1970 December 28 - El Monte, CA

GRATEFUL DEADMonday, December 28, 1970Legion Stadium - El Monte, CAAudience Recording

Music can change your mood, brighten your day, and transport you to far away lands. The Grateful Dead were good for all of these things, and sometimes a bit more. Sometimes the Dead’s music could even change the weather on you, causing the sun to burst through a cloudy day, or even change the season from winter to summer. Such is the case with 12/28/70. Firmly planted in what nearly anyone would call the middle of winter (okay, just seven days in on the calendar), this show ushers bright green grass, sunshine, and warm breezes into the coldest and darkest of days. It’s really something pervasive to what could be called the Dead’s 1971 sound – a folk and country tinged psychedelic rock that emanates a deep relaxed and joyful ease. And here at the doorsteps to 1971, we have a recording that brings this to our ears beautifully. Good time, summertime Grateful Dead.

12/28/70 was another tape which came to be a fixture for me as my appreciation of audience recordings grew over the years. As yet another recording by the same duo responsible for the infamous 08/06/71 tape, as well as the wonderful recording of 07/01/73, on December 28^th, 1970 Craig Todd and Harv Kaslow managed to come away with a recording that stands right up there with the gems they would produce in years to come. With beautiful range and surprisingly impressive stereo separation, this tape defies the standard pigeonholing that many people attribute to old Grateful Dead audience tapes.

Musically, 1970 becomes a difficult year to stack shows against shows, mainly because the truly phenomenal nights claim an unfair advantage over other shows which are good in their own right, yet perhaps don’t exist on the same “truly phenomenal” plane. While 12/28/70 isn’t one of these shows that can be called “best ever,” recognizing it as a good 1970 show coupled with its being preserved in spectacular recording quality given the time period, offers a quality inroad to the world of great AUDs. It’s a quiet and unassuming date tucked into the tail end of 1970. Overall it sounds a bit more distinctly like 1971, aided by the set list featuring tunes which would come of age in that following year. All of this combines to make for a fine addition to anyone’s collection. As your ears come to acclimate to the frequencies and ambience of the recording you should easily find a spot on the floor with the crowd, relaxing and flowing with the evening’s proceedings; summer breezes flowing through you.

The show’s set list also delivers an interesting chronology across the Dead’s repertoire, inserting highlights throughout, rather than building to a single explosive climactic moment. In so doing, the entire show plays out with a very nice energy. And while the over all feel is relaxed, there is just enough intensity and edginess intermingled with more standard material to make for a fine end to end listening experience.

Set One: Cold Rain And Snow, Truckin', It Hurts Me Too, Me And My Uncle, Beat It On Down The Line, China Cat Sunflower > I Know You Rider, Cryptical Envelopment > Drums > Other One > Cryptical Envelopment > Sugar Magnolia, Casey Jones

Set Two: Smokestack Lightnin', Big Railroad Blues, Me And Bobby McGee, Deep Elem Blues, Cumberland Blues, Morning Dew, Good Lovin' > Drums > Good Lovin' > Uncle John's Band

The show offers up a wonderful string of tunes out of the gate, complete with the opening Cold Rain And Snow, a stand alone Truckin, and fine China>Rider which unfolds like a spiraling flower with infinite petals. China Cat Sunflower throbs, filling every beat possible, and Garcia’s solos ring out beautifully. The road opens up before us as they coast into the transition jam. Bobby solos nicely as the band shifts effortlessly around bends and over hills. When Jerry picks up the lead, and Pigpen the tambourine, they have locked into the epitome of everything sublime in 1970-71. I Know You Rider flows out from the stage, and you can feel the crowd locking in, soaking it up, and gelling into synch with the music. The recording quality here shines as brightly as ever, and we are placed in a spot from which we have no desire to leave. From here the show feels like it could never end. Some prolonged equipment troubles sort of squash this vibe until we emerge on the other side into Cryptical Envelopment. It’s early in the set still, yet the band is casting its full spell over us, picking up directly off of the energy which trailed out of I Know You Rider.

This Other One suite doesn’t disappoint in the slightest. The great haunting storytelling ensues as Jerry spins Cryptical’s twisted tale, and the song reaches out with arms of unavoidable beckoning like dangerous craggy seashores luring sailors with songs of mermaids hidden in the wind. Drums follow, and then Other One itself. The deeply tribal rhythm resonates throughout as the music swirls in a sea of incomprehensible vines intertwined into an Escher-like landscape leaving no safe place to tread. There is darkness licking like flames all around as the band folds into and out of the beat, occasional returning to the driving pulse while often letting go into a soup of frothing confusion. With shifting syncopations the music resemble how the band’s jamming in 1973 could feel like it was just on the edge of tumbling head over heels down a mountain while running downhill. The song crackles into the final verse and then breaks like the sun over the horizon back into Cryptical Envelopment.

As is so often the case, the final Cryptical brings us to the voice within the inner sanctum of the Dead’s musical muse. As Jerry lightly solos over the slow churning gurgling riverflow of music, a serenity pervades as the song captures the most elemental being at the band’s core. This is remarkably simple music, wanting for nothing, pushing nowhere. And as Garcia sings out the last refrains of “You know he had to die,” the music goes on to fold in on itself, bending all perception into a center of pure musical satori, once again fusing us to nothing but perception of the moment.

We drop directly into Sugar Magnolia which has fully matured since it appear earlier in the summer. This is long before Sugar Mag evolved into the heavy rocking set two closing standard (a tune that I’m unashamed to say I skip more often than not). Here, the song is full of its original intent, and a good time is had by all. I particular enjoy hearing the guy near the taper after the song who comments, “Amazing what you can do with two guitars.”

