tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-27357026079254166692024-03-06T15:03:54.435+01:00the modern deadheadBenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05875337467116438015noreply@blogger.comBlogger49125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2735702607925416669.post-49837848158901769322015-04-18T13:23:00.000+02:002015-04-21T09:15:27.114+02:00One for the history buffs<div class="p1">
[I wrote most of this article some time ago; my brother runs a website called Cultural IV and asked me for some original content. For various reasons, it never went up, and and it's been sitting around for a while. A couple of weeks ago, with all the Chicago ticketing madness, I slapped a new introduction on it and pitched it to some online magazines. Nobody picked it up so here it is, in case any of you fine folk like it. Enjoy!]</div>
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<span class="Apple-tab-span"></span> People on StubHub are asking upwards of 100,000 dollars for tickets to see the Grateful Dead’s 50th anniversary shows in Chicago, 20 years after they played their last show there with Garcia. What <i>is</i> it with this band? Answers abound: it’s the music, it’s Jerry’s voice, it’s the improvisation, it’s the variety, it’s the mass availability of the band’s recordings, it’s the hybrid nature of the music, it’s the atmosphere. These all have a part to play, but one factor is hardly ever evoked: the band was a uniquely American institution not only as a musical phenomenon, but also a historical one.<br />
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<span class="Apple-tab-span"></span> The existing literature on the Grateful Dead, (something on the order of fifty publications of varying quality, accuracy and focus) deals with them primarily as a rock and roll band, and secondarily as a socio-cultural phenomenon. Only one book to date places them in a historical context [Edit: Peter Richardson's recent "No Simple Highway" does so as well; as of this writing I had not read it]. Carol Brightman’s <i>Sweet Chaos</i> juxtaposes the countercultures she and her sister Candace were involved in (Carol was an activist and Candace was the Dead’s lighting designer on and off for 20 years). Brightman argues that the Grateful Dead represented a specific current in the youth society of the 1960s. This begs the question as to whether, after the psychedelia fad (Strawberry Alarm Clock, anyone?) and the Woodstock moment, the band remained a reflection of American culture. Ultimately, a significant factor in the the band’s cultural legitimacy is the fact that for 30 years, they reflected the experience of Baby Boomer America.</div>
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<span class="Apple-tab-span"></span> Only one founding member of the band properly belongs to the Baby Boom (Weir, b. 1947). The rest of the band were born in the first half of the decade to a generation that had lived through the Great Depression and would constitute the maddeningly cautious and conservative authority figures of the 1950s and 60s. Just old enough to be looked up to by the Boomers, band members came of age in the era of Rock n’ Roll and Beat poetry, and graduated high school at the turn of the 1960s, determined to challenge everything that characterized the wartime generation.<br />
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<span class="Apple-tab-span"></span> Perhaps the best-known experiment of that era began in a Victorian enclave of San Francisco that had fallen into disrepair during the planning phase of a highway that was never built. In the mid 60s, the now-cheap Haight-Ashbury neighborhood filled slowly with newly independent young people of few means and unusually varied backgrounds, a community of erstwhile beatniks and bohemians that included Weir, the adopted son of a wealthy Atherton couple who ran off to - in his words - join the circus, Pigpen, a grimy young drunk from East Palo Alto, and Jerry Garcia, an army reject immigrant's son who had grown up in San Francisco waterfront taverns.<span class="Apple-tab-span"> </span><br />
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<span class="Apple-tab-span"></span> Outside the world of these proto-hippies, the US government was busy waging the Cold War, which notably involved a program called MK-Ultra that tested mind-altering substances for possible applications in espionage. A branch of the program operated across the bay in Berkeley; more than a few struggling young people signed up to earn a few bucks acting as guinea pigs. Some of them were given LSD, notably <i>One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest</i> author Ken Kesey, who founded the Merry Pranksters, and Robert Hunter, who would be the Grateful Dead's first and most prolific lyricist. <br />
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<span class="Apple-tab-span"></span> American Rock n’ Roll had more or less died at the end of the 1950s. Elvis joined the army in 1958; a plane crash killed Richie Valens, Buddy Holly and the Big Bopper in 1959. Chuck Berry was in serious legal trouble, accused of kidnapping a 14-year-old girl; Jerry Lee Lewis was blacklisted after marrying his teenaged cousin; Little Richard quit music to become a minister. The void was filled in 1963 by the British invasion and a new, irreverent and exciting form of Rock n’ Roll far from the polished, reasonably family-friendly fare of the preceding decade. In the Haight-Ashbury, it would spark an explosion of music combining rock n' roll, folk, blues, pot and LSD.<br />
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<span class="Apple-tab-span"></span> The Grateful Dead itself was properly born in June 1965 when Phil Lesh, an avant-garde music geek freshly fired from a job at the post office joined the Warlocks, a mediocre bar-band with a talented lead guitarist and a grungy frontman, who were playing a limited repertoire of old blues and rock and roll - with louder instruments - in singles bars and pizza parlors. Their influences had initially been bluegrass and jug band music, but the Rolling Stones’ American debut, combined with Pigpen’s Blues sensibilities, would give their sound a new direction. They had recently added a drummer named Bill Kreutzmann and gone electric. In December they changed their name from the Warlocks to the Grateful Dead, connected with their friends in the Ken Kesey scene and played some house parties for the Merry Pranksters' Acid Tests. Later immortalized by Tom Wolfe, this fateful union would lend them an indelible legitimacy that launched their career and followed them through the mid 1990s. For several early years, however, they waded on unremarkably in the burgeoning San Francisco music scene. In the summer of 1967, the media started to direct attention to the Haight-Ashbury neighborhood: the San Francisco Chronicle coined the (derogatory) term "hippy," Harry Reasoner, Life Magazine, and 60 Minutes brought national attention, the Baby Boomer generation took notice, and the hippie identity was born.<br />
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<span class="Apple-tab-span"></span> The two waves of hippies described by Brightman (largely conflated in the popular consciousness today) can be called escapists and activists. They existed at the same time and were comprised of the same generation, often in the same trappings, reacting to the same cultural rigidity, but on one side were those who set out to change the status quo by militating against it: the anti-war protesters, the sitters-in, the Weather Underground; and on the other, those who tried to create an alternate way of life by refusing to engage at all, represented by Easy Rider, communes, and the Grateful Dead. For several years, the band would rely only on themselves and their entourage. They played free concerts, recorded spacey, avant-garde, unconventional albums and played ambassadors of the “San Francisco Scene,” courtesy of legendary promoter Bill Graham, from Vancouver to Florida. Outside the youth scene, the same period had seen the emergence of a high-profile, organized and largely peaceful Civil Rights movement led by Martin Luther King. Jr., yielding several significant pieces of legislation. Hippie or not, there was a feeling of optimism among the rising generation: change was possible; change was happening.<br />
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<span class="Apple-tab-span"></span> This prevailing optimism suffered some significant blows around the turn of the decade, however. Martin Luther King had been assassinated, his pacifism yielding to more aggressive activism marked by the Nation of Islam and the Black Panthers. The euphoria following Woodstock was rudely shut down three and a half months later when a shoddily arranged concert at Altamont Speedway saw the stabbing death of a gun-wielding fan by Hell's Angels. Six months after that, four student protesters at Kent State university were shot by the National Guard. The activists turned serious, the escapists withdrew. These sharp doses of realism began to turn the tide for the country and the band. </div>
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<span class="Apple-tab-span"></span> In a deeply personal betrayal, the Grateful Dead's manager (second drummer Mickey Hart's father) absconded to Mexico in early 1970 with his mistress and a hundred and fifty thousand dollars of the band's money. This dose of reality yielded the decision to have the Stones' former manager Sam Cutler, who had washed up at Hart’s ranch after Altamont, lend some professional managerial experience to the band's affairs. The laissez-faire, come-what-may, non-stop party that was the Grateful Dead touring machine reluctantly gathered some semblance of order: organized tours, per diems, albums considerably more conservative (and successful) than the first few.<br />
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Beyond the band's world, the financial and moral cost of Vietnam were exerting a sobering influence on America's sense of rectitude and exeptionalism. News of the My Lai Massacre had broken in 1968, the New York Times started publishing the Pentagon papers in 1971; the dirty world of politics was laid bare by Woodward and Bernstein starting in 1972; strategic imperatives prompted involvement in the Arab-Israeli War of 1973. The American military was reviled, the President of the United States resigned in disgrace; the Arab oil-producers embargoed the country, engendering a devastating energy crisis.<br />
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<span class="Apple-tab-span"></span> The Grateful Dead plugged on, playing college gigs and developing an audience in the middle of the country (the coasts had already been more or less in the bag, thanks in large part to Bill Graham). One of their most celebrated successes was their 1972 tour of Europe. The trip would yield no less than seven releases (40 years after the fact, a $450, 73-disc set of the entire tour sold out in four days). The band also pioneered a gargantuan and still-unique PA system know as the Wall Of Sound that rose some 30 feet into the air behind the band, eliminating the need for individual amps or monitors. But the band was clinging to an outdated optimism. The road crew, consisting of anyone who wanted to join regardless of qualifications, was inefficient and costly. Setting up the massive Wall Of Sound required two sets of scaffolding that would leapfrog from show to show, adding considerably to expenses. Cocaine replaced marijuana and LSD as the drug of choice: productivity went up but so did emotional volatility. Finally, placing community over business despite rising costs, the band resisted raising ticket prices. As gas prices tripled in the wake of the OPEC embargo, the band finally saw the writing on the wall and went on indefinite hiatus in October 1974.<br />
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<span class="Apple-tab-span"></span> The Ford years were something of a black hole for the United States, marred by a crippling economic downturn, a Presidency forever tainted by the Watergate scandal, and a humiliating Communist victory in Vietnam. American music had also stagnated… the best-selling hit of 1975 was The Captain and Tenille's <i>Love Will Keep Us Together</i>. Band members tried their luck individually with a handful of solo projects, none of which rivaled the Grateful Dead. The band took back to the road gingerly in the summer of 1976, at about the time the American public decided to give the Democrats another chance and disco took center stage as the American musical genre of the moment.<br />
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<span class="Apple-tab-span"></span> There was a brief uptick in the American psyche in those final years of the 1970s, but it proved illusory. Carter, the genteel American everyman whose presidency is the only one so far not to see any wars, fostered the Camp David accords, easing the Cold War proxy-conflict in the Middle East, and the economy revived. The Grateful Dead saw a period of relative success: the spring tour of 1977 is considered one of their best (notwithstanding the flirtation with disco!), to date yielding official releases representing almost half the tour.<br />
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The optimism was short-lived. Hard drugs took root in the Grateful Dead entourage, a more aggressive form of escapism that was reflected elsewhere in American culture, where sci-fi fantasy ruled the box office with films like Alien, Star Wars and Star Trek. Disco faded, replaced by New Wave, in turn given a serious run for its money by the garish hair-and-makeup bands of the early eighties. The Iranian revolution of 1979 brought both another reminder of American vulnerability and Carter's famed "crisis of confidence," a crisis that nevertheless had serious economic repercussions. Carter also made the decision to involve the United States in Russia's Afghan venture. John Lennon was unceremoniously murdered on his own front step; former Grateful Dead keyboardist Keith Godchaux died in a car accident. By the early eighties, the party was over. Carter had perhaps seen it coming: "if we succumb to a dream world," he had warned, "then we will wake up to a nightmare."<br />
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<span class="Apple-tab-span"></span> The Grateful Dead would spend the first half of the 1980s fighting irrelevance. They wrote very little music; their improvisational and experimental style faded somewhat in favor of more rudimentary rock and roll fare. Aside from Rock Scully’s morbid discussion of Garcia's drug problem, the literature on the Grateful Dead is virtually silent on the first half of the decade. By and large, the entire band was struggling with substance issues - as was the United States as a whole, with the hugely popular Miami Vice reflecting the staggering trade in cocaine sweeping the country. Ronald Reagan's reforms had yet to produce results: the economy was stagnant, unemployment was high, morale was low, AIDS was rampant. There was little notable cultural innovation.<br />
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<span class="Apple-tab-span"></span> 1984 saw the modest beginnings of economic recovery and Reagan successfully campaigned for reelection on the slogan “Morning in America,” tapping into a cautious optimism among a chastened boomer generation now in their thirties. The feeling in the band was analogous. There was a change of management in 1984, following allegations of enablement and embezzlement. Sometime around 1985 tour bonuses were instituted as part of an overhaul of the organization’s finances; several band-members stopped using hard drugs (at least temporarily) in 1985 and ’86. 1985 saw the band gross an unprecedented $11.5 million. By the end of1987, as Wall Street hit theaters, the Grateful Dead was on the rise again: the album In The Dark had gone platinum, mostly on the strength of the band’s first and only top 10 hit, Touch of Grey. They negotiated a multi-album deal with the highest royalty rate in history thus far. Everyone in the band bought a new car.<br />
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<span class="Apple-tab-span"></span> The United States meanwhile, freed from financial uncertainty, seemed to grow something of an ecological conscience during the 1980s. The “Save the Whales” movement finally bore fruit, with a moratorium on commercial whaling (the fixation yielded the plot of 1986’s Star Trek IV, wherein the mammals are found to be the key to earth’s salvation). The concept of “sustainable development” was first defined in 1987 and deforestation became an issue, particularly in the Amazon Rainforest. By the late Eighties, the band began to reflect a sense of wider social responsibility. The band’s original fan base were entering middle age and were a notable factor in political discourse; Garcia would describe the band as “citizens who have a constituency.” In 1988, They began to militate for conservation, appearing before the UN, playing a major benefit concert and doing a spate of interviews. The following year, Garcia, Hart and Weir appeared before the Congressional Human Rights caucus.<br />
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The band’s (and the country’s) fortunes improved steadily into the early nineties - unemployment dropped through the end of the decade, per capita GDP rose, and the Grateful Dead became the world’s highest-grossing touring act in 1991, the same year the United States won the Cold War. Their average venue size had increased by about 40% and their income had tripled since the middle of the 1980s. Garcia once memorably quipped that the Grateful Dead were "like bad architecture or an old whore: if you stick around long enough, eventually you get respectable.” For good or ill, the Grateful Dead became quite fashionable in their final years, and they were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1994. Phil Lesh was invited to conduct the San Francisco Philharmonic Orchestra. Some of their boomer fan-base had done quite well for themselves: Al and Tipper Gore gave them a tour the White House; Senators Barbara Boxer and Patrick Leahy invited them to lunch at the Senate. Since then, Weir and Hart have both been invited to the exclusive and secretive annual retreat at Bohemian Grove, with the crème de la crème of American government, industry and culture.<br />
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<span class="Apple-tab-span"></span> Most fans will tell you that the final years of the Grateful Dead were not all roses and recognition, that Jerry Garcia’s health and chops faded palpably in the last years, that shows were marred by gatecrashing, drugs and police presence. Smashing success had not brought lasting stability, rather an unsustainable hubris among fans and a crushing pressure for the band to continue indefinitely. George HW Bush’s “New World Order” led by the United States, seemed poised for indefinite triumph in the wake of the Soviet collapse, but the by the middle of the decade, a new terrorist threat fueled by decades of American interventionism in the Middle East began to jell. It would definitively shatter the illusion, whole since the war, that the US was, if not invincible, at least immune to catastrophe. Garcia’s ignominious death of heart failure in a rehabilitation clinic drove that point home for Deadheads; the US embassy bombings in Africa, the attack on the USS Cole, and the destruction of the Twin Towers would do the same for the America in the years to come.</div>
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<span class="Apple-tab-span"></span> For some of those currently cashing in their 401Ks to see (most of) the Grateful Dead one last time, this is about more than good vibes or hearing a final Dark Star; there is no other band whose trajectory so closely reflects the life experiences of the Baby Boomer generation. Ever modest, Garcia’s “old whore” analogy sells the band short. Longevity alone is not enough to earn a place as a cultural fixture; one has to represent that culture in a tangible way. If demand for tickets to Chicago this summer (estimated to be in the millions) is any indication, there are a great many people in the United States who feel that this band, of all bands, is <i>their</i> band.</div>
<div class="blogger-post-footer">Ben Heckscher
Furthur Study
benjamin.heckscher@gmail.com</div>Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05875337467116438015noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2735702607925416669.post-91473851626595880722011-07-14T17:02:00.005+02:002011-07-16T03:55:46.465+02:00Grateful Dead: November-December 1973The Grateful Dead played twenty shows in November and December of 1973; half of them appear on official releases, including Dick’s very first Pick. Starting with the Winterland run, I listened to seventeen of those shows, and heard a very interesting interview taped during the three-night run in Boston.<br /> <br /> These shows come at the end of a four-year period during which Sam Cutler managed the band. Formerly the Stones’ manager, he had washed up at Mickey’s after Altamont in December of ’69 and put his experience to work with the Dead. During his tenure their schedule started to coalesce from a sort of perma-tour – gigs year-round with never more than a week or so off – to a much more structured arrangement where shows were booked in series with a more logical geographic distribution and longer breaks between outings. The early seventies saw the band become a professional touring outfit, even if drugs, logistics, and the 45% hike in gas prices with no concomitant ticket-price increase would eventually make things untenable. A January 1974 band meeting would see the dismissal of Cutler in a move led by Ron Rakow and Richard Loren, perhaps ironically on the grounds of being too focused on “more, bigger, more professional.”<br /> <br /> Musically, the band was certainly in great form. Their catalogue was well-rehearsed: of the 445 songs they played, there were only 56 different ones, and 21 of those were played at more than half the shows. Big River, El Paso, Mexicali Blues and Row Jimmy were almost nightly fixtures. <span style="font-style:italic;">Wake of the Flood</span> having just been released, Weather Report Suite and Eyes were also frequent. On the upside, this means that almost all the shows were, technically speaking, real good; on the downside, one can sense that there is an element of going through the motions, where songs are performed perfunctorily. Big River illustrates the point: the form was solid every night: chorus>verse>Jerry solo>verse>chorus>Keith solo>verse>chorus>Jerry double solo>chorus>tag. Getting this together is a walk in the park, but the occasions were few when all those solos were up to par (<a href="http://ia700405.us.archive.org/25/items/gd1973-12-01.sbd.miller.112205.flac16/gd73-12-01d1t12.mp3">12.01</a> comes to mind). That being said, I have to admit this might be my favorite period for Big River: fast and still thoroughly country.<br /> In the mid-00s, Weir made much of the fact that RatDog had such a large catalogue and that they might thus only get a stab at a song every few weeks or even months. By contrast, when you know a song will come back the next night, and likely the night after that, there is less urgency to put forth the effort every time. <br /><br /> I would argue that the band was feeling a little bored in November. The December leg saw some departures from the usual fare, notably the appearance of full-on Space segments, often prompted by Phil. The first of these came out of Playin’ on <a href="http://www.archive.org/details/gd73-12-02.aud.vernon.17278.sbeok.shnf">December 2nd</a>, and there were a few others thereafter. Cincinnati (12.04) saw a rather awkward interpretation of Eyes of the World with Phil slamming a few notes, Bill throwing in an off-beat riff, and a hesitant return to the main theme. There was also a rare Drums segment on the <a href="http://www.archive.org/details/gd1973-12-18.sbd.miller.97511.sbeok.flac16">18th</a>. Considering the fact that the band had only had a week off since mid-October and had since then crossed the country back to front and top to bottom, road-weariness is only natural.<br /> This was not confined to the band. The crew, never the most diplomatic of characters, had a run-in with the local Union in Cleveland, according to Parish. Accustomed to their own rhythm and methods, the GD crew had set about the task of unloading the trucks and setting up the stage, all the while ignoring the local Teamsters whose job it ought to have been. The latter, no more diplomatic than their counterparts, returned 150-strong with bats and at least one gun to explain their grievances. Pissing contests between the Dead’s crew and local hands were a common occurrence, but this escalation was perhaps indicative of something more systemic.<br /><br /> The post-show interview in Boston, in the early hours of December 2nd covered a broad range of topics, one of which was partying. One story involved Ron Wickersham (electronics guy working for Alembic, on board since ’68): on the first night of the run, an overenthusiastic fan had run through a plate-glass window in the lobby of the Boston Music Hall and landed in the arms of Wickersham, who was hurrying to the stage to address some electronic issue or other. The police arrived pretty quick, carting off both Wickersham and the glass-riddled fan. As the story goes, Wickersham had been up for two days (reasons un-named but guessable), which prompted the police to release the fan and hold Wickersham, sending him to the hospital for detox.<br /> The second thing involved Phil. On two occasions, a listener asked a question about how many Heinekens Phil had consumed during the show. The first time, the question was more or less deflected as one of the assorted crew/band-members present offered a minute-by-minute, ounce-by-ounce report on the whole evening, concluding that the total was somewhere near four and a half. The second time the question came up, however, Weir guessed somewhere around eleven. The fact that the question came up twice suggests Phil’s drinking was common knowledge, and the fact that Weir would even ballpark that number – consumed over the course of three hours – implies that Phil was already more than a casual drinker, notwithstanding the assertion in his book that he “wasn’t drinking or using drugs” in that period.<br /> <br /> The quote above, from Searching for the Sound (p. 218), referred to the Wall of Sound era. Most of the time, the Wall of Sound is held to have existed only in 1974 (and perhaps Phil quit drinking that year), but it had been in development since early 73. Several sources talk about a Wall of Sound “false start” on February 9th 1973 – an experiment at a Palo Alto show using various elements of the future wall, including a system for “pinking” the room to detect its acoustic properties and tailor levels accordingly. By way of explanation for the two-hour delay in starting the show on the first night, the Boston interview includes a description of the sound system. The amps and PA had been unified and stacked up behind the band. Aside from its size, this was really the defining feature of the Wall. While this incarnation was a <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4lJXSMKKCvcTmtokefKI4Y1lVuxbMpmy_ITVqdtvkyY3uJnFgdf57yEOIfPgPmdPz0SCLWOmbJsi7TKKgAjcGGG3wB1_ZmpPgVlfLeZLTqE6PKdyiws2ItTOO_oflwuUxSX7lRo33LIk/s1600/Front.jpg">smaller-scale prototype</a> of what would come later, the rig was <a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhkvPHGRjTeEKZPJACW5EXukGbufvgMinJaobwit79ThibLLUCvPNeDQ7cnD2foW1Mu-jLRar7xUo5u85stGfxQPabu1sCQMvyqHmSuLCqg6cpDcIcH0BdMLsOJ_T_WRdGKkrwiYgrpYO3u/s320/GRANDPRIX-RACECOURSE-7-28-73.jpg">large enough</a> that they had significant trouble fitting it into the Boston Music Hall, a venue much smaller than most of the others of the time. The January ’74 meeting that saw Cutler’s firing also yielded the decision to fund a full-scale system, but the late-‘73 version offered a glimpse of the future, and shows that the Wall did not appear out of nowhere in February 1974.<br /><br /> A few other items worth noting in the interview: Watkins Glen, the mammoth July show starring the Dead, The Band and the Allman Brothers, was generally considered too big – a large number of the six hundred thousand attendees simply couldn’t hear anything. Mickey was widely discussed, even though he had left the band almost three years before: among other things, Hunter’s <span style="font-style:italic;">Tales of the Great Rum Runners</span> had been recorded in Mickey’s barn/studio and made use of his talents as a horn arranger. The last part of the interview focused on the various solo efforts coming out of Round Records: <span style="font-style:italic;">Rolling Thunder</span>, the Garcia/Saunders record and <span style="font-style:italic;">Old and In The Way</span>. The Grateful Dead Records experiment was unique and innovative and consequently got a lot of airplay.<br /><br /> The second leg of the tour centered on the east coast. Donna Jean stayed home for these ten shows, pregnant with Zion to the point where it wasn’t “advisable to be running around on planes.” These are the only shows without her during her tenure (unless you count the tour closer in February 1979, the last show before the Godchaux’s official departure). She returned to the band in February ‘74, but presumably because of her new-mom status, the Spring schedule was uncharacteristically light, with only 4 Bay Area shows through April instead of their usual East Coast and Midwest tours. They also took the opportunity to record at least part of <span style="font-style:italic;">Mars Hotel</span>, at CBS Studios in San Francisco. <br /> It’s unfortunate that Donna’s most noticed contributions seem to be the Playin’ howl and the screaming she and Bob did on the end of Sunshine Daydream. Nobody would argue that both are more strained than melodic, and the desire to give the end of the show some kick sometimes got the better of them. I’ve previously noted the impressive credentials in her pre-Grateful Dead career and her harmonization talents, so I needn’t revisit that point; however, it was a bit of a relief to have a less strain in those moments, even if it meant less harmony on the ballads.<br /> Keith, on the other hand, seemed to loosen up somewhat in his playing. While he would regularly sprinkle in beautiful, whimsical little fills and harmonies, solos would find him retreating to the safety of chords. Big River saw one of his only regular solos, and only in December did I notice Keith really stepping up and asserting himself. Who knows if having a little “guy time” wasn’t good for him? Road-stress did almost destroy the Godchaux marriage, so time off couldn’t have been entirely negative.<br /><br /><br /> As I said above, late 1973 was musically a very solid period. Flubs and false starts were rare; the band moved through their sets quickly and easily, and there was a very broad range in the music, from the very tight (<a href="http://ia700208.us.archive.org/22/items/gd1973-11-17.sbd.patched.bec.22799.flac16/gd73-11-17d1t05_vbr.mp3">Mexicali Blues 11.17</a>) to the exploratory (Dark Star 11.11). Here Comes Sunshine got a good workout during November. China>Rider was frequent and Weir had a lot to say, depending on the night, during that transitional jam – I’m partial to 12.10 (<a href="http://www.archive.org/details/dead_air_20060813">here</a> at 10:50). Garcia would still solo over the whole song in Weir’s cowboy tunes. Phil tended to get a bit loud as the night went on; Weir often did too much screeching at the end of Sugar Magnolia. Peggy-O was added to the repertoire on December 10th. The general atmosphere was still jovial, with the odd fire-marshal warning, an occasional go-nowhere joke from Weir, banter from the stage. Phil still got a solo in Eyes or even Dark Star. Good times, warts and all.<br /> If I had to pick some favorites, I think I’d agree with Dick in pointing to 12.19 in Florida, and I’d throw in <a href="http://www.archive.org/details/gd1973-11-17.sbd.sirmick.79548.sbeok.flac16">11.17 in LA</a>. I love the Here Comes Sunshine vibe in November.<br /><br /> Considering the number of official releases, the most for any period save the upcoming Europe 72 release, I can’t be alone in appreciating the overall quality of late ‘73. That being said, hearing this stretch of shows has given me an appreciation for the later development of the band as the repertoire grew and they were able to play different songs more frequently. There is a reverence for certain early periods in the context of the quality of the music – the ’69 Live Dead era, the 72 tour, etc, but it’s easy to forget that the band was often playing the same songs night after night, so that hearing one show is bound to be rewarding but listening to several is often more of the same. There is an oft-quoted maxim that the Dead never played the same show twice. In terms of the music and solos, of course, that’s true, but I would not be surprised to find some very similar setlists. Listening to long stretches of shows becomes more rewarding in the late 80s and 90s when they could play five or six shows without repeating a song. A song’s development is more marked when one hears it a week apart rather than every night, and I can only assume it was more interesting for the band as well. <br /> <br /><br /> Up Next: I’ve been real slow in getting these written and posted, but in my defense, I was getting married ☺. I’ve started into the first half of 1983 (everything through May 13 so far), so that ought to be next. I’m going to take a little breather after that and listen to a half-dozen Rush shows, because I’ve never really paid any attention to them before, and then I suppose I’ll do the Furthur tour. Cheers.<div class="blogger-post-footer">Ben Heckscher
