Independence Ball, 7/3/66

Summary

GOOD OL’ GRATEFUL DEADCAST

Episode: Independence Ball, 7/3/66
Date: July 2, 2026
Theme: Unpacking the Dead’s Early Years & the Fillmore 1966 Recording

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Episode Overview

This episode shines a floodlight on 1966—a shadowy, formative year for the Grateful Dead—by exploring the context behind the newly released July 3, 1966 Independence Ball recording from the Fillmore Auditorium. Hosts Rich Mahan and Jesse Jarnow guide listeners through lost tapes, legendary acid tests, communal living, and the burgeoning San Francisco scene, all culminating with deep dives into the show’s musical significance. Through interviews with pivotal figures and period audio, the episode captures the Dead’s quest for independence, both as a band and as cultural trailblazers.

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Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. The Independence Ball Tape: Unearthing a Treasure

• [03:15–06:24]

  • The July 3, 1966 Fillmore show, recorded by Owsley “Bear” Stanley using then-advanced techniques, is one of the earliest full Dead sets on record.
  • The tape was long buried in "the magical banana box," discovered with Bear’s blessing in the Dead’s vault, and only made widely available decades later.
  • The set captures the band less than a year after naming themselves the Grateful Dead, still developing their distinctive sound, but already deep into original material and innovative covers.

  “Not yet fully formed, but already writing and performing truly original music…” – Jesse Jarnow [03:15]

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2. The Journey to Independence: From LA to the Bay

• [09:02–13:51]

  • Early Dead history: After going electric as the Warlocks, the band relocated to LA, drawn by opportunity and Owsley’s promise of sonic improvement.
  • The LA stint, stretched thin by legal pressures (LSD criminalization), lack of gigs, and the waning Acid Test era, fostered isolation and creative frustration.

  “...it was all great, well and good to be all living in this house with the instruments in the living room. But there was no money and there was no audience, there were no dancers, there was no fun.” – Rosie McGee [13:26]

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3. Rancho Olampali: Psychedelic Eden

• [14:00–20:34]

  • Rosie McGee and Owsley’s girlfriend Melissa scouted and secured Rancho Olampali in Marin County—a sprawling mansion with space for the whole band and their entourage.
  • The band’s residency created a legendary communal lifestyle: all-night jams, epic parties, and acid-fueled creative sessions.
  • Owsley’s tight control (diet, funds) led to a “vegetable mutiny,” and his gradual fade from the band’s inner circle.
  • Olampali’s environment became fertile ground for the Dead’s mythmaking and musical evolution.

  "For six weeks, we were high like 90% of the time." – Rosie McGee [18:11]

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4. The San Francisco Ballroom Scene: New Sounds, New Freedom

• [21:02–27:13]

  • Exiting the Prankster orbit, the Dead anchored themselves in the blossoming ballroom scene, particularly at the Fillmore, as dance concerts replaced staid club shows.
  • Bill Graham and Family Dog alternated Fillmore bookings; new bands (Jefferson Airplane, Big Brother, Quicksilver Messenger Service) flourished.
  • The period marks a transition from “sitting and watching” to massive, late-night, participatory dance events, fusing music, light shows, and countercultural community.

  “It is a music thing, an artistic thing, a free thing, and a people thing.” – John Dawson [13:13]

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5. Tape Mysteries and the Dead’s Archival Legacy

• [26:34–34:23]

  • Owsley’s tapes often include oddities: acid test fragments, mislabeled reels, lost jams. Some newly found tapes suggest gigs for which no documentation otherwise exists (e.g., a mysterious Huntington Beach run).
  • Historian Hawk and David Lemieux highlight the tangled mess of labels and partial setlists; the thrill and frustration are part of the Dead’s enduring lore.

  “The magical banana box holds mysteries but also frustrations, and that's also part of its charm.” – Jesse Jarnow [32:02]

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6. Social Networks & Early Management: Dead Family Foundations

• [38:03–53:06]

  • Owsley’s financial and technical patronage gave way to new alliances. Legendary managers Rock Scully, Danny Rifkin, and financial adviser Ron Rakow entered the fold, chosen as much for spirit and compatibility (tested via deep questions and shared acid trips) as for credentials.

