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- [00:05]
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. We are excited to be back with a new season of the Good Old Grateful Dead cast for you and we're kicking this one off by taking a close look at the shows from the spring 78 tour that make up the new Grateful Dead box set Friend of the Devils. This episode focuses on the three Florida shows from April 6th, 7th and 8th, 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 it 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 for 678 Sportatorium, Pembroke Pines, Florida 4778 Veterans Memorial Coliseum, Jacksonville, Florida 4878 two shows at the fabulous Fox Theater in Atlanta, Georgia on 410 and 411 the Cameron Indoor Stadium at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina on 4 hours 1278 Cassell Coliseum in Virginia, at the Polytechnic Institute in Blacksburg on 414 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 also be released separately. Duke 78 will be a available in three CD, 4, LP and digital configurations. 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.netdeadcast and check out all of our past episodes including the complete seasons one through nine and you can link from there to your favorite podcasting platform so you can listen how 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 if the spirit moves you, leave us a review. Thank you very much. Hey, were any of you heads 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 these shows were. Record your tour story@stories.dead.net and you may hear yourself on a future episode of the Dead cast. Sure, you're listening to your favorite podcast about our favorite band in the world, but you like to read about them too, right? Well, you're in luck. We have transcripts from many of your favorite Dead Cast episodes available for your reading pleasure. Head on over to dead.netdeadcast index and check them out. 1978 was a busy and transitional year for the band. Both Jerry and Bob had new solo records out. Jerry's voice went through a transformation and a new segment was born into the Dead set structure as you are all about to hear. Please welcome back your friend and mine, Jesse Jarno.
- [04:11]
Jesse Jarno
Charge up the solar powered Micro or Macro bus. We're going on spring tour 78 hello, hello.
- [04:18]
David Lemieux
Just a few more seconds, we'll have the drum riser nailed together and we'll.
- [04:23]
Jesse Jarno
Be able to begin on April 6, 1978, the Grateful Dead began a nine show 11 night jaunt through the south. And that's where we're pointed. To start this 10th season of the good ol Grateful Dead cast covering the music on the brand new Friend of the Devils box and then some. The April shows included songs from Terrapin Station recorded the spring before, as well as Shakedown street recorded a few months later. They also included the birth of a significant new part of Grateful Dead shows now called Drums and Space. But in the spring of 1978 they were the rhythm devils, making new friends wherever the tour stopped. Please welcome back our buddy Grateful Dead archivist, legacy manager and friend of the Devil's producer, David Lemieux.
- [05:35]
Steve Silberman
The Dead change their sound quite a bit within pretty much every year, but 78 I think more than any other year. It's like defined many years within the year.
- [05:47]
Jesse Jarno
In the 60s and earlier 70s, the Dead's phases were easy to define. The psychedelia of Live Dead, the Bakersfield Twang of Europe 72 or the Jazz rock of Blues for Allah. But as the 70s creep towards the 80s, the changes could be more subtle, though no less real.
- [06:05]
Steve Silberman
Even this little run of April 6th to the 16th, plus the 15th is different from what came like two days later when they started up in Pittsburgh on the 18th. And then the May tour is nothing at all like the April tour. And then you get the July shows. It's a wild year. It's a year that I am endlessly fascinated with. The shows do tell a very compelling story of the Dead in 1978. There's so many kind of micro eras within the year and this little 10 day period is one of those micro eras that is certainly to Me worth telling the story of. And you can hear how different the band is every night. Not set lists. Performance wise energy, the chances they take. There's a lot of cool things happening.
- [07:25]
Jesse Jarno
People rightly associate the Grateful Dead's music in the 1960s with the psychedelic experience. But the Dead would spend years, lifetimes, really figuring out how to musically channel and express those experiences, even when their own psychedelic usage fell by the wayside. 1978 isn't often thought of as one of the Grateful Dead's great psychedelic flowerings, but what this podcast presupposes is maybe it should be. Please welcome back Steve Silberman, who wrote the liner notes for the new box set. You can hear about Steve's earliest dead experiences in 1973 and 1974 in our Watkins Glen and Pride of Cucamonga episodes. And Steve was in full flower of his deadheaddom in 1978.
- [08:08]
Bob Wagner
I do not remember when I became aware that drums in Space were part of the set structure. But what's so interesting about the advent of Drums in Space to me is that even though they weren't doing the Drums in Space sequence back in the day at the acid test and all that, there was something about that sequence that was absolutely perfect for psychedelics. It seemed to evoke the disintegration of ordinary mind and the stripping down of music to its essential primordial elements. So that I. I became a huge. Yeah, I'm like a drone space fanatic. I hated when I got tapes in the mail that. Where they cut out the Drums in space. I hated hearing phrases like, oh, that's. That's when I go to the bathroom. Because for me. All right, I'll just say it. I shouldn't say this, but Drums in Space is my religion. It was. You know, it really was.
- [09:11]
Jesse Jarno
But whatever tape Steve was getting in the mail in 1978, I'm pretty sure that these two tracks, mixed live by Betty Cantor Jackson, sound better.
- [09:19]
Bob Wagner
Some of those venues were pretty small, and in fact, not just pretty small, but if you go back and look at the show reviews, people were, this place is a toilet. But, you know, when the band was playing well and Betty was taping, it could sound like a beautiful toilet.
- [09:56]
Jesse Jarno
We're going to focus on the Dead's musical performances and the mechanics and experience thereof. But there was also an undeniable vibe shift going on in and around the Grateful Dead's world that's audible on the recordings in different ways.
- [10:08]
Bob Wagner
I feel like the tour that was captured on this box set, it's not interesting because it's all pristine and perfect. It's interesting because it shows the band at a point of major transition and struggling with some internal issues, including Keith's drug use. And Phil was having problems too, and Jerry was probably having problems. And so it was a fertile period, but not because everything was perfect. The music was a lotus popping up. In these muddy circumstances, Bob Weir would.
- [10:45]
Jesse Jarno
Sometimes use a semi ironic phrase to describe the state the Dead were attempting to achieve. This is from between songs on January 30, 1978 in Chicago, just before the period we're about to swan dive into.
- [10:57]
David Lemieux
As you can readily see, one of.
- [10:58]
Bob Wagner
Our highly trained and expert equipment crack equipment crew is taking care of Mickey's.
- [11:03]
David Lemieux
Drums, which were not just exactly perfect.
- [11:06]
Bob Wagner
And so we're going to get everything just exactly.
- [11:08]
David Lemieux
We're going to take a moment here.
- [11:09]
Bob Wagner
To get everything just exactly perfect.
- [11:11]
Jesse Jarno
Jerry Garcia, though, had a different take.
- [11:14]
Bob Wagner
Meanwhile, Jerry's improving his situation over here as well.
- [11:18]
David Lemieux
I'm trying to make it as fucked up as possible. I'm not into that perfection shift.
