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Showing posts with label 1968. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 1968. Show all posts

Thursday, September 10, 2009

1968 May 18 - Santa Clara County Fairgrounds

Grateful Dead - May 5, 1968
GRATEFUL DEAD
Saturday, May 18, 1968
Santa Clara County Fairgrounds – San Jose, CA
Northern California Folk-Rock Festival
Audience Recording

As far as the Grateful Dead go, 1968 contains a collection of music that is in many ways unparalleled across the vast 30 year span of their career. Like no other year, 1968 never spares a single minute toying around with the idea of taking you on a psychedelic music journey. It doesn’t gently take your hand and lead you down a path which exposes you to some magic land. No, 1968 is more like being run over by a freight train fueled on electric Kool-Aid steam . Drop the needle down at any instance of 1968 Grateful Dead and you’re catapulted directly into the heart of a musical expression so lysergic, so steeped in cosmic adventurism, it defies any true comparison to what we might generally bring to mind as the “psychedelic scene” of the late 60’s. The Dead in ’68 go beyond.

At this time the band was fully possessed by it musical muse. This muse stood so close to the veil which normally shrouds its presence in mystery that we have no problem recognizing this higher power working the band like fingers on a hand. The muse found a foothold in this musical ensemble which not two years earlier epitomized the “San Francisco Sound.” Here, that band has broken free of any pigeonholing or time stamping. They are a hurricane force spiraling windstorm of transformative and bone melting music. You are not safe in their presence. You can not emerge innocent with flowers in your hair from this music. I would have hated to have been in a band sharing the bill with the Grateful Dead in 1968, especially if they took the stage before me. What they were doing went beyond music somehow. And they needed no warming up or cooling down. From bell to bell, you got life-altering soul-fire which bleached your flesh and bones into the color of stars.

Grateful Dead 1968Sadly, we are missing far more of the Dead’s output from 1968 than we are lucky to have on tape. Vast portions of the year are nowhere to be found. We have spotted shows, partial runs, fragments of music – and that’s from within the patches where we actually have music at all. Between March and August of 1968, for example, we have documents from only four concerts total, while the band was playing nearly night in and night out, early and late shows, free concerts and headlining. It makes what we do have all that much more precious and at the same time painful due to the thought of what has been lost to time, lingering on the air, and left boiling in the blood of the audiences that were there to experience it.

One of these precious treasures from the vast wasteland of lost music came at the hands of The Jefferson Airplane’s Jorma Kaukonen, who recorded his own audience tape of the Dead’s performance on May 18th, 1968. He recorded from the lip of the stage, and while he clearly was on the move occasionally (the mic obviously gets repositioned two or three times during the set to different parts of the stage it seems), the recording is breathtaking all the same. There aren’t a lot of up front vocals, but in 1968 this doesn’t matter in the slightest. The raw inferno of the Grateful Dead’s power explodes like a super nova off of this tape. The mic’s journeying around the stage seems only to intensify much of the psychedelic power. 95% of the time, the recording will bring you to your knees – outdoors at an all day concert with the full force of the Grateful Dead rocketing you to worlds beyond the physical universe. There's a woman asked to say a few words to the folks at home in the opening seconds of this recording. She sums everything up just perfectly.

Alligator > Drums > Alligator > Caution (Do Not Stop On Tracks) > Feedback

Sharing the bill with The Doors, Eric Burdon & The Animal, Big Brother & The Holding Co., The Youngbloods, Electric Flag, Jefferson Airplane, Kaleidoscope, Country Joe & The Fish, and Taj Maha, the Dead used their early slot at the Northern California Folk-Rock Festival to deliver side two of the Anthem Of The Sun album – a record not due to hit the shelves until July of that year. The music explodes, filling the entire Santa Clara County Fairgrounds like a shower of lava. The Dead become a black hole sucking all matter and being into their core. The music is fierce with fists like mountains crushing everything for miles.