A lot like 03/18/71, this show seems to shine in some unsuspecting spaces. Tucked away in this set are thoroughly wonderful renditions of Big Railroad, Deep Elem, and Cumberland Blues. Deep Elem Blues and Cumberland stand back to back, and exude a pure Grateful Dead American rock-n-roll that is deeply intoxicating, in much the same way that I Know You Rider and Going Down The Road Feelin’ Bad was in this time period. The music is unforced and relaxed, hypnotically drawing the listener in. When Morning Dew follows Cumberland the edges are beautifully blurred into that Americana-Folklore-Psychedelia that stands as the figurehead for this band’s musical persona. As Jerry opens up into the final solo section there are diamond raindrops hovering all around, swirls of colored smoke crystallizing from glass into spider webbing, all eventually exploding into a cascade of star showers as the song climaxes. Out of the dust, Good Lovin’ appears and everyone shakes their bones.

Not necessarily a hall of fame version, this Good Lovin’ demonstrates some fine improvisational rockin’ and a nice little segment deep in the jam where Bob and Jerry fall back into the song’s thematic key while the rest of the band continues to churn in the more bluesy groove. For a brief time Jerry is cartwheeling his solo in a slightly more St. Stephen and Eleven fashion which overlays the rest of the music nicely.

Good Lovin’ spills directly into Uncle John’s Band which closes the show with more of that pure Grateful Dead warmth and inviting energy which, once again, brings us to a place from which we have no need to consider leaving. Time could stop here and we wouldn’t care why.

12/28/70 AUD etree source info
12/28/70 AUD Download

The Ones That Get Away

This time of year always gets me thinking about its significance related to the Grateful Dead’s output in the year 1973. I’ve well documented my proclivity for everything “summer ‘73” in numerous posts, and as the last ten days of June approached, I even planned to honor certain favorite highlights in homage to this favorite time of my favorite year. While the Dead seemed to lock into their summer ‘73 vibe early in June at RFK stadium, the three show run at Universal City, CA holds a special place in my heart, even while for most people, it lives well in the shadows. For me, it’s more than simply the music, as each date has its own story in my trading travels. Interestingly, one of the stories is even seeing chapters written as we speak.

I’ve made detailed work out of the passion I hold for the closing night of this Universal City run on July 1st, 1973. It’s a tape that stands out as a shining example of all things good in audience recordings. Now, I’d like to turn our attention to some of the tapes from the rest of this stand.

June 29^th, 1973 was the first date from this run I ever collected – a one tape wonder SBD/? tape that provided ample openings into that certain something going on in the summer of ’73 sound. A full review might make its way to these pages eventually, but I’ve held off for the time being. This might have to do a bit with a personal disappointment in the quality of the tape that circulates, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it had more to do with the game of “hard to get” an audience tape from this date has been playing with me for nearly ten years. In fact, this date actually offers a nice window into the world of tape trading relationships, and into the story of how some tapes end up on archive.org in the first place, or sometimes don’t. For 06/29, even though there is a soundboard in ample circulation, it is marred by certain level settings and technical issues which make one thirst for an upgrade of some sort, even perhaps coming from an audience recording source.

To give you a glimpse into how the world of tape trading wasn’t (isn’t) just about finding a copy of a show, but was (is) also about constantly searching for upgrades and alternative sources, let me get you up to speed on my hunt for the June 29^th, 1973 audience tape.

So, 06/29 was an early addition to my collection, and served to spark my love of this portion of the year itself. When you would run into this tape on lists, it was always roughly the same partial SBD version. Eventually a SBD “upgrade” came into circulation after Dick's passing. But it left me still lusting after some kind of complete upgrade. Adding to the mystique of 06/29 was the fact that I had never once seen an audience tape for this date show up on anyone’s list.

One day, going back perhaps 8 years ago now, I was contacted via e-mail by a person who had found my contact information off of the several info files circulating around online related to audience tapes from the 1973 era. This sort of contact had become a beautiful undertone to my tape trading experience, helping to spark my amazement at the way the Deadhead community and technology were intermingling, and assuring me that somewhere out there all tapes were waiting to be found. This fellow told me that he had taped 6/29, and wondered if I might help him out by transferring the tape to digital format. What a glorious day that was for me – as seemed to happen often enough, here was another holy grail dropped from the sky on my head. Alas, it was not meant to be…

I confirmed with him that I would obviously be interested in helping him out. Despite his stories of having to miss recording some of the songs because of tough security, I made him aware that this was quite a find, and regardless of quality, the tape yearned to get into circulation. He talked of how he found better seats for the second set, and taped much of the big jams from a pretty sweet spot in the crowd (let the drooling commence). So, I gave him my address and waited for the tapes. And waited... And dropped him an e-mail after a week or so. And waited… To cut to the chase, eventually months went by where I would send off an e-mail every 6 to 8 weeks (completely in stalker mode, I know) wondering if he had sent the tapes, or found some other means of transfer. No reply, ever. Probably three or four years later, my now annual e-mail to him eventually hard bounced off his mail server with a fatal error – his address was dead.

