that really an unhorsed knight I see lumbering ducklike in fetid armor? A plastic toy cowboy horseman minus steed? A Viking lost in a time warp? A Roman slave-master? Why, no, nothing of the kind; it’s just an out-of-town Angel reeling away from his turn at the hose, playing walking custard pie.

Why is Jerry always off on the sidelines, grinning that hairy grin?

Tuesday night again; two Bronx groupies bump and grind their way past the demure ladies of the Dead tribe, like cheap hookers in a free-school communal dining room. One of the velvet cutie-pies washes Bob Weir in a flood of garlic from a yellow maw, and confides that she used to be a topless dancer (and worked her way up?). Weir says “far out.” Just another little vignette of the road, another mote in the old sunbeam. Why is that hairy man grinning?

Tuesday night the Dead played the best set I have ever heard, every note in place, every opportunity for improvisation taken. “Trucking” slid into one of Weir’s new high-power country rockers, loaded with melody and texture and sweet sliding riffs; that boy has finally learned to sing, with a vengeance. The Pig rendered sweeping blues, blowing everything from his tiny emaciated frame down into his wailing harp. Jerry took the lead on “You Win Again” from way back, and then it was time for some sensuous pyrotechnics with “Mister Charlie.” “Brokendown Palace” followed, back in the sweet groove, then “Cumberland Mine” with a rip-roaring extension, another new Weir number, “Big Railroad Blues” slamming down the track almost like Casey’s train, “El Paso” like Marty Robbins 10 years on and out, a magnificent collage of pieces from “Anthem of the Sun,” “I Know You Rider,” and then, to top it all off with a true blast of sheer power, “Casey Jones,” roaring the first set to a close. Thunder and lightning could do no more.

By the time they were done with “Wharf Rat,” “Dark Star,” “Sugaree,” “Playing in the Band,” “Not Fade Away,” “Going Down the Road,” and “Saturday Night,” several thousand delirious people had entered orbit – and we’re back where we started. As usual, the second set was much, much heavier than the first, and Tuesday night the boys in the band were on the ball as never before in my five years of Dead experience.

Sitting hunched over on an empty speaker case while the Academy crew sweated to comply to the strenuous demands of the Dead crew seeking perfection (that’s the name of the game, all the way from self-management to guitar-strings), Jerry Garcia pulled on an only-the-tops-special, relaxing before the serious stuff started that first night. “It’s really far out, just too fuckin’ neat, man,” he said with that same huge grin. “I mean, we’ve only just started getting’ into what we can do. There’s no limit…and we’re all feelin’ good.” Now, ain’t that good news?

(by Patrick Carr, from the Village Voice, 6 April 1972)

I posted a comment on a shorter edit of this article here. 

* * * 

THE GRATEFUL HELL’S ANGELS

The Grateful Dead gave a benefit performance for the Hell’s Angels at the Academy of Music on 14^th Street on Saturday night. A venerable tradition: benefits by performing artists to aid the victims of injustice. How did the bikers enter this category?

Last weekend the police burst into a six-story tenement on East 3^rd Street that the motorcycle gang has almost entirely taken over. They found revolvers, 1000 rounds of ammunition, knives, a machete, and a bomb. They arrested two Hell’s Angels, Vincent Giralomo and Anthony Morabito, who have long arrest records, and held them on $75,000 bail each.

The police raid had its origins in an incident of the preceding week. According to residents of the block, a slender young Puerto Rican boy was walking from the bodega at the corner of 3^rd Street and First Avenue, carrying a bag of groceries, when one of the Angels pounced on him and took a can of beer, a pork chop, and some other food. The Angel, who has been identified by police as Giralomo, is a fat and powerful-looking six-footer who wears a ring in his nose and tattoos over most of his body, including “Fuck You” spelled out on his knuckles. According to the boy, the Angel punched him and sent him crashing against an iron tenement staircase. When the police arrived they found the boy sobbing, his face bloodied and swollen.

