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Grateful Dead Hour - KFOG

ccasal — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 12:45:42 -0700

Week of March 23, 1987

Money Changes Everything part 1

Grateful Dead from the Mars Hotel
MONEY MONEY

Money Changes Everything part 2

Grateful Dead 3/3/87 Henry J Kaiser, Oakland CA
SAINT OF CIRCUMSTANCE

Money Changes Everything part 3

Grateful Dead 12/17/86 Oakland Coliseum Arena
SHIP OF FOOLS

Interview with John Barlow part 1

Sen. Everett McKinley Dirksen
LINCOLN'S GETTYSBURG ADDRESS

Interview with John Barlow part 2

Don Henley, I Can't Stand Still
DIRTY LAUNDRY

Interview with John Barlow part 3

The Call, Modern Romans
THE WALLS CAME DOWN

Interview with John Barlow part 4

Laurie Anderson, Home of the Brave
LANGUAGE IS A VIRUS

I had a request to play something from the original KFOG Deadhead Hour, which started in November 1984 and where I did my first radio show on February 18, 1985.

This episode is typical of the sort of thing I was doing in those days: the first half is "Money Changes Everything," an audio collage of music snippets of political and cultural stuff from TV and radio. The second half is an interview with John Barlow, Bob Weir's songwriting partner, in which he plays some of his favorite songs and we talk about writing, philosophy and of course the Grateful Dead.

You can browse or search the Grateful Dead Hour program logs on the GD Hour web site. Let me know if there's a particular program you'd like to hear, and feel free to post requests and comments here or by email to gdhour@dead.net.

Thanks for listening!
David Gans
gdhour@dead.net

Listen Now

Celebrity Guest DJ Series to Launch on Sirius Satellite Radio's Exclusive Grateful Dead Channel

ccasal — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 17:56:30 -0700

Jimmy Buffett to host first show for the new series

NEW YORK–June 30, 2008– SIRIUS Satellite Radio (NASDAQ: SIRI) announced today that SIRIUS’ Grateful Dead channel will launch a new weekly series of celebrity-hosted shows. The full-hour show will be hosted by various music icons, including Jimmy Buffett, Chris Robinson of the Black Crowes, Mike Campbell of Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, Warren Haynes of Gov’t Mule and others.

Jimmy Buffett, who has his own SIRIUS channel, Radio Margaritaville channel 31, will host the first show in the series on Monday, June 30. Buffett will tell stories of his experiences with The Grateful Dead and introduce his favorite songs by the band.

The special celebrity-hosted shows will air on Mondays at 9:00 pm ET. The shows will be rebroadcast on Tuesdays at 5:00 pm ET, Wednesdays at 9:00 am ET, Fridays at 1:00 am ET, Saturdays at 8:00 pm ET and Sundays at 10:00 am ET.

The Grateful Dead Channel which launched exclusively on SIRIUS Satellite Radio last year, features music spanning the band’s career with unreleased concert recordings and original shows hosted by band members Bob Weir, Mickey Hart, and Bill Kreutzmann. The channel also features rare archival interviews with Jerry Garcia and contributions from Grateful Dead experts David Gans and Dead archivist David Lemieux.

For more information, visit www.sirius.com/gratefuldead.

June 30 - July 6, 2008

ccasal — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 09:00:00 -0700

This week we'll be hitting some excellent summer Dead spanning the Grateful Dead's recorded history over the course of 19 years, 1970-1989.

Our first piece of music is something we played a little while back here, but due to popular demand, and because it's so darn good, we thought we'd play it again this week. From the Grateful Dead's famous trip across Canada, the Festival Express, as it was known, we have the show-closer from Winnipeg on 7/1/70, Lovelight. Pigpen is in fine form on this rendition, with a bit of raunchy bite that was common of Lovelights of the era. Wait until you hear the Lovelight in a couple of weeks here…

Next up, from exactly three years later, on 7/1/73 at Universal Amphitheatre in Universal City, California, we have the exquisite second set jam from that evening, featuring Truckin>Drums>The Other One>Wharf Rat>Me and Bobby McGee.This show capped the Grateful Dead's west coast swing in the summer of 1973, a run that featured shows in Vancouver, Portland, Seattle and three shows in Universal City. The summer of 1973 lacked a major tour by the Grateful Dead, but instead featured several massive events such as the two night stand at RFK Stadium with the Allmans and the Watkins Glen show (and soundcheck). Regardless of the fact that there was no big tour that summer, many of the shows they DID play were excellent.

We'll now jump forward fourteen years to the summer of 1987, to the Grateful Dead's wonderful show at Canada's Wonderland north of Toronto on 6/30/87. This show was very solid start-to-finish, and we're very pleased to play the second set's opening, Scarlet Begonias>Fire on the Mountain, Estimated Prophet>Eyes of the World. Evidently, Dan Healy was having a blast at the mixing board. A few things to listen for are the intro to Fire in which all instruments in the mix are seemingly muted aside from the bass, and you can really hear the crowd's reaction to that insane amount of Phil coming through the PA; also, this is some of the wackiest Weir vocally manipulation of the era during Estimated.

Finally this week, we'll play a selection from the magnificent 7/4/89 show in Buffalo, NY, which has been released, of course, asTruckin' Up To Buffalo on DVD. Today we'll play that awesomely powerful Morning Dew from toward the end of the second set. Mixed by Jeffrey Norman and mastered in HDCD (for the CD release of the video), it sounds incredible.

Be sure to check in next week for more great summer Dead. We'll look forward to seeing you and hearing your comments.

David Lemieux
vault@dead.net

On the next "Tales From The Golden Road" - Celebrating "American Beauty"

almanac — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 18:36:58 -0700

On Sunday, June 29, "Tales From The Golden Road" on Sirius Satellite Radio's Grateful Dead Channel will focus on one of the Grateful Dead's best-loved records, 1970's "American Beauty."

We'll talk to special guests who were involved in the making of this landmark album, feature archival excerpts from interviews with band members and play some tracks from the record itself, choice live performances and beautiful interpretations of some of the songs by other artists.

As always, listeners are invited to join the conversation by calling 1-888-89-SIRIUS

"Tales From The Golden Road" airs every Sunday from 4 to 6 pm ET on the Grateful Dead Channel, Sirius 32. The program is rebroadcast Monday at 9am ET and Tuesday at 5pm ET.

Additionally, there will be encore broadcasts of the "American Beauty" episode beginning Sunday, July 6, as part of the Grateful Dead Channel's 4th of July Weekend celebration.