So close. So close!!! When I first made this connection I had shared my excitement with one or two of my trading buddies, fellow hunters who were always out on the fringes looking to fill in gaps in the Grateful Dead taping history. They shared my schoolgirl-like glee over having bumped into this guy, and eagerly awaited my getting the tapes in hand. Only they can truly know this level of frustration. I’m sure they have shared the experience of a vein drying up before the gold itself was found. It’s one of the more frustrating levels of this area of tape trading – silence from the other end of a great line on a tape. And to know that this fellow is more than likely out there somewhere with some understandable reason for not sending the tapes, and never responding to my e-mails, makes it all the more maddening. It’s an example of the both the good and the bad in online relationships: great to get them started, but sometimes falling very short in going further. Where does this guy live? What’s his phone number? Who else do I know who might know this guy?? Maddening.

While I share this story mostly for entertainment purposes, I also do so with hopes to stir that tape back into the light. We sit here at its anniversary, so perhaps getting the stars to align and talking about it will do some good. It certainly worked with the next night.

06/30/73 was a recording I seeded out on the Audience Devotional Tree back in August of 2001. Just a few weeks ago I pulled out an old old DAT version of the same recording which offered a different lineage path from the reel I put into circulation eight years ago. My ears really liked what they heard. I had decided that with this being one of my all time favs recordings, it would be fun to seed out this DAT, get it up on the archive, and then write my review on June 30^th, 2009 sharing this new copy with everyone here. It all went according to plan until just three days ago.

The DAT source (http://www.archive.org/details/gd1973-06-30.aud.weiner.99703.sbeok.flac16) is indeed now up on archive.org. But drawing this bit of attention to the date over the last week has stirred up some contact from some old friends in the community – friends who were pivotal in my seeding out 06/22, 06/26, and even that first copy of 06/30 back in 2001. And that stirring has just now shaken loose an upgrade of true proportion for this date which I am eagerly awaiting in the mail (I do know that this copy will indeed arrive). Once I have it, I will seed yet another version of this show, and after it makes it to the archive, I’ll post my review for 06/30 and link to the upgraded copy at that time. It won’t hit the anniversary exactly, but I’m okay with that. I look forward to it just the same.

What is interesting to me is that my world of tape trading, and in particular this Indiana Jones type treasure hunting, is still in motion today. And for this passage of time you all get to ride along with me just like the old days. You probably can’t resist listening to the version I posted up just last week. I can’t blame you, and I’d be shocked if you weren’t interested. It sounds darn good. And then you may stay tuned in for the new version to be made available, saving that repeat listening perhaps for the new copy coming a week or two from now. That, my friends, is the living breathing heart of trading tapes, rolling out right here on the pages of the GDLG.

And we can all collectively keep holding our breath that the 06/29/73 AUD will show up in my mailbox soon too.

The Quiet Allure Of Audience Tapes

Upon launching the Grateful Dead Listening Guide I brought up a somewhat understated intention that went beyond the overarching goal of helping folks navigate the endless choices of Dead concert recordings online. Early on I came clean on the point that I was particularly fond of audience recordings, and that in years past I had devoted much of my time and energy to spreading the word of audience tapes and the joys within. There was little denying that throughout my ongoing ramblings there would be a sometimes subtle, sometime outright, push to wake people up to the beauty of audience recordings and my opinion that they (yes, I’ll say it) put the soundboard medium to shame on many levels critical to enjoying the magic of the Dead’s music.

Well, I haven’t been keeping any kind of score card, but I can safely tell you that after general e-mails and comments thanking me for putting up the guide overall, nothing quite comes close to the number of people who confess to having been converted over to an appreciation of audience tapes where before they wouldn’t have given them a chance. And, with readership growing steadily, the frequency of converts continues to rise. It’s a good thing, and it seems to be happening naturally, without my wildly banging some audience tape gong.

I often look at the collective readership of the GDLG like that single person I described at the start of this project who discovered the old grizzled deadhead living across the street (still not sure why I always paint him as old and grizzled. I’d like to think that I’m not particularly either), and began borrowing tapes, listening to stories, and building a collection of music not ever to be found in the nearby record stores. So here after nearly a year and a half, the old deadhead has turned this fellow on to about 80 shows. And being careful as he has been, he has slowly let his personal preference for audience tapes whisper its way into the newcomer’s ear. And slowly, being unconcerned with succeeding, the audience tape medium has been allowed to work its magic and gain another passionate devotee.

There can be little doubt that something more than music is going on when you listen to audience tapes, and this goes well beyond the simple fact that these recordings capture the crowd noise and room ambience. As has been recently articulated by folks commenting on the passing of legendary taper, Jerry Moore, when you listen to a good audience tape you can’t help but experience a layer of gratitude for the person who saw fit to deal with all the rigmarole of taping in the first place. This gratitude quickly expands to a difficult to describe sharing of the taper’s experience as it happened, placing a certain physical layer into the soundscape where we come to discern the true scale of the live musical experience (readily displayed when listening to tapes of 1974’s Wall Of Sound. Worth checking out the podcast too). And then we also come to appreciate the fact that the audience recording is a document completely separate from the world of commercial music. It is the product of people, shared from friend to friend, not packaged onto the shelves of record stores. This most quiet social/cultural layer is on every tape, and infuses the listening experience before during and after the tape is actually playing.

It is no wonder that the Grateful Dead Listening Guide is doing such a fine job of showing people the light of audience tapes. They work on so many levels, one only needs a slight nudge in their direction. From there, the tapes themselves begin to shed light on many things, not the least of which is the actual music itself as it flowed from the stage to the audience.

I once thought that an audience tape was only bringing us a small fraction of the listening experience at a Dead show, like how a photograph is a two dimensional take away from a four dimensional experience. But, when we consider everything “coming off the tape” when listening to audience recordings in particular, they appear more akin to the experience of discovering a rich layer of complexity hiding just below the surface of something we hitherto thought we fully comprehended. There is far more within them than a surface view can reveal, like fractals within fractals, and the sub atomic universe deeper within physical matter than any microscope can see.

