Jesse Jarno (3:34)

They could make it anywhere.

Rich Mahan (3:37)

Here's Jesse Jarno.

Jesse Jarno (4:08)

The Grateful Dead began September 1982 with one of their periodic incursions into the mainstream. Over to Nightline with Sam Donaldson.

Rich Mahan (4:18)

Joining us now live from station KGO TV in San Francisco is guitarist Jerry Garcia of the Grateful Dead, who played at Woodstock in 1969 and will be at the US Festival or the US Festival in San Bernardino later this weekend.

Jesse Jarno (4:31)

Ah, yes, the US Festival.

Rich Mahan (4:33)

Glen Helen Regional park in San Bernardino county over the Labor Day weekend. Many critics of the festival said it couldn't be done, that the day of the big Woodstock style music festival was over. But the US Festival proved him wrong.

Jesse Jarno (4:48)

It turned out to be the biggest.

Rich Mahan (4:49)

Rock show since woodstock more than 13 years ago. And in many ways it was even more successful. And it all began with Steve Wozniak, founder of Apple Computers, who had a dream of uniting America through song and proving that the most important thing in the 80s will be our ability to work together.

Jesse Jarno (5:09)

Absolutely was. Back to Sam in the studio.

Rich Mahan (5:12)

Well, now you improvise a lot. You just get out there and you just go on for 20, 30 minutes, just improvising. That's right. And your fans, known as the Deadheads seem to love that. Why do you think that is? Why don't they want to hear a familiar song just the way they have a tape of it? A sense of adventure, I hope, you.

Jesse Jarno (5:30)

Know something like that.

Rich Mahan (5:31)

Kind of for the same reasons that we do it, to see what's going to happen and that it makes the music unique to each situation as well. If we're sensitive enough, the music that arrives belongs uniquely to that situation and that audience and that dynamic and so forth.

Jesse Jarno (5:44)

You know, at the US Festival, that situation and dynamic would certainly be unique. With the Dead playing a breakfast set at 9:30 in the morning, it wasn't ideal, but it was an adventure. Earlier that spring on WRNW in Rochester, Jerry Garcia articulated some of what made the Dead different from most of the other artists playing on the US Festival. But not as different as you'd think.

Rich Mahan (6:08)

And we think of ourselves as a live act, you know, and I think our fans mostly do too. Records are an interesting thing to do and to try things out, but records have their own reality in America. You know, like anybody who makes records, we do participate some in that idea of. Hot Signal is a neat kind. It's a nice form of American music. You know, concise three minute pop tune or whatever. It's always been part of what we've tried to do for sure, because I mean, after all, we're Americans.

Jesse Jarno (6:36)

It was certainly an unusual landscape in which to continue to be the grateful dead. By 1982, the dead had outlasted virtually all of their peers. Jefferson Starship was still setting its own space pop course. That year, Grace Slick rejoined the band and they released Winds of Change, addressing the post punk, new wave, proto metal 80s in their own way. This is out of control.

Rich Mahan (7:14)

Splendor, Getting High and Here Comes Mary Here comes Sue I tried to warn you I tried to warn you it's out of control it's out of control.

Jesse Jarno (7:28)

Okay, that's actually kind of bitching. Winds have Changed hit the top 30 with a bullet.

Rich Mahan (7:33)

I'm very happy that things are the way they are. And the amount of latitude and freedom we get because of not being tied to that, you know, the ephemeral success of the single, you know what I mean? It's like we're not. Because we're not tied to that kind of a program or a repertoire, you know what I mean? It's tremendous freedom, which is. I appreciate it, but geez, we certainly wouldn't refuse a single, you know, successful single or so. Even if Inhabitants would sure be fun.

Jesse Jarno (8:03)

And maybe not out of the question. By some accounts, 1982 was the peak of rock and roll as chart topping popular. In 1982, Joan Jett's I Love Rock and Roll spent a month and a half at the top of the Hot 100. So did Survivor's Eye of the T.

Rich Mahan (8:58)

We almost always, somewhere in the course of every album we've ever made, there's like the record that our friends and our associates and ourselves, we start thinking this is gonna be the single, you know, and we think that way as it happens.

Jesse Jarno (9:12)

Jerry Garcia also co wrote a ubiquitous top 10 hit in 1982. Just a few months after that interview Though it took the Dead a little while to manifest it in the top 10, acknowledged by consensus, American reality.

Rich Mahan (9:41)

Must be getting early the trucks are running late Pain by Numbers Morning sky it's so phony.

Jesse Jarno (9:51)

That's an early version of Touch of Grey, recorded in late August 1982 on the Beyond Description box set. It would take another half decade for the band to get the song out on a record, but it was a hit of a different kind in 1982. Besides incursions like the US Festival, the Grateful Dead were pretty much off the radar, even to longtime Deadheads. It might not be obvious what was unfolding, but in 1982, the Grateful Dead were, as the kids say, back on their bullshit, once again building their own reality.

Rich Mahan (10:23)

We will get by we will get by we will get by we will survive it seems like we're excited about this.

Jesse Jarno (10:53)

Grateful led archivist and legacy manager David Lemieux.

Rich Mahan (10:57)

I've always loved the fall tour of 82. They started, I guess. Well, they did the Veneta stuff in Seattle and then they hit Florida and they played some great shows in Florida and then they just moved their way up and they played Boston. They played in great show in Maine and then a couple of nights in at the Garden. They played Syracuse. They played the Carrier Dome, that tour at the end. And it was interesting because they a few months earlier played Syracuse in the Little Arena.

Jesse Jarno (11:23)

This is Garcia on WRNW again for May 1982.

Rich Mahan (11:27)

There's a certain rhythm to our touring. We typically we go out and do somewhere between, say, 12 and 20 days right about that. And the pace will be kind of like two shows and a day off. And then we'll come home for a couple of weeks and we'll go out again for another weeks, and then we'll come home for another two weeks like that. So there's a certain. That makes it so that we stay hot, we can keep our edge.

Jesse Jarno (11:56)

When the band pulled into Madison Square Garden for a pair of shows just before the Autumn Equinox in 1982, now on in and out of the Garden. That describes their touring pattern stretching back the past few months, or far longer, if you count Garcia's side trips. It had been a year and a half since the Dead themselves had last officially played Manhattan at the March 1981 Garden shows we covered last time. But like we've been saying, the Dead were a New York band in many regards, playing again and again and again within striking distance of NYC public transportation systems. They passed through NASA Coliseum in May 1981, and again in April 82. Jerry Garcia brought his solo electric band through the Palladium in November 81, and then came through twice more as an acoustic duo with John Kahn in April and again in June. Bobby and the Midnights hit the Palladium in February and again in June 1982, plus five additional shows on Long island and in Passaic. Between those, Robert Hunter played the other end on Bleecker Street. If you were really on the ball, maybe you were in the audience for the acoustic Dead set when they played on Tomorrow with Tom Snyder in spring 81, or when Weir and Garcia played on David Letterman the next year. And if you were a super duper insider, maybe you saw the Dead of the Savoy Theater on 44th street at their Extra Late Night session on May 9, 1981, when John Belushi joined them for vintage oldies like Twist and Shout and Walkin the Dog. And that's not counting any musical hangs at Belushi and Dan Aykroyd's unmarked blues bars downtown or when they were supposed to have played on Saturday Night Live for a third time on April 18, 1991. Canceled due to a writers strike. Something else happened during this period.

Rich Mahan (13:39)

One small step for man, one giant leap for man.

Jesse Jarno (13:54)

MTV launched on Jerry Garcia's 39th birthday, August 1, 1981. Happy birthday, Garcia. I hope you like it. In the next years, the cable channel would transform popular music in the United States and around the world. And though in 1982 the dead would debut the song with which they would eventually storm mtv, nearly all of their plans that year and really every other year pointed in exactly the opposite direction. The Grateful Dead weren't gearing up to record a hot new single or make a video, sometimes consciously, sometimes not. While they were in some ways simply manifesting their own version of reality, they were nurturing an ecosystem that had started to grow around them as far back as their first year as a band, but had now spun well beyond them. That's Shakedown street from Road Trips, Volume 4. 4, recorded April 6, 1982, at the Spectrum in Philadelphia, a year when the parking lot bazaar outside Dead shows began to expand and the touring scene around the Dead heated up. The Grateful Dead had wanted to escape the record industry in the mid-70s by starting their own label, but they actually succeeded in the 80s by simply ignoring the industry for the better part of a decade. At the core was the idea that the Dead now had an audience that really, deeply listened to their music, so much so that it was important to be there wherever and whenever it emerged Charlie Miller wasn't taping yet in 1982, but he was listening hard, helping to build that ecosystem as a tape trader and just importantly, as a tape listener.