- [11:26]
Jesse Jarno
In the space between just exactly perfect and just perfectly fucked, we find the grateful dead in 1978 a place for beautiful chaos, chaotic beauty, and sometimes just one or the other. We've got a lot to cover in the next few episodes to put these shows in context, including the story of the tapes and a close look at the music the Dead were making, going under the hood with some amazing never heard interview tapes. But before we dive into the smallest details, let's catch up with the slightly bigger picture of the grateful dead in April 1978 and touch on a bunch of interconnected plot points to set the stage for why this spring 78 tour bred a special strain of Grateful Dead music. Nearly any of these topics could probably be a whole episode, and we'll hopefully revisit some down the line. First, we'll rewind a year to a pretty well known period in Dead history with which you might already be familiar. The Dead spent the first part of 1977 recording Terrapin Station with Fleetwood Mac producer Keith Olson. Mickey Hart had mainly played auxiliary percussion on Blues For Allah. So as their first studio album in many years with their two drummer lineup, producer Keith Olsen strongly urged the drummers to tighten up, which they did. One result was the much loved spring 77 tour, where each night produced a veritable greatest hits album. Someone else will have to check this math against sales figures, but disc for disk, it's possible that the releases from spring 77 have now outsold Terrapin Station itself. The season of touring ended with three shows at Winterland. Now on the June 1977 box set, almost unquestionably the end of a micro era of its own. A week and a half later, on June 20, drummer Mickey Hart was in a pretty harrowing accident. Drunk driving his car 20ft off a cliff, caught by a tree and saved by his friend Rhonda Jensen. Getting off lightly and only breaking numerous bones. Despite having a new album scheduled to come out in late July, the Dead didn't actually have any promotional touring plans that summer. When they returned to the stage over Labor Day, there'd been some developments. In July, Bobby Weir headed back to LA to make an album.
- [14:34]
David Lemieux
Bombs away. Well, I guess I'm back in love again well, hey now and around we go this'll bring me ruin Though I suppose it's Please.
- [14:50]
Jesse Jarno
Weir re teamed with Keith Olsen to create Heaven Help the fool, released in January 78. Edging for something slicker than the Dead. Here's how Weir described it on WBCN in November 1978.
- [15:03]
David Lemieux
I played with a bunch of those session cats in Los Angeles, and that's how it comes out. Those guys are real competent and real slick and real proficient, but it tends to sound kind of like that. That's what I came up with.
- [15:20]
Jesse Jarno
Where it's so easy.
- [15:21]
Bob Wagner
Keeping straight.
- [15:27]
David Lemieux
Just really makes Des Moines look second rate. Ain't making no big deal about it, but I hear that moment. Girls are really great. Had I done it with the Grateful.
- [15:40]
Bob Wagner
Dead, the songs would have sounded much different.
- [15:43]
David Lemieux
But I did it with those guys, and it happened real fast and real slick and real proficient and a little cluttered. That wasn't so much what I was.
- [15:50]
Bob Wagner
Going for as what I got.
- [15:51]
David Lemieux
And in so much as I got it, I went for it.
- [15:54]
Steve Silberman
Heaven Help the Fool. I love it. In fact, now that it's on my mind, after we record this, I'm going to go and listen to it later on. I do love that album.
- [16:04]
David Lemieux
Flatland USA.
- [16:09]
Steve Silberman
All my dreams led me.
- [16:12]
David Lemieux
To LA Another case of rags to riches Learned to throw some fancy pitches I found out what ain't and which is just exactly cool well, all right.
- [16:33]
Jesse Jarno
Can it help? And that summer of 1977, Jerry Garcia not only recorded one of his most beloved solo albums, but helped turn the Grateful Dead's rehearsal warehouse in San Rafael into a full fledged recording studio.
- [16:48]
Steve Silberman
There's a lot going on in 1978 Grateful Dead World, where on a show level, maybe not. It's just, you know, a bunch of tours. But then you think about Bob And Jerry had these two huge solo records. Bob's second solo record and Jerry's huge. Cats under the Stars. That's a magnificent album. Even Jerry loved it. And he's very critical of his recordings, Grateful Dead or Jerry Ben. But even he was, I think, enamored with that one.
- [17:16]
David Lemieux
Charisse was brushing her long hair gently down. It was the afternoon of carnival as she brushes it gently.
- [17:29]
Jesse Jarno
Here's how Garcia described it to our friends David Ganz and Blair Jackson in 1981. An interview you can read in the essential book Conversations with the Dead, which we've linked to@dead.net deadcast.
- [17:42]
David Lemieux
I like cats under the Stars. That's my favorite one. That's my favorite solo record. That's the one that I'm happiest with, you know, from. From Every Point of View, in which I operated. All on that record. Great songs on that record. Gamora. I love Gamora. Gamora.
- [17:59]
Rich Mahan
Well, I saw you do that a couple times.
- [18:00]
David Lemieux
Great little song. Yeah, I even did Ruben and Cherie. We did all those tunes when I toured right after Cats under the Stars came out. And I went out with a band that I was describing before with Keith and Donna and John and Maria again.
- [18:37]
Jesse Jarno
That was from the Warner theater in Washington, D.C. in March 1978. Now pure Jerry, volume six, just a few weeks before the start of the new Friend of the Devils box. The recording of Cats under the Stars is a good way to get into the vibe that the Grateful Dead carried into their spring 1978 tour on the new box set. So we're going to tell a short version of its very cool story. Please welcome back Richard Loren, who'd taken over band management duties from John McIntyre during the band's road hiatus in 1974.
- [19:07]
Richard Loren
The most important thing that happened in that period for me in 1978, besides Egypt, was Cats under the Stars. The best fucking album made by Jerry and most anybody else, in my opinion. It's brilliant. It was great. It was an incredible experience hanging around those guys in that period of time. It was just great because everybody was happy, you know, we were playing good music. We were doing the road, you know. And Jerry, he just loved not playing with the Grateful Dead all the time. I mean, it was a different kind of a thing. He was with three or four friends. We would be enjoying us. He abandoned me and Steve Parrish and stuff.
- [19:50]
David Lemieux
Just a song of Gamora. I wonder what they did there Must have been a bad thing to get shot down.
- [20:18]
Jesse Jarno
Here's how Garcia described it in March 1978, just a few weeks before the start of the Friend of the Devil.
- [20:24]
David Lemieux
Shows, we did it in our garage, fundamentally in our warehouse where we rehearsed, which just happens to be a really, really beautiful sounding room for some peculiar reason. It's a great big, big room.
- [20:38]
Jesse Jarno
Five years earlier, the Grateful Dead had started rehearsing in their equipment warehouse on Front street in San Rafael, which turned out to sound great. In 1977, they began to turn it into a real recording studio.
- [20:50]
Richard Loren
Richard Loren Cats under the Stars was made very, very simply. They didn't spend a lot of money to do that. That studio was put together because of Cats under the Stars. We needed a studio to record, so they said, hey, let's just go there. I think that's the first music that really came out of Front Street. They just made it work.
- [21:24]
David Lemieux
Accidentally. Like a martyr the hurt gets worse and the heart gets harder.