  • Rakow recounts a life-changing Viola Lee Blues trip and Garcia’s probing question:

    “What would you do for a living if there was no such thing as money?” – Jerry Garcia to Ron Rakow [47:01]

  • Bob Matthews and Betty Cantor establish a sound team that would shape the band’s recorded legacy for years.

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7. Band-to-Band Camaraderie and Rivalry

• [63:24–66:00]

  • Living in Marin fostered interaction between the Dead, Quicksilver Messenger Service (with playful "cowboys vs. Indians" antics), and Big Brother (including Pigpen’s brief romance with Janis Joplin).
  • The intensely social, often mischievous, communal bonds underpin the whole San Francisco scene.

  "They became the Indians and we became the cowboys... And they came and war whooped and raided us after dinner one night." – David Freiberg [64:25]

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8. The Scene at the Fillmore Independence Ball

• [66:51–73:24]

  • The Independence Ball, July 1–3, 1966: three nights curated by Bill Graham starring the city’s emerging bands.
  • The Dead played Sunday, middle-billed with Big Brother, Great Society, Sopwith Camel, Arthur Lee & Love, the Charlatans, and more.
  • John Dawson and Rosie McGee describe the vibe: light shows, wild fashion, community spirit, and the musical free-for-all that defined the Fillmore era.

  “The Fillmore auditorium has two of its four huge walls covered with movie type screens... The effect is a constantly changing artistic experience, both on the parts of those watching and those producing the show, which combines with the drive of the music to produce the free environment which is the Fillmore.” – John Dawson [72:51]

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9. The Music: What’s On the Tape

• [76:13–91:40]

  • The setlist reflects the Dead’s transformation: blues roots, rocking covers, complicated originals, and stretches of early improvisation.
  • Notables include:
    • “Dancing in the Street” and “Midnight Hour”: Early opportunities to stretch out and jam (~15 minutes on "Midnight Hour").
    • Originals like “Cream Puff War," “You Don't Have to Ask” (aka “Otis on a Shakedown Cruise”), the never-revisited “Keep Rolling By,” and Phil Lesh’s “Cardboard Cowboy (No Left Turn Unstoned)."
    • Rare covers: "Gangster of Love" (Johnny Guitar Watson), "Don't Mess Up a Good Thing" (Fontella Bass/Bobby McClure)—the latter with Pigpen singing both parts.
    • Evergreens such as “Cold Rain and Snow,” “Minglewood,” “Beat it on Down the Line,” and “Next Time You See Me.”

  “It’s a blues band. It’s a rock and roll band. It’s originals, it’s covers of old traditionals that they turn into these great rock and roll songs.” – David Lemieux [77:26]

  • The sound is ragged and raw, with moments of humor, surprise dedications (to Sun Dancers, local clothing boutiques), and Pigpen’s early mastery as a master of ceremonies and frontman.

  “Thanks a lot for coming, for letting us fuck around with your heads. We’ll see you next time we play.” – Phil Lesh on-stage banter [30:02]

  • The crowd’s reaction is evidence of the Dead winning over a skeptical audience and evolving into Fillmore favorites.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments (With Timestamps)

• Bear’s Tapes:

  “It came out of the magical banana box. Bears typically stored the tapes in fruit boxes. They're big, durable, they fit reels pretty neatly.” – Hawk [05:23]

• Olampali Days:

  “We set up a bunch of sheets of plywood and dragged out the gigantic voice of the theater speakers that had been our PA for a while and just set up on the plywood. And that became a stage for the music during the parties.” – Rosie McGee [17:08]

• Psychedelic All Experience:

  “I remember spending some long amount of like eons as kind of sentient fields of wheat, you know, that kind of stuff...And the pattern said all incredible neon.” – Jerry Garcia [57:02]

• Jerry's Test of Rakow:

  “What would you do for a living if there was no such thing as money?” – Jerry Garcia [47:01]
  “Viola Lee Blues...changed my life irretrievably. Totally. Period.” – Ron Rakow [50:02]

• Stage Banter & Humor:

  “Thanks a lot for coming, for letting us fuck around with your heads. We'll see you next time we play.” – Phil Lesh [30:02]

  "That's what's known as talent. Let's say good night to the Grateful Dead just once more, huh?" [91:48]

• On the Scene:

  "When you walk in into the ballroom and it's this cocoon, there was almost always a light show, liquid light, light show...You'd go to the bar or whatever, get a drink, and then four or five people cluster on a big velvet couch up in the second floor." – Rosie McGee [74:24]

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Noteworthy Timestamps for Key Segments

• [03:15] – The Magic of the July 3, 1966 Show
• [09:02] – Dead’s Early Electric Years & The Emergency Crew
• [13:26] – The Band’s LA Frustration
• [14:32] – Finding and Moving into Olampali
• [17:08] – Communal Living Details at Olampali
• [22:23] – Rise of the Fillmore and Dance Concerts
• [26:34] – Acid Test Tape Oddities
• [38:03] – Owsley, Scully, and Managerial Hijinks
• [47:01] – Jerry’s Philosophical Question to Rakow
• [53:06] – Olampali Parties and Free Shows
• [63:24] – Marin County Scene, Pigpen and Janis Joplin
• [66:36] – Bands of the Independence Ball Weekend
• [72:51] – Fillmore Atmosphere Described
• [76:13] – The Dead’s Dedications and Set Details
• [87:23] – “Gangster of Love” and Rare Covers
• [90:03] – "Midnight Hour" Jam and Pigpen’s Matchmaking
• [91:48] – Closing Banter and Episode Wrap

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Conclusion

The episode relishes in meticulously reconstructed context, rare archival audio, lived-in memories, and knotty Deadhead trivia, all in a conversational, witty, and occasionally irreverent tone true to both the hosts and their guests. For newcomers and committed Deadheads alike, it presents an irreplaceable window into a pivotal but oft-overlooked year, bringing to life the freedom, chaos, camaraderie, music, and mythology of the Grateful Dead’s earliest incarnation.

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Special Guests Featured: Rosie McGee, Ron Rakow, Bob Matthews, David Freiberg, David Lemieux, Hawk

Recommended Next Steps:

• Listen to the 7/3/66 Fillmore set for context
• Dive into related podcasts and books (linked at dead.net/deadcast)
• Explore photo archives of Olampali and the ballroom era
• Check out Deadcast episodes on the Warlocks, American Folkie Jerry, and Owsley’s sonic experiments

Transcript

[A]

Step into the sunshine with the latest collab from Dogfish Head and the Grateful Dead. Citrus Daydream Lager this refreshing American Lager is brewed with sustainable fonio grain and kissed with citrus and floral notes. It's easy drinking, refreshing and brewed for good vibes only. It joins their fan favorite Juicy Pale Ale for a duo that hits all the right notes. Find these brews near [e-mail] Dogfish Headcraft Brewery is located in Milton, Delaware. Please drink responsibly. 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 13 of the Good Old Grateful Dead Cast. I'm your co host Rich Mahan. Thank you so much for tuning in. In this episode of the Good Old Grateful Dead Cast, we take a look at the events early on in the Dead's career leading up to the show captured on the new Fillmore auditorium, San Francisco, California July 3, 1966 Release yes, you heard that right 1966 making this one of the earliest live recordings of the Grateful Dead and now it available as a 3Lp set and a 2 CD set. This show was recorded by none other than Owsley Bear Stanley and has been mastered by Jeffrey Norman with speed correction and tape restoration by Plangent Processes. So you know it sounds great. This 3LP set is limited to 6,600 copies and it ships this July 3rd, 60 years to the day after it happened. Pre order [e-mail] head on over to dead.net deadcast and check out all of our past episodes including the complete seasons 1 through 12 and you can link from there to your favorite podcasting platform so you can listen how you like to listen. Please help the Good Old Grateful Dead cast by subscribing Share with your friends. Hit that like button and if the spirit moves you, leave us a review. Thank you very much. It helps a lot more than you realize. We have transcripts for many of your favorite Deadcast episodes available head on over to dead.netdeadcast index and check them out. This episode delves into a period of the Dead's career that doesn't get a lot of light shined on it. So get ready for floodlight level illumination on 1966 Grateful Dead happenings, including their time in Los Angeles Olampali, their first home in Marin, and then back to the city to move into their famed residence at 710 Ashbury. Meet your psychedelic real estate agent, Jesse Jarno.