The boy was visiting New York from Puerto Rico and was badly shocked by the attack, but residents of the block were not so surprised. They spoke of frequent harassment and occasional beatings of passing blacks in the three years since the Angels settled on the block. They complained about the Angels’ practice of randomly insulting women who pass their headquarters and the 2 and 4 a.m. revving of motorcycle engines.

One woman who recently moved away after living on the block for 10 years said she left because of the “hideous – even painful – noise of the motorcycles, the garbage piled on the sidewalk in front of the Angels’ building, and their conversion of half the block into an outdoor garage for their bike. The Angels have imposed law and order on the block,” she said, “their law and their order.”

The admission fees of thousands of suburban teenagers at the Dead’s concert will enable the arrested Angels to meet their bail and continue to roam East 3^rd Street until the trial.

(by Ann Aboto, from the Village Voice, 30 March 1972)

July 11, 1969: New York State Pavilion, Flushing Meadow Park

RIFFS

. . . Going to the New York State Pavilion of the World's Fail is not an appealing idea any time, and it was the last place I wanted to be Friday night - even if the Grateful Dead were there... I was down. Only because I had heedlessly committed myself, I went to a midtown office building and climbed onto a school bus hired by the press agent, alone and unable to bring myself to talk even to people I knew. Flushing Meadow Park, I hear, is a nice place for bike riding and sundry Sunday occupations, but to me it's an unmarked maze designed to trap people into death by overexposure to Queens. Directions for drivers just aren't there. Even the bus driver got lost. But when he finally got us to the Pavilion, it was revelation city...
The ad had called the Pavilion a ballroom, but that sounds like Roseland. It is open space, open all around to the sky and roofed finally three or four storeys high, if there were storeys which there aren't, vast and open all around you for skipping and dancing, which was actually happening. You can walk up to the bandstand close enough to touch a leg of whoever it is you want to touch on the leg on stage. No goddam revolving stage, no goddam lightshow, and no seats anywhere. When you get wiped out from skipping and dancing you can give in to the charcoal hamburger smell, luscious, which nags at you all evening because they've been shrewd enough to put the grills upwind, up on the balcony in the prevailing southwest wind. You walk away from the stage without the desperate feeling that the music is going to - whoopsh - stop and disappear without your constant attention. It'll be there when you get back, in fact it follows you to the balcony and to a picnic table where you can sit down with your food or without it overlooking the flow. When you go back down you can plant your ass on the mosaic New York State on the floor, if you must, but it's just about impossible when the Grateful Dead are playing.
The Dead, as usual, took half of a marathon set to warm up, but once they did they were unapproachable, irreproachable, as usual better than ever before. Pigpen, happily, was out front toward the end, swinging and singing up a "Love Light" that galvanized band and audience alike. Pigpen is music, head to toe, and it's a gas to see him in the group again. He transforms them when he swings in. Jerry Garcia's pedal steel guitar is a joy. The sound he gets on it is unlike any other steel guitar, just as his electric is unlike any other. His acoustic encore was as loving as the old days of San Francisco were said to be. The Dead are still like that.
It was a night of flow, relaxed and together, music and people both. Booking for the rest of the summer is somewhat less inspired, but there are highlights to look forward to - this coming weekend, Chuck Berry himself and James Cotton; later on, Charlie Musselwhite, Buddy Miles, among others; and as a grand grand finale, Paul Butterfield and Muddy Waters on the same bill. The Pavilion is a bargain at $3. I'm told the subway is easier traveling than driving - express a few stops on the IRT Flushing line to Willet's Point (Shea Stadium), and a 15-minute walk or possibly a taxi ride. If I have any taxi adventures I'll tell you.