- [21:37]
Jesse Jarno
That's one of the earliest recordings from front street from August 1977. Garcia on Rhodes and vocals, Big Steve Parrish on drums and Bob Matthews on bass. Doing Warren Zevons accidentally like a martyr somehow, roughly six months before Zevon himself released feels pretty indicative of the vibe shift at Front Street.
- [21:58]
David Lemieux
What we've been talking about is that we want to make a record cheaper. We don't want to be in LA while we're making, so we don't want to repeat that experience. Although working with anything else is a good trip.
- [22:08]
Jesse Jarno
We spent the last few seasons of the Dead cast Talking about the Dead's grand imperial period of 1973 and 1974, when at their disposal they had their own record companies, travel agency, booking agency, and of course toured with the radical configuration now known as the Wall of Sound, to name only a few of the far out endeavors of the era. When we last left them, at the end of season nine, they just filmed five nights of performances at Winterland that were to become the Grateful Dead movie. Here's how Ron Rakkow put Nothing burns.
- [22:41]
David Lemieux
Up money like movies.
- [22:42]
Bob
I mean, cocaine habits don't burn up money like movies.
- [22:45]
Jesse Jarno
The movie was finally released in the spring of 1977, and the grateful Dead were still dealing with the financial fallout of a year and a half off the road alongside a money gobbling project the size of the Grateful Dead movie. It was up to Richard Loren to maintain the new austerity.
- [23:01]
Richard Loren
I had to run the business, man. I had to get him out of debt. I had to pay for the movie. I am a social radical and a conservative financial guy. I believe that you spend what you have. They spent way more than they had. And I inherited a band that spent money that they didn't have, and I had to keep it solvent. That was my job.
- [23:21]
Jesse Jarno
Hopefully we'll be able to really detail the making of the movie down the road. The story of the dead in 1978 is of finally almost being on the other side.
- [23:30]
Richard Loren
I wouldn't let them borrow money. The only time I borrowed any money was when I borrowed, you know, like, I think $40,000 from Bill for a short period of time to finish up on the movie. Graham helped us out, but then, you know, I paid him back right away because I don't want to be beholden the Bill. Worst thing could be you could ever do is be beholden the Bill. I couldn't say no to the son of a bitch if I owe him money.
- [23:53]
Jesse Jarno
In fact, there's a letter in the band's archives from just a few days before the start of the box indicating that they were still paying back loans to Bill Graham on various accounts.
- [24:03]
David Lemieux
We're still dealing with lots of other problems which are too diverse to mention, like we're broke or we're poor anyway, and we are. We've managed to stay poor as by the most incredible illusion of success. It just. It works out well for us because this is. This is like the way we make our living rather than being something which just made us fabulously well. If I was wealthy enough, I could get to be totally worthless. I might never do anything. I work, you know, this is my work. It's my work. It's my job.
- [24:38]
Richard Loren
You know, when I actually became the manager for the band, I said, I'll be your manager, but I have to have my own office. I have to have a door on it. And I don't want people coming in, coming out anytime they want. I have work to do, and I want to be left alone in the morning. Unless invited, the door is going to be shut.
- [25:02]
Bob
So.
- [25:02]
Richard Loren
But I'll tell you as soon as the door opens up. Somebody knocked on the door. I peeked in, and I would see, like, a band member. I'd have to let them in. But, you know, I see Mickey Hart come in there, and he's like, oh, God, now what does he want? More money, I'm sure, for a studio or something. And then, oh, it's Phil Lesh. Oh, what does he want? Oh, he wanted a. By a Lotus, you know. So I had to figure out how to say no to these people, you know, and that was the hardest thing to do, is to say no. And they had this concept of oh, we can always do another gig. I said, yeah, you can do another gig.
- [25:37]
Jesse Jarno
Here's Robert Klein interviewing Jerry Garcia in 1979.
- [25:42]
David Lemieux
You're modestly dressed in a black T.
- [25:44]
Bob Wagner
Shirt, some corduroy pants and some sneakers.
- [25:46]
David Lemieux
And how come you don't have dragon shoes on? And I just, just don't wear them out of the house.
- [25:55]
Jesse Jarno
Ladies and gentlemen, the finest band in.
- [25:58]
Steve Silberman
The land, the Grateful Dead.
- [26:13]
Jesse Jarno
That was the Grateful Dead at Englishtown Raceway in September 1977. Now Dix picks 15, where some of the new changes were audible. With Mickey Hart barely able to lift his arm to his shoulder just weeks before the gig, the band's groove had shifted subtly. Another change was the band's keyboard sound. For the first time in six years, there wasn't an acoustic piano on stage. That's the Dead with Keith God show and Yamaha CP 70 Electric Baby grand, an instrument he continued to play through his last year in Change with the Dead, Richard Loren.
- [27:20]
Richard Loren
I think it was convenience. I think that the quality of those keyboards were getting better and better, and I think that probably had somewhat to do with it. And then it was really a nuisance to get the piano. It's like just another vehicle to transport the piano from place to place or to get a larger expense to get it to rented at a local place.
- [28:06]
Jesse Jarno
That was Jerry Garcia playing his first solo in Eyes of the World at Englishtown in September 1977. Here's how it sounded on December 30th at Winterland. Now on Dick's Picks 10. With still another small difference that would set up the band for their spring 78 sound, Jerry Garcia was once again playing Wolf, the custom guitar built for him by Doug Irwin in 1970. In 1977 and 1978, the late journalist and photographer John Sievert prepared a massive article about Jerry Garcia for Guitar Player magazine, conducting interviews in December 1977 and June, July and August 1978. We'll be listening to some excerpts over the course of this and future episodes, with immense gratitude to the Retro photo archives.
- [29:21]
David Lemieux
This particular guitar that I'm playing this evening, it's a guitar that was made for me by Doug Irwin about. I think I got it at the end of. 72.
- [29:30]
Jesse Jarno
Mid 73. Jer, we discussed the original build of Wolf in our Here Comes Sunshine episode last year. Here's Doug Irwin describing it to John Sievert.
- [29:39]
David Lemieux
The guitar that he's using right now is a guitar that I built for.
- [29:43]
Jesse Jarno
Him about five or six years ago. Now the whole guitar is basically maple, except for the core and some of.
- [29:50]
David Lemieux
The stripes in the neck, essentially the whole body except for the purple part.
- [29:56]
Steve Silberman
Of it, which is purple heart is.
- [29:58]
Jesse Jarno
Made out of western maple.
- [30:01]
David Lemieux
Because this guitar is custom made for me, it's not like a production guitar. There's something to it, but I know that, for example, if anything goes wrong with it, I can't replace it. There's no other guitar that's comparable to it or that's similar to it, which.
- [30:15]
Jesse Jarno
Is exactly what happened. The guitar suffered a number of drops, some larger than others, including one that resulted in a small fracture in the peghead. In late 1975, Garcia returned the guitar to Doug Irwin for repairs and switched over to the newfangled Travis Bean guitars made with aluminum necks.
- [30:34]
David Lemieux
The Travis Beans. I could use them interchangeably, so they offer me that. And I played on it long enough down to where they feel they feel natural.