Rich Mahan (15:41)

I did 10 out of 13 on the Spring Tour in 82. Plus. I also did the two solo garcias at the Capitol in Passaic. So I saw 12. I got into touring after doing that. Yep, I would bring my home stereo, literally, not just the cassette deck, my home stereo, some speakers. And we set up, set them up in the room and I would have. I would find somebody who taped the shows and I would give him my cassette deck and ask them if they can make me copies. And, you know, it was. It was a shitty deck. It was like an 89 deck that it's good for, good for playing on or whatever, you know, it was. And so if it ever got stolen, I wouldn't care, but it never got stolen. Taper Jim Wise Listening to the show after the show is a really cool thing. That was pretty common. If I was on tour and we were in a hotel that night or whatever with headphones, it just was. Was really cool because it was nice to be able to evaluate what you were doing, how the sound was.

Jesse Jarno (16:39)

A subtle shaking of the Grateful Dead stage setup in early 1982 had an unexpected consequence. Steve Silberman and David Schenck's skeleton key. A dictionary for Deadheads refers to it as the Switch. To make better use of the stage monitors, Jerry Garcia and Phil Lesh switched sides of the stage, Garcia moving to the right, Lesh to the left. It placed Garcia directly next to keyboardist Brent Midland, formerly of the AOR act Silver and then the Bob Weir band. Midland had replaced Keith and Donna Godchau in 1979. Playing keyboards and singing his instrumental arsenal returned the Hammond B3 to the band's sound. And his improvisational voice, not quite as aggressive as Keith God show changed the makeup of the band's musical conversations. The switch changed the dynamic even more.

Rich Mahan (17:28)

That was when I really noticed the interaction between Brent and Jerry Growing was on spring 82.

Jesse Jarno (17:34)

Along with a new musical bromance, Brent Midland also got a new keyboard in early 1982, a Yamaha CP80 electric piano similar to the CP70 that Keith Godshow played between 1977 and his departure in 1979. It ended a distinct era from 1979 to 1981 where Brent's sound was often defined by the chiming of his Dino Roads like this Shakedown street, recorded October 25, 1979 in New Haven. Now Road Trips Volume 1 Number 1.

Rich Mahan (18:05)

Love that Shake on Shakedown Street Used to be the heart of town coming this town ain't got no heart Just got to poke around. I'm, I'm a big fan of the Brent stuff, and I'm a big fan of his sound in like, 83 and 84. I hated that piano. When I got on spring tour in 82 and he had that piano sound, I hated that. It just. I just thought it had a really lifeless, thin sound, like a fake, shitty piano.

Jesse Jarno (18:42)

It's not the best piano sound, but maybe fairly cutting edge for 1982. And I do like having a more traditional piano texture back in the mix, especially for moments like this.

Rich Mahan (18:52)

Philly, during Shakedown, when Brent and Jerry were kind of like doing a riff and the call and response thing, and Jerry would do something, look over, give him a nod, and then Brent would do something and go back to Jerry. And it was pretty cool watching that. SAM.

Jesse Jarno (19:34)

The emergence of the Grateful, that ecosystem was a collaborative community project, the seeds of which had been planted a decade ago. Deadheads were rampant, and they were starting to make things besides just tapes. Eric Schwartz was on the road that summer.

Rich Mahan (19:48)

Summer 82, we were gone. We printed up 10,000 tape labels, got in the Volkswagen, said goodbye to the parents, high school, high school juniors, and did the whole summer. You know, we started with cross country to the Rainbow gathering in Council, Idaho, where Wavy Gravy woke us up in our tent looking for 100 people to carry 100 watermelons on the 4th of July gathering in Idaho. And that's exactly how I remember him. You know, he was thin, he was tough. He had his total patched, you know, overalls on, clown makeup. I met the hundred people that were touring. I became friends with them all. It was just the people that I. That we saw every show and started putting their names in my tour book and their addresses and their phone numbers. There was a really tight core, and there were probably several type cores of people. You know, ours wasn't the only type of people, but there was like, you know, 60, 80, 100 really tight people that I knew.

Jesse Jarno (20:55)

There was like a, like a Syosset, Long island faction.

Rich Mahan (20:59)

There was, you know, a Boston faction. There were people from the Midwest, and we all kind of converged. We were still under the radar. There really wasn't any national Grateful Dead, terror by the media, impending doom coming to your town. We kind of were able to hit and run without too much drama.

Jesse Jarno (21:20)

One of the heads they hooked up with was an optician who went by the name Chris Goodspace. He'd been seeing the dead since 76.

Rich Mahan (21:27)

And wasn't till summer of 82 that I decided to head to the West Coast. I bought an old 69 Dodge van and fixed it up out of a junkyard and filled it up with some folks, and we started heading west and did the whole summer that tour, and had a good time. Chris was just an older dude that had a van, had his tour shit together, and we just latched onto him. And we'd all gather after a show and look at a roadmap and go, all right, we've got 800 miles to go. Let's pick a campsite. We'll all meet there. And 90% of the times we all met there. My first sticker was, like, 79 or so. For the summer of 82. I did happiness is Dancing with the Dead. And I didn't have enough room on the sticker, so I made the. With the one word, W, I, T, H, E. And so that got a lot of attention. And then I was also. My T shirts were. I had this buds for you support your local grower, which was one I sold on High Times magazine. But also I did the. And I stole it from Relics magazine. Because on their poster, where they do all the song posters, they had the Love Light guy, and they had taken him off, and I wanted to see him back out in the world. So I did Love Light T shirts. Everybody was biting each other's work because there was nothing digital. It was all just, you know, there's a poster. Well, we'll take a little piece of that and turn it into a T shirt.

Jesse Jarno (23:03)

Looked at another way, it was folk art, casually appropriating iconography from Dead albums, underground comics, and from each other without a look back. It was not only a maker culture, but a maker counterculture building its own network to provide an alternative to what was available elsewhere. John Leopold and his twin brother David hit the road that summer, too.

Rich Mahan (23:24)

For reasons that my parents still can't explain, they let us drive with these guys we barely knew to go to Red Rocks. We had this complete on the road experience. We turned on to Kerouac and the Grateful Dead and Keezy, all that stuff. We went to that show. And not only is it Red Rocks and all that stuff, but they're celebrating the 25th anniversary of on the Road at Naropa. And so that set break, there was Ginsburg and Burroughs and Kesey and Mountain Girl. It was like all these people that we had been reading about were now live. So we Were pretty hooked at that point. The distance between that period of the 60s and what we were experiencing didn't seem that far apart. Those folks were still around at a show where Kesey might show up. He would have the Thunder Machine out in the parking lot and people would be gathered around. Or Wavy would show up with the Nobody for President bus.

Jesse Jarno (24:19)

Eric Schwartz.

Rich Mahan (24:20)

I don't think we knew what Robert Hunter looked like till I went and saw a show and we were able to see him and the Garcia band and Bobby in the Midnight. So when we weren't doing that and Max Creek, you know, I mean, being on the east coast, it was just like five nights a week from Max Creek and then every Grateful Dead show you could see in between. But yeah, it was all just trying to absorb and learn as much as you can. For us, it seemed like a very vibrant scene. We look at it now as this period where Garcia was was going into some spiraling with his drug habit. But for us, they were popping out stuff all the time. Garcia was releasing solo records, and we're at the midnights. So there was a whole scene of people.

Jesse Jarno (25:03)

In our last episode, we heard a bit about Grateful Dead tour in the early 80s from photographer Jay Blakesburg and others. But as the 80s progressed, a number of other small cultural changes occurred that acted in some ways as important counterbalances to mtv. The first was Xerox machines. To talk about the radical power of photocopying and how it pertained to the unfolding psychedelic underground. Please welcome, from the Harvard School of World Religions, Jay Christian Greer.

Rich Mahan (25:31)

One of the byproducts of this technological revolution was an explosion of DIY publication. It's with the rise of Xerox copying not only at Kinko's, but within the corporate world. You have a switch from Mimeo and ditto this really onerous process. You have a transition to.

Jesse Jarno (25:55)

The big turning point would come with the introduction of the All Night copy Center in 1985.

Rich Mahan (25:59)

And it's no exaggeration, towards the end of the 80s, 88, 89, 90, you had no less than 100,000 to 200,000 new fanzines circulating every year. I mean, that's huge. That's just a massive amount of print.