Furthur Study
benjamin.heckscher@gmail.com</div>Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05875337467116438015noreply@blogger.com10tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2735702607925416669.post-88984992386470735162011-04-09T13:17:00.006+02:002011-04-09T14:22:01.484+02:00Grateful Dead - Summer 1995A few weeks ago I finished listening to a selection of shows from the Grateful Dead’s last outings between May and July 1995, including their final four performances. The generally positive feelings that have characterized the past few posts, as I worked through the band’s closing years, quickly turned sour. The last glimmers of hope I held for the band and Garcia flickered and died by the time I reached the penultimate run in Missouri. Not that there weren’t any interesting moments, but moments were all they were. <br /> <br /> I had been rather optimistic about Garcia when I started this latest series. The first few, from the west coast tour, found him occasionally sounding better than he had the previous fall, and there were some shows during that tour when has was more or less competent, but overall, his performance in this last period is unacceptable. The band had been covering for him for some time, but the distribution of solos still left him a lot of leading to do and it was a rare occasion when he could. Lines he had played for decades were out of sync, muddled, missing notes. He couldn’t put more than a phrase or two together. He would slide off the frets and play a half-step too high or low, either without noticing or without being able to rectify it. His voice was weak and out of place, he struggled to sing, dropped words and forgot lines to everything. He was, in other words, often incompetent, and any other band would have let him go. <br /> <br /> There were a few instances worth mentioning just to be fair to the old boy. The first set of <a href="http://www.archive.org/details/gd95-05-21.sbd.ladner.19419.sbeok.shnf">5/21</a> was pretty solid; his solo on <span style="font-style:italic;"><a href="http://ia600201.us.archive.org/19/items/gd95-06-25.sbd.2236.sbefail.shnf/gd95-06-25d1t04_vbr.mp3">Mexicali Blues</a></span> on 6/25 was good, and <span style="font-style:italic;"><a href="http://ia600306.us.archive.org/22/items/gd1995-07-05.sbd.larson.35170.flac16/gd95-07-05sbdd2t03_vbr.mp3">GDTRFB</a></span>, 7/5, saw some crisp leads (I have also read positive reviews for <a href="http://www.archive.org/details/gd1995-06-21.fob.schoeps.sisler.stephens.76663.sbeok.flac16">June 21st</a>, though I haven’t heard it). But by far the best song I heard was the penultimate night’s <span style="font-style:italic;"><a href="http://ia700303.us.archive.org/25/items/gd1995-07-08.sbd.larson.35157.flac16/gd95-07-08d2t05_vbr.mp3">Visions of Johanna</a></span>: seemingly out of nowhere, Jerry pulled together a strong, beautiful, heartfelt version of the song, the last Dylan song he would ever perform.<br /><br /> Meanwhile, the rest of the Grateful Dead carried on without much enthusiasm. Some shows were good. There was little original stuff going on, despite the occasional interesting jam like <span style="font-style:italic;"><a href="http://ia700304.us.archive.org/24/items/gd1995-07-06.sbd.larson.35156.flac16/gd95-07-06sbdd1t07_vbr.mp3">Cassidy</a></span> on July 6th or <span style="font-style:italic;"><a href="http://ia700302.us.archive.org/30/items/gd1995-06-02.sbd.damico.92520.flac16/gd95-06-02d1t07_vbr.mp3">Bird Song</a></span> on June 2nd, or an objectively solid number or two like Riverport’s <span style="font-style:italic;"><a href="http://ia700304.us.archive.org/24/items/gd1995-07-06.sbd.larson.35156.flac16/gd95-07-06sbdd1t02_vbr.mp3">Take Me To The River</a></span> (7/6). While the band’s musical abilities were strong, the effort wasn’t there like it had been even a year earlier. There were times when the work-in to a song was sloppy and disinterested (<span style="font-style:italic;"><a href="http://ia600201.us.archive.org/21/items/gd95-05-21.sbd.ladner.19419.sbeok.shnf/gd95-05-21d1t06_vbr.mp3">So Many Roads</a></span>, 5/21), or the time fell apart at the end (<span style="font-style:italic;"><a href="http://ia700304.us.archive.org/24/items/gd1995-07-06.sbd.larson.35156.flac16/gd95-07-06sbdd1t04_vbr.mp3">Me & My Uncle</a></span> 7/6). <br /><br /> Perhaps the biggest indication of the band’s general listlessness is Phil’s <span style="font-style:italic;">Unbroken Chain</span>. Today’s version is, to me, phenomenal. Furthur’s tight thematic progressions and bursting energy demonstrate the potential of that song, written in the mid seventies when the band was at a peak of compositional effort and complexity. The versions heard by crowds in 1995 were just terrible by comparison. Garcia was atrocious, but the rest of the band hardly put in the work either. After nine stabs at it throughout 1995, the band’s <a href="http://ia600201.us.archive.org/19/items/gd95-07-09.sbd.7233.sbeok.shnf/gd1995-07-09d2t04_vbr.mp3">last performance</a> of the song saw Phil leading all the way through, with very little involvement from Weir or Vince and little energy from the drummers.<br /> <br /> I wondered what kind of mindframe could bring a band like this to perform with such mediocrity, resignation, even indifference. That summer’s blistering temperatures are often mentioned, Jerry’s general poor health is noted… The venues were as big as ever and summer was arena season, with as many as sixty thousand people staring back at them (or passed out in the grass, or crashing the gates). There was also the rash of misfortunes on this so-called “tour from hell:” two fans fell from the upper level on June 30th, death threats against Jerry forced a show with the lights up and metal detectors at the gates on July second (and a <span style="font-style:italic;"><a href="http://www.archive.org/details/gd1995-07-02.aud.unknown.tetzeli.fix-12578.74417.reflac.flac16">Dire Wolf</a></span>: “please don’t murder me”). On July 3rd the show had to be cancelled when the police refused to secure the arena, citing gate-crashers. House lights stayed on July 5th as well and 100 people were injured at a nearby campground later that night when a porch roof collapsed on fans seeking shelter from the rain. It’s quite possible that these events, which must have affected the band members, further hobbled the already limping beast. It’s unfortunate that this had to be their last tour, if only because they never had a chance to go out on a high note.<br /><br /> But there is a silver lining. Amid all the listlessness of this final tour, Bralove and the drummers somehow escaped the quagmire, and <span style="font-style:italic;">Drumz</span> was as solid as ever. Perhaps having non-bandmember Bralove at the controls gave a sort of grounding to the segment; perhaps the fact that there were only two or three people involved in the music, as opposed to six, afforded a degree of independence; perhaps Mickey’s boundless thirst for exploration provided an inspiration absent from the rest of the music. Whatever the reason, <span style="font-style:italic;">Drumz</span> was a welcome break during those later shows, and I remember thinking that <a href="http://www.archive.org/details/gd1995-07-08.sbd.larson.tetzeli.fix-35157.98576.flac16">July 8th</a> might have been the best version I ever heard.<br /> The Gyuto Monks appeared as guests on June second. Tibetan Buddhist singers with a six-octave range and each capable of producing three-tone chords, they chant prayers intended to transport one to another plane, which Mickey naturally finds fantastic. Robert Hunter had given him a tape back in 1967, which he had listened to for several years before finding out what it was all about. In 1985, he and Dan Healy recorded selections of a Gyuto US tour; in 1988 and 1991, the Dead sponsored tours themselves, and June 2nd 1995 saw the monks <a href="http://ia700302.us.archive.org/30/items/gd1995-06-02.sbd.damico.92520.flac16/gd95-06-02d2t05_vbr.mp3">perform</a> five minutes onstage during <span style="font-style:italic;">Drumz</span>. <br /><br /> (Mickey’s solo career is not high on the radar of side-projects, despite its range. It is much less traded than Garcia or even Weir shows, and does not feature in Deadbase. Hart has written four books, and though he recorded or produced eight records during the band’s lifetime and several more since then, they were esoteric and rarely included any GD material. One can be forgiven for not being particularly familiar. Nevertheless, his contributions are undeniable, not only in terms of songs (<span style="font-style:italic;">The Main Ten</span> – <span style="font-style:italic;">Playin’</span>; <span style="font-style:italic;">The Pump Song</span> – <span style="font-style:italic;">Greatest Story</span>; <span style="font-style:italic;">Happiness is Drumming</span> – <span style="font-style:italic;">Fire</span>) but also instruments (the beast, the Beam, MIDI), and electronics (aided by Bralove). Mickey seems to have remained a believer as the Grateful Dead came to the end of the road, and his influence is most strongly felt during <span style="font-style:italic;">Drums</span>.)<br /><br /> <br /> A few new tunes made their way into the repertoire in 1995: Weir’s <span style="font-style:italic;"><a href="http://ia600202.us.archive.org/7/items/gd1995-02-21.sbd.serafin.walkerb.1524.shnf/gd95-02-21d1t01_vbr.mp3">Salt Lake City</a></span> (once –it was the first time they’d played in that city since 1981 and only the second since the song was written in 1977), The Beatles’ <span style="font-style:italic;">It’s All Too Much</span>, <span style="font-style:italic;">Unbroken Chain</span>, Fogerty’s <span style="font-style:italic;">Take Me To The River</span>, and <span style="font-style:italic;">Rollin’ and Tumblin’</span> (twice). None of them made much progress over the few performances, <span style="font-style:italic;">UBC</span> least of all. There was a little jamming (into <span style="font-style:italic;">Drums</span>, mostly), but nothing very exciting, and the shows were quite short (under two and a half hours). Nobody was trying very hard any more.<br /><br /> I’ve read several books on this band, and coming to the end of the story always leaves me sad: having followed the life of the group from its beginnings, one can’t help but regret the end of the journey, wishing that jerry had smoked a few less cigarettes, eaten one less burger, maybe stayed at Betty Ford or checked into Serenity Knolls a few days earlier. Maybe he would still be alive… they could have pulled through and reinvented themselves again. But listening to the end of the Grateful Dead’s touring life, I felt the opposite: I was irritated that they kept producing this sloppy, bored music and I lost interest in what the next show would bring, since they never seemed to bring anything. I don’t blame the band: the survival of so many friends and relatives depended on the GD touring machine. It was all they knew, it was all that was expected of them, and the fans never seemed to tire. Ticket sales certainly didn’t drop, and reviews weren’t too harsh. To this day you can read reviews from attendees talking about how magical the show was, how great Jerry sounded, what a wonderful experience it had all been. <br /> By 1995, it was time to go. There was nothing left. The band was a bad imitation of its former self, with nothing to recommend it other than an obliviously cheery atmosphere in some parts of the Deadhead community. It was not a sustainable project. Mickey has said that friends and family took a back seat to the Dead in those days and that it caused problems in everyone’s homes; Deborah Koons quoted Jerry as saying the road was killing him. An attempt in late 1994 to put together another album hadn’t yielded a single finished track. The band hardly talked to each other, with individual green rooms and curtained areas backstage. Honest conversations were hard to come by, confined to sophomoric banter and sarcasm. After Jerry’s death, Bill couldn’t get out of there fast enough. <br /><br /> The Grateful Dead was a wonderful story but it died an ugly death. Thankfully we still have this music, fifteen years later, with those parting words still ringing “such a long, long time to be gone/ and a short time to be there.”<div class="blogger-post-footer">Ben Heckscher
Furthur Study
benjamin.heckscher@gmail.com</div>Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05875337467116438015noreply@blogger.com25tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2735702607925416669.post-9809687829071487842011-02-21T16:08:00.008+01:002011-02-22T13:17:28.455+01:00Grateful Dead- Fall 1994I recently heard twelve shows from the fall of 1994, starting with one of the pre-tour Shoreline shows and finishing with eight consecutive nights at the end of the tour. I heard a handful of pretty solid shows, a few mediocre ones and only three terrible ones (the Landover run). Here’s the story.<br /><br /><br /> An explicit distinction is rarely made between the Grateful Dead and Jerry Garcia. Not that anybody confuses the two, but the when people talk about attributes of a particular show or run, the central reference point tends to be Garcia. This is logical insofar as for the majority of the band’s career, Garcia was the musical leader of the group. Despite the party line that the band had no leader and Garcia’s consistent denial that he was in charge, he carried the principal burden. From the very earliest rehearsals, he arranged songs and gave directions; the improvisational nature of the music often depended his contributions; he was responsible for fills and transitional passages; and his solos provided much of the music’s attraction. He was the central, formative element of the band’s sound for most of its career and for that reason an explicit distinction between Garcia’s work and the Grateful Dead sound could arguably be irrelevant. However, by the fall of 1994 this was an important distinction to make: by and large, the band was good and Garcia was not.<br /><br /> That Garcia was in not in good form in 1994-5 is well documented. The medical exam forced on the band in April revealed serious long-term damage, besides which he carried himself poorly, his memory was weak, and he had recurring carpal tunnel problems. But what is less often noted is how wildly variable his performances were. It’s impossible to systematize precisely what the issue was: from one night to the next, his voice might be strong and his playing weak or vice versa; there were nights when he just couldn’t pull anything together, when every note was a struggle, when the audience seemed to stand around waiting for just one lick that was on-key and in time (<span style="font-style:italic;"><a href="http://ia700304.us.archive.org/18/items/gd1994-10-09.sbd.miller.34562.sbeok.flac16/gd94-10-09d1t03_vbr.mp3">Bertha</a></span> 10.09). The rest of the band would chug along as he played his solo and then faded into the background again. On other nights he might be present and tight and then, inexplicably, completely blow a whole tune, like <span style="font-style:italic;"><a href="http://ia700201.us.archive.org/0/items/http://ia700201.us.archive.org/20/items/gd94-10-05.sbd.unknown.6483.sbeok.shnf/gd94-10-05d1t10_vbr.mp3">Cumberland</a></span> (10.05), or, on the contrary, pipe up out of nowhere and nail a song when he had been sloppy and quiet all night. <br /> On those bad nights, nobody could expect anything of him. Maybe he’d hit his fills, maybe he’d remember the changes, maybe he’d get a solo together. The band played on with or without him (<span style="font-style:italic;"><a href="http://ia700304.us.archive.org/18/items/gd1994-10-09.sbd.miller.34562.sbeok.flac16/gd94-10-09d2t03_vbr.mp3">Samson</a></span> 10.09), and Vince stepped up to cover the important lines (<span style="font-style:italic;"><a href="http://ia700300.us.archive.org/3/items/gd1994-10-18.sbd.wiley.8708.sbefail.shnf/gd94-10-18d1t02_vbr.mp3">Slipknot</a></span> intro 18/10). The most worrying moments were when he seemed to lose track of a song altogether, rushing ahead as in the middle of <span style="font-style:italic;"><a href="http://ia700402.us.archive.org/19/items/gd1994-10-10.sbd.miller.34563.sbeok.flac16/gd94-10-10d2t06_vbr.mp3">Terrapin</a></span> (10.10) when he skipped a full beat or two and the band had to catch up. On other occasions he would play almost random lines, as if he didn’t know what he was playing. He forgot at least a few words to almost every tune, and it’s a real shame that he often never bothered to learn the changes to new songs like <span style="font-style:italic;"><a href="http://ia700200.us.archive.org/2/items/gd1994-10-11.sbd.miller.34564.sbeok.flac16/gd94-10-11d2t03_vbr.mp3">Samba In The Rain</a></span> [10.11], a solid, fun tune inevitably gutted by a disastrous solo.<br /> On the other hand, he still brought original things to the music when he was awake. There are some interestingly fresh licks on <span style="font-style:italic;"><a href="http://ia700302.us.archive.org/16/items/gd1994-10-15.sbd.hinko-fixed.76894.flac16/gd1994-10-15d1t07_vbr.mp3">Easy Answers</a></span> [10.15]; some new melodies on the vocal vamp on <span style="font-style:italic;"><a href="http://ia700307.us.archive.org/15/items/gd1994-10-01.mtx.seamons.95066.sbeok.flac16/gd94-10-01d2t02_vbr.mp3">Fire on the Mountain</a></span> [10.01]. He could belt the vocals to <span style="font-style:italic;"><a href="http://ia700307.us.archive.org/15/items/gd1994-10-01.mtx.seamons.95066.sbeok.flac16/gd94-10-01d1t09_vbr.mp3">So Many Roads</a></span> [10.01]; he occasionally displayed disproportionate stamina in some longer jams like the 31-minute <span style="font-style:italic;"><a href="http://www.archive.org/details/gd1994-10-14.sbd.miller.79167.sbeok.flac16">Scarlet>Fire</a></span> on October 14th, and once in a great while, there was a flash of the young sprightly Garcia: take a listen to MSG’s <span style="font-style:italic;"><a href="http://ia700402.us.archive.org/23/items/gd1994-10-13.sbd-patched.miller.33299.sbeok.flac16/gd94-10-13d1t05_vbr.mp3">Mama Trie</a>d</span> and <span style="font-style:italic;"><a href="http://ia700300.us.archive.org/3/items/gd1994-10-18.sbd.wiley.8708.sbefail.shnf/gd94-10-18d3t05_vbr.mp3">US Blues</a></span>.<br /> All the things said about Garcia in this later period are true, but not all the time: it is unwarranted to write off his abilities in that era altogether.<br /><br /> The result of Garcia’s inconsistency is that the band learned to fill in around him. They apparently gave up waiting or expecting him to get it together and figured out how to play whether or not he was on point. This is part and parcel of the more general trend of not listening very hard to each other any more, safely ensconced in their personal sound mix, but it had the advantage of solidifying the music precisely because nobody was waiting for cues. When everything was going well the band was a powerhouse, and Jerry was no longer integral to the quality. <span style="font-style:italic;"><a href="http://ia700104.us.archive.org/9/items/gd1994-10-17.sbd.liberated-bootleg.gorinsky.3575.shnf/gd1994-10-17d1t03_vbr.mp3">Minglewood Blues</a></span> at MSG is perhaps the best example (despite some horrible equipment noise at the beginning): the band was rock-solid and Vince took a double solo. Not that the process of playing around Garcia was easy: there was some messiness, as during <span style="font-style:italic;"><a href="http://ia700304.us.archive.org/18/items/gd1994-10-09.sbd.miller.34562.sbeok.flac16/gd94-10-09d1t05_vbr.mp3">Stagger Lee</a></span> on the 9th when Bob and Vince both tried to cover the Garcia lines. The distribution of duties had to be worked out.<br /><br /> Jerry was not the only one to rush the beat.<span style="font-style:italic;"> <a href="http://ia700202.us.archive.org/18/items/gd1994-09-29.sbd.unknown.1815.shnf/gd94-09-29d2t02_vbr.mp3">Eyes of the World</a></span> (9.29) started nice and slow but slowly crept up to regular speed. <span style="font-style:italic;"><a href="http://ia700304.us.archive.org/18/items/gd1994-10-09.sbd.miller.34562.sbeok.flac16/gd94-10-09d1t08_vbr.mp3">Big River</a></span> (10/09) felt rushed too. As a general rule the band played faster than they had before, except maybe in the mid-eighties, but there were moments when the tempo increased palpably. Weir was the most sensitive to this: at Shoreline in July he had refused to play an encore because of it, getting in an argument with Garcia and then writing his band-mates a letter to explain himself.<br /><br /> The fact of having their own mix impacted the dynamics of the band in two important ways on nights when they were not really working at it. First, there was little volume variation as a general rule (with the notable exception certain ballads like<span style="font-style:italic;"> He’s Gone</span> or <span style="font-style:italic;">Stella Blue</span>): the band played at more or less full volume throughout the show. Even slow or spare tunes like <span style="font-style:italic;">Days Between</span> has a certain flatness of energy with no real arc or swells. Secondly, the longer, jammed-out tunes could lack any real interplay between the band-members. Whereas each had once picked moments to interject, suggest a theme, react to what the others were doing, or follow each-other into interesting asides, it now felt like the musicians were just playing along. This did not preclude interesting things from each member, but there was no sense of building anything. The 20-minute<span style="font-style:italic;"> <a href="http://ia700200.us.archive.org/2/items/gd1994-10-11.sbd.miller.34564.sbeok.flac16/gd94-10-11d2t01_vbr.mp3">Eyes of the World</a></span> on the 11th illustrates this point well.<br /><br /> I do want to point out that while Jerry was at a very low point (May of ’95 would find him in slightly better shape), the rest of the Grateful Dead were playing very well. Phil was rock-solid; listen to <span style="font-style:italic;"><a href="http://ia700304.us.archive.org/18/items/gd1994-10-09.sbd.miller.34562.sbeok.flac16/gd94-10-09d1t02_vbr.mp3">Hell In A Bucket</a></span> [10.09] or <span style="font-style:italic;"><a href="http://ia700402.us.archive.org/19/items/gd1994-10-10.sbd.miller.34563.sbeok.flac16/gd94-10-10d1t04_vbr.mp3">Althea</a></span> [10.10]. He also had some new songs this year:<span style="font-style:italic;"> If the Shoe Fits</span> and <span style="font-style:italic;">Childhood’s End</span> (I didn’t hear either of them particularly well executed, but <span style="font-style:italic;"><a href="http://ia700200.us.archive.org/2/items/gd1994-10-11.sbd.miller.34564.sbeok.flac16/gd94-10-11d1t06_vbr.mp3">Shoe</a></span> [10.11] had some potential). Weir had become even more of a leading presence, with a more sustained, melodic approach than usual. He had also begun playing a tune or two in the first set on acoustic guitar. It was not always mixed loud enough, but it did give a different vibe. The drummers, though perhaps a bit eager, were in lock-step. Vince had tightened up considerably compared with the previous year, and handled more solos now that Garcia was sometimes not up to it. A couple worth as listen: the afore-mentioned <span style="font-style:italic;">Minglewood</span>, <span style="font-style:italic;"><a href="http://ia700408.us.archive.org/14/items/gd1994-10-14.sbd.miller.79167.sbeok.flac16/gd94-10-14d1t02_vbr.mp3">West L.A. Fadeaway</a></span> on October 14th and <span style="font-style:italic;"><a href="http://ia700202.us.archive.org/18/items/gd1994-09-29.sbd.unknown.1815.shnf/gd94-09-29d1t03_vbr.mp3">Wang Dang Doodle</a></span> on September 29th. <br /> One way to look at the band’s overall vibe in late ‘94 is that, rather than experimenting and pushing boundaries as they once had, they were consolidating their sound. They were less risky but tighter, more businesslike or even (gasp) professional. <br /><br /> Much is made of the fact that it’s impossible to forge a connection with a crowd of twenty thousand people, and it did have an impact on the band’s music. On the 9th in Landover, Weir stepped up to the mic after <span style="font-style:italic;">Big River</span> telling the audience that the band couldn’t decide whether the preceding bit of feedback had come from the guitar or the drums. He tried to poll them as to which they thought it was and got some half-assed, incoherent hollering, to which Phil cracked “Hey, thanks for your help.” <br /> The band and their audience had grown apart. Testimony from heads of the time often indicates that the attraction was more in the scene than the music: “the show was outside the show,” one Oakland native and 90s Head recently told me. When Bill’s father fell ill and the band cancelled a show in Orlando, the crowd rioted. The following night, shut-out deadheads tried to break in to the arena, prompting police dogs and tear gas. At around the same time, according to Dennis McNally, Weir fell into a deep depression. The trend that had been developing since 1987 was only getting more pronounced, and the writing must have been on the wall for most of the band: they were just another supergroup now; the intimate connection that had defined their scene and their approach to music was no more and they were going to have to reconcile themselves to it.<br /><br /> The fall of 1994 might have seen the band at their worst in the very general sense that the lows were at their lowest. Of the shows I heard, however, more were solid than bad. I’m aware that the sample is imperfect, since there is more reason to trade good shows than bad and I’m therefore more likely to have picked up better ones. That being said, I’d point to the first three MSG shows (10.13, 14,15) and at least the first set of Philadelphia 10.05 as worth listening to. The highlight might be <a href="http://www.archive.org/details/gd1994-10-17.sbd.liberated-bootleg.gorinsky.3575.shnf">October 17th</a>. By contrast the Landover, MD, run will give you a glimpse of the opposite end of the spectrum. The band was generally solid and tight, even if they tended to barrel through some songs without much feeling. Garcia was all over the place; rarely great, occasionally disastrous, most often competent but uninspired. <br /> It seems Garcia and the band had grown apart too. After years of earnest support and love, and at least two serious interventions, might this latest bout of drug abuse and sloppiness have begun provoking a tinge of resentment? Perhaps they just decided he was on his own. <br /><br /> So mixed feeling and contradictions abound, but it would be simplistic to say that it’s not worth listening to any ’94 dead.<br /><br /> <br /> Up Next: I’ve started in on the last run of this series of posts: to wit, eight shows from the end of 1995, including the last four. So far, the band sounds considerably better than they did in late ’94. After that I’m thinking December-January ‘73-’74. If you have a better idea, let me know.<div class="blogger-post-footer">Ben Heckscher
Furthur Study
benjamin.heckscher@gmail.com</div>Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05875337467116438015noreply@blogger.com13tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2735702607925416669.post-22259695334596367382011-01-23T19:21:00.013+01:002011-01-30T13:29:11.998+01:00Grateful Dead - Summer 1993The year 1993 tends to get lumped into “the end” of the Grateful Dead. To some extent, of course, this is true: “Leviathan Dead” saw venues averaging a record 22.6 thousand seats, the lineup had reached its final incarnation, and the last of the logistical sound innovations had come about, specifically the removal of amps from the stage and the replacement of onststage wedges with Ear Monitors (the former had been a Healy idea, the latter an innovation by Future Sonics founder Marty Garcia introduced to the band during their 1992 tour with Steve Miller). These late changes were somewhat unpopular with audiences: there was the lukewarm reception to the new keyboardist, the impersonal nature of the venues, and the perceived disconnection between musicians and the audience corollary to each having his own sound-mix instead of reacting to the sound of the audience and stage. <br /><br /> In the same period, the concert-going scene had come to a rather ugly place. Gate-crashing became an increasingly common phenomenon, and hard drugs on the periphery brought an increase in crime along tour stops, prompting an attitude among police and security that was stressful across the board. All these factors could contribute to an unpleasant experience.<br /><br /> But the line has become blurred between these factors, real as they were, and the quality of the music. In the course of exploring the band’s later years, I listened to seven consecutive shows from the summer of 1993: the last five of the June tour and the next two in Oregon in August. Through these dates at least, the apparent association of the final stage as a whole (92-95) with the band’s increasingly erratic musical performances and Garcia’s ultimate decomposition, is unwarranted.<br /><br /> On the musical front, a few things might turn off Deadheads who prefer the raw, bare-bones sounds of the seventies and eighties. First of all, Bob Weir was using a lot of distortion in his playing, something perhaps born of his side-work in the eighties. Secondly, Vince leaned towards a very different sound than either Bruce or Brent. He seemed to favor a somewhat harsh, harpsichord-like sound with lots of overtones that filled out the spectrum. Combined with Healy’s detailed control, it could make for a very slick, saturated sound.<br /> <br /> And yet all these factors notwithstanding, the quality of the music in the middle of 1993 was very solid. By the following September (I listened to the Boston Garden run for context), the early signs of decline were more noticeable: Garcia flubbed the odd change, forgot more lyrics, and his time wavered a bit. The band also tended to play without a lot of dynamics, so that the overall energy was rather flat. If one pays close attention, those elements were present under the surface in the summer. <span style="font-style:italic;"><a href="http://ia700204.us.archive.org/4/items/gd1993-06-25.sbd.miller.110519.flac16/gd93-06-25d1t07.mp3">Cumberland Blues</a></span> and <span style="font-style:italic;"><a href="http://ia700204.us.archive.org/4/items/gd1993-06-25.sbd.miller.110519.flac16/gd93-06-25d2t02.mp3">China Cat Sunflower</a></span> in Washington are good examples: they’re relatively easy up-tempo tunes and everybody gets carried away, yielding a frantic energy with little room to maneuver. But this overplaying was still the exception to the rule (and having Bruce at that show added to the clutter). <br /> <br /> What is most striking is how crisp Garcia was that summer, and the effect it had on everyone else. He was still using the Irwin guitar (until Shoreline that August) but he had already started leaning towards the very sharp, almost twangy sound that was to characterize the last years. When used right, it was so sharp as to almost singlehandedly keep everything aligned. <span style="font-style:italic;"><a href="http://ia700109.us.archive.org/5/items/gd1993-06-21.sbd.miller.108982.flac16/gd93-06-21d2t04.mp3">Women are Smarter</a></span> from the first night at Deer Creek springs to mind, or <span style="font-style:italic;"><a href="http://ia700408.us.archive.org/19/items/gd1993-08-22.mtx.hansokolow.98235.flac16/gd93-08-22d2t03_vbr.mp3">Slipknot</a></span> from the second night in Oregon. Both are worth listening to for just how intentional and directive he could be when he was on point.