- [30:44]
Jesse Jarno
By the end of September 1977, Irwin returned Wolf to Garcia, and Wolf returned to the stage for the band's fall 77 tour.
- [30:51]
David Lemieux
I started playing it then. It's been through some transformation since then. Recently refinished and a new lamination up here. Stuff like that. You know some things. And it's got demons. It's more or less like a Stratocaster.
- [31:11]
Jesse Jarno
The lamination includes the guitar's namesake. In mid December 73, around three months after Garcia started playing the guitar live, someone affixed a sticker of a cartoon wolf just below the bridge. When Garcia brought it back in for repairs, Doug Irwin laminated the Wolf right into the guitar.
- [31:30]
David Lemieux
My guitar, as you photographed it, has now the back two pickups. It's still got three pickups, like a Stratocaster. The back two are. All three of them are Demarz yokes. But the back two are the dual sound ones that switch from humbucking to single coil, which is really perfect for what I'm doing right now. The Travis Beam that I play, also play a lot, is also luggage Stratocaster. It has three single coil pickups. I'm just fond of single coil pickups, and I'm also fond of having three of them. It offers me the greatest number of combinations without having to fool with it very much. The thing of having three different places that you're sampling from harmonically is neat.
- [32:09]
Jesse Jarno
The inside of the guitar had some cool new wiring too, but we're going to save that for another episode. With his own very serious custom and customized guitars, Garcia certainly couldn't deny that he had some opinions about the guitars he played.
- [32:23]
David Lemieux
The guitar isn't really as important to me as music is. And I love the guitar and I think of. I'm trying to become a guitar player, but it's the music that counts, so the more variety it offers me. In other words, there's sometimes I wish that I were a horn player, you know, or I wish. I wish right now I had a friend, a combination of a French horn and an oboe to play these notes.
- [32:44]
Jesse Jarno
Well, obviously someone hasn't listened to the Dead cast about Infrared Roses and the Dead's MIDI period.
- [33:01]
David Lemieux
So for me, that thing of anything that gives me more, another possibility. Yeah, I love it. I'm a nut for it. But the other element is that it has to be no hassle, you know, and it has to be really. And it has to be something that's repeatable and predictable. I'd rather have the surprises implicit so that I can discover them.
- [33:20]
Jesse Jarno
We'll have tons more from John Sievert's amazing interviews with Garcia later and over the next few episodes of the Dead cast.
- [33:26]
David Lemieux
I want to tell you how this gonna be.
- [33:53]
Jesse Jarno
Steve Silberman was at Winterland.
- [33:55]
Bob Wagner
I went to the. I think it was New Year's Eve 77 at Winterland. Was it? I think I took way too much lsd. That was the weird year when Bill Graham was at Santana at the Cow palace at midnight, rather than at the Dead. So the Dead, Midnight was actually put on hold, so they were not on stage at midnight, which seemed insane. It still seems insane to me. When the Dead went into Fire on the Mountain that night, I had this uncanny feeling of familiarity about it. Like, oh my God, I've heard this in a dream. No, dude, you heard it on the Digger Rhythm album without lyrics.
- [34:59]
Jesse Jarno
What's doubly odd about Steve's premonition is that an internal Grateful Dead document from this exact period indicates that alongside the Jerry Garcia Band and the Bob Weir Band, Mickey Hart was also gearing up for touring in 1978 with the Diga Rhythm Band. The tour never happened, but big collaborative drum sessions were clearly back on the percussionist's mind if they'd ever been off it. The four shows at Winterland in December 1977 were the band's first New Year's run there since 1972, and it was a classic Bay Area party. And so it was that after this multi day party, Jerry Garcia lost his voice.
- [35:43]
David Lemieux
You want to keep our.
- [35:49]
Jesse Jarno
That was the Dead a week later during their year opening gig in San Bernardino. Drink some tea, buddy. Bob Weir and Donna Jean Godscho had to sing most of the Songs for a few gigs. Steve Silberman I had gone on a.
- [36:02]
Bob Wagner
Little mini tour at the beginning of the year to Stockton and Sacramento, which were accessible from the Bay Area. But I will say I was young enough to not come home on the day in between. And I slept on the steps of the venue in. I think it was either Stockton or Sacramento. But Jerry was having one of his mysterious vocal episodes. He had not been able to sing at a couple of shows earlier in San Diego, I think it was. He did sing in Sacramento, but everybody knew that Jerry was sick, whatever that meant. But they were still really fun shows because if you were going to a show in Stockton or Sacramento, you were a serious Deadhead. I loved those small shows because of that community element.
- [36:55]
Steve Silberman
David Lemieux, he lost his voice in January. It was never the same. I mean, you listen to the fall of 77, the New Year's run, 12, 29, 77. Jerry's got that voice from 76, from 74.
- [37:10]
Jesse Jarno
Though Jerry Garcia remained a great singer, he had a new set of tools to work with. Another musical aspect to listen to on Friend of the Devils.
- [37:18]
Steve Silberman
You can really still hear it in those little February run at the beginning of February, and you can still hear it at these shows. It was never the same. It's Jerry getting used to his new voice.
- [37:29]
Jesse Jarno
Between the early January shows and the start of the April tour in the new box set, Garcia didn't exactly have time to rest. The Dead toured through February 5, now on Dick's Picks 18. Almost immediately, the Jerry Garcia band went back to Club Front to finish the long overdue Cats under the Stars, originally scheduled for release the previous fall but not out until mid April. Played a handful of local bar gigs with a Garcia band, then hit the road for their own tour, at least keeping Garcia and Keith and Donna Jean gotcha in playing shape.
- [38:08]
David Lemieux
My band plays the bars and then theaters. We do bars to theaters. I should ask you that. The Grateful Dead does theaters too. Concert hall. Big or, you know, large auditoriums. Outdoor. Big outdoor things.
- [38:18]
Jesse Jarno
It was a very different musical platform than the Dead for Garcia, guitar playing.
- [38:23]
David Lemieux
Itself is one of those things. Like, not really. I really don't think it's that interesting. I think it's the evolution of ensemble music with the guitarist and one of the leading voices is a new thing for me. Playing in my band is like a four piece band. Guitar, bass, drums and keyboards. For me, it's the new string quartet. It's the new conversational music where the instruments speak to each other, you know, and you have those kind of, that kind of dynamic, having that kind of excitement happening and that kind of tightness going on, you know, string quartet style.
- [39:25]
Jesse Jarno
That was Mission in the Rain by the Jerry Garcia Band for March 18, 1978 in Washington D.C. now in the Pure Jerry series, while the Garcia Band toured the Northeast, they stopped in venues that the Bob Weir Band had just played. And while Garcia's band featured Keith God show, Weir's band featured new keyboardist Brent Midland, a name Deadheads would soon know. Garcia's tour ended on March 22, Weir's on March 25, which we just heard some from. And that about brings us up to speed for the new box set.
