fuck yes grateful dead

Grateful Dead at the Fillmore East, January 3rd, 1970 (early and late shows)

Early Show

Any show that starts with a Morning Dew is not to be trifled with. The boys aren’t messing around! And the intensity is strong in this one. 

I dig these 1970 Cold Rains. A nice midway point between the grungy, punk sound of it in 66-67 and what it became through the 80s-90s.

Alligator is typical of the period, which is to say, HOT. and THICK. Deep and psychedelic! After the guitars bubble up again after the drums segment, things get heavy, with the drummers riding the cowbell all over the country while the guitarists head straight for the outer edges. After some furious jamming, things begin to coalesce again and while Bobby starts playing that squirrel-y little China Cat intro and you’re sure that’s where we’re headed, Jerry gives a little aural “uh-uh” and takes it back out to spacier realms before hitting on the “Bid You Goodnight” jam to beautiful effect. Lay down, my dear brothers...

Eventually we dissolve into a pretty far-out, almost Star-Trekky Feedback, and a UJB encore rounds out the early show. 

Late Show

A rousing Casey Jones gets this party started. Am I the only one who feels it’s a shame that Mason’s Children’s life was so brief? I think it would’ve been a gas to hear a 90s iteration of the Dead play this curious outtake from Workingman’s Dead. I always dug it’s fast clip, full-band harmonies and slightly arcane storyline. Anyway, this take doesn’t disappoint. Neither does the full Other One suite that follows; after a fairly low-key Drums, which builds up into Phil’s roll, the rest of the band absolutely slams into the audience with the meat of the jam. And boy this one is meaty! The post-Cryptical bookend flows into the lapping waters that is the Cosmic Charlie intro; the CC that follows is as satisfying as this consistently enjoyable song ever is. The only repeat between the early and late shows comes next - UJB - and a few short tunes further and we hit the show-ending Dancin. Between Jerry’s exhortations to get the crowd to sing along to Dire Wolf, and Bobby attempting a two-part clap-along during this Dancin’ (and of course Pigpen’s natural crowd-work), the Dead sure were more apt to try to garner direct audience participation in this era. Anyway, it’s hard to tell on the tapes if Bobby was successful. 

For the encore the Dead give ‘em what they want, and they always want St. Stephen. A high-energy version pushes it’s way into Midnight Hour, and Pig sends ‘em home happy.  

Grateful Dead at the Fillmore East, January 2nd, 1970

Photograph © Amalie R. Rothschild, 1970

Early Show

This show starts with Also Sprach Zarathustra coming over the PA as the band takes the stage; tongue in cheek or whatever (Bear was that you?), it does give the proceedings a sense of event, followed through by the oblique Mason’s Children cracking out of the speakers. This version is tight (it’s the one featured on Fallout From the Phil Zone), and it influences everything that comes after. A bit of banter here & there aside (Jerry, after the inevitable hollers of “play St. Stephen!!”: “That song’s on two albums, maaaan..”), the band gets right down to business. Even the Cryptical comes hot on the heels of Cumberland, and the band really sounds like they have a plane to catch. Not in the sense of rushing things, but in the sense of flying down those intricate corridors without a moment to waste. I’ve noticed that happens sometimes with these one-set early/late shows; there’s a lot to pack in and you don’t want anyone feeling ripped off. In this case, I can’t imagine anyone did! Feel ripped off, that is. After a rip-roaring Other One it’d be hard to. 

The Cosmic Charlie that flows so gently and naturally out of the tail-end Cryptical makes one wonder why they didn’t pair these more often, but then, such are the mysteries and beauties of the Grateful Dead! 

That takes care of the early show. But I’ll just pair them here as the link below gives you both. 

Late Show

As per the era, the band starts this show out with a batch of Workingman’s tunes - tight, elastic, clearly woodshedded at this point. (Fun to note that Jerry’s always trying to get the audience to sing along to Dire Wolf in its early readings. Seems kinda uncharacteristic, but then again it maybe speaks to some latent desire on Jerry’s part to bring out the “campfire” vibe of Workingman’s Dead - and that part of the Dead in general - at these shows. Kinda sweet really! Anyway, they really don’t comply much, and he gives it up after a while. Though the vibe he’s going for is certainly more fully realized in the soon-to-come acoustic sets.) A batch of “standard Dead” follows - played excellently, natch - though Good Lovin’ isn’t quite yet the prime Pig rave-up it would become in 1971. But y’know, we get a China>Rider, a Monkey, a broken string and some goofy banter.

Next thing ya know, though, you’ve gone back in time a year for a deep dose of primal Dead - the complete Live/Dead sequence, but with a distinctly 1970 flavor. The Dark Star - oh man, this Dark Star. It gets spacey & atmospheric right outta the first verse, and out of that slowly unfolds one of the most gorgeous and fully developed Feelin’ Groovy Jams ever. Similar in flavor to February 13th but hey, it ain’t fair to compare. This is a totally different Dark Star, different universe, and it’ll make ya glad to be alive. Cruelly, there seems to be no way around the cut at the end / beginning of St. Stephen. 

