Grateful Dead

Independence Ball, 7/3/66 supplementary notes

by Jesse Jarnow

This episode of the Deadcast explores the earliest full-show release, from July 3rd, 1966 at the Fillmore Auditorium, six months before they recorded their first album. We’ve made a number of episodes that cover the Dead’s earliest years. To listen in rough chronological order up to this episode: The Silver Snarling Trumpet  (Part 1, Part 2); Jerry Garcia: American Folkie; our biographical episodes about Phil Lesh, Bobby Weir, and Pigpen; a brief segment about the Warlocks in Enjoying the Ride: Bay Area, Part 1; Hug The Heat (about the Fillmore Acid Test); and LA ‘66.

Narrating much of the story is the incomparable Rosie McGee, who published the photo-memoir of the band’s early years Dancing With the Dead and recently launched a newsletter with lots of Dead stories and pictures (and other fun writing). 

The Owsley Stanley Foundation continues its mission of preserving Owsley’s tape archive. They recently posted the entirety of reel 1,300, a complete mystery to them (with no audible Dead connection), and welcome your suggestions about what it might be. In this episode, we discuss some of the contents of Bear’s magical banana box of mystery reels, including a fragment of stage banter that suggests the Dead were about to play the Pav-A-Lon, directly on Huntington Beach, a peak ‘60s surf spot. The venue can be seen in the background in great pictures of the very happening surf scene.

Back in northern California, Rosie McGee helped locate Rancho Olompali, where the band lived for 6 idyllic weeks in summer 1966, the site of enormous parties. Partygoers at the legendary May 22nd, 1966 blowout included the band’s new and old friends in the Jefferson Airplane, Quicksilver Messenger Service, the Great Society, and original psychedelic band the Charlatans. The party is described from the Charlatans’ perspective in a long, wild feature about them. 

After the Dead moved out, a bit later, the Chosen Family commune moved in, and Burdell Mansion was once again a center for heady activity, which included jam sessions by the Dead and friends, as well as the Aoxomoxoa photo shoot (which does not include young Courtney Love). The mansion burned down a few years later. It’s now a state park, where you can explore the ruins, site of occasional archeological digs.

Back in San Francisco, the Dead modeled clothing for Peggy Caserta’s boutique Mnasdika.

David Gans’s full interview with Owsley Stanley can be read in Conversations With the Dead. Jerry Garcia recounted the “all” experience at Olompali to Dennis McNally, which can be read or heard via Jerry On Jerry.