- [40:14]
David Lemieux
Hello, Hello. Just a few more seconds, we'll have the drum riser nailed together and we'll.
- [40:20]
Jesse Jarno
Be able to begin to get a first hand look at the shows on the new box. We're delighted to welcome Dr. Bob Wagner. You may know his tapes from such CDs as Dave's Picks 8, recorded November 30, 1980 in Atlanta. One of the Dead's only official releases to come from a fan made recording. He's probably taping near you this weekend.
- [40:40]
Bob
Well, my first shows were Academy of music and 72. I went to three of those. Of course, that was quite an experience. And in the last of those, the 32872 show, at the last minute, I got a ticket from a friend and it was second row center. So you can imagine that was kind of an overwhelming experience. And I was most definitely on the bus after that.
- [41:06]
David Lemieux
Going down the road, Going down the road.
- [41:34]
Jesse Jarno
Bob grew up on Long island, still one of the hardiest concentrations of Deadheads in the world.
- [41:39]
Bob
My high school was a Deadhead factory. And of course that's how I got into it, being influenced by friends. But even like during the Academy of Music shows, we would gather in the lunchroom during the lunch periods and talk to people who had been to one of the shows last night and get the scoop on it. Yeah, we even had in my high school and I saw them before it was into the Dead, we had a bunch of high school students that were a Dead cover band. It was called Jeb Stewart. And I remember seeing them play in the student auditorium, part of Live Dead, the St. Stephen, etc. From Live Dead. And I was not into the Dead at that point, but some of my friends were. And I remember that vividly. Let's see, it would have been 71ish.
- [42:31]
Jesse Jarno
It wasn't until a few years later that Bob got into tape collecting.
- [42:35]
Bob
I was at University of North Carolina, Chapel hill, which is eight miles from the Duke campus. Probably late 76. The Duke University radio station at the time, WDBS, and sometime during the vacation period had what they called a Grateful Dead orgy. And they played tapes like for a whole weekend. And I didn't even own a cassette player, but a friend of mine in the dormitory did and he recorded a few cassettes. And those were my first tapes. And I know it included the Miami 62374 a part of it. And for a couple of years I didn't even own a cassette deck. I would go to the music library on campus where everybody was checking out cassettes of classical music to study for their classes. And I'd be sitting there on my headphones grooving the way Weather Report. Sweet. I started trading basically through the classifieds in the back of dead relics. And I. I posted classifieds there, wrote to everybody else who posted and traded some tapes by the mail. The first thing I had to trade was the. The very flawed soundboard of Duke 92376, which I got from somebody I knew on the Duke campus. Very flawed audio recording, but a really great show. And then later my. My friend recorded the 52577 Richmond Mosque show. And I traded that through the mail with. With my first real recording was Englishtown 1977. And it was all inspired by my friend taping the Richmond 52577 show. He became my friend after I became aware of his tape. And that kind of inspired me. Like I can't go on going home from shows and not having a tape of it anymore. I got a certain do it myself. I had the Sony 158 and I bought some Sony ECM's 270 microphones. And I actually wound up using that setup only for my very first show, which was Englishtown. My deck malfunctioned and part of my not fade away is ruined from that show because the deck was screwing up. And then I replaced the mics. By the time I was on the next Tour, which was 4-78, with Sony 54Pmics, which were the highest grade Sony's that you could get in their line at the time.
- [45:49]
Jesse Jarno
By then Bob had entered into the Deadhead info trading network too.
- [45:53]
Bob
We generally did have set lists. I had been at Englishtown and I was trying to work out trades through the classifieds and relics for the whole June 76 tour. So this was a year later and we're still trying to get tapes of those. And we generally had set Lists or partial set lists. I don't know where they came from actually. For all or most of the shows, we generally knew knew what was played, even though there were holes. There were some shows that we didn't have or at least weren't circulating, but we generally knew what they were doing. I don't remember exactly how we knew that, but we did. And then Dead Relics, they would review certain shows and that would include a set list. Like, I remember Jerry Moore went on the fall 76 tour, or part of it, like Cincinnati and Indianapolis. And so we had set lists from those.
- [46:48]
Jesse Jarno
At the same time that Bob started taping, he also entered the next phase of his life.
- [46:53]
Bob
I started medical school probably in August of 77. And so April 78 came at the pretty much the end of the school year. Right near the end of the school year, I drove from North Carolina, I stopped in Jacksonville to buy tickets for that show along the way, and then I drove the whole rest of the way.
- [47:14]
Jesse Jarno
Bob's spring break didn't align with the Dead's trip south, but that wasn't going to stop him any more than it was going to stop them.
- [47:20]
Bob
It was a pretty exciting time for me because I was going to get to see the Dead in multiple shows for the first time in a long, long time. Since I didn't make any of the spring 76 shows, which sold out before I knew about them. And I was well situated for a southern tour because I was going to school in North Carolina. It's a pretty long drive to Florida, but doable and affordable. I didn't have money to buy airline tickets, I was a starving college student, et cetera. Before I went there, I came home, home being Long island, for spring break in March, and met, met up with some of my friends there, which included Steve Mazner, who made lots of 76 and 77 tapes that we enjoy today. And he was kind of the taping mentor for me because I didn't really know what I was doing at Englishtown, just self taught. So I learned a lot of the principles of taping from him and he was going on the tour. So I met up with him at Tampa and we stayed with one of his friends who was also into taping that lived in or near Tampa. And so I went to those three Florida shows with him.
- [48:31]
Jesse Jarno
And so the Dead arrived in Tampa to begin their second leg of touring for 1978 on April 6th.
- [48:41]
David Lemieux
Come on in with your. Open up your window.
- [49:08]
Jesse Jarno
Grateful Dead archivist David Lemieux.
- [49:10]
Steve Silberman
I've always felt that this show didn't have the vibe of an opening night. They were already in mid tour form by the beginning of the tour. And that's weird because they hadn't played in a little over two months since February 5th. Now there'd been a ton of solo activities with Bob and Jerry doing their own things. And they had big albums that year. They both had big albums that year. They had their chops up. They were ready to play, especially in the later years because they generally wouldn't have played for a few months when a tour opens and they. They're not hanging out all day and all week rehearsing. They kind of show up at the airport and not having seen each other for a few weeks and then they get on a plane, go somewhere and they play. They tended to play very well on opening nights, but not taking the chances. I found that this show they did take the chances. There's a Bertha opener, Candyman. They're playing some songs that are. They're not complicated necessarily, but they're the crowd pleasing things.
- [51:09]
Bob
At that first show at The Tampa Show, April 6, I believe it was, I relied on Mason since he had made so many tapes before and he decided the best place to go was across the floor and on some bleacher risers to go for the height because we didn't have a real high stand.
- [51:28]
Jesse Jarno
This is some of their tape from that night followed by some of the new box set the Only Game.
- [52:19]
David Lemieux
The Only Game.
- [52:24]
Steve Silberman
And then we get to the second set that. I mean the Samson that opens up the. The set just.
- [52:29]
Bob
It.
- [52:30]
Steve Silberman
I think it just totally rips.