It’s the crazy talk of a Deadhead, I know. But I struggle to find any more concrete means to explain the experience of the Dead’s music preserved under the glass of a pristine audience recording. That it is really there defies proof, yet the effects of its being there ripple into our more discernable perceptions of the experience. We know it's there because of the impact it leaves on us. People do turn on to audience tapes. The ear does tune to the spectrum of frequencies caught on tape after a short while allowing the listening experience to unfold like a blooming flower. A slight nudge really is enough to draw in the masses.

There is an invisible pied piper playing a siren song here – crazy as any deadhead out there. I’ve been drawn in by that song for a good long time, and I’m glad to see others hear it too.

Under Eternity Blue - Psychedelic Folk

The next installment of Under Eternity Blue hits the airwaves this weekend. For those that don't know, I started a podcast side project for an online radio station (Spirit Plants Radio) a couple of months ago. Loosely structured, Under Eternity Blue explores other music that I find meaningful and satisfying - I do spend 80% or more of my time not listening to the Grateful Dead after all.

This episode focuses on the Psychedelic Folk genre. It's an easy call that most Grateful Dead fans will find plenty of inroads to this particular installment, and perhaps I'll turn you on to something you hadn't heard before.

Spirit Plants Radio

streaming live:
http://spfradio.yage.net/
Under Eternity Blue with DJ Arkstar
Saturday, June 20th: 6pm – 7pm PST

Sunday, June 21st: 6am – 7am PST & 4pm – 5pm PST

The full weekend line up (11am PST Saturday - 11pm PST Sunday) is listed on the Spirit Plants Radio page above. If you can’t tune in live, all shows become listenable via archive streaming after the show ends Sunday night.

If interested, check out the first Under Eternity Blue podcast focued on Ambient Electronica.

The Stories Of Jerry Moore

He Was A Friend Of Mine

I lived through the dawning of the Internet Age of Grateful Dead tape trading. I participated through our amazement that we could be so immediately in contact with other traders (by the thousands), all sharing lists and arranging trades instantaneously - so unlike "the good old days" - to the full explosion of high speed sharing which brought the real need for a trading community to its end.

While living through all of that, I built up a cassette tape collection (then CD collection) numbering in the thousands, and all the while enjoyed not only collecting the tapes, but collecting the stories. Hearing about the old days, talking to people, sharing long e-mails - this was an even more precious gift than the tapes themselves.

One of the ongoing stories was the one titled, "Jerry Moore." I call it a story, because he was no more than that to me (and pretty much my entire circle of trading partners). Yes, there were people who could referencing knowing him way back when. But after getting online in 1997, despite my own ever-widening circle, Jerry Moore was "lost."

Did he die? Had he fallen off the grid? Did someone last hear that he was battling heroin and had sold off all his tapes to pay rent? Had someone seen him retreat into a forest cave to live among the rocks? Quite literally, all of these stories were floating around, and the only thing that stitched them all together was the fact that Moore was "lost" to us; "us" being the world of obsessed tapers trying to digitally archive all the old master tapes we could find. Often were the times I pined over how very absent Jerry Moore was from our world.

And so he grew mythical. And so I found myself in possession of tape copies of many of his recordings not even knowing they were his. Tapes of 10/01/76, 11/04/77, and God knows how many others, all were more often simply "AUD - taper unknown." And this in the age of digital communication.

That all changed for me one day in 2002, when an East Coast taper I knew quietly let me in on the fact that he was acquainted with Moore himself - an old friend, and that Jerry was interested in archiving what was literally a closet full of his masters, complete with a TARDIS-like quality of holding far more music than could conceivably fit inside. A small group of us became MooresBoys, a Yahoo Group devoted to making trips to Jerry's place to help deal with the closet, and then go through the careful Analog>DAT transfers, followed by digital editing into the final drafts that would go into mass circulation.

Living half a country away from the closet, I only performed my tasks on the DAT>SHN/FLAC mastering side of the equation (though Jerry did send me his actual tapes from 10/02/76 - Jesus! He had taped the holiest of 1976 grails ever - 10/02/76!!), so I never got out to meet him in person. But that didn't stop the stories.

Jerry wrote. He wrote a great deal. He wrote and wrote and wrote and wrote. We conversed in e-mail over a multi-year period back then where I was blessed to learn a seemingly endless wealth of knowledge around the life and times of Jerry Moore, the taper. Stories of how he fashioned a telescoping golf ball retrieval tool into his mic stand of choice in the 70's. Stories of how his very first recording, Grateful Dead 06/10/73 was so disappointing to his ears that he recorded over it a month or two later with a sweet recording of the New Riders. Stories of cajoling other concert goers to record with his gear because his seats sucked (07/29/74). Stories of avoiding roadies. Stories on top of stories, back and forth in e-mail.

Reading Jerry Moore is sort of like reading James Joyce or Camus, or Aristotle, or Edward Albee. He wrote thickly. He loved words, perhaps more than music. And he loved vetting out the truth in people and their actions, as much as he loved the details around nearly every facet of what it took for him to do all that taping. I always had to read his e-mails more than once to make sure I was *getting* what he was saying, sometime afraid I was catching the complete opposite meaning in his prose. And I loved that about Jerry.

An example, from the very last e-mail exchange we had between us. He begins an answer to my question related to the appearance of other old tapers more recently on the Internet scene:

odd?

yes and noah.

seems obvious.

then again,

hmmm.

real world answer?

okay.