<br /> <br /> Weir’s playing had become very confident. Healy’s imminent firing was brought on by a combination of things not the least of which, according to Phil, was his PA mix of Weir’s performances. There are certainly large fluctuations in Weir’s level within the mix, but he had come into a solid accompanying position with respect to Garcia. His tone was not nearly as harsh as it has become nowadays and he provided a broad tonal layer that underpinned Jerry’s (and Phil’s) more staccato approach. Perhaps it complemented Garcia’s pathological dislike of the spotlight, allowing him to feel less exposed in his solos…<br /> I should note that while Bob’s guitar work was strong, his voice was less so. Throughout those last five June shows, and though he did not sing any less than usual, there were moments when it was very scratchy and strained. It reached a peak on the last night of the tour as he battled his way through <span style="font-style:italic;"><a href="http://ia700208.us.archive.org/4/items/gd1993-06-26.sbd.miller.110520.flac16/gd93-06-26d3t04.mp3">Throwing Stones</a></span> and then followed it up with <span style="font-style:italic;"><a href="http://ia700208.us.archive.org/4/items/gd1993-06-26.sbd.miller.110520.flac16/gd93-06-26d3t05.mp3">One More Saturday Night</a></span> to close the show, which he belted even more than usual. He sounded like he was going to tear out his throat. <br /> He underwent surgery soon after for nodes on his vocal chords, though there might be some confusion as to just when. By August he sounded fine, as he did in Boston a month after that, but McNally writes that the surgery took place after the fall tour. In any case his troubles weren’t over: in April ’94 a medical exam found nodes in his throat.<br /><br /> Vince Welnick had now been the only keyboardist for over a year. Unlike his predecessors, he seldom played piano, or even organ, opting rather for a broad range of synthesizer sounds. His strength lay in coloring the music: his accompaniment to <span style="font-style:italic;"><a href="http://ia700101.us.archive.org/2/items/gd1993-06-23.sbd.miller.108984.flac16/gd93-06-23d1t04.mp3">Lazy River Road</a> </span>was particularly pretty, and he threw out any number of nice noodles between tunes. Come solo time, admittedly, his time was not airtight, especially in the fast right-hand figures he liked. <span style="font-style:italic;"> <a href="http://ia700101.us.archive.org/14/items/gd1993-06-22.sbd.miller.108983.flac16/gd93-06-22d1t07.mp3">All Over Now</a></span>, on June 22nd, is a case in point: the fills after Jerry’s solo are crisp and well-placed, but the solo that follows, though musically correct, slips around a little. In terms of singing, the only song I heard him take in those 10 shows was <span style="font-style:italic;"><a href="http://ia700300.us.archive.org/19/items/gd1993-08-21.sbd.serafin.11269.shnf/gd93-08-21d1t09_64kb.mp3">Way To Go Home</a></span>, a solid pre-drums tune with a lot of energy that always went over well. He had been singing <span style="font-style:italic;">Baba O’Riley>Tomorrow Never Knows</span> since May of ’92, got a verse on <span style="font-style:italic;">Maggie’s Farm</span>, and would bring in <span style="font-style:italic;">Samba In The Rain</span> (his only other original) in June ’94. <br /><br /> This seems as good a time as any to address that most unique Dead show quirk: <span style="font-style:italic;">Drumz</span>. Originally little more than a drum solo, it evolved beginning after the hiatus into a nightly fixture fueled by Mickey’s unquenchable thirst for rhythmic toys and the band’s appetite for all manner of effects. This tendency was shamelessly enabled starting around 1987 by Bob Bralove. By the middle of 1993, <span style="font-style:italic;">Drums>Space</span> stretched to almost 30 minutes (33 on August 22nd). Within the somewhat shortened shows of the later 90s, this amounted to at least a third of the second set, which, to be honest, seems excessive. It occurs to me that, had I not been warned, I might have been miffed to discover that 20 percent of the whole show was not music in the strict sense of the word. Even if it was a perfect occasion for a beer/bathroom run, half an hour is a long time. But they wouldn’t have done it if there wasn’t some good reason, some work in progress, so I make a point to listen to the whole thing every time.<br /> I mentioned the drummers’ equipment in my last post, and though I am still incapable of naming more than a few instruments, it seems that Mickey in particular had become very systematic about sampling each of the instruments he owned for use via electronic pads. Explaining that a drum, like everything else, has a certain lifespan in which it sounds good, he says he would take each of them, break them in and then record them so as to be able to play any of them at any time without worrying about the wear and tear of the road or the deterioration of each instrument’s sound.<br /><br /> Sonic scientist <a href="http://www.bobbralove.com/">Bob Bralove</a> had come aboard during production of <span style="font-weight:bold;">In The Dark</span>, having spent eight years with Stevie Wonder and later worked on the <span style="font-weight:bold;">Twilight Zone</span> sessions with Merle Saunders. It was at that point that he hooked up with Mickey, and the two immediately bonded over sampling and manipulating electronically “anything that sounded cool and weird.” (Grateful Dead Gear p 228). By the nineties, Bralove was performing nightly, bridging the gap between <span style="font-style:italic;">Drums</span> and <span style="font-style:italic;">Space</span> with a few minutes of very cool atmospheric space sounds that the rest of the band played along with. Though I haven’t seen this stated explicitly anywhere, I suspect he’s also behind the demonic mid-<span style="font-style:italic;">Drumz</span> swish effect, that fast left-right panning of the sound through the PA, always sure to get your brain in a twist.<br /> In addition his contributions as a performer and effects guru, Bralove is credited on <span style="font-style:italic;">Way To Go Home</span>, <span style="font-style:italic;">Picasso Moon</span> and <span style="font-style:italic;">Easy Answers</span>, as well as on six of the twelve tracks that make up <span style="font-weight:bold;">Infrared Roses</span>. He was working with Mickey at least through the Other Ones days, and is currently playing with Tom Constanten (as Dose Hermanos), recently recorded a solo piano album, and is working on a record called <span style="font-weight:bold;">Psychedelic Keyboard Trio</span>, featuring himself and TC and material recorded by Vince Welnick.<br /><br /> Dennis McNally talks about <span style="font-style:italic;">Space</span> in terms of a unique piece designed to be played exactly once. He also explains that during Drums, Garcia and Weir would hole up in Parish's tent (where the "laughs begin"), and loosely work out a theme for the <span style="font-style:italic;">Space</span> segment to follow. It's not clear how seriously this "theme" was ever followed, since it often sounded similarly haphazard. Surely facemelting given the right conditions, the occasional <span style="font-style:italic;"><a href="http://ia700103.us.archive.org/22/items/gd1993-09-24.sbd.miller.107840.sbeok.flac16/gd93-09-24d3t01.mp3">Space</a></span> is nevertheless worth an independent listen. Garcia had an ever-growing collection of MIDI effects to sift through looking for something he liked, usually settling on trumpet sounds. Among the new effects available to each, ironically, were drum samples (see June 23rd and 25th). This only makes it even more difficult to figure out what each member was doing, but of course, that's part of the magic.<br /><br /> Long story short, while nightly performances would soon start to decline, the band continued to push the envelope, doing everything they could to keep things from getting stale. A Jerry ballad had made its way into the first set: <span style="font-style:italic;">He’s Gone</span>, <span style="font-style:italic;">High Time</span> etc had previously been typically second-set stuff. The <span style="font-style:italic;">Drumz</span> slot had moved back a step by then, usually preceded by five songs and followed by three. 1993 saw eight new songs including <span style="font-style:italic;">Days Between</span>, <span style="font-style:italic;">Broken Arrow</span>, and <span style="font-style:italic;">Lazy River Road</span>. (<span style="font-style:italic;">Corinna</span> was another addition. While the main form is, in my opinion, one of their most boring – and the substantially reworked version one of RatDog’s most fun - the second half yielded some surprisingly cool <a href="http://ia700204.us.archive.org/4/items/gd1993-06-25.sbd.miller.110519.flac16/gd93-06-25d2t06.mp3">jams</a>).<br /><br /> Sting opened for the band a dozen times that year and the Indigo Girls opened twice. Bruce Hornsby, Huey Lewis, Branford Marsalis, Baba Olatunji, Ornette Coleman, Carlos Santana, Edie Brickell and Barney the Dinosaur all made guest appearances. Casey Jones was played for the last time. <br /> Jerry broke up with one girlfriend and then another, then a third before shacking up with Deborah Koons and then divorcing Mountain Girl. Weir toured with Wasserman, played no less than three Clinton inaugural events, and published <span style="font-weight:bold;">Baru Bay</span> with his sister Wendy. Jerry, Bob and Vince sang the National Anthem at the Giants’ season opener. Mickey made the inaugural contribution to the Library of Congress’s Endangered Music Project. Bill spent a month sailing off Mexico on Bill Belmont’s 101-foot Argosy Venture. Editor Gary Lambert launched the first Grateful Dead Almanac. Dick released his first Pick. <br /> It was business as usual for the Grateful Dead in 1993. With the benefit of hindsight, it’s easy to see “the end,” but there few clues that summer that the band had barely two years to live.<br /><br /><br />Up Next: I’m taking a break for a week or so (Phish NYE, 7Walkers NYE, Weir on Jam Cruise, maybe some MMW), then getting right back into the 90s with 8 shows from the Fall of 1994. Maybe more if someone posts some.<div class="blogger-post-footer">Ben Heckscher
Furthur Study
benjamin.heckscher@gmail.com</div>Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05875337467116438015noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2735702607925416669.post-47391915116417881302010-12-27T12:32:00.008+01:002010-12-27T18:58:26.209+01:00Grateful Dead - Spring 1989In 1989, the Grateful Dead played to one and a half million seats, with an average venue capacity of over 21 thousand. There had been a huge jump in sales and revenue since the release of In The Dark that would continue for the rest of their career: in ’91, they became the world’s highest-grossing touring act, playing to 1.6 million seats for $34 million; in 1994, they sold almost 2 million tickets, grossing $52 million. <br /> <br /> In the late 80s, the band developed a broader role in American culture. In addition to the benefit concerts they had always done, Garcia, Weir and Hart went to the UN in 1988 to bring attention to the destruction of the rainforest, and in ’89 they appeared before the Congressional Human Rights Caucus. In Garcia’s words, they had become “citizens who have a constituency.” Some of their early fans were now in high-ranking political positions, also adding some legitimacy: in March 1993, Mickey introduced the Endangered Music Project to the Library of Congress and they were invited to the White House by Al Gore, and in July ’94, they had lunch at the Senate with Senators Patrick Leahy and Barbara Boxer.<br /><br /> The end of the 1980s also saw a spike in new music. The band had written very little original material since 1979: in the next 8 years, they averaged a paltry two songs a year, including Lesh/Petersen’s one-off <span style="font-style:italic;"><a href="http://ia700300.us.archive.org/11/items/gd1986-03-27.sbd.furthernet.95808.shnf/gd1986-03-27d1t04_vbr.mp3">Revolutionary Hamstrung Blues</a></span>. In 1988, they suddenly brought out seven new songs, including <span style="font-style:italic;">Victim</span>, <span style="font-style:italic;">Foolish Heart</span>, and four Brent originals. <br /><br /><br /> I just finished listening to all but three of the shows played during the spring tour of 1989. While spring tours had generally been bookended with Oakland and Irvine shows, the band had been forced to cancel three mid-March shows in Oakland when the local community refused to have them. Consequently, the band hit the road with a six-week break behind them. The ’89 tour was also atypical geographically: instead of sticking to the coast, they spent most of the tour in the Great Lakes region, played Kentucky (which saw the final performance of Louie Louie) and closed out in Minnesota (where MIDI drums made their first appearance).<br /><br /> Perhaps because of the long break beforehand, the band took a while to hit their stride. The first four or five shows showed some of the complacency that had crept into the band’s MO. There were long breaks between songs, flubbed changes, a sense of just going through the motions. Garcia wasn’t particularly tight in his soloing either, and that first week was a bit flat. The Pittsburgh shows, fifth and sixth of the tour, were released as GD Download Series vol. 9 and as I got into that first show, I really wondered why. The answer came post-drums: <span style="font-style:italic;">The Wheel</span>><span style="font-style:italic;">Dear Mr. Fantasy</span>(><span style="font-style:italic;">Hey Jude reprise</span>)><span style="font-style:italic;">Around & Around</span>><span style="font-style:italic;">GDTRFB</span>><span style="font-style:italic;">Lovelight</span>, with <span style="font-style:italic;">Baby Blue</span> for the encore. Not only was this the most fun post-drums of the tour, but it also marked the turning point. The shows after this were all completely solid. I’m most partial to the following pair, in Ann Arbor, but the energy did not let up (though I confess I don’t have the last show in Minnesota). Weir has said that he considers the 89-90 period to be their best; by the end of the spring tour, shows were tight, the songs were as shapely and intricate as they would get, and the band alert and attentive. <br /><br /><br /> I paid a bit of attention to Brent throughout the tour for two main reasons. First, it was his last full year with the band. He split from his wife that year, an experience that was very traumatic, according to Phil: always insecure, he became self-destructive, suffering a non-fatal overdose in December 1989, and dying of another in June 1990. Yet at the same time, his contributions to the band had never been greater. As I mentioned, he brought four new songs to the catalogue in 1988, and two more in ’89 brought his total to 12, plus his covers. By way of comparison, Pigpen brought 9 songs to the band, Keith brought 1 and Vince 2.<br /> <br />He had about one song a night, but the crowd went crazy for his performances. His two most frequent originals were <span style="font-style:italic;">Blow Away</span> and <span style="font-style:italic;">I Will Take You Home</span>. The first, about moving on after a failed relationship, never failed to wake everybody up, particularly the long ad-lib jam in the second half, where he would wail about grabbing love in your hand and keeping it way down deep inside. (I have to admit there were moments when I cringed at the sheer awkwardness: “It’s like you want it in your heart,” he howled at the top of his lungs, “you want it in your heart probably!... baby baby baby baby baby baby baby!” Soulful, certainly, but hardly poetic). Anyway, awkward or no – it got better as the tour went on – it never failed to draw roars of approval from the crowds.<br /> <br /><span style="font-style:italic;">I Will Take You Home</span> was his weeper, typically post-drums. The rest of the band would hang back and more or less let him take the whole thing. Just as Barlow’s lyrics for <span style="font-style:italic;">Blow Away </span>are very appropriate for Brent’s rough relationship with his wife, <span style="font-style:italic;">Home</span>’s, I imagine, resonated particularly in the context of Brent’s daughter. The song evokes a father holding his infant girl, a lullaby of protection and reassurance. Brent sold both songs every time, the latter with poignancy enough to fill the slot after Space usually reserved for Garcia.<br /> <br /><br /> The last night of the tour saw the introduction of MIDI effects into the <span style="font-style:italic;">Drums</span> segment. The Musical Instrument Digital Interface allowed an instrument to produce the sound of another. It differed from a synthesizer in two important ways: it could be used with any instrument, and it created a new sound as opposed to playing back a pre-recorded sample. Mickey and Billy had been using samples for some time, but they were the last to get on the MIDI bandwagon. It was first introduced on Brent’s rig in the early eighties, and everyone in the band picked it up at some point, though Phil dropped his MIDI setup for a while because of the lag involved in processing the long bass waves. Garcia used MIDI most conspicuously, eventually using various horn emulators in his solos. <br /><br /> For the drummers, MIDI was really just another toy on the massive toy chest that was the Beast. Of the myriad rhythmic noisemakers clamped to and hung from the frame, very few made frequent appearances except the huge toms and the Beam, which generally featured at the climax of the segment (often loud enough to overdrive the microphones). But in between the kit portion and the climax, Mickey and Billy had dozens of other things to experiment with, making <span style="font-style:italic;">Drums</span> consistently interesting. I only wish I knew the names of half of the instruments they were using, or could tell a marimba from a balafon. <span style="font-style:italic;">Drums</span> was one of the only things that improved consistently throughout. After 1981, there was exactly one show without a <span style="font-style:italic;">Drums</span> segment – the Bill Graham memorial concert – and there were constant additions to the toy box. There is really no way to get drums “wrong,” and as the years went on, there was always something new to listen to, from the talking drum solos Bill favored early on or the atmospheric rainforest sounds Mickey brought in during the nineties.<br /> <br /><br /> I’m going to forego listing highlights this time around. Like I said, anything after Pittsburgh was pretty solid (i.e. 4/5 onwards). Solos could still hold surprises (and Garcia was sounding great), but by this period most songs were more or less set: there was little improvisation in introductions, thematic suites within jams, fillers, pickups etc. The one thing that might make or break a performance was the vocals: Jerry was prone to flubbing a few lines here and there, Weir could on occasion bring the roof down with his closers.<br /><br /> The period spanning 1989 and 1990 represents to my mind a peak in the consistency and professionalism of the band, which I think is why Weir is partial to it. They had developed a particular way of structuring a set and of performing songs with complicated arrangements, and here was a time when could be relied on to do it well. Most importantly, they could do so with their largest repertoire to date (not including the Dylan/Dead stuff), so that you can listen to a half-dozen shows without losing interest.<br /><br /><br />Up next. I realize that I tend to accentuate the positive in the music. I want to explore some of the bad days and get into what was so bad about them. I have not done so yet because I don't have enough shows from say 83-4 or 94-5 to make a fair assessment. I have 7 consecutive shows from mid '93, so that'll have to do for a start.<div class="blogger-post-footer">Ben Heckscher
Furthur Study
benjamin.heckscher@gmail.com</div>Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05875337467116438015noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2735702607925416669.post-19590124040346945772010-12-05T18:11:00.009+01:002010-12-07T08:50:08.466+01:00Furthur, November 2010Furthur’s latest tour, an eleven-date run between November 8th and 21st, took them through the West-North-Central and North-East regions. The Grateful Dead made a similar run every summer after 1982 (barring ’86), but it was Furthur’s first time in Iowa, Maryland, Minnesota or Missouri. (Iowa is a particularly rare stop: the GD played there 7 times, the last being in ’84. RatDog had been through seven times as well, and Phil exactly once.) The recent tour rounds out all of the major US markets except the South-Central region. I’ll be curious to see if they make it down to Alabama, Kentucky or Texas, all regular - if infrequent - GD stops. <br /><br /> This tour saw them add another few tunes to the repertoire, notably George Harrison’s <span style="font-style:italic;">Any Road</span>. Kadlecik presumably brought that one in: none of the GD have ever performed it, but it’s in JK’s solo catalogue. It came up twice. Aside from that, two sets of lyrics were resurrected from the depths of the Dead catalogue. <span style="font-style:italic;">Spoonful</span> made an appearance in Baltimore on the 17th, sandwiched within <span style="font-style:italic;">Smokestack Lightning</span>. The songs are essentially the same: Weir sang the lyrics but the tune never changed (the same applies <span style="font-style:italic;">Women Are Smarter</span>, <span style="font-style:italic;">Aiko Aiko</span> and <span style="font-style:italic;">Day-O</span>; see <a href="http://www.archive.org/details/gd87-07-06.beyerM88s.connor.2583.sbeok.shnf">7/6</a> and <a href="http://www.archive.org/details/gd87-12-31.schoeps.ewing.16436.sbeok.shnf">12/31/87</a>). They also resurrected Brent’s <span style="font-style:italic;">Hey Jude reprise</span> at the end of <span style="font-style:italic;">Dear Mr. Fantasy</span>, also in Baltimore. Again, the chord structure doesn’t change: Kadlecik sang the <span style="font-style:italic;">Fantasy</span> lines while the others sang <span style="font-style:italic;">Hey Jude</span>. Finally, the crowd at Madison Square Garden was treated to Furthur’s first performance of <span style="font-style:italic;">Weather Report Prelude>Part 1</span>. The catalogue now stands at an unheard-of 197 tunes (though there is room for debate on the afore-mentioned <span style="font-style:italic;">Spoonful/Hey Jude</span> front, or over how to count the <span style="font-style:italic;">Weather Report</span> or <span style="font-style:italic;">Terrapin</span> sections)<br /><br /> This tour marked a bit of a turning point for the band. First of all, there was an early element of “auto-pilot” reminiscent of Dead tours. The band is getting fully comfortable with each other and the material is well ingrained, which means that they can perform by the book relatively easily. Thus, the first couple shows were tight but conservative. There were also a few songs sprinkled throughout the tour with sloppy intros or iffy changes; a corollary, no doubt, of having such a large repertoire. The second thing was more pronounced arc to the tour compared to the more even quality of the last two outings. There was a high-water mark in Cincinnati, about halfway through, followed by a lull that did not really swing back up until MSG. It wasn’t a deep trough, but noticeable. <br /><br /> Phil’s comments in Chicago reveal something about the band’s more staid philosophy these days. The <a href="http://www.archive.org/details/furthur2010-11-12">11/12</a> show was, to my ears, surprisingly experimental (just as I had finished telling someone that I thought they were being too conservative…). When Phil came up for his Donor Rap, he thanked the crowd for indulging “interesting asides,” and sorta-kinda apologized for what “some might call … noodling.” In fairness, there were some loose moments in <span style="font-style:italic;">Dark Star</span> and <span style="font-style:italic;">Viola Lee</span>, but it was not so long ago that Phil was talking about how much he loved meltdown moments when anything can happen (Bass Player magazine, May ’09). Perhaps Phil has suddenly changed, but Weir has always run a real tight ship, and maybe Phil is coming around to the idea. <br /><br /> Speaking of Weir: the man has finally (finally!) developed the ability to power through a verse when he doesn’t remember the first line. For years, when he did not have the whole thing in his head, he would just not sing, shaking his head with a grin while the crowd inevitably cheered. Recently it’s been getting almost worrisome. Everybody forgets lyrics, but the solution is to sing whatever lyric comes into your head until you get the rest right. On one hand, the songsmith in Weir seems to demand that he tell the story correctly (In the RD days, he at least once stopped a tune altogether to start the verses over in order); on the other, since he steps to the mic, everybody notices when he doesn’t have it right and it interrupts the song (and gets him bad press in the bargain). Anyhow, this tour marked the first time I’ve noticed him singing whatever line comes up and catching himself after. And I can’t imagine that anyone walked out of the Baltimore show complaining that the third verse of <span style="font-style:italic;">Black-Throated Wind</span> didn’t quite make sense. Overall, July’s Nokia show notwithstanding, Weir’s memory is much more reliable these days. There were as few flubs from Weir as from Kadlecik.<br /><br /> After thirteen years on the bus, Jeff Chimenti is the most consistently original member of the band. He took up piano at age 4 and he studied classical music for about ten years. He switched to jazz in high school and kept at it for another ten, eventually touring with Dave Ellis. That connection brought him to RatDog in 1997, and on to the Other Ones/The Dead starting in ‘02. (He has also played variously with Pete Escovedo, Dave MacNab, Les Claypool, and String Cheese) I’ve previously mentioned his solidity in the context of <span style="font-style:italic;">Unbroken Chain</span>, <span style="font-style:italic;"><a href="http://ia700304.us.archive.org/12/items/furthur2010-11-16.ca14c.taraszki.flac16/furthur2010-11-16s1t03.mp3">Big River</a></span> etc., but as a general rule, perhaps due to his broad background, his contributions are surprisingly fresh. <span style="font-style:italic;"><a href="http://ia700304.us.archive.org/12/items/furthur2010-11-16.ca14c.taraszki.flac16/furthur2010-11-16s2t11.mp3">Franklin’s Tower</a></span> in Reading, <span style="font-style:italic;">Money For Gasoline</span> in Baltimore, and the intro piece to <span style="font-style:italic;"><a href="http://ia700208.us.archive.org/2/items/furthur2010-11-20.suraci.akg.sbeok.flac16/furthur2010-11-20d1t08.suraci.akg.mp3">Two Djinn</a></span> at MSG are good examples. He had ample time to practice the latter piece over the ten-plus years it was in the RatDog catalogue, but he never really settles on a particular feel the way most players will. And he can get a crowd worked up like few others.<br /><br /> Furthur continues to experiment with setlist orders and song pairings. Longtime pair <span style="font-style:italic;">China</span> and <span style="font-style:italic;">Rider</span> are no longer necessarily a pair or even bookends; <span style="font-style:italic;">Viola Lee Blues</span>, which has for over a decade been a sort of mortar-piece that ties most of a set together, was a <a href="http://ia700104.us.archive.org/6/items/furthur2010-11-21.zman/furthur2010-11-21d01t06.mp3">single tune</a> at MSG on the 21st; <span style="font-style:italic;">Caution</span> and <span style="font-style:italic;">Turn On Your Lovelight</span> appeared in first sets – and not as closers… Songs also continue to get tweaked here and there; <span style="font-style:italic;">Black Peter</span> has a new background vocal arrangement in the jam segment, <span style="font-style:italic;">The Music Never Stopped</span> now ends on a vocal line, <span style="font-style:italic;">Colors Of The Rain</span> seems to change every performance, <span style="font-style:italic;">Dear Prudence</span> has a new chord in the chorus, they’re reworking <span style="font-style:italic;">Hard to Handle</span>… The new transition (>!, where the next tune starts on the 4th beat of the previous one) made a half-dozen appearances; and the Phil-led transitional jams are working better and better… Old dogs, new tricks.<br /><br /> The <a href="http://www.archive.org/details/furthur2010-11-16.ca14c.taraszki.flac16">Reading</a> show and the second <a href="http://www.archive.org/details/furthur2010-11-21.zman">MSG</a> show were some of the best, in my opinion. A few other highlights: check out <span style="font-style:italic;"><a href="http://ia700208.us.archive.org/15/items/furthur2010-11-09.mahoney.flac16/FURTHUR2010-11-09d1t07.mp3">Big Bad Blues</a></span> and<span style="font-style:italic;"> <a href="http://ia700208.us.archive.org/15/items/furthur2010-11-09.mahoney.flac16/FURTHUR2010-11-09d1t08.mp3">Liberty</a></span> in Ames, IA, <span style="font-style:italic;">Eyes</span> in St. Louis, <span style="font-style:italic;"><a href="http://ia600307.us.archive.org/18/items/furthur2010-11-12._24bit_96k/furthur2010-11-12t07.mp3">Dear Prudence</a></span> in Chicago and <span style="font-style:italic;">Hard To Handle>Dear Mr. Fantasy</span> in Baltimore. I can’t really link any of the transition jams, since they’re neither tracked nor labeled, but they’re worth keeping an ear out for.<br /> <br /> Going forward, Phil and Weir are hosting the annual Unbroken Chain Foundation fundraiser in mid-December; Furthur will play San Francisco for New Year’s; Weir/Wasserman/Lane (also the Rhythm Devils) are scheduled on Jam Cruise 9 in early January; and Furthur just announced three February shows in Colorado.<br /><br /><br />Up Next: I’m listening to the Spring ’89 GD tour. It’s long, so it might be a few weeks before you get a post.<div class="blogger-post-footer">Ben Heckscher
Furthur Study
benjamin.heckscher@gmail.com</div>Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05875337467116438015noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2735702607925416669.post-83261078962853090002010-11-01T22:05:00.011+01:002015-05-19T10:39:51.942+02:00Grateful Dead – Fall 1976Thanks once again to Germain’s systematic uploads to etree, I managed to hear the entirety of the Grateful Dead’s midwest/east coast tour in the fall of 1976 and the two pairs of shows in California a week later. The band’s June “comeback tour” had consisted of 19 shows in the northeast and Illinois. They had played a six-show run at San Francisco’s Orpheum in July; and there had been two huge shows (24 and 30K seats respectively), again in the northeast, in August. After a seven-week break (and a cancelled show in London), the band started up again on September 23rd in Durham, NC, and played nine shows, wrapping up in Detroit, MI, on October 3rd. Two shows in Oakland and two more in Los Angeles would be the last until New Year’s Eve.<br />
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The band was recently back from its “hiatus.” Apart from the four shows the band played in and around San Francisco in 1975, they had also spent weeks in Weir’s new studio jamming and working up new material, released two GD albums and several more solo efforts, and got the Grateful Dead Movie under way. As McNally tells it, the break in touring was forced on the band by the sheer un-sustainability of the operation as it was in 1974. Not only was the Wall of Sound a financial sinkhole, but rampant drug use was becoming a real hindrance to both music and interpersonal relations and the laissez-faire business model had resulted in a bloated crew and inefficient management. As Danny Rifkin succinctly put it in a post-tour meeting in August ’74: “I’m not having fun any more.” The announcement within the organization was phrased in such a way as to encourage people to find work elsewhere, but notwithstanding Bill Graham’s “the last one” gimmick at the October 20th, 1974, show, not everyone expected the break to be permanent.<br />
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(Between October ’74 and June ’76, Phil met, married and divorced a woman named Lila; Rock Scully was arrested over a drug deal and would do some jail time (bunking with HR Halderman); Robbie Taylor – to this day Phil’s stage manager – came aboard, working at Weir’s studio; Garcia separated from Mountain Girl and moved in with Deborah Koons; Weir split from girlfriend Frankie, whom he’d been with since mid-‘69; Billy married his third wife, Shelly; Lenny Hart died of natural causes; and Mickey slowly rejoined the band even though he would not appear on Blues For Allah.)<br />
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By mid- ’76 the organization had been stripped down a bit and various changes made to booking and equipment use, but things weren’t perfect by any means. The biggest persisting problem was the band’s record company. Grateful Dead Record and the Round Records subsidiary were proving more trouble than they were worth. Despite creative and quality control, the band ran up against counterfeiters and had an insufficient distribution network that led to a partnership with United Artists. The whole self-production effort finally fell apart in July when Ron Rakow, on board since the Carousel days, author of the So What Papers and head of GD records, got wind of his impending termination and made off with $225,000 in distribution advance money from UA. On top of that, Rakow had invested in a dead-end Hell’s Angels film and borrowed money to keep the company afloat. Financially, the band was not in good shape. <br />