Somehow the jamming in The Eleven was never as furious after the latter half of ‘69; still, it’s a singular beast and truly unique in all of music. And this is a good one - it gets that floaty feeling I dig in some Elevens, where the drummers let the other instruments hang out for a while. Listen up, too, because there are only a half dozen left before it’s gone for good (aside from the very occasional jam on it’s chords, all the way up to 1981).

Pig wraps things up nicely with everybody in fine & rowdy form in a great, raucous Lovelight. 

Worth noting that both complete sets (along with portions of the following night) came out on Dave’s Picks Volume 30. Happily, those cruel cuts you hear here are restored in the official release.

Grateful Dead at the Boston Tea Party, December 31st 1969

This show features many hallmarks of what 1970 would become: the band giving hell to Bear for the sound in the monitors, Bobby’s Yellow Dog story (actually requested early(!) He promises to deliver at midnight. I’m certain some folks ended up wishing he’d forgotten..), Mason’s Children, and some absolutely cracking playing. The first set plays great but serves mainly to get the crowd (and the band) primed for the second. 

Samesuch second set starts with a monster Alligator with some truly beautiful, meditative and transformative playing from Jerry in the second half (after drums), with hints of the Feelin’ Groovy Jam and the Mountain Jam, eventually landing on the We Bid You Goodnight Jam that would later append the GDTRFBs of ‘71... When the “ALLIGATOR!!!” vocal refrain comes back, just when you thought the song itself had disintigrated, it’s kinda like someone just woke you out of a trance to tell you your house was on fire... in a good way..  Finally it’s like 1967 all over again as those last strains give way to the jumpy rhythm that is Caution. As Pig expounds on his conversation with the Gypsy woman the music become increasingly weirder (Jerry warned us earlier: “1970′s gonna be weird”) and dissolves into a feedback space wherein Phil just begins nonchalantly dropping bombs all over this Boston audience. I guess what happens next is we learn how well the mojo hand worked for Pig; he got him some Good Lovin’. It’s abbreviated though, as drums turns over to a very classic-’69 sounding Eleven - no complaints here! If you like the one on Live/Dead (or my own fave 2/28/69), you’re in for a treat.

But as if just to say, “Hey this ain’t 1969 anymore, folks”, The Eleven peters out (not a pun; they played that in the first set) into one of those slow, introspective High Times we’d all learn to know and love. (No stranger to ‘69 sets though, as it had been played regularly since June.) The Cumberland that follows is a breakneck-beauty. 

I’m not here for play-by-play though. I just wanna give you a feel for the thing. There are some great surprises here, and some real fun (some of it coming right after that Cumberland). And suffice to say, I love when Pigpen joins in on the vocals on those early NFAs. And Phil: it’s cruel to tease a Dark Star when the show’s clearly almost over..!

Interesting how it’s really at about this point - really late summer/fall ‘69 - that the template for a Grateful Dead show was fairly set; that is, the more “concise” songs in the first set, with a second set featuring the more exploratory/mind-bending fare, even with a bit of a “comedown” (here represented by a handful of folk & country tunes) after the hair-raising stuff. It’s just that, in late 69/70, everything was a little more s p r e a d  o u t  and dare I say, slippery.  

Ready to walk that tightrope of weirdness between 1969 and ‘70?

Hey look a new post!

Yeah, I haven’t posted in a couple years, and even then it was a couple years before that... but the truth is, I miss writing about the Grateful Dead! And it turns out, I don’t do much of that outside of this blog. 

So I decided to undertake quite an undertaking: I know I did this before with 1968 and maybe some other years? 1975, haha? but my plan is to listen to and write about every damn show from 1970. Yeah 1970! One Hundred and Forty-Two Shows! Second only to 1969 with 146. But actually I’m gonna do 143 because technically 12/31/69 flows into 1970. 

I really just want to get a full picture of this iconic year; the acoustic sets, the formation of so many great songs (and two great albums)... I just wanna get a full feel of how it all plays out. And, exercise my writing muscle while I’m at it. 

Of course I’ll post links to everything I listen to. 

Hope you’ll dig it, hope you’ll read a few things, hope you’ll listen. 

Grateful Dead : Halloween 1971 : Columbus, Ohio

Feels funny to say that an officially released show could be “overlooked”, but 10/31/71 seems rarely brought up. I’ve been rolling this one for a few days now and it’s treasures to be mined are many. Most every song is jammed to the brim but the “Tighten Up” jam nestled into this Dark Star is a space I’d like to live in for a long, long time. 

While yes this is a Grateful Dead blog, more importantly it’s a blog concerning music and true art. We’ve been heartbroken for the last 36 hours with the loss of one of the greatest artists we’ve been honored to share space and time with. And the Dead and Bowie shared more in common than most might think: both gave a lot of freaks, weirdos and misfits hope and a sense of community. 

In my view, when we lose a great artist we all have a responsibility to step up our game. Go and paint your version of your masterpiece. Thanks for everything, David Bowie. 

Grateful Dead - New Year’s Eve 1981 was one for the ages. If you start it right about now you should hit some sort of a climax at just the right moment tonight.