It was not the first time he played on my name like that, and, of course, the e-mail went on and on from there. It pains me deeply that there will be no more e-mails going on and on from Jerry Moore. I will miss him terribly. I have him to thank for elevating my joys in tape trading to their very highest, and that had nothing to do with the actual tapes he made, but just by being a friend of mine - just by turning from myth into a person with great stories.

So, the giant Internet tubes that changed our community forever get a big tip of the hat today. We can all remember and relive Jerry Moore's master cassesttes so easily now. He is certainly forever part of our living history in music. Just a few of his recordings have made it here onto the guide so far. So many more to come.

09/07/73
06/23/74
08/04/74
04/23/77
05/08/77
11/04/77

GDLG-005 - Into The 80s

Listening Session 005: Exploring the sometimes under-appreciated early 1980s output of the Grateful Dead in excellent audience recordings, along with the occasional story and insight adding color along the way.

1969 June 14 - Monterey Performing Arts Center

GRATEFUL DEAD
Saturday, June 14, 1969
Monterey Performing Arts Center - Monterey, CA
Soundboard Recording

Most all Deadheads are familiar with the 1969 “Live Dead” album. To a certain degree, this record represents a watershed moment in the band’s history, showcasing the true “live performance” magic of the Grateful Dead captured on vinyl. Not only does it possess quite possibly the highest of all musical events in all Dead folklore with the 02/27/69 Dark Star, but it also goes a long way in writing the book on the rest of the material contained on the album. While it could be argued that it was all downhill for Dark Star after this LP version (no, I’m not attempting to make this case myself), such is not the case with Lovelight. Its evolution had gotten well down the path by the time they played the version used on the record (January 26, 1969), but it was not nearly complete. As 1969 moved along, Lovelight continued to grow, stretching its boundaries not only in duration, but in creativity as well. By the summer of 1969 the song was bursting at its own seams.

It is often the case when listening to old tapes of Grateful Dead music, that you can be struck by the fact that what you are hearing never made it onto a commercial release, and thereby, into mainstream society. It is not uncommon to hear music so good, you can’t believe it only lives by the grace of a sub societal sect that cared for and shared this music fully outside the scope of a record label and commercial industry’s ability to present it as an example of a band’s musical identity to the “outside” world. This tends to happen at a higher than average ratio when it comes to 1969 Grateful Dead. And June 14th, 1969 exemplifies this in spades.

Turn On Your Love Light > Me And My Uncle > Doin' That Rag > He Was A Friend Of Mine > Dire Wolf; Dark Star > St. Stephen > The Eleven > Turn On Your Love Light > Drums > Turn On Your Love Light

As this show begins, we can hear everything known to be archetypically “Lovelight,” and a good deal more. Jerry’s leads give the appearance that he is a daredevil tightrope walker, fearlessly charging forward while blindfolded and balancing several tea cups on saucers across each extended arm, each of these holding aloft a feather-strewn lady sitting in a chair – like some twisted and distorted Dr. Seuss character. He has no concern which way the tightrope turns, bows, or buckles. He’s confidence radiates for miles. The song rolls like a river charging through the wild west terrain of America, great frothing whitecaps boiling over boulders, long swaths of orange and mustard brown silt running like ribbons under crystal glass cover. We are delivered to more remote and twisted vistas than the commercially released Lovelight might ever have dreamed of. Pockets of imploding feedback, great yawning taffy-like pulls of guitar-dinosaur moaning, and strobe light exploding curtains of color adorn the music while Pigpen’s improvised truck driver love poetry sprinkles a consistent thread throughout the 26 minute opening bookend of the show.

When the song sneaks its way into Me And My Uncle, the unmistakable aura of Grateful Dead magic pervades everything. We are defenseless as the band casts its controlling energy over the entire hall, happily lost in their hypnotic trance. Me And My Uncle crackles with a psychedelic power unfairly permeating a simple cowboy song. Bobby’s vocals quiver and tremble with their edgy glimmer, and Garcia’s guitar work is like a tumbleweed caught in a tornado. The Dead’s ability to superimpose one musical genre into the fibers and tissues of another in 1969 was nearly unequalled in any other year. Here in the summer of ‘69, the band was already headed down a creative path toward the formation of the “Acoustic Dead” which would fully play out through the winter and well into 1970. Yet at this time the titanic lysergic beast of 1968 still shrouded even the most traditional of songs, and often made it a more brain twisting challenge to reach stable ground in even the most straightforward of music. As Me And My Uncle deposits us directly into Doin’ That Rag, we are immediately thrust into the belly of the beast again, and Garcia is in as fine vocal form as he’s been on guitar up to this point. He’s delivery matches Bobby’s with its certain crazed and bug-eyed intensity.

That Jerry Garcia could sing a song! His voice paints a Cheshire Cat smile into the air. Doin’ That Rag is so overflowing with the symbolism that pervades the veiled and subtle messaging of the Grateful Dead, it’s a shame that the song could not have secured a more stable home in the Dead’s repertoire. It flashes forward to Robert Hunter’s lyrical majesty contained on American Beauty, crafting pictures and imagery into a poetic mural of spiritual grace, lessons to learn, and endless snapshots of the psychedelic experience.

This draws us directly into He Was A Friend Of Mine, another song that fell out of the rotation after the first few years and probably the one I personally miss the most, along with Viola Lee Blues. Jerry’s vocals and guitar solo only build upon what was happening in Doin’ That Rag. It’s a drippy walk through a folk ballad, showcasing the Dead’s personal signature wonderfully.

