THE GRATEFUL DEAD
BOB WEIR:
"WE'RE NOTHING MORE THAN AN EXTENSION OF ROCK & ROLL"
An interview by Bud Scoppa & David Reitman
Some things flow along so organically, you hate to interrupt them or bring them to an end. Like the Dead's music on a good night. So you just lie back and let yourself get carried along. When I showed up at the hotel room to talk to Bob Weir, I found Bud Scoppa there doing just that. What they were discussing was so startlingly real (for a change) that I couldn't bring myself to break it up. So Bud and I decided to combine our interview right there and I oozed into it at that point.
Talking with Bob Weir, and the assorted New Riders and friends that were present, was like hearing the Dead verbally. Maybe it was those chocolate-chip cookies, I don't know. I do know that I and Thou had their first good discussion for a long time, and since Bud was doing such a good job as Thou, I kept my questions/comments to a bare minimum. I hope this edited version of that marathon makes you feel as good as it made me feel. Or at least gives you some insights into the Dead's music.
D.R.
BS: What is your relationship with Warner Brothers like now?
BW: We finally caught on to how to make a commercial, or more commercial, record. And with that came their renewed interest in marketing us, and with their renewed interest in marketing us came a renewed relationship between them and us.
BS: But even prior to that, the "put on the Dead and spread" thing...
BW: They were without a doubt trying before that thing...
BS: It might be hard to separate these two elements, but on the one hand you've got Warner Brothers' need for a salable product and on the other hand you've got this whole vocal-traditional thing working itself out. Did those things just come together? Was it more one than the other? Did you consciously strive to make a salable record?
BW: No, not really. You try to make it as good as you can and hope that it'll be salable. Workingman's Dead came out with ten cuts on it as opposed to 3 or 4...
BS: Well, the first one was like that...
BW: Yeah.
BS: Is that the kind of thing that was just before its time?
BW: That was the kind of material we were doing at that point. Then later we got into more extended improvisational stuff. Then after doing a couple of years of that we found sort of a happy medium, where we could do both extended improvisational stuff and songs. From a record company standpoint and the way the media's set up these days, it's easier to sell songs than it is to sell improvisational long pieces.
BS: That's even more substantially true now than it was a year ago. It seems to me to be awfully tight.
BW: That's one of the restrictions of the art of making a record. The art of making a record encompasses the music, how long the piece is going to be, how appealing and how accessible it is to the audience. By accessible I mean easily understood. As opposed to John Coltrane, who played some dynamite music, I mean some really fantastic music, but he was never any superstar. And he had not much of an audience, because not many people could understand what he was playing.
BS: So accessibility was really the problem with your music...
BW: Yeah, I would think so. It bugs you if you are playing music the best you can play it, and not many people are listening, and just because you want people to listen, because you're a performer, and a performer wants people to listen, generally, you might consider changing your material or finding a new sort of material that more people will be interested in listening to, and at the same time you will still be interested in playing it. And that's kind of where we settled down, at least with Workingman's Dead.
BS: Do you prefer one way to the other? You're involved more in the improvisational aspect, aren't you?
BW: Not when I write songs. It's hard to say; I like them both. Generally when I write a song I think first of the record, of the recording of the song. It can grow from that point, in live performance. So these days I think of an encapsulated song and I try to state all the possibilities and avoid repetition and try to keep within a short space of time a whole lot of movement and to build a relatively cohesive unit out of the song. So I live in both those worlds...
BS: Complementary, in your case...
BW: Yeah, because say in a single for instance, two minutes and twenty-five seconds, if you can state a theme that could be a jam, if you can state a theme that can suggest everything that could go on for 20 minutes in that theme in 15 seconds, you've really created something...
BS: I've always thought that singles were pretty highly evolved art forms...
BW: I feel the same way.
BS: And the other thing is, not on your earlier records, but especially in live performance, it seemed what you were doing was 2:20 singles surrounded by transitions, you know, going away and coming back again. It's like when the people get up and start dancing and scream their heads off, that's when you hit that recognizable part...
BW: Right...
BS: ...and that's kind of the exciting thing.
BW: That all falls in the realm of accessibility once again.
BS: It seems like a successful formula. Like the Byrds did it with "Eight Miles High."
BW: Right. That's a really graphic example of what I was just saying...
BS: Is anybody else doing that specific process?
BW: Well, Buffalo Springfield were doing it a long time ago and so were we. A lot of bands have been doing it for a long time. You can go out at any given point and then come back and there's a flash of recognition, and that's the onstage excitement syndrome where everybody used generally the same ploys. That's a ploy where the audience gets off a whole bunch and retrospectively you get off, where you've gone out for an extended improvisational period of time, shall we say, and you flash back in on the song and everybody goes "Oh wow!"
BS: That's the thing that makes it transcendent, because it isn't really planned...
BW: We've been doing that pretty consistently on the Other One, the song with the "tiger paws" rhythm that Billy and me came up with, and the other night it was getting slowed down and convoluted and there was really no direction it was headed, and all of a sudden I had a flash of inspiration and I kind of half remembered a Coltrane riff from Africa Brass that I was particularly fond of, but I couldn't remember it all, so I made up my own tonal structure for it and I came in with a rather slow, lazy African shuffle, and Phil picked up on it real quick, and underneath it all the time was the other rhythm, because they were synchronized...
BS: You're really doing two things at once...
BW: We're playing one thing and suggesting the other, and then intuitively at one point we both made Garcia feel it; Garcia was playing in between the two. So me and Phil and I think Bill came crashing back with the other rhythm and the crowd of course stood on its head... That's a great feeling, because I look over at Garcia, before all that went down everybody was tense, trying to get it on, nobody was smiling much, and at the point that we came back into the Other One rhythm the bottom half of my face just about fell off and Garcia, well he was more grin than beard, which is unusual.
BS: And you can really avoid that whole thing about being on Broadway for 500 shows because you can make it whatever you want it, within some context.
BW: There's a lot of factors there - how much sleep we've had, how particularly inspired we are...
BS: Well that's the danger I guess. You are taking a risk every time you go out on the stage.
BW: I don't think we'll ever be at the point where we can go out there and rip off a really professional show behind playing just set music, because none of us can get off behind it any more. Because of that fatal first flash of when you get into some really far out intuitive stuff, and it's so electrifying when it works right...
BS: As much from you as the guys out in the audience...
BW: Oh, probably more, because we feel it really deeply. It's so electrifying and satisfying when it works right that we can no longer get off performing anything set. So in any of our given songs, there's very, very little structure. The structure can go only as far as chord changes and at our best, we even intuit chord changes. That's pretty far out. That hasn't been done in music yet, where people are cohesively intuiting chord changes together, and that's happened to us and that's just some amazing stuff.
BS: It really mates the mind and the body, doesn't it; it's really like coming I suppose...except in your head.
BW: Sixfold. Cause there's six of us doing it.
BS: In our all-encompassing need to classify things, it seems as though there's a movement afoot to classify the music you've been playing as something other than rock, whatever that means.
BW: It's nothing more than an extension of rock and roll, a logical, I would think, extension of rock and roll.
BS: I was thinking that calling that rock rather than calling it jazz, let's say, has as much to do with the response to the music... That's the kind of response that jazz might find it handy to imbue upon an audience, bring a kind of warm excitement back rather than a cool appreciation. Am I being simplistic?
BW: We played with Miles Davis at the Fillmore West and he started playing amplified music and, lo and behold, it's still jazz. I think there is a fine line there. One of the fine lines is that Miles Davis has been playing for how many years and he can play 32nd notes until his nose turns blue, and each one's more beautiful, more perfectly timed and well placed than the next. He has so much more technique and there's so much more going by; generally there's not too much time to get really worked up. Though he has the same effect on me that a really good rock band does, he really gets me off. He's got a lot of young people in his band and when I was listening to him at the Fillmore West, he'd take a solo and split and some other soloist would come in, but they're all younger guys, pretty much in our range. They're pretty well versed and certainly musically know a lot about what they're doing, but they didn't get off - I know they didn't get me off - like Miles got me off; as soon as he stepped back up to the microphone and started doing what he was up to, playing his trumpet...
DR: Didn't jazz in a sense get away from the people, during the bebop era; as you said, they ripped off a whole bunch of 32nd and 64th notes and it was very hard to know what was going on, unless you were a musician, whereas what you're doing is a little more accessible because you don't play as many notes.
BW: Well, it depends what you're going after. Of course what you're going after depends on who you are. Like I say about accessibility, I can appreciate Coltrane - Phil turned me on to Coltrane as a matter of fact - but how many people can appreciate Coltrane? I guess it's a shame Coltrane sacrificed accessibility for something else - whatever else he was doing. And the result was he had little audience and great music.
DR: You seem to be trying to get an audience and make great music.
BW: Well, we try to learn by example, and Coltrane set a really striking example of that possibility where you can get just too far out... He brings me up and I start playing stuff I didn't know I could play, and I imagine when I'm 30 years old, I'll be doing that to somebody else. So we have a scene where we have people who know where to go and people who can follow, but it gets turned around - sometimes I have the far-out idea - generally it's Garcia or Phil - but sometimes I have the far-out idea and it goes that direction, but in that we have so many people playing together and a sort of a basic commitment to make it understandable to everybody in the band - and by taking in everybody in the band you can generally reach everybody who's listening - it seems to work.
BS: It seems like every X factor you add, you multiply the number of levels you can reach, because you're bringing in all the levels each person is capable of and all the levels they're capable of getting to with each other's help.
BW: Right. But somehow it didn't work that way with Coltrane, where he had a lot of people, he had Pharaoh Sanders, McCoy Tyner, Jimmy Garrison, and of course Elvin Jones, and the combination of Trane and Jones was the musical happening of that decade for certain, probably the musical happening of the quarter century, for that matter. But they were all too well versed, there wasn't enough diversity in what they were all into. They were all pretty much conservatory trained musicians and they started right there on a level that's beyond the man on the street's, and of course they got better and better, more proficient in their realm, and left more and more men on the streets being men on the streets instead of enlightened individuals, like they left a few.
BS: I guess it's all in the way you look at music, like if you define music as that which is played and that which is heard...
BW: Right, right...
BS: Then Coltrane is less valid than, let's say, the Beatles.
BW: For sure, in that sense.
BS: It seems to me that, as you move up the line, that if you keep one hand locked onto what you started with...
BW: We started with something different because our roots are completely different than Coltrane's. Jazz obviously came out of the blues and into what Coltrane was doing. But our roots are American country music, and a little bit of country blues, as exemplified by the jug band. Seeing as though we've been playing around those forms of music for a long time, we understand them best and work within those modes, and those modes are really ingrained on people's psyches. They've heard blues, rehashed and rehashed, to the point that none of it can get by them; so we're relatively safe if we keep working in that area, for the next few years, in terms of getting over people's heads.
DR: Why do you suppose that older country musicians never took it in the direction you're going in, that is take it as a basis and then stretch it out?
BW: Well, I would say probably economic reasons. If you're a Nashville studio musician you play Nashville studio music, that's how you make your living, and I imagine they get together and jam. I've heard stories of rooms full of pedal steel guitar players, and as early as 1964 - 1963 actually - the big rage down there was playing Charlie Parker riffs, on the pedal steel guitar, getting them perfect, sounding like a horn. If they can do that, they can fuckin' do anything. And the pedal steel guitar is an amazing instrument anyway. And there's other perfectly capable musicians down there, I don't have to start running off examples among those musicians, there must be some supermen who can do anything, and I imagine they've done pretty much anything you can imagine down there in their own spare time. You don't hear it because there's apparently no market for it.
BS: Well, maybe you'll help them indirectly.
BW: The restrictions of their art are how far you can get within the 3-chord or 4-chord restrictions of country music. And that's a meaningful restriction. And a restriction like that makes the form a fine art. They've done some really amazing stuff behind those limitations.
BS: Strict limitations don't always hurt. I think in some cases they kind of compress and challenge artists who ordinarily might be too lazy to challenge themselves.
BW: Either that or they have a tendency to force scenes you can't spread out, they have a tendency to force you higher. If we're playing in a country mode, you won't hear us going off into Coltrane licks and that's understood; in order to appreciate the art form, the country music art form, you have to appreciate its limitations, you have to play within it. At the age of 23 I can't say I'm going to be the innovator that's going to melt these two together, because I can't say that I've got enough experience or proficiency or anything to be that innovator until I'm sixty years old.
BS: And you do keep them distinctively separate.
BW: We at least try to.
BS: By having two separate parts of the show, with the New Riders of the Purple Sage, rather than one in the middle of the other, let's say, and by using certain musicians in each...
BW: Right...
BS: By adding that to what you already have it's kind of like a natural completion. You've been giving them post-rock and roll and now you're giving them pre-rock and roll, and the middle is the core and the core is just the distance. That kind of leaving a no man's land between them. Which is the body of what they've been hearing for the last few years.
BW: You can suggest all that by giving them the roots and giving them the logical completion, not the completion but the extension of where they're going, and you can suggest easily all the distance in between. A lot of times we play Coasters songs and "Good Lovin'" for instance, and stuff like that.
DR: Weren't the New Riders born out of necessity as much as just pleasure?
BW: Pleasure.
DR: But doesn't that experience enhance what you do elsewhere? You can bring things back from it.
BW: It's an attempt to bring more different music to the people...
BS: You know, what you have is a close parallel to Kubrick's "Space Odyssey." You know, the ape throws the bone into the air and it turns into a rocket ship. The bone turning into a rocket ship and becoming all those thousands of years that went in between, you know, in a much compressed sense...
BW: You know we've suggested much more music than we can possibly between all of us play in one night...
BS: When I first heard American Beauty I really liked it instantly a lot better than Workingman's Dead, like I always liked some tracks on it, but I never could get behind the whole album. I thought Live Dead was the one that should have been shouted about instead, or should have sold, but this one is really good. I don't know what the difference is. I think you do sound a little tighter vocally now.
BW: That, as a matter of fact, has been instrumental in the change. The change that has been the most noticeable to the record buying public. Well, we all decided that we'd like to sing, because singing is a lot of fun and we'd been glossing over it for a long time, and all of a sudden we delved into it. That was pretty much maybe like Crosby's and Stills' influence on us, cause they were hanging out for a while with us back around this time last year, and they were really good singers and they never directly got together with us and coached us on our singing, but perhaps their influence...whatever it was, we began singing together.
DR: Why do you suppose the Dead have lasted as long as they have? Is it because you have been denied the ego conflicts brought about by super-stardom?
BW: If I get to be rich I'll be glad. If, on the other hand, I get to be a rock and roll star, it'll probably bum kick me. Because that makes it impossible to relate to people. It's to the point now where it would be very difficult for me or any one of us really to fall into a scene here in New York, for instance, because most everybody knows our faces now and we just cannot relate to people on a person-to-person level. The time-honored bitch of the star.
BS: Well, it's as valid as it ever was.
BW: Like we had a whole myth and we actually supported that myth in the eventuality that someday we might make it big. We supported that myth in the hopes that even if we did make it big, that we could still be real people and still have the fun that real people have and still have the trips that real people have. And apparently that's not possible with the arrangement the media have got for promoting music.
BS: It's funny. Groups will come into town for the first time and I'll talk to them and they'll be just like you and me [and the next time] they'll have a best-selling record and they'll be changed.
BW: It's hard not to.
BS: Well, I guess you get protective of your own time.
BW: I know very few people who have achieved any success who've gotten a big head behind it or anything like that. But you do get defensive and you do get a lot of shit laid on you. Like, for instance, along with success comes responsibility and people assume that you should be owned up to the responsibility, and that of course is a great weight on you. Like for instance I've got to be right on with whatever I say, and I've got to be as universal in my thinking as I can possibly be, and if I'm ever pursued to make a statement about a given subject it's got to be like I say, right on. Or I'm going to start factionalizing people. If I said "Kill the pigs" or came across with that philosophy, then all of a sudden you find there's a bunch of people that are on that trip and, "So and so from so and so group are big stars, and they say that, so that must be where it's at." You start scenes like that and you can easily create a whole lot of unrest. It gets beyond music into political philosophy. And I'm a musician, not a political philosopher. And generally I say, "I just play the guitar" or words to that effect. I may have the feelings on any given subject, but a lot of times I'm not at liberty to express them.
BS: Well, you're pretty much acting out your political philosophy.
BW: Exactly. This is my bitch: that people don't see I'm living and acting out any political or social philosophy that I may have. I'm not a perfect example of the way I think and the way I feel about things, because the way I think and feel about things hasn't come to completion yet. So you can only see it half way and you can misconstrue what you see, easily. So I have to be very evasive. And that's generally the case for most everybody...
(by Bud Scoppa & David Reitman, from Rock, 15 February 1971 - also partially reprinted in Sounds (UK), 15 May 1971)
Thanks to jgmf.blogspot.com.
Jan 30, 2019
Jan 29, 2019
October 19, 1971: Jerry Garcia, Phil Lesh & John Dawson Interviews
OCTOBER 19, 1971
Northrop Auditorium, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis
KQRS-FM Broadcast
PART I - JERRY
DJ: We'll be back with more of the Grateful Dead in a moment. This afternoon John Peet talked with Jerry Garcia, and it went like this.
Q: //during the Grateful Dead concert, we are doing it before the Grateful Dead concert. Jerry Garcia here. You'll notice that there's a lot of noise in the background, it's due to the fact that people are setting up the equipment, getting ready for the program to go on tonight. Jerry, you've been on the road for so long now, I'm sure that you're pretty used to this sort of thing, the pre-concert thing. What does everybody get into from that aspect - I notice a number of the musicians come out, some of them start to tune, some of them start to play - how much are they getting [into it]?
GARCIA: Well, it's the idea of hanging out where the workers [are], you know what I mean? It's kind of like - it's kind of another version of the sidewalk superintendent trip, you know, when there's guys putting up a building or something like that, there's always people standing around watching - it's kind of like - that's one of the things that's happening - and the other thing that's happening is everybody likes to get into a place to kind of feel what it's like, get in early enough to try - sound out various different ways of playing your instrument, making sure your equipment works, all that kind of stuff. You know, getting used to it.
Q: You were here - it's about 2:00 in the afternoon, you've been here for about an hour and a half now just kind of looking over the hall - what do you do, just pick up how it's going to sound and how it's going to feel?
GARCIA: All that. I just let it hit me - it's like watching TV or something, it's like - I don't have any formula, I just like to hang out.
Q: Does all it depend upon the - we were talking last night about the EQ. (G: Right.) Does that have something to do with it?
GARCIA: Oh yeah. Sure, because - this place is going to be transformed when the show starts, you know, when we get playing tonight, so it's like it's kind of groovy to get an idea of what kind of vehicle is being used, you know what I mean - like a road test.
Q: Do you have any idea how many individual pieces of equipment the Grateful Dead brought with them, along with the New Riders?
GARCIA: How many pieces do we have there, Rod? [Rod answers.]
Q: 150 pieces of equipment. Plus 22 people, nine of whom play - and this is really quite an organization. (G: Right.) I mean it isn't just a couple guys going round the country playing rock & roll...how much different is it from when you started?
GARCIA: Not much.
Q: The trip remains the same.
GARCIA: Yeah, the trip is basically still the same, it's just that, you know, now we've got 150 pieces, you know, and 22 people.
Q: In other words, quite a bit of the bread that you've made over the years has gone back into it.
GARCIA: Yeah, well right, that's our whole scene - I mean, we have faith in what we're doing, so in that sense we kind of like invest in ourselves, or invest in our trip - make it better.
Q: You've appeared now just recently on the Jerry Garcia-Howard Wales Hooteroll album, and I understand that you do - primarily just gig with him just once in a while.
GARCIA: Yeah, I also play with another fella out in San Francisco named Merl Saunders who's an organ player - and Tom Fogerty, he used to play in Creedence Clearwater - and the same rhythm section that was on that Hooteroll record, John Kahn and Bill Vitt. We play around in bars and nightclubs and so on.
Q: Just for kicks?
GARCIA: Yeah.
Q: I just take it you're getting on with each other.
GARCIA: Yeah - my whole trip is that I just enjoy playing, I enjoy playing any context - see, the Grateful Dead being this complex institution - it's like groovy to be able to play in a situation which is not of any great interest to anybody, but just a chance to get off, you know.
Q: How about the other group that you're playing with now, the New Riders of the Purple Sage, was this your idea?
