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- [00:00]
Rich Mahan
Hello Friends. Author and fellow Deadhead Steve Silberman passed away suddenly just after the first episode of the good old Grateful Dead cast season 10 was released. A frequent contributor to the Dead Cast, Steve's insight and humor will be greatly missed.
- [00:16]
Jesse Jarno
Here's Jesse There are layers of Deadheads original Haight, Ashbury or East Village Dead freaks. People who got into the band from hearing them on the radio in the American Beauty era or when they were hitting college campuses hard in the early 70s. Fans who came on board after the massive summer festivals at Watkins Glen or Englishtown, or the Touch Heads who arrived with in the dark in the 80s. I was none of those. I was and am a skeleton Keyhead Steve Silberman is one of my favorite writers ever, and in that way I still want everybody to meet and hang out with him. As far as I'm concerned, Skeleton Key should be issued to all newly minted Dead Freaks in anybody who has anything to do with the Dead, or anyone who's ever heard the phrase Grateful Dead and is remotely curious. His other book Neurotribes, meanwhile, should probably just be issued to all humans. Find the Others remains perhaps Timothy Leary's most sage piece of advice. Steve was an excellent and righteous other finder, equally well indexed and ready to be found. As we've been saying, fly your freak flags at Half Master. Love you, Steve.
- [01:30]
Rich Mahan
The Good Old Grateful Dead Cast the Official Podcast of the Grateful Dead. I'm Rich Mahan with Jesse Jarno exploring the music and legacy of the Grateful Dead for the committed and the curious. Ladies and gentlemen, fellow Deadheads, welcome to season 10 of the Good Old Grateful Dead Cast. I'm your co host Rich Mahan. Thank you very much for tuning in. In this episode of the Good Old Grateful Dead Cast, we continue our journey through the new Grateful Dead box set Friend of the Devils. This time around we delve into the two Atlanta shows in the box from the fox Theater on April 10th and 11th, 1978. This new limited edition Friend of the Devil's box set is selling quick and with good reason. The band was playing great in spring 78 and as the name suggests, this 19 CD box set presents eight unreleased concerts that feature the rise of drums and space as second set traditions. Friend of the Devils April 1978 includes complete shows from Curtis Hickson Convention Hall, Tampa, Florida 4678 Sportatorium in Pembroke Pines, Florida 4778 the Veterans Memorial Coliseum in Jacksonville, Florida on 4878 the Fox Theater, Atlanta, Georgia which we're talking about today on 410 and 41178 Cameron Indoor Stadium at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina for 1278 the Castle Coliseum in Virginia at the Polytechnic Institute in Blacksburg on 41478 and the Huntington Civic center in Huntington, West Virginia on 416 78. The concert at Duke is the breakout show from this box and will be released separately as Duke 78. It'll be available as a 3 CD set, a 4LP set, and of course, digitally. Both Duke 78 and the limited edition Friend of the Devils will be released on September 20th. More info and orders are happening now over at dead.net head on over to dead.net deadcast check out all of our past episodes, including the complete seasons 1 through 9. You can link from there to your favorite podcasting platform so you can listen how, when and where you like to listen. Please help this podcast by subscribing, sharing us with your friends on social media, hitting that like button and leaving a review. Thank thank you very much. Hey, were any of you heads out there at any of the shows in spring 78 up and down the East Coast? Well, we want to hear from you. We need your stories to illustrate just how wonderful all of these shows were. Record your tour story@stories.dead.net and you may hear yourself on a future episode of the Deadcast. We've got a way that you can dive into these Dead casts a little more closely. We have transcripts from many of your favorite Dead cast episodes available for your reading pleasure. Head over to dead.netdeadcast index and check them out. Oh Atlanta. Anybody who's been to the Fox Theater knows what a special place it is. And on April 10th and 11th, 1978, the Grateful Dead treated the citizens of Hotlanta to two memorable shows. We're going to hear about the Dead history in this Southern metropolis, meet some very interesting people who hung with the band and Jerry, and dive into the changes to Garcia's gear setup that allowed him to generate the new sounds of this era. It's time to hand the microphone over to your friend and mine, Jesse Jarno.
- [05:44]
Jesse Jarno
After opening their Spring 78 tour with three shows in Florida, the Grateful Dead rolled into Atlanta for two nights at the Fox Theater. Now the fourth and fifth shows on the new Friend of the Devils box. Grateful Ed archivist and legacy manager David.
- [05:58]
David Lemieux
Lemieux I love both these shows. These were shows I got early in my tape trading when the Betty board started showing up from this tour. The Fox shows were the first two I got.
- [06:23]
Glenn Phillips
With the look that's in her eye. I had to learn the hard way to let her pass by.
- [06:33]
David Lemieux
It's a long tour. It's the 6th through the 24th, and then a 10 day break before another two weeks. So they're. They're busy. They got a lot going on. They're recording a new album, Shakedown street on the go. But these shows that the Fox is really. Shows that the tour is really building momentum. And I. That's what I find. This tour builds more than any other tour. I find that a lot of tours start strong, if not a little mellow and strong. And they've got like a vibe. This one keeps growing as the. Keeps going up as the, as the shows go on.
- [07:06]
Glenn Phillips
Upside down, inside down. False alarm. The only game in town. No, man. The only game in town. Terrible. The only game in town.
- [07:27]
Jesse Jarno
It was later in 1978, that Bill Graham had one of his famous lines about the Dead painted on the outside of Winterland.
- [07:33]
Donna Jean Godchaux McKay
They're not the best at what they do. They're the only ones who do what they do. The Grateful Dead, please.
- [07:39]
Jesse Jarno
We're gonna use Betty Cantor Jackson's beautifully recorded tapes from the two Fox gigs, listen to some never heard interviews with Jerry Garcia, and talk about some other popular and underground music of the era to really get inside what Bill Graham's famous phrase meant in April 1978.
- [07:55]
Glenn Phillips
Once in a while you can get shown the light in the street.
- [08:08]
Jesse Jarno
At the most surface level. The Grateful Dead changed their set lists around of their rock and roll peers in 1978. Like the Rolling Stones, Neil Young and Bob Dylan, the Dead were among the few to be predictably unpredictable. Even Bruce Springsteen and Frank Zappa were playing basically the same set lists night after night in 1978 with only a few changes. Hot Tuna had been keeping things pretty loose, but they broke up at the end of 1977. If you wanted to follow an artist with truly variable set lists and weren't a jazz fan, you had to look a little deeper to the rock underground, to artists like NRBQ or the Patty Smith Group, who'd started playing some of the same theaters the Dead in their side projects could still cram into. But set lists were only one level of what was variable about the Dead's music.
- [08:55]
David Lemieux
To see this in the Fox Theater again. I always encourage people to look at the venue before they listen to a show because this is a great looking venue. The Dead had a bit of a history there. 77, 78, 85. Played some good shows there.
- [09:13]
Glenn Phillips
Don't murder me. I Beg up, you don't murder me. Please don't murder me.
- [09:28]
David Lemieux
And I've got to wonder, you know, did that inspire the band to play differently when they get into a nice, beautiful theater versus playing a dumpy arena, does that translate to the vibe of the show? I don't know. Certainly they're two very different venues. And this is, what, five days apart? So you've played three kind of weird venues in Florida, and now you're in these beautiful theaters in Atlanta, where they clearly love playing.
- [09:54]
Jesse Jarno
It certainly made a difference to the vocalists in the band. Please welcome back Donna Jean Godsho McKay. Oh, like singing in a theater. Oh, my gosh. A theater like that was built for music instead of a hockey rink or something else. Just to sing in the theater was just like, oh, my gosh. This is what this building was made for was music. So I love that. I love that. And coming from a studio mentality, it was more controlled. And so you had more of a controlled sonic atmosphere in a theater than elsewhere.
- [10:50]
Glenn Phillips
Slowly round the fire when he is done I wanna know him better.
- [11:04]
Steve Mazner
When.