To hear this sliver of May 1968 (April is completely absent from tape collections, and May and June only barely qualify as being any better) is to be given a window into the Dead’s evolution through these primal years. As if the January and February tapes display a band any less powerful, this snapshot of May displays something more colossal. This is similar to the way November and December 1972 stand somewhat more brutally powerful than the months just before. The band and its ferocious musical energy is completely unleashed here in May ‘68.

There’s little hope in mapping out this musical journey. Though, I will say that the transition into Caution manages to somehow push things over an edge. Just after you’ve spent about twelve minutes under a gale force of Alligator jamming, Caution takes things up another notch, swirling in that Bluegrass element which, even here in the deepest reaches of psychedelic mayhem, is able to jettison the musical experience further out into swirling space-time.

The first pass into Feedback, somewhere just after Pigpen’s first round of “Just a touch,” comes one like a welcome breather which seems poised to allow our heart to stop racing for a few moments. Of course, this undulating wash of cymbals and turning volume knobs pins us down all the more, only giving us the smallest hints of the insanity to come some eleven-and-a-half minutes later.

The final Feedback is inescapable. Flesh, nerves, hair, bones, and fingernails are shredded so completely as to remove the individual human experience entirely from the event. Where has the fairground gone? Where has anything I held onto as reality gone? Breathing and heart beating are unknown here. The rippling sound beams find names in the valley of my sundrenched treetops and my gurgling brooks.

When it’s over, things have surely been driven so deeply into your body as to never have hope of ending completely.

05/18/68 AUD etree source info
05/18/68 AUD Download

Sunday, September 28, 2008

1968 August 23 - Shrine Auditorium

Jerry Garcia 1968

GRATEFUL DEAD
Friday, August 23, 1968
Shrine Auditorium – Los Angeles, CA
Soundboard Recording


Perhaps similar to many Deadheads, I spend the bulk of my listening time on shows from the 70’s and 80’s. I get back to the 60’s less frequently, and whenever I do, it strikes me that the shows from that decade are made up more purely of the essential power that would slowly diffuse into all the years that follow. It’s like standing close to the furnace within a power plant that, in turn, powers an entire city. This close, the source itself overpowers anything else, demands your attention. It’s at once frightening and unbelievably awesome at the same time. Put another way, the 60’s were the Grateful Dead’s big bang, and the resulting years were the slow expansion and formation of a glorious universe born out of that supremely powerful moment.

60’s Grateful Dead shows tend to have the opposite problem to that found in the 80’s, but it leads to the same challenge. In the 60’s, there were virtually no subpar shows. And while it means you can stick your hand in the jar and almost always come out with a tasty bit of candy, knowing which piece to grab first can still be a struggle. Picking 60’s shows for the blog has been my greatest challenge thus far for just these reasons.

Here, I will share a no-brainer pick from 1968. Parts this show have appropriately turned up as bonus material on the Golden Road Box Set copy of Anthem Of The Sun , and it is truly a must for all collectors. I had the pleasure of writing the review of 08/23/68 for the now out of print Deadhead’s Taping Addendum. Here is that review:

Jerry Garcia 1968August 1968. Always known as an amazing time of an amazing year. This entire show is, without a doubt, a knockout. So much good stuff all over. But what happens from Alligator on is beyond imagination. It takes the date to another level, leaving everything played before it somehow only "great."

The Other One blazes with that white-hot freight train intensity that typifies 1968 Dead. But as the show moves along, the true colors of this period begin to seep out from cracks in the skin of the flames. Dark Star is pushing ever closer to its destination of late February 1969. There is a wonderfully gooey passage where Jerry rides his volume knob up and down. Throughout the song you can hear many of the themes that would become rock-solid threads in the fabric of Dark Stars to come. They move into "St. Stephen," and it is most notable for the absence of crowd eruption that its first two notes would elicit in the years to come. It's neat to ponder the youth of the song here in August 1968. This is one of the first ten performances of that tune.