- [52:58]
Jesse Jarno
Samson and Delilah was one of three songs from the newish album Terrapin Station along with Passenger and Estimated Profit, which begins the second set jam sequence.
- [53:11]
David Lemieux
Standing in a shaft of Light.
- [53:22]
Steve Silberman
And then like so many shows on the tour where there's an estimated Eyes or an estimated he's gone. This one gets the estimated He's Gone treatment. And I think both of them are played incredibly well. And they generally would clock about 25 minutes for the two of them.
- [53:53]
Jesse Jarno
I love the deceleration from Estimated Profit into He's Gone especially. It's like a full two minute slowdown starting here and gradually landing.
- [55:08]
Steve Silberman
This is when that kind of format really started falling into place where you get your slotted songs. And this is really where those really started where there's going to be a cowboy medley.
- [55:18]
Jesse Jarno
Grateful that setlists always had some amount of organization to them, but starting especially after the band's return to the road and culminating in this tour of the south, they increasingly found a format for the shows. David mentioned cowboy medleys when Bob Weir would link together two of his country covers, which he did for the first time on April 30, 1977, at the Palladium in New York. Now download series volume.
- [55:53]
David Lemieux
Me and My uncle went right down.
- [55:57]
Jesse Jarno
There had been drum breaks even before Mickey Hart joined the band in 1967, but his presence invited more of them, often coming out of Alligator, like this version from early 1968 now on Dick's picks 22. And when Hart returned to the road with the band in 1976, so did the high energy drum brakes at first, just inside Let It Grow. But by the fall of 1976, they started regularly emerging in unexpected places, specifically in order to generate even more unexpected places, like this jam from Dick's picks 20. Bridging comes a time and Eyes of the World. But over the next, while the band began to organize their second sets around the drum segment as Deadheads, we always.
- [57:14]
Steve Silberman
Used to just think that things would morph and things would just change. But I do think a lot of these things were by design where the format that they kind of 76 still was all over the place. 77 2. You can still get a show like Cornell that doesn't have a drums interlude. It doesn't have a duet, it doesn't have space. It is just a rock and roll powerhouse. And then later in 77 into 78. I think it was a conscious choice to divide that second set into kind of four or five songs proper songs. And then a drums rhythm, Devils space, and then the kind of three songs after four songs after Always with the Jerry ballad in There. Stella Blue, Black Peter Warfrat, occasionally, Rarely Morning Dew and then wrap it up with Bob. We're Rocking the House with Sugar Mag, Round and Around, something like that.
- [58:00]
Jesse Jarno
The opening night of the tour features arguably the last of the band's original drum breaks.
- [58:37]
Steve Silberman
There's an extremely long version of the other one at this show, and it just, you know, other one can generally be six to eight or nine minutes.
- [59:10]
Jesse Jarno
What stretches this version especially is that usually in this era, after the song's second verse, the band would almost immediately move into the next song. Here the jam stretches for more than five minutes before they land in Warfrat. That vibe shift we mentioned before was real with this version of Wurf Rat. We'll also say goodbye to the band's friend and sometimes agitator Emmett Grogan, a key player in the Diggers, the radical Mutual Aid anarchists of the Haight Ashbury and Comrades of the Dead. On the night of April 6, 1978, while the dead were in Florida, Grogan overdosed and died on the F train to Coney Island. Things had changed.
- [60:33]
Bob
Bob Wagner But I thought the level of playing was really good. That was also the tour where the format got firmly established and the long drum jams. And I wasn't at the time too enamored with the with the drum jams. But that was counteracted by the fact that just the playing was so good overall.
- [61:02]
Jesse Jarno
Ma the middle of three shows in Florida occurred at the Sportatorium in Pembroke Pines outside Miami. The self declared favorite venue of our late friend. Thoughts on the Dead Before I listen.
- [61:39]
Steve Silberman
To any given show, I look at the venue. Before I listen to that show and the Sportatorium I've looked at for years. Have you seen this place? It's a dump. It looks like a great place to see the Dead. Just like a place like a broke down palace that tear this whole building down.
- [61:54]
Bob
Bob Wagner was kind of out in the middle of nowhere. I remember I was driving and having a hard time finding it. In those days of pre GPS when you had to rely on some written directions or follow the crowd was kind of in the middle of the nowhere. Was not really a nice venue. But I recall the sound being pretty good. Healy worked his magic as always.
- [62:18]
Steve Silberman
Pembroke Pines, Good show. I mean I'm going to say this all the time. Good show. Again, completely different from the the previous night.
- [62:26]
David Lemieux
Are you ready?
- [62:30]
Bob
Good.
- [62:31]
Bob Wagner
So are we.
- [62:56]
Steve Silberman
Great. Pagio 1978 Peggy oh, that's to me the peak of that song. Saying that New Haven 77 is magnificent, but Pagio every single version of it. Whereas sometimes in the 80s or you know, it can be a song that if it's not. I've talked this about about other songs like this and if it's not played great, it can just be there. But the ones in 78 are always played great. They always to me are a highlight. Jerry's doing a lot of mellower stuff this tour and maybe that's because as we mentioned, his voice is changing and he's kind of changed. But you know, you're getting a lot of Peggy O and Loser and Friend of the Devil and kind of those. I don't want to say slower songs, but then you get these bouncy versions of Tennessee Jed like we have here. As I mentioned, there's a lot of estimated eyes, occasional estimated He's Gones which they they did the previous night at Curtis Hickson this one instead gets the kind of other common jam. If there are two, let's say 1972 had the dark star and the other one here you would get kind of leading in the drums, either Estimated Eyes or He's Gone or the Terrapin playing, which is funny because later in the 80s it would turned into playing Terrapin similar to the way estimated eyes in 90 became eyes estimated through the end. But this one has the really good terrapin into playing in the band. And I. It's a combination that to me works perfectly as they end the final notes of Terrapin Station and the big powerful ending. And then it kind of slows down and quiets down a bit. And then Bob does the 10 count and then boom, they kick into playing in the band.
- [66:07]
David Lemieux
Some folks trust a reason.
- [66:17]
Steve Silberman
So this one is a playing in the band show before drums, before Rhythm Devils, which now even clocks in above 11 minutes.
- [66:25]
Jesse Jarno
What happened next changed Grateful Dead history. The April 7th show at Pembroke Pines was the first to feature an array of steel drums, percussion and other instruments ready for jamming. This is one place where the cleaned up mix by Jeffrey Norman is a vast improvement over the circulating tapes.
- [67:12]
Steve Silberman
It.
- [67:39]
Jesse Jarno
What'S not obvious from the tape is who is playing the steel drums. Some video photos and newspaper accounts survive from later in the tour documenting that Jerry Garcia, Steve Parish and others were regular participants in the steel drums segments. And we'll note those when we know for sure. But based on the sound of things, I think all of the Rhythm Devil segments from April 7 onward feature more than just Hart and Kreuzman.