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They would sign and remain with Arista in September 1976, definitively abandoning GD Records (and UA).<br />
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That same month, longtime friend Rex Jackson died. He had originally come down from Hermiston, OR, through a Kesey connection, with Sonny Heard and Ram Rod in 1968 and joined up with the band as a roadie. After a stint on the Rolling Stones tour of November ‘69 he returned to the GD and worked his way up to manager (‘75-6). He fathered a daughter, Cassidy (as in <span style="font-style: italic;">Cassidy</span>), by Eileen Law, and a son, Cole, by Betty Cantor. Ironically having incited a 1974 “drug bonfire” in Europe in response to the rampant cocaine use, Rex’s newfound free time coupled with his rock-band drug connections got the better of him and he drove off the side of the road one night on his way home. <br />
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Such were the conditions under which the Grateful Dead took to the road in late September 1976. <br />
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The band’s sound had changed significantly during the break. Perhaps most significant was the return of Mickey and new swing tempos. There was a very intentional and deliberate feel to the music in this period that I like very much: it left room for everyone to have a say and contributed, I think, to the adventurous nature of some of the tunes (more on that later). <br />
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Phil was playing a fretless bass this tour, as he would again on the spring ’77 tour. While the most evident manifestation was in the introduction to Scarlet Begonias, it also contributed a wider range in open-ended passages. He dropped that bass a little while later – I think because the fretlessness was unnecessary to his style – but was in rare form throughout the tour. Here’s a jaw-dropping little lick that will give you an idea what he was capable of (<a href="http://ia700201.us.archive.org/16/items/gd76-09-23.sbd.backus.14687.sbeok.shnf/gd1976-09-23d2t05_vbr.mp3">at 0:25</a>). nor was he averse to throwing some chords around if things were getting dull.<br />
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But the most distinctive element of the sound in this period might be Jerry’s <a href="http://www.travisbeanguitars.com/images/misc/jerry_3.jpg">Travis Bean</a> guitar. Recognizable by a T-shaped cutout in the headstock, it was the first of his guitars with an effects loop. He would hold on to it until he got a refurbished Wolf back from Doug Irwin in fall 1977. It had an unprecedentedly bright, clean midrange that was ideally suited to the fast runs of <span style="font-style: italic;">Samson</span> or <span style="font-style: italic;">Big River</span>, and defines to my ears the best days of <span style="font-style: italic;">Scarlet Begonias</span>. It could get a bit screechy in the high end though.<br />
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A word about Keith and Donna: they were far from a new addition to the band, but I haven’t really paid attention to their contributions pre-hiatus. Keith was never particularly high in the mix, but I think part of it was on purpose. He was a very colorful player but also very self-effacing. During the first few nights of the tour, he had a few real pretty absent-minded noodles between songs that showed off his abilities, but there were rather few instances where he took off in his solos, preferring instead to play safer, chord-based lines. Nonetheless, he was still alert and tight – it would be another year at least before he started to fall flat in his contributions. It's apparent, meanwhile, that Donna had a very beautiful melodic range but could not cope with the louder stuff. She sang beautifully on most ballads, particularly <span style="font-style: italic;">High Time</span> and <span style="font-style: italic;">Looks Like Rain</span>. Songs like <span style="font-style: italic;">Dancin’</span> or <span style="font-style: italic;">Playin’ In The Band</span> demanded more power than she could comfortably put forth, and she was often both straining and low in the mix.<br />
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The fall tour was atypical in that it took longer than most tours to get rolling but didn’t taper off. I noted in my last post that the band wasn’t always tight: a certain disorganization persisted for about half the tour, with confusion in the arrangements and the odd blown change. I also noticed that there were 1-to-2-minute breaks between tunes, suggesting either technical issues or uncertainty about how to structure the sets. It is difficult to pinpoint when these breaks got shorter because many of the circulating recordings have had them removed. By the time they wrapped up in LA, however, things were moving smoothly. Over those three weeks, the band’s facility with the material improved steadily and there was none of the usual end-of-tour fatigue: perhaps the relative shortness of the tour and the several days of rest between the last two pairs helped sustain the energy.<br />
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The long pressure-free jam sessions at Weir’s had yielded a lot of new material. <span style="font-style: italic;">The Music Never Stopped</span>, for example, grew out of repeated workouts on a Weir progression called <span style="font-style: italic;"><a href="http://ia700201.us.archive.org/19/items/gd75-03-17.sbd.vernon.10111.sbeok.shnf/gd75-03-17d2t07_vbr.mp3">Hollywood Cantata</a></span>. Aside from <span style="font-style: italic;">Music</span> were <span style="font-style: italic;">Help-Slip-Frank</span>, <span style="font-style: italic;">Samson</span> and five other new songs. They also rearranged <span style="font-style: italic;">Dancin’, St. Stephen, Minglewood</span> and <span style="font-style: italic;">All Over Now</span>, which had been absent since ‘71. This material would provide the backbone of late-1976 setlists, with many songs – especially <span style="font-style: italic;">Dancin’</span> – making near-nightly appearances. <br />
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While the relative novelty of the material meant the occasional pitfalls, it also meant that the band had an experimental approach to a large proportion of the material they were playing. <span style="font-style: italic;">Music</span> is a good example. The thematic succession that makes up the second half of the tune had two parts: a bridge and a jam on the main theme. At one point (9/30), there was a miscue in the change that led to a sort of awkward jam before everyone came back to the same page. As the tour went on, that awkward moment was repeated intentionally, cued by Phil, and made for a third theme. By the last show, it was gone again. Another moment materialized out of haphazard noodles, becoming what was labeled <span style="font-style: italic;">Orange Tango Jam</span> on Dick’s Picks 20. That being a favorite jam of mine I waited for it as I was listening through the tour and I noticed that the odd lick or effect reminiscent of that jam were peppered throughout, both before and after the night of the jam itself. <br />
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A different sort of improvisation stemmed from the new <span style="font-style: italic;">Drums</span> interlude. <span style="font-style: italic;">Drums</span> were a new addition to the sets: usually confined to a few minutes and involving little more than the regular drum kits, they were not always a nightly fixture. Nevertheless, they were regular enough to occasion experimentation with respect to the set: they floated around, generally in set II, and served variously as interludes within a song or as transitions. On September 24th, they split up <span style="font-style: italic;">Slipknot </span>and increased the tempo significantly. As the band came back in, there was a nice little jam on the faster Slipknot theme before they worked the tempo back down into <span style="font-style: italic;">Slipknot>Franklin’s</span>. <br />
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To a certain extent, improvisation of this sort was common currency, if not a trademark, of the band’s music throughout its career. This period was nevertheless exceptionally experimental in that department.<br />
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Finally I’d like to say a word about venues. We modern-day Heads are spoiled by the circulation of so many soundboards, but it’s a double-edged sword: while it makes for great listening, it also means we often don’t get a sense of the actual rooms the band was playing in. It struck me during one of the longer audience patches that many of these places were big concrete cubes with few acoustic qualities and little intimacy. The Wall of Sound and other financial constraints had engendered the need to book ever-bigger halls. Without including Watkins Glen, the average venue in 1973 held 13,500 seats, up from 5,900 in ‘71. Even with the European tour, 1974’s average was 10,500. In ’76 they were able to go back to smaller venues in the spring, but the fall tour still took them through gyms, event centers and arenas. <br />
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All this points to the fact that this band was still struggling. They were making completely unique music for a very dedicated fan-base and that put them on a solid foundation, but they were constantly chasing their bank balance. In 1976, after ten years on the road, there was nothing to indicate that this would ever be anything more than a hand-to-mouth exercise in survival for all those involved. They were famous in their own circle but had not gained any kind of cultural notoriety in the wider world. Nobody was writing books about them (except Hank Harrison, the Warlocks’ “manager,” who published a semi-fictional account of their early days in 1973), and none of them had a retirement fund.<br />
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Here are a few highlights from the tour: <span style="font-style: italic;">St. Stephen</span>, 9/25 (interesting stuff in the jam); <span style="font-style: italic;"><a href="http://ia341004.us.archive.org/2/items/gd1976-09-27.sbd.miller.87664.sbeok.flac16/gd76-09-27d1t05_vbr.mp3">Looks Like Rain</a></span>, 9/27 (Keith and Donna both sound lovely); <span style="font-style: italic;"><a href="http://ia700209.us.archive.org/17/items/gd76-09-28.aud.vernon.14356.sbeok.shnf/gd76-09-28d1t07_64kb.mp3">Minglewood</a></span>, (for Jerry’s solo), and <span style="font-style: italic;"><a href="http://ia700209.us.archive.org/17/items/gd76-09-28.aud.vernon.14356.sbeok.shnf/gd76-09-28d2t12_vbr.mp3">Johnny B. Goode</a></span> from 9/28; <span style="font-style: italic;"><a href="http://ia341340.us.archive.org/2/items/gd1976-10-03.fmsbd.jerugim.248.shnf/gd76-10-03iipt09_vbr.mp3">Around and Around</a></span>, 10/03 (with the double-time ending of that period); <span style="font-style: italic;"><a href="http://ia700201.us.archive.org/0/items/gd76-10-03.sbd-aud.cotsman.12832.sbeok.shnf/gd76-10-03d1t10_vbr.mp3">Music</a></span> 10/03 (with that middle bit), <span style="font-style: italic;">Scarlet</span> and <span style="font-style: italic;">Lazy Lightning>Supplicatio</span>n <a href="http://www.archive.org/details/gd1976-10-09.aud.fix-10179.tetzeli.sbeok.83819.flac16">10/09</a>; and <span style="font-style: italic;">Dancin’>Wharf Rat>Dancin’</span> from <a href="http://www.archive.org/details/gd76-10-10.hollwein.vernon.11670.sbeok.shnf">10/10</a>. As a general rule, shows got better as they went along, and I would say that the tour as a whole is most interesting for its experimental aspects. It yielded two Dick’s Picks: <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dick's_Picks_Volume_20">20</a> (9/25, 28) and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dick's_Picks_Volume_33">33</a> (10/09, 10). Personally, I‘m most partial to DP 20 and the Detroit show on <a href="http://www.archive.org/details/gd76-10-03.sbd-aud.cotsman.12832.sbeok.shnf">October 3rd</a>. <br />
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There you have it. Happy listening!<br />
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Up Next: I'm listening four Rhythm Devils shows from the most recent tour; I'll have a word about that up shortly.<div class="blogger-post-footer">Ben Heckscher
Furthur Study
benjamin.heckscher@gmail.com</div>Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05875337467116438015noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2735702607925416669.post-58615425653070320772010-10-15T11:38:00.005+02:002010-10-16T10:04:32.348+02:00Furthur - Fall 2010Furthur played a nine-date west coast tour in September. They had had a six-week break beforehand (barring a one-off in Golden Gate Park), and are scheduled for another before hitting the Midwest and East Coast in November. They also just announced two shows to wrap up the year in San Francisco, putting this year’s show total at a healthy 82.<br /><br /><br /> September’s outing saw the premiere of three new songs, bringing their songbook to a total of 193 tunes. Two of those songs have their origins in previously written material and feature lyrics by Phil’s son Brian Lesh (with some indirect input from Robert Hunter). The full story appeared in a <a href="http://www.jambands.com/news/2010/09/19/phil-lesh-and-brian-lesh-build-on-david-crosby-and-ola-belle-reed-originals-for-new-furthur-songs">Jambands.com article</a>, but the broad strokes are as follows. Having heard an outtake from David Crosby’s <span style="font-style:italic;">If Only I Could Remember My Name</span>, Brian built on the only lyric (“Gonna let the mountain be my home”) and wrote a song for his own band. His mother Jill thereafter dug up an old set of Hunter lyrics originally intended to complete Crosby’s, upon which Brian and Phil retooled the song to incorporate all the elements. This yielded Furthur’s <span style="font-style:italic;">The Mountain Song</span>, premiered in Oregon on the 17th and played two more times thereafter. I personally like it very much; it has a great thematic suite, like <span style="font-style:italic;">Unbroken Chain</span>, and a lot of energy.<br /> <br /> Brian’s second contribution to the songbook comes from <a href="http://home.comcast.net/~tompolis/">Olla Belle Reed</a>’s <span style="font-style:italic;">High On A Mountain</span>, which has a long tradition of interpretations. Phil having reworked the tune himself, it fell to Brian to write the three new verses that complete Furthur’s version, performed in Redmond and at Red Rocks. <br /><br /> Finally, we were treated to one performance of Weir’s <span style="font-style:italic;">Big Bad Blues</span>. This tune was <a href="http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=1527447818831&ref=mf">posted, in its embryonic stages</a>, on Weir’s facebook page a while back and sounded pretty simple and generic, with only two verses and a chorus. The performed song was much more interesting; a long, funky blues with three new verses and a nice long jam sandwiched between a very cool new bridge.<br /><br /> <br /> There is more funk in the band’s sound these days. There has been an undercurrent at least as far back as the Crusader Rabbit Stealth Band in 2000, but it was seldom developed into actual songs (barring <span style="font-style:italic;">Shakedown</span> and <span style="font-style:italic;">Viola Lee</span>) until now. I noted the Schoolgirl from last tour and now Big Bad Blues. In addition, JC funked up <span style="font-style:italic;">Stagger Lee</span> and Come Together, and <span style="font-style:italic;">On the Road Again</span> got a full treatment. <br /><br /> Another new trick appeared, this time in the transitions. They can segue seamlessly from one tune to the next (>), they can transition with a jam (>jam>), they can end one tune and start the next immediately (.>), and now they’ve come up with a new way which I’m tempted to dub “>!” because it’s inherently surprising. It involves starting the next tune on the ending chord of the previous one: the tune doesn’t resolve, and the 4th beat becomes the 1st of the new bar. They did it at least twice this tour and I hope they do more of it: it keeps everybody on their toes.<br /><br /> Of Furthur’s revamped material, <span style="font-style:italic;">King Solomon’s Marbles</span> deserves some mention. I noted – uncharitably – that Kadlecik had had a little trouble with the form when they first started playing it. It was originally written and recorded during the hiatus, at a time when I think they felt the desire to experiment with some complex arrangements. Consequently, it is a rather dense progression that takes some serious attention and work to get just right. They finally nailed it from start to finish in Santa Barbara on the 20th. The second performance of the tour, on the closing night at Red Rocks, saw them start to really make an original go of it, with Chimenti in particular finding some very original things to say in his solo section. I’m glad to see a substantially new interpretation start to make some headway. The same can be said of the end of Terrapin: while the first two sections have been evolving all along, those seldom-performed sections have moved past the recital phase (for lack of a better term) and into the performance phase. <br /> Now if JK can just get his head all the way around <span style="font-style:italic;">The Eleven</span>…!<br /><br /> A few disjointed notes: Kadlecik tweaked the lyrics to <span style="font-style:italic;">Deep Elem</span> (“Have your 20 dollars ready,” “bandits in Debellum”); the <span style="font-style:italic;">Other One</span> has a “coming around” closing tag; Phil found a new introductory line to <span style="font-style:italic;">Colors of the Rain</span>; the tricky vocal arrangement to <span style="font-style:italic;">Born Cross-Eyed </span>has been settled, and <span style="font-style:italic;">China Cat</span> and <span style="font-style:italic;">Rider</span> seem to have been separated, performed at a week’s interval, though with the transition jam still serving as outro and into respectively. <br /><br /> <br /> Donor Rap: the tour opened with two show in Oregon, which Phil dedicated to Macalan (sp?) in the first real departure from his usual Donor Rap. Macalan was an Oregonian who recently donated his organs, and Phil mentioned him at both shows. It has been eleven and a half years since he’s been doing the Donor Rap and recently he’s been acknowledging that most of the audience has heard it before, and that many of them are already organ donors. There are only so many ways to say that playing at all is bittersweet moment, and that we should all emulate Cody’s courage, nobility and generosity of spirit; this was the first time that he has tried to make it immediately relevant. Parenthetically, Phil has been much more genial in his donor raps this tour than he was over the summer: a word about the rain and the cold in the first few nights, a nod to the renovations at the venue in Vegas, and he repeated how he absolutely loves playing at Red Rocks.<br /><br /><br /> In closing, I’d like to say something that will likely be extremely unpopular: in some ways, Furthur is a better band than the Grateful Dead. Now let me explain before you throw me to the wolves. The Grateful Dead, for all their magic, cultural importance and personal significance to the tens of thousands of people who have grown up with them (myself included), are also plagued, in my opinion, with a certain hagiography. The deification of the band in Deadhead culture tends to obscure their humanity, and precludes a certain type of criticism. Of course we all agree that Garcia was a mess at certain periods, and that the last few years were a painful experience for all involved, but there is always the implicit agreement that there will never be anything that can touch the Grateful Dead. Any and all post-GD incarnations fall into the “used-to-be” column. But let’s look at it the other way: should we write off the ongoing work of the people who created the Grateful Dead to begin with? That would amount to a dismissal of (in this case) Weir and Phil’s contributions. There will never be another Jerry Garcia, just like there will never be another Shakespeare or another Pélé, but there will be other musicians and playwrights and soccer stars who build and expand on their work. <br /><br /> Over thirty years, there was a constant refinement and improvement of the way the Dead played. For all the fun of ’76 (which I’m currently listening to), they were not always tight, nor did the arrangements have the subtlety and texture that they would have later. These aspects continue to evolve. Furthur’s music is driven by forty-five years of development and experience. It is a more professional organization than the GDP ever was: it’s not clogged up with the complications of being the sole support of the extended GD family, it’s less claustrophobic, and in the sense that there is new blood in the band, the music is less inbred. I think the long period of frustration and ill-feelings in the late nineties attests to just how untenable that model had been.<br /><br /> This band is very tight and they work at it, they’re motivated, and they’re disciplined. They have, as a group, demonstrated a willingness to incorporate and develop individual interpretations of the Dead’s material. They’re sober, at least by comparison if not objectively. Phil and Bob have spent fifteen years finding a way to productively renew their body of work. I find the emotional range of the music to be broader, and the thematic progressions to be subtler and more intentional. Which is perfectly logical. Personal preference, naturally, is a different matter.<br /><br /> Jerry Garcia is dead: his body of work is finished and we’ll always have it, but his was a part of a larger musical organism that is still alive and no less interesting. <br /><br /> There. I said it. <br /><br /><br />Up next: I’m already halfway through the Dead’s 1976 fall tour. I should have a post up in two weeks. Cheers.<div class="blogger-post-footer">Ben Heckscher
Furthur Study
benjamin.heckscher@gmail.com</div>Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05875337467116438015noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2735702607925416669.post-41941298141842669412010-09-26T13:34:00.012+02:002011-01-23T16:54:18.380+01:00Grateful Dead - Europe, October 1981The Grateful Dead went to Europe seven times in their thirty-year history and cancelled at least two other expeditions. In 1981, they went twice. The first trip, consisting of five shows in March, was a favor to Pete Townsend: the Who were breaking up and Townsend had called to ask if the band could possibly cover some dates in London. They stayed an extra few days to share a bill – and a European telecast – with the Who in Germany. In September, the Dead flew back across the pond for the first extended tour since the acclaimed 1972 visit, playing thirteen shows in seven countries between September 30th and October 19th. <br /><br /> The planned venues averaged 3-5,000 seats (with the notable exception of Copenhagen’s Forum Theater at about 13,000), significantly smaller that the stateside average of about 12K though not out of line with venues in Cleveland, Pittsburgh or DeMoines.<br /><br /> Soundboards (including at least three Millers) circulate of all but two of the shows. They all recently appeared on Workingman’s Tracker as part of the ongoing 1981 project, along with video of the shows at the Melkweg in Amsterdam (the Garcia-Weir acoustic show and the two GD performances).<br /><br /><br /> After three shows in the American northeast, the band flew out and played their first European gig in <a href="http://www.archive.org/details/gd81-09-30.sbd.jim.12229.sbeok.shnf">Edinburg</a>. The mood was grumpy. Technical issues caused delays and gripes from the various band-members and left space for the audience to holler at the band. Of course, the audience was Scottish, and the band can be heard talking, both among themselves and to the audience: “I can’t understand a fuckin’ word.” The show was decent.<br /><br /> Things changed when they hit London, however. <a href="http://www.archive.org/details/gd81-10-04.sbd.jim.12887.sbefail.shnf">October 4th</a> saw a much more relaxed Weir bantering before the show, notably polling the audience as to whether they felt that <span style="font-style:italic;">Springtime for Hitler</span> was in good taste (The Producers had been on TV the previous night). Over the four nights they played at the Rainbow Theater they built up a head of steam that would carry them through most of the rest of the tour. While most of the shows were, for my money, real good, I would point to <a href="http://www.archive.org/details/gd1981-10-06.sbd.miller.103627.flac16">London 10.6</a>, <a href="http://www.archive.org/details/gd81-10-08.sbd.macdonald.7918.sbeok.shnf">Copenhagen 10.8</a> and <a href="http://www.archive.org/details/gd81-10-10.sbd.jim.12998.sbefail.shnf">Bremen 10.10</a> as the highlights. <br /><br /> I noted with a smile how Weir handled the different countries. When they went over to Germany, he made a point to e-nun-ci-ate clear-ly, and instead of his falsetto “Thank you”, it was “Danke;” Amsterdam might as well have been the US (the aud tapes reveal that a lot of the audience were in fact Americans); in Paris, he managed “intermission s’il vous plait” and a mangled “Bonne nuit et bons rêves.” <br /><br /><br /> There were a total of 92 songs in the repertoire for the tour, including a <span style="font-style:italic;">Blues for Allah</span> jam and four <span style="font-style:italic;">Spanish Jam</span>s (the latter having made a big comeback that year). The most frequent tunes were <span style="font-style:italic;">Althea</span> and <span style="font-style:italic;">Minglewood</span>, but aside from that, Garcia had a much broader repertoire than Weir did. Of the other most frequent tunes, most were Weir’s: <span style="font-style:italic;">Rooster</span>, <span style="font-style:italic;">Sugar Mags</span>,<span style="font-style:italic;"> Sailor>Saint</span>, <span style="font-style:italic;">Looks Like Rain</span> etc. Garcia, on the other hand, had a numerous ballads like <span style="font-style:italic;">High Time</span> or <span style="font-style:italic;">Row Jimmy</span> that he could break out at will. This pattern holds true for the year as a whole: of the 15 most frequent songs, 13 were Weir’s. Brent only had two songs in the repertoire: <span style="font-style:italic;">Good Time Blues</span> and <span style="font-style:italic;">Far from Me</span>, the latter of which he only played once, in Amsterdam. <br /><br /> Brent, however, was a force to be reckoned with musically. He was in great form throughout the tour. He was always on point, <span style="font-style:italic;">Good Times</span> was always a winner and there are a few moments that bear mentioning as well: his solos on <span style="font-style:italic;">FOTD</span> on 10.4 and <span style="font-style:italic;">Scarlet</span> 10.8, a fun little oom-pa-pa riff at the beginning of<span style="font-style:italic;"> <a href="http://ia361301.us.archive.org/16/items/gd81-10-10.sbd.jim.12998.sbefail.shnf/gd81-10-10d1t05_vbr.mp3">El Paso</a></span> in Bremen, 10.10, and a solid lead on the only impromptu jam of the tour in Ruesselheim on the 13th.<br /><br /> The Drumz section now stretched out to nearly twenty minutes, with the drum solos taking up about 60 percent of that time. Almost every day, after a few minutes on the kits, Bill broke out the talking drum and Mickey his tar; they would give each other a few minutes more or less alone before closing out with the rack-toms. They were quite attached to those drums, it appears: on the Amsterdam jaunt, the only elements of the band’s gear that made it were Phil’s bass and those two drums.<br /><br /><br /> Amsterdam's unscheduled Oops Concerts get a lot of attention as one of the band’s more spontaneous adventures. On a day off in Germany a week before, Garcia and Weir had gone over to Amsterdam to meet some friends of Rock Scully’s, including Basketball Diaries author Jim Carroll, William Burroughs, and a poet laureate named Vinkenoop with a tennis-champion wife and the world’s largest library of psychedelia. That night, Weir and Jerry had followed Jim Carroll’s rock/poetry set at the Melkweg with a <a href="http://www.archive.org/details/gd1981-10-11.aud.unknown.stephens.76195.sbeok.flac16">35-minute acoustic duet</a>. The next day, back in Germany, the band heard that their two gigs in the south of France had been rained out, and they faced the choice of either staying in Germany doing nothing or blowing all their money in Paris before their next gig. Garcia, Weir and Scully convinced the rest of the band and the crew to go to Amsterdam instead. The crew accepted - grudgingly - on the condition that they not have to take the equipment. <br /><br /> So on what Scully describes as the band’s last real adventure, the Dead played two gigs on mostly borrowed equipment in a small, sweltering 1,500-capacity club tucked away on the south side of Amsterdam. The shows were a lot of fun if only because the band seemed free of the pressures of a regular tour date and could fool around somewhat with the setlist. On the <a href="http://www.archive.org/search.php?query=grateful%20dead%201981-10-15">first night</a>, Brent pulled out the only <span style="font-style:italic;"><a href="http://ia360642.us.archive.org/0/items/gd1981-10-15.aud.michel.79933.sbeok.flac16/gd1981-10-15d1t08_vbr.mp3">Far From Me</a></span> of the year, and they played the first ever <span style="font-style:italic;"><a href="http://ia360642.us.archive.org/0/items/gd1981-10-15.aud.michel.79933.sbeok.flac16/gd1981-10-15d2t03_vbr.mp3">Spoonful</a></span>. The <a href="http://www.archive.org/details/gd1981-10-16.mtx.chappell.sb27.95431.flac16">second night</a> saw them open with a rare acoustic set, and the electric set boasted the first <span style="font-style:italic;"><a href="http://ia311203.us.archive.org/3/items/gd1981-10-16.mtx.chappell.sb27.95431.flac16/gd81-10-16d2t06_vbr.mp3">Gloria</a></span> since 1968, followed by the first <span style="font-style:italic;"><a href="http://ia311203.us.archive.org/3/items/gd1981-10-16.mtx.chappell.sb27.95431.flac16/gd81-10-16d2t07_vbr.mp3">Lovelight</a></span> since 1972, and the band’s only performance of <span style="font-style:italic;"><a href="http://ia311203.us.archive.org/3/items/gd1981-10-16.mtx.chappell.sb27.95431.flac16/gd81-10-16d2t03_vbr.mp3">Hully Gully</a></span>. <br /><br /> The following day, the band was in <a href="http://www.archive.org/search.php?query=grateful%20dead%201981-10-17">Paris</a>, and two days later they closed out the tour in <a href="http://www.archive.org/search.php?query=grateful%20dead%201981-10-19">Barcelona</a>, the only time they ever played in Spain.<br /><br /><br /> Now, the general quality of the shows notwithstanding, some Garcia issues were coming to a head. Thanks to Scully’s otherwise flawed book, we know that his heroin habit was getting to be a problem socially. Scully relates an incident that occurred upon arrival in Scotland. Upon meeting an emissary (i.e. a courier) from local contacts at the airport, a sweaty Garcia insisted upon immediately retreating to the bathroom to get high, despite objections to the effect that customs officers were twenty feet away and their hotel ten minutes from the airport. <br /> <br /> The way in which it affected the music is less well documented. The first thing I noticed was a general laziness in moving the show along. Setlists read Jerry.>Bob, pause, Jerry.>Bob, and so on. Weir was always ready to go with the next song. The band was used to it too; one night Mickey had to fix something between tunes and you can hear him yelling to wait a second while the closing hit of <span style="font-style:italic;">Bird Song</span> was still ringing. The only exception to this rule was <span style="font-style:italic;">Mexicali</span>, which Jerry starts. The grainy videos from the Melkweg show that he would walk off the stage for a sec, maybe to fiddle with his rig, maybe for a puff of a cigarette. <br /> <br /> Weir (“Mr. Clean” at that time, according to Scully) had an active stage presence. While Garcia was less than charismatic, looking generally shaggy, nobody else seemed particularly alert either, and Bob was already the one leading, calling changes, and keeping the timing and arrangements together when it was needed. There was really only one thing Garcia could be counted on to do, and that was to call the last hit of a tune. He could be capricious as well, setting off on a jam of his own accord (the first time they went along, the second time they left the stage and it segued into drums), and he was resistant to spontaneous musical suggestions put forth by the others.<br /><br /> Finally, I noticed that he was starting to have trouble in the faster parts of tunes. In something that would characterize his later playing as well, he would occasionally miss notes. While he was thinking and moving in time, there would be occasions, especially in faster riffs like<span style="font-style:italic;"> Cumberland</span> or <span style="font-style:italic;">Samson</span>, when it sounded like he was missing the string. I should stress that for the vast majority of the shows, his playing was still sharp and that the shows don’t betray a serious issue. But there was a shadow of things to come in the next few years.<br /><br /> Overall, his condition and attitude were getting to be too much for his band-mates. On the last night of the tour, in Barcelona, they presented Jerry with a letter, penned by Phil but signed by everyone, expressing their dissatisfaction with his behavior and musicianship. It started: “Dear Sir and Brother. You have been accused of certain high crimes and misdemeanors against the art of music. To wit: playing in your own band; never playing with any dynamics; never listening to what anyone else plays…” Considering the legendary avoidance of confrontation that characterized the organization’s inter-personal relations, I take this to be a significant step, expressing a lot more than passing frustration.<br /><br /> While I confess I have not listened systematically to a significant portion of 1980-82, I think this European tour is a positive representation of the musical state of the band in that period. The extended jamming on, say, <span style="font-style:italic;">Scarlet>Fire</span>, still yielded interesting moments, especially thanks to Brent, and the more complex Weir tunes like <span style="font-style:italic;">Sailor>Saint</span> were tight and well executed. There were fun moments, like the time Garcia segued into <span style="font-style:italic;"><a href="http://ia341024.us.archive.org/0/items/gd1981-10-12.sbd.unknown.3196.shnf/gd81-10-12d3t04_vbr.mp3">Around and Around</a></span> so fast that Weir had to jump to the mic, after which Weir screwed around with the introduction to <span style="font-style:italic;"><a href="http://ia341024.us.archive.org/0/items/gd1981-10-12.sbd.unknown.3196.shnf/gd81-10-12d3t05_vbr.mp3">Good Lovin’</a></span> to keep him on his toes. <span style="font-style:italic;">Not Fade Away</span> tended to have a nice long jam-in, <span style="font-style:italic;">Truckin’</span> had those new whistle blasts at the intro riff, Weir was dropping F-bombs in <span style="font-style:italic;">Looks Like Rain</span> and <span style="font-style:italic;">Saint</span>, and the <span style="font-style:italic;">Althea</span>s of this period are some of my favorite. Finally, though musical issues are lurking in the wings, it’s still easy enough to ignore them, and most of the tour is definitely worth a listen.<br /><br /><br /> Up next: Furthur’s on tour, so I’m listening to that. I’m a little disappointed that only three of the shows have appeared (those West Coast tapers tend to be slower than the Joe Beacons of the world), so I guess I’ll be dropping some money on Nugs.net…<div class="blogger-post-footer">Ben Heckscher