- [11:05]
Jesse Jarno
The Grateful Dead returned to the road in 1976, part of the intent was to keep things at a more manageable level for both the band and audience, with the hopes that they could spend more time playing in the theaters that the band considered their natural home. But by 1978, that was getting to be a losing battle because of the demand for the band. Because sometimes the band needed the paydays, and because sometimes there just wasn't a nice theater to play in Atlanta. Circumstances combined to put them in a beautiful venue during their late 70s appearances. The Dead's first two shows in Atlanta in 1969 and 1970, were both with Atlanta's hometown underground heroes, who, like the Dead had done in San Francisco, pioneered the local practice of playing for free in the park and became one of the most legendary and incredible groups in the city's history. I'm speaking, of course, of the Hampton Grease Band.
- [12:40]
Glenn Phillips
In the year of old, Tan cray became Crow Factory's manicured, stale salt lungs.
- [12:51]
Jesse Jarno
We're absolutely delighted to welcome, from the Hampton Grease Band, guitarist Glenn Phillips.
- [12:57]
Bob Weir
When the Grease Band first started, we couldn't find any place to play. And I had read about the Grateful Dead doing shows in the park. And so I went down to Piedmont park in Atlanta, which is a really big park, with a clock radio, because I had seen that there was an outlet in the pavilion. And I plugged it into the pavilion and I realized it was live. And I just said to the band, we need to start going down to the park and playing.
- [13:24]
Glenn Phillips
Well, hey, old lady, what do you do? I pick up garbage and what's it to you? Spend my lifetime walking around Picking up residue all over town When I'm seen everyone roars I get to see.
- [13:40]
Jesse Jarno
The Hampton Grease Band was fronted by young Bruce Hampton. Not yet militarized, he would only promote himself to Colonel in the 80s and wasn't the leader of the Grease Band, despite being its namesake.
- [13:50]
Bob Weir
We started going down there every week, and by the following summer, later, later that summer, other bands were joining us. And then the following. Then we got a call from the Allman Brothers, from Phil Walden, can the Allman Brothers come play with you? Then we played there with the Grateful Dead. And it just exploded into this whole scene. And it was like this influence of reading a line about them playing in the park for free that led to the scene exploding in Atlanta for me. Plugging a clock radio in, even to the point where the Grateful Dead were playing there.
- [14:25]
Glenn Phillips
St. Stephen with the rose in it now in the garden country Garland in the wind and the rain Wherever he goes the people all complain.
- [14:47]
Jesse Jarno
The Dead show in Piedmont park in July 1969 was their first appearance in Atlanta, including a Super Jam that was also their first time playing with the members of the Allman Brothers. Sadly, neither Glenn Phillips nor Harold Kelling from the Grease Band played in the Super Jam. In the late 60s and early 70s, the Hampton grease Band anchored a thriving local scene. In part because Glen saw the band at the fox in 78 too. In part because I'm an enormous fan of both the Grease Band and Glenn's solo work. We're going to use them as a way to tell the story of how the Grateful Dead's music evolved and what it meant in 1978. Not that other towns had bands exactly like the Hampton Grease Band, but lots of towns had their own underground rock acts that started in the 60s who didn't quite break through nationally, but whose members stayed active as members of the longer musical continuum, blurring the lines between eras and subcultures. The Dead and the Grease Band only crossed paths a few times, but it made an impact.
- [15:43]
Bob Weir
I remember talking to Jerry Garcia at one point about comic books and that he was very into comic books and I was very into comic books when I was growing up. Just the expression, an open ended expression of imagination is what it's about. And that. That's. That's what it. That's the button that it pressed in him and myself and many others. And just Finding that wherever you did, whether it was a novel, a comic book, a movie, another band just seen, sort of being taken aback by the openness and the freedom of it allows you to feel like you have a license to do the same thing.
- [16:25]
Jesse Jarno
Before we get too much further, I'll note that we've Posted links@dead.net Deadcast to Glenn's music, as well as his excellent and soulful memoir, the Hampton Grease Band. My life, my music, and how I stopped having panic attacks.
- [16:39]
Bob Weir
You'll frequently find very common stories among bands about them being a collective of somewhat dysfunctional individuals. And this would certainly include myself. And the form of therapy is just letting out what's inside and getting it in front of yourself. And that's what moves you forward through life. I don't want it to sound negative when I talk about dysfunction or problems growing up that people have. But this collective, it's kind of a healing process, a collective healing process that's.
- [17:15]
Jesse Jarno
Taking place without knowing it. Glenn is describing the setup for Theodore Sturgeon's More Than Human, the classic sci fi novel that the Dead read collectively when they were getting their chops together in 1966, about a group of supernaturally dysfunctional people who create a combined energy force greater than themselves, called a blesh to outside observers, even if they didn't know the term, the Grateful Dead were obviously that. Another term that circulates around the Grateful Dead, sometimes attributed to Bob Weir, is misfit power. And Glenn Phillips and the Hampton Grease Band practice that, too.
- [17:50]
Bob Weir
It's like you think you're sort of picking up little pieces of little crumbs, but they're a trail and they lead someplace. Obviously. The Hampton Grease Band, I'd have to say, was inspired by the Grateful Dead, but. And influenced by it. But it doesn't sound like the Grateful Dead. The reason the Grateful Dead are great is because they sound like themselves. And it's the same other bands who find the truth inside themselves and find a way to get it out in front of them. That's what's important about music.
- [18:22]
Jesse Jarno
Sadly, owing to Owsley Stanley's bust in February, there are no tapes of the Sports arena gig in May 1970, where the Hampton Grease Band opened and the Dead borrowed the Allman Brothers amps and jammed with brother Duane. But after their first two trips to Atlanta, vibes got a little harsher when they returned in November 1971.
- [18:40]
Steve Mazner
Hey, that's not really necessary, man. That's not really necessary, Okay?
- [18:46]
Jesse Jarno
A lot harsher, okay?
- [18:48]
Steve Mazner
There ain't gonna be no music as long as there's cops on this stage.
- [18:51]
Jesse Jarno
For the next few years, the Dead were confined to the cavernous Omni.
- [18:55]
Glenn Phillips
I'd like to wish Dicky Betts a.
- [18:58]
Steve Mazner
Happy birthday to his birthday.
- [19:00]
Jesse Jarno
It was only when the Jerry Garcia Band started touring in 1976 that they landed on the Fox. Originally opened in 1929, it was a contemporary of the St. Louis Fox Theater. Another favorite, Dead Zone, opened by William Henry Fox that same year. Though they were hardly clones of one another, the Atlanta Fox was part of a Shriner temple. Though the Shriners were gone by 1930. We've posted a link to a documentary about the venue's history@dead.net deadcast I came.
- [19:28]
Bob Weir
Here for the Metropolitan Opera when we would have a red carpet placed across Peachtree street between the Georgian Terrace Hotel and and the Fox Theater. And in between the acts we would go across the street and have champagne.
- [19:42]
Jesse Jarno
And then come back by.
- [19:44]
Bob Weir
And it was just a very glamorous time in Atlanta.
- [19:48]
Jesse Jarno
In the spring of 1978, there was still world changing underground music to be found in Georgia. But the scene had shifted somewhat. The Allman Brothers had broken up in 1976, though they'd reunite later in the summer of 78. In 1975, Glenn Phillips had self financed and self released his solo debut Lost at Sea. This is Lenore.
- [20:40]
Bob Weir
After Grease man broke up, I put out a solo album that I recorded on my own. And Richard Branson flew over from England and signed me to Virgin and we went over there and toured.
- [20:51]
Jesse Jarno
Glenn and his music turned out to be the perfect way to evoke the changing times. Virgin Records had started from the original Virgin Records store in London. Its early releases are all what we lovingly call progressive. That was the titanically selling Tubular Bells by Mike Oldfield. There was a pretty big vibe shift going on as Glenn discovered when he got to England.