Grateful Dead Hour no. 268

ccasal — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 09:43:59 -0700

Week of November 8, 1993

9/13/93 Spectrum, Philadelphia

HELL IN A BUCKET
JACKAROE
THE SAME THING

TUBULAR BELLS SPACE->
EASY ANSWERS->
DAYS BETWEEN->
GOOD LOVIN'

By request of Mike Perko (again), more of 9/13/93 - some highlights from set 1, and from set 2, the one-of-a-kind "space" jam built around a theme from Mike Oldfield's seminal 1973 instrumental Tubular Bells.

Thanks for listening!
David Gans
gdhour@dead.net

Listen Now

June 23 - June 29, 2008

ccasal — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 09:54:22 -0700

This week we're going to jump around a bit, but the end result a whole bunch of really good Grateful Dead music from this week in the band's recorded history.

Our first stop is the Fillmore West on 4/12/70. This was the final night of a four night run of shows that, as we mentioned last year at this time, mostly doesn't exist in the vault. These shows are famous for the fact the Miles Davis Quintet was the opening act. Say what?!? Indeed. Also, from this 4/12/70 show, Phil selected the Dancing In The Street for inclusion on his Fall Out From The Phil Zone compilation. Also from this night, we're pleased to play a few songs from the then-soon-to-be-released Workingman's Dead, a nice combination of Cumberland Blues-Dire Wolf, and from a bit later in the show, Black Peter-Uncle John's Band. It's too bad this entire run doesn't exist; that would be make a stellar 10-CD boxed set release!

While we're at the 4/12/70 show this week, we figure we might as well play the show-closing sequence of songs, just because it's so good: It's A Man's World, Viola Lee Blues>Feedback. Certainly an appropriate way to end a four night run of shows at the Fillmore West in 1970.

Next we'll stop into 1973 to a show a little out of our date range, 6/24/73 at the Memorial Coliseum in Portland, Oregon. We played a little bit of this show a couple of weeks ago, and we thought you might like to have another taste, so here is a great little China Cat Sunflower>I Know You Rider from late in the first set.

Jumping ahead ten years, we'll check out some music from one of only two shows the Grateful Dead ever performed in the state of West Virginia, on 4/10/83 in Morgantown. The other West Virginia show was 4/16/78 in Huntington, which unfortunately does not exist in the vault. However, from the show in 1983, there are very clean Beta PCM digital tapes (heard here) and cassette masters. From the second set of 4/10/83, we have Uncle John's Band>Playing In The Band.

Finally this week, from the magnificent live album from the Jerry Garcia Band, Don't Let Go, recorded at the Orpheum Theatre in San Francisco on 5/21/76, we have the set closing song, Lonesome and Long Way From Home. Although not quite as way out there as the song would become by early 1978, this is a mighty fine version.

Be sure to check back in next week for more great music. Please feel free to write with questions, comments, requests or suggestions, to the email address below. Please put “Grateful Dead” in your subject so that I can easily identify it as non-spam. Thanks.

David Lemieux
vault [at] dead.net

Baltimore Symphony to Perform World Premiere of Lee Johnson’s “Dead Symphony” August 1st

Analise Dubner — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 09:53:04 -0700

Last year composer Lee Johnson released the premiere recording of his acclaimed “Dead Symphony,” an orchestral tribute to the music of the Grateful Dead performed by the Russian National Orchestra and conducted by the composer. dead.net’s Blair Jackson described the Symphony as “a work of great passion, depth, subtlety and imagination” (for Blair’s full aricle on the Dead Symphony and its composer, go here).

Now, more than a year after its recorded debut, Lee Johnson’s bold transfiguration of some of the best known and loved Grateful Dead melodies in an orchestral setting is about to receive its world premiere in concert (and we all know that the Dead’s music is best heard live), when it is performed by the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra on August 1^st (Jerry Garcia’s 66^th birthday). For this one-night-only event, the lobby of Baltimore’s Joseph Meyerhoff Symphony Hall will be transformed into a gallery of Grateful Dead and other countercultural art and artifacts, including rare images by Fillmore East photographer (and Baltimore native) Amalie R. Rothschild, which will be auctioned at the performance and online to benefit the Baltimore Symphony.

For tickets and detailed information, visit the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra website.

Grateful Dead Hour no. 266

ccasal — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 10:31:50 -0700

Grateful Dead Hour #266

Week of October 25, 1993

9/13/93 Spectrum, Philadelphia
SCARLET BEGONIAS->
FIRE ON THE MOUNTAIN
PLAYING IN THE BAND->
DARK STAR->
TERRAPIN

Another all-music show, by request of Mike Perko (again). And look at that list! Come back next week for more of 9/13/93.

Thanks for listening!
David Gans
gdhour@dead.net

Listen Now

Limited-Edition: Family Dog Fine Art Lithographs

ccasal — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 09:00:00 -0700

The Art That Defined A Generation

The Family Dog 1966-1970

Rock and roll in the 1960s exploded into an important and enduring counterculture that impacts fashion, politics, and a broad range of popular social values.

Right in the middle of this mid-60s explosion Chet Helms was organizing a series of weekly dance hall revues at the Avalon Ballroom in San Francisco.

These events were the epicenter of the emerging psychedelic culture and featured some of the most important bands of the era, including Big Brother and the Holding Company, Jefferson Airplane, and the Grateful Dead.

Five of the renowned Family Dog artists, known as the San Francisco Five, created artwork to promote these shows that captured the essence of the era, and their "throwaway" handbills became so important that they are now featured in Smithsonian traveling exhibitions, New York's Museum of Modern Art, the Louvre, and Britain's Tate Museum.

Rhino Entertainment, the featured artists, and Jack Gallery have collaborated to print, publish and distribute these images in limited-edition signed and numbered fine art lithographs. The collection currently comprises 18 of the most significant images of the era, with more to be added over the years. This premiere at Jack Gallery will be the first time that this collection of remastered Family Dog images will be shown prior to their traveling to galleries worldwide.

Please join us to celebrate The Family Dog and the Art that Defined a Generation.

Family Dog fine art lithographs will be available for viewing and purchase starting Wednesday, June 18th
Jack Gallery
3rd and Fairfax
(on the plaza between the Farmers Market and the Grove)
Los Angeles, CA 90036
(323) 933-4883

June 16 - June 22, 2008

ccasal — Fri, 13 Jun 2008 08:53:32 -0700

We have lots of cool stuff this week from throughout the Grateful Dead's recordings, including music from 1976, 1991 and some other nuggets.