Furthur Study
benjamin.heckscher@gmail.com</div>Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05875337467116438015noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2735702607925416669.post-45409640188716893572010-08-21T23:40:00.006+02:002010-08-23T15:11:21.026+02:00Rhythm Devils - July 2010Mickey Hart and Bill Kreutzmann have re-formed the Rhythm Devils. Starting on July 16th, the band played eleven shows in the Mountain region and on the West Coast, closing out the tour at the Gathering of the Vibes on the 31st. Venues were varied, from a drive-in theater in Idaho to the venerable Orpheum Theater in Flagstaff, with capacities from 700 to 6,000 (not including the Vibes), in the same circuit as Michael Franti, J.J. Grey or Yonder Mountain. They started a North East leg on August 21st; they will play Chicago’s House of Blues, the Sherman Theater and the Hampton Beach Casino Ballroom, venues frequented by RatDog and Furthur (the northeast has always been Deadhead territory). <br /><br /> The lineup has changed considerably since the Rhythm Devils’ last incarnation a few years ago, which had included Mike Gordon, Jen Durkin and Steve Kimock. The new personnel has jam-scene favorite Keller Williams on guitar and lead vocals, advantageous because he knows the words to a broad section of the Grateful Dead’s catalogue. The other guitar slot has been filled by 22-year-old Brit Davy Knowles, a founding member of Back Door Slam, who has shared bills with The Who, Government Mule and George Thorogood. The bass slot is held by Government Mule member Andy Hess (whose credits also include Tina Turner, David Byrne, the Black Crowes and John Scofield), and who filled in for Kreutzmann’s Seven Walkers band in June. Rounding out the lineup is talking drum master Sikiru Adepoju, a musical cohort of Mickey Hart’s since the mid eighties who recorded with Stevie Wonder and Santana and has played with Babatunde Olatunji for 17 years.<br /><br /> This tour’s rotation counted 45 songs, with a dozen originals forming the backbone of the setlists; the vast majority of the other songs are from the Grateful Dead catalogue. Aside from that, Davy Knowles contributed <span style="font-style:italic;">Sultans of Swing</span> (the first song he ever learned on guitar, he says), they played David Crosby’s <span style="font-style:italic;">Almost Cut My Hair</span>, <span style="font-style:italic;">Hey Bo Diddley</span> (6 performances), and Neil Young’s <span style="font-style:italic;">Cortez The Killer</span>. Unfortunately, very few shows trickled down through the usual channels: I only managed to get a hold of the Tucson show on the 28th and the Vibes show from the 31st. <br /><br /> The addition of Keller Williams gave the band the freedom to pick liberally from the GD catalogue, so that a lot of those tunes were only performed once or twice. This is nice for the band, and makes for a fair amount of diversity in the shows, but by the same token they did not have time to really work up the Dead stuff: there is nothing new or special about that material. On the other hand, their original material is pretty good. Without the thick sonic atmosphere boasted by previous incarnations, these Rhythm Devils have worked up some new arrangements for <span style="font-style:italic;">Fountains of Wood</span> and <span style="font-style:italic;">Fire on the Mountain</span> (mainly coming from Mickey, it sounds like), and the jam section of <span style="font-style:italic;">Strange World</span> was great both times I heard it.<br /><br /> Overall, this is a young band in the sense that they have yet to really jell around a particular sound. For the moment, the Dead material sounds like it’s being played by a cover band, albeit a perfectly competent one. Davy Knowles has garnered a fair amount of praise for his talents, and knows his way around rock and blues. Andy Hess has all the experience you could ask for but comes off a bit stiff in some of the longer jam segments. Keller Williams plays great and sings well, though he doesn’t have the power and authority of Jen Durkin. It took me a little while to get used to it. <br /><br /> The 17 shows of the current tour, which runs though September 11th (Mickey’s 67th birthday) should give them time to work out an angle, and there are two more shows scheduled for early January 2011. I’m curious to see what happens to this band. There has already been a lineup change, with The Mother Hips’ Tim Bluhm replacing Keller, which begs the question as to what kind of commitment they’re asking of the individual members, and what kind of time-frame they have in mind for the life of the band. I’d venture that it’s not a long-term project, since it never has been in the past, and I don’t expect that they will work too hard at a seriously original sound; I think the drummers have too many other projects on the burner to commit to the Rhythm Devils.<br /><br />Up Next: at the moment, I'm working through a dozen or so Miles Davis shows. I'm not very knowledgeable on that subject, so I won't post on it, but I think the next thing you'll see here is a review of the Grateful Dead's September-October 1981 European tour.<div class="blogger-post-footer">Ben Heckscher
Furthur Study
benjamin.heckscher@gmail.com</div>Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05875337467116438015noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2735702607925416669.post-25056536218398531462010-08-10T19:19:00.008+02:002010-09-04T19:41:19.419+02:00Furthur - Summer 2010Furthur has settled into a groove of consistently solid performances this summer. Eighteen shows in the Northeast between June 25th and July 30th have yielded half a dozen new songs, most original; a fresh, non-formulaic setlist pattern; greatly improved vocal arrangements and very few meltdowns. And someone may or may not have slipped something in Weir’s drink at the Nokia Theater on July 28th.<br /><br /> Furthur’s catalogue for 2010 numbers 189 songs, more than the maximum for the Grateful Dead in any year (150 songs in 1987 including all the Dylan material) and even RatDog, who topped out in 2007 at 180. They’ve added a number of originals though they seem to have dropped <span style="font-style:italic;">Welcome to the Dance</span>, which has not been played since February. <span style="font-style:italic;">Muli Guli</span> first appeared at the festival in California and three more times since; <span style="font-style:italic;">Colors Of the Rain</span> was first performed on June 30th and was the most frequent of this tour’s new songs (four performances); and <span style="font-style:italic;">Seven Hills of Gold</span> was broken out in early July. Each of them is credited to “Furthur;” they trade verses on <span style="font-style:italic;">Muli</span>, Phil sings <span style="font-style:italic;">Colors</span>, and Bob handles <span style="font-style:italic;">Hills</span>. <span style="font-style:italic;">Celebration</span> is not a new song, but it had only ever been played by Phil & Friends prior to three performances in July. Aside from that, Traffic’s <span style="font-style:italic;">Feelin’ Alright</span> appeared twice, though I suspect it won’t be a regular part of the catalogue, like Ryan Adams’ <span style="font-style:italic;">Bartering Lines</span>, performed once in New York. <span style="font-style:italic;">I Fought The Law</span> had not been done in recent memory but made a surprise appearance in early June. <br /> <br /> Parenthetically, they’ve also started performing the other parts of <span style="font-style:italic;">Terrapin Station</span>, which has a long and complicated history. Robert Hunter wrote pages of lyrics for different parts of an epic-poem-style Terrapin Station suite (see Box of Rain – Penguin Books 1990), most of which have never been performed. In 1977, the Grateful Dead recorded a musical suite including certain parts on the B-side of the eponymous album: <span style="font-style:italic;">Lady With A Fan>Terrapin Station>Terrapin>Terrapin Transit>At A Siding>Terrapin Flyer>Refrain</span>. It may be that some sections were arbitrary cuts for royalty purposes. The <span style="font-style:italic;">At A Siding</span> section was played live once in 1977 without lyrics and is labeled <span style="font-style:italic;">The Alhambra</span> on the tapes that circulate but aside from that, the song was always limited to the first <span style="font-style:italic;">Lady/Terrapin</span> diptych. In August 2002, RatDog started performing the whole suite, but it was not until the Furthur Festival that this was picked up by anyone else. Since then, Furthur have performed <span style="font-style:italic;">At A Siding>Terrapin Flyer>Refrain</span> (or <span style="font-style:italic;">Terrapin Reprise</span>) five times. The suite runs about twenty-five minutes, making it a bit unwieldy, but they have also played the first diptych and the second half separately. <br /><br /> Pardon the digression.<br /><br /> The summer tour kicked off in Brooklyn, and though reviews were generally very positive, I couldn’t help but notice something that persisted through the first half of the tour at least: Weir’s volume. His level has always been rather low, and the Weirheads out there, myself included, often wish he would turn up. This is only advisable up to a point. Often times during the tour his volume was the loudest on the stage. Now, insofar as he and Phil are the backbone of the group, he ought to be prominent in the mix, but his tone and the structure of the music make too much Weir detrimental. First of all, he often seems to play at the very highest limits of the human auditory spectrum, a sound bordering on screechy, which even his guitar tech admits sometimes needs to be rolled off. In the context of the Grateful Dead’s sound, with a pretty full tonal range, the high end can be the only place to find some room to play. However, if he is too loud, it can obliterate the upper midrange and the high end distracts from everything else. Secondly, the Garcia element of the Dead’s music involves a consistent, flowing lead sound to tie the other rhythms together. Weir has a way of nudging a groove along by picking moments to interject: if he is playing at lead volume, there’s nothing to nudge and it breaks up the flow.<br /> He was pretty intentional in his volume level, as I recall, at times turning up further if Kadlecik stepped up. I imagine he’s either working on developing a way to lead with his guitar voicing, or trying to carve out a greater directive presence. I personally don’t think he can lead with guitar alone unless he plays a straighter rhythm. However, he definitely came down as the tour went along, so whatever he was going for, he seems to have found it. <br /><br /> Since Furthur started up about a year ago, there has been some experimentation with vocal arrangements. Specifically, Weir and Kadlecik are trading verses (<span style="font-style:italic;">Tennessee Jed</span>), couplets (<span style="font-style:italic;">Half-Step</span>) and in some cases even lines within a verse (<span style="font-style:italic;">Touch of Grey</span>). When this first started, it felt disorganized and unnecessary but they have gotten quite good at it, so that it’s not that noticeable any more (<span style="font-style:italic;"><a href="http://ia360701.us.archive.org/20/items/Furthur2010-07-07.Disley.SM57.flac16/Furthur2010-07-07Disley.sm57d2t08.mp3">Touch</a></span> in Ottawa is a case in point). Jeff Pehrson and Sunshine Becker are still at times an integral part of the vocals, as opposed to embellishments or chorus: <span style="font-style:italic;">The Eleven</span> is a good example, with substantially rearranged vocals, and Pink Floyd’s <span style="font-style:italic;">Time</span> relies heavily on their contribution, though Phil sings as well. The a-cappella tunes like <span style="font-style:italic;">Attics</span> and <span style="font-style:italic;">We Bid You Goodnight</span> could not happen without them.<br /><br /> Some songs are noticeably being tweaked. <span style="font-style:italic;">Hard to Handle</span> (7.8) jumps right out. There is a funky new introduction, and long centerpiece jam, and the end goes into a vamp with some Weir vocal ad-libs. <span style="font-style:italic;">Shakedown Street</span>’s “shake it down” vocal vamp and modulation was not done the same way twice this tour. Once they did a long a-cappella vamp before the shift, once they did it like RatDog: twice around on the vocal line into the change; and there was also an occasion on which they added a vamp before the end of the modulation. It’ll be interesting to see what they settle on. <span style="font-style:italic;">Ashes and Glass</span> has a new chord progression towards the middle at “Nothing left to say,” and Weir added some words at the top of the <span style="font-style:italic;">Jack Straw</span> jam in Philadelphia. While on the subject of Weir’s singing, I’d like to point out two tracks in particular which showcase the roar he can still muster despite his age and reputation. Admitting that he has off nights on which he sounds a bit weak, check out <span style="font-style:italic;"><a href="http://ia360702.us.archive.org/10/items/furthur2010-07-10.nak100.cp4.Banaszewski.108954.flac16/furthurnak2010-07-10d1t08.mp3">Satisfaction</a></span> in Philly (7.10) and <span style="font-style:italic;">Death Don’t Have No Mercy</span> at the Nokia (7.29). I’ve never heard him belt one out quite like that last one.<br /><br /> Keyboardist Jeff Chimenti continues to be in top form though he takes fewer leads than he did last tour (Weir takes more). <span style="font-style:italic;">Unbroken Chain</span> (their best song, for my money) relies most heavily on JC’s contribution but he takes relatively frequent solos and almost always has something interesting to say. Note that he has a bit more freedom to come up with something original than Kadlecik, who tends to be confined to the Garcia mood for given sections. Joe Russo is solid as always. I noticed a few things: first, he’s the only guy on stage who moves much. Those of you who saw that viral video of the wedding band drummer twirling sticks and pumping his arms will have an idea of what Russo is doing, albeit on a lower scale. It’s not too showy but it is noticeable compared to the generally staid attitude of the front-line guys. Second, he’s very tight. There are numerous transitions with Furthur (the “.>” stop-go kind, as opposed to the <span style="font-style:italic;">China>Rider</span> type) and he never misses a beat, which is something that Bill and Mickey never quite got the hang of. His facility with fills is most noticeable on the latter <span style="font-style:italic;">Terrapin</span> sections and on <span style="font-style:italic;">Slipknot</span>, both of which have drum-fill portions that he always nails. <br /><br /> To finish up, I’d like to throw in two cents about the Weir incident at Nokia on July 28th. The by-now-familiar video of <span style="font-style:italic;"><a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZX0BX7XHcwM">El Paso</a></span> shows Weir a little unsteady on his feet, shaking his head, and completely unable to remember the words to a song he’s been singing for 40 years. Trouble started during the previous tune,<span style="font-style:italic;"> Brown-Eyed Women</span>, in which he flubbed the end verse. There were some more blank moments in the second set, though not as painful as the 5-minute <span style="font-style:italic;">El Paso</span> vamp (<span style="font-style:italic;">Music</span> and <span style="font-style:italic;">Cassidy</span>). Some say he was drunk, others say he was dosed, and Phil implied the latter by way of an introduction on the following night (detractors argue that it could be a plausible lie to cover for him). I know that Weir has had issues with drinking, though not in any detail. Nonetheless, I cannot imagine that a career musician would do something quite so unprofessional. For a guy whose livelihood is so squarely and intentionally based in performance, it doesn’t seem logical to get drunk before a show. Additionally, he didn’t appear impaired in any way on the <span style="font-style:italic;">Shakedown</span> opener, nor did he sound stumbling-around-drunk on any of the other tunes he sang. Being dosed before the show and thrown for a loop at the onset of the trip a few songs in seems to fit the performance. I have no inside info, no expertise on the psychotropics going around, but I don’t think he was drinking. <br /><br /> Anywho, that’s it for this installment. There is a lot I didn’t cover (setlists, for example), favorite shows (I’ve heard Herniker a lot, but I’d say Nokia 7.29), etc., but this seems quite long enough. Thank you for indulging me. <br /><br /><br /><br />Up next: I heard a few Rhythm Devils shows from this past tour. I’ll have a short post on those within a few days.<div class="blogger-post-footer">Ben Heckscher
Furthur Study
benjamin.heckscher@gmail.com</div>Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05875337467116438015noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2735702607925416669.post-83163212538225843632010-08-06T04:48:00.009+02:002010-08-07T01:16:21.397+02:00Carol Brightman: “Sweet Chaos: The Grateful Dead’s American Adventure”Carol Brightman was a political activist in the late 60s and early 70s. She edited the underground <span style="font-style:italic;">Viet-Report</span> on the US’s involvement in Vietnam, and later won a National Book Critics Circle award for a book on author/activist Mary McCarthy. In the early nineties, her editor – and the fact that her sister had long worked for the Grateful Dead – convinced her to write a book about Deadheads. The end product came out differently: Sweet Chaos mainly chronicles the counter-culture years of the late 60s, using as lenses the Grateful Dead and her own experience.<br /><br /> Carol’s sister Candace had been working at the Capitol Theater in 1971 when Garcia came through with his band. He liked her work and asked her to join the GD crew (“A lot of people work for us for nothing,” he told her when she asked about pay). She started in New York at the Academy of Music in March 1972 and aside from a couple of years when she quit in a huff (‘74-’75 – Parish had refused to let Carol backstage), she was a full-fledged family member. Carol, on the other hand, was heavily involved in political activism, and had relatively little contact with her sister at the time. She makes no claims to be familiar with the inner workings of the band and admits that their a lot of their music sounds the same to her.<br /> <br /> The book opens with the only really historical analysis of the burgeoning hippie culture of the mid-sixties. Rather than focusing on the Haight and the Summer of Love, she traces the Beat generation’s gradual demise, the emergence of a secondary coffee-shop scene and the fabrication of the “hippie” identity (noting that at the time of the S.F. Chronicle article coining the term, “hippie” referred to high-school-age Beatnik wannabes, an unflattering term hotly resisted by those involved).<br /><br /> The book’s centerpiece places the late-sixties activism in which Brightman was involved against the Grateful Dead’s origins and early identity. There are chapters devoted to the Weather Underground, her time at <span style="font-style:italic;">Viet-Report</span>, and with the Brigadistas, those American youths who descended on Cuba to aid in the revolution by harvesting the sugarcane that would finance an independent government. While the connections with the GD’s world are not made explicit, she ties them together under the umbrella of the government’s efforts to curb the counterculture. The Dead were busted and hassled, of course, and Brightman discusses the extensive files on her own and others’ political activities, and chronicles the spate of clashes between National Guard and college students in 1970. <br /><br /> The author argues that in the early 70s, both political activism and the Dead’s early counter-cultural identity petered out. Though she is not particularly clear on the details, it is true that Lenny Hart’s exit was more or less the last straw in a series of failed in-house initiatives, and that thereafter there was a reorganization of the band’s financial and touring affairs that effectively brought them more in line with the mainstream music business. She is more eloquent on the demise of political activism: the sheer number of factions and angles made an actual solution difficult to articulate, and it became clear that the cost of further encouraging resistance (i.e. Weathermen attacks and campus clashes with the National Guard), was unacceptable.<br /> In my opinion, the comparison is not altogether very convincing, even if the two phenomena were coeval. It seems to me that they were reactions to different mores of mainstream culture – loosely speaking, social vs. political – and that there was little direct connection between the two movements.<br /><br /> There is a break in the narrative around 1971-2 (like everyone else, she focuses disproportionately on the band’s first five years), but the initial intention to write a book on Deadheads provides her a wealth of interview material. A cross-section of fans, some there for the music, others for the drugs, provide a look at Deadhead culture upon which she bases some illuminating commentary: the escapism provided from mainstream culture and politics, the development of the Deadhead identity, the flowering of the secondary merchandise and parking lot scenes etc. She also gets a fair amount of information from Candace and Chris Brightman (their brother, a set carpenter for the GD in the nineties and later for the Furthur festival), providing a glimpse of the culture backstage and among the crew: jealousy and petty battles, Garcia’s unavoidable cult status, mistrust of anyone on the outside, etc. These are not great revelations, though nonetheless authoritative. The ensuing discussion is original and very useful in explaining the Grateful Dead phenomenon to the uninitiated, giving a broad overview and some insight into the “why-on-earth” questions elicited by the band’s admittedly obsessive fandom. <br /> <br /> Sweet Chaos is, to my knowledge, the only historically contextualized book on the Grateful Dead’s early years, and it does more than most to address the varied elements of the band’s social appeal. That being said, it dwells on episodes of the author’s experience whose relevance is unclear and whose weight is unwarranted considering the book’s title The original angle about Deadheads comes through but meanders somewhat, as though the author could not pick out a unifying thread. The political counterculture parallel to the social upheaval surrounding the Dead in the late sixties is relevant to the band’s origins and this book juxtaposes them nicely, but it is only the beginning of the work to be done in that area. <br /><br /><br /><br />Up Next: I know I’ve been promising a post on Furthur’s summer shows. I’ve had a rather fragmented schedule recently with very short commutes, so it has taken me much longer than usual to hear those shows. You should get something within a week.<div class="blogger-post-footer">Ben Heckscher
Furthur Study
benjamin.heckscher@gmail.com</div>Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05875337467116438015noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2735702607925416669.post-86023284351929992992010-07-12T01:53:00.008+02:002011-04-09T19:37:52.986+02:00Rock Scully: "Living with the Dead"Rock Scully worked for the Grateful Dead in several capacities for almost twenty years: he was brought in by Owsley Stanley in December of 1965, and was eventually let go in early 1984 (or ’85, depending on who you believe). In 1992, having kicked the drugs that got him fired in the first place, he began writing “Living With The Dead: Twenty years on the road with Garcia and the Grateful Dead.” The first of a half-dozen primary accounts on the Grateful Dead, it was written with David Dalton; it was first published in 1996 and remains in print. Eschewing even a cursory chapter on the author’s origins and mentioning his private life only in passing, it is strictly what the title implies.<br /> <br /> As with almost every other account, the first half of the book centers on Haight-Ashbury and the years between 1965 and 1970. The description of that period is refreshingly subjective: Scully does not situate the hippie phenomenon in any grand philosophical or cultural scheme, using it rather as a backdrop for what the band was doing. In between descriptions of acid trips, there are glimpses of the San Francisco hippie identity, that unifying spirit of independence from the mainstream in which artists and activists coexisted for a few brief years in the mid-sixties. But the rest of the book is set squarely on the road: in green rooms, hotels and buses.<br /><br /> Scully’s main focus is the drugs. His opening scene has the band members banging on his door looking for whatever he is holding, and the book more or less closes on a frankly disturbing picture of a heroin-ravaged Garcia. In that respect, the book is more detailed than other accounts. That drugs were a fixture is no secret, but the book reveals the encyclopedic range of psychotropic pills and liquids that circulated in the early years, and offers a brutally frank account of Garcia’s habits in the early eighties. However, this is Scully’s only real lens: methamphetamines fueled the Beat and proto-hippie scenes in the sixties, cocaine drove the Dead’s grandiose plans for self-sufficiency in the early seventies, heroin kept them going in the studio during endless nights of mixing during and after the hiatus, etc. <br /><br /> The book also centers on Garcia, and Scully does not seem to notice the irony in dropping the man’s name in the sub-title as he explains that Jerry’s drug use was fueled by his need to escape the spotlight. The other band-members figure barely as caricatures. Phil likes wine. Weir is spacey and does few drugs. Kreutzmann likes to get wasted on anything and everything. Mickey is a real asshole if you don’t mike his bells properly. Despite the focus on Garcia, however, the account is very superficial, outlining no more than the most rudimentary character traits in between descriptions of Jerry holed up in an airplane bathroom for an entire flight, or dirty and stinking, subsisting on Häagen-Dazs and heroin, his legs too bloated to walk. The end of the book is an ever-darker succession of vignettes reminiscent of Requiem For A Dream: get drugs, hide out, do drugs, repeat. Scully was at the time as much a junkie as Garcia was, though he doesn’t say so in so many words. By his account, the two of them enabled each other, hid out together, scored together and got high together. Scully rented apartments – secretly – specifically so that he, Jerry, and Garcia Band bassist John Kahn could smoke Persian heroin out of sight of everyone else. He is certainly the person most intimately acquainted with Garcia’s habits, but he writes objectively and avoids all responsibility or commentary.<br /><br /> Painful as it may be, the portrayal might have more credibility if the book weren’t so riddled with factual errors and fabrications. For someone so closely involved with the band, he makes mistakes that could have been avoided with some basic research. He writes that Weir’s parents died in 1970 (they died in early 1971); he explains that the tie-dye amp coverings first appeared on the Wall of Sound, as a response to people hurling bottles at the speakers (they existed at least two years before that); and he states that Owsley Stanley went to jail in 1969 (he was busted with the band in New Orleans in January 1970). Meanwhile, the entire seventies seem to be a blur: among reminiscences from 1978, for instance, he places an episode with Sam Cutler, who left the band in early 1974.<br /><br /> These errors put into question the road-stories that make up the majority of the book: Owsley's famed pill-press in the attic of the house in LA; Keith Moon chiseling a hole into his room from Garcia’s to retrieve his stash; Kreutzmann pissing in his Eggs Benedict in front of a hotel maid … There is little reliable factual information here; the atmosphere is plausibly recreated but everything seems fictionalized to the point of irrelevance. Almost all dialogue is obviously fabricated and even if the spirit of a given conversation is true, there’s nothing you can hang a hat on. <br /><br /> The book is not a complete loss, however. First, the focus on drugs does force one to at least acknowledge that the organization functioned under a pervasive atmosphere of insobriety, which is especially relevant to the early years before a concerted effort was made to solidify the group’s financial and managerial affairs. Ordinarily, the inefficient and ad hoc character of the early GD years is chalked up to inexperience and an almost quaint idealism. However, the Dead in those days were very close with the Jefferson Airplane, Big Brother, Janis, and Crosby, Stills and Nash, big names with big budgets and big record companies behind them: they could not ignore the complexities and pitfalls of running a major touring and recording act. Purity of intentions notwithstanding, communal living and partying without any professional experience or external anchors could only breed waste and disorganization, especially if pot, LSD, DMT and nitrous oxide were daily indulgences.<br /><br /> Secondly, it does little service to perpetuate the myth of Garcia as the wise and benevolent Buddha figure. To a large extent, this image accounts for the mythos and popularity of the band, but it inaccurate and has no value for posterity. The book’s images are ugly, almost unnecessarily so, but they are a useful commentary on cults of personality and the isolation corollary to being ensconced in a self-perpetuating organism of several hundred people. If we’re going to understand the Grateful Dead, the ugly side has to figure in the perspective.<br /><br /> The book can be a fun read: underage groupies, trashing hotels, getting really really wasted a lot… This is the stuff of rock and roll legend and rowdy stories in concert parking lots after a show. You should, however, take it all with a pinch salt. Rock Scully, who will turn 69 on August 1st, recently appeared in two video interviews, with Lesh and Weir, on Furthur’s festival website. He and his wife Nicki, whom he was with for most of his time with the Dead, have split. She is a priestess or a witch of some sort and is heavily involved in Egyptian spiritual rites. Scully is a member of the San Francisco Arts Commission, has a radio show, and makes frequent appearances at San Francisco cultural events. <br /><br /><br />Up next: I’m catching up with the Furthur tour; that’s on deck. I also bought Carol Brightman’s “Sweet Chaos: the Grateful Dead’s American Adventure.” I should have a review in a few weeks.<div class="blogger-post-footer">Ben Heckscher