- [21:27]
Bob Weir
I went over there. I stayed with Mike Oldfield while I was there. Who? You know, Tubular Bells. And he was a big Virgin artist. And just I was hanging around a lot at the Virgin offices and the Sex Pistols. I would cross paths with them at the Virgin offices. And plus there was, I remember parties at Richard Branson's house boat and I'd run into people from different bands that were connected with Virginia. And so the Sex Pistols were around then.
- [21:59]
Glenn Phillips
God save the queen she ain't no human being There is no future in England's Freeman.
- [22:12]
Jesse Jarno
After EMI signed and dropped the Sex Pistols, Virgin Records scooped them up and the Sex Pistols version of punk detonated across brains around the world. In rock history, there's a before and after the Sex Pistols, just like there is for Elvis or the Beatles or Nirvana. But while your history books might frame punk in opposition to lots of other music, we here at the Dead cast are here to celebrate the whole spectrum.
- [22:35]
Bob Weir
Magazines were very much wanting to jump on whatever they thought was new in the breaking story and cover it. So they sort of presented this as that was then, this is now sort of moment. This is what's new. This is what's. This is what matters, but within the world itself. And this is what the Grateful Dead very much were about and their audience were very much about. That was not really reality. That was marketing. And for musicians and as well for, I think, a lot of people in the audience, it was an evolving, growing thing. But that didn't mean that it discarded the past. For some people, it did like, oh, that all sucks. But even if you go back and listen to music that was coming out at the beginning of the New Wave era, you think of a band like Television. If you go back and listen to that first Television album, it's very clear that they were very much influenced by the Grateful Dead.
- [24:07]
Jesse Jarno
Television's Marquee Moon was released in February 1977, and remains a regular jam in this household. While we're throwing down mile markers for the Friend of the devil's box. Though April 1978 was also the month of television's second album, Adventure.
- [24:29]
Glenn Phillips
I just get so sore Careful, careful you know I need that girl more and more, more.
- [24:57]
Bob Weir
When I came back to Atlanta, the new wave punk movement was exploding. I wasn't really part of that, except for the do it yourself ethos, you know, where. Just make your own record.
- [25:09]
Jesse Jarno
Not only was punk exploding in Atlanta, punk was exploding on Atlanta. The Sex Pistols virtually followed Glenn Phillips home.
- [25:16]
Bob Weir
Ironically, they did their first show in the U.S. here in Atlanta, and ended up hanging out with one of my neighbors that lived around the corner from me while they were in town.
- [25:26]
Jesse Jarno
The Sex Pistols tour of the United States was pretty short, opening at the Great Southeastern Music hall in Atlanta on January 5th. In Grateful Dead terms, it coincided almost exactly with a mini tour of California, where Jerry Garcia lost his voice, which we talked about in the first episode of this season. The pistols run ended two weeks later at Winterland on January 14, while the dead were in Bakersfield. What turned out to be the Sex Pistol's final show of their original run.
- [25:56]
Glenn Phillips
Ever get the feeling you've been cheated? Good night.
- [26:02]
Jesse Jarno
The next night, January 15th, back in Atlanta, was another turning of eras. Where the Glenn Phillips Band headlined the Capri Theater with an opening set by Bruce Hampton. Then during his stint as a standup comedian.
- [26:15]
Bob Weir
When I came back from England the first time, you know, there was a lot of buzz because I put Lost at Sea out and just put it out myself and recorded it at home. And the fact that this label was picking it up overseas and the record become big, big there. The first thing I did was I did a show at this theater in Atlanta. But I had Harold and Bruce come down and to do some shows with. To do some songs with the band. So there was still this connection between the past, the present and the future. And. But that was the kickoff of Bruce's solo career.
- [26:51]
Glenn Phillips
Every day that the sunshine come through to you Feel the sunshine in every way Feel the sunshine lies on me.
- [27:06]
Jesse Jarno
That spring, Bruce Hampton was recording his first album outside the Hampton Grease Band. One ruined life of a bronze tourist. He wasn't yet a colonel though, but went under the name Mr. Hampton B. Coles retired.
- [27:20]
Glenn Phillips
I was down at Cocoa beach where the sun always shines I was eating on some pineapple and some coconut rind when long up to me came a man and he said, you got the same head as my daughter who was dead. Awesome time.
- [27:48]
Jesse Jarno
But the epicenter of radical Georgian music had shifted to nearby Athens, where In April of 1978, the same month the Dead played the Fox, a new young band released their debut 7 inch single, which John Lennon later credited with reviving his own interest in making music. Ladies gentlemen, non binary heads the B52.
- [28:19]
Glenn Phillips
We were at a party his earlobe fell in the deep Someone reached in and grabbed Was a rock, pop rock lobster.
- [28:38]
Bob Weir
There was a thriving musical scene that had a foot in the past and a foot in the present and the future. Bands like the pool cues, the B52s pylon, the fans, the Brains, these were all bands that were perceived of as being new wave. A lot of them grew up coming to hear the Grease Band and telling me that that had an impact on them and. And influenced them. I identified very much with the bands that were playing the Swimming Pool Cues at the time. Were considered a new wave band. I was really close friends with Jeff, who I still play with today, Bob Elsey, their guitarist. I gave guitar lessons too. I felt connected with these people. I'd sit in with them, they'd sit in with us, we'd do shows together.
- [29:26]
Glenn Phillips
The only thing alarming was the noise. 84 signals over the wire Shut waves crack Boggles apart Wanna stay late after one or maybe Some other number A flash report loud and clear Penetrates my slumber.
- [29:52]
Jesse Jarno
That was the swimming pool cues with the A bomb woke me up. Despite how the story is sometimes told, there was and is a pretty blurry line between the hippie underground and the punk underground. And I like imagining that there were probably a few very cool weirdos who caught some of the B52's earliest gigs in Athens and who also saw the Dead at the Fox in those years. The Grateful Dead could still be considered underground music in their own Way in 1978, but they were their own kind of long developing independent entity. They'd moved onto a parallel track around the time they started their own record company in 1973 and stayed there when they reintegrated with the mainstream a few years later. One aspect of Bill Graham's maxim about the Dead being the only ones who did what they did is that it didn't apply only to the musicians on stage, but but their whole traveling crew. Nothing came fabricated. There was no one they could hire to come make recordings of their shows. We have the great recordist Betty Cantor Jackson to thank for taking that task on herself. We wouldn't be here talking about these shows today if not for her tapes. David Lemieux these are unreals.
- [30:58]
David Lemieux
These are all 7 inch reels running at 7 1/2 inches per second, so pretty much the standard 76 through 79.
- [31:07]
Jesse Jarno
And they sound amazing.
- [31:22]
David Lemieux
If we'd had the tapes 25 years ago or when Dick was working on the tapes, I'm sure some of it, if not more than some of it, would have come out. The reason is these tapes weren't in the vault.
- [31:33]
Glenn Phillips
Hurts my ears to listen Then it burns my eyes to see Cut down a man in cobalt Shannon might as well be.
- [31:49]
Jesse Jarno
Betty Cantor had started making live recordings of the Grateful Dead in the early 1970s. Along with her then partner Bob Matthews, she oversaw the recording and engineering of the band's first three live albums, 1969's Live Dead, 1971's Grateful Dead and 1972's Europe 72, as well as the scrapped live album from the capitol theater from February 1971, which we discussed back in season three of the Dead cast, along with Owsley Stanley and crew members Kid Candelario and Rex Jackson, who became Betty's husband. She also took responsibility for engineering worktapes for the band. Here's how Jerry Garcia described it to Ray White on WLIR in January 1979.
- [32:31]
Steve Mazner
More often, I listen to tapes of our most recent concerts because it's like homework. Yeah, we usually pull tape like out at the sound booth and sometimes we have people who are recording like really nicely mixed two track Nagra tapes of the shows As a matter of routine.