- [68:03]
Steve Silberman
Presumably it was Mickey who made that choice. Hey, Ramrod, load up the steel drums and the pots and pans. I think it would also be Mickey's choice to say, hey, let's turn this into like a participation thing where anybody who wants to, you know, you've seen the pictures of Keith and Jerry and Bill's up there and Parrish and everybody's welcome. I don't know a lot of bands that would do this. It's. It's a pretty cool thing that they. They did that. And I. I would kind of give Mickey credit for that to this day. It's the kind of thing Mickey still does. He loves the beat and he loves the more people that are hitting that. I think it's a good thing.
- [68:39]
Jesse Jarno
For Mickey, it was the steel drums that made segments truly participatory, with an open tuning that allows musicians to play together without knowledge of scales. And also elevated the segment from Percussion Showcase to something more playful. Here's Garcia, speaking with Robert Klein in 1979.
- [68:56]
David Lemieux
This kind of life has a minimum amount of spontaneity when you know where you're going to be, where you're going to be playing and the hotel you're going to stay at and all the rest of that. So the whole thing is being able to create some amount of that that can happen, in our case, during performances. So it's the idea of avoiding a certain kind of show, you know, avoiding repetition of material. If we can. We can get that far as far as planning is concerned, you know, to sort of allow for the possibility of something new to happen.
- [69:28]
Jesse Jarno
Mickey Hart was already a lifer percussionist, but he'd gradually begun to build an instrumental palette for himself that would take over the back half of the Grateful Dead stage. But it wasn't simply a matter of designing new instruments. Here's how Garcia described it in an interview in July 1981.
- [69:44]
David Lemieux
What happens when Mickey constructs one of those kinds of things? It's like the last thing he thinks about is the music. You know what I mean? He makes an effort to put together everything, and he gets like, this kind of architecture, architectural space, you know, putting together elements. You know, it's kind of science or something like that. And then. And then they never rehearse. Maybe they'll have a few things together. But the thing is his. His hope is that with the right personality there, something special will happen. And it's one of those things where we've done various combinations over the years where there've been just enough of those lucky breaks with absolutely nothing planned, you know, and with absolutely nothing planned, that worked out good so that it's like he has enough confidence in that mechanism to try it, you know, even sometimes. And sometimes it doesn't. Doesn't work. It's one of those. Like a gamble.
- [71:06]
Jesse Jarno
On this night, at least on tape, they're still learning how to gamble. But it would pay off in the long run, veritably forcing them to jam harder and weirder. By 1977 and 1978, the dead didn't engage much in the wild open zones of Darkstar or Ned Legion's Seastones. There's not a lot of deep space in the beloved Grateful dead year of 1977, which could be why some people like it. But this being the Grateful Dead, that simply couldn't stand Steve Silberman.
- [71:35]
Bob Wagner
Before this tour, Drums in space was not a part of the set structure. There had been, obviously, interludes of space, and obviously there had been interludes of drums. Once they locked into this sequence of tribal sounding drums followed by really out there electronics in space. It was so right that it seemed like it had been there forever. It's hard to even imagine. Like, I feel like it distorted my memories of previous shows. Like, wasn't there a drum space? No. I found drums in space to be extremely cathartic because they were willing to go to really dark and even occasionally terrifying places. And that matched the gravitas of the psychedelic experiences I was having in my own head. And the thing about psychedelics is they are ancient. They work through ancient neurochemical pathways. I loved how what the Dead were getting at was bigger than them in drones in space. And they would seem to invite presences that were ancient and huge. I could never understand how people could go get a hot dog, but that was me.
- [73:26]
Jesse Jarno
It was sometime in this window that the term Rhythm Depth Devils came into the Grateful Dead syntax to describe Mickey and Billy's excellent adventures. David Lemieux what I love about a.
- [73:36]
Steve Silberman
Lot of these shows is the songs that come after Rhythm Devils. You get these massive 10, 12, 22, 23 minute versions of rhythm Devils and then you still get usually a couple of songs after Rhythm Devils that are also 10 minutes or more. You get the 15 minute other one the night before this one, you get the 10 or 11 minute version and not Fade Away that I love these, these huge Not Fade Aways. And this is the first one of the run of our, of our shows in the box. And I love Not Fade Away. I mean, you get three little verses, you get no bridge and you get some incredible jamming. And when they did five minute versions of Not Fade Away in the 80s, let's say they still jammed a lot. But when you're getting a 10 minute version, to me, there's nothing like it because you've got Jerry shredding. But you also get a lot of really fun jams within Phil's Holding It Down. The drummers clearly love playing it.
- [75:11]
Jesse Jarno
And down into the evening's Garcia ballad. Steve Silber Foreman those slow songs like.
- [75:42]
Bob Wagner
Black Peter and whatnot that people would complain about because they were so slow, they were actually a perfect vehicle for that new voice of Garcia's because it had that wizened quality and he sounded like an old man. He sounded like Black Peter, you know, I think Jerry was looking for a way to make the best of what he had.
- [76:04]
David Lemieux
Really. See how everything.
- [76:34]
Steve Silberman
You get a huge Black Peter, which always clocks in over 10 minutes, and then you get the jam coming out of Black Peter that goes back into playing in the band. I love that this is a show and it's not that common they did this. It's the playing in the band that ends the second set as well. And I. I love that. I love when the Dead would do this. I saw them do that, I think only once.
- [78:00]
Jesse Jarno
After the show, the Tabors had a question they needed answered and went looking for front of house engineer Dan Healy.
- [78:06]
Bob
Unlike many sound men of today, who disappear from the soundboard as soon as the show ends, he would often hang out for a while at the board, so you could go and talk to him. I don't really remember doing so on the April 78 tour, but definitely when I was in July on those shows through the Midwest.
- [78:28]
Jesse Jarno
Their question was simple. What the hell just happened?
- [78:31]
Bob
Somebody asked Healy about it and he said, oh, that's the Grateful Dead Rhythm Devils. So tapes were being labeled back then as Rhythm Devils. Now. I don't know if Healy meant it as an official title or just his description or whatever, but anyway, we took that and ran with it. And that's why it's generally written on the cassette boxes from back then.
- [78:54]
Jesse Jarno
If you ever wondered how Heads knew the names of new songs, that's the answer they asked Dan Healy.
- [79:00]
Bob
Back in that era, nobody from the Dead was looking to shut us down. Not in. Not in spring 78. It was strictly a matter of the venue. Each venue was different. And I don't remember there being any problem getting my equipment in at Tampa or at Curtis Hexon hall or at. Or in Hollywood. But as I went through the line, they searched my backpack in Jacksonville. And the guy told me that I had to check it, that I can't bring it in. So I did. Then I got in, met up with all my friends, and one friend got his Mach 550. And someone else who had my mics in his backpack had no problem getting those in. It was just kind of a random thing.
- [79:43]
Jesse Jarno
It's a good thing Betty was taping. Then the dad rolled into Jacksonville for a Saturday night party.
- [79:59]
David Lemieux
I was born, Daddy sat down and cried could not be tonight.
- [80:12]
Jesse Jarno
David Lemieux.