Our first stop this week is at the first night of a three night run at the Capital Theatre in Passaic, NJ, in 1976. The band started their comeback with two shows in Portland, OR, four in Boston, two in New York, followed by these three in Passaic. From the end of the second set, we have this mighty Let It Grow>Wharf Rat, from 6/17/76. When they came back in 1976, the Grateful Dead left behind the Weather Report Prelude and Part 1, which is too bad, but these go-it-alone Let It Grows sure are good, with that nifty little drum break.

While we're talking about the whole Weather Report Suite, and looking at this week's date, we'd be remiss if we didn't play the whole Weather Report Suite jam from 6/18/74 in Louisville. There are certain shows that are legendary amongst Dead Heads, and certain jams that are equally famous, as this is one of them, rightfully so. So, here you go: Weather Report Suite>The Other One>Space>It's a Sin Jam>Stella Blue. There is a cut in the master reels during Stella Blue, but otherwise this sequence sounds great, and is played exquisitely.

One little technical side note: I often refer to “cuts in the master reels,” although there are no cuts in the master reels. What I'm referring to is a reel change, as most of the 2-track reels in the vault are 7” tape running at 7.5 inches per second, meaning the tape runs out every 46 or so minutes. The recordist would then, as quickly as he or she could, put on a new reel and hit record, a process that would take 20-40 seconds. So, to answer those occasional questions I've received on what a “cut in the master reel” means, there you have it.

Throughout 1974, there were incredible, unique jams played with an inspired energy, such as the jam above from 6/18/74. Another great example is the jam that bridges the Playing in the Band jam and the Scarlet Begonias from 8/6/74 (see Dick's Picks Vol. 31 for that one), and another cool one is this jam from 6/16/74 in Des Moines, IA, Eyes of the World>Big River, specifically the transition from Eyes to Big River. Great stuff. I've always felt that a compilation of 6/16 and 6/18/74 would make a tremendous CD release.

Our next stop this week is at Alpine Valley in East Troy, WI, site of many fine Grateful Dead shows throughout the 1980s. From 6/22/85, we have the second-set closing sequence of Dear Mr. Fantasy>I Need A Miracle>Stella Blue>Throwing Stones>Not Fade Away. This was the start of the very good, and intriguing, Summer Tour of 1985. The tour was recorded to both Beta PCM digital tapes and good old analog cassettes. This sequence was drawn from the PCMs.

Thanks for stopping in, and be sure to come by next week for more great music. As always, we really encourage you to write with questions, comments, suggestions or requests. We welcome it all, and please include the words “Grateful Dead” in the subject of your email, sent to the address below.

David Lemieux
vault [at] dead.net

Grateful Dead Hour no. 611

ccasal — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 14:36:29 -0700

Week of June 5,2000

Grateful Dead 5/12/80 Boston Garden
LAZY LIGHTNING->
SUPPLICATION
FAR FROM ME
MINGLEWOOD
ESTIMATED PROPHET->
HE'S GONE->
JAM

An all-music show, requested by Mike Perko. Enjoy!

Thanks for listening!
David Gans
gdhour@dead.net

Listen Now

June 9 - June 15, 2008

ccasal — Mon, 09 Jun 2008 09:00:00 -0700

Welcome back to the Tapers Section. Not only is the weather getting really good, but so too is the Grateful Dead's summer performing schedule through the years, so plenty of great music was played, with some of it being brought to you here today.

First stop will be 6/10/73 at RFK Stadium in Washington, DC. This show saw the band sharing the bill with the Allman Brothers Band, and the Grateful Dead certainly delivered the goods by playing one of their finest shows of a great performing year. From the end of the first set, we have a typically hot Playing In The Band. Phil has a particularly great tone on this one, and Weir and Keith are crystal clear in the mix, with the drums mixed perfectly. Oh, and Jerry. Yes, his guitar playing here is exquisite.

While we're checking out 6/10/73, we might as well play you something from the second set. So, here's an excellent Here Comes Sunshine. What a great addition to the repertoire this tune was. Once again, Weir stands out, not only in the mix, but in his playing as well.

Next we'll jump ahead three years to 6/12/76, the final show of a four night run at the Boston Music Hall. The band had returned to active touring a week before with the 6/3&4/76 shows at the Paramount in Portland, OR, with the real touring starting in Boston on 6/9. From this final show in Boston, we have this excellent Dancing In The Street>Around and Around. I can only imagine what New England Dead Heads must have thought when they heard this arranegment of Dancing In The Street, after such spectacular regional shows such as the April, 1969 shows at the Arc, 5/6/70 at MIT, 4/7&8/71 at the Music Hall, 9/15&16/72 at the music Hall, 4/2/73 at the Garden and the Fall 1973 three night run back at the Music Hall.

This Boston run had loads of great music, but one of my favourite jams of the entire run is the second set opening sequence of St. Stephen>Eyes of the World>Let It Grow. Unfortunately, the start of St. Stephen is missing from the master reels (reminiscent of Harpur College, eh?), but it's such an insignificant omission when compared to the quality, and quantity, of the music that was to come. There is a rough edge around some of the playing, but the jam into Eyes of the World was a real throwback to 1974 improvisational jam. And Eyes>Let It Grow, a nice pre-hiatus sequence.

Lastly this week we'll stop into Cornell University in Ithaca, NY, on 5/16/81. A few weeks ago we played you the opening of the first set, and this week we have the end of the first set, specifically Passenger, High Time, Let It Grow, Don't Ease Me In.

Be sure to stop by next week for more great music from the vault. It's always great to hear from you, so feel free to write with questions, comments, suggestions or requests.

David Lemieux
vault [at] dead.net

Listening Party -- Road Trips No. 1, Vol. 3!

Jonathan Lane — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 17:20:21 -0700

Road Trips Vol. 1 Number 3

Jonathan Lane — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 15:53:28 -0700

More Lost and Found From the Hot, Hot Summer of’71 on this Two-Disc Set!

$19.98 :: GO TO THE STORE

:: See Track List

Shows

New Haven, CT - 7/31/71
Chicago, IL - 8/23/71
Hollywood, CA - 8/6/71
San Pedro, CA - 8/4/71

Listening Party!

Join us for a limited
time as we stream selections
from this amazing new set.
::Listen Now

More Road Trips

Read more about the series,
plus answers to questions you
might have about the series.
::Click Here

::See All Road Trips

If you’re up on your Dick’s Picks releases—and we know you are—you’ll recall that Dick’s Picks 35, released in 2005, featured some smokin’ performances from the summer of 1971. The master reels from which it was culled, long believed to have been lost, had turned up miraculously on a houseboat owned by the parents of former GD keyboardist Keith Godchaux, discovered more than 30 years later by Keith’s brother, Brian, and son, Zion. And Keith had these masters because the band wanted him to be able to hear their most recent tour in preparation for his taking the piano seat that fall. It was quite a find, to say the least—the Grateful Dead world equivalent of uncovering a new royal tomb in the Valley of the Kings.