Jesse Jarno (26:12)

But 1982 is an inflection point in the fanzine world. In the spring, Mike Gunderloy launched Fact Sheet 5, a zine that simply listed other zines, creating essentially a central directory for the emerging network of undergrounds. And though it wasn't listed in fact sheet five, it was in 1982 that Grateful Dead tour got its own zine Relics had of course launched as a proper magazine for Dead tapers in Brooklyn in 1974, following the earlier North Carolina publication Dead in Words that had been aimed at bootleg LP collectors. But in August 1982, Michael Linna founded Michael Spelled with a K, a one sheet publication that he copied and distributed at shows. Eric Schwartz met him on tour.

Rich Mahan (26:56)

From what I remember, he was funding his tour by either refereeing or winning bridge tournaments, like organizing and getting people to pay for registration fees to play bridge professionally or semi professionally. He reminds me of the guy from Doonesbury and Hunter S. Thompson. Totally nondescript. I mean, complete with the visor, the clamping on the.

Jesse Jarno (27:21)

I don't know if he smoked or.

Rich Mahan (27:22)

Not, but that's just how I picture.

Jesse Jarno (27:24)

Him over the next few years. Michael Lyna's small zine Michael was the only publication in the parking lot keeping heads up to date with set lists, classified ads, tidbits about COVID songs and other information. Sadly, Michael Linna died of cancer only a few years later, but his work is invaluable. Thank you, Michael. By the end of 1982 he'd published nearly 10 issues. We've posted a link to scans of Eric Schwartz's nearly complete collection at dead.netdeadcast. if you have issues 6, 8, 9 or 10 from 1982 and would like to help, please get in touch with us@stories.dead.net in the same way that MTV would create a new center of gravity for the music industry, the zine network would create a new core for many thousands of parallel and entwined undergrounds, an interconnected subterranean exchange by which readers could find like minded heads the story of fanzine culture.

Rich Mahan (28:17)

Within that story, the main characters, the main groups, are psychedelic groups.

Jesse Jarno (28:22)

These groups would exist at the far periphery of the Grateful Dead scene and provide another kind of counterbalance to mtv and in a way a counterbalance to the Dead themselves, who represented a different kind of mainstream. By 1982, Christian's forthcoming book from Oxford University Press sounds like extremely my scene and perhaps yours. Angel headed psychedelic militancy in 1980s North America. We've posted links to Christian's website as well as to his new psychedelic travelogue memoir, Kumano Pilgrimage to power spots@dead.net deadcast.

Rich Mahan (28:57)

Particularly Church of Subgenius, plays a very important role, as do the Discordians.

Jesse Jarno (29:01)

Founded In Texas in 1980, the Church of the Subgenius was a parody of a religion. Or was it? They rallied around the Grinning, pipe smoking piece of clip art they named J.R. bob Dobbs.

Rich Mahan (29:13)

And I think that in many ways the church was founded on an attempt to really rejuvenate some of the playful, far out mind expanded creativity that was associated with the Pranksters and psychedelic culture in general, particularly moving through this accordion movement, which really, I think, asserted itself in the mid-70s with Robert Anton Wilson and Robert Shea's Illuminatus trilogy. But if you know about Discordianism, what is it? Discordians stick apart. You know, that they're militantly decentralized. And so I think what you saw with Churches of Genius is an attempt to channel that energy into a collective project that was, at the very fundamental basis, fun at the very fundamental a great time.

Jesse Jarno (30:01)

What the hell do you think you're doing dragging your butt through the day, selling body and soul to a bunch.

Rich Mahan (30:07)

Of bland normals acting stupid so they'll think you're one of them.

Jesse Jarno (30:12)

The Church of the Subgenius had their own zine, of course, the Stark Fist of removal. By 1982, its subscriber list wasn't very big. One of those subscribers, though, was Ken Kesey, who would be blurbed on the back of the Book of the Subgenius a few years later. And one of its readers, at least, was Jerry Garcia, who is seen holding a copy of the very third issue of the Stark Fist of Removal in a photo from the holidays that year in Oregon with the Keezis.

Rich Mahan (30:38)

It's easy to forget that this grinning guy who seems to be sort of cheesy was really the mask or the face of what I consider to be a strain of militant psychedelic culture. Because if you start looking at Subgenius texts, they were very clear about a repudiation of normal culture, a hatred of work, and the insistence that people cultivate their own, what they called slack, which of course you can't define slack. Everyone has their own slack. It's JR Bob Dobbs, the living Slack.

Jesse Jarno (31:14)

Master and his Church of the Subgenius. Bob brings a new destiny for the.

Rich Mahan (31:20)

Abnormal, for Bob comes to justify our.

Jesse Jarno (31:23)

Sins, to unmask the conspiracy and to.

Rich Mahan (31:26)

Get us back the slack they stole away. It's us versus them. Are you gonna fry in Hell on Earth alongside the Pink Boys, or will you pull the wool over your own eyes and accept Bob into your mind? Repent, quit your job.

Jesse Jarno (31:42)

And they had their own acid.

Rich Mahan (31:43)

I dated the earliest form of Dobbs blotter acid to, like 1981, because I do have evidence that it was circulated at the first major subgenius Convention that took place in Dallas in 1981.

Jesse Jarno (31:58)

A few years after they had their own acid, they had their own mass market paperback with blurbs from Ken Kesey, R. Crumb, Robert Anton Wilson and other subterranean heavies.

Rich Mahan (32:08)

Within the broad or wider world of fanzines, you have a sort of language developing, and that language is visual. So you have the Dobbs Head. This is in many ways the symbol for acid culture in the 80s. However, there is one symbol that's even bigger, and that's the steely. That's the Grateful head.

Jesse Jarno (32:29)

By the early 1980s, the Grateful Dead had become the mainstream of the psychedelic underground, a big tent for numerous other cliques of weirdos. There wasn't a lot of overlap between Dead Freaks and Subgeni, but there was some. A decade later, a Dobbs Head would appear on backstage passes for the Jerry Garcia Band. Another psychedelic affinity group around the Dead in those days was the first Church of Fun out of Western Massachusetts, who built their own acid tests around the recording of the August 1972 Sunshine Daydream benefit that we spoke about a few episodes back. Please ring your silent bells and welcome back to the Deadcast. Dupree's Diamond News founder, Johnny Dwark.

Rich Mahan (33:09)

I had a connection with the Church of the Subgenius because I had been ordained by Wavy Gravy as the rabbi of the First Church of Fun. And so the Church of the subGenius and the First Church of Fun were sort of like sister cults. And so we had flirted with each other from the early 1980s onward. And it was very obvious that we were very different from one another, but we were mutually compatible.

Jesse Jarno (33:42)

By then, Johnny had begun his own entry into the zine world.

Rich Mahan (33:45)

I started the Hampshire College Grateful Dead Historical Society. And we started to produce Deadbeat magazine, which was more of a zine than a magazine. But it was one of those earliest Grateful Dead newsletters that was focused on trying to figure out what Grateful Dead shows are actually available in what quality tape, soundboard or audience. And how do you actually connect with tapers? Before the Internet, there was this scene in New York of tapers, this scene of the deservedly legendary tapers like Jerry Moore, who was the actual co founder of Relics magazine, who was one of the great tapers, and Barry Glassberg, one of the great tapers.

Jesse Jarno (34:39)

In addition to the ecosystem of tapes themselves, which created a linear history for Deadheads, Deadbeat also began to cultivate something else. Community memory.

Rich Mahan (34:48)

I was also going down to New York to connect with these tapirs and to not just trade tapes with them, but talk history with them and try to actually go, you know, put together the definitive list of what are all of the Grateful Dead shows and what are all of the tapes and what quality are they all. And so the only way before the Internet that you really could get this information was by hanging out with these people. And of course, because we were digitally, because we were analog recording back then, it took you as long to make a tape as it took to run the tape at play speed. So you had all this time to hang out with these people and talk shop.

Jesse Jarno (35:35)

If the Deadhead scene of the 70s became sentient with Relics, zines like Michael and Deadbeat brought the self awareness to the next level. In an era when Relics itself turned its attention to more mainstream music. A few years later, Dead Bass and other publications would put it into book form. The other huge counterbalance to MTV in the early 1980s was the true ascendance of the cassette deck. In the summer of 1980, the Walkman arrived on American shores from Japan and was an instant success, turning cassettes into a global music format. Without knowing the numbers, it resulted in an explosion of Grateful Dead tape trading over the course of the early 80s. During this era, the Dead themselves tried to figure out how to harness the power of the cassette. And the Deadheads. We are so honored to welcome back from Ice 9 Publishing Alan Trist.