- [32:53]
Jesse Jarno
From the band's return to the road in 1976 through 1980, Betty Cantor Jackson recorded more shows than she erased. Now known as the Betty Boards, they're not pure recordings off the PA at the band's concerts, but special sub mixes putting everything in balance. In the mid-1980s, after languishing in a storage locker, the tapes were auctioned for delinquent fees. We've linked to the story of the betty boards@dead.net deadcast.
- [33:42]
David Lemieux
I think it was like 87 into early 88, at least in my tape trading world. That's when the Betty Boards started showing up. Then the shows that came to my mailbox padded envelopes with my Maxels beacon Theater in 76, the May shows in 77. And then the next kind of batch that came in of the Betty Boards for me was some of the April shows and. And quite a few of the ones that are in this bo. Anything that was a Betty board back in our tape trading days, it by definition was just not in the vault. They were the tapes outside that people got their hands on and made copies of that all of us tape traders benefited from. After Dick passed and I started listening to a lot more tapes for possible release. Dick's Picks, Road Trips, now Dave's Picks, other box sets. I kind of stopped listening to the shows that we didn't have a chance to release because I was so busy listening for work. But then Cornell came back to the Vault. It came out. I'm extremely happy it did. And with those tapes around 2000-2018-2017-2018, along with Cornell and Beacon Theater and all those great shows came these first shows. On the spring tour of the April run of the spring tour, I got to define it as the two the April and the May. Those first. That first April 6th to the 16th came back in their entirety. Complete shows. We'd always had the 18th in Pittsburgh through the 24th in Illinois. We did get a little antsy a couple of years ago. April 15th has already come out as part of the Day's picks. There were 25,000 of those. So hopefully everybody who gets this box has that Dave's Picks and can kind of complete the run of shows.
- [36:33]
Jesse Jarno
The April 15, 1978 show in Williamsburg, Virginia became Dave's picks 37. But we'll be including it in our storytelling during this series. For sure, Today's episode covers the two shows from Atlanta, but if you saw the Dead that month in the Virginias or North Carolina, seriously, please hit pause and go record your memories@stories.dead.net Glenn Phillips.
- [36:55]
Bob Weir
I think it was the second night that I went. I just went one of the two nights and I really enjoyed it.
- [37:02]
Jesse Jarno
The Glenn only caught the April 11th show. We're going to frame some of his comments around the April 10 gig too, because they're pretty universal and strike a keynote for what was powerful about the Dead and their world in 1978.
- [37:14]
Bob Weir
When I went to that Dead show, this was 1978, 10 years from when the Grease being first formed. And the world culturally had changed a great deal. And when I went to that show, I was really struck by the culture that had evolved around the Dead. It was like stepping into. It's like a science fiction movie where you're an explorer and you step into the jungle and you discover all these beasts from the past, but they're living and breathing and alive. And, you know, it's like King Kong beating his chest and letting out a glorious yell. And that was the Grateful Dead.
- [37:56]
Glenn Phillips
If I had my way if I had my way if I had my way I would tear this old building down.
- [38:10]
Bob Weir
The fact that this scene had managed to stay alive and current and thriving and the band had it well was a real. At that point in time was a inspirational and sort of jaw dropping moment that this was still going on and this culture was still there in the midst of a world that the rest of the world felt like, oh, it's time to move on. This, this isn't valid anymore. And it was still valid and still alive and obviously remain that way to this day. There were aspects of that that still came to our shows which I was very appreciative of and still felt conn. But obviously nothing like on the level of the Grateful Dead. They were, they were breathing life into this culture day in and day out. And other bands from that era, you know, growing up, all the music that came from the west coast and especially the Grateful Dead had a big influence on me and the people other musicians that I was around and. But culturally they still did. You didn't see that impact on a day to day level. But when the Dead came in town, all those people came out and you realized how alive that culture still really was.
- [39:28]
Jesse Jarno
One part of the Dead scene that was alive and thriving were the Tapirs. When we left Dr. Bob Wagner, at the end of our last episode, he was dropping off his taping crew in Atlanta while he went back to Chapel Hill for class. We're delighted to welcome Today one of Dr. Bob's passengers and one of his taping mentors, Steve Mazner. Steve got into Dead taping in a pretty funny way.
- [39:49]
Donna Jean Godchaux McKay
I started listening to the Grateful Dead basically on the radio, and then probably bought Walking Man's Dead at my local record store. And they also had all these bootleg records. And it was like, okay, after hearing a few shows on what wnew, I said, well, I want more than just the album. And I bought a few of the bootlegs.
- [40:13]
Jesse Jarno
In the early 1970s, when reel to reels were expensive and cassettes hadn't fully caught on, bootleg LPs were one of the prime ways to consume live Grateful Dead music outside of going to see them.
- [40:25]
Donna Jean Godchaux McKay
We're up in Boston in 73 seeing the dead. The first night, they played the Musical three nights, and we didn't get in. We couldn't get tickets the first night. Yeah, we kind of went to their hotel room, and me and my buddy, we knocked on Garcia's door. It was really late by the time they came back, and he wasn't at the party, but he was very nice about it. And so we just. You could just ask for Garcia's room. So the next morning we went there and hung out with him. He rolled up a couple of joints for us, and I couldn't believe, you know, I'm used to a Colombian with seeds and stems or whatever, and he just rolls them so fast, and they were great and delicious. And I guess it was the first time my life, I ever smoked Sense of Mia. He was just very nice. Other people came into the room, other fans, and we just talked about, you know, his favorite guitar players, Dead songs. He was very modest, as far as, you know, he didn't think he was a good singer. We talked about different songs and how they touched us. And we started talking, and I was telling. And we were just talking about his music and songs. Have they changed? Let's say cold rain and snow Well.
- [41:46]
Glenn Phillips
I married me a wife she's been troubled all my life Run me out in the cold rain and snow rain.
- [42:12]
Donna Jean Godchaux McKay
When it was recorded on the album, it was very fast. And then now they had slowed it down.
- [42:25]
Glenn Phillips
All my life brought me out in the cold rain and snow and I.
- [42:38]
Donna Jean Godchaux McKay
Wouldn'T have known that unless for these bootlegs. And he just went off going, wait a second. These guys are stealing the music from us. You should go in there and steal the Albums because you can't get arrested for stolen material. I thought it was quite clever. But anyway, he basically says, if you want the music, go record it. And I'm like, what? You're gonna let me record your shows? So really, Garcia gave me some tacit permission to record.
- [43:11]
Jesse Jarno
Steve started taping soon thereafter, and by the mid-1970s, was a regular at Dead shows.
- [43:16]
Donna Jean Godchaux McKay
We went to the Rochester shows in 76 and next night in Syracuse. And I got there a little late, and I set up right next to him at the soundboard. And I go, I'm going to find out if he minds or not. And it was a great first set. And next thing I know, he's like, coming down and like, how did it come out? How'd it come out? I go, what are you talking about? He goes, your tapes. How'd it come out? I go, I don't know. Somebody stole beer in the speaker yesterday in Rochester. It's shot. And he goes, give me the tape. And he's listening to the tape and very excited, and he goes, yeah, yesterday you were wearing an orange shirt. You were too close. I go, you're telling me you saw me in the audience yesterday and I was too close? He goes, yeah, you gotta be back a little bit farther for sound quality.
- [44:03]
Jesse Jarno
Though the Grateful Dead didn't officially allow taping until 1984, it was hard to get more direct than Garcia's permission to record and engineer Dan Healy's tips on how to do it righteously.
- [44:14]
Donna Jean Godchaux McKay
I was pretty. Pretty blown away by that. My faith in this whole idea of a family, of this Grateful Dead family, which started actually probably my first show, existed, that they care about the audience, that they're aware of the audience.
- [44:29]
Jesse Jarno
In 1976 and 1977, if the dead were playing on the east coast and maybe the West, Steve was there. He made it to the Atlanta 77 shows at the Fox. The second night is now Dix picks 29.