So imagine our surprise when two years later, under completely different circumstances, even more great, previously uncirculated master tapes from the summer of ’71 turned up unexpectedly. Surely that was a sign, too, that this music needed to come out and be shared with all of you. Which brings us, happily, to Road Trips Volume One, Number 3. This release offers up the brightest of these recently discovered gems: Disc One is taken from the famous show at the Yale Bowl in New Haven, Connecticut, July 31, 1971, anchored around an out-of-this-world “Dark Star” and a version of “Not Fade Away > Goin’ Down the Road” that also includes a short “Darkness, Darkness” jam. Hot stuff!

The material on Disc Two is from the Auditorium Theatre in Chicago about three weeks later—8/23/71 (the following night, 8/24, was spotlighted on DP35)—and its big highlight is probably the very jammed out version of “That’s It for the Other One,” which in my humble opinion stands with the best they ever played (yes, even ones from the Fillmore West box). Spread across the discs you’ll also find outstanding versions of “China Cat > Rider,” “Uncle John’s Band > Johnny B. Goode,” “Wharf Rat,” “Sugar Magnolia” and lots more. Like the DP35 performances, these are a Phil-lover’s-delight, with massive bass on almost every track—careful if you’re driving or operating heavy machinery when you crank up these CDs!

As is customary, too, for the proverbial “limited time only,” when you buy Road Trips #3, you’ll also receive a bonus disc with still more rarities from that ’71 tour. Check it out: The first few newly unearthed tracks are more from the 8/6/71 Hollywood Palladium show (featured on DP35), including the justifiably legendary, consensus-best-ever version of “Hard to Handle,” heard in pristine soundboard form for the first time. It will knock your tie-dye socks off! There are also more fine tracks from Yale Bowl, but the heart of this disc was plucked from the 8/4/71 show at Terminal Island correctional facility in Southern California, where Grateful Dead sound guru Owsley Stanley was incarcerated at the time. This show doesn’t even circulate as an audience recording! (What—a venue the tapers couldn’t crack? No way!) We think you’ll agree that all of this is GD of the highest order! As usual, these master soundboard recordings have been mastered in HDCD, and each package includes a cool booklet with an essay about the music (by yours truly in this case) and plenty o’ rare photos from the period.

So…You know the drill: click here for a complete track listing for the three discs, and click here to order your copy today!

Grateful Dead Hour no. 573

ccasal — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 16:20:52 -0700

Week of September 13, 1999

Conclusion of a three-part GD Hour broadcast in memory of Dick Latvala, the Grateful Dead's tape archivist, who passed away in the summer of 1999.

This program began as a live broadcast on KPFA on August 11, 1999.

DICK'S PICKS VOL. 7 feature

Dick's Intro 4/19/95
Grateful Dead 10/28/72 Public Hall, Cleveland OH
DARK STAR->
PHILO STOMP->
JAM->
SUGAR MAGNOLIA

Dick and I thought up the name "Philo Stomp" for a bass solo that Phil Lesh performed several times in 1972. I was pleasantly stunned recently to hear it on a tape of 2/26/77 in San Bernardino, California; I'll be playing that one on the GD Hour in the very near future.

Thanks for listening!
David Gans
gdhour@dead.net

Listen Now

Legendary Artist Alton Kelley Passed Away

ccasal — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 18:12:52 -0700

ALTON KELLEY
1940 - 2008

Legendary artist Alton Kelley created a graphic style that rocked the world beginning in the psychedelic Sixties. His concert posters, logo designs, LP album covers, and fine art have forevermore defined that time. Kelley, born June 17, 1940, passed away peacefully at home June 1st of complications from a long illness.

He is survived by the true love of his life, Marguerite Trousdale Kelley. He also leaves his mother Annie, sister Kathy, and beloved children Patty, Yossarian, and China, and beautiful grandchildren Life and Lacoda.

Through his mind-expanding creativity and over several decades, Kelley gave rock music new colors, shapes, and themes expressing the optimism and enthusiasm of young people around the globe. His graphics defined youth culture as much as the music itself-in effect his art was a break-through collaboration with musicians and bands such as the Grateful Dead, Jerry Garcia, Janis Joplin, and Jimi Hendrix. As Joel Selvin, rock critic for the San Francisco Chronicle, put it, “Kelley and Mouse drew the first face on rock music.”

Kelley and his life-long collaborator Stanley Mouse are best known for their posters for “San Francisco style” dance-concerts at the Fillmore Auditorium, Winterland Arena, the Fillmore West, the Avalon Ballroom, and a host of other Bay Area theaters and amphitheaters. They also created world-renowned posters and album covers for the Grateful Dead, Journey, Steve Miller, Jimi Hendrix, The Beatles, and others.

The two artists historically worked as a team, in their words “riffing off each other's giggle.” They joyfully appropriated from historic sources, in one instance re-working an obscure nineteenth-century etching to create their iconic Grateful Dead “skeleton and roses” design. They combined vibrant Sixties color with French poster-making joi de vivre enthusiasm, and their own adapted technique, to generate compelling pieces often issued on a weekly basis, ultimately dazzling millions worldwide. Thus, they changed advertising art forever, as their posters were key examples of what became one of the most important art movements of the latter part of the twentieth century.

When Kelley (a native of Maine) met Mouse (a native of Detroit, MI) in San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury district in late 1965 (the “Haight” was the epicenter of the hippie movement, culminating in the “Summer of Love” in 1967), they instantly recognized they were kindred spirits in what Mouse describes as “one of the juciest scenes of all time.” Their concert posters, commissioned by Fillmore promoter Bill Graham and the Avalon's Family Dog collective, were eagerly snapped up by bands and fans alike.

In the decades since, Mouse and Kelley's classics have established even greater popularity, rivaling the interest long shown by collectors of French turn-of-the-century Belle Epoque art made famous by Toulouse-Lautrec and others.

In his later years, Kelley joyfully turned to illustrating hot rods and custom cars, fine art paintings, and designs for t-shirts and other merchandise.

In lieu of flowers, donations can be made at the Washington Mutual Western Street branch in Petaluma, CA for a memorial bench in a Sonoma County Park. A memorial event will be announced shortly.