Rich Mahan (36:24)

The majority of the income for the band came from touring. Unlike many bands of the time, 75% of their income was from records and 25% from touring was the other way round. With the Grateful Dead always, the Deadhead audience was growing right through the 80s. Merchandising was another item on the agenda too, another income source. The demand for these sorts of things in the early 80s was really growing because the Deadhead audience was growing right through the 80s.

Jesse Jarno (36:57)

In 1982, the band again tapped into their vaunted mailing list and Grateful Ed Productions sent out their first official mail order merchandise catalog with help from Bill Graham's Winterland Productions.

Rich Mahan (37:08)

There were a lot of restrictions that particularly Hunter and the publishing side wanted to put on merchandising, like don't use the lyrics. We couldn't do much about song titles, hence all those little bears came out with song titles. But definitely there were issues about what to sell and what not to sell. As always, the Dead was. Were keeping an eye to merchandising decency, could I say, yeah, as opposed to racking up the sales.

Jesse Jarno (37:42)

The Dead were more than aware of the incipient taping SCENE There had been talk of putting out archival releases as far back as the early 70s, with various internal discussions of tape clubs and even a subsidiary record label called Ground records. But in 1982, that conversation began again in the Grateful Dead business. Archives is a fairly extraordinary memo dated August 13, 1982, prepared by Alan Trist of Ice 9 Publishing. Titled Concert Tape Marketing, it summarizes a conversation between Allen, Phil Lesh, Bill Kreutzman and others about the feasibility of selling the Dead's own live tapes.

Rich Mahan (38:20)

So it was a natural discussion to talk about the tapes as an income source.

Jesse Jarno (38:26)

It's a radically forward thinking document. We had Alan read many of the salient points.

Rich Mahan (38:31)

Concert tapes could be sold by direct mail through the Deadheads list. Special selections could also be offered, for instance, drum breaks, bugs, Phil's Choice, Egypt, etc. Selected from the Vault Such a method of marketing Grateful Dead music is most natural to the Grateful Dead's creative process. The occurrences of new songs or the resurrection of old songs, new arrangements, etc. Popping up from time to time in concerts is less forced than periodic compression of new material into an album. Economically, selling Grateful Dead recorded music this way could entirely supplant record company albums and make more money. Although I might say that last point.

Jesse Jarno (39:28)

Is uncertain, it's an intensely fascinating proposal. The proposal goes on to present some math. They estimate 75 shows per year, 40 of which might be approved for release, estimating approximately 1,000 buyers per show, with a total profit of perhaps $200,000 a year. A little over $600,000 a year in today's terms. The proposal also raised some counter arguments.

Rich Mahan (39:54)

Devil's ADVOCATE Although we might reach the same market as regular records do, we would forfeit the chance to reach new markets through the power of record companies and the media. Devil's ADVOCATE not everyone, not even all Deadheads, have tape machines. Some people prefer to buy albums. Devil's advocate Again, intentional studio recording projects, particularly of new material, can express a coherent concept or aesthetic more fully than a concert or a concert tape. I have an afternote. As the concert tape project developed, however, set and concert design might begin to develop such coherence. That's an interesting possibility that we never explored. The music industry would not be threatened by the novelty of this marketing technique, for the GD is the only band where every concert is more or less unique.

Jesse Jarno (41:07)

The Dead had nurtured a delicate ecosystem, as Alan reflects now.

Rich Mahan (41:11)

I felt that looking at all the sides of this issue was going to be important because the innovation of tape trading and as long as nobody passed any money back and forth was a real innovation in the music business business. The Dead were outliers in respect to it. Probably still are to this day. I don't know about that. But it was that kind of energy. To overturn that and turn it back into a commercial operation would have been a change from the direction that had been we had been going. So I wanted to show both sides of that coin, which had been in discussion in the office for some time. I think the fact that it was addressed that memo to Billy and Phil is interesting because I think they are the two who were concerned about most, about the way the money was going to flow. And they wanted to keep an eye on the potentials as well. The band valued the interest that the tape trading gave to the Deadheads. You get another dimension to the community aspect of the Grateful Dead subculture, you might say. I since learned that tape trading wasn't just something that happened by mail. That local communities would form in different parts of the country around the need to find a venue to trade tape. So they would meet somewhere, they'd meet at somebody's house or even in a larger venue, and they'd set up shop and trade tapes with each other. I think that's a very significant part that would have been lost if the tapes had gone commercial. Because the extension of community in every way, whether it's the parking lot or trading tapes or going on the road together, this was a part of the larger Grateful Dead experience. Generation energy exchange, which is just what you want. You want that one to have an evenness to it. The Nobel economist Paul Krugman, he famously said in some New York Times post of his that everything he learned about business, he learned from the Grateful Dead. And wrote a column to that effect. And it's a very challenging thought, but I think it just goes to the thing that if you give your product away freely in the sense that we just talked about in terms of community and sharing technical and other kinds of knowledge, you create a loyalty. And there's other words one could use, probably that comes back in that everyone will then buy the official releases as well as having it on tape.

Jesse Jarno (44:03)

The Dead weren't selling their own tapes by fall 1982, but they absolutely continued their commitment to chasing the cutting edge of sound and lights. The newest major contributor was Meyer Sound, run by John and Helen Meyer. And the same years the Dead were making their first forays into live sound. John Meyer was doing the same with the Steve Miller Band. By 1969, he'd invented a new speaker system in his living room. And from here we'll let the Myers pick up the story. We're so pleased to welcome from Meyer Sound, John and Helen Meyer, who brought a brochure to the nearby Whole Earth Truck Store founded by TRIPS festival organizer Stuart Brand.

Rich Mahan (44:41)

The store was around the corner and we put a brochure in the store. We gave a demo for Stuart Brand outside and he put it in his catalog. Said, well, if you want something to take your head off, here it is. So we built the eight foot horns and Pepperland started to happen. We were involved in Pepperland in 1969, 1970. So Pepperland was a ballroom in San Rafael. And when they came to us, they said they wanted to make it the most exciting ballroom rock venue possible. And we got excited because they were excited about doing a quadraphonic.

Jesse Jarno (45:16)

Located in San Rafael. Pepperland was just a few blocks from where the Dead would soon take over, a warehouse space on Front Street.

Rich Mahan (45:23)

They liked the horns that fit into their scheme of roundness. And of course they made the news. And we had these big eight foot horns and they were so powerful. When you build horns that big, they're very, very efficient. They would bounce around the floor as we played music. And so people would climb inside them. I mean, there were people sleeping in them, climbing on top and things like that.

Jesse Jarno (45:42)

John would go on to work for McCune Sound and consult with Owsley Stanley while the Dead created the Wall of sound in the mid-70s, helping to refine the idea with some very pertinent suggestions which we'll save for another episode. John and Helen moved to Switzerland for a time in the middle of the decade where John did research at the Institute for Advanced Musical Studies.

Rich Mahan (46:02)

After Switzerland, we decided to start Meyer Sound. So that was in 1979. And then you started working with the Dead, really right around the early 80s. The way I think you got more connected with the Dead in the early. After we started Myers Sound was your connection with Bear. Yeah, because Bear came to an AES meeting. He heard what you were doing. He said, that's what the Dead needs. And it was really Bear. That's right, yeah. We took that monitor, which we built with a very high speed, really kind of what I always wanted to make, studio monitor. And we took it to the Starship because Bear was doing both the Starship and we did it for Kantner and played. And what was nice about it is that we could mix in drums, things like that, and they could hear. They really liked it. The sound of this is A stage monitor. And so we started. That's the first product we started to build as a stage monitor for the Grateful Dead, the Ultra monitor. And the Dead, they started using more and more of these Ultra monitors. So we started and then we built a more powerful MSL3 system.

Jesse Jarno (47:03)

In the years following the Wall of Sound, the Dead had used a patchwork of systems, most lately renting from the Clare brothers. In 1981, Dan Healy commissioned a small speaker setup for Meijer Sound.

Rich Mahan (47:15)

We built them four, small enough that they could do a show like in Berkeley Community Theater. But without telling me, they took it up to the Greek Theater. And on one side they had Claire do the thing, and then the other side was these eight speakers. We built them. We weren't. I wasn't invited. We didn't even know that they were doing it. It was a shootout. And we. Apparently, we won because we won.