- [80:13]
Steve Silberman
There's unique stuff in this show. They open up with a. A 10 minute song, 11 minute song, a big, big half Step. So we're really seeing the variety here. We had Bera and Promised Land and Half Step. Now.
- [80:51]
Bob
There certainly wasn't like a parking lot scene or anything like that. I think that the crowd was mostly locals that would show up at the last minute and then disappear as soon as the show was over. I mean, I recall there were pretty good crowds. It's not like I don't recall any of those shows being played to an empty building, but there wasn't really a whole scene around it at that point. I remember the sound was not that great. And actually Kathy Sublette made her own tape from that one too. And I. I've listened to that and it's okay, but not great. So I would say the PA was not especially good there.
- [82:13]
Steve Silberman
Bill's baseline on they Love each other in 1978 in particular, onward, especially that ending thing. I. I just. I love what he's doing. It's a song that, you know, is just a nice. I mean, it wasn't a ballad when they started playing it in 73, but it kind of is a more of a mid tempo, ballady kind of thing. But it's got so much going on that to me, it's always an exciting song.
- [82:37]
David Lemieux
God, try to see a little. You can see that it's true.
- [83:10]
Steve Silberman
Looks Like Rain. Another one of those songs that just builds. You get to really hear Donna. Donna sounds great on this tour, by the way, after the Wall of Sound, when they came back in 76 in particular, right through 77 and 78, Donna Jean, I think, sounded magnificent. And there's so many songs in this era that they. They wouldn't be the same without her.
- [83:33]
Jesse Jarno
Green feels like.
- [83:39]
Bob Wagner
Here Comes the Rain.
- [84:00]
David Lemieux
Yes, it looks like rain and it feels like Rainbow.
- [84:10]
Jesse Jarno
Workshopping material on stage with thoughtful critiques was always an important part of the Dead's process. You can hear some constructive notes from Billy Kreutzman, I believe, after they accidentally play through the ending to Samson and Delilah twice.
- [84:26]
Bob Wagner
Did you do it?
- [84:28]
David Lemieux
Why did you do it, you fucking idiot?
- [84:36]
Jesse Jarno
In case you missed it, I believe the text of Kreutzmann's Socratic dialogue can be transcribed as who fucked up? Who fucked it up? Who did it? Did you do it? Why did you do it?
- [84:50]
Steve Silberman
And then we get a nice Scarlet Fire early in the second set, but not opening, which I always think is cool.
- [85:29]
Jesse Jarno
If you dig Scarlet Begonias. We referred you back to our episode about that song from earlier this year. Just like the 1972 box sets have devastating versions of Dark Star or the other one every few shows. The same holds True for 1978 and Scarlet Begonia's Fire on the Mountain. Weider and Garcia make some great tension filled shapes during the transition. Garcia takes an especially scenic route to the peak, ducking into a few elegant switchbacks.
- [86:53]
Steve Silberman
The first of the. The second Sets that are kind of standard format where you get Scarlet Fire, Estimated Eyes. Like this is a sequence that I. I've seen on dozens of tapes. I saw them play it live a lot of times.
- [87:05]
Jesse Jarno
In fact, the April 8, 1978 version is the first time the Dead followed Scarlet Begonias in Fire on the Mountain with estimated profit in Eyes of the World. A pattern they'd repeat a few dozen times over the next decade.
- [87:18]
Steve Silberman
But then it gets weird again. We now have Rhythm Devils now clocking and what are we, the third show of the tour, if I'm not mistaken. We're now at 15 minutes clocking in. They're on their way to doing something. They're. They're having fun. They didn't just kind of one off this and go. It didn't really work. Let's go back to the five minute duet. This is working for them. And then this was one of the first shows that really had its own space where they didn't come out of the Rhythm Devils with Not Fade Away or the other one with that nice lead. And this has a bonafide space jam. It's like, you know, Jerry comes out, does some incredible spacey stuff.
- [89:10]
Jesse Jarno
There's also this excellent moment at the very end of Space where Garcia and Lesh converse around the five tone alien call from Close Encounters, Garcia's favorite recent movie. They'd played with the Close Encounters call a few times, most notably in Eugene in January. Now Dave's picks 23. But this one's more subtle. Earlier in the show you can hear Bob Weir yell off mic for a roadie to hammer in rhythm. And I think that's exactly what's happening at the beginning of Sugar Magnolia, somebody hammering on the drum riser.
- [90:33]
Steve Silberman
And then in a total rarity here, they only do one song after Drums in Space. I refer to it as drums sometimes. But for this tour it really is Rhythm Devils as it should be because it's different from your regular drums. But you get Sugar Mag out of Space and that's it. You get no, Not Fade Away or the other one or anything. And you don't get a ballad. But it's a weird show like that.
- [90:57]
Jesse Jarno
I think perhaps the Dead discovered that sometimes if they jammed extra hard during the drum segment, they might come up against the very far out concept of a curfew.
- [91:50]
Bob
Bob Wagner it was just a wonderful experience. It was a wonderful experience for me. For one thing, after the winter you get to go to Florida in April is a fantastic experience in and of itself. Just weather and beaches, etcetera we had a hotel on the beach after the Jacksonville show. That proved to be a sleepless night. And then somehow I still drove to Atlanta the next day. I had riders to the Hollywood show and then I drove the whole crew up to Jacksonville for that show. And then I wasn't going to the Atlanta shows. I had to get back to school. But I dropped them off in Atlanta on the way back home. I didn't go to Atlanta because I had school obligations. I was. I was in my first year of medical school at that point. And that's kind of interesting too, because I. I cut a bunch of classes to go on this tour, much to the consternation of my dad, who needed extra martinis when he heard I was doing that. But. But I knew, I knew that I wasn't going to flunk out. We were pass fail. And the worst thing that could possibly happen was that I might flunk a test and have to make it up in the summer, but I wasn't going to flunk out of medical school. So I went for it.
- [93:58]
Jesse Jarno
Plus, you know, sweet tapes.
- [94:00]
Bob
And it's always been my tradition to listen to whatever tape I've made right after the show. Normal people don't understand that.
- [94:08]
Jesse Jarno
Does this mean I'm not normal?
- [94:11]
Bob
The non papers would say, why would you listen to something that you just saw?
- [94:14]
David Lemieux
You know?
- [94:15]
Bob
But it's part of the. Part of the tradition for tapers for sure. I would listen off of the headphone jack of the tape machine, even while driving. Unsafe, but worth the risk, you know, don't try this.
- [94:31]
Jesse Jarno
Not at home. See you in Atlanta. But not you, Dr. Bob.
- [94:35]
David Lemieux
Thank you and good night. I always say that too.
- [94:44]
Rich Mahan
Thanks very much for tuning in to the good old Grateful Dead cast friends. We'd like to thank our guests in this Richard Loren, Bob Wagner, David Lemieux and Steve Silberman. Extra special thanks to friend of the Dead cast David Ganz for his ongoing contributions of audio from his interview archive. 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.
- [95:17]
Jesse Jarno
All rights reserve.