- [44:43]
Glenn Phillips
Just one thing I ask of you Just one thing for me Please forget you knew my name My darling sugary Shake it, shake it, sugar be so tell her.
- [45:19]
Donna Jean Godchaux McKay
I had gone there the year before and that was spectacular. And what a beautiful theater that is, and what a great show.
- [45:29]
Jesse Jarno
With that, let's turn our ears towards April 10, 1978.
- [45:34]
Glenn Phillips
Two, one. It was a paradise for the lizards. One young gr.
- [45:56]
Jesse Jarno
That's a little bit of the Dead sound checking. Bob Weir, Salt Lake City in Atlanta, from his then new solo album, Heaven Help the Fool. Ask your local tape collector for the rest.
- [46:05]
David Lemieux
They rarely recorded the sound Checks, which is too bad because I'd always. I always wonder. I mean, they sound check most shows, especially when it was a one night run or the opening night of, in this case a two night run. Sometimes they make it through a whole song. Like the Salt Lake City in the soundcheck is. It's a bonafide full version of the song.
- [46:28]
Glenn Phillips
Straight.
- [46:48]
Jesse Jarno
Salt Lake City wouldn't make its dead debut until 1995, when the dead returned to the Salt palace for the first time in a decade and a half.
- [46:55]
David Lemieux
They didn't rehearse the way they used to. You know, they didn't. They didn't live together like they did in 66 and rehearse, you know, eight hours a day. It wasn't quite like that in the later days. So soundcheck is about as much rehearsal as you get. Unless they were introducing new songs, then they would have rehearsal sessions generally at Club Front.
- [47:13]
Jesse Jarno
Glen Phillips When I saw that show.
- [47:16]
Bob Weir
I. I enjoyed it and it was great, but it was very different. It was a very different chemistry. For some people, that's their favorite era of the band. For me, because of emotional reasons. I'm sure when I encountered stuff, it's the Era 69. But hearing them and I was, don't get me wrong, I was glad that they were staying together. And if you stay together that long, it's going to evolve and people are going to come and go. But it was a very different band with Keith and Donna than it was in 69.
- [47:45]
Jesse Jarno
This is Jerry Garcia speaking with WHMR in November 1978.
- [47:49]
Steve Mazner
What we do is very much, very close to it in spirit, in the sense that, that the material is, for example, a song by our definition is really lyrics, melody, line and changes. Apart from that, arrangement considerations are things that we don't rehearse or put together or you know, evolve in quite that way.
- [48:13]
Bob Weir
It is really interesting to see the impact that just one person adding to the band or two people, in the case of Keith and Donna, how much that influences the chemistry. The Grateful Dead were a big enough band and a big enough ongoing thing where they could keep it going and keep going through these evolving things and keeping this the core of these members. And now it's at the point where, you know, you have this Dead and company at the sphere and it's like two guys from the band. And obviously the chemistry is wildly different.
- [48:46]
Jesse Jarno
This is another part of Bill Graham's equation about the Dead being the only ones to do what they do. Not only did the Dead have a wide repertoire, they had a wide repertoire that they didn't necessarily rehearse. Which might sound obvious, but it means they very rarely brushed up on the early intentions of the arrangements and instead let the songs develop without fixed parts. Here's how Brown Eyed Women sounds in Atlanta, a song that Mickey Hart didn't play until he returned to the road in 1976. A case of the one definitely being where it thinks it is or where it isn't. This is Bobby Weir speaking with David Ganz in 1977, an interview that's now in Conversations with the Dead, a cornerstone in any Dead library. We've posted a link@dead.net deadcast we've had.
- [49:51]
H
To do a lot of conscious work on dynamics simply because once again, with the reintroduction of Mickey, he missed out on like four or five years of just tacit understandings and agreements with regards to dynamics that we came upon. And so we finally had to start talking about it again when Mickey came back, because otherwise he'd go banging and crashing through the quiet parts or, you know, he wouldn't know when that sudden sucker punch is coming or whatever. And so, you know, we had to tell him, which means we had to be thinking about it. Which means while we're thinking about it, we might as well be thinking about it.
- [50:29]
Jesse Jarno
The tides of the drummers were fascinating. As we discussed last time, they tightened up at the behest of producer Keith Olson for Shakedown street and then kept right on changing. Sometimes it really worked. Instead of returning to their 60s dynamic, they found a new one. It helped that it fit very closely with Bob Weir's new rock and roll moves.
- [50:49]
David Lemieux
Weir was rocking out on this tour. He's always been a rock star, but we haven't helped the fool. He was on his way to Bobby in the Midnights and his theatrics and stuff, and just amazing stuff. So you get Bob doing a lot of really good rock and roll at this show. It's all over.
- [51:18]
Jesse Jarno
That.
- [51:19]
Glenn Phillips
That's the lie.
- [51:34]
David Lemieux
I remember putting it on. And it was probably only the second or third Dead version of this song I'd heard, but it's. It's all over now.
- [51:41]
Bob Weir
The.
- [51:41]
David Lemieux
The Stones tune. There's a really good version of that on here.
- [52:09]
Jesse Jarno
Over the course of late 1960, 1977 and into 1978, the late John Sievert conducted an amazing multi part interview with Jerry Garcia for Guitar Player magazine. We heard some of it last time and we're going to hear more today and in future episodes. Immense thanks once again to the retro photoarchive for access to this material. None of the interviews were conducted in April precisely, but they reflect on Garcia's musical philosophies in that era. I'm pretty sure I'm not alone in hearing a continuity in Jerry Garcia's guitar playing and his singing.
- [52:42]
Glenn Phillips
What would your mama think if she heard my Guinness come saw me riding at the end of My Soldiers?
- [52:56]
Bob Weir
Though.
- [53:18]
Jesse Jarno
Garcia told John Stevert pretty much the same thing.
- [53:21]
Steve Mazner
My voice and my guitar are almost interchangeable. You know, when I'm in my best space, when I really know the song, I can sing it really well. Well. And I know the chords perfectly, or I know where I am at all times on the guitar. And I'm totally comfortable with those two things. There's a certain thing that happens, which I like a lot. There's the thing of feeling very continuous between the person who is a guitar player and the person who is a singer, which is a neat feeling. I can't describe it any other way. It's a feeling, really. And like I say, when I'm off, when the band's on, when everything is on, you know, that thing starts to become almost magical, and I really like it. The way I start is by learning the literal melody of a tune, if there is one. Learning the literal melody. And then I construct solos as though that were happening and I'm either playing with it or against it. This is a very loose description because everything else works in there, too. Then later I start to see other kinds of connections. But one of my first processes in learning the new tune is to learn the literal melody, how to play the literal melody in any position. If they don't have a real great melody, tying the changes together in some sense, then the changes themselves don't mean anything to me. So my ear draws me to melodies. So that's usually the thing I learn. And I just start from there, classically playing the melody as though I were singing it and then start to build off of.
- [56:37]
Jesse Jarno
I think it's safe to say that Peggio has the kind of melody Garcia is referring to, or for that matter, Candyman. I love this version where Garcia finds some really cool phrasings for his vocals.
- [56:52]
Glenn Phillips
Come on, you pretty we must.
- [56:59]
Steve Mazner
With.
- [57:00]
Glenn Phillips
Your head hanging down Open up your window Close the candy in town.
- [57:22]
Jesse Jarno
I've never really tracked how often Garcia put in the extra s in women's. Maybe there should be a tag for that on Jerry Bass. There are lots of different classes of arrangement changes in the Dead songbook. Candyman possesses at least one of those here's how it sounded at winterland in early 1974. Now on Dave's picks 13 and then we'll flip to the 78 version.
- [57:48]
Glenn Phillips
Candy, here it come and it's gone again. Pretty lady ain't got no friend Till the candy man comes around again.
- [58:15]
Jesse Jarno
Here's Garcia speaking on WHMR in 1978.