Jesse Jarno (47:38)

Pretty soon, Myerstown was supplying the PA for all the Dead's west coast shows and became a participant in Grateful Dead board meetings as they started to develop their newest system that would make its debut in the late summer of 1982. Leading up to the shows at Madison Square Garden.

Rich Mahan (47:54)

The next board meeting I saw that they were really getting annoyed with the Tapers. Had a board meeting about getting rid of the people taping the shows. And I said, since you invited me, can I put in my pitch? And they go, what is your pitch? I said, well, you know, we're in the very beginning of trying to create high fidelity sound for the Grateful Dead in the audience. We're doing everything in our power to make it like a really great experience, like a record experience. And when they're recording like this, it really pushes the envelope on the fact we all have an archive of our story. We can't just say we're doing it. They're going to actually have data. And I like that because it'll really keep us on track. We're human, after all, and we have someone watching us.

Jesse Jarno (48:37)

It would be a few years yet before the Dead would officially legalize taping, but big ups to John Meyer for standing up for the Tapers. Charlie Miller wasn't taping yet in fall 82, but he was definitely trading tapes and listening hard.

Rich Mahan (48:50)

That was the first tour with their new pa, the Ultrasound PA with Meyers sound. And I just could not believe how unreal it sounded. It was the most amazing, clear, warm, analog sound, and I just loved it. It used to be if you wanted it to sound good, you had to be. By healing, you had to be at the soundboard because everything was hard panned. You know, one drummer was out of one channel, the other drummers out of another channel. Brent was all the way on the right side, Bobby's on the left side. Jerry was in the middle and Phil was in the middle and the vocals were in the middle. But other than that. So if you were on the. In the fill zone, you couldn't really hear the keys. It was loud and clear with the jbl. As you see the get evolved, you'll see more and more the stage stuff got smaller and smaller and smaller over time and we enhanced it more with speakers. But that was a lot of my influence in pushing because Bear was really. He was kind of forced to agree with me, even though he didn't like the idea. Because you can't blast everybody. You can't do an arena or a stadium and have all the sound come through the performers. It was all kind of aimed at getting those. It's coming from stereo. So everything was kind of concentrated at the mixed position. I said, I think it really, really got. And Behr was also interested in. And the movie people also were. There's, there's stereo and then there's multi channel mono, which is what the movie people were doing. In other words, they'd have a center speaker for voice and they'd have a left speaker for music, right speaker. It's called multi channel mono. It was not stereo. They, they didn't, they didn't like stereo movie people and kind of developed it early on as a multi channel mono thing. And I like that better. I say to Barry, we're already started with this if you think about it. We've got Phil Asch over here and we've got Jerry or whoever. The car is coming over here. It's already got a multi channel mono. And we don't have the stereo problem, but we just make everything and then we can add fill to that. Which is my skill to kind of filling in, say at a distance to try and enhance that experience, but keeping that as our image, you know, that multi channel image and then having. So wherever you feel that should always be coming from stage left or right, depending on which way you. If you're the actor or the audience. It was supposed to sound good anywhere in the room, not just by healing. Once I switched to Myers sound, the low end on the recordings became smoother. The high end was just crisper. It had a fuller, warmer sound to it. We got constant feedback, mostly from Don Pearson and Howard Dancik because they were out there Dan Healy a little bit, but mostly it was from Don and Howard, I'd say, right. Don had a lot of ideas and he would talk a lot about how he could imagine things being better and better. And you collaborated on a lot of that. And he's always trying to make things better.

Jesse Jarno (51:43)

The pairing of Meyer Sound with the Grateful Dead was one of the most perfect and seemingly frictionless in the band's history, a relationship which continued through the end of the Grateful dead proper in 1995 and on into the band's spin offs. At the same time, Meyer Sound became an industry standard heard in venues across the world. We'll have more of our conversation with Helen and John Meyer next episode. It wasn't just the sound that the Dead were bent on improving. In our last season about Europe 72, we spoke with Candace Brightman and Ben Haller about the Dead's then new light rig, a pair of light trees that fit into the back of the recording truck. By a decade later, it had evolved. In 1982, Dan English joined Candace Brightman on the road. Please welcome to the Deadcast.

Rich Mahan (52:29)

Dan English, I worked for a pretty well known lighting company at the time, this company called Morpheus Lights. And they're still around, but they were, they're big into touring and I'd been on the road for a couple years with them doing all kinds of bands, Santana, Neil diamond and John Denver, people like that. So I was, I was sort of on the road. And then Candace was looking around for a new lighting company. She was from the Bay Area and so is Morpheus. We were in San Jose. She just randomly called in and the boss sent me to go check it out. The first show was the Greek Theater, I think in 82. I went up and I met Candace and she gave me her vision of what she wanted, which was intriguing because it was completely different than the kinds of things that we had been doing at the time. Candace was sort of very theatrical in her approach and she used an interesting combination of very deep colors from very high angles and things. The gold standard was queen straight ahead, red, blue, amber, green, big banks of lights. And Candace wasn't about that at all. Hers was interesting angles, different, completely different looks, very theatrical presentation. It wasn't like a Disco Pete or anything like that. It was sort of timed intricately with the music. And this was before moving lights.

Jesse Jarno (54:03)

Candace's setup had grown a bit since the Europe 72 days of light trees, but mostly they'd just gotten more.

Rich Mahan (54:10)

They had talked about having Tate Towers out there before they were like, very straightforward park hand rigs. And, you know, I think she just couldn't get what she wanted from them as far as, look, I want this interesting design, the way the trezzes are. I want the. This kind of layout, and I want someone to pay attention to me, say what I want. And Morpheus, we're very keen on that, doing those kinds of things. And we had our own welding shop. We made custom brackets to fly the trusses at custom angle. And it all kind of came together rather serendipitously, I would say. We did the Greek Theater. We went on to do some more local shows. And then the first Back east tour I did was. I think there's a run that included, like, West Palm beach and Lakeland, Florida, and then we went up north.

Jesse Jarno (55:04)

That's the fall 1982 tour that led up to the Garden shows. In addition to the new sound system and the new lights, the tour also had new songs. Archivist David Lemieux.

Rich Mahan (55:14)

They've debuted west la, Keep your day job. And then a couple weeks later, they add Throwing Stones and Touch of Gray. These are two songs that would be huge parts of the 1980s. Grateful Dead. The 82 Duprees came back. Crazy Fingers came back. These are songs that hadn't been played in a number of years. Crazy Fingers, 76 came back in 82 in July, and then Dupree's hadn't played it since. 78 came back. They're kind of reaching back a little bit and pulling out some songs that I think were very well received because those are deep cuts, you know, Crazy Fingers is, you know, pretty deep.

Jesse Jarno (55:52)

One way to hear the Dead's new songs was to be there in person. Or you could track it down on tape from somebody like Jim Wise, then acquire a tape label from somebody like Eric Schwartz, who needed a record company anyway. The Dead sure didn't need a label to sell at Madison Square Garden.

Rich Mahan (56:07)

Johnny'd work, and everybody knew. Everybody knew that the Grateful Dead played better in New York. Because there was something about the high energy of the Grateful Dead scene in New York that inspired the Grateful Dead to be on their game. You'd go down I95, and it took two and a half, three hours to drive. And you'd go down and you'd see your family and you'd see your friends, and you'd set up during the day tape trading. And then at night, you'd see the Grateful Dead at Madison Square Garden. It was a thing outside the Garden.

Jesse Jarno (56:42)

There wasn't a scene, but you might have Run into Michael Linna, who would have given you a copy of issue number four of his one sheet one sided zine, featuring a set list from the US Festival, as well as the publication's first letters column. Charlie Miller was on tour, but stayed at home in Forest Hills when the Dead were in town.

Rich Mahan (57:00)

First night we were at the train station and we were getting ready to board the train to the Garden. And I said, my friend called half step opener. I called the Shakedown Street. And what was really cool is that after the lights went down, the first sound that came out of the PA was Bill. When he was tuning was the opening quarter, Shakedown. And we all knew it was coming and it was just so awesome.

Jesse Jarno (57:42)

We spoke a bunch with photographer Bob Mincken last time he was there for the Garden 82 shows as well.

Rich Mahan (57:48)

It was always a lot of energy, especially when they would open with Shakedown street used to be the heart of town. Tell me this town ain't got no heart Just gotta poke around. It's really the perfect opener to be playing at the Garden because of the line. Tell me this town ain't got no heart that line alone brought thunder to the place because, you know, they could be playing in other cities. Tell me this town ain't got no heart yeah, yeah. Okay, that's nice. But when they say that line in New York, it really has a lot of resonance.