GARCIA: No no no, the New Riders was more or less a spontaneous creation - basically founded on Marmaduke and his songs.
Q: And then you don't regard yourself as the prime mover in that group.
GARCIA: Oh no, I don't regard myself as the prime mover in any group. See, it's like my function, my role as a musician - I work better in a situation where I'm working with somebody else on their - on somebody else's music, [rather than my own], in the sense of - you know, like I've always enjoyed working with Crosby and those guys because they have their own ideas about what music should be and I work well in that complementary context, you know, and that's the way I like to think of myself in any situation - I don't really think of myself as a [musical leader].
Q: Well the New Riders, of course their style is quite a bit different from the Grateful Dead (G: Right), and when you're doing the same concert in the same amount of time with two different groups, do you have to change your frame of mind to get into playing with, you know, a different thing, or does it all just [count]?
GARCIA: Not really, it's all music - although, you know, being in the Grateful Dead is like - is something very far out, you know, it's not - it's just a whole different trip - there's nothing else, no other thing compares to it, you know what I mean, it's unique.
Q: It isn't just music, is it?
GARCIA: No.
Q: Is there a little bit of a family - there's gotta be a family-type relationship with guys like you who've been on the road for quite some time.
GARCIA: Well, definitely, everybody in the whole scene, in fact all these guys that are working here on the stage, you know, we're all - you know, we've all been through a lot together...on our sojourns...
Q: How many people have you picked up over the past say two years now, as far as new people are concerned?
GARCIA: I don't know, I would say about four or five people in the last couple years - it's like, the people who are our scene, we sort of find them and they find us, you know what I mean - it's just, whoever thinks that they can dig it - not unlike a motorcycle club in that respect, you know what I mean, it's not really everybody's cup of tea, but there are some people that it's really right for.
Q: That's an interesting concept, for comparison.
GARCIA: You know, it's turned out to be that way, because we've had people [knowing] that it wasn't really right for, it wasn't the right thing for 'em - you know, it's definitely something some people can get into.
Q: Now your organist is not on this tour (G: We have a new -), you have a new organist.
GARCIA: Right, he plays piano, too.
Q: Now what is happening on the homefront, are you still using Pigpen on the other things?
GARCIA: Well, Pigpen is sick, that's his main reason for not being on this tour - and you know, when he's well, we get into our next set of [practice], whenever that is - Actually, Pigpen didn't really play that much organ on that many tunes or anything like that, he was mostly more into just doing what he does, singing.
Q: Who's your new organist now?
GARCIA: He's Keith Godchaux.
Q: And how did he happen to come to you guys?
GARCIA: Well...he's the guy that thought that he was the right guy for the job, and he came around and we tried playing with him and it seemed to work out real well, and that's just the thing that happened. It's exactly like what I was talking about a while ago, there's some people that are just, that's what they're supposed to be doing, you know.
Q: And it just seems to fit together.
GARCIA: Yeah. Well, you know, it doesn't always, you know, obviously, if there's a lot of people [...] the Grateful Dead, it's not really what's happening, you know what I mean, but there are some times when something just happens and it's mutual and everybody gets off behind it, obviously it's the right thing to do.
Q: Jerry, do you envisage doing anything other than being on the road and being a rock & roll musician?
GARCIA: Well, I'm a musician, y'know - I don't like to define myself any more than just saying that I'm a musician - I don't think of myself as a rock & roll musician, you know, really. That's what I do, music's my life...
Q: Do you plan [on]...branching out into other phases of the arts [...]?
GARCIA: Well, I would like to get into movies sometime, because I enjoy making movies - I mean, that would be like from the standpoint of being someone who might direct, you know, or just put together my own movies for laughs, but not like an actor or anything like that. You know, obviously I'm interested in all those -
Q: I think you'd be very good as an actor.
GARCIA: It's not my cup of tea (laughs), let me put it that way.
Q: Well actually, I suppose when you get up on stage to a certain extent, there's a certain pose -
GARCIA: Well, no - there are people that can do that, but we haven't ever been able to do that - that's one of the things about the Grateful Dead that makes it weird also, is we don't make any attempt to put on a show, we don't make any attempt to be in any way really theatrical, you know what I mean?
Q: The British groups seem to be really into that.
GARCIA: Right, they're much more conscious of all that - but see, we come from the background of where, you know, you play and it's the music that comes out that's important, not what you seem to be doing.
Q: Is there still what you'd call a San Francisco scene?
GARCIA: Oh yeah, more than ever, I would say - especially in music, you know - I mean, I would say that it wasn't - that San Francisco is probably an inappropriate title or label, because really what scene there is is much more spread out than just in San Francisco - the city itself, it's more like in the Bay area [...] Marin county, especially where we're at.
Q: Van Morrison I understand is now out in that area.
GARCIA: Yeah, same as everybody else - I mean, really a lot of musicians are there - that's one of the reasons that there's a consistent musical thing coming out of San Francisco, you know.
Q: Is it because of the vibes from the city itself or -
GARCIA: No, I think the city is not what's happening, I think it's the fact that there's just - that all the turmoil, changes and stuff that the Bay area's gone through traditionally like two or three years ahead of everyone else, like the whole Berkeley scene, the whole violence trip, all that stuff, the whole Haight-Ashbury and all that, represents experience which has now been assimilated into the culture out there, in the sense that now, you know, it's like very free for most people. And so artists naturally would gravitate toward that, musicians especially, just because it's real nice out there.
PART II - PHIL
Q: Once again, you're hearing this during the concert, we're doing it before the concert, because it's the afternoon, about 4:00, and we've been here now for about two hours, people have been setting up, some of the musicians have already been here, one of them is Phil Lesh. Phil, you've been with the Grateful Dead for a long time, and we talked to Jerry Garcia about his feelings going into the concert - now you get out and play, now there's gotta be a reason for it in the afternoon, are you just picking up or what?
LESH: You mean playing in the afternoon? Before the concert - well, because we have to get the sound of the place right. Every hall is unique, you know, every acoustic environment is unique.
Q: And what happens when you get into a place like this, you're totally alien to it, I mean to begin with, so when you get into it before the concert starts -
LESH: That's what we're trying to do. Sometimes we can, sometimes we can't, it depends on the hall. A place like this, matter of fact you could say it's very easy to get into.
Q: Just judging from some very nice things that are happening around town today, for instance the fact that the weather cleared up -
LESH: That's the reason we bring the rain with us - especially this time of year.
Q: This is such a nice place to be - as a matter of fact, just 22 people here - it's really quite a big crowd.
LESH: Yeah, it's our normal touring-aid scene, although we've added on - we're now taking on most of it ourselves, rather than splitting it up between the PA company and [--].
Q: Well, with $100,00 worth of equipment, it's rather obvious that everybody's pretty serious about it. Do you guys -
LESH: Yeah, we're investing in it very heavily [...].
Q: Phil, you've been with the group since its inception, back in the early dim dark days -
LESH: Those were pretty bright days, [if I may say so].
Q: How do you think the thing has changed since then, as far as you're concerned?
LESH: Well...for me, it's coming around full circle. We're sort of beginning a new cycle, reveling up a new plateau that's going to climb again soon.
Q: You feel this musically now, or just touring, or everything coming together?
LESH: Everything, on every level, you can't separate the music from what goes on, both going in our heads and in the world.
Q: While talking with Jerry, he said there's no leader to the Grateful Dead, is there a spiritual leader?
LESH: We all consult each other from time to time.
Q: Everybody's into everybody on some level.
LESH: We're all each other's gurus. I know that those guys have always been my gurus. All my friends that I've ever had in my life have been my teachers.
Q: It happens - with the group on the road, you do so many cities in so many days, it's gotta be kind of tough on you physically.
LESH: I guess it is. I definitely have symptoms of physical strain now.
[...]
MUSIC STARTS, INTERVIEW CUTS OFF.
Thanks to Harry Angus.
* * *
THE NEW RIDERS OF THE PURPLE SAGE
Roy Rogers had The Sons of The Pioneers. Captain America has The New Riders of The Purple Sage.
They've been called America's best unknown band. But, there's a reason: nobody's ever heard of them. That could change. They are good. The new album - Columbia C30888 - is a good example of a major direction in contemporary music, Country/Rock (but mainly Country). Before their recent concert at the University of Minnesota with The Grateful Dead, I talked with them.
SE: You remind me a lot of the Sons of the Pioneers, that band that used to follow Roy Rogers around and sing great Western music whenever there was a lull in the action. In fact, I almost think you could call yourselves the sons of the Sons of the Pioneers. Agree?
NR: Ya. Although there was an earlier group, the Riders of the Purple Sage.
SE: Would you call what you do Country and Western?
NR: Umm....
SE: I mean besides the fact that music is music no matter what the categorization.
NR: We listen to a lot of country music...old country music. I guess it influences the way we play. But, we're not really country and Western because we're not country people ourselves. Really we're San Franciscans.
SE: I know that Jerry Garcia of the Grateful Dead had something to do with getting you together.
NR: Well... He was learning the Pedal Steel. A couple of years ago. He'd just picked up on a new Pedal Steel when the Dead was on the road and he was trying to get into it and learn some chops. And ah...I had a few songs that I was playing and I'd go over and pick in the living room with him and just play chords that he could improvise steel stuff behind just as a practice thing. And at the same time I had a little job in a coffeehouse down in Menlowe Park, south of San Francisco which is next to Palo Alto which is where we're all from. Jerry came down...drove all the way down from Marin County every Wednesday.
SE: To take lessons?
NR: No... He just helped me play the gig. And it was practice for him and it was groovy music to add to mine in this little coffeehouse. And then we said, "Hey, that's pretty nice." And we figured we ought to get a bass player and another guitar player and start a band.
SE: Have you always played country music? It's suddenly very hip to put a little country tinge on just about anything today, from Bach to the Beatles.
NR: It's about time.
SE: Who are your favorite country singers?
NR: Bill Monroe and the Bluegrass Boys. The Stanley Brothers. Doc Watson.
SE: I guess I'm a selective bigot, but I like certain things in country very much and I suppose by a purist's standards they're the commercial things. I like Tammy Wynette's music.
NR: Ya. She's good. Dolly Parton. Loretta Lynn.
SE: Ya, she was supposed to be here for the State Fair. By the way, Spencer Dryden, you were with the Jefferson Airplane for five years before you joined the New Riders. What happened? Did you decide to change forms musically, or what?
SD: Ya...I left the Airplane in March of last year. Little over a year ago.
SE: That seems to me like a pretty big jump from one style to another. What prompted the change?
SD: Like...I guess I graduated. If you go to college for four years you learn as much as you think you can and then decide what you want to do. It's like taking different majors. And everybody in the Airplane has kind of gotten off into their own tangents. Marty left and Paul and Grace are doing things. Jack and Jorma have Hot Tuna. They all go into these different directions. It's kind of natural evolution. I'd known Jerry from the Grateful Dead on different things we'd played together. And I liked this band.
SE: People who don't like long-haired musicians could be fooled if they just heard the music and didn't see you. Have you ever played on an authentic country Western bill?
NR: No. That'd be scary. Those are the real guys.
SE: You can't fool them.
NR: No.
SE: You could fool me. Good luck with the album.
NR: Thanks.
(and then they rode off into the sunset)
(by Steve Edstrom, from the "Words and Music" column, the Winona Daily News (MN), 31 October 1971)
Northrop Auditorium, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis
KQRS-FM Broadcast
PART I - JERRY
DJ: We'll be back with more of the Grateful Dead in a moment. This afternoon John Peet talked with Jerry Garcia, and it went like this.
Q: //during the Grateful Dead concert, we are doing it before the Grateful Dead concert. Jerry Garcia here. You'll notice that there's a lot of noise in the background, it's due to the fact that people are setting up the equipment, getting ready for the program to go on tonight. Jerry, you've been on the road for so long now, I'm sure that you're pretty used to this sort of thing, the pre-concert thing. What does everybody get into from that aspect - I notice a number of the musicians come out, some of them start to tune, some of them start to play - how much are they getting [into it]?
GARCIA: Well, it's the idea of hanging out where the workers [are], you know what I mean? It's kind of like - it's kind of another version of the sidewalk superintendent trip, you know, when there's guys putting up a building or something like that, there's always people standing around watching - it's kind of like - that's one of the things that's happening - and the other thing that's happening is everybody likes to get into a place to kind of feel what it's like, get in early enough to try - sound out various different ways of playing your instrument, making sure your equipment works, all that kind of stuff. You know, getting used to it.
Q: You were here - it's about 2:00 in the afternoon, you've been here for about an hour and a half now just kind of looking over the hall - what do you do, just pick up how it's going to sound and how it's going to feel?
GARCIA: All that. I just let it hit me - it's like watching TV or something, it's like - I don't have any formula, I just like to hang out.
Q: Does all it depend upon the - we were talking last night about the EQ. (G: Right.) Does that have something to do with it?
GARCIA: Oh yeah. Sure, because - this place is going to be transformed when the show starts, you know, when we get playing tonight, so it's like it's kind of groovy to get an idea of what kind of vehicle is being used, you know what I mean - like a road test.
Q: Do you have any idea how many individual pieces of equipment the Grateful Dead brought with them, along with the New Riders?
GARCIA: How many pieces do we have there, Rod? [Rod answers.]
Q: 150 pieces of equipment. Plus 22 people, nine of whom play - and this is really quite an organization. (G: Right.) I mean it isn't just a couple guys going round the country playing rock & roll...how much different is it from when you started?
GARCIA: Not much.
Q: The trip remains the same.
GARCIA: Yeah, the trip is basically still the same, it's just that, you know, now we've got 150 pieces, you know, and 22 people.
Q: In other words, quite a bit of the bread that you've made over the years has gone back into it.
GARCIA: Yeah, well right, that's our whole scene - I mean, we have faith in what we're doing, so in that sense we kind of like invest in ourselves, or invest in our trip - make it better.
Q: You've appeared now just recently on the Jerry Garcia-Howard Wales Hooteroll album, and I understand that you do - primarily just gig with him just once in a while.
GARCIA: Yeah, I also play with another fella out in San Francisco named Merl Saunders who's an organ player - and Tom Fogerty, he used to play in Creedence Clearwater - and the same rhythm section that was on that Hooteroll record, John Kahn and Bill Vitt. We play around in bars and nightclubs and so on.
Q: Just for kicks?
GARCIA: Yeah.
Q: I just take it you're getting on with each other.
GARCIA: Yeah - my whole trip is that I just enjoy playing, I enjoy playing any context - see, the Grateful Dead being this complex institution - it's like groovy to be able to play in a situation which is not of any great interest to anybody, but just a chance to get off, you know.
Q: How about the other group that you're playing with now, the New Riders of the Purple Sage, was this your idea?
GARCIA: No no no, the New Riders was more or less a spontaneous creation - basically founded on Marmaduke and his songs.
Q: And then you don't regard yourself as the prime mover in that group.
GARCIA: Oh no, I don't regard myself as the prime mover in any group. See, it's like my function, my role as a musician - I work better in a situation where I'm working with somebody else on their - on somebody else's music, [rather than my own], in the sense of - you know, like I've always enjoyed working with Crosby and those guys because they have their own ideas about what music should be and I work well in that complementary context, you know, and that's the way I like to think of myself in any situation - I don't really think of myself as a [musical leader].
Q: Well the New Riders, of course their style is quite a bit different from the Grateful Dead (G: Right), and when you're doing the same concert in the same amount of time with two different groups, do you have to change your frame of mind to get into playing with, you know, a different thing, or does it all just [count]?
GARCIA: Not really, it's all music - although, you know, being in the Grateful Dead is like - is something very far out, you know, it's not - it's just a whole different trip - there's nothing else, no other thing compares to it, you know what I mean, it's unique.
Q: It isn't just music, is it?
GARCIA: No.
Q: Is there a little bit of a family - there's gotta be a family-type relationship with guys like you who've been on the road for quite some time.
GARCIA: Well, definitely, everybody in the whole scene, in fact all these guys that are working here on the stage, you know, we're all - you know, we've all been through a lot together...on our sojourns...
Q: How many people have you picked up over the past say two years now, as far as new people are concerned?
GARCIA: I don't know, I would say about four or five people in the last couple years - it's like, the people who are our scene, we sort of find them and they find us, you know what I mean - it's just, whoever thinks that they can dig it - not unlike a motorcycle club in that respect, you know what I mean, it's not really everybody's cup of tea, but there are some people that it's really right for.
Q: That's an interesting concept, for comparison.
GARCIA: You know, it's turned out to be that way, because we've had people [knowing] that it wasn't really right for, it wasn't the right thing for 'em - you know, it's definitely something some people can get into.
Q: Now your organist is not on this tour (G: We have a new -), you have a new organist.
GARCIA: Right, he plays piano, too.
Q: Now what is happening on the homefront, are you still using Pigpen on the other things?
GARCIA: Well, Pigpen is sick, that's his main reason for not being on this tour - and you know, when he's well, we get into our next set of [practice], whenever that is - Actually, Pigpen didn't really play that much organ on that many tunes or anything like that, he was mostly more into just doing what he does, singing.
Q: Who's your new organist now?
GARCIA: He's Keith Godchaux.
Q: And how did he happen to come to you guys?
GARCIA: Well...he's the guy that thought that he was the right guy for the job, and he came around and we tried playing with him and it seemed to work out real well, and that's just the thing that happened. It's exactly like what I was talking about a while ago, there's some people that are just, that's what they're supposed to be doing, you know.
Q: And it just seems to fit together.
GARCIA: Yeah. Well, you know, it doesn't always, you know, obviously, if there's a lot of people [...] the Grateful Dead, it's not really what's happening, you know what I mean, but there are some times when something just happens and it's mutual and everybody gets off behind it, obviously it's the right thing to do.
Q: Jerry, do you envisage doing anything other than being on the road and being a rock & roll musician?
GARCIA: Well, I'm a musician, y'know - I don't like to define myself any more than just saying that I'm a musician - I don't think of myself as a rock & roll musician, you know, really. That's what I do, music's my life...
Q: Do you plan [on]...branching out into other phases of the arts [...]?
GARCIA: Well, I would like to get into movies sometime, because I enjoy making movies - I mean, that would be like from the standpoint of being someone who might direct, you know, or just put together my own movies for laughs, but not like an actor or anything like that. You know, obviously I'm interested in all those -
Q: I think you'd be very good as an actor.
GARCIA: It's not my cup of tea (laughs), let me put it that way.
Q: Well actually, I suppose when you get up on stage to a certain extent, there's a certain pose -
GARCIA: Well, no - there are people that can do that, but we haven't ever been able to do that - that's one of the things about the Grateful Dead that makes it weird also, is we don't make any attempt to put on a show, we don't make any attempt to be in any way really theatrical, you know what I mean?
Q: The British groups seem to be really into that.
GARCIA: Right, they're much more conscious of all that - but see, we come from the background of where, you know, you play and it's the music that comes out that's important, not what you seem to be doing.
Q: Is there still what you'd call a San Francisco scene?
GARCIA: Oh yeah, more than ever, I would say - especially in music, you know - I mean, I would say that it wasn't - that San Francisco is probably an inappropriate title or label, because really what scene there is is much more spread out than just in San Francisco - the city itself, it's more like in the Bay area [...] Marin county, especially where we're at.
Q: Van Morrison I understand is now out in that area.
GARCIA: Yeah, same as everybody else - I mean, really a lot of musicians are there - that's one of the reasons that there's a consistent musical thing coming out of San Francisco, you know.
Q: Is it because of the vibes from the city itself or -
GARCIA: No, I think the city is not what's happening, I think it's the fact that there's just - that all the turmoil, changes and stuff that the Bay area's gone through traditionally like two or three years ahead of everyone else, like the whole Berkeley scene, the whole violence trip, all that stuff, the whole Haight-Ashbury and all that, represents experience which has now been assimilated into the culture out there, in the sense that now, you know, it's like very free for most people. And so artists naturally would gravitate toward that, musicians especially, just because it's real nice out there.
PART II - PHIL
Q: Once again, you're hearing this during the concert, we're doing it before the concert, because it's the afternoon, about 4:00, and we've been here now for about two hours, people have been setting up, some of the musicians have already been here, one of them is Phil Lesh. Phil, you've been with the Grateful Dead for a long time, and we talked to Jerry Garcia about his feelings going into the concert - now you get out and play, now there's gotta be a reason for it in the afternoon, are you just picking up or what?