For members of the press: photographs, selected artwork, and video bites are available by contacting Jennifer Gross at 323-658-8700.

June 2 - June 8, 2008

ccasal — Fri, 30 May 2008 17:30:25 -0700

We're going to start our week out with some nice, early Grateful Dead music, as it's always a good way to wake up on a Monday.

From the Fillmore West in San Francisco on 6/8/69, we have this excellent set-closing combination of That's It For The Other One>Cosmic Charlie. A truly classic 1969 moment. This was another four night Fillmre West run, and although not quite the 2/27-3/2/69 run (what is, though, right?), it did have some great music played throughout.

From the same venue a year later, another four night June run, we have some very tasty music from 6/4/70's acoustic set. We have the show opening Deep Elem Blues, followed by a quartet of songs from the set, featuring Silver Threads and Golden Needles, Friend of the Devil, Black Peter, Cumberland. We don't play as much acoustic Dead here as we'd like, owing primarily to the fact that there isn't all that much acoustic Dead in the vault. Fortunately, what IS there is excellent.

From two nights later during the same run at the Fillmore West, on 6/6/70, we have a very cool sequence of tunes. As you may recall, last year we played you the Good Lovin'/New Orleans jam from earlier in this set, and this year we're pleased to bring you Dire Wolf>Alligator>Drums>Jam>Lovelight>Not Fade Away>Lovelight. Lots of oddness happening here, including a cool pairing of Dire Wolf>Alligator, and a terrific jam after the Drums. The cuts in Drums and Lovelight are where the master reels run out.

Our last stop this week as we begin our Summer Dead listening, we have the show-opening Bertha>Good Lovin' from 6/4/78 at UCSB Stadium in beautiful Santa Barbara, California. There seems to be a couple of minor drop outs in Good Lovin'. This show also featured a very cool Sugar Magnolia second encore that we played here last year, and you can check out all previous Tapers Section here in the archive.

Be sure to stop back next week for some music from 1973, as well as lots of other great stuff. It's always great to hear from you, so feel free to write me at the email address below.

David Lemieux
vault [at] dead.net

Bill Cutler: With a Lot of Help from His Friends

Jonathan Lane — Fri, 30 May 2008 09:21:32 -0700

Garcia and Other Top Bay Area Rockers Make This “Debut” Album Memorable

Drum roll, please…The 2008 Patience and Perseverance Award for a Rock Recording goes to….BILL CUTLER! Yes, 33 years after singer-songwriter Bill Cutler—older brother of Grateful Dead/Garcia Band sound engineer John Cutler—went into Wally Heider Studios in San Francisco with Jerry Garcia and others to lay down tracks on a bunch of Bill’s songs, the album is finally out. Cutler’s Crossing the Line was released this past March on Magnatude Records and has been garnering some seriously good buzz in the Dead Head community. Not only does it include six fine songs with Garcia on lead guitar (tracked in 1975), it also features a slew of other top Bay Area players, including Jorma Kaukonen, Mark Karan, David Nelson, Bob Weir, Matthew Kelly, Dave Torbert, Michael Falzarano, Jerry Miller and many others. Of course, the impressive guest list wouldn’t mean much if the songs and Cutler’s own lead vocals weren’t consistently strong and compelling. Make no mistake about it. This is his album, through and through. There’s a really nice balance of styles here, from solid rock (“Flash Flood”), to ballads (the lovely “Delta Nightingale”), to blues (“Sugar for Sugar”), to hot-pickin’ countryish tunes (the “Cumberland”-ish “Rockingham Mill”), to the exceptional, obviously Van Morrison-influenced “Ridin’ High,” which has Garcia blazing at his best.

How the album came to be and why it had such a long gestation make for a very interesting tale, which Bill Cutler shared with me recently. We started by talking about growing up on the East Coast…

Did you and your brother John move to the West Coast together or separately?

We came out here separately but around the same time. I actually started coming out here in ’67. That’s when I dropped out of school. So I came out just exploring; then I came back in the summer of ’68 again, and then I made the final move in 1970. It took me a few years to sort of organize myself and move out here.

Where did you grow up?

I grew up in a combination of Manhattan and Stamford, Connecticut. We moved to Connecticut from around the time I was 9 or 10 until I graduated, then my parents moved back to Manhattan, so John grew up more in Manhattan than I did., but we both went back and forth.

Had you been in bands back east?

Yes, my whole life I’ve been singing. I started out as a kid singing in glee club and stuff like that, and then I was in two or three bands back East. I was in a band called the Mourning After—how psychedelic is that name? [Laughs]—which played all the clubs you could play in Connecticut and fraternity parties and other little college things. The repertoire was a combination of originals by me, very primitive early psychedelic tunes, and covers of Moby Grape and whoever already had a record deal in the psychedelic world. We covered early Stones and Yardbirds; things like that. I was in another band called Dr. Fate’s Experiment…

Oh, man, you can’t make this shit up! [Laughs]

Exactly! A great name, isn’t it? I was also friendly with and influenced by a band back there I wasn’t in called NGC 4594, which had a song called “Goin’ Home,” which was an early psychedelic hit tune.

But I actually spent most of my time back there playing in Greenwich Village as a singer-songwriter-folk musician. I did the regular, standard clubs—Gaslight Café, the Café Wha, The Bitter End and The Four Winds. For me, Dylan had been my major influence going back as far as ’62-’63—he’s the one who made me think I wanted to be a songwriter. I opened shows for Eric Andersen and David Blue, Phil Ochs. I even opened a show for Dylan at the Gaslight.

How did the San Francisco scene in ’67 compare to what was happening in Greenwich Village?

It was completely different. The New York scene was much more about little groups of people who played certain kinds of music and were in their own little circles. The San Francisco scene seemed like a movement. It was like walking into a place where everyone was in one tribe together. And I hadn’t experienced that. On the East Coast, you kept your cards a little closer to your vest and [in SF] it was a more visual, less verbal sort of a culture.

When I was growing up in New York and learning how to play guitar and stuff, I was looking at the kinds of musicians that would play in New York sessions, and they were tremendously disciplined—jamming was not even a part of the picture. If you had a session in New York and it was called for 10 o’clock, you arrived at 10 o’clock and you were given parts to play. What I was aspiring to in New York was the whole Brill Building songwriter thing, which was very controlled and business-like. The minute I got to San Francisco, I immediately ran in to the other extreme: “You’ve got four chords and we jam on ‘em for 25 minutes.” [Laughs] So it was interesting to take my disciplined New York songwriter side and collide it into, for lack a of a better way of putting it, a Grateful Dead non-navigated experimentation side. It turned out to be a good combination for me. It loosened me up and let me see the value of letting players really do something unique with my music.