Jesse Jarno (58:37)

One of the wonders of the world, a Shakedown street opener at Madison Square Garden. And an occurrence that I thought had happened much more frequently. Only four times in the 15 years that the Dead played the Garden. This 1 in 82, again in 88, 91 and 94. Archivist David Lemieux.

Rich Mahan (58:55)

The tapes sound incredible too. I gotta say. There's a cleanliness to the tapes and there's a cleanliness to the performances that I've always really loved. They're not exceptionally jammed out shows. Songs aren't particularly jammed out. It's a much more concise Grateful Dead. And I say concise in a very good way. So they're not stretching things out to, you know, a song that might have at other times stretched out to 12 or 14 minutes. They're maybe keeping them at eight or nine. I was always on Phil's side, several seats up off of the floor. For me, that was the sweet spot. And the reason that that was the sweet spot was because I had given my right ear hearing to Hot Tuna at their legendary all night long late shows at the Academy of Music, which then became the Palladium. The Hot Tuna would Play literally the late show from 1am till 6am my sweet spot was closer to the band than the soundboard and a couple of seats up from the floor so I could sit and see the band play, but also get the best mix for the hearing that I had. My memory of those shows is this double. It's like it's two memories that. That compete against one another. And one is my memory at the time of being greatly concerned about seeing the shift in Jerry Garcia's health. When you go back now and you listen to the music from that period of time, it's like, wow. Actually, two things are true about that music, and one is it was disappointing to see the shift from the sort of psychedelic to the cocaine vibe. But, oh, my God, that music actually rocks compared to the music that the Grateful Dead were playing, for example, in the 1990s. So perspective is everything.

Jesse Jarno (61:42)

There was a whole world of Deadheads at Madison Square Garden, from urban professionals to tour rats. People making bumper stickers and T shirts and newsletters, people taking photographs, people twirling, people totally puddled. People at their first rock show, people at their first rock Show since the 60s, people at their first rock show since the night before. And of course, Tapers Jim Wise.

Rich Mahan (62:05)

Those were the type of people that I would be mingling my way through as I was getting into the show. I mean, there was a whole world of people out there doing their thing, and I was just doing mine. I had much better tickets than I did in 81. I had good floor tickets, so I must have been, because I just had better tickets. So the sound was better.

Jesse Jarno (62:29)

For the 81 Garden shows, Jim had stationed himself safely at the soundboard next to Dan Healy. Dan English of the Light Crew remembered this posse.

Rich Mahan (62:38)

He really liked the ones that were real serious and he appreciated what they were doing. And they'd come talk to him about particular tape decks.

Jesse Jarno (62:47)

Recording in the thick of the venue floor was a different game for Jim Wise.

Rich Mahan (62:51)

Being a taper and recording the show is a completely different experience than going to the show and just being a fan and trying to enjoy the show. I was always engrossed in taping. I'd probably be obsessing over my tape deck, watching the levels, looking around. If I was in an area where I was trying to be discreet, keeping the mic's head level or whatever. You're always looking over your shoulder. You're always looking around, trying to head off security if they happen to come around, or, you know, let's say someone wanted. The usher was trying to find someone to see and they happened to be right next to you and you got all your gear out. You don't necessarily want that to happen. So you always had to be aware of what was going on around you. There was always someone who was just really fucked up or whatever and would come stumbling through and use the mic stand for support as they're walking through your gear. That's when you got to be like, hey, be cool, and so on so forth. But once if you point out what you're doing to someone as they're coming through, then yes, they're very respectful. I would be able to enjoy the show afterwards forever. So if I went through the work of making the recording, it just seems that was other than, you know, sacrificing the enjoyment of actually being at the show. It was worth it.

Jesse Jarno (64:09)

And thank you for that. Jim There'd been a bit of turnover in the Dead set list since their last time through the old Oxamoxo. A favorite, Dupree's Diamond Blues, had returned a month earlier and was received warmly at the Garden.

Rich Mahan (64:23)

When I was just a little young boy Papa said I'll tell you the reason if you wanna know Cause child of mine There isn't really a parent far to go.

Jesse Jarno (64:44)

Brent Midland's newest song was no longer a new song by Fall 82 exactly. Midland would title it Good Time Blues, but the name Never Trust Woman stuck. It debuted a few months after the previous Garden shows, a year to the day before the band brought back Dupri's Diamond Blues. Never Trust a Woman would never make it to a D. Dead album, though the song went in and out of the sets through 1990. It was during this 19821983 period that Midland began to work on his never completed solo album. We've posted a link to a deep history of that project by Dean Budnick@Dead.net Deadcast Goodtime Blues doesn't seem to have been in the consideration, perhaps because it had already found a bit of a home in the Dead repertoire. At the Garden, the band had some new new songs.

Rich Mahan (65:49)

Bob Minkin, Grateful Dead MSG 92082 and my note I wrote next to it says three new songs.

Jesse Jarno (65:57)

The first two of those songs came paired together at the end of the first set.

Rich Mahan (66:05)

Picture a bright blue ball Just spinning, spinning free, Dizzy with Eternity.

Jesse Jarno (66:22)

David Lemieux.

Rich Mahan (66:23)

The way they incorporated them, especially something like Throwing Stones, where they didn't quite know where it would live. I mean, it was one of those moments in time where such an important song in the Dead's repertoire for the next 13 years. Didn't have a home yet. And I love that. I think that's fantastic.

Jesse Jarno (66:39)

Throwing Stones, written by Bob Weir with lyricist John Perry. Barlow had debuted three days earlier in Portland, Maine, and the version at the First Night of the Garden was only the third ever. Nearly two years into the Reagan administration, it was the Grateful Dead's most political song, at least in the eyes of its lyricist, Elrovian. Time traveler David Ganz interviewed Barlow about it in January 1986. Part of David's wonderful book Conversations with the Dead.

Rich Mahan (67:06)

And we're not real polemical, but every once in a while I'll get on a crank. I decided that I was going to ask the Grateful Dead to do a political song, which I'd never done before and never had any desire to do. I mean, since what the Grateful Dead does is work on consciousness, which is the best way to approach politics anyway. You change consciousness and politics will take care of itself. But it seemed like there was a pressing need for everybody to have an anthem all of a sudden, and there still is. I mean, we have to be thinking about these things. And I felt like we had to say something very direct and strong. But it took a while before we found something that had the right to.

Jesse Jarno (67:58)

It was a new thing in the Grateful Bed catalog, however you sliced it. It even had a little jam where.

Rich Mahan (68:03)

Garcia got to Garcia.

Jesse Jarno (68:33)

Five years later, Throwing Stones would follow Touch of Grey onto MTV as the Dead's second video, though with perhaps a little less success. At the garden in 82, the dead were very much still figuring out what to do with it.

Rich Mahan (68:45)

Would it come out of space? Would it be a song that would go into drums? Is it going to be an end of the first set song leading into Day Job?

Jesse Jarno (68:53)

On this first night at the Garden, it would land in one of Jerry Garcia and Robert Hunter's three new songs.

Rich Mahan (69:18)

Still gotta work that eight hour day.

Jesse Jarno (69:22)

Aha. The notorious Keep youp Day Job. Sean o' Donnell.

Rich Mahan (69:26)

I remember being highly offended by Day Job on In Real Time, as it happened. Whether you like that job or not Better keep it all nice While you're lining up your long time which is to sit day Keep your Don't give it away Keep your bad job Whatever they say Keep up till you're night. It felt literally offensive because I was doing exactly the opposite and largely motivated by them, you know. So I tried to go to college for two seconds right out of high school in fall 81. That didn't take. Even though it was pharmacy school. I left and then.

Jesse Jarno (70:33)

It was just.

Rich Mahan (70:34)

Playing guitar, teaching guitar lessons, playing in bands, and it was all about not keeping the day job as much as possible.

Jesse Jarno (70:44)

If Jerry Garcia was keeping up with the Church of the Subgenius Stark Fist of Removal newsletter, it seems like Robert Hunter wasn't. It's an unusually 80s attitude for a Dead tune to take, and at a distance. I have to hope that the dropouts in the Dead were being a bit ironic. Keep youp Day Job was anti slack. The song stayed in the band's repertoire for less than four years, one of the few Garcia Hunter originals never released on an official Dead album, only making it into the properly documented canon in 1996 with the issuing of Dick's Pick 6. This box set nearly doubles the amount of officially released versions of Day Job in his lyrics collection, A box of rain Hunter noted of Keep your day job. This song was dropped from the Grateful Dead repertoire at the request of fans. Seriously, it's not that bad. But it was time for the jams.