LESH: You mean playing in the afternoon? Before the concert - well, because we have to get the sound of the place right. Every hall is unique, you know, every acoustic environment is unique.
Q: And what happens when you get into a place like this, you're totally alien to it, I mean to begin with, so when you get into it before the concert starts -
LESH: That's what we're trying to do. Sometimes we can, sometimes we can't, it depends on the hall. A place like this, matter of fact you could say it's very easy to get into.
Q: Just judging from some very nice things that are happening around town today, for instance the fact that the weather cleared up -
LESH: That's the reason we bring the rain with us - especially this time of year.
Q: This is such a nice place to be - as a matter of fact, just 22 people here - it's really quite a big crowd.
LESH: Yeah, it's our normal touring-aid scene, although we've added on - we're now taking on most of it ourselves, rather than splitting it up between the PA company and [--].
Q: Well, with $100,00 worth of equipment, it's rather obvious that everybody's pretty serious about it. Do you guys -
LESH: Yeah, we're investing in it very heavily [...].
Q: Phil, you've been with the group since its inception, back in the early dim dark days -
LESH: Those were pretty bright days, [if I may say so].
Q: How do you think the thing has changed since then, as far as you're concerned?
LESH: Well...for me, it's coming around full circle. We're sort of beginning a new cycle, reveling up a new plateau that's going to climb again soon.
Q: You feel this musically now, or just touring, or everything coming together?
LESH: Everything, on every level, you can't separate the music from what goes on, both going in our heads and in the world.
Q: While talking with Jerry, he said there's no leader to the Grateful Dead, is there a spiritual leader?
LESH: We all consult each other from time to time.
Q: Everybody's into everybody on some level.
LESH: We're all each other's gurus. I know that those guys have always been my gurus. All my friends that I've ever had in my life have been my teachers.
Q: It happens - with the group on the road, you do so many cities in so many days, it's gotta be kind of tough on you physically.
LESH: I guess it is. I definitely have symptoms of physical strain now.
[...]
MUSIC STARTS, INTERVIEW CUTS OFF.
Thanks to Harry Angus.
* * *
THE NEW RIDERS OF THE PURPLE SAGE
Roy Rogers had The Sons of The Pioneers. Captain America has The New Riders of The Purple Sage.
They've been called America's best unknown band. But, there's a reason: nobody's ever heard of them. That could change. They are good. The new album - Columbia C30888 - is a good example of a major direction in contemporary music, Country/Rock (but mainly Country). Before their recent concert at the University of Minnesota with The Grateful Dead, I talked with them.
SE: You remind me a lot of the Sons of the Pioneers, that band that used to follow Roy Rogers around and sing great Western music whenever there was a lull in the action. In fact, I almost think you could call yourselves the sons of the Sons of the Pioneers. Agree?
NR: Ya. Although there was an earlier group, the Riders of the Purple Sage.
SE: Would you call what you do Country and Western?
NR: Umm....
SE: I mean besides the fact that music is music no matter what the categorization.
NR: We listen to a lot of country music...old country music. I guess it influences the way we play. But, we're not really country and Western because we're not country people ourselves. Really we're San Franciscans.
SE: I know that Jerry Garcia of the Grateful Dead had something to do with getting you together.
NR: Well... He was learning the Pedal Steel. A couple of years ago. He'd just picked up on a new Pedal Steel when the Dead was on the road and he was trying to get into it and learn some chops. And ah...I had a few songs that I was playing and I'd go over and pick in the living room with him and just play chords that he could improvise steel stuff behind just as a practice thing. And at the same time I had a little job in a coffeehouse down in Menlowe Park, south of San Francisco which is next to Palo Alto which is where we're all from. Jerry came down...drove all the way down from Marin County every Wednesday.
SE: To take lessons?
NR: No... He just helped me play the gig. And it was practice for him and it was groovy music to add to mine in this little coffeehouse. And then we said, "Hey, that's pretty nice." And we figured we ought to get a bass player and another guitar player and start a band.
SE: Have you always played country music? It's suddenly very hip to put a little country tinge on just about anything today, from Bach to the Beatles.
NR: It's about time.
SE: Who are your favorite country singers?
NR: Bill Monroe and the Bluegrass Boys. The Stanley Brothers. Doc Watson.
SE: I guess I'm a selective bigot, but I like certain things in country very much and I suppose by a purist's standards they're the commercial things. I like Tammy Wynette's music.
NR: Ya. She's good. Dolly Parton. Loretta Lynn.
SE: Ya, she was supposed to be here for the State Fair. By the way, Spencer Dryden, you were with the Jefferson Airplane for five years before you joined the New Riders. What happened? Did you decide to change forms musically, or what?
SD: Ya...I left the Airplane in March of last year. Little over a year ago.
SE: That seems to me like a pretty big jump from one style to another. What prompted the change?
SD: Like...I guess I graduated. If you go to college for four years you learn as much as you think you can and then decide what you want to do. It's like taking different majors. And everybody in the Airplane has kind of gotten off into their own tangents. Marty left and Paul and Grace are doing things. Jack and Jorma have Hot Tuna. They all go into these different directions. It's kind of natural evolution. I'd known Jerry from the Grateful Dead on different things we'd played together. And I liked this band.
SE: People who don't like long-haired musicians could be fooled if they just heard the music and didn't see you. Have you ever played on an authentic country Western bill?
NR: No. That'd be scary. Those are the real guys.
SE: You can't fool them.
NR: No.
SE: You could fool me. Good luck with the album.
NR: Thanks.
(and then they rode off into the sunset)
(by Steve Edstrom, from the "Words and Music" column, the Winona Daily News (MN), 31 October 1971)
Jan 25, 2019
January 17, 1969: Robertson Gym, UC Santa Barbara
SANTANA, DEAD: GRACEFUL YET POWERFUL
Climaxing four hours of the best concert that has happened on campus this year, the Grateful Dead offered a mind-expanding experience to the 4,000 who crammed into Robertson Gym on Friday night.
As one of the true acid bands originating in 'Frisco, they have survived national success and remained the most outstanding group on the hard-rock scene today.
First on stage was the Travel Agency, who are noted for their numerous originals which feature their fabulous lead singing and harmony back-up. Unfortunately, the P.A. system was not working until after their set, so they jammed for the entire time.
Their music was a fast rhythm and blues along the lines of "Ten Years After." Their drummer appeared to have great ability, but he did not project the rich full sound that Santana's and the Grateful Dead's drummers were able to produce.
After the Agency, the Santana Blues Band came on, feeding their soulful vibes to the eagerly awaiting audience. Their Afro-Blues sound got most of the crowd on its feet, turning on to the violent primitive beat. Sitting still during their set was impossible; their music let everyone release all tensions and frustrations by just letting it carry them.
Using three different conga drums, Santana's conga drummer dominated their presence. In a truly aggressive spirit, he carried the soulful beat throughout their set.
Most of Santana's members were very talented, as was proven in the solos. The conga drummer overwhelmed the audience when he broke into solos, while the organist, in the style of Barry Goldberg, created a mood of his own.
Their drummer took his solo in their fourth number, and really displayed his great talent. "Soul Sacrifice," their concluding number, brought the audience to a peak of excitement as its crude, pulsating beat flooded the gym, which then seemed to be in another world.
Whereas Santana's music was like a rushing torrent cutting deep into the earth, Grateful Dead's sound created visions of the pool of eternal calm, high above the native earth. Their graceful flowing music permeated every object, letting everyone who was receptive experience an emotional ecstasy that cannot be forgotten.
Just as the Grateful Dead began, the power blew and both drummers immediately went into solos as if it was part of the number. When the lights came back on several minutes later, most people suddenly realized what had happened.
Opening with "Shine on Me," they established their easy flowing rhythm. All seven of the Dead are exceptionally talented, and together they produce a mood that can only be experienced, not explained.
As a whole, the concert provided an atmosphere of total environment. The sound system, once it was finally set up, was very good. The visuals, which were provided by Dry Paint, left something to be desired. They had sufficient equipment to do an excellent show, yet they apparently did not know how to utilize it effectively.
The police stationed inside the gym were very "cool" about the whole affair. At the beginning of the concert, they worked diligently to enforce the "no smoking" regulation, but later on in the evening most of the heads were lighting up without any hassle.
Possibly the only disappointment of the evening was when the Grateful Dead were forced to stop playing after the house lights had been rudely blinked on-and-off several times. They probably would have continued for quite some time, as they usually do at their concerts.
Hopefully the great success of the concert will encourage other "organizations" to sponsor a similar happening. Besides being a success financially, this concert provided an exceptionally satisfying and enjoyable evening for all who attended.
(by Jack Evans, from El Gaucho, Santa Barbara, 22 January 1969)
Thanks to Dave Davis.
See also: http://jgmf.blogspot.com/2016/11/dropping-in-robertson-gym-gd1969-01-17.html
https://archive.org/details/gd69-01-17.sbd.miller.89798.sbeok.flac16
Climaxing four hours of the best concert that has happened on campus this year, the Grateful Dead offered a mind-expanding experience to the 4,000 who crammed into Robertson Gym on Friday night.
As one of the true acid bands originating in 'Frisco, they have survived national success and remained the most outstanding group on the hard-rock scene today.
First on stage was the Travel Agency, who are noted for their numerous originals which feature their fabulous lead singing and harmony back-up. Unfortunately, the P.A. system was not working until after their set, so they jammed for the entire time.
Their music was a fast rhythm and blues along the lines of "Ten Years After." Their drummer appeared to have great ability, but he did not project the rich full sound that Santana's and the Grateful Dead's drummers were able to produce.
After the Agency, the Santana Blues Band came on, feeding their soulful vibes to the eagerly awaiting audience. Their Afro-Blues sound got most of the crowd on its feet, turning on to the violent primitive beat. Sitting still during their set was impossible; their music let everyone release all tensions and frustrations by just letting it carry them.
Using three different conga drums, Santana's conga drummer dominated their presence. In a truly aggressive spirit, he carried the soulful beat throughout their set.
Most of Santana's members were very talented, as was proven in the solos. The conga drummer overwhelmed the audience when he broke into solos, while the organist, in the style of Barry Goldberg, created a mood of his own.
Their drummer took his solo in their fourth number, and really displayed his great talent. "Soul Sacrifice," their concluding number, brought the audience to a peak of excitement as its crude, pulsating beat flooded the gym, which then seemed to be in another world.
Whereas Santana's music was like a rushing torrent cutting deep into the earth, Grateful Dead's sound created visions of the pool of eternal calm, high above the native earth. Their graceful flowing music permeated every object, letting everyone who was receptive experience an emotional ecstasy that cannot be forgotten.
Just as the Grateful Dead began, the power blew and both drummers immediately went into solos as if it was part of the number. When the lights came back on several minutes later, most people suddenly realized what had happened.
Opening with "Shine on Me," they established their easy flowing rhythm. All seven of the Dead are exceptionally talented, and together they produce a mood that can only be experienced, not explained.
As a whole, the concert provided an atmosphere of total environment. The sound system, once it was finally set up, was very good. The visuals, which were provided by Dry Paint, left something to be desired. They had sufficient equipment to do an excellent show, yet they apparently did not know how to utilize it effectively.
The police stationed inside the gym were very "cool" about the whole affair. At the beginning of the concert, they worked diligently to enforce the "no smoking" regulation, but later on in the evening most of the heads were lighting up without any hassle.
Possibly the only disappointment of the evening was when the Grateful Dead were forced to stop playing after the house lights had been rudely blinked on-and-off several times. They probably would have continued for quite some time, as they usually do at their concerts.
Hopefully the great success of the concert will encourage other "organizations" to sponsor a similar happening. Besides being a success financially, this concert provided an exceptionally satisfying and enjoyable evening for all who attended.
(by Jack Evans, from El Gaucho, Santa Barbara, 22 January 1969)
Thanks to Dave Davis.
See also: http://jgmf.blogspot.com/2016/11/dropping-in-robertson-gym-gd1969-01-17.html
https://archive.org/details/gd69-01-17.sbd.miller.89798.sbeok.flac16
December 13-14, 1968: The Bank, Torrance CA
GRATEFUL DEAD GIVES CONCERT
The Grateful Dead, one of the original components of the San Francisco sound, journeyed south to the Bank in Torrance over the weekend for what amounted to a progress report on the development of their music.
Unlike other bands of the same era, the Dead's music has survived the pressures of commercial success and popularization.
While other groups were rapidly releasing albums in an attempt to capitalize on a moment, the Dead waited over a year to release their second record, hoping that it would be a further exploration of a territory they were only beginning to discover. The result was nearly fatal with a fickle public.
Their brilliant performance at the Bank this weekend went far toward obliterating any early demise. Guitarist Jerry Garcia displayed his prowess as an innovator capable of sustained solos that are never dull. His strength lies in the lyrical progressions he employs to develop thematic lines.
Bassist Phil Lesh combined with the Dead's two drummers to create a series of exciting contrapuntal bottoms that were highlighted by frequent, but never wanton, variations in time signature. Rhythm guitarist Bob Weir provided catalytic themes from which Garcia and Lesh drew inspiration. Weir would state a theme, wait for Garcia to interpret the statement, and then move on to another idea.
The Grateful Dead seem to function in a musical hinterland that utilizes the potential of its individual members in relationship with its group entity. Each member of the band is concentrically related to the unit, allowing individual freedom of exploration and the security of a fixed position at the same time.
In keeping with the Bank's policy of providing balanced quality booking, Magic Sam, a superb Chicago blues band, also performed.
(by David Mark Dashev, from the Los Angeles Times, 17 December 1968)
Thanks to Dave Davis.
* * *
EARWAX [excerpt]
The Grateful Dead played at one hell of a funeral last weekend as the Bank announced it is closing down.
Main reason for the death of the fifth Los Angeles rock club to close within a year was pressure from the local gendarmes who have done their best for the last four weeks to intimidate Bank patrons. It was not unusual to see a dozen or so cars being searched between the club and the Hamilton Street offramp, a distance of one quarter of a mile.
The scare tactics worked on the less faithful with a subsequent drop in attendance.
The Bank was one of the few nightspots around that maintained an intimate atmosphere so important to the moodiness of most bands. Now smogville is left with the Ash Grove, Troubadour, Whiskey, and the Shrine - with the Ash Grove being the only club where bands can get it on with any frequency.
The Dead's great lead guitarist Jerry Garcia displayed his genius for nearly three hours on Saturday night without boring anybody. Magic Sam and blues guitarist Richard Dennis aided Garcia in making the Bank's farewell a rousing wake. The club's "family" are planning a final "Screw L.A." party for New Year's Eve for the official burial. Sad to say we'll all rest in peace.
(by Bob Barnett, from the Valley State Daily Sundial, 20 December 1968)
Thanks to jgmf.blogspot.com
Alas, no tape!
See also this list of shows at the Bank:
http://rockprosopography101.blogspot.com/2010/08/bank-19840-south-hamilton-avenue.html
The Grateful Dead, one of the original components of the San Francisco sound, journeyed south to the Bank in Torrance over the weekend for what amounted to a progress report on the development of their music.
Unlike other bands of the same era, the Dead's music has survived the pressures of commercial success and popularization.
While other groups were rapidly releasing albums in an attempt to capitalize on a moment, the Dead waited over a year to release their second record, hoping that it would be a further exploration of a territory they were only beginning to discover. The result was nearly fatal with a fickle public.
Their brilliant performance at the Bank this weekend went far toward obliterating any early demise. Guitarist Jerry Garcia displayed his prowess as an innovator capable of sustained solos that are never dull. His strength lies in the lyrical progressions he employs to develop thematic lines.
Bassist Phil Lesh combined with the Dead's two drummers to create a series of exciting contrapuntal bottoms that were highlighted by frequent, but never wanton, variations in time signature. Rhythm guitarist Bob Weir provided catalytic themes from which Garcia and Lesh drew inspiration. Weir would state a theme, wait for Garcia to interpret the statement, and then move on to another idea.
The Grateful Dead seem to function in a musical hinterland that utilizes the potential of its individual members in relationship with its group entity. Each member of the band is concentrically related to the unit, allowing individual freedom of exploration and the security of a fixed position at the same time.
In keeping with the Bank's policy of providing balanced quality booking, Magic Sam, a superb Chicago blues band, also performed.
(by David Mark Dashev, from the Los Angeles Times, 17 December 1968)
Thanks to Dave Davis.
* * *
EARWAX [excerpt]
The Grateful Dead played at one hell of a funeral last weekend as the Bank announced it is closing down.
Main reason for the death of the fifth Los Angeles rock club to close within a year was pressure from the local gendarmes who have done their best for the last four weeks to intimidate Bank patrons. It was not unusual to see a dozen or so cars being searched between the club and the Hamilton Street offramp, a distance of one quarter of a mile.
The scare tactics worked on the less faithful with a subsequent drop in attendance.
The Bank was one of the few nightspots around that maintained an intimate atmosphere so important to the moodiness of most bands. Now smogville is left with the Ash Grove, Troubadour, Whiskey, and the Shrine - with the Ash Grove being the only club where bands can get it on with any frequency.
The Dead's great lead guitarist Jerry Garcia displayed his genius for nearly three hours on Saturday night without boring anybody. Magic Sam and blues guitarist Richard Dennis aided Garcia in making the Bank's farewell a rousing wake. The club's "family" are planning a final "Screw L.A." party for New Year's Eve for the official burial. Sad to say we'll all rest in peace.
(by Bob Barnett, from the Valley State Daily Sundial, 20 December 1968)
Thanks to jgmf.blogspot.com
Alas, no tape!
See also this list of shows at the Bank:
http://rockprosopography101.blogspot.com/2010/08/bank-19840-south-hamilton-avenue.html
Halloween 1969: San Jose State College
GRATEFUL DEAD BRING LIVE MUSIC TO LIVELY SJS HALLOWEEN FLING
This Friday evening SJS is having its own “trick-or-treat,” when it brings out The Grateful Dead to play in the College Union Ballroom.
The Grateful Dead, pioneers of the San Francisco sound, will be making their first appearance at SJS Halloween night.
“The Dead” have added a little country to their blues and psychedelic elements, and the blend works well, according to people who saw them last weekend at Winterland.
“The Dead,” whose music has what many people term a euphoric effect, will play two sets, a total of one and a half to two hours. It is hoped that they will play some of their more famous sets which range from straight country, as in “Mama Tried,” to the blues encore, “Good Morning Little School Girl.” In the former, bass guitarist Phil Lesch produces a good country vocal sound, and in the latter, Ron (Pig Pen) McKernan is at his vocal best.
Lead guitarist Jerry Garcia also has a good set as does organist Tom Constante and rhythm guitarist Bob Weir. The dependable work of drummers William Kreutzman and Mickey Hart is ideal in the country tunes.
Accompanying “The Dead” will be the far out sounds of the “Experimental Flash.” In addition, two color horror films will be shown, “Billy the Kid vs. Dracula” and “Godzilla vs. The Thing.” Both films will be shown silently behind the bands.
The dance will be held from 9 p.m. to 1 a.m. and admission is $2 for students and $3 for the public. Tickets are on sale in [the] Student Affairs Business Office, located on the second level of the College Union.
(by Marty Pastula, from the Spartan Daily, San Jose State College, 29 October 1969)
BANDS TO PLAY AT MASKED BALL IN COLLEGE UNION
The Grateful Dead and Southbay Experimental Flash will perform at 9 p.m. tonight in the College Union to a masked audience.
In keeping with the theme of Halloween, the College Union Program Board (which is sponsoring the dance) has asked that all those attending tonight’s dance wear masks.
It is hoped that the debut of The Grateful Dead at SJS will be a pace-setter for future “name groups,” according to [the] CUPB student director.
The CUPB will provide masks for those who “forget their disguises.”
Tickets are still available in the Student Affairs Business office. [...]
[The] CUPB director added that in case it gets too warm, there will be “bobbing for apples” as refreshing but perhaps “ghostly” fun.
(from the Spartan Daily, 31 October 1969)
https://archive.org/details/gd1969-10-31.141252.sbd.pcm.dalton.miller.clugston.flac1644
This Friday evening SJS is having its own “trick-or-treat,” when it brings out The Grateful Dead to play in the College Union Ballroom.
The Grateful Dead, pioneers of the San Francisco sound, will be making their first appearance at SJS Halloween night.
“The Dead” have added a little country to their blues and psychedelic elements, and the blend works well, according to people who saw them last weekend at Winterland.
