if you haven’t caught this yet, i think you should check it out. it is an extremely well produced documentary on the grateful dead. i saw it on the big screen at its debut, and have since then watched it via amazon at least a couple of times. i say ‘least’, because the streaming version is conveniently broken up into bite size pieces, usually around 45 minutes each. some segments i have watched more than others. it clocks in at four hours and is filled with all kinds of footage, some never before seen, plus an almost never ending soundtrack. for fans of the band, it is almost not long enough. for people not familiar with them, it might get a little long, but if you are an overall music fan and are interested in the culture of the sixties and seventies, i think you will find the story very compelling. for at the end of the day (and even though the band would dismiss such a notion), the grateful dead were very much an embodiment of the counterculture of those two decades. the documentary is not a glossy portrait of the band – it is an honest and thorough glimpse into the wonders and the dangers of a rock and roll life. they remain, in my mind, one of the quintessential american bands of all time.
the garcia estate has been slowly releasing choice jerry garcia band shows in this series, much like the dead have their dave’s picks releases. in general they both have been exposing great recordings, with a few occasional duds. this one is definitely growing on me. 1990 and 1991 are often considered the last great run of grateful dead and jgb tours, and this one catches the latter on a midwest tour in late november 1991. while this period was also a tremendous occasion for loss, with the passing of keyboardist brent mydland and promoter bill graham, the bands seemed to power on and process the grief through inspired playing.
this version of jgb was the longest running lineup by far, and they are in fine form this evening. a total of fifteen songs, only five of them are garcia/hunter compositions. the rest are covers ranging from clapton, van morrison, the band, dylan, and bruce cockburn. the keyboard/organ playing of melvin seals and the background vocals of gloria jones and jacklyn lebranch give many of the songs a significant gospel feel. a real solid show all the way through, and finishes with a ramped up classic jerry take on ‘tangled up in blue’
another significant release by the estate came out a few months ago, hart valley drifters ‘folk time’.
recorded as a radio show in the bay area in 1962, it features a young jerry garcia on banjo and his good friend robert hunter on bass, along with david nelson on guitar (later with new riders of the purple sage). ken frankel on fiddle and norm van maastricht on dobro round out the lineup. the tape was rediscovered in 2008 by the former stanford student who had originally recorded it. this is three years before the formation of the grateful dead, and during this time frame jerry was very much a bluegrass artist and trying to make a name for himself in the area.
the boys here are doing their best to make a go of it, but there are a few miscues and some occasional sloppy playing. that being said, this is a really interesting glimpse of the early inspirations and playing of one of my musical heroes, and it is worth it just to hear him in this early period of his life. if you are a bluegrass fan and have any reasonable knowledge of the classics of that period, you will recognize many of the songs here.
entering the sixth year of this subscription series, we are offered a monster show that is the finale to their spring tour of 1973. by monster i mean that they play a total of 34 songs, with a run time of three hours and 37 minutes – it barely fits on 3 cds. the first set is comprised of 16 songs, heavily populated with their standard ‘cowboy songs’ of that era, but also peppered with a fine ‘china cat sunflower/i know you rider’, donna jean doing loretta lynn’s ‘you ain’t woman enough’, and capped off with a solid ‘playing in the band’.
the second set is a marathon, with a mix of established favorites but also some of their newer material (nearly every song from their ‘wake of the flood’ album is represented here, even though it wouldn’t be released for another 6 months). the ‘stella blue’ is pristine, maybe one of my favorite versions i have heard, and the ‘eyes of the world’ is fifteen minutes long, with the second half used as a foray into jazz fusion.
the overall playing is crisp and focused, and they are all on their game here. the recording quality is outstanding.
this was their first appearance at the boston garden, a place that they would return to another 24 times, more than any other band in the long history of that venue. they probably would have played more but they got banned for a few years because they got busted for grilling lobsters in a fire escape before a show. they had been intended to be the last band to play there and were scheduled for a run of six shows in september of 1995, but those shows were cancelled due to jerry’s death that august. previous to this release, the dead had also released two other shows from the venue – dick’s picks 12 (6/28/74) and dick’s picks 17 (9/25/91).
this was a great way to start off the 2017 series, and they have already announced the next release – the december 7th 1971 show at the felt forum in nyc. on top of that, they just announced that they have finalized a deal long in the making – the return of hundreds of reels recorded by betty cantor-jackson to the vaults. whether or not any of those become volume 23 or 24 is still to be determined, but it seems likely that at least one of them will be. stay tuned.