Rich Mahan (72:08)

She was falling My eyes could be an illusion But I might as well.

Jesse Jarno (72:15)

Try Might as Well try the 1982 model of Scarlet Begonias was about a dozen bpm faster than the classic 1977 takes. You can hear some of that Garcia Midland bromance unfolding during this semi unison segment as the band shimmers from Scarlet Begonia's Into Fire on the Mountain. For Bob Weir's first slot in the second set, he called another tune that was new to the Dead's live repertoire since their last time at the Garden.

Rich Mahan (73:15)

Let us put men and women together See which one is smarter Some say men but I say no Women got men like a puppet show it ain't me, it's the people that say men are leading the women and straight I.

Jesse Jarno (73:31)

Say it's the women Today certainly can't argue with a message anyway Most likely the song was written in the late 1930s by Norman Spann, the Trinidadian calypso singer known as King Radio. Since the world began, women was always.

Rich Mahan (73:46)

Fooling men and if you listen to this radio attentively I'm gonna show you all the women Smarter than me or.

Jesse Jarno (73:53)

Not me there's some people who say.

Rich Mahan (73:55)

That the men leading the women astray.

Jesse Jarno (73:58)

But I see all us that but it was Harry Belafonte that added the familiar chorus and popularized the song in the states in the 50s. In every issue, the Dead zine Michael featured one of their cover songs, and Man Smart Woman Smarter was tackled in issue number one, distributed over summer tour There's a good version on Belafonte at Carnegie Hall. Michael notes and helpfully cites the catalog number.

Rich Mahan (74:27)

The woman is it's my gum. That's right. The woman is it's my turn. That's right, that's right.

Jesse Jarno (74:35)

Thanks as always to Alex Allen's thorough song histories@whitegum.com in terms of jam highlights, the First Night at The Garden in 82 also has another piece that had returned to the Dead's repertoire in 1981. The Spanish Jam was a motif that stretched back to the primal Dead era, played often in early 1968, and only really part of the Dead's vocabulary again in 1973 and 1974. As multiple band members noted over the years, it rooted on the great Miles Davis Gil Evans collaboration Sketches of Spain, released in 1960, and specifically a track called Solia. We've linked the Grateful Dead Guide's excellent piece on the origins and evolution of the Spanish Jam at dead.net deadcast the Spanish Jam re emerged in May 1981 and began its second extended life with the band. I love how articulated and deconstructed and weird it got in this era while still retaining its triumphant feel.

Rich Mahan (76:15)

Sam.

Jesse Jarno (76:44)

For the night's encore, the Dead dropped another brand new song. It was the first time most people in Madison Square Garden heard what would become the Dead's only top 10 hit. For most other acts, it was a song that would result in them headlining venues like Madison Square Garden.

Rich Mahan (77:10)

Must be getting early. Clocks are running late Morning sky It's hopeful dawn is breaking everywhere.

Jesse Jarno (77:29)

Lyricist Robert Hunter, as always, would be fine with any interpretation of Touch of Gray. But years later, he told Rolling Stone's David Brown about the song's origins. I'll give you the blistering truth about it, he said. A friend brought over a hunk of very good cocaine. I stayed up all night and at dawn I wrote that song. That was the last time I ever used cocaine. Nor had I used it for many years before that. Now I listen to it and it's that attitude you get when you've been up all night speeding and you're absolutely the dregs. I think I got it down in that song. Hunter had his own version of Touch of Gray that he debuted in the summer of 1980.

Rich Mahan (78:06)

The shoes on the hand it fits that's all there really is to whirl through your teeth and spit Cause it's all right. Modern saviors, saints and sinners Motley pack of Paul reveres Keep on smiling through the tears Cause it's All right. We will get by we will get.

Jesse Jarno (78:29)

And of course, Jerry Garcia earned his co writing credit, especially with the irresistible chorus, which also had space for a neat guitar figure. I Will Survive Though it would be the song that sent the Dead into the mainstream for real for now, it was for Heads only. The Dead scene was still pretty low key, despite the band selling out multiple nights at Madison Square Garden. Johnny Dwark.

Rich Mahan (79:07)

And then I should say that when you were done with the Dead show at Madison Square Garden, naturally you'd have the munchies. And there were a couple places in New York that were infamous for post Madison Square Garden food adventures. And one of them was Wo Hop Noodle Shop on, I think it was Mott street in Chinatown. And they were open late into the night. And it was this greasy wok place that you had to walk downstairs into the basement too. But they stayed open late and they had really, really, really great chow fun. And sure enough, you, you'd like take a taxi from Madison Square Garden down to Chinatown and you would be completely surrounded by Deadheads. And I remember being amazed because the first time that I went there after a Madison Square Garden show, Mickey Hart is sitting there. And I like it. You know, it was the sort of seating family style where like the seats are not separated, right? Everybody sort of sits together and so you like, might have, like, there was just as good a chance that you'd be seated right next to Mickey Hart as not. And nobody made a big deal of it. And everybody was high and everybody was munching out on really good greasy Chinese food. And I think to this day, Wohop still is a thing.

Jesse Jarno (80:40)

Sadly, as of the pandemic, Wohop now closes at 10pm on weekends. As Johnny was sleeping off his Wo Hop bender, another head was slugging it through his day job.

Rich Mahan (80:50)

There's one guy who made that pilgrimage to see the Madison Square Garden shows who deserves a place in the pantheon of heroic Deadhead characters. And this guy's name is Richard Petlock. By day, Rich Petlock was a geeky, nerdy certified public accountant who crunched numbers for corporations in the Springfield, Massachusetts area. And he had a super mundane job of doing bookkeeping for big corporations. And he put on his suit and tie and his nerdy glasses and he had this sort of nerdy haircut at the time. And he'd show up for this mundane job day in, day out, but at night he was like Clark Kent. Off would come the suit and the tie. And he was one of the most devoted Deadheads in Grateful Dead history. Because he would get in his car at 5 o' clock and he would tear ass down to the city and he would catch every show at Madison Square Garden. And incredibly, when they went off stage after the second set, he'd skip the encore so he could get out of Dodge quick. And he would drive the two and a half hours back to Western Mass. Where he would get four or five hours of sleep and then he would go to work at whatever, 7am again in the suit and the tie. And then he would head right back to New York City for the show that next night. And he did this for over a decade. I've never known anybody who was more committed to the scene than Rich petlock.

Jesse Jarno (83:02)

Jeff Pincus September 21, 1982.

Rich Mahan (83:06)

A week before my 17th birthday. I had seen the dead four times prior to the garden show. Three times at the Nassau Coliseum, once at Radio City Music Hall. Over the summer, I read the Doors of Perception and the Electro Kool Aid Acid Test and tried LSD for the first time. It was a revelation. It was clear that there was much more going on than I had been told at home or school. I got tickets for the second night of the Garden and my friend Alan and I decided that now that we had lost our psychedelic virginity, the next natural step was to go see the band live, take some acid and see.

Jesse Jarno (83:47)

What that was like.

Rich Mahan (83:48)

We took the train into the city from Long Island. When we arrived at Penn Station, the streets were filled with heads drumming, incense, tie dye. We dropped a full hit of the Faro blotter before we went.

Jesse Jarno (84:04)

In fact, if you'd made it over to Times Square in this era, eight blocks to the north of Madison Square Garden, then, at the height of its porn era, you might have come across a few adult bookstores that also sold lsd. Blotter Fresh from Dead tour, a brief turf war erupted. I tell the story in my book, A Biography of Psychedelic America. Charlie Miller.

Rich Mahan (84:24)

The next night, me and my friend were meeting at the Garden. We had seats next to each other. He was the guy I did the tour with. Spring tour in 82 and for 9 hours, 21 minutes and 82 seconds. I picked up a couple of different blotters on the train and he picked up a couple of different blotters. So between us, we had all different kinds and we just switched and I literally ate like four or five different kinds of blotter that night and just had the best, best time ever.

Jesse Jarno (84:48)

Promoter John Cher gave the band an introduction and Dan Healy gave John Cher some special effects.

Rich Mahan (84:57)

Good evening, I'm keyboard Greg Midland. I'm drums Mickey Hart. I'm drums Bill Kreutzman. I'm David Delish.

Jesse Jarno (85:09)

I'm rhythm guitar Bob Weir.