(by Annie Fisher, from the "Riffs" column in the Village Voice, 17 July 1969)

http://streetsyoucrossed.blogspot.com/2012/03/1969-ads-revisited-singer-bowl-and.html

https://archive.org/details/gd69-07-11.sbd.hanno.4644.sbeok.shnf

Two more 7/11/69 reviews:
http://deadsources.blogspot.com/2017/07/july-11-1969-pavilion-flushing-meadow.html 
http://deadsources.blogspot.com/2017/10/july-11-1969-new-york-state-pavilion.html

See also Lucian Truscott's review of the 6/22/69 Central Park show, from the 6/26/69 Village Voice:
http://deadsources.blogspot.com/2013/06/june-22-1969-central-park-nyc.html
And Annie Fisher's review of the Dead's May '68 NYC shows, from the 5/16/68 Village Voice:
http://deadsources.blogspot.com/2012/02/may-4-9-1968-new-york.html
And Robert Christgau's account of their June/July '69 NYC shows, from the 7/27/69 New York Times:
http://deadsources.blogspot.com/2012/02/june-20-july-11-1969-new-york-city.html

* * *

The same Village Voice issue also contains a positive review of the Rolling Stones' 7/5/69 concert in Hyde Park ("the biggest, most vital, most moving rock concert ever"), a negative review of Blind Faith's 7/12/69 show at Madison Square Garden ("there just wasn't any feeling...lots of noise from the stage, and not much music"), and a review of the Velvet Underground's 7/11/69 show at the Boston Tea Party, which I can't pass up:

The Boston Tea Party, that town's answer to the old Balloon Farm, closed its doors last weekend. (It will reopen soon in a new and, alas, spiffier location; what the world really needs is fewer plastic pop palaces and more drafty old halls where kids, of all ages, can go cheap, sit on the floor and groove, or dance in wild abandon.) Anyway, to enhance the nostalgia, and add a touch of class to the proceedings, the Velvet Underground were asked to attend. The Velvet's cult is particularly strong in Boston. In fact, their cult is strong in almost every burg except their home town (New York), where they still seem to be regarded as local freaks.
I hadn't seen the Velvets in live performance since they held forth in the Gymnasium, which must be two years ago. (However, I can [ -- ] among that singular crew which has the pleasure of enjoying the Velvet's company on social occasions from time to time, and that, along with their albums, seemed to suffice.) But I am glad I decided, on the spur of the moment, to barrel up to Boston to catch them Friday night.
I hate to sound like Andrew Loog Oldham gushing liner notes on an early Stones album, but I realized after the sounds and images of the Tea Party concert that I had been right all along about the Velvets. They are one of the most brilliant groups around today, playing rock and roll, playing just music, knocking out strong stuff that one can dance to or freak out over. I had become accustomed to defending the Velvets against their detractors, but more on the basis of friendship than deep conviction. However, after listening to them go from "I'm Waiting for My Man" to "Jesus" (a remarkably original gospel-hymn) and then on to "Sister Ray," I am convinced, once again, of their merits. So was the audience, who gave them a standing ovation.
It was a joy to hear Lou Reed bursting out with "I'm Set Free." The song is a testimonial to the fact that the Velvets are indeed free of the Warhol stigma that stayed with them long after they left Andy. I was also relieved to discover that, although it sounds a bit different, "I'm Waiting for My Man" loses none of its power now that John Cale is no longer with the group. (He is doing very well on his own, incidentally.)
Cale's replacement, Doug Yule, plays bass (very well) and organ. Yule, it seems to me, fits right in with what the Velvets are into since Lou Reed (in his own words) "saw the light." He is an affable young man who fortunately did not lose his identity upon joining Lou Reed's band.
And that is something else I realized: the Velvets are Lou Reed's band. But that does not mean that Lou can do without Sterling Morrison's stoic presence or Maureen Tucker's distinct and incredible style of drumming. I think all the Velvets understand that. I think it is important for Lou to know that Sterling is there, looking for all the world like Gary Cooper. And Maureen, bless her little heart, has held them all together through many a long set with her relentless beat.
Someone (I think it was me) once said the Velvets were the Judy Garlands of Rock. And they are. But, unlike Judy, they have managed to evolve slowly, giving themselves time to mature and to appreciate themselves and their music, without being eaten alive by a voracious cult which just happened to have the intelligence and the sensitivity of appetite to dig them in the first place.
Yes, I am happy to announce that the Velvet Underground are alive, and well, and making live music. And the next time they are in Boston, or Philly, you really should catch them.