When we arrive in Dark Star, it quickly makes everything that proceeded it seem like child’s play. The song comes on as if we’d been slipped a massively over-potent elixir brewed by some medicine man in the Central American jungle, and all the warnings we’d been given in preparation for the ensuing experience amount to not even the smallest level of readiness for what’s happening. Looking back on the show up to this point, we can only laugh at ourselves for having thought we were witnessing the psychedelic grandeur of the Grateful Dead. Dark Star is the real deal, a true game changer.

Oddly, in the grand scheme of Grateful Dead things, the fact of the matter is that most of their music isn’t all that psychedelic. We all have probably been asked the question, “How is this psychedelic rock?” by people in our immediate circle who hear this music over our shoulder. I’ve been asked the question many times, and there’s little point in arguing. Tennessee Jed? Ramble On Rose? Promised Land, Big River? This list goes on and on – this isn’t hippie psychedelic music. I suppose those of us on the inside find it all tinged with the roots of psychedelic rock in some way. Such is the power of that portion of the Dead’s music that truly was psychedelia incarnate. And that, beyond doubt, was Dark Star in 1969. The Dead’s psychedelic preferences didn’t infuse Dark Star. Dark Star was the elixir itself. It was stepping into the inner chamber of a hidden palace to find a secret underground sea of mists, colors, and sounds all in a cosmic dance of intricate beauty. One taste, and you can forever onward begin to trace hints of it throughout everything else. Have you ever heard the strains of Dark Star while gently taking in a beautiful spring morning? That’s it.

There’s little sense in road mapping 06/14/69’s Dark Star for you here. It’s a version that makes you very thankful that recordings of this band were made in such abundance. The idea of this performance having been lost to history as each note rang out without being recorded is unthinkable. The one thing I will mention in regard to the actual playing on 06/14 is that while the entire song quickly latches into the musical satori experience of the Grateful Dead’s living breathing musical muse, there is a near indescribable soul burning passage in the section that follows the first verse. As music revolves, and feedback swarms into all empty space around every sound, the dance between form and chaos overwhelms. This push and pull is never ending. It lays to waste any ability to retain a sense of separation between music and listener.

You are drawn to listen because the music is finding itself within you. Dark Star is the muse within us all. It wakes itself as it plays. The illusion is that we believe Dark Star works on us. This is not true. It is seeking itself within us. We aren’t really there at all in the end. The more we can work to realize this absence of division, the more deeply we can release into the moment. The parallels to pure spiritual knowing here are not coincidental. The force of Being sings through many forms, and in the depths of Dark Star its musical voice is true. The thematic undercurrent which was Dark Star itself binds to everything in the Grateful Dead’s history. In that, it goes beyond any simple mapping from one song to another on a time line. In 1969 we were blessed to be exposed to the pulsing heart of the Dead’s magic. Once exposed, the beat echoes forever forward and back, in and out of music, in and out of self. Dark Star is just something altogether elemental while also dwelling beyond most everything else imaginable.

When Saint Stephen rolls out into The Eleven, there is a controlled frenzy to the intricate rhythm. As if taming something part swarm of bees, part lightning, and part molten furnace core, the Dead sear through time and space with an impossible control over something so ferocious. The music sweats. The pulse races. And in a great swirl of callioped color we find ourselves back at the start of the show as Lovelight steps back on the stage. Beautifully the song drops completely out into Space momentarily and then flashes back into view (one of my favorite elements of any Lovelight). Complete with opening band Aum's leader, Wayne "Tha Harpe" Ceballos, filling in a bit as a guest vocalist, and a drum solo in the midst of everything else, this closing bookend of Lovelight adds another 17 minutes on top of the 26 minute opening ride. Yes, Lovelight was in full bloom during the Summer of 1969.

The tape we have sounds good, but also possesses something of a classic Dead bootleg quality to it. It isn’t culled directly off of a 10” master reel. It has that cassette feel to it, while not taking anything away from the quality of the recording – just a nice layer of listening pleasure reminding us how lucky we are to have the tape at all.

06/14/69 SBD etree source info
06/14/69 SBD Stream

Grateful Dead Listening Guide - Kindle Version

Amazon expanded Kindle subscriptions to offer blogs. I couldn’t resist setting up the Grateful Dead Listening Guide (Kindle Version) in the Amazon store. They are currently offering a free 14 day trial too. Got a Kindle? Check it out. Know someone with a Kindle whose life is missing that certain electronic layer of the Grateful Dead? Pass along the news!

1976 June 14 - Beacon Theater

GRATEFUL DEAD
Monday, June 14, 1976
Beacon Theater – New York, NY
Soundboard Recording
Just as picking a show from the early 80’s can present a daunting task when it comes to knowing which way to turn first, June 1976 is like a microcosm of the same problem. The Grateful Dead played a lot of shows marking the inaugural run in the band’s return to the road as a touring act in '76. It seems that nearly the entire month of June has always circulated in good quality, and the shows can sort of bleed together. Way back when we all had to build our tape collections through trade, a large portion of June ’76 was among the easiest music to find because the band had done so many FM simulcasts. This meant that soundboard quality recordings were being seeded, potentially by the hundreds, night after night, up and down the East Coast. Interestingly, certain shows from this run (Chicago Auditorium Theater) remained lost in the fog even from an audience tape perspective while the surrounding dates were easy pickings.

I’ve mentioned before how it seems that this overabundance of easy to find music from June contributes to the bad rap 1976 gets in general – so much material from, arguably, the low point of the year. And while I’ll be the first person to tell you that the music only continued to get better and better as 1976 rolled along, there is plenty to enjoy even as the band was shaking the rust off from its near 20 month hiatus. In fact, the highpoints among this historical “snoozer portion” of the year become that much more special precisely because one generally expects very little from June ’76.