The Eleven is a tidal wave of power. Phil's ability to crunch out note after note, pile-driving energy into your spine, is colossal. The song spins wagon wheels of music slowly over each other. Knots are being tied and untied. Threads ignite and burn like wicks rushing toward dynamite. The drummers begin to snake into one another while Jerry starts to find small themes that pull him out and over the scene. Seconds before the tape cut, it becomes clear that Death Don't Have No Mercy is coming next. Nonetheless, the cut strikes like a city-wide power outage. Though the hint of Death Don't is there, the final decent out of The Eleven is lost. The only saving grace is that none of Death Don't itself is really missing. The tape picks back up at what seems like the logical start of the song.

Soulful darkness pervades Death Don't Have No Mercy as usual. There is a great bonding tie-in when Jerry again rides the volume knob in the same sticky liquid waves he found in Dark Star. It comes in the verse after his solo and it's very brief. But it's this sort of thing that makes the song all the better.

Jerry Garcia 1968A twisted image crowds my mind at the start of Alligator. I can't shake the vision of Pigpen telling his story in the song to a group of boys and girls in the kids' section of the local library on a Saturday afternoon. It's odd, and in the first moments of the Drums that comes after his last lines it is swept away. The drummers reach directly into their tribal revival rhythms, joined a few minutes later by Jerry. In a few more minutes the entire band is crashing back into the Alligator jam. It is most pronounced by its lyrical quality. Jerry soars over wildly joyful lines that continually toy with the Mountain Jam. This lends a perfect color to the white-hot blaze of energy - warm yellow and green washing into an electric sea of light. Jerry is breaking the membrane that holds the band on the ground. Without pausing for breath, they bound into Caution.

The tide rises and dark blue-black water churns from depths untouched by sunlight. A mild feedback courses over the drums revealing for a moment the true source of the black waters far out above the stars. Pigpen gives the verse, and the call/response between band mates of "all you need" is nicely delivered and heightened by the strong panning of each voice in the stereo mix. This is followed by a dive into Feedback. The sky is peeled back to reveal a home in the back-lit canopy of stars and moons. Music dissolves into cosmic voice and song. The comfort of this space is undeniable. Objects pass around you fast and slow, strange yet familiar. It's as if in Feedback the band manages, with its combined effort, to strum some inner instrument that runs its strings though each of our bodies. It flashes brighter, then is formed into more lyrical bliss by Jerry for a minute or so, the band roaring and moaning beneath him. Caution comes back out of the dark and charges ahead like a beast unchained. But the drone of the inner instrument proves too strong. It pours back into the foreground like sheeting rain pushed on the wind. Somehow, order finds a foothold again in Caution-like sounds. This back and forth between Feedback and Caution is amazing; so much explained in a place so confusing. Then, as if mildly amused by the attempts of order being placed on it, the inner instrument washes everything off the table and leaves the endless void of true space in its wake. Shimmering lights and pulsating globes consume all.

When the reality of the Shrine Auditorium returns with the clapping of hands, it is the most pathetic of attempts at trickery. Surely we have just been snatched out of true reality back into the dreams of daily life - the glimpse of the real world receding on feathered memories that cannot be forgotten.

08/23/68 SBD etree source info
08/23/68 SBD Stream

Tuesday, July 29, 2008

1968 January 22 - Eagle's Auditorium

Jerry Garcia Central Park, NY - May 5, 1968

GRATEFUL DEAD
Monday, January 22, 1968
Eagle's Auditorium – Seattle, WA
Soundboard Recording


The Grateful Dead were evolving at light speed. Or at least it seems that way. We have so little of the music from 1967 that the little glimpses we get are like spending an hour trying to tune in a radio dial to our favorite station and only hearing it for fractions of a second, a mere handful of times. While those glimpses are all on the same frequency, they actually end up sounding like very different radio stations altogether. In an interesting analogy, it could be said that history has formed 1967 into a mystery not unlike a caterpillar’s metamorphosis into a butterfly. Maybe we aren’t meant to see exactly how it happened?