(by Richard Nusser, from the Village Voice, 17 July 1969)

https://news.google.com/newspapers?id=vOwjAAAAIBAJ&sjid=K4wDAAAAIBAJ&pg=1595,473568&hl=en (pg.36)

February 1968: Jefferson Airplane

AIRPLANE FLIES! -- LEAVES MANAGER, BATTLES RCA
Group Follows Beatles Lead: Run Own Show

The Jefferson Airplane have "divorced" themselves from the personal management of Fillmore Auditorium manager Bill Graham on February 6, following the lead of the Beatles, Grateful Dead, and Quicksilver Messenger Service. Each of these groups has taken its business affairs into its own hands on a strictly cooperative basis.
Bill Thompson, long the Airplane's road manager and now their spokesman (like Rock Scully and Danny Rifkin of the Dead, he is an integral part of the group and not an autonomous individual with his own, possibly conflicting, interests) was reticent about discussing the break with Graham but definite about the band's independence. "We might get other management," he said, "then again, the Earth might split open."
Like the other two San Francisco outfits, the first venture to interest Jefferson Airplane has been, naturally, a rock and roll show. The Great Northwest Tour undertaken by the Dead, Quicksilver, and Jerry Abram's Headlights - it was actually organized and promoted by Rifkin, Scully, Ron Rakow, and attorney Brian Rohan - was a huge success, not so much financially, although it did end up in the black, as in showing that an independent group-based operation could do everything the show business professionals could do, do it (musically) better, and have a good time doing it.
Even Rock Scully, who blithely remarked, "We knew along along we could do it...only before we were too busy scuffling and recording," was amazed at the way the tour, with the aid of a few well-placed posters and a phone call to the editor of a local and/or college newspaper, could create as much excitement in a Washington or Oregon college town as they would have caused by riding through its streets in the back of a circus wagon, plugged into a mobile generator and playing at full amplification.
"We walk into an empty hall," he said, "at 3:30 - the show's at 8 - by the time it starts we've transformed that place into a scene that would rival the Fillmore or the Avalon at their very best. They (the audience) were running into the place."
What struck everyone connected with the tour was the fact that the shows came off better - music, lights, communication between performers and audience - than similar productions with the identical musicians produced by outsiders. "There were 30 of us making a creative effort. After all, it was our thing," Rock said.
This is the atmosphere that Jefferson Airplane also hopes to capture in its future efforts. "The Airplane wants to change the concept of the rock and roll show," Thompson stated. "The San Francisco groups got into the business to have a good time and give a good show. But because of the conditions we ran into on our tour, we weren't able to give a lot of audiences the shows they should have been receiving."
The conditions he referred to are familiar to all traveling salesmen, professional athletes, high fashion models, and musicians, especially musicians: get off the plane, spend an hour or three in an uncomfortable motel room, go somewhere you've never seen before and do whatever it is you do for people who've never seen you before and get on the plane again to do it over again.
Jefferson Airplane is a big-time act (in fact it gets more money - up to $7500 a performance - than any other American band) and its members do not have to put up with the changes that many less successful performers do, but a grind is a grind, dull is dull, and tired is tired.
It was not specified whether the continuous live performances were a factor in the parting-of-the-ways with Graham, who not only arranged them, but expected the group to come up with fresh material on the road. However, the Airplane has resolved never again to undertake such a punishing schedule of appearances.
Among the new ideas the Airplane is considering is the possibility of traveling with the Doors, hardly unknowns themselves, with the bands exchanging material. This would give the audiences a chance to hear Jim Morrison soar into "Somebody to Love," followed by Marty Balin and Grace Slick singing "Light My Fire." The Airplane is also seriously considering a tour of Europe, accompanied by Headlights. If they make the trip they plan to set up some joint performances with the Grateful Dead, already booked for Continental appearances in April and May thanks to the efforts of the Dead's managers.
Setting its sights still further Eastward, Jefferson Airplane also hopes to become the first American band to play behind the Iron Curtain and is especially interested in performing in Russia. Thompson admits that he is still waiting to hear from Kosygin.