I made early mention of one of my favorite Dead shows in general which happens to come from this time frame - the long time under-circulating masterpiece from June 9, 1976 - and here now is another show that has always managed to poke its colorful petals up over the rest of the June ’76 flower garden in my mind: June 14th from the Beacon Theater.

The show packs great energy, both from the band and audience (clear even on the soundboard), and the first set plays like an archival sample of everything good going on in 1976. In typical early 1976 fashion, nothing explodes (though Might As Well – often miss-documented as “Mighty Swell” – does fly over the top), but the entire set is a worthy listen. And it all rounds out with a memorable Playin’ In The Band.

This Playin’ presents a wonderful balance of every direction the song could flow in 1976. Still a staple feature of Dead shows, 1976 saw Playin’ begin to more fully explore different rotation slots in the set lists beyond its hallmark set one closing role. It also started to traverse distinctly different temperaments as if reflecting the changing mood of the band – some would flow out in silky smooth oceans of psychedelic waves, while others could find their ways into jagged and treacherous terrains that boiled with fire and hail. 06/14’s Playin sits in the traditional set one closing spot, and seems to explore and taste both extremes of expression.

With sound quality on the soundboard source that rivals nearly all other tapes, when the band slides into the Payin’ jam everything is about as close to perfection as we could wish. With a terrific balanced mix of instruments, the sense of this six piece band as a true ensemble comes shining through on this tape. Everything weaves together as the band continues to pick up steam. There’s a lovely flow oozing in and out like one’s breath as they roll along. Eventually things quiet to a whisper and we find Playin’ set at the precipice that might have easily led to a roaring Tiger Jam two years earlier, but here in 1976 it hints more at Blues For Allah. The intensity builds again as if we have just passed though the eye of a hurricane, and we are slowly swept back into the fantastic stitch work of an intricate tapestry. Not long after, the drummers tip over an edge into pure rolling thunder – the beat has been consumed and the entire band begins to tremble and fracture leaving us both on dizzying heights and staring up at more impassable mountains of dark foreboding rock. Before a completely blinding meltdown can ensue, the band reappears and another phase of the jam takes form. The drummers come back to the beat while we were lost in some phrasing by Garcia, and soon there is the sense of all the instruments fitting together like massive planet sized gears of reflecting kaleidoscope glass. It’s as if the music can’t take a wrong turn. Each member zeroes in on a simple phrase of their own and they begin to repeat them into each other like the inner workings of a watch. This is one of the most subtle explorations of the band’s pure creative musical force, made somehow more precious by its delicate and fleeting nature. Capping off the jam section of a nearly twenty minute Playin’ In The Band, we find that we’ve travelled many diverse miles all while we otherwise thought we were just listening to another Dead show.

The Wheel opens set two, to the clear shock and delight of the crowd. The song came out on Garcia’s first solo LP in 1972 yet never made it into the live show line up until 1976. Here, the band is fully enjoying themselves (there’s even a nice “Woo!” let out along the way as they become clearly locked into the slow pulsing arch of the songs melodic runs). The solo section paints a majestic picture with Garcia dancing on tiptoe from star to star. It’s short lived, but no less enjoyable for it, as the song comes to a close just as we’re ready for it to go on forever.

There follows some fun stage chatter as no one seems to know what to play next, eventually seeing the band land on Samson & Delilah, followed by a tasteful High Time, and The Music Never Stopped.

With Crazy Fingers, we head into the meat of the second set. Always good for casting a subtly gentle, yet psychedelically mysterious mood, we find ourselves casually ambling through a misty evening as our peripheral vision seems to flicker with unseen light sources. The song trails off into the end portion improvisation and the slow turning galaxy wagon wheels are back. The tides shift, and just as we feel the arrival of a Spanish Jam, Bobby provides a distinctive tease into the Dancin’ that will follow. Gently the jam subsides leaving the drummers to assemble the backbone of Dancin’ In The Streets.

Dancin’ was a tune that matured over the years after its return in 1976, and the ’76 breed is often one that merits little attention. Truly the versions in the following year become epic. Here, however, we are gifted with some of Garcia’s most delicious solo work of the entire evening. When they launch into the jam, Jerry’s phrasing becomes that of a 1950’s jazz saxophone player (insert your favorite’s name here). The way he holds back, and then blows out phrases flying up and down the fret board provides us with the Jerry we are all so thankful for. His tasteful note selection, filling the syncopated spaces between the beats, brings nothing but smiles to your face. All in all, it’s an understated Dancin’, as most were in 1976. But it’s worth everything to ride with Jerry through the solo section.

Cosmic Charlie, another song seeing its revival in 1976, comes next and is delivered perfectly. Vocally, the song just takes you in and works its magic. And as the pulsing backbeat that bore The Wheel at the start of the set returns to ricochet and echo its way through this song too, we’re firmly locked into the hypnotic trance of the Grateful Dead.

Then the set caps off with the wonderful highlight of Help>Slip>Franklin, containing an improvisational masterpiece during Slipknot which firmly locks this entire show into its spot as one I’m always happy to return to and explore. Here, as the 1976 tour was getting started, this song trio was well rehearsed and sounding very much like the Blues For Allah album version while allowing the band plenty of space to work each rendition into its own unique direction, and all the while finding Garcia able to forget the correct ordering of the lyrics in Franklin’s Tower.