Furthur Study
benjamin.heckscher@gmail.com</div>Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05875337467116438015noreply@blogger.com13tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2735702607925416669.post-54367607193073157162010-06-27T19:05:00.006+02:002010-07-29T16:44:42.254+02:00January 1970The Grateful Dead were in full swing as they rolled into 1970. Having just released Live Dead (November ’69), their financial affairs were as close to tidy as they had been since they had signed with Warner Brothers in September 1966. Their touring schedule, such as it was, involved more or less constant playing: they played almost 290 shows in ’69 and ’70, meaning shows virtually every other day for two years running. December 1969 took them from San Francisco to LA, Texas, Florida, and Massachusetts. They kicked off 1970 in New York before heading back to California, then Oregon and Hawaii, and finally closing out the month in New Orleans. Still in their twenties, the Dead were playing to audiences in the thousands all over the United States.<br /><br /> This period was a high-water mark for the band in general. Musically, they were beginning to move away from the experimental psychedelia that had characterized the two preceding years. While it had yielded some fabulous music and a record-breaking live album, the Anthem/Live Dead years had also seen the erstwhile firing of two band-members including Pigpen, who was otherwise alienated by the influence of LSD on the band’s musical direction and structure. Garcia would later call their music of that period “self-consciously weird.” Meanwhile, the time they had spent on Anthem of the Sun and Aoxomoxoa had put them in severe debt, prompting their grueling tour schedule.<br /><br /> In April 1970, the band would discover that their manager Lenny Hart had been systematically diverting money to a private account set up with his bank-teller girlfriend. While suspicions had floated about for a while (Pigpen’s organ had been repossessed from the stage at a sound-check in December), the other shoe dropped over a missing royalty check destined for Garcia. He and Mountain Girl had had their eye on a house and MG had been calling the business office on Union Street regularly, awaiting the arrival of money owed Garcia for his work on the motion picture Zabriskie Point. When the check arrived, Gail Turner called the Garcias; by the time MG got down to the office, Lenny claimed that no such check had arrived. That was the last straw: RamRod was called in and Lenny was given a few days to get the books in order and turn them over, during which time he fled to Mexico with 150 thousand dollars. Mickey subsequently went into a crippling depression. Phil's father died around the same time, as did Pigpen's mother. Later that year, Jerry’s mother Ruth passed away after a month-long convalescence following a car accident. Janis Joplin, longtime friend and neighbor of the band, died of a heroin overdose in early October, two weeks after Hendrix had taken too many sleeping pills and choked to death in his sleep. <br /><br /> But in January, the band was in great form, getting a lot of mileage out of the by-now-familiar Live Dead material while working up the songs that would yield Workingman’s Dead and American Beauty later that same year. Most shows would incorporate the Other One suite, although it was not always complete; they omitted Cryptical one night and the reprise on another. There was by now, however, a real drum solo that could stretch up to ten minutes, a significant expansion on the initial few bars between Cryptical and Phil’s bomb into the Other One. Drum solos appeared elsewhere as well, most notably in Good Lovin’ but also in Alligator or even Dancin’. Dark Star was frequent, though less so, as was St. Stephen.<br /><br /> Among the newer material in the rotation was Mason’s Children (consistently tight and energetic). Phil introduced it on January 3rd as a song they had written for a film project they had finally bailed on. It was supposed to be shot at a drive-in movie theater, where they would play to parked cars. Dire Wolf appeared almost nightly as well. Jerry was determined to get people to sing along to the “don’t murder me” chorus; he would often introduce the song as a “paranoid fantasy song,” one you could easily sing along to if you wanted. He even went as far as rearranging the tune on February 1st so that it started with the chorus. Black Peter was a near-nightly fixture, as were Cumberland Blues and High Time. Uncle John’s Band made a few appearances, but the performances were still pretty sloppy. <br /><br /> Pigpen was in high form musically, if not physically. Lovelight was well-established by then, so much so that fans in the audience were calling out parts of his “hands-outta-yo-pockets” fix-up rap. Hard To Handle was a regular, and the audience was treated to the occasional Easy Wind and Good Lovin’ as well. He wasn’t always right on point, though since he didn’t care, it came over better than when Weir or Garcia flubbed. The latter two would either mumble or stop altogether, while, Pig just barreled ahead with whatever words came through his head. He might repeat parts of verses or switch the odd word around, but he always sold it. The end of the Live Dead years would open up some room for Pigpen to contribute more songs: within two years he would be breaking out Run Rudolph, Two Souls in Communion, Empty Pages, and a half-dozen other shorter-format songs.<br /> <br /> TC’s tenure was coming to a close. He was with the band until they returned to San Francisco in early February. His contributions were less and less evident at this point. The work he had done to color Mountains of the Moon and more introspective versions of Dark Star was less integral as the years went on, and his approach to the shorter, country-flavored tunes was a bit stiff. He was offered a job writing for a musical and he and the band had an amicable parting of ways.<br /><br /> Much of the new material featured three-part harmonies, influenced, Phil would explain later, by Crosby Stills and Nash. Stephen Stills had spent most of the summer of ‘69 living at Mickey’s ranch in Novato and the two bands had spent a fair amount of time together. While Jerry and Bob had a relatively experienced approach to singing, Phil was eager but untrained, and his frequent high harmonies sounded strained in a live setting. Can’t blame the guy for trying. Phil always had a very serious approach regardless of objective merit. I almost laughed out loud after Feedback one night: following a good ten minutes of distorted screeching and rumbling, he stepped to the mic and said, with a tone befitting the flawless completion of Beethoven’s ninth: “Thank you. Goodnight.”<br /><br /> Bob Weir's role in the band was growing significantly. Just over a year earlier he’d been sorta-fired because his musical chops and responsiveness lagged behind Phil and Jerry’s. The tapes from the first shows of January and February (Fillmore East and New Orleans respectively) had Weir very high in the mix, giving a close-up view of what he was doing. I was most struck by just how varied his parts are; each chord change, each shift and modulation, had a distinct Weir-part built around what the others were doing. Historically, Weir has been fairly low in the mix, and when he goes from straight chords to inversions to single notes, it’s easy to lose track of where he is and what he’s doing. <br /><br /> There were two occasions on which equipment issued left some space to fill. The first time, Weir did Monkey and the Engineer solo, with a little Jerry sneaking in towards the end. On January 31st, however, Phil’s amplifier blew out. Weir carried the show with five tunes mostly by himself: Long Black Limousine, Seasons of my Heart, Saw Mill, Bound in Memories, and Race is On (Jerry followed it up with five of his own before they closed with Cumberland). <br /> Let the record show that, after the late-’68 Hartbeats experiment, Weir caught up quick.<br /><br /> Rock and roll equipment in those days was primitive – broken strings were an almost nightly occurrence – and the Dead had yet to start using a professional PA (Alembic would be their first, in spring ’71). Their system in January 1970 was mostly homemade, and Bear had returned to the fold (he and the band had parted ways in August ’66). Bear was a stickler for sound, an electronic mad-scientist type whose continual experiments were hampered by his constant LSD ingestion. On one hand, the soundboard tapes from this period generally sound very good - when everything was running right – but they are often incomplete. There were relatively frequent calls from the stage about tweaking the monitor mix, feedback issues and system hum. Jerry got noticeably cranky on February 1st: “Ah, could you eliminate the ring from the PA please. The ring is most annoying, most annoying.” to which Weir added “What you’re hearing now is the Bear solo.” <br /><br /> Sound issues abounded on the last night of January, at the Warehouse in New Orleans. Like at Woodstock, a grounding problem caused electrical shocks for the singers and they had to stop a while and fix it. Phil cracked: “For a while, we thought the only life around hear was the heat!”<br /> Weir took the opportunity to wax antiauthoritarian: “ I got a statement to make: This seems to be a blatant attempt, by the establishment,” (laughter) “to keep rockers from coming here and, ah, save this fair city for the straight people. Well…”<br /> Jerry: “The revolution’s over…”<br /> Phil: “Go home, folks… Remember, obedience to the law is the only true freedom.”<br /> Weir: “And crime does not pay.”<br /><br /> The exchange was oddly appropriate for the evening: upon return to their Bourbon Street hotel, they found the police crawling all over the place and were all hauled off to the precinct. This was a show bust, by most accounts, and photographers and media did nothing to keep things civil or low key. Phil writes that Weir somehow managed to handcuff an officer to his desk! Pigpen and TC, roommates and both non-smokers, were not arrested. Mickey presented an ID that said Summer Wind (“spiritual advisor”) and so he was not officially booked. Eight hours later, after a phone call by Warner’s Joe Smith to the New Orleans DA promising that the Dead would stay out of New Orleans (and a significant campaign contribution), the band were released on bail. Early that same morning, Mountain Girl had called the hotel looking for Jerry to inform him that she had just given birth to a baby girl: Annabelle. “Sorry honey,” she was told, “the police came and took them away last night.”<br /> Bail had wiped out the proceeds from that night, and they booked another gig on February 1st to make up for it. They would share the bill with Fleetwood Mac, leading to a raucous, 40-minute, all-star-jam Lovelight closer. No mention was made of the legal trouble, though there was a shout-out of sorts. The MC introduced the band: “And now those who made this afternoon possible, the G…”<br /> “The New Orleans Police Department!”<br /><br /><br /> These were the days of adventure, excitement and uncertainty. The GD machine was taking on a life of its own and the band was reaching an adulthood of sorts. The music is strong, tight and forward-looking. We hear the inauspicious beginnings of Uncle John’s Band, early stabs at the China-Rider transition jam, experimentation with arrangements for the new material, top-notch performances of the Live Dead material, some very rare acoustic stuff, and an epic Easy Wind (Jan. 30). My favorite show was Jan 2nd in New York (a Miller soundboard circulates), but the whole series was real interesting. The legendary February 14, 1970 show at the Fillmore East was just around the corner, and Harpur College (5/2) only three months away, so January is worth checking out if only for historical context.<br /><br /><br />Up next: I heard the Oakland run from February 1990 but there’s nothing of great import to say. I’ll have a post up next week on the first part of the Furthur run. I also bought Rock Scully’s Living With The Dead, so you can expect a review within a few weeks. Cheers.<div class="blogger-post-footer">Ben Heckscher
Furthur Study
benjamin.heckscher@gmail.com</div>Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05875337467116438015noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2735702607925416669.post-13579990482390137222010-06-12T00:24:00.003+02:002018-03-12T15:53:23.733+01:007 WalkersIn July 2008, Bill Kreutzmann ran across Louisiana native Malcolm “Papa Mali” Welbourne backstage at a festival in Oregon; the two hit it off and began playing together whenever the opportunity presented itself. In October of last year, sessions started up for an album of songs written by Papa Mali and Robert Hunter. Soon after, they began performing as 7 Walkers. They have been out and about since then and a number of shows have trickled down to etree, whence they were dutifully snatched up by yours truly.<br />
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Papa Mali is on the road 200-odd days a year and has an impressive resume. He toured with various blues and funk bands starting in his late teens and found his way into reggae with the Killer Bees. He eventually toured with Burning Spear, where he got the nickname he has gone by for the last twenty-plus years. His first solo record was real dirty swamp music, his second was more raw delta blues with a jazzy bent to it. He has toured with B.B. King, Cyril Neville and Derek Trucks, and is a regular fixture at the big summer festivals, where he inevitably winds up sitting in with any number of headliners and all-star bands.<br />
His stylistic range is pretty broad, and even if he sticks to a mostly rock sound with 7 Walkers, he can throw some funk around and plays a mean slide. At the same time, he tends to keep things simple; there are no fireworks, no longs buildups or screaming, sustained leads. He is humble and versatile, so that he does justice to a wide range of sounds. His singing has a New Orleans/Dr. John sound on the edges, which comes out in some of the band’s swingier stuff.<br />
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Aside from Papa Mali and Kreutzmann, the official 7 Walkers band (named after one of the Hunter originals recorded for the album) also includes bassist Reed Mathis and multi-instrumentalist Matt Hubbard, from Willy Nelson’s band, who plays keyboards, harmonica and trombone. Mathis performed on the album and on the band’s early gigs, but not on the recent tour. He was replaced by George Porter Jr. for most of that time, though Brad Houser played on at least one gig. The bass slot is relatively conventional except when Porter is on board, in which case he sings a few (he does a mean Hey Pocky Way) and takes the occasional solo.<br />
Hubbard is a great player whose facility with the trombone allows the band to take on a distinct New Orleans sound. One original on which the horn is prominent is a fun, if fairly generic, tune called New Orleans Crawl, but it is also integral in the band’s highly original take on Death Don’t Have No Mercy. The song gets a full Bourbon-Street-funeral treatment, a surprising adaptation in keeping with the character of the lyrics. They played it at all three of the shows I heard.<br />
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For a guy who doesn’t want to play with the Dead, Kreutzmann sure plays a lot of Grateful Dead music: 7 Walkers’ catalogue is almost exclusively GD material. They play a few covers and a handful of cuts from the album, but they also do a lot of material like Bertha, Sugaree, He’s Gone, Wharf Rat, Mr. Charlie, and even We Bid You Goodnight. On paper, this seems pretty uninspired but the approach is liberal and makes for interesting renditions. Papa Mali has no problem switching a few words here and there (“…something like a bird <span style="font-style: italic;">inside</span> her sang,” “<span style="font-style: italic;">Got to</span> get back on my feet someday”), and they managed to produce very interesting versions of Bird Song and Deal, to name a few standouts.<br />
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Overall, the band is very accessible: funky, versatile and surprisingly good, while sticking close to familiar territory. <a href="http://www.archive.org/details/7walkers2010-06-05">Here</a>’s a great soundboard from a show in Denver in early June, which should cover all you need to hear to make up your mind. I’d definitely check them out if they come around your neighborhood.<br />
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Up Next: January 1970. I have 10 shows, so it’ll probably be two weeks.<div class="blogger-post-footer">Ben Heckscher
Furthur Study
benjamin.heckscher@gmail.com</div>Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05875337467116438015noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2735702607925416669.post-15700249872897130042010-06-09T00:06:00.004+02:002010-06-09T01:08:58.045+02:00Furthur FestivalThis year’s Futhur Festival (May 28-30) was only the third of its kind, surprising in light of the fact that several second- and third-generation jam bands have been doing it regularly for years. Despite two years of the traveling Furthur Festival (little relation) and the multi-band Terrapin Station and Comes A Time gatherings, it is the first time a single Dead-related band has set up a festival of its own. While they could have undoubtedly drawn a respectable crowd on their own, they invited a half-dozen lesser-known bands to fill out the schedule, though Phil Lesh felt it was necessary to encourage the crowd to go see these bands (including his son’s), after the erstwhile “soundcheck” on the first night.<br /> <br /> A controversial decision a few months ago saw them announcing the setlists for this festival ahead of time: the six official sets would each comprise one of their albums. Phil’s band had done this once before in May of ‘08 (though without announcing it in advance), and those shows had included some of the same albums. The reactions to this announcement had been rather befuddled; why do those again, and above all, why on earth advertise it so far in advance? This reviewer had found it strange to take away the element of surprise, a part of the atmosphere at Dead and Dead-family shows. As things got closer, however there was some excitement at the idea of hearing certain songs, particularly those that were rarely, if ever, part of the catalogue. Besides, it would have become immediately evident what they were up to anyway: it took less than an hour for people to figure it out when Phil and Friends did it two years ago.<br /><br /> Furthur’s current lineup has changed slightly, with the departure of Jay Lane on percussion and the replacement of background vocalist Zoe Ellis by Bay area alum Jeff Pehrson, but the sound is almost indistinguishable. Lane’s contribution had been somewhat superfluous, consisting more of embellishments than structural elements, and having an alto or a tenor voice in the background harmonies makes little difference. The band had continued their rehearsals, both private and “live,” in the run-up to the festival and they are improving noticeably. While some of the more esoteric material had an feeling of recital, the stuff that is well entrenched in the band-members’ respective solo catalogues hit some high peaks.<br /><br /> On the first night of the festival, the band played a two-and-a-half-hour set of popular material that would not feature in the headline shows, including the Eleven, with the original vocal arrangements, Eyes, Dark Star, Scarlet>Fire and Playin’ in the Band. The show was solid with at least one standout passage at the end of Unbroken Chain, a showcase for both Chimenti and John Kadlecik. <br /><br /> Two things became apparent that first night. First was the fluidity and responsiveness of Joe Russo. It was previously hard to discern just what he was doing, since he blended with Lane’s sound, but he is a very versatile player with a real facility in switching grooves and tempos in mid-swing. His ability to lockstep with Phil is reminiscent of John Molo, no small feat considering the disparity in their experience, but he’s more unconventional, peppering rim-shots and taps and rattles throughout. <br /> The other revelation (if it can be called that) is that Phil is unquestionably the band’s director. It first became apparent when, at the reprise of Dark Star, Weir moved beautifully and organically into the Dark Star rhythm, setting the foundation for a jam on the main theme: Phil completely overrode it with his introduction to the piece’s “head” section. On the second night, Weir sang Friend of the Devil and included Phil’s verse (“You can borrow from the devil/ you can borrow from your friend/…”), which closed the song; after the last chord hit, Phil inexplicably felt it necessary to sing that verse again himself. Most tellingly, however, throughout the weekend, it was always Phil talking through the stage monitors between songs, as opposed to Weir or anyone else. <br /><br /> The six sets that comprised the official festival were, by and large, excellent, the first night being the stronger of the two. They covered each album in order, performing the modern versions of the songs: they omitted certain thematic passages, like the “Faster we go…” and “Quadlibet…” sections of The Other One, or the modulation at the end of Dancin’ In The Streets. Though it might have been an interesting exercise to perform everything just as it was on the record, learning it would have been unduly time-consuming and frankly pedantic. <br /><br /> The oddball material on the third night did come off a little stiff: Blues for Allah’s B-side had been performed exactly once and it was clear they were not completely comfortable with it. Aoxomoxoa’s Rosemary was a rare one (Phil sang it this time), and it is questionable whether “What’s Become of the Baby?” was ever performed at all. The lyrics, shared by Phil and Theresa Williams, were only slightly less indecipherable than on the record. Nonetheless, it was gratifying to relive those strange moments of the Grateful Dead’s catalogue in a live and modern setting, nothing’s wrong with a little nod to history and a touch of nostalgia.<br /><br /> Larry Campbell and Theresa Williams made liberal appearances throughout the weekend. Larry played a lot of fiddle, most notably on Brokedown Palace and Dupree’s Diamond Blues. The latter bears special mention as one the best songs of the festival: high energy and featuring stellar solos by all involved, it peaked out with a round of frankly hair-raising exchanges between Campbell, Kadlecik and Chimenti. Campbell played guitar as well on select songs: his contribution to Cumberland Blues was fantastic (even if everyone got a little carried away), I can’t think of anyone who can do that fast country stuff better than him.<br /><br /> Campbell’s wife Theresa Williams handled some important leads: ‘Till The Morning Comes, for one, which was originally sung in harmony by the boys in the band. Sunrise was a Donna Jean tune for Rex Jackson which definitely needed a female voice, and she handled that as well. Attics was another standout of the weekend. It was rather rarely performed by the Grateful Dead, and though it was in RatDog’s repertoire (mostly a-cappella), they never did it justice. The rendition led by Williams on the second night was an absolute gem, with beautiful, tightly orchestrated three- and four-part harmonies. It may have been the all-time best performance of the song.<br /><br /> A few more standouts worthy of mention for Kadlecik’s contributions: Easy Wind, Born Cross-Eyed, Help On the Way, Music (he closed it out with a monstrous lead), and Dancin’ In The streets. There was some confusion at the outset of the latter as to whether it would be in the disco-Dead or original style. However, his solo was straight out of the late-70s disco versions, both in the effect he was using (I’ve noted before how he seems to have all the exact same effects at Garcia), and the language of the riffs. <br /><br /> Finally, it should be mentioned that they premiered a new song by Robert Hunter known as Muli Guli, with a chord progression reminiscent of Pride of Cucamonga. It later appeared during the live rehearsal shows that followed the festival, joining Welcome To The Dance in a new batch of songs for the catalogue, with hopefully more to come. Further currently has 26 shows slated through September 25th. They will have played 79 shows since the previous September, an annual total that outstrips Phil’s most prolific year and rivals the Grateful Dead’s schedule anytime after 1970. The wheel is turning and, apparently, you can’t slow it down.<br /><br /><br /><br />Up Next: I was pleasantly surprised by 7 Walkers, the Kreutzmann/Papa Mali band with Matt Hubbard and whatever bass player they can get a hold of. I’m going to listen to a few more shows and give you all a rundown.<div class="blogger-post-footer">Ben Heckscher
Furthur Study
benjamin.heckscher@gmail.com</div>Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05875337467116438015noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2735702607925416669.post-66526762158908901142010-05-29T21:37:00.008+02:002010-05-31T09:47:21.977+02:00Sound and a side-band: Dan HealyA handful of shows by the Healy Treece Band appeared a few weeks ago on Workingman’s Tracker. I didn’t have anything to listen to just then so I grabbed three consecutive shows from the end of May 1981. There is not much information available on the Healy Treece Band, but they performed with a variable lineup from 1979 to 1981, and did a one-off performance in ‘83 on the occasion of Kreutzmann’s birthday. At various times, the lineup headed by Dan Healy and Richard Treece (both on guitars and vocals) also included Bill Kreutzmann, John Cipollina, Keith and Donna and at least three bass players. <br /><br /> The shows I heard from 1981 featured Cipollina and Kreutzmann. The band was solid bar band; they played blues more than anything else and had some funk influence. Their repertoire was not very large (they played the same material on the three tapes I heard), but it covered a pretty wide range, from 50s pop to Santana. I have to assume that some of the material (maybe a quarter) was original, or at least I’ve never come across it; the rest included Hand Jive, Unchain My Heart, Truck Drivin’ Man, Mystery Train, Long Black Veil and Black Magic Woman. <br /> <br /> The band played small venues with average sound systems, which could be detrimental to the overall sound. Nonetheless, the show on May 28th was definitely poorly performed. Perhaps from the sound system, perhaps from under-rehearsing, the band was occasionally out of sync and unclear on forms and intros. John Cipollina was a saving presence in the band. Healy and Treece didn’t take very many solos, but Cipollina’s distinctive tremolo cut through and there were some really fun leads on most songs. Over the three days, the band tightened up considerably so that by May 30th, in Pleasanton CA, they were sounding good and tight. A couple of songs in particular stand out: Rain Song (not the Zeppelin tune) and Magic Door are interesting, animated songs with space to jam, and I enjoyed their take on Unchain My Heart, especially Cipollina’s leads. Overall, they were a highly competent, though not particularly inspired band that could certainly liven up a room but did not have anything original enough to warrant an extended career. <br /><br /> The Healy Treece Band never recorded an album, but there survive at least a dozen tapes. Those that appeared on Workingman’s Tracker all came from Joani Walker and Paul Scotton by way of Charlie Miller. <br /><br /> Even if HTB is no great revelation, it seems to warrant a short bio on Dan Healy. He came into contact with the Dead in the very early days of the San Francisco scene and would remain with the band until 1994. McNally described him as being the next guy, after Robert Hunter, considered to be a member of the band. Healy’s first job in San Francisco was working in a recording studio and he was living in a houseboat on the marina next to John Cipollina, who was playing lead guitar for the Quicksilver Messenger Service. As a techie, Dan was instantly useful to anyone involved in making music, especially since rock and roll equipment was not highly developed and none of the bands had any money. This earned Healy a standing invitation to any and all Quicksilver shows, to act as technical assistant. He inevitably crossed paths with the Grateful Dead, one night at the old Fillmore when Quicksilver and the Dead were sharing a bill. He was volunteered to fix an issue with Phil's amp and after the show Garcia invited him to help out with the Dead's sound.<br /><br /> In the early days, the Grateful Dead scene was anything but organized; while Healy was certainly <span style="font-style:italic;">persona grata</span> there were no guarantees. Various sources describe his affiliations differently, but it seems that he spent a fair amount of time with the GD during Bear’s early tenure and incarceration. He drifted back to Quicksilver for a while around 69-70. The guys running Quicksilver (not Cipollina) were not the easy-going, open-hearted communistic types, however, and Healy found himself back with the Grateful Dead for good in 1971. From then on, in close collaboration with Ron Wickersham (from Alembic) and Bear, he was part of the cutting edge sound/amp industry that really centered around the Dead in the early 70s. He was, of course, intimately involved with the development of the Wall of Sound, and to this day he seems to be best known for that. <br /> <br /> Healy survived the ’74 hiatus and went on to head the sound crew for the next twenty years. At the same time, he appears as producer, mixer, engineer etc. on almost every Dead and Dead-related project since the 70s. Intimately involved with the workings of the band, he was, by all accounts, constantly pushing the envelope of sound quality. He also contributed to the band’s grass-roots popularity when, in 1984, he prompted the establishment of the taper section, which was a first in the music business. He did not personally establish the section, but his pro-taper stance had made them a fixture for years; it came down to either banning them altogether or letting them run loose: someone made the suggestion to have a separate section. <br /><br /> In a radical, if ultimately unpopular move, he proposed in May 1992 that they remove all amps and monitors from the stage. The reasoning was that there was only so much that an engineer could do if he was working with sound coming from a mass of speakers all lined up: bleeding between amps and mics and feedback issues from monitors placed a limit on the sound quality. All the amps were thereafter kept in isolated chambers under the stage, running from there to both the soundboard and the monitor mixing console. Unfortunately, replacing the stage equipment with customizable in-ear monitors ultimately led to musicians isolating themselves, and was unpopular with fans in the front who liked the palpable rush of sound from the stage amps.<br /><br /> While Healy was an integral element in the GD sound, he could rub some people the wrong way. Throughout the mid 80s he liked to interject noises over the PA - sometimes during tuning breaks but also occasionally during songs. He also took pleasure in screwing with Weir’s vocals, which, according to some was one of the reasons for his eventual departure. Phil Lesh has one version: In 1993, a serious problem came up when Healy was caught running the PA at less-than-full capacity during Sting’s opening set (Sting was understandably angry and the band was very embarrassed about it). Prompted by this, Phil describes how he and Garcia took a closer listen to the soundboard tapes and noticed that Healy was making some very questionable decisions about Weir’s mix. That prompted the band to fire him in mid-March 1994. However, it’s apparent that he was not really officially terminated (the band was notoriously cowardly in that department): rather, they elected to have manager Cameron Sears inform Healy of the decision. Healy, for his part, maintains that he quit, unable to stand Garcia’s despicable health, appearance and performances. We’ll never know for sure, but considering the drama- and rumor-mill that worked overtime in the GD world, Healy might have gotten wind of the impending decision and there is probably some truth to both perspectives.<br /><br /> Since leaving the Dead, Healy continues to work in music mixing and production. A life-long guitar player, he plays with the Sky Blue Band, based in Marin; he recently recorded and mixed their debut album. He was running sound for Dark Star Orchestra in 2008, he’s been overseeing an antique-radio restoration company, and was working on instructional videos with Tony Bennett’s drummer. He's been married 33 years and has a daughter.<br /><br /><br />On another note: Charlie Miller posted the Avalon Ballroom show from May 19 1966 a month or so ago. I just heard it and it sounds unbelievable. I have no idea how he got such crystal sound from a 45-year-old tape. It's really primal dead, the kind of stuff that came out on Rare Cuts and Oddities: three minute songs, no jamming, bar-band-Dead. I loved it. Highly recommended.<br /><br /><br />Up Next: Most likely Furthurfest.<div class="blogger-post-footer">Ben Heckscher