“The Dead,” whose music has what many people term a euphoric effect, will play two sets, a total of one and a half to two hours. It is hoped that they will play some of their more famous sets which range from straight country, as in “Mama Tried,” to the blues encore, “Good Morning Little School Girl.” In the former, bass guitarist Phil Lesch produces a good country vocal sound, and in the latter, Ron (Pig Pen) McKernan is at his vocal best.
Lead guitarist Jerry Garcia also has a good set as does organist Tom Constante and rhythm guitarist Bob Weir. The dependable work of drummers William Kreutzman and Mickey Hart is ideal in the country tunes.
Accompanying “The Dead” will be the far out sounds of the “Experimental Flash.” In addition, two color horror films will be shown, “Billy the Kid vs. Dracula” and “Godzilla vs. The Thing.” Both films will be shown silently behind the bands.
The dance will be held from 9 p.m. to 1 a.m. and admission is $2 for students and $3 for the public. Tickets are on sale in [the] Student Affairs Business Office, located on the second level of the College Union.
(by Marty Pastula, from the Spartan Daily, San Jose State College, 29 October 1969)
BANDS TO PLAY AT MASKED BALL IN COLLEGE UNION
The Grateful Dead and Southbay Experimental Flash will perform at 9 p.m. tonight in the College Union to a masked audience.
In keeping with the theme of Halloween, the College Union Program Board (which is sponsoring the dance) has asked that all those attending tonight’s dance wear masks.
It is hoped that the debut of The Grateful Dead at SJS will be a pace-setter for future “name groups,” according to [the] CUPB student director.
The CUPB will provide masks for those who “forget their disguises.”
Tickets are still available in the Student Affairs Business office. [...]
[The] CUPB director added that in case it gets too warm, there will be “bobbing for apples” as refreshing but perhaps “ghostly” fun.
(from the Spartan Daily, 31 October 1969)
https://archive.org/details/gd1969-10-31.141252.sbd.pcm.dalton.miller.clugston.flac1644
Nov 14, 2018
November 7, 1970: Marty Weinberg Interview
Marty Weinberg interviewed an usher during a set break in the Saturday show at the Capitol Theater, Port Chester.
MARTY: Hello, sir. Do you enjoy being usher here?
USHER: Uh, sometimes. Not when I have to hassle people. [...]
MARTY: Was there ever a concert where you never had to hassle people?
USHER: Yes.
MARTY: When? Besides the Dead.
USHER: Uh, no, the Dead is the most - the worst one to hassle people.
MARTY: Why?
USHER: 'Cause of the fire laws the way they are, when everybody smokes here - you know, like, it's a bummer.
MARTY: Well why do you have to keep people off the aisles?
USHER: 'Cause that's another fire law. [There's] people in Port Chester, particularly the fire commissioner, who want to close down this theater. [to audience] Don't smoke that joint! Pass it around.
MARTY: I see you're blackmailing with us.
USHER: No, man. [...]
MARTY: Yeah, but like, if there's a fire here, first of all man, don't matter if the aisles are cleared or not, they're gonna be filled up in two seconds anyway.
USHER: Oh, sure, but if there are people in the aisle...people sitting, not standing so much - lot of times, the people just come down and sit down in the aisles - and if they're sitting, like, you just run 'em over.
[Someone in the audience asks something.]
USHER: That's the fire marshals.
MARTY: What are they doing in here? How come there's only one -
USHER: [to audience] I suggest you put that out! 'Cause I don't wanna lose my job.
MARTY: There was only one last night. How come there's so many tonight?
USHER: Because the fire commissioner himself is here.
MARTY: Is that the guy who was around last night, that funny guy -
USHER: He wasn't here last night. First time he's ever been here.
MARTY: Oh, does he like it? Does he like the concert?
USHER: No, he wants to close the place down.
MARTY: Is he gonna be able to?
USHER: Yeah.
MARTY: Yeah? There's gonna be a concert tomorrow night, I hope.
USHER: I hope.
MARTY: Yeah, good. Sunday night concert's always the best.
USHER: Yeah, this one has been the best since Thursday.
MARTY: No, last night was pretty good, Thursday -
USHER: No, tonight's better. Well, it has a lot to do with the audience, tonight's audience is much better than last night.
MARTY: Well, last night they did some pretty good stuff - like, Thursday night [...]
USHER: It was a really good concert last night. But like, if they play the same tonight as they did last night, I think they're playing better.
MARTY: Well first of all, it's only like ten after 12 now, and last night - by the ten-minute break, it was 1:00 in the morning already.
USHER: Yeah, I know.
MARTY: They haven't been playing as much tonight. Maybe they'll play more tomorrow night. Usually the last night concerts are the best.
USHER: Well there are gonna be so few people here tomorrow, compared to the other ones, though.
MARTY: They'll sell out eventually, probably - sell all the $5.50s, at least. It looked like you almost sold out on Thursday night.
USHER: Well no, you see, that's [a fallacy]. When we sell out, it means there are at least 300 people standing.
MARTY: It means you're selling standing seats?
USHER: No. Free passes.
MARTY: Oh, I see.
Audience member: How many people are on the Dead guest list?
USHER: On the Dead guest list? Not very many, 14, 15 tonight.
[Audience member asks a question.]
USHER: Yeah, but it doesn't work that way. The people on the Dead list are backstage, those are the people we see in back of the equipment. [some discussion with audience member] For this show, they're not even letting ushers go backstage.
MARTY: They're not? Do they usually let ushers go backstage?
USHER: Oh, yeah. [It's] a big thrill standing on the side watching somebody.
MARTY: Huh, I'm really disappointed with the -
USHER: The easiest concert we ever had was James Taylor.
MARTY: Why?
USHER: Everyone just sat here in total -
?: I just snorted some cocaine! And I feel good.
?: You did, great. Great!
MARTY: Is the fire commissioner - what about the police department, are there -
USHER: I believe there are two uniformed policemen in here and four non-uniformed.
MARTY: Is anyone busted in here?
USHER: Uh, one of my friends was busted earlier this evening.
MARTY: For possession or selling?
USHER: Possession.
MARTY: In the theater?
USHER: Yeah. He's smoking pot and the cop walked right up to him.
[A nearby audience member is surprised: "Really? You hear that?" Tells a friend that someone "got taken out by a cop."]
USHER: Good on Howard, ran after him.
MARTY: He did?
USHER: Yeah. He managed to talk the cop into letting the kid go.
MARTY: That's good - are they busting kids outside here at all?
USHER: A lot.
MARTY: Yeah?
[An audience member asks the usher who someone by the door is.]
MARTY: How'd you get a Grateful Dead t-shirt?
USHER: One of my friends made it. Two dollars.
MARTY: He made it? Two dollars? I'd like to buy one!
USHER: Go to Flushing, Union Street. Tell him -
MARTY: How would you like to buy some tapes of the Dead?
USHER: No chance.
MARTY: I have Dead tapes...
https://archive.org/details/gd1970-11-07.134083.aud.weinberg.parish.flac16
MARTY: Hello, sir. Do you enjoy being usher here?
USHER: Uh, sometimes. Not when I have to hassle people. [...]
MARTY: Was there ever a concert where you never had to hassle people?
USHER: Yes.
MARTY: When? Besides the Dead.
USHER: Uh, no, the Dead is the most - the worst one to hassle people.
MARTY: Why?
USHER: 'Cause of the fire laws the way they are, when everybody smokes here - you know, like, it's a bummer.
MARTY: Well why do you have to keep people off the aisles?
USHER: 'Cause that's another fire law. [There's] people in Port Chester, particularly the fire commissioner, who want to close down this theater. [to audience] Don't smoke that joint! Pass it around.
MARTY: I see you're blackmailing with us.
USHER: No, man. [...]
MARTY: Yeah, but like, if there's a fire here, first of all man, don't matter if the aisles are cleared or not, they're gonna be filled up in two seconds anyway.
USHER: Oh, sure, but if there are people in the aisle...people sitting, not standing so much - lot of times, the people just come down and sit down in the aisles - and if they're sitting, like, you just run 'em over.
[Someone in the audience asks something.]
USHER: That's the fire marshals.
MARTY: What are they doing in here? How come there's only one -
USHER: [to audience] I suggest you put that out! 'Cause I don't wanna lose my job.
MARTY: There was only one last night. How come there's so many tonight?
USHER: Because the fire commissioner himself is here.
MARTY: Is that the guy who was around last night, that funny guy -
USHER: He wasn't here last night. First time he's ever been here.
MARTY: Oh, does he like it? Does he like the concert?
USHER: No, he wants to close the place down.
MARTY: Is he gonna be able to?
USHER: Yeah.
MARTY: Yeah? There's gonna be a concert tomorrow night, I hope.
USHER: I hope.
MARTY: Yeah, good. Sunday night concert's always the best.
USHER: Yeah, this one has been the best since Thursday.
MARTY: No, last night was pretty good, Thursday -
USHER: No, tonight's better. Well, it has a lot to do with the audience, tonight's audience is much better than last night.
MARTY: Well, last night they did some pretty good stuff - like, Thursday night [...]
USHER: It was a really good concert last night. But like, if they play the same tonight as they did last night, I think they're playing better.
MARTY: Well first of all, it's only like ten after 12 now, and last night - by the ten-minute break, it was 1:00 in the morning already.
USHER: Yeah, I know.
MARTY: They haven't been playing as much tonight. Maybe they'll play more tomorrow night. Usually the last night concerts are the best.
USHER: Well there are gonna be so few people here tomorrow, compared to the other ones, though.
MARTY: They'll sell out eventually, probably - sell all the $5.50s, at least. It looked like you almost sold out on Thursday night.
USHER: Well no, you see, that's [a fallacy]. When we sell out, it means there are at least 300 people standing.
MARTY: It means you're selling standing seats?
USHER: No. Free passes.
MARTY: Oh, I see.
Audience member: How many people are on the Dead guest list?
USHER: On the Dead guest list? Not very many, 14, 15 tonight.
[Audience member asks a question.]
USHER: Yeah, but it doesn't work that way. The people on the Dead list are backstage, those are the people we see in back of the equipment. [some discussion with audience member] For this show, they're not even letting ushers go backstage.
MARTY: They're not? Do they usually let ushers go backstage?
USHER: Oh, yeah. [It's] a big thrill standing on the side watching somebody.
MARTY: Huh, I'm really disappointed with the -
USHER: The easiest concert we ever had was James Taylor.
MARTY: Why?
USHER: Everyone just sat here in total -
?: I just snorted some cocaine! And I feel good.
?: You did, great. Great!
MARTY: Is the fire commissioner - what about the police department, are there -
USHER: I believe there are two uniformed policemen in here and four non-uniformed.
MARTY: Is anyone busted in here?
USHER: Uh, one of my friends was busted earlier this evening.
MARTY: For possession or selling?
USHER: Possession.
MARTY: In the theater?
USHER: Yeah. He's smoking pot and the cop walked right up to him.
[A nearby audience member is surprised: "Really? You hear that?" Tells a friend that someone "got taken out by a cop."]
USHER: Good on Howard, ran after him.
MARTY: He did?
USHER: Yeah. He managed to talk the cop into letting the kid go.
MARTY: That's good - are they busting kids outside here at all?
USHER: A lot.
MARTY: Yeah?
[An audience member asks the usher who someone by the door is.]
MARTY: How'd you get a Grateful Dead t-shirt?
USHER: One of my friends made it. Two dollars.
MARTY: He made it? Two dollars? I'd like to buy one!
USHER: Go to Flushing, Union Street. Tell him -
MARTY: How would you like to buy some tapes of the Dead?
USHER: No chance.
MARTY: I have Dead tapes...
https://archive.org/details/gd1970-11-07.134083.aud.weinberg.parish.flac16
Nov 13, 2018
1973: Mr. Tapes
MR. 'TAPES' OF BROOKLYN: HE RULES THE GRATEFUL DEAD TAPE EMPIRE
BROOKLYN -- Don't let anybody tell you differently. Brooklyn is the Grateful Dead center of the world. For one thing, Mickey Hart's grandparents live in Bayridge. Bill Kreutzman's niece goes to school on Coney Island. And on East 18th Street, cleverly disguised as a mild-mannered inspector for the New York City Housing Authority, lives the man Jerry Garcia calls "Mr. Tapes."
Les Kippel pointed to his collection. "Over 500 hours of Grateful Dead tapes," he beamed. "More than 100 concerts from early 1968 right up to Watkins Glen. The Dead by themselves, the Dead with the New Riders, with Duane Allman, with the Beach Boys, the Airplane - there's even a tape with Janis Joplin." Les closed his eyes for a beat. "Let's see...that one was from the Fillmore East, January 3rd, 1970.
"The first concert I personally recorded was on May 25th, 1971. I had a borrowed cassette machine and a 45-cent microphone - now I use a Sony TC1-10A and an Uhr mike. It's a real pain in the ass doing an audience tape. It takes a lot of preparation - you have to attach the mike to a long pole to get above the crowd noise. You also have to know the concert hall very well - in some places, for example, the best sound is in the first row balcony. You also need a partner to help with the equipment and a lot of dope to keep you mellow."
Les moved out of the apprentice class last year while he was waiting in a Ticketron line at Macy's. "There were some 200 people screaming to get tickets to see the Dead at Roosevelt Stadium," he said. "And three or four of them were screaming, 'We have tapes. We have tapes.' One of them was a cat named John Alberts - and we wound up exchanging collections. That brought me up to about 200 hours."
It wasn't until a Dead concert at Waterbury, Connecticut, last year that Les became a Grand Master. "John and I were hanging around the backstage area before the concert. We needed a super-good 'Box of Rain' for our collection." So they made up a little gift in a small box and attached one of their cards. "We managed to get it to Bill Kreutzman. Ten minutes later he comes running outside with Phil Lesh, looking for us... They gave us stage passes. We handed out over a hundred of our cards backstage, and the tapes really started coming in after that."
Approximately two-thirds of Les's tapes are audience tapes, the remainder being either radio-simulcasts or soundboard tapes which have been borrowed, copied, and (sometimes) returned. There are also a couple of tapes from Warner Bros. - but Les never involves himself in the shadier aspects of tape procurement. "All I want to know," he said, "is how good the sound is and what concert it's from."
With Les as source, free Grateful Dead tape exchanges have been set up in Oregon, Arizona, Colorado, Florida, California, Maryland, Massachusetts...there have even been inquiries from Australia.
"A lot of people want to set up exchanges. I tell them to get cards made up with their telephone numbers on it, but I also insist it says 'free' on them. Then they came over here. If they can make me like them, I'll start them out with 15-20 hours of tape - they can trade their own way from there. If they're assholes, I'll charge them outrageous prices for a couple of tapes and tell them not to come back."
John Orlando got his tapes for nothing. He lives in Brooklyn, of course, and he is a member of one of the nine Dead tape exchanges which Les has spawned in New York City.
"Mr. Tapes is a bitch," John said. "He set me up and two of my friends with tapes, right? Man, I was doing wall-to-wall taping 18 hours a day, four machines going at the same time. I had to quit my job - it was very intense. I had to stay high all day or I'd go nuts. After a week, my chick comes over and said, 'John, is it me or the Dead?" 'Take a walk,' I says. I'm a Grateful Dead hermit - but I have an understanding with them, so it's cool. But Mr. Tapes, man, he can fuck your head good."
Back on 18th Street, Les talked about the future. "I'd like to go legit," he said. "Sam Cutler told me we can make some money working with the Dead. It seems that they have a lot of holes in their archives - somebody ripped off some tapes while they were in Oregon. There's certainly a demand for old stuff, and the Dead are cut loose from Warner Bros. now, so the next move is theirs."
Les Kippel, however, is the Tape Master only because the old one is in addled retirement. Somewhere, walking the streets of Flatbush, is a man known only as "The Legendary Marty." Clasped in his hand is a suitcase - full of Dead tapes, the best and the most exotic. The leaders are split and tangled, and there are no labels on the tiny five-inch reels, but the very thought of them is enough to give Les cardiac arrest.
"I haven't seen the Legendary Marty in over a year," said Les. "Nobody knows where he is. What I would love to do is close my eyes, stick my hand into the suitcase, and record whatever I pull out. Who knows what goodies he has in there?"
As he talked, Les poured out three glasses of wine. He sipped at one and handed me another - the third he put on the table.
"What's that for?" I asked.
Les answered in a reverent tone, "It's for Marty. Just in case."
(by Charley Rosen, from Rolling Stone, 11 October 1973)
See also:
https://relix.com/articles/detail/early_tapers_the_united_dead_freaks_of_america_and_the_dawn_of_relix/
BROOKLYN -- Don't let anybody tell you differently. Brooklyn is the Grateful Dead center of the world. For one thing, Mickey Hart's grandparents live in Bayridge. Bill Kreutzman's niece goes to school on Coney Island. And on East 18th Street, cleverly disguised as a mild-mannered inspector for the New York City Housing Authority, lives the man Jerry Garcia calls "Mr. Tapes."
Les Kippel pointed to his collection. "Over 500 hours of Grateful Dead tapes," he beamed. "More than 100 concerts from early 1968 right up to Watkins Glen. The Dead by themselves, the Dead with the New Riders, with Duane Allman, with the Beach Boys, the Airplane - there's even a tape with Janis Joplin." Les closed his eyes for a beat. "Let's see...that one was from the Fillmore East, January 3rd, 1970.
"The first concert I personally recorded was on May 25th, 1971. I had a borrowed cassette machine and a 45-cent microphone - now I use a Sony TC1-10A and an Uhr mike. It's a real pain in the ass doing an audience tape. It takes a lot of preparation - you have to attach the mike to a long pole to get above the crowd noise. You also have to know the concert hall very well - in some places, for example, the best sound is in the first row balcony. You also need a partner to help with the equipment and a lot of dope to keep you mellow."
Les moved out of the apprentice class last year while he was waiting in a Ticketron line at Macy's. "There were some 200 people screaming to get tickets to see the Dead at Roosevelt Stadium," he said. "And three or four of them were screaming, 'We have tapes. We have tapes.' One of them was a cat named John Alberts - and we wound up exchanging collections. That brought me up to about 200 hours."
It wasn't until a Dead concert at Waterbury, Connecticut, last year that Les became a Grand Master. "John and I were hanging around the backstage area before the concert. We needed a super-good 'Box of Rain' for our collection." So they made up a little gift in a small box and attached one of their cards. "We managed to get it to Bill Kreutzman. Ten minutes later he comes running outside with Phil Lesh, looking for us... They gave us stage passes. We handed out over a hundred of our cards backstage, and the tapes really started coming in after that."
Approximately two-thirds of Les's tapes are audience tapes, the remainder being either radio-simulcasts or soundboard tapes which have been borrowed, copied, and (sometimes) returned. There are also a couple of tapes from Warner Bros. - but Les never involves himself in the shadier aspects of tape procurement. "All I want to know," he said, "is how good the sound is and what concert it's from."
With Les as source, free Grateful Dead tape exchanges have been set up in Oregon, Arizona, Colorado, Florida, California, Maryland, Massachusetts...there have even been inquiries from Australia.
"A lot of people want to set up exchanges. I tell them to get cards made up with their telephone numbers on it, but I also insist it says 'free' on them. Then they came over here. If they can make me like them, I'll start them out with 15-20 hours of tape - they can trade their own way from there. If they're assholes, I'll charge them outrageous prices for a couple of tapes and tell them not to come back."
John Orlando got his tapes for nothing. He lives in Brooklyn, of course, and he is a member of one of the nine Dead tape exchanges which Les has spawned in New York City.
"Mr. Tapes is a bitch," John said. "He set me up and two of my friends with tapes, right? Man, I was doing wall-to-wall taping 18 hours a day, four machines going at the same time. I had to quit my job - it was very intense. I had to stay high all day or I'd go nuts. After a week, my chick comes over and said, 'John, is it me or the Dead?" 'Take a walk,' I says. I'm a Grateful Dead hermit - but I have an understanding with them, so it's cool. But Mr. Tapes, man, he can fuck your head good."
Back on 18th Street, Les talked about the future. "I'd like to go legit," he said. "Sam Cutler told me we can make some money working with the Dead. It seems that they have a lot of holes in their archives - somebody ripped off some tapes while they were in Oregon. There's certainly a demand for old stuff, and the Dead are cut loose from Warner Bros. now, so the next move is theirs."