Culturally, out here I got into psychedelics more, I met some fascinating people, and I said, ‘I’ve got to live out here.’ The scene was so open and people were so accessible, whereas in New York, the music business people were far more remote and hard to reach.

At Coast Recorders in SF during the last set of tracking sessions for the album are (L-R): Pat Campbell, David Perper, Bill Cutler, Chris Solberg, Mark Karan and David Nelson

So when you come out in ’70 with an eye on music, it’s changed a bit—a lot of musicians have dispersed to Marin…

The real bridge for me into the scene when I moved out here came when I decided I wanted to make a demo of some of my tunes so I’d have something of a calling card. I looked around and thought, “Well, the engineer I liked the best is Steve Barncard,” [who’d recorded American Beauty and David Crosby’s first album, among others], so I called him out of the phone book and asked him to make a demo with me at Funky Jacks’ Recording [actually known as Funky Features, run by Jack Leahy] in the Haight. And he said, “OK!” It blew my mind! [Laughs]. So we made the tape and as a result of that it kind of got circulated around to whoever Stephen bumped into, and one day it fell into the hands of [Canadian folk singer and songwriter] David Rea. I’d been here a couple of years by then, passing the hat playing for tourists at the Cannery [in SF], playing in places like the Coffee Gallery, and gradually starting to put a band together. Anyway, I got a call from David Rea saying he liked the song “Ridin’ High” off my demo and he wanted to know if I wanted to audition for his band. So I did, and the other guys at the audition were Matthew Kelly, Chris Herold, James Ackroyd from James & the Good Brothers, and Pete Sears. At the end of a long day of people jamming and talking, David hired me. So I went from doing my own thing to being a support player in that situation.

They were in the middle of cutting the David Rea & Slewfoot album for Columbia, so I wound up on some of the tracks on that album, playing rhythm and singing backup and stuff. And Bob Weir and Barncard were co-producing that record with David, so that put me into that world. There were a lot of good people on that record: On this track the drummer was Spencer Dryden, on that one the keyboard player was Keith Godchaux, or Charles Lloyd was playing horns; with the core of us. Meanwhile, Matthew and Chris Herold and I were becoming good friends. Slewfoot played around as a band a little, including the Columbia Records convention in ’73, but right about that time, as the record was starting to do pretty well, Clive Davis was fired as president of Columbia and a lot of the acts he had signed that weren’t super-successful—which included us at that point—were dropped from the label.

It’s an old record biz story…

It is an old story, but it’s amazing how often it happens. Still! You need a guy at a label who supports you, and if you don’t have that you’re in trouble. The Sons of Champlin were dropped. We were dropped. Copperhead, which was John Cipollina’s great new band, was dropped. Once Clive was gone, it left a big hole in the northern California music scene.

So at that point I found myself on my own, and that’s when I put the band Heroes together. There were a lot of incarnations of Heroes…

We met originally in 1976 at Weir’s studio when you were recording with Heroes. I had just started working for BAM [magazine] at the time.

That’s right. In 1976, we were the first band to record there, and that’s when you and I met. We probably recorded half an album’s worth of material there. We also recorded a bunch of other stuff at Wally Heider’s. We actually did quite a bit of recording, but we never got a record out mostly because we had this awful string of bad luck—just as we started to get somewhere, a member left or a member died or something happened that would set us back and make us change course. But we did some demos and we played around and we developed a pretty good-sized draw—we headlined a lot of places in San Francisco.

Since you’d had a relationship with Herold and Kelly, was there any talk about you joining Kingfish, which was developing around that time?

Well, originally, Kingfish was going to be a very blues-oriented band, because that’s what Matthew wanted to do. Blues wasn’t really my background—I was more rock, country-rock, folk, R&B. Then, shortly after the band got started, Bobby announced that he wanted to join as the rhythm guitar player and lead singer, and that would’ve been the spot I would’ve had.

Aced out by Ace!

[Laughs] Well, it wasn’t really like that, because I was never close to being in that band. I co-wrote “Home for Dixie” and other things with Matthew and we were pretty close. Before Kingfish, I had worked on Wing and a Prayer, Matt’s solo album, with him back in ’73, after Slewfoot broke up. [That album was not released until the ’80s.] That was the first recording of “Ridin’ High” and that was also the first time I played with Jerry and played with Bobby, because we played in the studio together. I also helped with production on some other tracks I didn’t play on.

Let’s talk about how this album was put together. It’s amazingly seamless considering you’ve got tracks on here that are more than 30 years old combined with things of a much more recent vintage.

Well, it was my desire to make a timeless album that was a songwriter’s album on which the song could be focused on and you weren’t distracted by any of that. A lot of the credit for how seamless it sounds belongs to Russell Bond, who is a very skilled engineer and put in countless hours with me on this project.

Would it be rude of me to say that this album sounds like it could’ve been made in 1974?

Not at all. An album that sounds like this could have been made in 1974; but this album couldn’t have been made in ’74, because the technology required didn’t exist then. If it had been made in ’74, there would be more bleed and hiss and all that kind of stuff.

But in terms of the songwriting, the instrumentation, the feel…

Right. The approach.

How did it end up being this combination of sessions from different decades?

What happened is this: In 1975 I went in and cut what was really the first half of this album at Wally Heiders with a core group of musicians that was sort of becoming Heroes, which included Pat Campbell on bass—he later played in the Good Old Boys with Jerry, and played with Mike Bloomfield and various others. We also had Austin deLone on keyboards—he was great then and great now. Scotty Quik was on lead guitar—he’d been friends with Matthew and Chris and had been in Horses and other bands that fed into that world, and he and I knew each other from the Wing and a Prayer days. I played rhythm guitar and did vocals, and Carl Tassi played drums on the original sessions. Unfortunately, only one of Carl’s tracks survives on this record, bceause the most difficult thing to preserve over 20 or 30 years is drums, because they’re usually on the edge tracks of the tape, which are the ones that tend to decay first.

How did Jerry get involved?

Well, we met on the Wing and a Prayer sessions and in the course of seeing him around, he heard a bunch of my songs and said, “If you ever make an album of your stuff, I’d be happy to help out.” Which was a pretty exciting offer, of course! [Laughs] In fact, I’m not sure I even believed it at first, because people say that kind of stuff all the time and nothing ever comes of it. And I knew how busy Jerry was.