- [58:19]
Steve Mazner
Phil isn't singing anymore. So all the songs that we used to do that he's saying are an important part on. We've had a drop until we were able to work out the parts with Donna. So some songs we haven't done because simply because we haven't worked them out yet, you know, and, you know, other ones like Uncle John's band and St. Stephen are ones that we had to rework. So Donna would learn the top part.
- [58:45]
Jesse Jarno
Song and Bobby Weir speaking with David Ganz in 1977 from Conversations with the Dead.
- [58:51]
H
Yeah, he blew his voice. Improper singing technique essentially there but for a fortune. He just wasn't singing properly and he abused his throat. And you can only do that so long before his. You just have no range left. He could get it back with an operation, but it's hell, it's an expensive operation. Then after that you can't talk, you can't whisper or anything for six weeks. And then you come back very slowly. You can get your range back. Boy, I just don't want to lose my voice. Singing is the most fun. I know playing is a great get off, but the only one thing that I know the tops of is singing. We can share the women, we can.
- [59:33]
Glenn Phillips
Share the wine we can share what we gotta use Cause we don't share all of my.
- [59:47]
David Lemieux
Here they open the second set with Jack Straw, a traditional first set opening song. So again, it's the Dead now falling into this rhythm of. Of the format that would be around for 17 years, but they're still constantly messing with every night.
- [60:35]
Jesse Jarno
The core of the second set is built around the first of the Dead's two singles from 1977. The Dead debuted their original arrangement of Dancing in the street, the 1964 Motown civil rights anthem, in mid-1966. This one's from the Fillmore Auditorium on July 3, 1966. Now on the 30 trips around the Sunbox, they played it like this through the end of 1971.
- [61:24]
Glenn Phillips
Come alive around the World.
- [61:46]
Jesse Jarno
A copy editing note when it was released by Martha and the Vandellas in 1964, the song was titled Dancing in the Street. Singular, no apostrophe on dancing. When the Dead revived it in Their so called disco arrangement in 1976 and put it on Terrapin Station. It became Dancin in the Streets, pluralized with an apostrophe. The late 70s arrangement was largely built on this guitar sound.
- [62:14]
Glenn Phillips
All we need is music, sweet music everywhere.
- [62:31]
Jesse Jarno
And that guitar sound is Jerry Garcia running his Mutron Ottawa. We're going to dip into John Sievert's amazing interview to hear Garcia talk a little bit about his effects rig in 1978, which can be heard largely during the second set jam sequences.
- [62:46]
Steve Mazner
I use effects with the Grateful Dead. I haven't started using them very much in my band, but I do have a whole rig, an effects rig that I use with the Grateful Dead that has some standard stuff. It has the Mutron envelope generator.
- [62:58]
Jesse Jarno
The Mutron 3 is a combination envelope filter and automatic Wah Wah pedal. Dancing in the street is one distinct example in this era. Also, Bob Weir's estimated profit debuted in 1977. This is from April 8th in Jacksonville. And actually, Garcia doesn't take his opening Auto Wasp solo on Fire on the mountain on April 11th. So this is from April 8th too.
- [64:02]
Steve Mazner
A distortion plus thing, you know, from MXR.
- [64:07]
Jesse Jarno
The MXR distortion plus gets deployed along with the Auto Wah on the solo to estimated profit during the newly delineated space segments like this one from April 11th at the Fox. You can hear a lot of the pedals on display.
- [64:49]
Steve Mazner
The Mutron octave divider, MSR phaser, neutron Wah Wah pedal, and volume pedal, which I don't use the volume pedal very much, and a analog delay. MSR analog delay.
- [65:16]
Jesse Jarno
One reason Garcia didn't use the volume pedal much is because of one of the new additions to his Wolf guitar when Doug Irwin returned it to him in late 1977. If you look at pictures of the guitar in this era or any of Garcia's guitars thereafter, you might notice two guitar cables coming out of it.
- [65:33]
Steve Mazner
I have one innovation in wiring and that is this second hole. Now the way this works, because of the wiring of the whole Fender idea, everything comes before the final volume pot. Now what I've done is created an interrupt stereo in out whole. Well, when it's on in, it's just normal. I see. So but if I plug it in, then I have a chord where it's a stereo. It's a sand down one side of the chord and it's a return up the other back into the guitar before the volume pot. Now what I do, the reason for that is when you come in after the switch, the pickup selector switch and the tone pots, what, what's coming through is to get the pickups wide open. And when you use outboard devices, fuzz tones and any of those gadgets that are that. That whose function, the way they work, their behavior is dictated by input voltage. What this does is make it so they always see the same input voltage. They always see full out pickup input voltage. And they return back into the guitar before the volume pod to the amplifier, see, so that I can have set my sounds up, you know, like an envelope generator, like the Mutron envelope thing, which is very voltage sensitive. Set it up so it behaves exactly the way I want. And then I have the option of playing at any volume based on output.
- [66:53]
Jesse Jarno
That's a pretty heady concept and one that took me a little to get my head around. But to linger on it just slightly. Somebody once sent us a very nice message asking if we had any interviews with Ramrod, the Dead's trusted and long serving Rhodey. In the course of talking, John Sievert caught some of the elusive Ramrod, known to some as Lawrence Shirtleff of Pendleton, Oregon.
- [67:15]
H
Say it.
- [67:15]
I
Lawrence.
- [67:16]
Steve Mazner
Leo, Shirley, any race app, please. Ramrod. You don't want to talk into the micro?
- [67:22]
I
No, I'm not opposed to talking into the microphone there.
- [67:25]
Jesse Jarno
But Ramrod relented. Here's Garcia and Ramrod talking through Garcia's signal chain. Ramrod is the voice slightly closer to the microphone.
- [67:33]
Steve Mazner
The octave and then the envelope opener is first in line.
- [67:39]
Bob Weir
Right.
- [67:39]
Steve Mazner
The envelope filled with a neutron.
- [67:41]
I
It's a neutron. Okay.
- [67:42]
Steve Mazner
Is the next.
- [67:44]
I
Then it goes through the distortion.
- [67:46]
Steve Mazner
Distortion device.
- [67:47]
I
Then it goes to a phasing device, to a wall off pedal, to an analog delay, back to the network box, back to this box. Then to his instrument.
- [68:00]
Steve Mazner
Up the stereo chord, up the other.
- [68:02]
I
Side of the stereo chord.
- [68:04]
Steve Mazner
So your control over dynamics is a function of volume control. In other words. So they are stable. No matter how I set them, they won't vary. Yeah.
- [68:12]
I
And if he flips his switch, there's no jumping gain or loss in gain at the amplifier.
- [68:19]
Steve Mazner
Real simple. Anybody can do it. Yeah.
- [68:20]
I
And if troubleshooting it wisely, all this shit gets crazy. The kick it out, it's still the same gain. There's not a big jump or a loss.
- [68:28]
Jesse Jarno
It was a long term problem. They'd spent some time thinking about some devices.
- [68:32]
I
When you turn them off, the device isn't active. But the combine of its network represents a load on the circuit. We endeavored to straighten that across and we've been pretty successful at it.
- [68:46]
Jesse Jarno
Though Ramrod didn't design any of the circuitry. He had a functional knowledge of how much of the Dead's gear worked.
- [68:52]
I
I will say that I am responsible for the guitars and the Grateful Dead and the things that they have to deal with. From picks to speakers.
- [69:02]
Jesse Jarno
If a guitar needed to go someplace for repair, Ramrod was its first stop. And if Ramrod couldn't fix it, he'd find the person who could.
- [69:10]
I
The repair guys are guys that I've known for years and years and years. And they're Rick Turner, Rod Wickersham. Quan has worked on a lot of our things. Doug Irwin essentially, is who has Jerry's instruments electronically as well as physically electronically. On Phil's instruments, there's Ron Wickersham and Rick Munday, who have designed electronics and networks within Phil's basis, which. Which I haven't and I can't fix. So I cannot say that I am responsible for Phil's basis, but I am responsible to Phil for his instruments. And I know Mundy, George Mundy, and Rick Turner, Robert Sam Real personally, I can be a buffer amp so far as that goes, right. That seems to be my strongest quality.