Furthur Study
benjamin.heckscher@gmail.com</div>Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05875337467116438015noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2735702607925416669.post-88860973847773451652010-05-23T19:37:00.007+02:002010-05-24T10:46:12.305+02:00Mid '85I went looking for some bad shows this week. For a little while I’ve had a theory that shows are worse at the beginning or between tours; I’ve been meaning to listen to the infamous Boreal Ridge show; and I though 1985 was as good a place as any to find weak or sloppy playing. So, thinking I had a foolproof trifecta of negative circumstances, I listened to 5 shows from the middle of 1985: the last show of the short (9 dates) summer tour, the second of two Ventura shows (coming after a two-week break), Boreal Ridge (over a month after that), and two dates in the south in early September.<br /><br /> I don’t know quite why, but 1985 has always held connotations of heroin-wracked sloppiness, a period best forgotten, when Garcia spent his time nodding off against his amp and the others tried to compensate without excluding him. I suppose the January ’85 bust and the collapse in June of ’86 seemed like logical bookends for a really bad period. I consequently avoided that period like the plague, even though I had heard Dick’s Picks 21 and loved it. Well I’m here to set the record straight on ’85: Jerry’s playing was fantastic. His leads were powerful, he was precise and intentional with fills, transitions, he was on the ball with switching effects mid-phrase etc. No complaints there.<br /><br /> If there were shortcomings, they were in his singing. While the volume at which he sang was the same as usual, there are some moments when the smoke-damage to his vocal chords was painfully obvious. There were also definitely struggles with lyrics, on any number of songs: Big Railroad Blues, Cryptical (last one ever, and pretty bad – the reprise somewhat better), Ramble On Rose… However, this did not detract from the overall quality; unlike RatDog, for instance, the band did not loose steam when the vocals weren’t on point.<br /> <br /> The overall sound they had developed was somewhat more conventional; songs tended to be shorter, and little effort was devoted to taking risks or improvising outside of defined jam segments (this trend continued for a few years). The result is that the tunes themselves were much tighter and could be played faster: the mid-80s have a certain energy, a certain accessibility that separates that period from any before or since. Nonetheless, the intricacy of the arrangements was the same as ever and careful listening is, to me, just as rewarding. <br /><br /> The Drums section in those days was really a lot of fun, more structured and rhythmic than later. There were a lot of alternative gourds and xylophones and things but the pre-recorded stuff had not made a noticeable appearance. Mickey bounced around on the beam a little in the middle of the solo rather than wait for the end, and there was some looping effects in use that provided a longer-sustained groove to build on. <br /><br /><br /> Now, the Boreal Ridge show. There are no reviews in Deadbase but I have heard the same rumors as everyone else and the Illustrated Trip paints a sorry picture indeed. I was almost disappointed when the show wasn’t a complete train-wreck (except for the Day Tripper encore). The fact is, the band didn’t play that badly, and I imagine that the reputation it has gathered is, on one hand, more reflective of technical issues that musical ones, and on the other rendered disproportionate simply by virtue of the date being singled out. <br /><br /> The first set is indeed almost palpably trying for the musicians: the levels were off-kilter for the first few songs; a loud hum periodically emanated from Weir’s rack, something that sounded like false notes (loud, sustained ones); we can hear Mickey and Garcia griping about technical issues between songs; and Weir calls an end to the first set after seven songs, rather than the usual nine. There are the odd miscues and an awkward jammy segment in the middle of Bucket, but it’s not a disaster and songs were still tight and relatively intricate. The second set was better, with a solid Stranger opener, China-Rider (a bit ragged in the transition) and a nice He’s Gone before a huge Drums segment. Truckin’>Black Peter (with recurring sound issues)>Around and Around followed Space and the set closed with a solid Lovelight. The encore, a throwaway if there ever was one, was awful, sounding the way I expected the whole show to sound. <br /><br /> The band hadn’t played in more than two months, it was the first time they played that venue, and there were serious equipment issues that affected both the sound output and the ability of the band-members to hear themselves and each-other. All of this I knew, and I went into it expecting the worst show I’d ever heard. I won’t say it was very good – objectively speaking it was subpar - but it certainly doesn’t quite deserve the reputation it has. They actually scheduled a return visit to Boreal Ridge about a year later, but due to Garcia’s health, it never happened.<br /><br /><br /> So, in retrospect, another myth busted. If I had to guess why 1985 is not a very popular year, I would venture that the lack of spacey exploration is a factor, as is the “Jerry’s drug issues” cloud that hangs over that period. And yet for the band, things were going rather well. It seems that Garcia’s bust in Golden Gate Park, coming directly on the heels of an intervention, did in fact prompt Jerry to clean up. They sold out 65 of the 71 shows they played that year and grossed a record $11.5 million, suggesting that their fanbase was not shrinking. Garcia commented later that the years were finally starting to pay off. They were still a few years away from Touch of Gray, but Phil quit cocaine a little while later, Bill started going to AA meetings, and Bonnie Parker, the last GD employee with real drug issues, was let go. Things were finally looking up.<br /><br /> All that to say that the mid 80s are seeming less and less frightening the more I look, which opens the door on a whole other period that has never been on my radar. I realize as I write this, of course, that for the first few years, anything outside of 1976-7 was not on my radar either… Well, live and learn.<br /><br /><br />Now. It has been brought to my attention that my entries are too damn long, that blogs should take five minutes to look over, and that nobody wants to read an essay every week. What do you think? I could just as easily break these up and post 500 words or so a week…<br /><br />Up next. I’m going to listen to a few ‘81 shows from Healy’s band, when Kreutzmann was on board. I might post on those or just wait for Furthurfest. You’ll find out next week.<div class="blogger-post-footer">Ben Heckscher
Furthur Study
benjamin.heckscher@gmail.com</div>Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05875337467116438015noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2735702607925416669.post-71988514108026330642010-05-20T21:42:00.006+02:002010-05-22T12:58:12.341+02:00Further readingI read two books last weekend: Sandy Troy’s <span style="font-style:italic;">Captain Trips</span> and Steve Parish’s <span style="font-style:italic;">Home Before Daylight</span>. They are different in a number of ways but have their focus on Garcia, their length and their scholarly weight in common. To be honest, someone lent me <span style="font-style:italic;">Captain Trip</span>s and I burned through it pretty quick, so I figured I was on a roll and dove into <span style="font-style:italic;">Home</span> right away. Anyhow, for those of you who haven’t read them, here are my two cents.<br /><br /> <span style="font-style:italic;">Captain Trips</span>, (Garcia’s prankster name, which he didn’t like) chronicles his life, like many other books, but was completed soon after Garcia’s February ’94 wedding to Deborah Koons and published later that year. It consequently lacks the fatalistic thread that runs through later accounts. It has the same chronological pattern as McNally’s and Phil’s books, which is that about half of the text addresses the period before 1970; it also completely skips over the early 80s, which were to my mind a pivotal period in the logistical dynamics of the band.<br /><br /> The factual content is, to my knowledge, perfectly adequate. Not that I know everything, but I didn’t come across anything I knew to be false. It did include certain pieces of information I appreciated: addresses of the Chateau and St. Michael’s Alley, gross earnings for a couple of years, release dates etc. Aside from the odd precision, however, the book rolls through events and facts without much commentary or reflection. On one hand, it keeps the author’s interpretation out of the way, but on the other it keeps things superficial.<br /><br /> The focus on Garcia and the simplistic approach to various events obscures the wider dynamics of his life. For instance, the evolution of the Jerry Garcia Band is described as though Jerry was singly responsible for the changing lineup. It does not address the logistics of the life of musicians, which is that people often simply drift to where there’s work, or get married, or move to Kansas, or whatever; nor does it discuss the trends of the music itself, which has no intentional guide but can make one person more or less suited to the slot or prompt a change in instrumentation. Likewise with the GD’s various side-projects: a passage on the establishment of the Rex Foundation mentions only Garcia, ignoring the untraceable, committee aspect of every decision. Finally, the departure of Keith and Donna is presented as a firing, whereas McNally paints a the decision as a mutual agreement.<br /><br /> Jerry’s personal issues are almost completely absent. In fairness, since the book was being written while he was still there to comment on it, it would have been disrespectful to delve into his issues with women in general or heroin in particular, areas that have since been addressed elsewhere. His 1985 arrest in Golden Gate Park is mentioned in passing, with details available in the arrest report, and an excerpt from an interview has him admitting that he had, at one point, gotten into some pretty nasty stuff. The book’s admission that there was, at one point, cocaine and heroin involved is mitigated by the suggestion that that problem had come and gone: “Garcia’s drug addiction was under control, the band was more popular than ever…”<br /> As far as his many complex relationships, they are barely present in the story. I would speculate that Deborah Koons, a woman known for her close control over Jerry’s affairs, perhaps born of insecurity, had an editorial hand in the book. <br /><br /> Anyhow, in retrospect, this biography lite was perfectly well suited to the time and audience. Jacketed in tie-dye and titled to evoke Jerry’s counter-culture iconography, it provides a broad overview of his life and projects: his childhood, bands, recording gigs, etc, while avoiding deeper underlying processes and issues. For a deadhead in the 90s, I imagine this would have been everything you wanted to know.<br /><br /> <br /> A completely different picture is presented by Parish in <span style="font-style:italic;">Home Before Daylight</span>. The book is an autobiography and is centered on Steve Parish’s experience as a central member of the Grateful Dead family, but Parish was one of the people closest to Garcia throughout the 80s and 90s. I should mention that at no point does it come across that he is trying to either exaggerate his involvement or capitalize on their relationship. His portrayal of Garcia is much more character-driven, and specific dates or facts are incidental to the story.<br /><br /> The story starts with Parish’s early adulthood: at seventeen or so, he hatches a plan to finance a relocation to the West Coast by selling a batch of LSD. He winds up at Riker’s Island. Eventually finding his way into the Grateful Dead crew via Weir’s ranch, Rex Jackson’s couch, Quicksilver and Alembic, he spends the first few years driving trucks across the country, then reveling in the non-stop party occasioned by Dead tours.<br /><br /> There is no shortage of drug-fueled-rampage stories. He flipped an equipment truck on a tight curve while driving wired on amphetamines; he had a four-way marriage going for a while; he used to sleep with every groupie he could get his hands on, he threw a promoter off the stage because he didn’t recognize him, he lived on nitrous and pot for years, and so on and so forth. The tales of his life on the road are exactly what you would expect, and Parish is unapologetic to the last. <br /><br /> Being intimately involved in the day-to-day life of the band and crew, he is more honest about the rampant drug use, especially cocaine, though he maintains he only liked the “occasional” toot. He details the end of Rex Jackson’s life in a months-long coke bender (fueled by a gallon-size ziplock of blow that he somehow scored), and the paranoia and irritation that infested the family in 73-74. Parish is reassuringly matter-of-fact on this subject; I say reassuringly because I don’t get the sense he’s exaggerating or glorifying the drugs they took; he is quite honest about the downsides of over-indulgence and the personal shortcomings engendered by their use. He especially bemoans the early-70s switch from communal drugs like nitrous, pot and LSD to harder stuff like cocaine and heroin.<br /><br /> His close relationship with Garcia developed in the 80s when he became manager of JGB along with being the main guitar roadie for the GD. His duties would evolve almost towards a personal assistant position by the nineties; the last time he saw Jerry, he was instructing Parish as to how he would like to see the new Club Front laid out. They traveled together while on the road, they went on vacation to Hawaii together with their families, he helped a very nervous Jerry get dressed for his 1994 wedding, and the only really emotional moment in the book comes when, standing over the casket, he absentmindedly brushes a little dandruff off Jerry’s shoulder, as he had so many times before.<br /><br /> Garcia’s use of heroin was constant, according to Parish, even if there were ebbs and flows, and it was an awful sight to see. He writes of being very conflicted about what to do; while his main job was to protect Jerry from the outside world, there was a grey line between protecting Jerry and letting him insulate himself. Whereas he had been able to refuse Jackson when asked to hold his stash, he found he could not refuse Jerry. The volatility and defensiveness that Garcia exhibited in response to any intrusion on his private life is pretty well documented, and applied as well to the outside world as to his closest friends. One aborted intervention saw him hold the door while everyone came in only to slam it behind them and walk off down the street. I have no experience with drugs of that sort, but it seems to me that on some level, he chose to stick with heroin, since no amount of interventions, arrests, health issues, friends, girlfriends or wives were able to stop him. Consequently, those close to him could either tacitly disapprove or risk further isolating him. <br /><br /> Parish does have a fondness for one member of the band in particular, and that’s Weir. It becomes apparent in his description of Bob as the most level-headed guy in the group, forced into an unenviable position of taking up Garcia’s slack when he started slipping in the late 70s, and who did more than anyone else to confront Garcia. He seems to agree with everyone else in that he describes Weir as an honestly kind, generous person who cares deeply for others; one who did the fewest drugs, who was always uncomfortable with the Hell’s Angels etc. The friendship seems mutual; the book has a foreword from Weir that is quite funny but conveys a real familiarity and affection: “Let’s be clear about this,” it begins, “Steve Parish is definitively a mixed blessing.” It goes on to reminisce about road trips and equipment snafus, and these memories are complemented in the main text with Parish’s memories of inadvertently getting Weir picked up for unpaid parking tickets, and later wrecking Weir’s BMW when he parked his truck uphill of it and the handbrake failed. <br /><br /> There are no major revelations in the book, but it certainly has a unique angle on the Grateful Dead. On a broad objective level, it’s really about a man who refused to grow up, one who got out of jail on a drug-dealing rap only to run off to the west coast to take a lot of acid, who drove a Harley as fast and as recklessly as possible until California passed a helmet law and he lost interest, who was content to get off the phone with his wife, who had just given birth to their daughter, and run upstairs to have a three-way, one who got stoned in a church with a guy about to get married. And yet he lived the rock-n-roll lifestyle to the fullest and came out just fine on the other side. He’s married now, to a wife who has no background in that world and no tolerance for his screwing around, and they have two kids. He’s still close to the GD family (I suppose those kinds of bonds don’t break easily). I couldn’t tell you what he’s doing these days, but he seems to have survived rather well, considering.<div class="blogger-post-footer">Ben Heckscher
Furthur Study
benjamin.heckscher@gmail.com</div>Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05875337467116438015noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2735702607925416669.post-60779259499876732912010-05-09T21:25:00.007+02:002010-05-31T19:55:49.058+02:00Odds and EndsSo I haven't written anything in the past few weeks for two reasons: primarily because I've been swamped with work, and also because I've been listening to disjointed, recently downloaded odds and ends, to kill time before Furthurfest without getting too deep into anything. <br /><br />I heard a few shows from Mike Gordon's March tour. I don't know his solo material very well, and I was surprised not to to hear a single Phish tune, which is really to his credit. I should say I'm not an expert; there may have been some rarer Phish tunes in there, maybe Adelman's Yard, or Sugar Shack? His 5-piece band consists of two drummers, Todd Isler and Craig Myers (sp?), Scott Murawski on lead guitar and Tom Cleary on keys. Murawski is a force of nature, a monstrous player who can shred the fastest country I've ever heard, and Cleary can be really impressive as well. I don't know where he came from, but for some reason Gordon likes to say his name a lot.<br />The music gets really funky; there are a few songs that just shake your insides, as you might expect form Mike Gordon. As you might also expect, there are a few floaty tunes with mindless lyrics, but it's mainly really fun stuff. Each show I heard had one, maybe two songs by Cleary and Murawski, including Cruel World, which Murawski was doing regularly with Kreutzmann a few years back.<br />There is some Gordo banter, mostly platitudes "great to be here, shout out to whoever", but he does have a thing about "is" that he does a lot. Something about a cat named Is whose name should be called repeatedly and at random: "is is is is is is ..." The other thing I noticed was that he usually announces that he's going to go hang out by the merchandise table after the show. I was surprised to hear it simply because imagined that, being in Phish, he wouldn't need to push t-shirts, but considering that the material and the sound are so un-Phish-like, I suppose he is building a different audience.<br />My favorite show was on March 12th in Philadelphia. Most of the show was really upbeat and funky, and featured appearances by at least one member of the Chieftains. I say that because I only heard one guest intro, yet there was an accordion and a fiddle, and also a tap-dancer somewhere. There were three Murawski tunes, including Cruel World and one ludicrously fast country thing that I listened to twice in a row. <br />Overall, I like the band a lot. I don't know that I would listen to a whole tour (there is a fair amount of repetition from show to show), but I'm definitely learning some of those bass lines.<br /><br /><br />After the Gordon tour I picked up a series of Mickey Hart-related recordings that surfaced on Workingman's Tracker. The earlier one was a series of tracks dating from 1972 recorded at Mickey's barn in Novato. Mickey built a recording studio up there, and after leaving the Dead in February '71, he spend a lot of time there playing and recording. I knew that he had gone into Diga Rhythm in that time but I was surprised to hear the other material he was doing, collected under the title Mickey Hart and the Marin County Collective. First on the tape is Fire on the Mountain, which he apparently wrote himself. The groove is substantially different, even if it's definitely recognizable, and there were maybe a half-dozen alternate verses. At least one of these reappeared in the Other Ones/The Dead period when Mickey sang Fire. Other tracks involved a host of Bay Area musicians doing their own material, including David Freiberg, John Cipollina, Barry Melton and others. Some of it is really good, especially Speed Racer. Ghost Riders in the Sky stands out in the list, a slightly different arrangement than the final cut everyone knows.<br />Phil Lesh and Garcia show up on a number of tracks. Lesh is featured on one track about vampires that reminds me of The Who's Boris the Spider, and Garcia appears on both Fire on the Mountain takes as well as a few others. At the same time, there was some experimentation with swirly electronic noises and feedback, a sort of intermediary between Feedback and Seastones. It's not particularly pretty but it is a serious experiment with that sort of alternative noise music. One is a feedback/organ jam, one involves drums, harmonica, accordion and howling vocal stuff, featuring Ned Lagin, and one is straight space noise. Finally, there is a tune called Marshmallow Road (spacey psychedelia, as you might expect), which weaves in electronic sounds and sped-up vocals within the song.<br />Later, during the hiatus, Mickey was playing with Diga Rhythm Band (Diga meaning "naked" in Sanskrit). I have yet to find any reliable set- or show-lists for this band, so I have no idea how frequent these shows were, nor whether they involved only Diga or were part of a Bay Area lineup. There are only a few pieces on the surviving tapes, though they are soundboards, and I must confess I can't fully appreciate what's going on there. It all sounds well and good to me, frankly, but knowing the lineup, it probably involves complicated polyrhythmic patterns well outside the boundaries of western musical vocabulary. Son of Mickey's tabla teacher Usted Allarakha, Zakir Hussein headed and did the talking for the band, but Mickey got a few solo sections, and Hussein introduced him as a member of the Grateful Dead. It seems that Mickey retained all the cachet of a GD band member in his time off. The lineup of San Francisco musicians involved in the Novato sessions was pretty seminal, and he was still a musical celebrity in early '75, when he was not yet officially back in the band.<br /><br /><br />A month or so ago, an article appeared in the Atlantic Monthly which touched on the scholarly attention being paid to the Grateful Dead nowadays. The band appeared in various studies and such throughout their existence, but generally as a manifestation or example of hippie culture and rarely in terms broad yet clear enough to warrant much attention. The specific Deadhead phenomenon has been the subject of dissertations and college courses for a number of years, but it is only recently that doctoral and post-doctoral studies have focused on, say, the influence of the classical music structure in GD music, the nature of their brand of improvisation, or the place in the "Americana" canon of songs like Dire Wolf or Peggy-O. I poked around and came across a collection of essays written by PhDs in the past few years, called All Graceful Instruments. I bought it, mainly because I thought the title reference was satisfactorily obscure, and in spite of the high price tag ($40: it's a print-on-demand thing from Cambridge Scholars Publishing). I've only gotten through one chapter so far but it was very good, managing to discuss objectively the improvisational structure of Dark Star and The Eleven, and using that as a model to frame out the band's improvisational approach to their music in general. The components of the argument are relatively common knowledge to most deadheads, but they combine to make a scholarly discussion possible. I'm looking forward to the rest of the book.<br /><br />Anyhow, I think that's it. I'm gonna read Sandy Troy's "Captain Trips" soon, so I'll post on that. Up next, I think I'll try to compare the P&F and Furthur versions of the Dead albums covered at Furthurfest. <br />Cheers.<div class="blogger-post-footer">Ben Heckscher
Furthur Study
benjamin.heckscher@gmail.com</div>Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05875337467116438015noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2735702607925416669.post-46057105050942545572010-04-26T17:58:00.011+02:002010-04-26T23:53:50.313+02:00Sam Cutler: "You Can't Always Get What You Want..."“…my life with the Rolling Stones, the Grateful Dead and other wonderful reprobates.” At three-hundred-odd pages, it’s a surprisingly quick read. As the sub-title implies, the book covers the five years between mid-1969 and mid-1974, during which time Cutler managed the Rolling Stones’ American tour and the Grateful Dead. It describes all the debauchery of the rock and roll circus, complete with a colorful cast of drug dealers, con men, cops, shady lawyers and ruthless promoters. <br /> It is very well written; better, I confess, than I would have expected from a man whose life experience is so far removed from literary academia. Suspecting that it was ghost-written, I took a look at <a href="http://www.samcutler.com">Cutler’s blog</a>. The styles match, and if there was clearly some professional editing, Cutler’s language and turns of phrase are prettier than Phil’s and more colloquial than McNally’s.<br /> From a strictly academic point of view, there are some deficiencies. Written thirty-five years after a period during which, by his account, he was high (on any number of drugs) and/or drunk virtually all the time, he outlines certain events with suspicious specificity. There are also a few inconsistencies and factual errors sprinkled about – for instance the claim that Keith Godchaux joined the Dead in 1970, rather than ’71. This book is a memoir, not a piece of historical literature, and while I had trouble nailing down any hard facts of objective significance, it was immensely enjoyable.<br /><br /> The first half of the book – after a cursory summation of the author’s childhood and coming-of-age – focuses on the troubled US tour that the Rolling Stones engaged upon in October 1969, with a special focus on the Altamont debacle. Cutler outlines, in the introduction, his intention to set the record straight on the Stones’ responsibility for Altamont. While I for one had a different impression, he starts from the premise that to this day, the Stones are held responsible for the whole thing, that they organized it and hired the Hell’s Angels to do security. The picture he weaves is highly complete and nuanced, written from the perspective of someone at the center of the disorganized, uncontrollable zoo.<br /> As tour manager, Cutler’s job was to take care of the band members themselves, a position that put him in the administrative center of the tour yet conferred on him very limited power: he saw all but could affect nothing. On one side were the groupies, stunning girls who insinuated themselves into every backstage area, hotel room, airplane and limousine to engage in every manner of drug-addled debauchery with any member of the touring party, no matter how far removed, in a quest to get access to the band themselves. Then there were the legions of local personnel, promoters, agents, peripheral business executives and assorted hangers-on that constantly entered and exited the circus as the band traveled along, a constant gaggle of authorized personnel that nobody at the center knew nor cared about. Finally, and this is where the intrigue starts, there were a few highly connected people who, despite not having any official connection to tour management, became centrally influential players in daily operations. <br /> One of these was Ken “Goldfinger” Connell, a rich and well-stocked drug dealer, a friend and confidant of the West Coast rock scene, who had lost a hand in a freak accident while running drugs out of Mexico. Another was a certain John Jaymes who first introduced himself as the “man from Chrystler,” on scene to smooth out a little trouble with missing rental cars. Within weeks, however, Jaymes was inexplicably handling security with twenty off-duty NYPD officers and a private drug dealer to keep the band and crew well-supplied with cocaine and everything else, entirely without contract or payment from the Stones’ management. <br /> <br /> The Altamont concert was a half-baked idea thrown about on the suggestion of Bay Area acquaintances, primarily the Dead’s Rock Scully, which grew legs of its own when Mick Jagger, constantly needled by media attacks about greed and high ticket prices, announced the free concert as a fact. The West Coast people organized it, such as it was, as a one-day festival, while it was represented in the media as a Rolling Stones affair. Cutler had serious reservations about the feasibility of the event, and into the breach stepped Jaymes. He claimed to represent the Stones (with no legal authority to do so) and, unsolicited, set about “making it happen.” The last-minute venue changes, the pathetically small stage and the organizational issues of the concert itself are fairly well known, but there were wider intrigues as well, including a huge, mysterious batch of extremely potent LSD which had extremely adverse effects on a large portion of the attendees, causing freak-outs and fights almost from the moment people started showing up 24 hours before the show.<br /> The central revelation of the book is Cutler’s assertion that the Federal authorities had a major hand in the catastrophic mood of the concert. He asserts that Jaymes was a small-time mafioso affiliated with the Castellano mob in New York and who had testified against another mafia group in New England, and that he was somehow also working for the FBI. The Feds were supposedly seriously concerned with the potential impact of the Woodstock culture and were determined to sabotage any further mass concerts. Largely on the word of Ken Goldfinger, Cutler states that Jaymes and a lawyer, also involved in the planning, had recently been meeting with the FBI, and that there were a number of undercover federal agents at the show, including the head of the FBI’s San Francisco branch. He also reveals that the mysterious acid contained a nearly toxic 1600 micrograms of pure LSD, “almost seven times the normal “meeting God” dose,” and that, according to the small Bay Area community of underground LSD manufacturers, it was created using a pill press worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, a sum vastly beyond the means of any underground chemist but easily accessible to a government authority.