Les Kippel, however, is the Tape Master only because the old one is in addled retirement. Somewhere, walking the streets of Flatbush, is a man known only as "The Legendary Marty." Clasped in his hand is a suitcase - full of Dead tapes, the best and the most exotic. The leaders are split and tangled, and there are no labels on the tiny five-inch reels, but the very thought of them is enough to give Les cardiac arrest.
"I haven't seen the Legendary Marty in over a year," said Les. "Nobody knows where he is. What I would love to do is close my eyes, stick my hand into the suitcase, and record whatever I pull out. Who knows what goodies he has in there?"
As he talked, Les poured out three glasses of wine. He sipped at one and handed me another - the third he put on the table.
"What's that for?" I asked.
Les answered in a reverent tone, "It's for Marty. Just in case."
(by Charley Rosen, from Rolling Stone, 11 October 1973)
See also:
https://relix.com/articles/detail/early_tapers_the_united_dead_freaks_of_america_and_the_dawn_of_relix/
Oct 31, 2018
October 4, 1970: Winterland Arena
WINTERLAND BOOKS AIRPLANE, DEAD
The Jefferson Airplane and the Grateful Dead, plus their satellite groups, Hot Tuna and the New Riders of the Purple Sage, will appear as the first attractions in a new series of popular music concerts at Winterland, Oct. 4-5.
"Winterland Presents," co-ordinated and supervised by Harold Copeland and produced by Paul Baratta (one-time Fillmore staffer), plans to present regular shows throughout the winter and spring seasons.
[list of coming attractions]
With a new stage, lighting, and sound arrangements, tickets at $3.50, and substantial financial backing, the Winterland Presents series promises to provide full-scale competition to the Fillmore West offerings and to expand the San Francisco rock-entertainment scene considerably.
(by Philip Elwood, from the San Francisco Examiner, 16 September 1970)
BRAVE NEW MIX-MASH [excerpt]
KQED deserves a big, big round of applause for last night’s 4-hour (10 p.m. to 2 a.m.) show and lively coverage of the Winterland Rock Show – with the Jefferson Airplane, Grateful Dead, and Quicksilver Messenger Service. All kinds of kudos go to producer Larry Armstrong and director Duncan McKelvey. Their on-the-site sound-and-color mix was fittingly dove-tailed to the product.
(from Dwight Newton's TV column, the San Francisco Examiner, 5 October 1970)
ROCK TRIUMVIRATE THRILLS 6000 FANS
The new rock-show operation at Winterland Arena couldn't have chosen a surer sellout program than the triumvirate of Jefferson Airplane, Grateful Dead, and Quicksilver Messenger Service.
And much to the delight of producer Paul Baratta, all expectations were realized both Sunday and last night. The place was jammed with about 6000 fans each evening - enthusiastic, happy, hot, tired, friendly fans of the three famous "old original" San Francisco bands.
Musically things went pretty much according to tradition. Grace Slick of the Airplane and Dino Valenti (who now dominates Quicksilver) were the only two strong and steady singers on stage. Bob Weir of the Dead is also a good one, when his colleagues don't clutter up the background.
The Airplane's vocalist Marty Balin was erratic and out of sorts Sunday and did not show last night. He is a distinctive singer and remarkably fine interpreter of lyrics. But Balin lately has had to shout more than sing.
Perhaps his closing lines Sunday night, "I need a new band," were, indeed, prophetic.
The Dead's instrumental ensemble is now at its all-time best, but their lack of memorable singing hurts their general presentation. Conversely it is the Airplane's sluggish ensemble, which takes half a set to really get going, that causes the group's problems.
But none of this is new -- these things have been true for a long time.
Quicksilver has lost its old thing by becoming essentially Valenti's accompanists. And their new big brass and reed section just compounds the difficulties of trying to keep some of the good old sounds.
Those who came to hear the last show by the old Quicksilver were disappointed at Winterland. What they got, instead, was the beginning of the new, not the last of the old.
A new giant stage has been built in the arena at the end opposite the entry, at the point where the Ice Follies annually mount their various acts. And a huge, superbly directed, sound system has been erected.
Rear-projected light shows splash their stuff on a big scrim which hangs above the stage.
Everything was working this weekend, no major problems in the whole operation.
But Baratta still had a worried look of concern on his tired face. Late yesterday he received word from England that his headliner on October 16-17, the immensely talented and popular singer Dave Mason, has had to cancel because of emigration problems.
(by Philip Elwood, from the San Francisco Examiner, 6 October 1970)
* * *
ROCK, PIGS AND TELEVISION
Sardine-packed longhair music freaks jammed Winterland Sunday for the first revival of the three original San Francisco acid rock groups -- Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane, and Quicksilver Messenger Service.
Hundreds arrived hours early and pitched camp around the old ice-skating rink to be sure to get the $3.50 tickets. Funky trucks, psychedelic buses, and painted and decrepit cars filled every parking space for blocks around.
Sunday night Bill Graham's prodigal partner was turning them away from the door -- not out of humanitarian impulse so everyone inside could breathe, but because there was literally no more space to pack them in. Greed is limited only by necessity.
The music did its job. The Dead's Jerry Garcia plucked away our time, Jack Cassidy looked like he had a narrow lead over Grace Slick in their race towards decadence, Quicksilver put on quite a show. The stage was lighted like a crucible, and the shoulder-to-jaw crowd all faced towards it like sunflowers facing the sun.
And the whole thing was projected into your livingroom, Mr. & Mrs. America, through the marvels of modern electronics. Two radio stations (KQED-fm and KSAN) and a TV station (Channel 9) carried the show live Sunday in quadrisonic -- each radio station carrying two tracks. The first for head culture was sponsored by Pacific Stereo, who bought the time on KSAN who in turn paid the expenses of the broadcast for the "non-commercial" KQED TV and FM. All of this was to tell us that our stereos are obsolete and that we now have to buy quadriplex sound systems. (This is known as planned obsolescences. The record manufacturers are taking their cue from Detroit.)
It was kind of sad to see in one way. Here were the same musicians from in the beginning. Here were many of the same people as in the beginning, plus thousands who had joined along the way, having those same new/old experiences -- community, trusting everyone enough to pass joints openly as a matter of course, realizing membership.
And here was the same rooting pig, packing in as many as fire regulations allowed, hiring moonlighting San Francisco policemen to keep the crowd "under control." The only novelty was the American flag with the peace symbol instead of the field of stars they wore on breast pockets, goading people along with their flashlights. No standing around in the lobby; move along, cummon, keep movin.
It's actually lost ground. The pig has mastered the subculture. Crowd control, as in mace and beanbag shooters, has been replaced by culture control, as in Vortex One and KSAN. Reds are more popular now, same with wine and smack.
When the Dead started to wail on Good Lovin' and the rhythms got tighter and tighter like spiral watchsprings, people screamed, uncoiled. Grace Slick (a first for educational TV) says, "You want your fuckin' music? You'll get your fuckin' music."
Jimi Hendrix died in his own vomit and Janis Joplin died of a smack OD. You won't get their music anymore.
(by csm & snag, from the San Francisco Good Times, 9 October 1970)
* * *
BROADCASTING IT ALL BACK HOME
The sounds and sights of Winterland in our very own bedroom. Far fucking out!
The Quick, the Dead, and the Airplane. Live and on stage, all playing long sets. Beautiful music in quadraphonic sound. Sound like you hear standing next to the amplifiers.
No $3.50 at the door. No lines. No packing in more people than the hall could handle. No muss. No fuss.
Now we can offer the excitement of a hippy/rock/be-in/concert/orgy/dance/happening in the privacy of your very own home. No salesman will call on you. If not absolutely delighted, return to straight society within 10 minutes and get a refund with no questions asked.
In 1966 the ballrooms were just starting. At Chet's Avalon Ballroom strange things were happening.
The Grateful Dead would play "Midnight Hour" for a half hour or more. Pigpen sang, really getting into it. And hundreds of people - practically everyone in the hall - would JOIN HANDS and dance to exhaustion.
It happened several times, I can't describe how it felt, what it did for our heads.
"One of these nights we're going to dance out of here, into the streets, and get the whole city of San Francisco to join us. We'll turn the whole city on," Buddha said one night.
But that was four years ago. If it happened, I missed it.
The Sunday TV/radio broadcast must have taken a lot of energy. Having to go through endless hassles with sponsors and network executives and all that shit. Probably months of hard work by people trying to create something beautiful.
But for many of us it was the wrong show at the wrong time. A couple of weeks after Jimi Hendrix died - in London (why London?). The SAME NIGHT Janis Joplin died - in Hollywood (why Hollywood?). A time when people are shaken by their deaths and wondering if maybe something's wrong with the rock music culture.
And then this show ("Instant Karma's gonna hit you in the face") that makes you wonder even more. Despite all the hard work, despite the music, it was a bummer for many.
Part of it was the medium. A painting, record, or newspaper only hits one of your senses. TV hits several, almost giving you the impression that you're THERE. But you aren't, you're detached from their reality. It's an illusion.
Another problem was that the cameras were backstage. And backstage is where all the groupies - male and female - hang out. The hangers-on.
A lot of it was the disc jockeys. Dusty Street being so trippy with all the Beautiful (Hip) People. Saying "man" every sentence. Saying nothing. Coming on about as liberated as the women's section of the Oakland Tribune.
The other disc jockey - some dude named Ginger Man - was even worse. He had the following conversation with a young WHITE woman:
G.M.: Are you a Black Panther?
"No."
G.M.: Do you believe in violent revolution?
"No."
G.M.: Outtasite!
When a Tribe brother broke the string of "farouts" and "outtasites" by rapping on Bobby Seale on the air, Ginger Man picked up his microphone and ran his racist ass off.
He and Dusty were constantly reminding us what a great time everyone was having. As if we couldn't see and hear the laughs, joints, beer, smiles, "fucks" and "shits," wine, and shouts liberating the airwaves. The constant hype of the announcers somehow made it all seem hollow.
But the worst thing for me - the unforgivable thing - was the way Janis was ignored. The announcers were talking up this new promoter who used to work for Bill Graham. They talked about how he was bringing back the great old days of the San Francisco Scene.
How the three bands - Dead, Quicksilver, and Airplane - were back at Winterland. How everyone was grooving just like they used to in the Summer of Love. But Jimi and Janis were playing Winterland back then too! AND THE PEOPLE IN THE AUDIENCE WEREN'T EVEN TOLD THAT JANIS WAS DEAD.
The rumor spread among some people backstage. Ginger Man on TV asked, "What's happening to our rock stars?", not really wanting an answer. But no one told the masses in the audience about it.
It would have just been BAD VIBES. And they'd hear about it the next day anyway. And why ruin their fun (and our show)? And they didn't really NEED to know, did they?
We should be together.
- Jefferson Airplane
Together doesn't JUST mean 5,000 people jammed into Winterland. Or 300,000 people watching rock murder and mayhem at Altamont. Or even 1,000,000 people digging the same TV show. That's just a step.
Dig it. The promoters (of all sorts) are, more or less, cynical. The audiences are passive, steeped in blind faith. The performers are, ultimately, all alone. That's not together.
I'd like to hold hands with my sisters and brothers, and dance all night. That's another step. Our life's too fine. And we should - must - be together.
(by Rick, from the Berkeley Tribe, 9 October 1970)
* * *
A couple excerpts on Janis:
from JANIS, A BLUE MEMORY
... I heard about her death at the re-opening of Winterland, up in 'Frisco. For the first time in a long time the Jefferson Airplane, the Grateful Dead, and the Quicksilver Messenger Service were going to be on the same bill. KQED, the educational TV station, was telecasting the concert live and in color, and some of the radio stations were simulcasting the event in stereo. The Dead had just done an incredibly together set when the rumor started. I checked UPI, and found it was true. Four years I knew her. Until Sunday that seemed a long time.
Others had checked the story, and by the time I got backstage everyone knew. The reaction of Janis Joplin's fellow 'Frisco musicians was for some reason the same as if they had received a weather report. None of the groups at Winterland shed a tear for Janis that night. They just really didn't grasp its meaning. A publicist for one of them thought it was a great third act, funny, told me to forget about it.
I left the hall and went to a house to watch on TV the event I'd just left.
A friend's face flashed on the screen. He was asked by some do-gooder from NET about the prevalence of drugs and death in rock and roll. He couldn't have been talking about Janis Joplin. He was just talking about someone who OD'd at the Landmark -- but not Janis.
Janis Joplin died on a Sunday, alone, too high in an impersonal motel room. ...
(by John Carpenter, from the Los Angeles Free Press, 16 October 1970)
from JORMA KAUKONEN (interview)
JORMA: We did the thing at Winterland last weekend when Janis died and all these people were saying "gosh it's really shitty, why don't you say something about Janis dying and all that stuff?" I felt that was antithetical to the idea of what everybody playing there was trying to do; which essentially was to have a good time and to have the people that were there have a good time. It's really a great trip, you're all messed up on something or other, and someone says "so and so just died, what a drag." They lay a heavy rap on you. Who needs it? You can read the paper. Why lay it on people at a time when they are supposed to be feeling good? BB King says all that shit better than I do. I really like the way he talks - he's talking about the blues and he says you're playing blues to forget about feeling bad, not to feel bad. That's pretty much the way it is.
(from the Door, San Diego, 22 October 1970)
See also:
http://deadsources.blogspot.com/2013/06/october-4-5-1970-winterland-sf.html
http://deadsources.blogspot.com/2018/03/october-4-1970-winterland-ballroom.html
* * *
Bonus article on the 8/30/70 "Calebration" broadcast on KPIX:
7:30 K-101 (101.3); KCBS (740) - Calabration: Second four channel stereo broadcast with television featuring the Grateful Dead Quick Silver and Swamp Dogg.
("Sunday FM Highlights," SF Examiner 8/30/70)
The Grateful Dead will perform along with the Quicksilver Messenger Service and Swamp Dogg on "Calebration," tonight at 7:30 on Channel 5. To receive the full impact of the music, a viewer should have not only a television set but two FM-stereo receivers.
HEAR - SEE - 4-CHANNEL
Television Broadcast Tonight!
Quicksilver Messenger Service - The Grateful Dead - The Swamp Dogg - tonight at 7:30 on Channel 5, with 4-channel stereo on K101 and KCBS-FM, brought to you by Lafayette stores and TEAC quadrasonic recorders. See the broadcast tonight, hear the 4-channel sound track recorded on the TEAC TCA-42 at any Lafayette Bay Area store all this coming week.
(two more notices from the 8/30/70 SF Examiner)
ROCKSPONIC
Back in '66 when I started goin' to rock concerts, the greatest possible event was a "Quick and the Dead" concert. We'd load up on weed in the car, pay Chet or Bill some money, go in, and trip, sing, scream, and dance for five or six hours. It was the ultimate rock orgasm.
If you'd told me four years ago that the Grateful Dead and Quicksilver Messenger Service would someday star in a "special" on Channel five, I'd have thought you insane. After all, it was underground culture, too fuckin' wild for the TV creeps.
But there they were on the Tube Sunday night with Swamp Dogg and Jerry Abrams' Headlights. And it was outtasite! Pigpen on prime time TV!
Strange changes have come down. When the bands first started playin', it was music for dropouts. Now the businessmen are using it to convince us to drop back IN!
To enjoy the show in all the glory of its quadroponic sound, you needed a small arsenal of stereo equipment. Several radios and a color TV arranged in a circle around you, according to the demonstration. We made do with a black and white TV and a table radio -- and thought we were well off.
The program was "brought to you by" the maker of quadroponic tape machine. They explained the stereo would soon be obsolete, but for "only $695" we can prepare for the quadroponic future. And then we'll enjoy aural orgasms for ever more. At least until Pentagonic sound makes EVERYTHING obsolete.
Of course, some of us dropouts might not have $695. So there was a commercial urging us to check out our local schools for coursers in computer programming, etc. Then we could drop IN during the day to make our $695 and drop OUT at night with our Super Sound System. Sorta like schizoid behavior under the banner of psychedelic capitalism.
Seems like the businessmen are getting a bit nervous. Like they can see that "Rock 'n' Roll is here to stay." But I don't think they're so sure about their economic system -- what will all this living and lack of consumer-consciousness. [sic] So they're tryin' to get a piece of the hippy action. Like Hugh Hefner (of Playboy, Pepsi Generation, and Sexist Pig fame) trying to buy Rolling Stone Magazine.
But there are some problems "getting these kids back in the system." 'Cause the pied pipers are pipin' the wrong tunes. On the program Quicksilver did a very heavy song of the need for revolution. "Whatcha gonna do about me?", they screamed, running down all that's wrong with Amerika. The song was directed against the "sponsors" among others, but I think Mr. Tapedeck D. Jones had his earphones on.
There's nothing about the joyous, maddening, black magical music of Quicksilver that could induce you to drop back in. There's nothing about the lifestyle of the Grateful Dead that makes you yearn for the air-conditioned sterility of a computer office. There's nothing in Jerry Abrams' flashing acid tinged lights that could make the monotony of bourgeois life look brighter.
So thanks for the show, "sponsors." I really enjoyed it, tripped the whole way. The Dead were right on time; Quicksilver crazed our already unstable minds; and Headlights put on the best light show I've seen -- even in black and white. So keep those shows comin'. They're mighty nice and I like the price.
[ . . . ]
(by Otis, from the Berkeley Tribe, 5 September 1970)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-OWi1g8Xz5s
The Jefferson Airplane and the Grateful Dead, plus their satellite groups, Hot Tuna and the New Riders of the Purple Sage, will appear as the first attractions in a new series of popular music concerts at Winterland, Oct. 4-5.
"Winterland Presents," co-ordinated and supervised by Harold Copeland and produced by Paul Baratta (one-time Fillmore staffer), plans to present regular shows throughout the winter and spring seasons.
[list of coming attractions]
With a new stage, lighting, and sound arrangements, tickets at $3.50, and substantial financial backing, the Winterland Presents series promises to provide full-scale competition to the Fillmore West offerings and to expand the San Francisco rock-entertainment scene considerably.
(by Philip Elwood, from the San Francisco Examiner, 16 September 1970)
BRAVE NEW MIX-MASH [excerpt]
KQED deserves a big, big round of applause for last night’s 4-hour (10 p.m. to 2 a.m.) show and lively coverage of the Winterland Rock Show – with the Jefferson Airplane, Grateful Dead, and Quicksilver Messenger Service. All kinds of kudos go to producer Larry Armstrong and director Duncan McKelvey. Their on-the-site sound-and-color mix was fittingly dove-tailed to the product.
(from Dwight Newton's TV column, the San Francisco Examiner, 5 October 1970)
ROCK TRIUMVIRATE THRILLS 6000 FANS
The new rock-show operation at Winterland Arena couldn't have chosen a surer sellout program than the triumvirate of Jefferson Airplane, Grateful Dead, and Quicksilver Messenger Service.
And much to the delight of producer Paul Baratta, all expectations were realized both Sunday and last night. The place was jammed with about 6000 fans each evening - enthusiastic, happy, hot, tired, friendly fans of the three famous "old original" San Francisco bands.
Musically things went pretty much according to tradition. Grace Slick of the Airplane and Dino Valenti (who now dominates Quicksilver) were the only two strong and steady singers on stage. Bob Weir of the Dead is also a good one, when his colleagues don't clutter up the background.
The Airplane's vocalist Marty Balin was erratic and out of sorts Sunday and did not show last night. He is a distinctive singer and remarkably fine interpreter of lyrics. But Balin lately has had to shout more than sing.
Perhaps his closing lines Sunday night, "I need a new band," were, indeed, prophetic.
The Dead's instrumental ensemble is now at its all-time best, but their lack of memorable singing hurts their general presentation. Conversely it is the Airplane's sluggish ensemble, which takes half a set to really get going, that causes the group's problems.
But none of this is new -- these things have been true for a long time.
Quicksilver has lost its old thing by becoming essentially Valenti's accompanists. And their new big brass and reed section just compounds the difficulties of trying to keep some of the good old sounds.
Those who came to hear the last show by the old Quicksilver were disappointed at Winterland. What they got, instead, was the beginning of the new, not the last of the old.
A new giant stage has been built in the arena at the end opposite the entry, at the point where the Ice Follies annually mount their various acts. And a huge, superbly directed, sound system has been erected.
Rear-projected light shows splash their stuff on a big scrim which hangs above the stage.
Everything was working this weekend, no major problems in the whole operation.
But Baratta still had a worried look of concern on his tired face. Late yesterday he received word from England that his headliner on October 16-17, the immensely talented and popular singer Dave Mason, has had to cancel because of emigration problems.
