Mime Troupe Benefit - first show as "The Grateful Dead" - also: Jefferson Airplane; The Great Sciety; John Handy Quintet; The Mystery Trend; The Gentlemen's Band
show date
Venue
dead comment
The music mix
I went to hear John Handy. My friends wanted to see the Airplaine. The bonus, for me, life changing beyond my imagination was the Dead. Where are those days, when it was music that mattered?
December 10, 1965
The birthday of both the Grateful Dead and me. Unfortunately I missed the concert that day. Oh well.
December 10, 1965
The best I can remember is that we came over on a bus from the California Hall where there was another show going on, (maybe it was the Charlatans), to see the Airplane and climbed the stairs to the Fillmore to find the Dead on stage, (who I was unaware of at that time, now knowing of course why, that that was the first, maybe second night, depending upon whose telling the story, that they ever played as the Grateful Dead), walking their guitars into their speakers and piercing the Fillmore with feed back like I had never heard. It was not painful like the feedback, (essentially sonic mistakes), of other bands but "musical" in it's own way. They were, particularly Jerry and Pigpen dark and hairy guys, kind of scary even. They had control of this sound they were evoking and then slid it back into a sound we understood as music, melody, harmony, time change etc. I remember now how vividly I was taken and got on a second "bus" in short order. Nearly everyone was very high in the hall that night and later at the side bar drinking some water I spoke for a moment about that which I cannot remember now to Jerry, beginning a casual conversation which continued very occasionally around the halls and clubs over the next few years. I feel wonderful soft tears at the memories and miss the live band deeply.
December 10, 1965
My band, the Vipers, actually opened the show. http://www.chickenonaunicycle.com/Phoenix.htm
We weren't on the poster or the newspaper ad, but neither were the Dead.
http://rockarchaeology101.blogspot.com/2010/03/1805-geary-blvd-san-fran…
Ralph Gleason still referred to them as the Warlocks in his review.
http://deadsources.blogspot.com/2013/02/december-10-1965-fillmore-audit…
The "VIPs" was his misreading of our name, the Vipers.
I attended the Big Beat Acid Test the next night, where the Dead also played. A pretty big weekend for a 21 year old, soon to be a Stanford drop-out.
Fillmore 12/10/65: "Wreak Havoc's Historic '65 Wreakend"
I never tire of reading about such specific and momentous memories as this one you've shared. In this case, it helps to bridge the chronological and geographic distance, of having been a southern Ohio 3-yr-old at that time! Thank you.