1968 comes along and the band has clearly evolved into a psychedelic rock band like no other. In this early example of 1968 from Eagle’s Auditorium on January 22nd, we find the band fully defined (and Mickey had only joined the band as drummer number two a scant few months earlier). There could be entire books devoted to the ways in which the Dead differed from the other bands of the same era and genre. I’ll mention only that rather than playing in and on the style of the day, the Dead sounded like they were channeling psychedelic rock from the depths of creation; they were the voice through which the music’s soul chose to express itself – one of the obvious nods to labeling early years as “primal.”

Wasting no time what-so-ever, Alligator flies out of the gate stoking the psychedelic fires. Considering what follows, the song is actually a tad tame. It’s great to listen to the extremely slow dissolve into more and more freaked out music as the song moves along, going from recognizable rock instrumentation into fields of more and more slightly bizarre noises and vibrations . The edges of the song and the music continually fray away from a center of normalcy. Here, with the band taking its time, it seems somehow orchestrated and organic at the same time - improvised music with design. That said, by the end of Alligator, we are barely prepared for the rest of the set.

Mickey Hart Central Park, NY - May 5, 1968The live recordings used for the Anthem Of The Sun LP come from shows in November ’67 and January ’68. The 01/22/68 Cryptical > Other One > Cryptical suite is very much indicative of the album version with the added pleasure of an extra (first) verse on Other One. As it blossoms into New Potato Caboose it bears mentioning that the crowd was hearing side A of the record before it was released. Having imprinted myself so heavily on this record in the early years of my Dead discovery process, I can barely imagine what experiencing this musical journey might have been like live and fully unprepared.

As New Potato expands out into its post song jam section I can’t help but marvel at the small section of music before Jerry starts truly soloing. It’s the window of music that features nothing more than the sound of psychedelic winds blowing lazily around. This portion of the song where it seems almost nothing is happening (Jerry’s volume knob work layered over the band’s primal rhythm section churn) is magic for me. The sense of levitation is addictive. Short lived, it moves into the pure embodiment of the New Potato Caboose Groove. Here, there is a pervasive sensation of a glorious army march cresting over hilltops bathed in rainbow-hued sunshine. As they move into the melodically designed end portion of the song you can’t help but be completely locked in step with the band. It’s a song your heart already knows how to sing.

Instantly we drop on queue into Born Cross-Eyed, which comes off as some sort of twisted AM radio top 40 hit. This song seems to break as many rules as you’ll let it. And then the song ends and takes us beyond its spot as the last song on side A of the record, past the center groove of the LP, into a drippingly dark Feedback segment peppered with teases of the Spanish Jam lurking some four minutes in the future. Before getting there, we’re left with no place to hide from a restrained freefall into chaos. The Feedback is brooding and black, like wet rocks underground prevented from seeing sunlight. Darkness without fear, it’s more haunting than scary. Spanish Jam appears and provides a twisted pathway out of the formless void in which it found us.

Jerry Garcia Central Park, NY - May 5, 1968Then Dark Star. Not the epic it would become one year later – this song would need quite some time to breath – this is a none-the-less lovely version. Jerry’s solo lines are delivered with a familiar lilting. Still played faster than could allow the song’s phenomenal power to full take effect, there is nothing not to like about this early version. The band is clearly letting the song come to life and take form. They feed it whatever feels right. There’s a sense that an artist is taking another few minute pass at carving a statue out of rock. And then at the spot that would eventually head into the yet to be introduced St. Stephen, we go perfectly into China Cat Sunflower.

These early early China Cats are sensational. You can easily hear how the song places the band directly back into the Alligator jam style, and they are completely comfortable here. To listen to them fly through the song, all playing their finely crafted counterpoints with such energy, is primal Dead joy. When Jerry blasts into the last solo which heads toward The Eleven, it’s like fireworks exploding overhead. When they hit The Eleven proper it is clear that they have spent the last couple of months with Mickey in the band practicing this 11/8 time signature a lot (as the story certainly goes). After a slight passage where Jerry seems to regroup, the nectar begins to flow and flow.

That there are actually vocals in the midst of this music never fails to amaze me. Regardless of it still being a somewhat early version (one of the very first we know of on tape) there is nothing timid going on here. Interestingly, they don’t linger. Things cool down, and with one of Jerry’s magician-like casting of a rainbow full of notes, we are in Caution.