(by Philip Elwood, from the San Francisco Examiner, 6 October 1970)
* * *
ROCK, PIGS AND TELEVISION
Sardine-packed longhair music freaks jammed Winterland Sunday for the first revival of the three original San Francisco acid rock groups -- Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane, and Quicksilver Messenger Service.
Hundreds arrived hours early and pitched camp around the old ice-skating rink to be sure to get the $3.50 tickets. Funky trucks, psychedelic buses, and painted and decrepit cars filled every parking space for blocks around.
Sunday night Bill Graham's prodigal partner was turning them away from the door -- not out of humanitarian impulse so everyone inside could breathe, but because there was literally no more space to pack them in. Greed is limited only by necessity.
The music did its job. The Dead's Jerry Garcia plucked away our time, Jack Cassidy looked like he had a narrow lead over Grace Slick in their race towards decadence, Quicksilver put on quite a show. The stage was lighted like a crucible, and the shoulder-to-jaw crowd all faced towards it like sunflowers facing the sun.
And the whole thing was projected into your livingroom, Mr. & Mrs. America, through the marvels of modern electronics. Two radio stations (KQED-fm and KSAN) and a TV station (Channel 9) carried the show live Sunday in quadrisonic -- each radio station carrying two tracks. The first for head culture was sponsored by Pacific Stereo, who bought the time on KSAN who in turn paid the expenses of the broadcast for the "non-commercial" KQED TV and FM. All of this was to tell us that our stereos are obsolete and that we now have to buy quadriplex sound systems. (This is known as planned obsolescences. The record manufacturers are taking their cue from Detroit.)
It was kind of sad to see in one way. Here were the same musicians from in the beginning. Here were many of the same people as in the beginning, plus thousands who had joined along the way, having those same new/old experiences -- community, trusting everyone enough to pass joints openly as a matter of course, realizing membership.
And here was the same rooting pig, packing in as many as fire regulations allowed, hiring moonlighting San Francisco policemen to keep the crowd "under control." The only novelty was the American flag with the peace symbol instead of the field of stars they wore on breast pockets, goading people along with their flashlights. No standing around in the lobby; move along, cummon, keep movin.
It's actually lost ground. The pig has mastered the subculture. Crowd control, as in mace and beanbag shooters, has been replaced by culture control, as in Vortex One and KSAN. Reds are more popular now, same with wine and smack.
When the Dead started to wail on Good Lovin' and the rhythms got tighter and tighter like spiral watchsprings, people screamed, uncoiled. Grace Slick (a first for educational TV) says, "You want your fuckin' music? You'll get your fuckin' music."
Jimi Hendrix died in his own vomit and Janis Joplin died of a smack OD. You won't get their music anymore.
(by csm & snag, from the San Francisco Good Times, 9 October 1970)
* * *
BROADCASTING IT ALL BACK HOME
The sounds and sights of Winterland in our very own bedroom. Far fucking out!
The Quick, the Dead, and the Airplane. Live and on stage, all playing long sets. Beautiful music in quadraphonic sound. Sound like you hear standing next to the amplifiers.
No $3.50 at the door. No lines. No packing in more people than the hall could handle. No muss. No fuss.
Now we can offer the excitement of a hippy/rock/be-in/concert/orgy/dance/happening in the privacy of your very own home. No salesman will call on you. If not absolutely delighted, return to straight society within 10 minutes and get a refund with no questions asked.
In 1966 the ballrooms were just starting. At Chet's Avalon Ballroom strange things were happening.
The Grateful Dead would play "Midnight Hour" for a half hour or more. Pigpen sang, really getting into it. And hundreds of people - practically everyone in the hall - would JOIN HANDS and dance to exhaustion.
It happened several times, I can't describe how it felt, what it did for our heads.
"One of these nights we're going to dance out of here, into the streets, and get the whole city of San Francisco to join us. We'll turn the whole city on," Buddha said one night.
But that was four years ago. If it happened, I missed it.
The Sunday TV/radio broadcast must have taken a lot of energy. Having to go through endless hassles with sponsors and network executives and all that shit. Probably months of hard work by people trying to create something beautiful.
But for many of us it was the wrong show at the wrong time. A couple of weeks after Jimi Hendrix died - in London (why London?). The SAME NIGHT Janis Joplin died - in Hollywood (why Hollywood?). A time when people are shaken by their deaths and wondering if maybe something's wrong with the rock music culture.
And then this show ("Instant Karma's gonna hit you in the face") that makes you wonder even more. Despite all the hard work, despite the music, it was a bummer for many.
Part of it was the medium. A painting, record, or newspaper only hits one of your senses. TV hits several, almost giving you the impression that you're THERE. But you aren't, you're detached from their reality. It's an illusion.
Another problem was that the cameras were backstage. And backstage is where all the groupies - male and female - hang out. The hangers-on.
A lot of it was the disc jockeys. Dusty Street being so trippy with all the Beautiful (Hip) People. Saying "man" every sentence. Saying nothing. Coming on about as liberated as the women's section of the Oakland Tribune.
The other disc jockey - some dude named Ginger Man - was even worse. He had the following conversation with a young WHITE woman:
G.M.: Are you a Black Panther?
"No."
G.M.: Do you believe in violent revolution?
"No."
G.M.: Outtasite!
When a Tribe brother broke the string of "farouts" and "outtasites" by rapping on Bobby Seale on the air, Ginger Man picked up his microphone and ran his racist ass off.
He and Dusty were constantly reminding us what a great time everyone was having. As if we couldn't see and hear the laughs, joints, beer, smiles, "fucks" and "shits," wine, and shouts liberating the airwaves. The constant hype of the announcers somehow made it all seem hollow.
But the worst thing for me - the unforgivable thing - was the way Janis was ignored. The announcers were talking up this new promoter who used to work for Bill Graham. They talked about how he was bringing back the great old days of the San Francisco Scene.
How the three bands - Dead, Quicksilver, and Airplane - were back at Winterland. How everyone was grooving just like they used to in the Summer of Love. But Jimi and Janis were playing Winterland back then too! AND THE PEOPLE IN THE AUDIENCE WEREN'T EVEN TOLD THAT JANIS WAS DEAD.
The rumor spread among some people backstage. Ginger Man on TV asked, "What's happening to our rock stars?", not really wanting an answer. But no one told the masses in the audience about it.
It would have just been BAD VIBES. And they'd hear about it the next day anyway. And why ruin their fun (and our show)? And they didn't really NEED to know, did they?
We should be together.
- Jefferson Airplane
Together doesn't JUST mean 5,000 people jammed into Winterland. Or 300,000 people watching rock murder and mayhem at Altamont. Or even 1,000,000 people digging the same TV show. That's just a step.
Dig it. The promoters (of all sorts) are, more or less, cynical. The audiences are passive, steeped in blind faith. The performers are, ultimately, all alone. That's not together.
I'd like to hold hands with my sisters and brothers, and dance all night. That's another step. Our life's too fine. And we should - must - be together.
(by Rick, from the Berkeley Tribe, 9 October 1970)
* * *
A couple excerpts on Janis:
from JANIS, A BLUE MEMORY
... I heard about her death at the re-opening of Winterland, up in 'Frisco. For the first time in a long time the Jefferson Airplane, the Grateful Dead, and the Quicksilver Messenger Service were going to be on the same bill. KQED, the educational TV station, was telecasting the concert live and in color, and some of the radio stations were simulcasting the event in stereo. The Dead had just done an incredibly together set when the rumor started. I checked UPI, and found it was true. Four years I knew her. Until Sunday that seemed a long time.
Others had checked the story, and by the time I got backstage everyone knew. The reaction of Janis Joplin's fellow 'Frisco musicians was for some reason the same as if they had received a weather report. None of the groups at Winterland shed a tear for Janis that night. They just really didn't grasp its meaning. A publicist for one of them thought it was a great third act, funny, told me to forget about it.
I left the hall and went to a house to watch on TV the event I'd just left.
A friend's face flashed on the screen. He was asked by some do-gooder from NET about the prevalence of drugs and death in rock and roll. He couldn't have been talking about Janis Joplin. He was just talking about someone who OD'd at the Landmark -- but not Janis.
Janis Joplin died on a Sunday, alone, too high in an impersonal motel room. ...
(by John Carpenter, from the Los Angeles Free Press, 16 October 1970)
from JORMA KAUKONEN (interview)
JORMA: We did the thing at Winterland last weekend when Janis died and all these people were saying "gosh it's really shitty, why don't you say something about Janis dying and all that stuff?" I felt that was antithetical to the idea of what everybody playing there was trying to do; which essentially was to have a good time and to have the people that were there have a good time. It's really a great trip, you're all messed up on something or other, and someone says "so and so just died, what a drag." They lay a heavy rap on you. Who needs it? You can read the paper. Why lay it on people at a time when they are supposed to be feeling good? BB King says all that shit better than I do. I really like the way he talks - he's talking about the blues and he says you're playing blues to forget about feeling bad, not to feel bad. That's pretty much the way it is.
(from the Door, San Diego, 22 October 1970)
See also:
http://deadsources.blogspot.com/2013/06/october-4-5-1970-winterland-sf.html
http://deadsources.blogspot.com/2018/03/october-4-1970-winterland-ballroom.html
* * *
Bonus article on the 8/30/70 "Calebration" broadcast on KPIX:
7:30 K-101 (101.3); KCBS (740) - Calabration: Second four channel stereo broadcast with television featuring the Grateful Dead Quick Silver and Swamp Dogg.
("Sunday FM Highlights," SF Examiner 8/30/70)
The Grateful Dead will perform along with the Quicksilver Messenger Service and Swamp Dogg on "Calebration," tonight at 7:30 on Channel 5. To receive the full impact of the music, a viewer should have not only a television set but two FM-stereo receivers.
HEAR - SEE - 4-CHANNEL
Television Broadcast Tonight!
Quicksilver Messenger Service - The Grateful Dead - The Swamp Dogg - tonight at 7:30 on Channel 5, with 4-channel stereo on K101 and KCBS-FM, brought to you by Lafayette stores and TEAC quadrasonic recorders. See the broadcast tonight, hear the 4-channel sound track recorded on the TEAC TCA-42 at any Lafayette Bay Area store all this coming week.
(two more notices from the 8/30/70 SF Examiner)
ROCKSPONIC
Back in '66 when I started goin' to rock concerts, the greatest possible event was a "Quick and the Dead" concert. We'd load up on weed in the car, pay Chet or Bill some money, go in, and trip, sing, scream, and dance for five or six hours. It was the ultimate rock orgasm.
If you'd told me four years ago that the Grateful Dead and Quicksilver Messenger Service would someday star in a "special" on Channel five, I'd have thought you insane. After all, it was underground culture, too fuckin' wild for the TV creeps.
But there they were on the Tube Sunday night with Swamp Dogg and Jerry Abrams' Headlights. And it was outtasite! Pigpen on prime time TV!
Strange changes have come down. When the bands first started playin', it was music for dropouts. Now the businessmen are using it to convince us to drop back IN!
To enjoy the show in all the glory of its quadroponic sound, you needed a small arsenal of stereo equipment. Several radios and a color TV arranged in a circle around you, according to the demonstration. We made do with a black and white TV and a table radio -- and thought we were well off.
The program was "brought to you by" the maker of quadroponic tape machine. They explained the stereo would soon be obsolete, but for "only $695" we can prepare for the quadroponic future. And then we'll enjoy aural orgasms for ever more. At least until Pentagonic sound makes EVERYTHING obsolete.
Of course, some of us dropouts might not have $695. So there was a commercial urging us to check out our local schools for coursers in computer programming, etc. Then we could drop IN during the day to make our $695 and drop OUT at night with our Super Sound System. Sorta like schizoid behavior under the banner of psychedelic capitalism.
Seems like the businessmen are getting a bit nervous. Like they can see that "Rock 'n' Roll is here to stay." But I don't think they're so sure about their economic system -- what will all this living and lack of consumer-consciousness. [sic] So they're tryin' to get a piece of the hippy action. Like Hugh Hefner (of Playboy, Pepsi Generation, and Sexist Pig fame) trying to buy Rolling Stone Magazine.
But there are some problems "getting these kids back in the system." 'Cause the pied pipers are pipin' the wrong tunes. On the program Quicksilver did a very heavy song of the need for revolution. "Whatcha gonna do about me?", they screamed, running down all that's wrong with Amerika. The song was directed against the "sponsors" among others, but I think Mr. Tapedeck D. Jones had his earphones on.
There's nothing about the joyous, maddening, black magical music of Quicksilver that could induce you to drop back in. There's nothing about the lifestyle of the Grateful Dead that makes you yearn for the air-conditioned sterility of a computer office. There's nothing in Jerry Abrams' flashing acid tinged lights that could make the monotony of bourgeois life look brighter.
So thanks for the show, "sponsors." I really enjoyed it, tripped the whole way. The Dead were right on time; Quicksilver crazed our already unstable minds; and Headlights put on the best light show I've seen -- even in black and white. So keep those shows comin'. They're mighty nice and I like the price.
[ . . . ]
(by Otis, from the Berkeley Tribe, 5 September 1970)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-OWi1g8Xz5s
Oct 4, 2018
1970: More Workingman's Dead Reviews
GRATEFUL FOR THE DEAD
My favorite pop rock heart throb group of musicians is the Grateful Dead. I first saw the Dead at a pre-peace march dance in Longshoremans Hall on April 9, 1967. I was fresh from New Jersey and I had never seen a light show, much less the Dead. They came on right after the Sopwith Camel, and they blew my mind; and it's been uphill ever since.
I was sitting eating pizza some time ago when this fellow said that nothing important had come out of the rock explosion. I turned around in my chair and made myself heard as I told him of the virtues of the most holy Grateful Dead. I dragged him to my home and sat him down in front of some enormous speakers and played Anthem of the Sun for him at very high volume. He shouted that they broke all the rules and then he wept as he said, "but it works."
My list of converts is long. I especially like the look on the faces of the people who can't believe that the Live/Dead album was really recorded live. I lean back, light up my four foot marigewana ceegar and explain that if they were to encounter these types in person the rest of their brains would be suitably shattered.
I've followed the Dead's encounter with the forces of capitalism with great interest. Many's the time that some experienced rock hustler would call me aside and say, "how can they expect to make money when they spend over $100,000 on one album. They'll never last, never!"
Ahhhhh but they have lasted, and each succeeding album converts more and more people, not to mention the hamsters. The Dead are the embodiment of the revolution. They live ("I don't know but I been told it's hard to run with the weight of gold.") with a lot of people, and they feed a lot of people, and no one who's ever been with the Dead has ever told a bad story about my pop rock idols.
The Dead have been party to every different type of rock and roll shuck and they've managed to weather them all and feed their family and make every new album. This one's the Workingman's Dead, a mindblower.
In fact they're so good that their good old (and it is a good) record company wouldn't let the Dead loose even if they sold maybe no records. Remember the Dead are the guys who told Billy Graham to fuck off when they were broke. Talk about soul.
The Dead fulfill a most marvelous vision of mine. They are a band which is highly blues and country influenced, which makes music which is exciting and good in terms of anybody's vision. The new album is more down home than anything except "Lovelight" on the Live/Dead album. The songs are sort of short for the Dead, and the words courtesy of Robert Hunter are super good.
"driving that train/
high on cocaine
Casey Jones you better watch your speed
trouble ahead
trouble behind
and you know that notion just crossed my mind."
That's the opening of Casey Jones. Here's the opening of Uncle John's Band:
Well the first days are the hardest days
don't you worry anymore
when life looks like easy street
there is danger at your door
think this through with me
let me know your mind
what I want to know is all you'll find [sic]
The combination of Garcia/Lesh and Hunter is working out and very well. The Workingman's Dead is the finest example of this work, and I hope it's a portent of things to come.
I need some energetic Dead freak to maybe do a service for all mankind. Like sit down with all your Dead albums, and gather the lyrics of all their original songs so that some other revolutionary can print them up and give them out free and thereby give the revolution some good songs. The Dead's songs make you think and are very educational.
This latest example leans heavily on the country roots of the Dead, and I'm sure, on the New Riders of the Purple Sage. That's a mystery for those of you who don't know what that is. The songs are real down to earth. They talk about whatever you like. I find a lot of revolution in the songs; other people may find other things. It'll be in your local ripoff record store in a few weeks, but first a message about local ripoff record stores. There are a few record stores that are run by the people and for the people, like Leopolds in the East Bay and the New Geology Rock Shop in the Haight. Like dig it when the White Front throws a sale the capitalists cry crocodile tears as they rip off the people's cash money. Like Leopolds et al is the best we got till the people own the entire means of production. Also if you know of other records stores that are in the interest of the people, drop a line.
"One way or another, this darkness has got to end." (New Speedway Boogie, by the Grateful Dead on the Workingman's Dead) Dig it.
[The rest of the article reviews Spider John Koerner's Running Jumping Standing Still album.]
(by Sam Silver, from the San Francisco Express Times, 29 May 1970)
* * *
WORKINGMAN'S DEAD, The Grateful Dead, Warner Bros. WS1869
The Dead only know how to get better. This new album captures perfectly the unique craftsmanship they exhibit so effortlessly in concert. They offer several exceptional cuts ("Uncle John's Band," "Dire Wolf," "Casey Jones"), and there isn't a disappointing note on the LP. Even the use of two or more drummers on several of the cuts doesn't intrude on the basic gentleness that is the core of all their recent work. It's music that should be lived with, rather than simply listened to. (And are those really old Sanford Clark licks on "New Speedway Boogie"?)
(from "Recent Releases," the Madison Kaleidoscope, 1 June 1970)
* * *
GROUP GROUP (excerpt)
Speaking of live and free, the Grateful Dead have a new record out. Now, the Dead are a live band if there ever was one. And they used to play for free pretty often too.
The magical band. The Acid Test band. THE San Francisco band. And - on a good night - the highest of the high.
But they've never got it down on a record. Some tracks on "Live Dead" came close, particularly "Love Light." And "Viola Lee Blues" with that stratospheric jam on the first record. In fact, every album has good music on it. But they've never captured the magic.
Sadly, this one is no exception. "Workingman's Dead" is the most "country" of their albums. But it's constipated. Despite impeccable musicianship, it drags like a 300lb. bag of pure country cowshit.
The first cut is downright embarrassing. Thought it was Crosby, Stills, ad infinitum at first. But I soon realized that, despite the whining, the musicians were too good, too tight, and too together to be C.S.N.&Y. Inc.
But it still wasn't the Grateful Dead.
(from the Berkeley Tribe, 19 June 1970)
* * *
WORKING MAN'S DEAD
Ah, a new Grateful Dead album - Working Man's Dead. The Dead generally have had a hard time getting together in the recording studio. Their recording history has sort of paralleled the Airplane's - the bands are close. First albums were very tight and cramped, just hints of the freedom and life and beauty of the live performance. Successive albums - Bathing at Baxters, Crown of the Sun [sic] were mixtures of live and studio recordings, and Crown of Creation and AOXOMOXOA were back in the studios. Then came live albums - Bless Its Pointed Little Head and Live Dead which were finally definitive of the power and majesty of the band's potential. Then the Airplane with the help of a few friends made Volunteers, their best studio album. Quicksilver Messenger Service has gone the same route, only internal hassles in the band made their last studio album untogether - dominated by Nicky Hopkins and not enough Quicksilver. So where were the Dead going?
I couldn't imagine anything following Live Dead. The music there is free, easy, loud, soft, fast, slow, beautiful and terrifying - the Grateful Dead live.
What happened was the Dead got themselves together - having found out they could put their music on a record after all - and put down very easy and flowing in the best Dead style sketches of 8 songs.
Most are songs I remember from being freaked out in giant concerts waiting for the Dead and they come out and do magic and start playing and Christ there's the Dead man real fucking people up there playing so cool so easy flying high and it's no longer a freaked out pop concert as the Dead take us out of the giant cement arenas in 20th century Amerika and into the magical acid world of the Grateful Dead.
But these aren't live versions of the songs as each could be as a side of an album like the songs on Live Dead, but they are sketched skeleton metaphor of the songs live as just the bare essentials of the song are there, but are there so easily and you don't expect a live performance or Live Dead because it's Working Man's Dead - a record.