Help On The Way overflows with heartfelt and emotional vocal delivery by Jerry, and rides ever so sweetly through the extended solo section. The tempo is locked in the pocket, and everything shimmers and gleams as they roll into the last verse, and then deftly navigate the intricate path which leads to Slipknot. This jam is representational of a new direction for the Dead. Nothing they were doing in their first ten years sounded quite like this at all. And the music finds its way into a lovely expanse of long flowing phrases atop Bobby’s wide volume swells. A deeply explorative jam finds the musicians listening to and playing off of each other. For a long while we are buoyed in a borderless ocean of the jam’s theme, lost in a timeless space of coolly dark comfort.

Soon much of the jam drops away, leaving Garcia playing off of the drummer’s light accents. Slowly Phil works back in, layering his own solo efforts while Jerry’s notes fly past like meteor showers. Eventually the rest of the band assembles again, and off of Bobby’s seemingly forced change of direction inspired by Phil’s own thumping, the band slips into the heavenly realm of absolute bliss and musical satori that forces chills to electrically snake across your face and down into your heart. We are cast into a pure musical presence which sucks all attention into its own focused midst. There is nothing else in the universe at all. This short (painfully fleeting) passage calls back to the inspirational brilliance found deep within 1970 Dark Stars – joyful expression of exquisite musical passion. Experiencing this music when you can offer it your open heart is a healing event. Our souls filled to bursting, the inspiration fades and the band returns to the coolly dark and mysterious interplay we were comfortably enjoying moments ago. We ride the twisting river toward Frankin’s Tower and arrive in the song’s own uplifting energy and simplicity.

Nothing left to do but smile, smile, smile.

06/14/76 SBD etree source

06/14/76 SBD Stream

06/14/76 AUD etree source

06/14/76 AUD Download

Learning The Ropes To A Forgotten Trade

Way back when, if you decided that you were going to collect Grateful Dead concert tapes, it wasn’t something that was extremely easy to do. Back in the days of analog music preservation, it was not all that common for someone to have two cassette decks, and having two decks was only the bare minimum required in the secret door knock that would get you into this club. It certainly didn’t stop there. Once inside, there were many feats of strength you had to perform in order to be granted a seat at one of several tables that warmly understood you were a welcomed comrade ready to trade. It was barely enough to just be a lover of the Grateful Dead, who then felt something snap in your head telling you that you had to figure out a way into the club. You had to learn the rules. Now in general, everyone had some kind of help. Since you couldn’t easily stumble upon the world of Grateful Dead bootlegs without someone “turning you on” to tapes, you would generally know someone who had at least a faded and patched together map of the road in.

While the kindness of deadheads is a historical fact, being allowed to copy your friends tapes (or relying on your friend to copy them for you if you didn’t even have your second deck yet) would only get you so far. Eventually you’d run out of his tapes. By then, you were probably a full blown addict, and getting deeper into the club was now a necessity – life without more of those Summer ’73 tapes was just unthinkable. So, you had to wrangle up two cassette decks and start trading.

Deadhead tape traders were (are) a detail minded bunch, and there were many facets to tape trading that could either smooth or obstruct one’s way into the world of building a tape collection. Once inside door number one of this club, you would be quickly directed down a particular hallway based upon just which kind of cassette decks you owned. If you could afford it, or rigmarole some means of acquisition, possessing two Nakamichi tape decks could get you into the first class lounge of this tape trading Moose lodge (never do it without your fez on). Folks who went “all in” to this club were spending a pretty chunk of change to get set up with two Nak decks. Even as tape decks were speedily going down the path of the black and white TV and 8-track player, Naks were fetching top dollar, and this long after they went out of new deck production. There were some models that represented the crème de la crème, one of which was the Nak Dragon, a deck that would run you a minimum of $900 “used” in the 1990’s. This, while you could stroll into Target and pick up a fancy dual-well dubbing deck for under a hundred bucks (we have a special room in the club for you guys with dual-well decks, by the way). And yes, even in the Nak lounge, the Dragon guys would sit at their own table (the bastards!). It’s not that Nak folks wouldn’t trade with non-Nak folks, but it certainly helped. Those Nak decks really did make the very best possible copies of tapes. If you had the tapes I wanted, and Nak decks, I was going to do everything I could to find a way to score a trade with you.

Okay, so decks were important. I brandished a couple of Nak decks myself. But even more important was knowing how to use them. There were a few cardinal rules in trading that I’ve probably mentioned before: NO DOLBY; use good quality tapes (Maxell XLII’s and XLII-S’s); and set your levels right. That last rule was subject to serious debate. Because of this, you were best off to just ask your trading partner where they wanted their levels set (I was a +3 to +5 peak guy. Many others would say set them flat to +0). And then you had to actually set the levels. This required looking at the set list, picking a part of some tune (or tunes) that you knew generally produced a “loud” moment, fast forwarding to find that spot, and playing the tape to then set the recording peaks on deck two. I would generally seek out the end portion of a Sugar Magnolia, or the explosive start of an Other One. You had to take care, because blowing level setting would cast a negative picture in your trading partner’s eyes when it came to trading with you ever again.

It didn’t end there. Where do you want the set list and tape genealogy written out? Can I write on the j-cards? Back of the peel-and-stick tape label sheet? And special packaging instructions - did you know that we typically never ever mailed the plastic cases that cassette are stored in? They just break in transit. Rubber banding the tape with a special loop to prevent the hubs from spinning the tape loose while in the mail – I kid you not, we cared about all of this.

Rules. Rites of passage. Customs. When we weren’t blissed out the newest Dark Star to cross our paths, deadheads certainly were sticklers for details.