The Airplane's business ambitions do not stop at tours and concerts. They have set up a publishing company called Ice Bag Corp. Already in the works are two songbooks - for Surrealistic Pillow and After Bathing at Baxter's, the group's two latest albums - which are being compiled and produced by Gary Blackman, an Airplane associate and erstwhile publicity man.
Then there are what Bill Thompson calls "visuals." Conrad Rooks, the young movie producer-director, held a private, Airplane-only screening of his Chappaqua, then met with the group and found them quite interested in his plans for a feature-length film featuring them. (He didn't mention that when he first announced plans for a rock-and-roll-oriented movie it was supposed to have starred the Beatles and been shot in Nepal.) John Urea, a Los Angeles film maker who has already produced several shorts on musical subjects, has also broached plans for a film, and no decision has been reached on which (or both or neither) project the Airplane will engage in. But some sort of film definitely is in the works.
In another, more familiar medium, recorded music, the band finds itself anxious to record some new songs but is at loggerheads with its label, RCA Victor. The issue is again freedom and the hassle is centered in two areas: promotion and the actual conditions of cutting tapes.
After Bathing at Baxter's was terribly mishandled and underpromoted by RCA, according to Thompson, who suggests that the apparent incompetence may have been purposive on the part of the company, which wanted another Surrealistic Pillow and was further put out by the Ron Cobb cover design which the Airplane insisted on using., "Every record cover, every advertisement is going to be associated with the Jefferson Airplane and we have a right to the final say" is the group's position on the matter. They also want the record company to guarantee that a definite amount of money will be spent for promoting each album and single - said money to be turned over to the Airplane and its public relations firm to be used as they think most effective. RCA, it hardly need be said, is not rushing forward with wheelbarrows full of greenback dollar bills to meet this demand, but insists that the records are its products to be sold as it sees fit.
As for the actual recording, the Airplane musicians, especially Jorma Kaukonen, are notoriously unhappy with the RCA Los Angeles studios. They want to be able to name their own engineers and production people, choose their own studios to record in - in San Francisco, if they like, which, according to Thompson, RCA now forbids - and even start their own studios.
In essence, the Airplane wants to present the label with the finished tapes for a record and say, "Here." Thompson says that several members of the group refuse to set foot in a studio until these conditions are met. The group's contract is in fact being renegotiated following the departure of Graham, but if RCA gives away promotion money or allows the total control the Airplane wants, it will be a first in the history of the relationships between recording companies and artists.
A rock group going into business for itself may not be as simple as it seems. However, on the local scene, Ron Polte and the Quicksilver Messenger Service have just finished presenting a series of shows at the New Committee Theater in North Beach that featured performers as diverse as Charles Lloyd and the Ace of Cups, an all-lady rock band. The Grateful Dead/Country Joe and the Fish St. Valentine's Dance at the Carousel Ballroom on Market Street (which will be broadcast live by KMPX-FM just like Symphony Sid used to broadcast live from Birdland twenty years ago - "that was in another city") was immensely successful, as was the dance they held a month earlier at the same location.
While the Dead have no use for the "rock Establishment" here - such Establishment as it may be - and say, "The promoters have just been putting out pap. That's why we haven't played the (Avalon and Fillmore) ballrooms in the last 8 months," the Airplane thinks it will appear at the Fillmore again, perhaps soon, and Bill Graham, playing to the hilt the amicable ex-husband of his own metaphor, agrees. "Unless," he adds, "they become too big - like the Beatles." 
And the Beatles, it will be remembered, formed their own cooperative business agency, Apple Ltd., soon after the death of their manager, Brian Epstein, and so started, like so many other things, all this.

(from Rolling Stone, 9 March 1968)

See also:
http://deadsources.blogspot.com/2012/02/march-1968-europe-tour-planned.html (from the same issue)
http://deadsources.blogspot.com/2012/02/january-1968-tour-announcements.html and
http://deadsources.blogspot.com/2013/07/january-30-1968-emu-ballroom-university.html (some Rohan/Scully publicity for the Great Northwest Tour)
http://deadessays.blogspot.com/2011/08/some-airplane-comments.html (Airplane interview excerpts)