‘there’s nothing wrong with bear that a few billion less brain cells wouldn’t cure’
-jerry garcia
there is no separating the history of the grateful dead and the life story of this man. you can try by arguing that they moved in separate parallel psychedelic universes, and that might be true, but it could also be argued that they might be entirely irrelevant to musical history without each other.
to paraphrase the introduction from the book’s cover, bear was one of the most iconic figures in the cultural revolution that changed both america and the world during the 1960’s (both good and bad).
an early pioneer in the production and distribution of lsd (when it was still legal), his product helped drive ken kesey and his merry prankster’s acid tests. by most accounts, a vast majority of the crowd and musicians at the monterey pop festival were served his latest batch (‘monterey purple’). the shipment he sent to john lennon shortly after the festival was instrumental in the production of the beatles’ ‘magical mystery tour’ album and film.
convinced that the grateful dead were destined to become one of the world’s greatest rock bands, owsley provided the money that kept them going in their early years. as their long time soundman, he also faithfully recorded many of their early live performances. he also designed the massive pioneering sound system known simply as the ‘wall of sound’.
of the approximately 2300 shows the dead are known to have performed in their thirty years, it is estimated that close to 2000 of them have some remnant of them recorded in some form. there is good reason to believe bear was largely responsible for initiating this phenomenon. at first it was for his own enjoyment, but then the band also starting listening to see how they sounded to the audience. on top of that, bear would also record the various bands from the era that played in the shows with them on a given night. his ‘sonic journals’, as he called them, still exist. all on analog tapes, they are reaching the end of their shelf life and there is a push by the surviving family to get them digitallized before they degrade any further.
from a child born to a kentucky blueblood political dynasty, to his death on a road outside his ranch in the outback of australia, this is the story of a very unique and intelligent individual. i have heard many stories about bear in the various books and articles i have read about the dead over the years, but this spins a lot more tales (and dispels a few myths). a must read for any one interested in the evolution of the counter culture of the sixties.
i got this in the mail last week. by coincidence, i had a road trip planned to see my daughter for dad’s weekend, which involved a three hour trip through the foothills of the appalachian mountains. it was a crisp late autumn morning, sunny skies, plenty of fall foliage, and a few patches of fog. got very close to finishing the whole thing by the time i pulled into her small college town. it basically set the tone for a nearly perfect day.
this is a chronicle of a show that was put together last spring to pay tribute to the life and music of jerry garcia. all surviving members of the original grateful dead were there (the ‘core four’), and were prominently featured throughout. it is a two cd collection, and a dvd of the show. all of the performances are at least worth a three star, and some are just downright righteous. highlights for me include buddy miller tackling ‘deal’, jimmy cliff doing his own ‘harder they come’, and then delivering a killer ‘fire on the mountain’. bill kreutzmann and billie and the kids do ‘help on the way/slipknot/franklin’s tower’, then are joined on stage by disco biscuit and deliver a stunning ‘scarlet begonias/ i know you rider’. and that is just the first disc.
back up band for many of the artists includes buddy miller, don was, and sam bush. grand finale with the entire cast doing ‘ripple’. if you like jerry, you will like this.
also arriving last week was the most recent dave’s picks, volume 20. recorded at the university of colorado in december of 1981, it is a particularly energetic show. there are really only two flaws throughout, one due to the band and the other in the recording. jack straw is the second song, and weir just totally blows the lyrics about halfway through and kills the momentum of the song (in fairness, jerry seems to have gotten off track before this, which may have in turn confused weir). half way through the first set the overall recording has a completely different sound to it (the band is a little muted and the crowd is much more up front), and so i expect that there is a gap in the original seven inch reel to reel tapes, and they spliced it with a high quality taper source. but again, i quibble. ‘bird song’, ‘candyman’, and ‘cassidy’ on the first disc are great. the first set closer starts the second disc, a solid ‘china/rider’, which would basically set the tone for the epic second set.
‘scarlet begonias/fire on the mountain/estimated prophet to start, a nearly perfect ‘stella blue’, and then close out with ‘around and around/good lovin’/us blues/satisfaction’.
redeyegin 