(from the Rag (Austin, TX), 22 June 1970)
* * *
"WORKINGMAN'S DEAD" IS HUMOROUS TO PHILOSOPHICAL
The Grateful Dead album, Workingman's Dead, is a tribute to a generation. That generation is the Beat Generation, with its pot, its music, its drinking, singing, and most of all, its love of life. The Beats wanted to grasp life as one would a goblet of wine, and then drink it down lustily, so they lived fast, played hard, and never stopped searching for fresh horizons, fresh thrills, and fresh meanings in their world. Out of the storm of the Beat Generation came William Burroughs, Allan Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, Timothy Leary, and Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters. And with Kesey came the Grateful Dead.
The Dead have been around for a long time - they put out the original underground album in 1965 - and yet each album reveals a different musical idea. "Workingman's Dead" is unlike anything else the Dead have ever done. Gone is the feedback, the loud, screeching guitar riffs, the shouted vocals and inexact harmonies of previous LPs. Instead, one finds a series of low-volume arrangements where the words themselves come across and capture the listener's attention. The lyrics are varied in subject matter, ranging from humorous to philosophical to frightening, but there is no variety in their quality. All the songs are outstanding in their ability to tell a tale without sacrificing the quality of the music itself.
It is an album of poetry put to music, true, but to the Dead, music has always been first in importance. Much of the guitar work is acoustical, so that the vocals, the highlight of the disc, stand out. "Uncle John's Band" gives a fine description of what music really is to the Dead. It is playing with the folks that mean something to you just for the sake of getting together for a good time.
I live in a silver mine / and I call it Beggars Tomb
I've got me a violin / and I beg you call the tune.
Anybody's choice / Let me hear your voice
Wo, ho and I want to know / How does the song go?
"Cumberland Blues", "Casey Jones," and "Easy Wind" deal with the kinds of jobs the Beats usually ended up holding - common labor that paid just enough so they could enjoy life in their own way. These jobs allowed them to work without the responsibilities of better paying positions, for when one of them decided to up and leave for a while, it was easy to quit such a job.
Been ballin' that shiny black steel jack hammer
Been breakin' up rocks for the great highway
I'll live five years if I take my time
Ballin' that jack and drinkin' my wine.
The heroes that the Dead give us are again the common laborers. "Casey Jones", which is almost certainly a tribute to the late wildman Neil Cassidy, presents a fine portrait of the workingman-become-hero.
"Workingman's Dead" is a musical documentary of a generation, a poetic portrait of a unique way of life. This album has beautifully captured the Beat Scene. The Dead also have reached a peak of musicianship on this LP, as they finally bring everything together. Instrumentally, vocally, lyrically and creatively, this is their finest effort.
(by Dan Cook, from the Observer (Case Western Reserve U), 13 October 1970)
See also:
http://deadsources.blogspot.com/2018/06/1970-workingmans-dead-reviews.html
http://deadsources.blogspot.com/2012/07/1970-workingmans-dead-reviews.html
My favorite pop rock heart throb group of musicians is the Grateful Dead. I first saw the Dead at a pre-peace march dance in Longshoremans Hall on April 9, 1967. I was fresh from New Jersey and I had never seen a light show, much less the Dead. They came on right after the Sopwith Camel, and they blew my mind; and it's been uphill ever since.
I was sitting eating pizza some time ago when this fellow said that nothing important had come out of the rock explosion. I turned around in my chair and made myself heard as I told him of the virtues of the most holy Grateful Dead. I dragged him to my home and sat him down in front of some enormous speakers and played Anthem of the Sun for him at very high volume. He shouted that they broke all the rules and then he wept as he said, "but it works."
My list of converts is long. I especially like the look on the faces of the people who can't believe that the Live/Dead album was really recorded live. I lean back, light up my four foot marigewana ceegar and explain that if they were to encounter these types in person the rest of their brains would be suitably shattered.
I've followed the Dead's encounter with the forces of capitalism with great interest. Many's the time that some experienced rock hustler would call me aside and say, "how can they expect to make money when they spend over $100,000 on one album. They'll never last, never!"
Ahhhhh but they have lasted, and each succeeding album converts more and more people, not to mention the hamsters. The Dead are the embodiment of the revolution. They live ("I don't know but I been told it's hard to run with the weight of gold.") with a lot of people, and they feed a lot of people, and no one who's ever been with the Dead has ever told a bad story about my pop rock idols.
The Dead have been party to every different type of rock and roll shuck and they've managed to weather them all and feed their family and make every new album. This one's the Workingman's Dead, a mindblower.
In fact they're so good that their good old (and it is a good) record company wouldn't let the Dead loose even if they sold maybe no records. Remember the Dead are the guys who told Billy Graham to fuck off when they were broke. Talk about soul.
The Dead fulfill a most marvelous vision of mine. They are a band which is highly blues and country influenced, which makes music which is exciting and good in terms of anybody's vision. The new album is more down home than anything except "Lovelight" on the Live/Dead album. The songs are sort of short for the Dead, and the words courtesy of Robert Hunter are super good.
"driving that train/
high on cocaine
Casey Jones you better watch your speed
trouble ahead
trouble behind
and you know that notion just crossed my mind."
That's the opening of Casey Jones. Here's the opening of Uncle John's Band:
Well the first days are the hardest days
don't you worry anymore
when life looks like easy street
there is danger at your door
think this through with me
let me know your mind
what I want to know is all you'll find [sic]
The combination of Garcia/Lesh and Hunter is working out and very well. The Workingman's Dead is the finest example of this work, and I hope it's a portent of things to come.
I need some energetic Dead freak to maybe do a service for all mankind. Like sit down with all your Dead albums, and gather the lyrics of all their original songs so that some other revolutionary can print them up and give them out free and thereby give the revolution some good songs. The Dead's songs make you think and are very educational.
This latest example leans heavily on the country roots of the Dead, and I'm sure, on the New Riders of the Purple Sage. That's a mystery for those of you who don't know what that is. The songs are real down to earth. They talk about whatever you like. I find a lot of revolution in the songs; other people may find other things. It'll be in your local ripoff record store in a few weeks, but first a message about local ripoff record stores. There are a few record stores that are run by the people and for the people, like Leopolds in the East Bay and the New Geology Rock Shop in the Haight. Like dig it when the White Front throws a sale the capitalists cry crocodile tears as they rip off the people's cash money. Like Leopolds et al is the best we got till the people own the entire means of production. Also if you know of other records stores that are in the interest of the people, drop a line.
"One way or another, this darkness has got to end." (New Speedway Boogie, by the Grateful Dead on the Workingman's Dead) Dig it.
[The rest of the article reviews Spider John Koerner's Running Jumping Standing Still album.]
(by Sam Silver, from the San Francisco Express Times, 29 May 1970)
* * *
WORKINGMAN'S DEAD, The Grateful Dead, Warner Bros. WS1869
The Dead only know how to get better. This new album captures perfectly the unique craftsmanship they exhibit so effortlessly in concert. They offer several exceptional cuts ("Uncle John's Band," "Dire Wolf," "Casey Jones"), and there isn't a disappointing note on the LP. Even the use of two or more drummers on several of the cuts doesn't intrude on the basic gentleness that is the core of all their recent work. It's music that should be lived with, rather than simply listened to. (And are those really old Sanford Clark licks on "New Speedway Boogie"?)
(from "Recent Releases," the Madison Kaleidoscope, 1 June 1970)
* * *
GROUP GROUP (excerpt)
Speaking of live and free, the Grateful Dead have a new record out. Now, the Dead are a live band if there ever was one. And they used to play for free pretty often too.
The magical band. The Acid Test band. THE San Francisco band. And - on a good night - the highest of the high.
But they've never got it down on a record. Some tracks on "Live Dead" came close, particularly "Love Light." And "Viola Lee Blues" with that stratospheric jam on the first record. In fact, every album has good music on it. But they've never captured the magic.
Sadly, this one is no exception. "Workingman's Dead" is the most "country" of their albums. But it's constipated. Despite impeccable musicianship, it drags like a 300lb. bag of pure country cowshit.
The first cut is downright embarrassing. Thought it was Crosby, Stills, ad infinitum at first. But I soon realized that, despite the whining, the musicians were too good, too tight, and too together to be C.S.N.&Y. Inc.
But it still wasn't the Grateful Dead.
(from the Berkeley Tribe, 19 June 1970)
* * *
WORKING MAN'S DEAD
Ah, a new Grateful Dead album - Working Man's Dead. The Dead generally have had a hard time getting together in the recording studio. Their recording history has sort of paralleled the Airplane's - the bands are close. First albums were very tight and cramped, just hints of the freedom and life and beauty of the live performance. Successive albums - Bathing at Baxters, Crown of the Sun [sic] were mixtures of live and studio recordings, and Crown of Creation and AOXOMOXOA were back in the studios. Then came live albums - Bless Its Pointed Little Head and Live Dead which were finally definitive of the power and majesty of the band's potential. Then the Airplane with the help of a few friends made Volunteers, their best studio album. Quicksilver Messenger Service has gone the same route, only internal hassles in the band made their last studio album untogether - dominated by Nicky Hopkins and not enough Quicksilver. So where were the Dead going?
I couldn't imagine anything following Live Dead. The music there is free, easy, loud, soft, fast, slow, beautiful and terrifying - the Grateful Dead live.
What happened was the Dead got themselves together - having found out they could put their music on a record after all - and put down very easy and flowing in the best Dead style sketches of 8 songs.
Most are songs I remember from being freaked out in giant concerts waiting for the Dead and they come out and do magic and start playing and Christ there's the Dead man real fucking people up there playing so cool so easy flying high and it's no longer a freaked out pop concert as the Dead take us out of the giant cement arenas in 20th century Amerika and into the magical acid world of the Grateful Dead.
But these aren't live versions of the songs as each could be as a side of an album like the songs on Live Dead, but they are sketched skeleton metaphor of the songs live as just the bare essentials of the song are there, but are there so easily and you don't expect a live performance or Live Dead because it's Working Man's Dead - a record.
(from the Rag (Austin, TX), 22 June 1970)
* * *
"WORKINGMAN'S DEAD" IS HUMOROUS TO PHILOSOPHICAL
The Grateful Dead album, Workingman's Dead, is a tribute to a generation. That generation is the Beat Generation, with its pot, its music, its drinking, singing, and most of all, its love of life. The Beats wanted to grasp life as one would a goblet of wine, and then drink it down lustily, so they lived fast, played hard, and never stopped searching for fresh horizons, fresh thrills, and fresh meanings in their world. Out of the storm of the Beat Generation came William Burroughs, Allan Ginsberg, Jack Kerouac, Timothy Leary, and Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters. And with Kesey came the Grateful Dead.
The Dead have been around for a long time - they put out the original underground album in 1965 - and yet each album reveals a different musical idea. "Workingman's Dead" is unlike anything else the Dead have ever done. Gone is the feedback, the loud, screeching guitar riffs, the shouted vocals and inexact harmonies of previous LPs. Instead, one finds a series of low-volume arrangements where the words themselves come across and capture the listener's attention. The lyrics are varied in subject matter, ranging from humorous to philosophical to frightening, but there is no variety in their quality. All the songs are outstanding in their ability to tell a tale without sacrificing the quality of the music itself.
It is an album of poetry put to music, true, but to the Dead, music has always been first in importance. Much of the guitar work is acoustical, so that the vocals, the highlight of the disc, stand out. "Uncle John's Band" gives a fine description of what music really is to the Dead. It is playing with the folks that mean something to you just for the sake of getting together for a good time.
I live in a silver mine / and I call it Beggars Tomb
I've got me a violin / and I beg you call the tune.
Anybody's choice / Let me hear your voice
Wo, ho and I want to know / How does the song go?
"Cumberland Blues", "Casey Jones," and "Easy Wind" deal with the kinds of jobs the Beats usually ended up holding - common labor that paid just enough so they could enjoy life in their own way. These jobs allowed them to work without the responsibilities of better paying positions, for when one of them decided to up and leave for a while, it was easy to quit such a job.
Been ballin' that shiny black steel jack hammer
Been breakin' up rocks for the great highway
I'll live five years if I take my time
Ballin' that jack and drinkin' my wine.
The heroes that the Dead give us are again the common laborers. "Casey Jones", which is almost certainly a tribute to the late wildman Neil Cassidy, presents a fine portrait of the workingman-become-hero.
"Workingman's Dead" is a musical documentary of a generation, a poetic portrait of a unique way of life. This album has beautifully captured the Beat Scene. The Dead also have reached a peak of musicianship on this LP, as they finally bring everything together. Instrumentally, vocally, lyrically and creatively, this is their finest effort.
(by Dan Cook, from the Observer (Case Western Reserve U), 13 October 1970)
See also:
http://deadsources.blogspot.com/2018/06/1970-workingmans-dead-reviews.html
http://deadsources.blogspot.com/2012/07/1970-workingmans-dead-reviews.html
Sep 21, 2018
February 4, 1970: Family Dog
BLACK SHADOW
Wednesday night (last Wednesday - a week ago) there was a hot-shit, high-class, invitational only bash at the Family Dog. If you had gone down, you could have gotten in - like you walk up to the door and say, "Marty Balin invited me," and bop on through. I said, "Ralph Gleason invited me," (actually it had been Sandy Darlington). I invited a number of people myself, and they said, "Black Shadow invited me." Everybody got in. Hip high-society, rubbing elbows. Get in free.
KQED-TV was taping a live rock show with the Airplane, the Dead, Santana, and Kimberly. But it was really a party, a television party, and as a matter of fact it was pretty neat. I usually get places early ('cause I dig watching things get set up), and Lil and I arrived around 8:00. The Dog was mostly empty except for a bunch of people sitting around the stage, early-bird movie cameramen, and some technicians playing with their shiny TV cameras. It felt good, even with nothing happening; people were relaxed and expectant, rapping and watching the big color-TV monitor by the side of the stage. There were three cameras, two of them on high dollies and one (right in front of the stage) on a low, rolling platform. People drifted in in pairs and triplets, and strolled up and down the hall looking for their friends.
After a while, Kimberly started to play. We hadn't brought any dope, and I went looking for someone who had. No luck, so I complained to the management and wandered some more. The cameras were mostly taking pictures of the audience, and big, colored lights blinded us. That's the price you pay for fame and everything. The Dog was getting more crowded now, and I could feel the curve of excitement rising slowly. Something was building, but not yet built. Fuck, where was the dope?
The second (or third) wave of arrivals came bearing the sacrament, and an angelic chick who had come with Robert Altman led me to where it was being smoked. Five or ten minutes later I slipped back into the flow, as Kimberly finished their set and the Stones bootleg concert album started playing on the PA. Dope circulated freely. The curve was getting up there now, and I realized that it wasn't a concert, wasn't even an event, but merely a party. Santana started to play, and I found my way up to the front so I could watch the cameramen and the TV monitor.
TV is groovy stuff, man. Instant feedback, watching the image in the back of the camera while you take it. There wasn't much room to move around, but whenever the cameras had to change position the crowd obligingly melted, flowed, and crystallized again, understanding the reason for the disruption and perfectly cool. Altamont should have been like that. No one was uptight about anything. The earlier promise of good vibes had been fulfilled, and I was well and truly stoned. Helpless to do much more than sit there and take it all in, I let Santana fill me with energy, watched the cameras, and smoked more dope.
There had been rumors (the usual rumors - you know) that the man was arriving with a lot of acid. I went over to the snack bar and discovered two big barrels of kool-aid punch - a barrel of green kool-aid and a barrel of red kool-aid. I stood there trying to figure out the psychology of the kool-aid makers: if I were going to put acid in one of these barrels, which barrel would I put it in? Finally I drank some green and some red, filled cups, and brought them to Lil and Altman. But the acid turned out to be rumor-acid, and we never got off. No matter.
By now the Dead were setting up. Earlier in the evening I had gone over to ask Jerry Garcia something, and discovered him in the grip of an intense karmic involvement with this cat whose lady wanted to dance on-stage with the Dead. The cat was channeling a really heavy energy beam at Garcia, and Garcia was just doing the best he could, saying, "Sure, man, she can do whatever she wants, it's cool," but the cat couldn't dig it and kept right on beaming in, saying, "She couldn't get it together to ask you, and you're just her favorite band," and on and on. I remembered a Common meeting when someone had accused Garcia of being a rock star, and Garcia said, "We can't help it, man, if people need to make us rock stars we gotta play along."
So now she was up there with the Dead, living a dream and dancing North Beach go-go style. I watched her tits bounce for a while, but the best dancers were on the floor, dancing for themselves. I really don't dig watching go-go dancers - the ego-trip gets in the way. The Dead put out some pretty music, but they weren't up to the energy explosion that they usually pull off. They had just gotten busted in New Orleans a couple of days before, and under the circumstances I could dig that they might be a shade off the mark. But even on an off-night the Dead look out for your head, and it was good to dance, good to be there with them.
The dope was still going around, and it all began to flow even smoother than before. Somehow the Dead got off and the Airplane got on, and then Jorma's guitar was ripping through the smoke-filled hall, carrying an intensity that couldn't have hit me more intimately if his guitar strings had been attached to my teeth. A rush, heavy and fine, and then Marty and Grace were into "Another Side of This Life," just as sad/true as it was when Fred Neill sang it in the Gaslight on MacDougal Street, lo these many years ago. The Airplane did it up just right, and now the curve was peaking and I leaned into it, giving over to the music.
But going through the acid number (you know: Is it coming on? Am I getting off?) had used up a lot of energy, and Jorma's guitar was about all I could still pick up on. Tired, happy, wasted, I wandered around until I found Lil and we crashed somewhere off by ourselves, letting the Airplane TCB. There was a jam afterward, but I couldn't listen anymore and we split.
Sure was a nice party.
(from the San Francisco Good Times, 13 February 1970)
* * *
COLUMBYN
In April the National Educational Television network will present an hour and a half special featuring the Jefferson Airplane, the Grateful Dead, Santana, and 800 invited guests in various states of heightened consciousness. The show was pulled together by writer Ralph Gleason, who was able to secure for the groups complete control over the program, filmed last week at the Family Dog Ballroom on the Pacific Coast Highway. The show promises to be unique in many ways. To begin with, not since the heyday of the old Fillmore Ballroom almost three years ago have I seen such a cosmic gathering. In the crowd Dino Valenti wandered around, as did members of the Quick Silver Messenger Service, Bill Graham, Chet Helms, the old Charlatans, and other members of Frisco bands and scene makers. Members of the San Francisco Hip Society, sipping red or green Kool Aid, according to taste.
At the rear of the hall in a sound box was Owsley, the sound man at the original Family Dog and Acid Test gatherings. It was like the class reunion of Sandoz '65.
The taping started at eight in the evening. Santana, the Airplane, and the Dead were each to do short sets, then join together for a jam session.
The jam session started late in the evening, the Kool Aid and the vibes were electric as the Dead, Quick Silver, the Airplane, and Santana played with each other. Various members of the audience also took the mike and crooned their trip into it. After a decent allowance of time with the mike, the tripster would be gently guided off stage as, together, the bands played on into the night.
All of the bands were as good as I have seen them before, only this night they seemed especially so. It was as if they all got a chance to take a trip back to the scene Frisco was before they were rock stars, before the ballrooms got over-crowded and people stopped dancing in them.
Gleason wrote a book last year, The Jefferson Airplane and The San Francisco Sound (Bantam, 95 cents), in which he reviewed the San Francisco scene from its beginnings and interviewed each of the Jefferson Airplane. In the interview with singer Marty Balin, the following dialogue takes place.
GLEASON: It's a profound sociological event, this whole last two years.
MARTY: It's funny how it happens like that. If you have a sense of history, you can see...we are the renaissance of today...the young people, the grass, and the music.
GLEASON: They can't stop the music...there are little delaying actions...you guys did it...you are on the top of the charts on every radio station in this country. They can't erase that. It is there. Forever. When you do your ninety minute TV thing, what it ought to be is the whole thing. It should lay it right out there visually.