Rich Mahan (85:11)

I'm lead guitar Jerry Garcia. Please welcome back to New York the Grateful Dead. The band took the stage and the crowd roared. They opened the set with playing in the bands right as we began our lysergic liftoff, going for several hours on a psychic musical adventure to places both beautiful and frightening. Some folks trust reason, others trust your mind. I don't trust nothing.

Jesse Jarno (86:00)

A playing in the Band show opener was unusual enough. In its early days, the song had mainly been a first set closer. But then its placement moved to the core of the second set jam suites. By 1981, the band was occasionally using it to open second sets and jump right into the deep end. And at the US Festival, it moved to the very top of the show. A few days before the Garden in Maryland, they'd open with Plain and wound its theme throughout the show. On the second night of the Garden, as at Landover, it linked into a song not heard on the east coast for a half dozen years.

Rich Mahan (86:42)

SA.

Jesse Jarno (87:16)

Recorded for 1975's Blues for Allah. The delicate Crazy Fingers had only survived a few tours into the Dead's 1976 return, disappearing that fall until the band revived it in Ventura earlier in the summer of 82. If it wasn't quite as nuanced as the early versions, it still brought the Dead to a musical space they didn't really access otherwise. Maybe somewhere between the Spanish Jam and a moody other one, Prelude. But it wasn't just the linkage to Crazy Fingers. Weir kept the ball in the air, moving the band into Me and My Uncle, a vague echo of some of the early 70s segues from psychedelic space into cowboy territory.

Rich Mahan (88:41)

Well, me and my uncle went right down South Colorado, west Texas bound we stopped over each center Fade that damn.

Jesse Jarno (88:59)

The first set also included yet one more new song since the last time through.

Rich Mahan (89:22)

I'm looking for a chateau but 21 rules but one will do.

Jesse Jarno (89:31)

Like Touch of Grey and Throwing Stones, it would take another five years for the Dead to properly release West La Fadeaway, another piece of new material for the tape traders to circulate. I hear the blues sleaze as being in an adjacent neighborhood. The grotty grittiness of Shakedown street. Maybe somewhere around the corner from the scene you see on the front cover of that album. And like Touch of Grey, Hunter had played it in his solo sets before Garcia adapted it for Dead Use this is from November 18, 1981 in Washington, D.C.

Rich Mahan (90:11)

Well, I quit my job well, the pavement was pathetic It's a shame those boys can't be more copacetic.

Jesse Jarno (90:30)

The early Dead versions had some lyrics that didn't survive into the final draft.

Rich Mahan (90:47)

Here's what Changes say Always plays by the gold. He says, you treat other people all right. No other people.

Jesse Jarno (91:02)

Probably something I love love in this era is that the band was still playing some of their new songs nearly every night, still deeply excited about them and trying to break them in. After the third ever, Touch of Grey, had been encore the previous evening, the fourth ever version opened the second set.

Rich Mahan (91:29)

Be getting early Clocks are running late Paint by the morning sky it's all.

Jesse Jarno (91:38)

Fun Marty Meyer, no relation to John, was keeping a set list that night.

Rich Mahan (91:43)

Touch of Gray and women are smarter and throwing, Throwing stones are all in there. I was like an avid sort of show list maker. I'm a baseball fan and I always make an analogy between baseball and the Grateful Dead, which is you would get.

Jesse Jarno (91:57)

Into it and you would. It's almost like a box score, having the set list and knowing the set.

Rich Mahan (92:03)

Lists for the last, whatever, 12 months or whatever, and then trying to use that to predict the future. So we would always be doing that and always keeping our list.

Jesse Jarno (92:13)

We'll direct you to David Ganz's great essay. Grateful Dead Concerts are Like Baseball games, which we've linked to@dead.net deadcast Marty caught two of the first four versions. There's an alternate lyric in these early takes that he took a bit personally.

Rich Mahan (92:29)

I see you've got your list out. Say a piece to yourself. Yes, I get the gist of it, but it's all right. Definitely was my first time seeing Touch of Grave. We always thought it was hilarious, like during, you know, the Touch of grays in 82, if you listen to those on the MSG shows, one of the lines is, so you got your list out, say your piece and piss off. And we always, like, thought maybe that was like, you know, we don't care about your lists or whatever. We're going to play what we want to play and you should enjoy it. And, you know, but that was like. That was us internalizing.

Jesse Jarno (93:06)

Could be. Phil Lesh once told David Gann that the line referred to an intervention the band held with Garcia in Barcelona in late October 1981. Robert Hunter had already written the lyric by then, so perhaps Phil was internalizing too, or maybe remembering an earlier intervention. With Grateful Dead lyrics. Everybody's always right, which is maybe why the final choruses of this song become more inclusive.

Rich Mahan (93:41)

We will get by we will survive.

Jesse Jarno (93:48)

The second set Jam suite leads off with Bob Weir and John Perry Barlow's estimated profit finding a very nice place.

Rich Mahan (94:22)

Charlie Miller in the second set during He's Gone somebody set off an M80 and the show never recovered. They were doing the nothing's gonna bring him back and then you hear boom. And the show just lost her. That whole intense energy thing.

Jesse Jarno (94:59)

Well that's just like your opinion, man. The jam continued on for a few more minutes with a coda before landing almost gently in drums and space. Whether or not the show is an all timer, there were still some surprises.

Rich Mahan (95:27)

SA Bob Minkin Throwing stones coming out of drums and the throwing stones, it should have been like a morning dew or something. But then wait, they did Black Peter.

Jesse Jarno (96:01)

Afternoon Fade Away and after the third Throwing stones appeared in the first set the night before and here out of space. But what was more notable was where it was going.

Rich Mahan (96:11)

My friend had binoculars and I was watching Bobby at the end throwing stones and they got to the picture. Bright blue ball just spinning, spinning free. And we're like they had normally been the past few nights when they'd either gone into day job or deal or something else right there. Bobby looked at Jerry and he looks like he kind of just shrugged his shoulders and just started clapping and Ashes, ashes all fall down they just went into it like they weren't sure about it. They just went into it and then they dropped into not fade away from that possibilities Ashes, ashes all fall down Ashes, ashes all fall down Ashes, ashes all fall down Ashes, ashes all fall down Ashes, ashes all fall down Ashes, ashes all fall down Ashes, ashes all fall down Ashes, ashes all fall down SA.

Jesse Jarno (97:41)

It was the song's first of many sing along outros. Implicit behind the groove of Throwing Stones is a somewhat hidden iteration of the clave rhythm known as the Bo Diddley beat. It's never quite stated directly, but tonight Weir states the quiet groove out loud.

Rich Mahan (97:55)

And at the moment that was the most amazing thing. Just the way they just bam right into Not Fade Away. And I thought I was like, oh my gosh, this is, this is just the best thing ever. But you know, I didn't know I was going to see it like one out of every other show for the next, what, 13 years.

Jesse Jarno (98:27)

The throwing stones not fade away transition became one of the most repeated moves in the next years. Jeff Pincus I remember the sweet sadness.

Rich Mahan (98:36)

Of high time and the rollicking good lovin that helped bring us back down to earth. The whole experience felt initiatory, not always pleasant, but profound.

Jesse Jarno (99:10)

The US Blues encore by itself was nothing new or probably that exciting for most Deadheads, one of the most common encores since its debut in 1974. But it wasn't often that the chorus was so literally topical. It was September 21st. The next day was the autumn equinox. Jeff Pincus and his friends navigated themselves back to the Long Island Railroad and eventually made it home.

Rich Mahan (99:53)

My father was waiting up for me when I got home. How was the concert? He asked. Great, I murmured as I made a beeline to my room. Life was never the same, thank goodness. Thank you all. Good night. We'd like to thank our guests in this episode Alan Trist, John Meyer, Helen Meyer, Dan English, Bob Minkin, Charlie Miller.

Jesse Jarno (100:26)

Jim Wise, Eric Schwartz, Chris Goodspace, John Leopold, Johnny Dork, Sean o', Donnell, Jeff Pincus, Marty Meyer, David Lemieux and Jay Christian Greer.

Rich Mahan (100:39)

Extra special thanks to friends David Ganz.

Jesse Jarno (100:42)

And Blair Jackson for contributing audio from their interview archive. Thank you very much for tuning in. Don't forget to like and subscribe. And keep your tour stories coming by.

Rich Mahan (100:53)

Recording yours over@stories.dead.net See you at the Wo Hop Noodle Shop. Executive producers for the good old Grateful Dead cast, Mark Pincus and Doron Tyson. Produced for Rhino Entertainment by Rich Mahan Productions and Jesse Jarno. Special thanks to David Lemieux. All rights reserved.