- [70:08]
Jesse Jarno
Ramrod's role as a buffer extended past the instruments and into nearly all elements of the Dead's creative lives. An indispensable part of the operation. When Garcia talks about keeping his equipment stable, I have to think he's talking about Ramrod, too.
- [70:22]
Steve Mazner
The more elements that I can keep stable, the more you can concentrate on your playing and not be continually adapting your technique to your equipment.
- [70:30]
Jesse Jarno
Though the Dead's gear changed constantly with the rise and fall of the wall of Sound, there were actually some unchanging elements.
- [70:36]
Steve Mazner
The first amplifier that I used with the Warlocks was a twin reverb. I bought a twin reverb. I guess the first year they came out. I guess it was 64, 63, somewhere around there. My original one may still be being used by Mike Wilhelm from the Charlatans. He bought it from me and it was. It's a great amplifier. It really is good. But I am using the second one. Yeah, the old Blackspace one. And now it's only a chassis, you know, I mean, I only use the preamp, just the chassis and the. The front of it and stuff like that. But it's basically the same old Fender preamp, Fender twin reverb. An old Blackface going through a Macintosh 2300 that drives four JBL 12 inch speakers. It's real simple.
- [71:20]
Jesse Jarno
That about covers Garcia's tone in 78, but certainly not all of his playing, which we'll return to shortly. First, more of the Dancing in the street jam. By this point, Garcia has turned off the Ottawa and is playing with a pretty clean. The Dancing in the street unfolded into the evening's Rhythm Devils segment. Once again, it opened up into steel drums, where Jerry Garcia and other non drumming members of the Dead were very likely playing percussion. There's no space segment on the first night in Atlanta.
- [73:14]
David Lemieux
David Lemieux, the Rhythm Devils portion. We're still up in that 15 minute range. They come out of drums with Franklin's Tower. It was, you know, this is the Dead at their adventurous best. You know, they'd already dropped about six months earlier. They dropped help on the way in Slipknot. So Franklin's Tower was a bit of a free agent at this time. It could appear anywhere in the set list. It would sometimes be joined with Half step to open a show. It would just appear in strange places. And I frick, I love that about this.
- [74:14]
Jesse Jarno
Send out a shout here to my buddy, the other Bill, the drummer born on this particular April 10th for the dead. It was one more Monday night in Atlanta, but then there was Tuesday. Steve Mazner hadn't actually taped the first night at the Fox, just enjoyed himself.
- [74:36]
Donna Jean Godchaux McKay
Some of these shows I record and some I don't. You know, I just. It's too much to do it every night for me, you know, and maybe I like to get too loose or something like that. But anyway, I did tape the Florida show, but I did not tape the first night in the Fox Theater, but the second one I did.
- [74:55]
Jesse Jarno
He had some help from an unexpected source. Front of house engineer Dan Healy.
- [74:59]
Donna Jean Godchaux McKay
My ticket was right in front of the soundboard, and I think I had a problem. Maybe I didn't have many batteries. And Healy and I had struck up a casual friendship. And I had asked him, hey, can I. Can I borrow some power from you? Can I plug in somewhere? And that led to, well, what are you recording on? You know, I go, well, I got a knock. 550. And I got three mics. And he goes, oh, man, listen, you got to set up the mics like this. And he was working on. I don't know exactly what he would call it, but I'll say something like a surround sonic experience, where sound was coming from all over the hall.
- [75:41]
Jesse Jarno
In 1974, the dead had toured the world and elsewhere with what's now known as the Wall of Sound, but opted for smaller systems. When they returned to the road a few years later, in the spring of 1978, they were rocking a system from the East Coast PA crew, the Clair Brothers. But the wall was still present for some of this period. And I'm not totally sure if spring 78 is included. The setup included a monitor setup built by Harry poppick that incorporated 12 inch and 5 inch speakers from the wall cut down into monitor wedges. The whole system was tweaked by Wiz Leonard and Dan Healy, who also occasionally offered taper advice to people like Steve Mazner.
- [76:20]
Donna Jean Godchaux McKay
And he goes, look, your ears don't go forward. We're watching. They go off to the side. They're like omnidirectional microphones and everybody. And you, you know, you're using directional Michaels at the PA because you're gonna. It sounds good, but it's not picking up what our ears actually hear. And so he convinced me and helped me set up to take two mics and put them to the left and the right and the third mic center.
- [76:46]
Jesse Jarno
Unfortunately, Steve hasn't yet digitized his three mic recording of the Fox, so our Betty boards will have to do. David Lemieux When I got these two.
- [76:54]
David Lemieux
Shows, I liked them both, but I like this one better.
- [76:57]
Jesse Jarno
We'll use the Bertha opener to mention another subtle musical change, one that I didn't notice until recently after decades of listening to the Dead, and didn't even notice in time for the previous season of the Dead cast. Here's how Bertha sounded at the beginning of 1974. Pay attention to the groove and the way Bill Kreutzman is playing it.
- [77:25]
Steve Mazner
Now.
- [77:25]
Jesse Jarno
Here's what the groove sounded like a little bit later in the year at Hartford at the end of July. Now on Dave's Picks too.
- [77:43]
Glenn Phillips
I had a hard run running from your window.
- [77:51]
Jesse Jarno
Between the Pacific Northwest tour in May and the shows in June 1974, drummer Billy Kreutzman altered the Bertha groove, falling back into the pocket so it feels more like halftime, kind of like they love each other. The groove stayed like this until after the band's year off from touring and into 1977. But somewhere in mid-1977, it became a little more variable, depending on how the drummers felt it that night. Here it is again from the second night at the Fox in 78, where they play it with the funkier 74 Feelings. And here's how they played it the very next night in North Carolina, leaning into the more straightforward pulse. One of the many subtle things to listen for in Grateful Dead shows that I know my ear will now be attuned to. I like the happening and Playful space Garcia and Weir find inside the Tennessee Jed Bounds. But the real highlight comes in the second set with the 23 minute Scarlet Begonias into Fire on the Mountain.
- [79:50]
Glenn Phillips
Run Too bad to open and too cool to blow As I picked up my matches and was closing the door had one of those flashes I've been there before Been there before.
- [80:14]
Jesse Jarno
It's a sweet reading of the song sounding alive and in motion from the very first beat, in accordance with them being in a small theater. Donna Jean does some improvising too. Not always a given in the post hiatus years. Let's use this sparkling, bubbling example of a Scarlet Begonias jam as a soundtrack to Jerry Garcia's thoughts about the Dead's group improvisation from his extended 1978 interview with John Sievert.
- [81:09]
Steve Mazner
Every role is being redefined in the Grateful Dead. Like, Phil doesn't play conventionally, nobody plays conventionally. So everybody has to solve that problem of how to fit into unconventional contexts. And so it feeds back into itself. So everybody is unconventional in that context. And I appreciate how difficult it is. That's one of the things that's interesting about the Grateful Dead. My logic is not anybody else's logic. Everybody has their own logic. So the way Weir develops, for example, always surprises me because the way he develops is unlike the way I develop. And same with Phil and everybody else in the band, everybody develops a different way with a different sense to their development. The interesting thing about that is that all of a sudden there's somebody who's got a whole bunch of ideas that you haven't stumbled on and might. The Grateful Dead is. We've never developed as a group. I mean, we develop as a group in a certain kind of large sense. But everybody's individual development has that thing of being surprising, interesting, entertaining, if you will, any of those things. So that's one of the things that keeps the Grateful Dead an interesting thing to be involved in.
- [82:42]
Jesse Jarno
You can hear Garcia engage the Ottawa. There was a good deal to say about his partner in guitarine, Bobby Weir.