There wasn’t much in the Dead’s repertoire that contained more raw power. What the band had been doing with Viola Lee Blues, they continued to develop in Caution, and you could completely see how it provided the same outlet, only slightly more fierce. There was the same amazing juxtaposition of bluegrass to psychedelia. If there’s anything to really mourn on this tape, it’s that the entire vocal portion of this Caution is absent. When the SBD>DAT version made it into circulation, I noticed that it ended early in Caution itself. But I had a cassette version which, after the same cut, picked back up after one second of dead air after the vocals (reel flip?), to play out the rest of the show. I stitched up the version in circulation linked below.

The slide into Feedback is breathtaking. The portion of the tape that comes after the cut begins with Caution reaching its highest peaks while a pure frenzy of soul smashing noise and energy tears itself apart in a slow motion megaton explosion until nothing is left but a white-hot onslaught of noise. It slowly passes into quiet, leaving the audience completely stunned. There’s nothing left. Then from the emptiness rises the familiar album ending feedback portion from Anthem of the Sun, running a good time longer than the B side of the record could contain.

This is wholly mind crippling music culled from the pool in which all mind enlightening satori energy forms. The potency this close to the pool is more than the senses can bear - in a way preventing our ability to feel the gentle expanding release into the moment. Our attention is locked, to be sure, but things are moving and changing so fast and in so many directions, the power becomes overwhelming – as I said, crippling.

A living example of what the older generation surely saw as unbearably wrong with the youth, and yet for those who had made room in their head for it, a nirvana-petal flower calling from the deep soul lifeblood of music. This is what lives at the heart of it all. The rushing, looping, exploding, twisting inferno whose fingers reach their way all the way into every fiber of the Grateful Dead body. Tinged with this magic, it is no wonder so many of us find so much drawing us all the way in time and time again.

01/22/68 SBD etree source info
01/22/68 SBD Stream

Thursday, February 14, 2008

1968 March 3 - Haight Street

Grateful Dead March 3 1968 - Haight Street Free Concert GRATEFUL DEAD
Sunday, March 3, 1968
Haight Street Free Concert
Audience Recording

Anyone following this blog might have seen this one coming. It wouldn't be long before I needed to turn focus to 1968, and since I've proven an affection for AUD tapes, coming to 03/03/68 first makes an almost impossible task of picking a good 1968 show (we'd be sitting in front of my tapes and CDs for an entire evening while I proved completely incapable of picking just one show), all the more easy.

The picture of the Dead playing this concert is one of those historic 1960's Revolution shots that ends up giving many thousands of words to the era. This very listenable digitization of this recording came into circulation in 2002, and it rings every bell when it comes to Dead shows.

Jerry Garcia 1968 A concert event of mythic proportion that nearly no one ever heard on tape.

A golden nugget from a period of time in the Dead's evolution (Jan-Feb '68) where most serious tapers have/had every note in circulation on tape. This was like God himself throwing a towel out to the crowd, or casually letting a poem written on the back of a napkin flutter down to us from heaven (Pick your favorite metaphor. I couldn't).

It's a field recording from an event in cultural history. This makes the musical archeologist in me swoon.

And the last bell rung is a hallmark in Dead taping - the tape runs out as the band is set to go off into the meat of the set which we may never hear (apparently we missed an Other One and Dancin' at the very least). Oh the PAIN!

Psychedelic Blender Rock

In Viola Lee Blues, somewhere two or three hundred light-years into the jam, there is a fabulous out there/in there moment where the band is spiraling and soaring and Jerry locks into a haunting one note slow repetition that feels like some beacon message from an outer planet satellite. A bit later, they somehow find a higher speed on the blender and proceed to whip you so mightily that the vessel in which you're spinning dissolves and you blend into the chaos of primal feedback. You can feel the focused attention of the crowd through this. It is powerful stuff.

03/03/68 etree source info
03/03/68 AUD download

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