As it turns out, though, before I went in the studio with Pat and Austin and Scotty, Jerry heard that I was going in to record and told me he wanted to play on the tracks. Because the Dead weren’t touring then [during the Dead’s performing hiatus of ’75-’76], he actually had some time and he came by, rehearsed a little with us, and we recorded about half an album with him. He seemed really comfortable in the group. We got some great stuff down, recording a bunch of basic tracks with scratch vocals, and then Jerry added his solos. Steve Barncard was our engineer at Heider’s.

The plan was to cut a bunch more tracks at some point, but what happened is the Grateful Dead went back out onto the road [in mid –’76] and then they got so busy that there was just never an opportunity to do more, so I literally put the tapes in a closet and they sat there for many, many years.

But you talked to Garcia later about working on the album again, didn’t you?

Yes, we re-connected at a Garcia band show at the Warfield in 1993.

Wow, that’s a long time later.

Yeah, it was. I was working with a hip-hop group called the Mystery Tramps and we did a rap version of “Like a Rolling Stone” that Dylan allowed us to use a sample of his voice for—him going, “How does it feel?” Which was a big deal because Dylan had never approved a sample before. So I brought a copy of it to the Warfield to show it to Jerry, and I was surprised that he asked me about what had happened to the tracks we’d recorded at Heider’s all those years ago. He said, “We should finish that album!” At his suggestion I went into Front Street [the Dead’s studio] with my brother and Jeffrey Norman to bake the tapes [to eliminate the build up of sticky emulsion on the analog tapes], and when we played them they did still sound really good. But, unfortunately, we never got back to it in time, and of course by the summer of 1995, Jerry was gone, and I put the tapes back in my closet again.

Literally a closet?

Sure. It was dry and dark. I’ve seen tapes stored in much worse places, believe me. [Laughs]

So at some point, though, you got back to work on this and cut the second half of the album…

It took me a year or two after Jerry died to feel like I wanted to work on the material; just to get over the raw emotions and everything. Then I started looking for a backer and it was a hard project to explain to people. I wanted to have complete artistic control and make it my album with the contributions of all these people. I didn’t want to misrepresent it.

You mean by emphasizing Jerry’s participation?

Right. I mean, I knew that would be interesting to people, and I’m proud to have Jerry on there, of course, but I didn’t want people thinking that’s what the album was about, because it’s just part of it, obviously. Anyway, eventually Greg Torre and Kurt Burgess, who are both great guys, decided to back the project. That was in 1998.

You managed to snag some pretty good guitarists to help you out on the next round of recording: Mark Karan, Barry Sless, Jerry Miller, Jorma…

I was very fortunate. They’re all people I’ve known for a long time; I’ve known Mark since the early ’70s when he was in the Sarah Baker Band. I’ve known Barry since he started playing in the David Nelson Band. Jerry Miller played with Heroes as a guest guitarist at the first Haight Street Fair in ’78, and Jorma and I recorded together in the ’80s with Michael Falzarano. I wanted to find people who would sound right for the material. It wasn’t just guitarists, either. We cut new drum tracks and keyboards and all sorts of other things. The basic tracks for the next round of recordings were done at Coast Recorders. I was able to cut new lead vocals on all the material, which was done at Russell Bond’s studio, called Howling Point, in Los Gatos. The backup vocals were recorded at Jeff Watson’s studio in Mill Valley by Russell and me. Gary Mankin, another great engineer who I’ve worked with for years, was the main engineer on the second half of the record, though Russell recorded the overdubs and did the mixing.

Was it difficult to match the sound of the older tapes?

We listened to the old tracks and we didn’t match the sounds exactly, but we used some of the same gear [as the original sessions] and that signal path. The new material was cut analog through a Neve [console] onto a Studer [multitrack tape recorder] just like the original stuff. We did the basic tracks at Coast Recorders in San Francisco, which was the closest thing I could find that was like the old Heider’s studio. It had all the right gear and a big, good-sounding drum room, which we needed.

We also worked with Pro Tools. By this time—1999 or 2000—Pro Tools had gotten to the stage where I was willing to put this beautiful analog stuff in there and it didn’t feel like a sonic sacrifice. Once we moved everything into Pro Tools [for editing and overdubs] we would take our rig wherever we needed to and that gave us more flexibility.

How different do you sound now as a singer?

I sound much the same. I sang in the same keys. I haven’t lost any of my range.

Do you have a favorite track?

Well, they’re all important to me in different ways. I guess “Delta Nightingale” is one, though, because it was such a revelation to hear it after all these years and hear all the sensitive work from Jerry on it and to have these wonderful backup vocals on it now.

I like the sort of Van Morrison-ish feel of a lot of the backup vocals on the album.

Well, the female back up singers are Desiree Goyette, Conesha Owens and Sandy Griffith. They were terrific to work with! I didn’t have a target record I wanted it to sound like. I just let it be what it was and I wanted it to be cohesive from track to track and make sure the bottom end was consistent. There were three different bass players on the album—Pat Campbell, Chris Solberg and Dave Torbert—so it was a challenge to unify the sound. Joe Gastwirt did the mastering and really helped tie it all together.

What’s the story behind “Starlite Jamboree,” which has Jerry on it but also seems to be about Jerry?

How that came about is that Jerry and I used to bullshit about this idea I had for a film. He had bought the rights to [the Kurt Vonnegut book] Sirens of Titan, and was really into film and science fiction and all that. So one day I said to him, “Wouldn’t it be cool to have a Twilight Zone where you could play music with guys who had already died?” He loved that idea and we nicknamed it the “Starlite Jamboree.” We used to say, “I’ll meet you at the Starlite Jamboree,” but it was a joke. Anyway, I also had these [chord] changes I used to call “Starlite Jamboree,” though I didn’t have any lyrics for them. I’d try a lyric and it’d suck. Jerry had played some guitar licks over these chords that I really liked, and I thought, “I’ve gotta finish that someday.” Then, when Jerry died, I decided to write the lyrics about him. I re-recorded the whole song with Barry [Sless] and Mark Karan and [drummer] David Perper and various others, and I was able to import Jerry’s track and put it on at the same tempo as the old one. I’m really happy with how it came out.

So when was the album completed?

We mixed it in 2001.

Why did it take so many years to get it out, then?

Well, after that we ran into the issue of clearances for all of our players and all the legal ramifications—there was turmoil around the Garcia estate, so it took a long time to settle all the legal issues around the record.

You must be thrilled to have this album finally out after all these years.