MARTY: That's what we want to do. Yeah! We want to tell it from the inside and tell it so beautifully and so heavy that, for an hour, people are just caught up...not with just selling it, or this and that, you know, just showing off, but just the sheer poetry of it, the beautiful idea that exists. It would blow people's minds, and hour and God! [sic] How can we get the chance to do it? Nobody will give us the chance. They think we are all crazy! When we went into those towns, well, we said, "Let's go play in the park for the people like we do at home." So we'd do that, and I'm not kidding you! We'd play in these Civic Centers, and we played one place, the cops just lined up around this whole Civic Center, all the cops in the city, from out of town, and there are maybe 50,000 kids there for our free concert, right in the middle of the Civic Center. It was just great! It was a fantastic thing... They would have barriers up, and we'd just knock the barriers over. We'd take off our shirts and not bullshit. We just came out on this sunny day, and we're all getting tans, too, and they just had a great time. [We'd] do that before we'd go play a concert lots of times, and they'd still come to the concert. Promoters would freak out. They'd say, "You can't play anywhere for a 50 mile radius," so we played for nothing, for ourselves for free, and they'd blow their minds.
GLEASON: Have they tried to write anything into the contract saying you can't play for free?
MARTY: No. They don't think anybody plays for no money.
Gleason says, "The book is a gas if you were, like myself, involved in the early days of the San Francisco scene. The crazy people Marty spoke of finally got their chance, in the Family Dog Ballroom, to lay it out for TV, so beautifully that the people were caught up, and the old San Francisco magic came back for a return appearance. In April you'll be able to see what all the shouting was about way back then, on Channel 28.
(by John Carpenter, from the Los Angeles Free Press, 20 February 1970)
* * *
THE S.F. ROCK SCENE REVISITED
The Haight-Ashbury may be a disaster area and the hippies may be dead, dispersed, or diverted, but the music which made the mid-Sixties a turning point in American social history is alive and well.
The Jefferson Airplane, The Grateful Dead, and the Quicksilver Messenger Service are the three bands from the original dances in 1965-66 and they are still strong bands today, and the Dead, strangely enough, is now more popular than ever.
When it was all happening in the beginning months, TV crews and filmmakers from all over the world flocked to San Francisco's ballrooms and photographed the action. I remember when a BBC-TV crew spent weeks here in a frenzy of filming, living with the Grateful Dead and following one band after another around to dances and concerts.
But somehow all these representations of the San Francisco scene failed to bring out what it was really like, perhaps because of time limitations, perhaps because of other things.
In any case, it certainly never seemed to me that what I ended up watching on the screen or the tube really got the feeling that the events themselves had in that period.
So when the chance came to make a film and a videotape program for National Educational Television on the San Francisco adult rock music [scene], it was too good to resist.
The results will be seen today on Channel 9 at 10 p.m. in NET's "Fanfare" series and next Sunday night at 10. Tonight's program is a filmed performance documentary and is called "San Francisco Rock: Go Ride the Music." Next Sunday night's program is a videotape show and is called "San Francisco Rock: A Night at the Family Dog."
The programs began as a series of discussions between Dick Moore (then head of KQED's film unit and now head of the entire KQED operation), Bob Zagone (who had directed numerous rock and jazz programs for KQED), and myself. When NET approved the idea, we then went to the Jefferson Airplane for a long evening's discussion of what to do, and the project was under way.
That was early this year. The Airplane wanted the music to be seen and heard in its most natural setting. So we took over the ballroom on the Great Highway that the Family Dog was then operating and had a two-night rehearsal and shooting schedule with the KQED mobile video unit and with special assistance from Glenn McKay, the light show artist who had done so many of the Airplane's shows.
The program consisted of sets by the Airplane, the Grateful Dead, and Santana, one of the exciting younger bands who was there as the Airplane's guest, and a jam session at the end of the evening. Special care was taken to keep the lighting necessary for video cameras low enough so it did not distract either the musicians or the audience and [was] still bright enough to get an image.
Bob Zagone worked outside in the mobile unit's command truck with its control room setup, and the whole evening was videotaped and an hour show edited down from that.
Then we went to work on the film program, the idea of which was to show the bands in several different scenes and to get some feeling of how it was for them, as differentiated from the feeling of the video show at the Family Dog which was more from the audience viewpoint.
We filmed an evening with the Airplane at Pacific High studios in San Francisco where they just played a couple of sets for their friends, a group which included members of most of the other bands and several visitors such as David Crosby. There we had more mobility with hand-held cameras and simultaneous shooting from several locations.
Next we had the unusual opportunity of participating in one of the dances that the San Francisco bands themselves ran. This was an evening at Winterland featuring the Airplane and the Quicksilver Messenger Service.
We were able to film the special technical arrangements being made prior to the performance and to film, with one hand-held camera, a portable light, and a tape recorder, backstage in the dressing room as Dino Valenti rehearsed a new song with David Freiberg of Quicksilver.
Then, with good luck running with us, we were able to arrange for a free concert by Quicksilver at Sonoma State College on a gorgeous sunny afternoon in March during a special week-long peace program. It was a wild day.
One of the group had decided to quit and we didn't know if he would show up. There was a terrible hassle getting a piano for Nicky Hopkins. The electricity blew out three times in the opening number, but somehow we survived it all and got a lot of excellent footage of the band and the audience in that benign setting.
Then the hard part came when Bob Mathews mixed down the music tracks and Claire Ritchie and Bill Yahraus edited the film. That is the show we will see tonight, with the video performance at the Family Dog next Sunday night.
In neither of the programs did we want to set up an outside voice to narrate, so the only voices heard are those of the musicians themselves. In tonight's film there are short interviews with both Marty Balin, lead singer of the Airplane, and Jerry Garcia, guitarist and unofficial musical guru of the San Francisco scene, which set the stance for the entire approach.
Since the filming at Sonoma State followed the evening when Dino Valenti brought out his new song, we were able to cut from the dressing room rehearsal to the outdoor performance in one of the most effective moments I have seen concerning contemporary music.
Rock music is, of course, inextricably bound up with electronics, and we were lucky throughout to get the kind of realistic sound we did. In addition, Bob Zagone's prior experience with Jazz Casual shows and with several rock shows (including the West Pole series) was of immense value in capturing the feeling of the musicians and of the event itself in each case.
Both of the programs are being sent out over the Public Broadcasting System's network to the educational TV stations all over the country, and hopefully they will all program them.
San Francisco's contribution to contemporary music has finally had an adequate representation on film and videotape which, no matter what may happen now to trends and styles, will be available for history. I am proud to have had even a small role in bringing it about.
Both programs will be repeated, incidentally, on the Saturdays following the initial showing. Tonight's program will be repeated Dec. 12 at 6 o'clock and next Sunday night's program will be repeated at 6 on Dec. 19.
(by Ralph Gleason, from the San Francisco Examiner, 6 December 1970)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U0XVcM_osts (China>Rider)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8uptOZA_UIs (Hard to Handle)
See also:
http://deadsources.blogspot.com/2012/07/february-4-1970-family-dog.html
Wednesday night (last Wednesday - a week ago) there was a hot-shit, high-class, invitational only bash at the Family Dog. If you had gone down, you could have gotten in - like you walk up to the door and say, "Marty Balin invited me," and bop on through. I said, "Ralph Gleason invited me," (actually it had been Sandy Darlington). I invited a number of people myself, and they said, "Black Shadow invited me." Everybody got in. Hip high-society, rubbing elbows. Get in free.
KQED-TV was taping a live rock show with the Airplane, the Dead, Santana, and Kimberly. But it was really a party, a television party, and as a matter of fact it was pretty neat. I usually get places early ('cause I dig watching things get set up), and Lil and I arrived around 8:00. The Dog was mostly empty except for a bunch of people sitting around the stage, early-bird movie cameramen, and some technicians playing with their shiny TV cameras. It felt good, even with nothing happening; people were relaxed and expectant, rapping and watching the big color-TV monitor by the side of the stage. There were three cameras, two of them on high dollies and one (right in front of the stage) on a low, rolling platform. People drifted in in pairs and triplets, and strolled up and down the hall looking for their friends.
After a while, Kimberly started to play. We hadn't brought any dope, and I went looking for someone who had. No luck, so I complained to the management and wandered some more. The cameras were mostly taking pictures of the audience, and big, colored lights blinded us. That's the price you pay for fame and everything. The Dog was getting more crowded now, and I could feel the curve of excitement rising slowly. Something was building, but not yet built. Fuck, where was the dope?
The second (or third) wave of arrivals came bearing the sacrament, and an angelic chick who had come with Robert Altman led me to where it was being smoked. Five or ten minutes later I slipped back into the flow, as Kimberly finished their set and the Stones bootleg concert album started playing on the PA. Dope circulated freely. The curve was getting up there now, and I realized that it wasn't a concert, wasn't even an event, but merely a party. Santana started to play, and I found my way up to the front so I could watch the cameramen and the TV monitor.
TV is groovy stuff, man. Instant feedback, watching the image in the back of the camera while you take it. There wasn't much room to move around, but whenever the cameras had to change position the crowd obligingly melted, flowed, and crystallized again, understanding the reason for the disruption and perfectly cool. Altamont should have been like that. No one was uptight about anything. The earlier promise of good vibes had been fulfilled, and I was well and truly stoned. Helpless to do much more than sit there and take it all in, I let Santana fill me with energy, watched the cameras, and smoked more dope.
There had been rumors (the usual rumors - you know) that the man was arriving with a lot of acid. I went over to the snack bar and discovered two big barrels of kool-aid punch - a barrel of green kool-aid and a barrel of red kool-aid. I stood there trying to figure out the psychology of the kool-aid makers: if I were going to put acid in one of these barrels, which barrel would I put it in? Finally I drank some green and some red, filled cups, and brought them to Lil and Altman. But the acid turned out to be rumor-acid, and we never got off. No matter.
By now the Dead were setting up. Earlier in the evening I had gone over to ask Jerry Garcia something, and discovered him in the grip of an intense karmic involvement with this cat whose lady wanted to dance on-stage with the Dead. The cat was channeling a really heavy energy beam at Garcia, and Garcia was just doing the best he could, saying, "Sure, man, she can do whatever she wants, it's cool," but the cat couldn't dig it and kept right on beaming in, saying, "She couldn't get it together to ask you, and you're just her favorite band," and on and on. I remembered a Common meeting when someone had accused Garcia of being a rock star, and Garcia said, "We can't help it, man, if people need to make us rock stars we gotta play along."
So now she was up there with the Dead, living a dream and dancing North Beach go-go style. I watched her tits bounce for a while, but the best dancers were on the floor, dancing for themselves. I really don't dig watching go-go dancers - the ego-trip gets in the way. The Dead put out some pretty music, but they weren't up to the energy explosion that they usually pull off. They had just gotten busted in New Orleans a couple of days before, and under the circumstances I could dig that they might be a shade off the mark. But even on an off-night the Dead look out for your head, and it was good to dance, good to be there with them.
The dope was still going around, and it all began to flow even smoother than before. Somehow the Dead got off and the Airplane got on, and then Jorma's guitar was ripping through the smoke-filled hall, carrying an intensity that couldn't have hit me more intimately if his guitar strings had been attached to my teeth. A rush, heavy and fine, and then Marty and Grace were into "Another Side of This Life," just as sad/true as it was when Fred Neill sang it in the Gaslight on MacDougal Street, lo these many years ago. The Airplane did it up just right, and now the curve was peaking and I leaned into it, giving over to the music.
But going through the acid number (you know: Is it coming on? Am I getting off?) had used up a lot of energy, and Jorma's guitar was about all I could still pick up on. Tired, happy, wasted, I wandered around until I found Lil and we crashed somewhere off by ourselves, letting the Airplane TCB. There was a jam afterward, but I couldn't listen anymore and we split.
Sure was a nice party.
(from the San Francisco Good Times, 13 February 1970)
* * *
COLUMBYN
In April the National Educational Television network will present an hour and a half special featuring the Jefferson Airplane, the Grateful Dead, Santana, and 800 invited guests in various states of heightened consciousness. The show was pulled together by writer Ralph Gleason, who was able to secure for the groups complete control over the program, filmed last week at the Family Dog Ballroom on the Pacific Coast Highway. The show promises to be unique in many ways. To begin with, not since the heyday of the old Fillmore Ballroom almost three years ago have I seen such a cosmic gathering. In the crowd Dino Valenti wandered around, as did members of the Quick Silver Messenger Service, Bill Graham, Chet Helms, the old Charlatans, and other members of Frisco bands and scene makers. Members of the San Francisco Hip Society, sipping red or green Kool Aid, according to taste.
At the rear of the hall in a sound box was Owsley, the sound man at the original Family Dog and Acid Test gatherings. It was like the class reunion of Sandoz '65.
The taping started at eight in the evening. Santana, the Airplane, and the Dead were each to do short sets, then join together for a jam session.
The jam session started late in the evening, the Kool Aid and the vibes were electric as the Dead, Quick Silver, the Airplane, and Santana played with each other. Various members of the audience also took the mike and crooned their trip into it. After a decent allowance of time with the mike, the tripster would be gently guided off stage as, together, the bands played on into the night.
All of the bands were as good as I have seen them before, only this night they seemed especially so. It was as if they all got a chance to take a trip back to the scene Frisco was before they were rock stars, before the ballrooms got over-crowded and people stopped dancing in them.
Gleason wrote a book last year, The Jefferson Airplane and The San Francisco Sound (Bantam, 95 cents), in which he reviewed the San Francisco scene from its beginnings and interviewed each of the Jefferson Airplane. In the interview with singer Marty Balin, the following dialogue takes place.
GLEASON: It's a profound sociological event, this whole last two years.
MARTY: It's funny how it happens like that. If you have a sense of history, you can see...we are the renaissance of today...the young people, the grass, and the music.
GLEASON: They can't stop the music...there are little delaying actions...you guys did it...you are on the top of the charts on every radio station in this country. They can't erase that. It is there. Forever. When you do your ninety minute TV thing, what it ought to be is the whole thing. It should lay it right out there visually.
MARTY: That's what we want to do. Yeah! We want to tell it from the inside and tell it so beautifully and so heavy that, for an hour, people are just caught up...not with just selling it, or this and that, you know, just showing off, but just the sheer poetry of it, the beautiful idea that exists. It would blow people's minds, and hour and God! [sic] How can we get the chance to do it? Nobody will give us the chance. They think we are all crazy! When we went into those towns, well, we said, "Let's go play in the park for the people like we do at home." So we'd do that, and I'm not kidding you! We'd play in these Civic Centers, and we played one place, the cops just lined up around this whole Civic Center, all the cops in the city, from out of town, and there are maybe 50,000 kids there for our free concert, right in the middle of the Civic Center. It was just great! It was a fantastic thing... They would have barriers up, and we'd just knock the barriers over. We'd take off our shirts and not bullshit. We just came out on this sunny day, and we're all getting tans, too, and they just had a great time. [We'd] do that before we'd go play a concert lots of times, and they'd still come to the concert. Promoters would freak out. They'd say, "You can't play anywhere for a 50 mile radius," so we played for nothing, for ourselves for free, and they'd blow their minds.
GLEASON: Have they tried to write anything into the contract saying you can't play for free?
MARTY: No. They don't think anybody plays for no money.
Gleason says, "The book is a gas if you were, like myself, involved in the early days of the San Francisco scene. The crazy people Marty spoke of finally got their chance, in the Family Dog Ballroom, to lay it out for TV, so beautifully that the people were caught up, and the old San Francisco magic came back for a return appearance. In April you'll be able to see what all the shouting was about way back then, on Channel 28.
(by John Carpenter, from the Los Angeles Free Press, 20 February 1970)
* * *
THE S.F. ROCK SCENE REVISITED
The Haight-Ashbury may be a disaster area and the hippies may be dead, dispersed, or diverted, but the music which made the mid-Sixties a turning point in American social history is alive and well.
The Jefferson Airplane, The Grateful Dead, and the Quicksilver Messenger Service are the three bands from the original dances in 1965-66 and they are still strong bands today, and the Dead, strangely enough, is now more popular than ever.
When it was all happening in the beginning months, TV crews and filmmakers from all over the world flocked to San Francisco's ballrooms and photographed the action. I remember when a BBC-TV crew spent weeks here in a frenzy of filming, living with the Grateful Dead and following one band after another around to dances and concerts.
But somehow all these representations of the San Francisco scene failed to bring out what it was really like, perhaps because of time limitations, perhaps because of other things.
In any case, it certainly never seemed to me that what I ended up watching on the screen or the tube really got the feeling that the events themselves had in that period.
So when the chance came to make a film and a videotape program for National Educational Television on the San Francisco adult rock music [scene], it was too good to resist.
The results will be seen today on Channel 9 at 10 p.m. in NET's "Fanfare" series and next Sunday night at 10. Tonight's program is a filmed performance documentary and is called "San Francisco Rock: Go Ride the Music." Next Sunday night's program is a videotape show and is called "San Francisco Rock: A Night at the Family Dog."
The programs began as a series of discussions between Dick Moore (then head of KQED's film unit and now head of the entire KQED operation), Bob Zagone (who had directed numerous rock and jazz programs for KQED), and myself. When NET approved the idea, we then went to the Jefferson Airplane for a long evening's discussion of what to do, and the project was under way.
That was early this year. The Airplane wanted the music to be seen and heard in its most natural setting. So we took over the ballroom on the Great Highway that the Family Dog was then operating and had a two-night rehearsal and shooting schedule with the KQED mobile video unit and with special assistance from Glenn McKay, the light show artist who had done so many of the Airplane's shows.
The program consisted of sets by the Airplane, the Grateful Dead, and Santana, one of the exciting younger bands who was there as the Airplane's guest, and a jam session at the end of the evening. Special care was taken to keep the lighting necessary for video cameras low enough so it did not distract either the musicians or the audience and [was] still bright enough to get an image.
Bob Zagone worked outside in the mobile unit's command truck with its control room setup, and the whole evening was videotaped and an hour show edited down from that.
Then we went to work on the film program, the idea of which was to show the bands in several different scenes and to get some feeling of how it was for them, as differentiated from the feeling of the video show at the Family Dog which was more from the audience viewpoint.
We filmed an evening with the Airplane at Pacific High studios in San Francisco where they just played a couple of sets for their friends, a group which included members of most of the other bands and several visitors such as David Crosby. There we had more mobility with hand-held cameras and simultaneous shooting from several locations.
Next we had the unusual opportunity of participating in one of the dances that the San Francisco bands themselves ran. This was an evening at Winterland featuring the Airplane and the Quicksilver Messenger Service.
We were able to film the special technical arrangements being made prior to the performance and to film, with one hand-held camera, a portable light, and a tape recorder, backstage in the dressing room as Dino Valenti rehearsed a new song with David Freiberg of Quicksilver.
Then, with good luck running with us, we were able to arrange for a free concert by Quicksilver at Sonoma State College on a gorgeous sunny afternoon in March during a special week-long peace program. It was a wild day.
One of the group had decided to quit and we didn't know if he would show up. There was a terrible hassle getting a piano for Nicky Hopkins. The electricity blew out three times in the opening number, but somehow we survived it all and got a lot of excellent footage of the band and the audience in that benign setting.
Then the hard part came when Bob Mathews mixed down the music tracks and Claire Ritchie and Bill Yahraus edited the film. That is the show we will see tonight, with the video performance at the Family Dog next Sunday night.
In neither of the programs did we want to set up an outside voice to narrate, so the only voices heard are those of the musicians themselves. In tonight's film there are short interviews with both Marty Balin, lead singer of the Airplane, and Jerry Garcia, guitarist and unofficial musical guru of the San Francisco scene, which set the stance for the entire approach.
Since the filming at Sonoma State followed the evening when Dino Valenti brought out his new song, we were able to cut from the dressing room rehearsal to the outdoor performance in one of the most effective moments I have seen concerning contemporary music.
Rock music is, of course, inextricably bound up with electronics, and we were lucky throughout to get the kind of realistic sound we did. In addition, Bob Zagone's prior experience with Jazz Casual shows and with several rock shows (including the West Pole series) was of immense value in capturing the feeling of the musicians and of the event itself in each case.
Both of the programs are being sent out over the Public Broadcasting System's network to the educational TV stations all over the country, and hopefully they will all program them.
San Francisco's contribution to contemporary music has finally had an adequate representation on film and videotape which, no matter what may happen now to trends and styles, will be available for history. I am proud to have had even a small role in bringing it about.
Both programs will be repeated, incidentally, on the Saturdays following the initial showing. Tonight's program will be repeated Dec. 12 at 6 o'clock and next Sunday night's program will be repeated at 6 on Dec. 19.
(by Ralph Gleason, from the San Francisco Examiner, 6 December 1970)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U0XVcM_osts (China>Rider)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8uptOZA_UIs (Hard to Handle)
See also:
http://deadsources.blogspot.com/2012/07/february-4-1970-family-dog.html
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