- [83:09]
Steve Mazner
He's really a fine player and he doesn't get the credit he deserves. I really think he's the finest rhythm guitar player on wheels right now. Weir has really created a definition for his own playing and an approach to his playing that is really amazing. That's an amazing achievement. Playing with Weir is like. He's like my left hand or something. He and I have a long and serious conversation going on musically. The whole thing is that the complimentary nature is always fascinating to me. We have fun that's the thing. We've designed our playing to work against each other. His playing, in a way, really puts my playing in the only kind of meaningful context it could enjoy. That's a hard idea to communicate, but in the Grateful Dead, any serious analysis of the music that we're playing, the way we're playing, the way we're approaching it, you would see that things are designed really appropriately. There are some passages and some kinds of ideas that, geez, I mean, if I had to solve the problem, how do I create a harmonic bridge between these things that are happening rhythmically with two drums? There's amazing power on a rhythmic level. Phil's innovative bass style, it's unlike anyone else. Weir's ability to solve that particular kind of problem is really extraordinary. And he knows how to do that thing of. He's a guy who has a really beautiful grasp of all grain chords. His way of coloring things so that something that's like with a minor seventh feel that he can sneak in other flavors that really influence what I can do with them. And all of a sudden there's this augmented voice. Weir's got extraordinary large hands, so he's able to voice chords, like to do some of those close voicings, you know, that you can't. I mean, you have to have really big long reach. Yeah. And he can pull those things off. Just. There's just part of the flow of his playing you. He does stuff that's bog mindboggling. For example, when I'm singing, it's a common for Bob to be signaling dynamic changes or accents. He's gotten real good at calling accents. You know, he can get the whole man to accent, like on the two or the end of three, just with a signal. And it ends up sounding amazing. Of course, for years it sounds awful. You know, three people would catch it or wouldn't.
- [87:22]
Jesse Jarno
And that's just the start of the second set. David Lemieux.
- [87:26]
David Lemieux
You get a very late version of Sunrise, Sunrise. Donna Jean, by this point had started moving towards from the Heart of Me, the song that would appear on Shakedown Street. So, you know, similar to Brent having his two early songs, Far From Me, Easy to Love you. She had her two songs in 77 and 78. So sunrise. Beautiful version.
- [87:49]
Glenn Phillips
Gazing at the fire Burning by the water before he speaks the world around is quiet.
- [88:11]
Jesse Jarno
Written about the band's friend Rolling Thunder, Sunrise was Donna Jean's first original song for the Grateful Dead and one we'll get into down the line.
- [88:19]
David Lemieux
I remember Dick Lotvala told me he Went to the east coast for a couple of the spring of 77 shows and he went to the Hartford show and he was talking about Sunrise and he said, and I don't think he hadn't heard it yet, it was a brand new song. And he said. And I said, I saw dawn and she was doing some. I thought it was opera. Dick, who's, you know, a deadhead who lived and breathed this music in 77 and anytime he said, it was like they're doing some kind of opera thing and that's. She's filling that 16,000 seat venue with her. With her pipes.
- [89:09]
Jesse Jarno
Terrapin Station was the big set piece that led into Rhythm Devils. Barely a year old, there wasn't much jamming in it yet. At the very end of 1978, starting at the Capitol center in November, they would develop what I call the Starlight Jam. Between the final verse of the lady with a Fan Section and the since the End Is Never Told transition into Terrapin proper, it would become an ineffable and uneffable part of the song.
- [89:35]
Glenn Phillips
Storytelling makes no joy. Soon you will not hear his voice. His job is to shed light, not to master.
- [89:59]
Jesse Jarno
But on this box set that was seven months away in the spring of 78, they were still sticking to the libretto. Mostly, though, you can hear Garcia and Keith Godchau playing with a few brief new harmonies in the outro. Like many knights of the tour, there are scene reports of Garcia and others joining Billy Kreutzman and Mickey Hart for the Rhythm Devil segment, playing steel drums and other percussion. One musical moment I like in this version is when the steel drums and the other chaos pair up with what I think is a ballophone. While the drummers and the other drummers were drumming, Steve Mazner flashed on what engineer Dan Healy had told him about mixing for the room.
- [91:40]
Donna Jean Godchaux McKay
It seemed like everybody was involved. Roadies would come out with pots and pans and it was just very, very exciting. And sure enough, I think probably during the Rhythm Devils, I heard sound coming behind me and I told that after the show. And he was so excited.
- [91:59]
Glenn Phillips
Yeah, yeah.
- [92:14]
David Lemieux
Another bit of a surprise coming out of the. The 15 minute rhythm devils little spacey jam before they kick into Iko. Iko and Iko had been in the repertoire very sporadically for about a year. It joined in St. Louis in May 15 of 77. And it was a song that. It became something different. It became a really upbeat party song. When I was seeing the Dead in the later 80s, you know, a shorter song and it would be like really high energy. These ones are not high energy.
- [93:18]
Jesse Jarno
Ico. ICO had come into the Dead's repertoire during the fabled Spring 77 tour, though they were still feeling their way through its groove. And it was pretty similar to Not Fade Away in its earliest versions. Here's the debut from St. Louis now on the May 1977 box.
- [93:37]
Glenn Phillips
Sitting by the fire My spot dog say your spot dog ought to set your chain on fire.
- [93:59]
Jesse Jarno
To me the Fox 78 version is notable because it's the first one where they find a feel for it that has its own identity.
- [94:06]
Glenn Phillips
Sa.
- [94:32]
David Lemieux
Introspective, almost like a Not Fade Away without the intensity of Not Fade Away, those big explosive things that Not Faye would do. And I love the groove. I mean, it's almost meditative Grateful Dead music, where they get into it and the drummers are clearly having fun. Donna sounds great. You know, Jerry loves it. I mean, they love this song. You can really tell how much fun they have playing it.
- [94:56]
Jesse Jarno
I love the way Garcia digs into the lyrics on this version. Garcia spoke a bit about Aiko aiko in a July 1981 interview with Greg Harrington.
- [95:29]
Steve Mazner
The original rock and roll version of Aiko Aiko, the Dixie Chops. Iko. Iko is all this. It's all this sort of codified bayou talk, like Creole and all that. Yeah. And it's full of little stuff that you can't know about unless you know something about that whole world.
- [96:12]
Jesse Jarno
All in all, it was a pretty swell Tuesday in Atlanta. The Dead played a few smaller venues than the Fox in 1978, but not many, and a lot of them were field houses or other kinds of dumps. They'd return to the uptown in Chicago a few times and would make their last visit to their beloved Boston Music hall in the fall. But the smaller rooms were increasingly the domain of the Jerry Garcia Band, the Bob Weir Band, and other side trips.
- [96:37]
Steve Mazner
And I like having the range all the way from little clubs to huge arenas because there's different scales of energy which you address the music. And larger rooms bring out a kind of grandness and a largeness in the music that you wouldn't get in a smaller room or that you wouldn't necessarily get in theaters and so forth.
- [96:56]
Jesse Jarno
The end result of Bill Graham's phrase about the Dead being the only ones who do what they do is another obvious thing that's not necessarily true about many of the Dead's contemporaries. There's nowhere else or when the music at these shows could have happened.
- [97:20]
Glenn Phillips
Thank you.
- [97:21]
Jesse Jarno
Yes. To reiterate what Weir said.
- [97:24]
Rich Mahan
Thank you, friends. Thank you very much for tuning in to the good old Grateful Dead cast. We'd like to thank our guests in this episode, Donna Jean God Show McKay, Glenn Phillips, Steve Mazner and David Lemieux. Extra special thanks to friend of the Dead cast, David Ganz, for his ongoing contributions of audio from his interview archive. Thank you, David. We couldn't do it without you. Executive producer for the good old Grateful Dead cast, Mark Pincus, produced for Rhino Entertainment by Rich Mahan Promotions and Jesse Jarno. Special thanks to David Lemieux, Brian Dodd and Doron Tyson. Also, all rights reserved.