I can’t even put it into words. It’s been the strangest and most exhausting thing I’ve ever been involved in, but it’s also been so exciting and so satisfying. I’m getting letters and emails from all over the world. Because Pete Morticelli at Magnatude Records chose to release it in Europe and Asia and made deals with iTunes and Amazon and dead.net, it’s available everywhere, no matter how you like to get your music. I’m hearing from four generations of people, and most of the feedback has been extremely positive, so it’s been an incredible experience. And we’re still just getting the word out…

I presume you have newer songs, too, that will perhaps see the light of day?

Sure. I’m always writing, so I have a huge backlog of material; certainly more than enough to do another album, which I’ll think about depending on how things go with this.

And hopefully you won’t be 90 when it comes out!

[Laughs] Yeah, maybe the next one can come out a little quicker! Of course, I’ve been on other records in between, and in bands, so it’s not like I’ve been sitting around for 30 years only working on this. But amazingly enough this is my debut as a solo artist!

* * *

To order Bill’s album click here.

Grateful Dead Hour no. 572

ccasal — Wed, 21 May 2008 08:44:40 -0700

Week of September 6, 1999

Part 2 of a three-part GD Hour broadcast in memory of Dick Latvala, the Grateful Dead's tape archivist, who passed away in the summer of 1999.

This program began as a live broadcast on KPFA on August 11, 1999.

Phone calls from listeners and friends of Dick Latvala.

Interview with Dick Latvala 2/96 regarding Dick's Picks vol.4 . Excerpts from "Alligator," "The Other One," "China Cat Sunflower."

Interview with Dick Latvala 4/95 with Dick's Picks vol. 2 montage and excerpts.

Thanks for listening!
David Gans
gdhour@dead.net

Listen Now

Grateful Dead Hour no. 571

ccasal — Tue, 20 May 2008 11:57:31 -0700

Week of August 30, 1999

This is the first of a three-part GD Hour broadcast in memory of Dick Latvala, the wonderful crazy Deadhead who was hired in 1985 to take care of the Grateful Dead's tape archive, and later became the namesake of the Dick' Picks series of live concert releases.

As you will hear in the program, Dick was working with Blair Jackson, Steve Silberman and me on the boxed set So Many Roads: 1965-1995, filling our heads with possibilities as we struggled to pack thirty years of musical development into a 5-CD compilation, when he had a heart attack. He remained in a coma for several days before departing this life.

Dick Latvala was a hero to Deadheads everywhere because of the work he did in serving this music we all love so much. He is loved, and he is missed.

Grateful Dead, Dick's Picks vol. 14 (12/2/73)
MORNING DEW

TRIBUTE TO DICK LATVALA part 1:
Interview with Dick when Dick's Picks vol 1 was released ... How Dick became a Deadhead ... got paid to take psychedelics in a clinical study ... worked as a mailman ... moved to Hawaii ... What made the Dead more special than the other bands on the SF scene ... how he got into collecting tapes ... kept notes on every tape he collected ... Dick's work in support of the So Many Roads boxed set project ... Phone interview with David Nelson ... post from John Cutler: "Tonight I ask that all who have been touched by Dick and wish to celebrate his unique and special life adopt Bob's toast: Latvala!” Dick's first meeting with the GD at Red Rocks in 1979 ... Closing of Winterland was the most powerful day of his life ... “Primal Dead” ... hired as the archivist ... origin of the Dick's Picks series... how he made his choices and how the process worked ...

Grateful Dead, Dick's Picks vol. 1 (12/19/73)
HERE COMES SUNSHINE

You can browse and/or search the Grateful Dead Hour program logs on the GD Hour web site. Let me know if there's a particular program you'd like to hear, and feel free to post requests and comments here or by email to gdhour@dead.net

Thanks for listening!
David Gans
gdhour@dead.net

Listen Now

May 26 - June 1, 2008

ccasal — Tue, 20 May 2008 09:48:09 -0700

This week we'll cover 20 years in the Grateful Dead's recorded history, from 1973 to 1993, with a little taste of something in between.

Our first stop is at Kezar Stadium in San Francisco, right on the tip of Haight-Ashbury. There's still a field there, but the stadium no longer exists, unfortunately. Hunter lamented the closing of Kezar and Lindley Meadows for concerts with this verse from Truckin', sung by the lyric writer, but never by the Grateful Dead in concert:

Once in a while when the music gets into the street
Fifty old ladies buck every cop on the beat
They're putting the lock on Lindley Meadow and Kezar
Beginning to look like we can't play in the park

Of course, the Grateful Dead would return for a free concert to memorialize Bill Graham on 11/1/91, but by the late-1970s, Golden Gate Park was generally closed to concerts. However, from 5/26/73 at Kezar, we are very please to play the ending sequence from the second set (of a three set concert), China Cat Sunflower>I Know You Rider, Bertha, Around and Around. This was the third consecutive weekend concert that would take up the Grateful Dead's May, 1973, schedule, with the others being 5/13/73 in Des Moines and 5/20/73 in Santa Barbara.

From the same date four years later, 5/26/77 in beautiful Charm City, Baltimore, we have the quartet of songs that closed the first set, consisting of Looks Like Rain, Jack-A-Roe, Minglewood Blues, Bertha. This was the penultimate show of the super fine Spring Tour of 1977, and featured the high level of playing consistent with the rest of the tour. It's always our pleasure to play you more music from this great tour, hon.

As our last visit to the Spring Tour of 1977, we'll stop in on the final show of the tour, five weeks after it started in Philadelphia. The tour ended at the venerable old Hartford Civic Center, then home to the Hartford Whalers hockey team, who were at that time part of the WHA, still two years away from joining the NHL. Many people don't know this, but the team's nickname, the Whalers, was applied due to the team's affiliation with its league, not, as a wise man once guessed, due to the “Connecticut whaling industry.” (!) Rather, the name stems from the fact that they were conceived as part of the WHA, hence the WHAlers. Anyhow, enough hockey talk. From the final show of the tour, here is the middle segment of the first set, Jack Straw, Row Jimmy, Minglewood Blues, Candyman, Passenger, Brown-Eyed Woman.

Finally this week, we'll check in on the Cal Expo show in Sacramento on 5/26/93. Last year here we played some of the more well-known highlights of that show, including that monster Playing In The Band that is widely considered one of the finest versions played beyond 1974. This week, we'd like to play you the show's closing sequence of Corrina>Playing In The Band reprise>China Doll>Around and Around. The Corrina has a very cool intro, with Phil doing all sorts of cool stuff.

Be sure to pop back next week for more great June Grateful Dead music. As we begin looking ahead a few weeks, we see some great music on the horizon. Feel free to write to the email address below with questions or comments, suggestions or requests.

David Lemieux
vault [at] dead.net

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