<br /> <br /> Immediately after Altamont, the Rolling Stones skipped town as fast as possible to avoid the media and police frenzy over the death of Meredith Hunter, the gun-wielding concert-goer stabbed to death by Hell’s Angels in front of the stage. As Cutler tells it, he stayed behind of his own volition to represent the band and defuse the inevitable backlash that would follow. Jagger tried to discourage him but finally acquiesced, promising that all his expenses would be paid. Nothing came of the promise and Cutler found himself penniless, homeless and friendless. The only people he knew in the area were the Grateful Dead, who had been his main contacts in the planning of Altamont, and he made his way to Mickey’s ranch in Novato. The GD family welcomed him. Jerry invited him to stay with Mountain Girl and himself at their place in Larkspur. <br /> It was nine months after the departure of Lenny Hart and Garcia was thinking about how to reorganize the Dead’s managerial apparatus. He offered Cutler the position of co-manager, with David (and Bonnie, by default) Parker and Jon McIntire; they would be in charge of tour management, accounting and general management respectively. The Dead were in a huge financial hole. Not only had Lenny stolen some 150 thousand dollars, but the band owed money to Warner Brothers, and their touring was haphazard and financially nonsensical. In the next few years, Cutler would overhaul the Dead’s touring practices, putting together tours that made geographic sense, he would streamline their travel arrangements and structure per diems to eliminate waste and conserve as much money as possible. He also founded Out Of Town Tours, a company based down the street from GD headquarters in San Rafael, that handled travel arrangements for the Dead, The Band, the New Riders, the Allman Brothers and others.<br /><br /> His memories of the band members themselves are almost all very kind. He remembers Mickey’s kindness in welcoming him in the first place, Garcia’s generosity and the emotional background they shared, and Pigpen’s soft bluesman soul, buffeted by the psychedelic winds that had overtaken the band he had more or less founded, and who was fundamentally not at home in the midst of LSD parties and musical space flight. He talks about Ramrod, Steve Parish and Bear, and describes his ongoing rivalry with Bill Graham with some relish (they got in a fist fight at one of the Stones’ west coast shows). <br /> There is a chapter on Weir that illustrates the not-so-cute side of Weir’s legendary mischievousness. “[He] considered the whole business of being on the road an opportunity to try out every dumb practical joke he knew. He loved to wind me up and it annoyed me no end. Weir, I quickly noted, had problems in airports. In fact, Weir had problems in any kind of public space. I tried to think of a name for his condition and the best I could come up with was “anarchic agoraphobia.” In other words, give the guy a wide-open space and you’d have complete chaos on your hands. The later it was in the day, the more likely he was to indulge in all kinds of silly tricks.” Making the road manager’s life a pain in the ass seemed to give Weir endless pleasure, and it took a while for Cutler to come around. Eventually, after losing it and popping Weir in the nose one day, the two had a sit-down and straightened things out.<br /> The Dead family was something very different from the Stones'. Cutler’s recollections of his time with the Dead, which included the Festival Express and Europe ’72, are full of anecdotes about traveling and practical jokes, most of them revolving around the crew’s practice of dosing anyone and everyone with LSD. For instance, the birthday cake rolled out on Janis’ (last) birthday at the end of the Festival Express tour was completely laced, and everybody wound up partaking, including the police officers in charge of security. A few choice stories from the Europe tour also illustrate the chaotic yet good-natured anarchy that were Grateful Dead tours in the early seventies.<br /><br /> But the life of a tour manager is stressful and complicated, and there is no rest for the weary. Cutler weaves in the unglamorous side of living with the world’s most successful touring acts. His primary job was getting The Money, no small feat in a world with few contracts, little insurance, and endless layers of promoters all trying to get their end. At the same time, he had to be available and lucid at any time of the day or night to deal with travel arrangements, venue logistics, cancellations, local promoters and crew, errant band members, busts, police hassles, crowd control, guest lists, backstage passes, hotel complaints, fights, parties, etc. After Europe, he was hospitalized with a stress-induced bleeding ulcer; a little while later, David Nelson confronted him about whether he was skimming money from the New Riders; finally, in mid ’74, he was told in a band meeting “Sam, we have someone who can book the band for five percent.” Cutler was charging 10. He told them “good luck” and that was that.<br /> <br /> He does not seem to bear any rancor towards either the Stones, who abandoned him after Altamont and never paid him the money they owed him, or the Dead, who he felt neither appreciated his efforts nor trusted his honesty. There is no mention of what he did afterwards, but he seems to have moved on quite well after his years at the apex of the Rock world, hanging out with Janis Joplin, getting high with Hendrix and Keith Richards, a man he adored, and drowning in groupies and cocaine… In retrospect, those five years must have sated his interest in the glamour of Rock and Roll.<br /> <br /> There are sure to be some exaggerations in the tale, some embellishments and some omissions, but “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” is a hell of a read nonetheless. I find his description of the circumstances of Altamont perfectly plausible, and his accounts of life with the Stones and the Dead are not out of line with the prevailing literature on the subject. If there is one significant angle here, it is the excellent description of the uncontrollable beast that was the Stones tour, of the powerful competing interests at work and the relative impotence of the actual band members, and of how the free concert took on a life of its own despite innumerable warning signs. It also provides some commentary on the early phase of the Grateful Dead and the way in which their stubborn insistence on mutual trust and communal decision-making left them open to exploitation and prevented them from making any real money.<br /> It is, overall, a very interesting read for anyone who wants to know what it was like to ride that storm. It wouldn’t stand up in court, so to speak, but it communicates the atmosphere wonderfully, and it’s full of good stories.<br /><br /><br />Up next: really not sure. Suggestions welcome.<div class="blogger-post-footer">Ben Heckscher
Furthur Study
benjamin.heckscher@gmail.com</div>Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05875337467116438015noreply@blogger.com13tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2735702607925416669.post-19204460059722827172010-04-21T22:57:00.009+02:002010-05-13T10:07:22.560+02:00Grateful Dead: Fall 1979Released in November 2007, <a href="http://store.dead.net/1970s/road-trips-vol-1-no-1">Road Trips 1.1</a> highlights the Dead’s “blazing fall 1979 East Coast swing.” Having heard the CDs, I thought it interesting to go back and listen to the whole tour, which included fourteen shows from October 24th to November 10th. Workingman’s Tracker has been doing a ’79 project and I took the opportunity to gather up as many shows from that tour as possible. I wound up with soundboards of ten of the shows. Audience tapes of the first two nights in Springfield and New Haven came up as well, but sticking to soundboards gives me a way to keep my downloading addiction in check. I’m currently closing in on a terabyte of disk space, and that’s just silly.<br /> When Rhino began releasing Road Trips, I frankly thought it was a great idea. Full-show-puritanism notwithstanding, there’s something to be said for an overview of a given tour. Starting in the early seventies and certainly post-hiatus, the band was able to organize clearly defined tours. In between tours, band members had extended periods of time off, so that tours themselves had a certain coherence in terms of sound and vibe. In later years, as the catalogue broadened, there could be very few versions of a given song in a tour. Picking out highlight versions of each tune would, in theory, make a relevant historical snapshot.<br /><br /> The fall of 1979 was notable for several reasons. The Rhythm Devils had just recorded the drum tracks for Apocalypse Now and were now carting around the famous “Beast.” Consisting of a large cylindrical frame festooned with toms, bells, gourds and other assorted rhythm-makers, it provided the drummers with a huge palette of sounds to play with. Though the “drums” section had existed for years, it was in 1979 that it became more than a conventional drum solo. “Space” was tacked on at the end but it was much shorter than in the 90s; where Drumz could eventually stretch to almost thirty minutes, it stayed under 15 in the fall of 1979. <br />Phil, meanwhile, was in the process of sobering up. By his account, he was drunk in 1978; he put on a lot of weight, and peripheral crew members and tour personnel had taken to calling him Phil Lush. Years later, in one of the band’s interventions with Garcia, Jerry laid into him about his sloppy playing in that period. Phil had also recently switched to a Doug Irwin bass modeled after Jerry’s new Tiger (the same bass he couldn’t get to work during the 1980 Radio City telecast.) He would not stick with the bass very long; to my ears it had a gorgeous midrange but lacked the low-end power of his later Modulus basses.<br /> While Phil was drying out, however, Garcia had slowly begun to make escapism a way of life. He had started using heroin in 1976 during the exhaustive process of editing the Grateful Dead Movie, though it was, for the moment, not affecting his playing; nonetheless, the rest of the band would soon compose an only-half-joking letter accusing him of playing without dynamics and not listening to them like he used to. <br />Finally, after six months in the Grateful Dead, Brent was hitting his stride and played superbly. In addition to his predecessor’s marital and drug abuse issues, a musically logistical weak spot had been Keith’s insistence on playing a conventional piano. With two drummers, bass, and Jerry’s single-note style, the percussive piano was, as Garcia put it, “more of the same.” They had long pressed Keith to play something with more sustain, and Brent’s facility on the organ was just exactly what they had been looking for.<br /><br /> The overall sound of the tour was that loping style they had perfected over the last two years. Dancing in the Streets and Not Fade Away are the clearest examples. The former was in fine disco-Dead form, with one noticeable difference: while everyone’s favorite version, from Cornell, had a ten-minute Garcia solo, the jam now involved more equitable contribution across the board; rather than holding the groove, the band was throwing ideas around, making things more interesting. The latter song, NFA, was in the same general swingy/sulky shape as the long workout from the Closing of Winterland show. My favorite rendition was on November 2nd, where they took some time to work into it from the drum break.<br /> New to the repertoire were Althea, Sailor>Saint and Brent’s Easy To Love You, as yet the only one of his tunes to make it into the rotation. Althea was in that same sort of lope, and it only got five outings. Easy To Love You got seven; generally very tight and well executed. Sailor>Saint, also seven, was evolving: a few words were not yet settled, and the transition between the two really only jelled halfway through the tour. Though Franklin’s Tower was not new, they were playing around with its location. Initially paired with Help>slipknot, it started coming after Half-Step in late ’78. By fall ’79, it could appear anywhere and it was not until 1989 that it permanently went back to following Slipknot.<br /> Brent’s playing bears some mentioning: he asserted a strong presence with his fills, adding color all over the place and keeping things very interesting. But the biggest testament to his abilities is the facility with which he jumped into the longer jams, especially Playing In The Band. The tune was already eight years old, and that centerpiece jam was about as out-there as the band got in the late seventies - no form, no “one” – and yet Brent was right at home in the middle of it, even taking a few choice leads. <br /><br /> From the occasional banter that survives, the band sounded pretty relaxed. Weir’s joke of the moment, which he told at least three times, was “What’s the difference between a duck?” (“May I have the envelope please”) “And the answer is: One leg’s both the same!” Finally, on the last night, Mickey cracked: “Hey Weir, that’s not even a bad joke! That’s even lower than a bad joke!” On another occasion, at Nassau, he announced that he had heard it from a usually reliable source that the Russians had bombed Staten Island, and so that those in the audience who lived there needn’t go home tonight. There were a few crowd issues on Long Island: on the first night, there was so much pushing in the front rows that they were crushing the snake cable that ran to the soundboard, causing audible pops in the sound, and the band had to stop twice to ask them to move back.<br /> <br /> Overall, the tour got better and better, starting off competent but not particularly noteworthy, and improving markedly from the end of the Nassau run (10.31-11.02). For what it’s worth, this is borne out by the track selection from Road Trips, which comes almost exclusively from the second half of the tour. If I had to pick a favorite all-around show, it would be Buffalo on November 9th, though not by much; all of the November shows were better than average (except, inexplicably, November 6th: a very long first set with breaks upwards of four minutes followed by a four-song second set, plus drums). A few highlights: Music from 10.28; Shakedown from 10.31; Peggy-O and Scarlet>Fire from 11.01; Althea from 11.05; Playin’ from 11.06; and Minglewood from 11.10.<br /><br /> This is a tour well worth checking out; the short tunes were tight, the long tunes inventive. They were still plagued a little by jam segments where they didn’t listen much to each other, letting Jerry fly off with those loopy 5/2 figures (especially on Eyes) that are impressive technically but so busy that nobody else can get a word in. Yet Brent was such a fresh sound that it breathed new life into the whole band, and they displayed a lot of discipline in terms of crafting a tight feel for newer tunes; Easy To Love You and Althea stand out (Peggy-O was also endowed with a fabulous groove that took some work to maintain). The band still regularly took the time to get into a ten or fifteen minute jam on some song or other, a trend that would fade markedly during the eighties. By all means buy the Road Trips, but also know that soundboards of the best of the tour are out there.<br />[EDIT: sorry there are no hyperlinks; archive is not responding just now.]<br /><br /> <br />Up Next: I’m currently listening to RatDog’s fall ’06 tour and loving every minute; for my money it was their peak period; faster tempos than later, and transitions so tight and subtle it’ll give you chills. However, I don’t think I’ll post on that, barring overwhelming demand. Instead, I just picked up Sam Cutler’s new book “You Can’t Always Get What You Want.” He details his time managing the Rolling Stones’ US tour in 1969, which included Altamont, and then his time with the Grateful Dead. According to McNally, the four years Cutler spent with the Dead were pivotal in getting them on a professional footing in terms of touring. Should be interesting.<div class="blogger-post-footer">Ben Heckscher
Furthur Study
benjamin.heckscher@gmail.com</div>Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05875337467116438015noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2735702607925416669.post-80067042147993885122010-03-28T21:44:00.012+02:002010-04-02T10:46:00.331+02:00Extracurricular Weir“If I keep doing Grateful Dead stuff till the end of time, I might get bored pretty quick,” Weir said in a radio interview in March, 1978. “I already know how to do that… but fitting into that little niche… eliminates the possibility of growth.” So began Weir’s solo career with Heaven Help the Fool, recorded in the summer of 1977 and released in January 1978. <br /><br /> Ace, Weir’s first album under his own name, was recorded almost exclusively by the Grateful Dead (plus Dave Torbert and a few horn players), and aside from Walk in the Sunshine, it comprised exclusively Grateful Dead material. Released under Grateful Dead Records, there was no band or commercial support for the album. <br /><br /> Beginning in 1974, during the Grateful Dead’s then-indefinite hiatus, Weir toured and recorded with Kingfish, founded by former New Riders Dave Torbert and Matthew Kelly in 1973. Matthew Kelly was one of Weir’s oldest friends (reportedly at his tenth birthday party), and considering the New Riders’ close relationship with the Dead, it made sense that there be some cross-pollination. Unfortunately for Kingfish and despite the fact that they did very few Grateful Dead songs, Weir’s status in the musical world left the impression that they were merely his backup band. This initial collaboration lasted through August 1st, 1976, when Kingfish did a handful of east coast shows ahead of two GD dates there. Weir felt “stretched plenty thin” by his dual commitments and stepped out of Kingfish for the time being.<br /><br /> When Heaven Help the Fool was released, the Dead had recently signed to Arista and Weir embarked on a nationwide major-markets tour with the Bob Weir Band in support of the album. The February-March tour comprised 17 dates and there were a half-dozen one-off shows later in the year, but it was a short-lived group with a catalogue of less than twenty songs (generally about 12 per show), assembled strictly for the promotion of the album. Shows were relatively short and the music, though upbeat and energetic, was conventional. Nonetheless, two major connections emerged from that lineup. Brent Mydland, of course, would go on to join the Grateful Dead in April 1979 and the first lineup of Bobby and the Midnites in June 1980. The BWB also comprised Bobby Cochran, nephew of Eddie Cochran, former lead guitarist of Steppenwolf, and fellow Ibanez endorser with his very own <a href="http://www.bobbycochran.com/images/weir_miller_bobby/weirandme78dpi100.jpg">Cowboy Fancy</a> model. Master of both the screaming classic-rock lead and SRV-style blues, Cochran would play with Weir through 1984.<br /><br /> It was not until mid-1980 that Weir formed his first real side-project, Bobby and the Midnites. The core of Weir, Cochran and Miles-Davis-sideman and Mahavishnu Orchestra founding drummer <a href="http://www.billycobham.com/html/index.php">Billy Cobham</a> was complemented at different times by Brent Mydland and Matthew Kelly (June ‘80 – January ‘81); <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VbF5RXj0vgM">Alphonso Johnson</a> (January ‘82 – March ‘83), of Weather Report, Genesis, and later Jazz is Dead and the Other Ones; and Little Feat bassist Ken Gradney (March ‘83 – September ‘84). <br /><br /> In contrast to the pathologically uncompromising Grateful Dead, Bobby and the Midnites threw themselves gleefully into a broader 80s sound: Me Without You, Rock in the 80s, Thunder & Lightning (with its refrain “over the edge and out of control”), and <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dWscxdleZzI">I Want To Live in America</a> are shameless 80s pop. The rest of the repertoire was mainly Weir material, with very little GD: Minglewood, Supplication, Victim, and a few covers like Women are Smarter and C.C. Rider. The band was tight, Cochran never failed to impress, and there was room for more stage goofery than with the Dead: vamps over Heaven Help the Fool or Josephine could occasion a lot of ad-libbed antics and asides. The Midnites released two records in their four-year lifespan, did six major tours along with a dozen smaller runs and one-offs, and performed their last show in September 1984.<br /><br /> No sooner had the Midnites dissolved than Weir went back to playing with Kingfish. A new MO appeared: in an effort to capitalize on Weir’s contribution while avoiding the identification as his side project, he acted as a sort of guest bandleader. Most of the band’s repertoire consisted of covers, and depending on the night, Weir would lead part or all of a given set, always leaving a half-dozen original Kingfish tunes on which he was absent. In all the Kingfish lineups (at one time including Steve Kimock), Matt Kelly was the only constant, but keyboardist Barry Flast did most of the talking: he would introduce the songs, the band and Weir whenever he came on. Parenthetically, it made me smile to hear him introduce their signature song Hypnotize with a shout-out to all the “Fishheads” in the audience. Finally, it was common for Bob to do a few solo acoustic songs towards the end of the second set. This same arrangement applied to Go Ahead, a Mydland/Kreutzmann outfit with which he did a dozen shows during the Grateful Dead’s ‘87-‘88 winter hiatus. Weir’s collaboration with Kingfish would continue sporadically through 1989.<br /><br /> In 1986, Weir recorded three songs with a <a href="http://www.brianmelvin.com/home.htm">Brian Melvin</a> project called Nightfood. Brian Melvin shared the Dead’s San Francisco roots and loved their sound. He is an adept of the Mickey Hart-style spiritual world-rhythm approach, and played with Jorma Kaukonnen and a host of other Bay Area musicians. He was also a close friend of the late great bassist Jaco Pastorius, who among other things collaborated closely with Pat Metheny and replaced Alphonso Johnson in Weather Report. Melvin cut a record aptly titled Nightfood and Weir played a handful of gigs in support of the album in late 1986. The music on the album is fusion-lite and by then Pastorius’s bipolar disorder, exacerbated by alcohol abuse, made him very erratic, but it’s an interesting interlude in Weir’s career to have shared the stage with him. I have found no live recordings but if anyone has a lead, let me know.<br /><br /> In all likelihood, Weir had been doing solo acoustic stuff all along but there is no easily accessible record of such performances outside Deadbase, which lists his first solo performances in 1984. At the Sweetwater in Mill Valley, in October 1988, Weir first played with fantastically interesting upright bassist Rob Wasserman. This led to a long-standing collaboration that would tide Weir over into the mid nineties and eventually transition into RatDog, via Scaring the Children (later RD3) and Ratdog Revue. Weir/Wasserman, or more commonly Bob and Rob, did their first three outings in ’88 and ’89 as an opening act for the Jerry Garcia Band but struck out on their own in January 1990. Until 1993 they toured regularly whenever the GD were not on the road, generally with an opening act (Susan James, Hot Tuna, Bruce Cockburn and Michelle Shocked). Their sets were rather repetitive (though less and less so as the years went on), and Wasserman almost always took a bass solo. New material complemented the standard Weir solo catalogue, lighter, more vocally-driven songs from the standard jazz canon. Fever, Witchcraft, Twilight Time and Artificial Flowers found their way into the sets more and more frequently in that period.<br /><br /> There were no Weir/Wasserman shows in 1994, but in April 1995, Jay Lane and Matthew Kelly first performed with the duo at an Earth Day concert in San Francisco in a one-off performance that would lead to RatDog. Named Ratdog Revue, that foursome premiered on August 6th, 1995, three days shy of Jerry’s death, which would mark the biggest turning point in Weir’s career. It seems an appropriate place to end this overview of his musical extracurriculars.<br /><br /> I began this week’s listening with the intention of identifying some pivotal moment in which Weir went from sideman to showman, so to speak, but seven shows over 12 years is hardly enough to give that sort of insight. If anything, this overview reveals a series of explorations in different directions. The Midnites was an anti-Grateful Dead foray into the world of pop and conventional rock and roll; Kingfish and Go Ahead offered a forum for him to do a little of everything without the pressure of being a support pillar; and Scaring the Children (my favorite of the duo’s monikers) was a serious, bare-bones exercise in developing guitar voicing and jazz vocals. Whether these were planned, conscious choices or not is debatable, but they certainly complement the picture of Weir’s character available from his days with the Grateful Dead. <br /><br /><br /><br />Next: I’m listening to RD3’s three-day run at Wetlands in February 1999 (new soundboards), while I decide what to do next. My options are: GD January 1970, GD November-December 1979, RD 2006, a closer look at Bobby and the Midnites, or a series from the recent Mike Gordon tour. If anyone has a preference, let me know.<div class="blogger-post-footer">Ben Heckscher
Furthur Study
benjamin.heckscher@gmail.com</div>Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05875337467116438015noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2735702607925416669.post-25464201979267030522010-03-19T23:05:00.015+01:002010-03-21T11:59:11.907+01:00Furthur, Winter 2010 vol. 3The Furthur tour officially wrapped up in Portland on March 8th with Phil telling the crowd how it always seems that things are getting really good just as the tour is ending. Having listened to 28 consecutive shows, I have to admit I’m a little burned out, but the overall quality stayed high for the duration. I’ve said most of what there is to say about the band in my first two posts but a few things are worth mentioning in overview.<br /> <br /> By the end of the tour, Phil had stopped chiming in at the end of the first set, the RatDog material had disappeared, Weir finally got his Duck joke straight and Scarlet Begonias had become their favorite set opener (5 times including 3.12). Bob continued to introduce little things: the reggae jam I mentioned in my last post, which is something RatDog did for years, came back two more times now prefaced by an audible “Pressure drop!” from Weir (check out <a href="http://ia360930.us.archive.org/0/items/furthur2010-02-26.aud.coniff.gmb.106354.flac24/furthur2010-02-26s1t05.mp3">Memphis Blues</a> in Uncasville). He also likes one-chord jams, which I find awkward because there are no built-in points of reference for dynamic movement. For years, Odessa had very few changes; recently, Minglewood lost a 5-chord at the end of the form, and in the second half of this tour there were a few instances where there was a one-chord vamp in the middle of the tune (<a href="http://ia360926.us.archive.org/0/items/furthur2010-02-23.neumann-km184.damico.106324.flac24/furthur2010-02-23d1t03.mp3">After Midnight</a> and <a href="http://ia360926.us.archive.org/0/items/furthur2010-02-23.neumann-km184.damico.106324.flac24/furthur2010-02-23d3t01.mp3">Mason’s</a> on 2/23 for example). RatDog also did a lot of reprises, wherein they ended the song and then jumped back in for a last chorus; Furthur did this a few times towards the end of the run (<a href="http://ia360930.us.archive.org/0/items/furthur2010-02-26.aud.coniff.gmb.106354.flac24/furthur2010-02-26s2t12.mp3">US Blues</a>, <a href="http://ia331326.us.archive.org/1/items/furthur2010-03-02.schoeps.mahoney.106426.flac16/Furthur10-03-02d2t02.mp3">Lovelight</a>, Touch). Finally (I don’t know whose idea it was), there were <a href="http://ia331332.us.archive.org/0/items/furthur2010-03-06.akg480.chuck-miller.106435.flac16/Furthur2010-03-06_C-481t24.mp3">two</a> <a href="http://ia331338.us.archive.org/1/items/furthur2010-03-05.dpa4022.hayes.106443.flac16/Further_2010-03-05_D202.mp3">occasions</a> on which they started the tune in double-time for a few bars before jumping in fully. <br /><br /> Two things surprised me about the tour, or rather two absences. First, the Throckmorton shows featured some nice jazz jams and I was surprised not to hear any others during this tour. Second, Kadlecik used a MIDI doubler occasionally (both the guitar and the effect were audible) and I thought it sounded interesting, but I only heard it three times (I might have missed some).<br /><br /> Any highlights are subjective but I might as well throw my two cents in anyway. I had a lot of fun listening to the<a href="http://www.archive.org/details/furthur2010-02-23.neumann-km184.damico.106324.flac24"> first night at Radio City</a>, even if it had a lot to do with Joebeacon’s recording, which was vastly superior to those made in the foregoing week by the tapers in New Hampshire, Delaware and Utica. The second set in Atlantic City was highlighted by <a href="http://ia360933.us.archive.org/1/items/furthur2010-02-27.superlux.banaszewski.106344.flac1648/furthut2010-02-27s2t08.mp3">Dark Star</a>, which took a really funky turn holding out through the second verse, and Weir sounded like he was having a lot of fun on the <a href="http://ia360933.us.archive.org/1/items/furthur2010-02-27.superlux.banaszewski.106344.flac1648/furthut2010-02-27s2t15.mp3">Gloria</a> encore. Lastly, the <a href="http://www.archive.org/details/furthur2010-03-03.schoeps.mahoney.106411.flac16">second night in Chicago</a> was real interesting just because it essentially consisted of two second sets. After the show, Jay Lane introduced two people: the daughter of Johnnie Johnson (founding rock pioneer –starting with Chuck Berry in 1952 - who did a stint with RatDog in 96-97), and his own birth sister, whom he had met that day.<br /> <br />While it was not technically part of the tour, the <a href="http://www.archive.org/details/furthur2010-03-12.flac16">birthday benefit</a> is worth hearing if only for two long-lost classics: Pigpen's <a href="http://ia331217.us.archive.org/3/items/furthur2010-03-12.flac16/futhur2010-03-12d1t04.mp3">Two Souls In Communion</a>, in the acoustic 1st set, and Garcia's <a href="http://ia331217.us.archive.org/3/items/furthur2010-03-12.flac16/futhur2010-03-12d4t03.mp3">Cream Puff War</a> at the end of the third set (though RatDog played that one a few times in 08-09). The acoustic <a href="http://ia331217.us.archive.org/3/items/furthur2010-03-12.flac16/futhur2010-03-12d1t08.mp3">Mountains of the Moon</a>, sung by Phil was a treat, and the 1st electric set roared throughout. I think there's a chance they'll release the soundboard for free; keep your fingers crossed.<br /><br /> In other news, it was announced on a Philzone thread, and confirmed by Phil, that Jay Lane has elected to leave Furthur and go back to playing with Les Claypool. At the end of the tour, Jay told Bob he’d been offered the spot and they decided it was logical to do so after the birthday show. Phil was consulted and agreed. There doesn’t appear to be a replacement percussionist in the works. I don’t think Jay was integral to the Furthur sound (Joe Russo, as far as I can tell, is flawless), so it makes sense that he would want to get back to something where he is more valuable, as it does that Phil did not object. Phil also said that the backup singers are theoretically on board, but they are both new moms and have to “figure out their logistics.” <br /> <br /> The next stop is Futhurfest at the Calaveras County Fairground on May 28th. The other acts are Jackie Greene and Mark Karan with their respective bands; Larry Campbell and Theresa Williams; old friends Electric Hot Tuna; the Waybacks, with whom Weir sat in a few years back; Galactic; and a handful of others I’m not familiar with. It’s not Bonnaroo. It’ll probably be a low-key vibe compared with the circuses that are common these days, so I’m looking forward to seeing what happens. I’d also be curious to know how much rehearsal they do and how much serious conversation goes into the repertoire. <br /><br /> <br /> Next: as I said, I’m a little burned out on Furthur, so I’m going to go back to Weir’s solo work throughout the 80s. I have seven shows at two-year intervals from 1978 to 1990 lined up. It’s a start into a long-term look at how Weir dealt with the 80s, Garcia’s increasing unreliability, and the need for him to step up and carve out a leading position. I’m curious to see if his vocal and rhythmic presence changes significantly. Also, if anyone has a line on where I can get a hold of anything he played with Jaco Pastorius ("Nightfood," 09.86 - 05.87), I’d be much obliged. So long.<div class="blogger-post-footer">Ben Heckscher
Furthur Study
benjamin.heckscher@gmail.com</div>Benhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05875337467116438015noreply@blogger.com0