[B]

The new Truth triple LP of the Grateful Dead performing at Bill Graham's Independence Ball at San Francisco's Fillmore Auditorium on July 3, 1966, is one of my favorite of all Grateful Deads, not yet fully formed, but already writing and performing truly original music and a creative repertoire of covers captured on Ultra Stereo tapes by LSD chemist Owsley Stanley, known as Bear.

[C]

You already know.

[B]

You already know. They'd only been the Grateful Dead for less than a year and sound very little like the band that would fill San Francisco ballrooms by the end of the 60s. Though they play a few of the same songs, it's the sound of a group playing for the hearts, minds and feet of San Francisco dancers. Grateful that archivist and legacy manager David Lemieux.

[D]

Around 2002, when Phil and Bobby and Mickey and Billy went to Alpine and did those Terrapin Station family reunion shows, Bear came over for it and he came back to the Bay Area to see his friends and family. And he came into the vault one day and I spent a day with him. It's so much great insight and conversation. And then as he was leaving, he pointed, he said, hey, that box. Because Bear had his whole section of Non Grateful Dead, which was all the things he recorded, which I never touched. We stored it, we took good care of it, but it wasn't ours to touch and listen to, so that was off limits. But Bear said, oh, that box there, I know it's in there. Have you looked into. I said, no, it's your stuff. He said, I know what's in those. Check those ones out. I think you'll find some cool stuff after I leave. You know, when you have some time, go into it, you know, whenever you get some time. I remember him saying that. And he walks out of the vault. I beelined it to that box, stopped whatever the heck I was doing and started putting on his tapes.

[B]

The Owsley Stanley foundation have a name for this particular box. Please welcome back Hawk.

[E]

It came out of the magical banana box. Bears typically stored the tapes in fruit boxes. They're big, durable, they fit reels pretty neatly.

[B]

I thought Bayer only ate meat.

[E]

He didn't eat the bananas. He just got the banana boxes.

[D]

David Lemieux it was a box of things. A lot of it was very poorly labeled. Probably 30 tapes at the most. 25, 20, 25 and all 10 inch tapes. So some rehearsal stuff. There was some live stuff that was poorly labeled. And that is where the beginning of rare cuts and oddities happened. That is where this was first found,

[B]

There are lots of Dead tapes that have circulated for years among fans. The July 3, 1966 recording We're Getting into today is not one of them, honestly.

[D]

Decades ago I stopped kind of paying attention to what's out in the world.

[B]

Well, take our word for it. There was a mislabeled tape called July 3, 1966. But the dead's performance at Bill Graham's Independence Ball didn't get out until the 30 trips around the Sunbox in 2015.

[D]

And this was earliest complete show of this length. This was a bonafide 2 set show with some tremendous performing in San Francisco at the auditorium. It's an interesting mix of songs because it's songs that were in the repertoire for 29 years, for 30 years, and then some things that were very much of their time.

[B]

I'll once again pass along the wisdom of historian Nicholas Meriwether, founder of the Grateful Dead Studies association, and observe that to understand the history of the United States, you have to understand the 60s. To understand the 60s, you have to understand California. To understand California, you have to understand San Francisco. To understand San Francisco, you have to understand the Haight Ashbury. And to understand the Haight Ashbury, you have to understand the Grateful Dead. I'll add one more clause to that list. To understand the Grateful Dead, you have to understand how they spent their 1966. The destination we're working towards today is the Independence Ball, the day before the 190th anniversary of our always wonderful nation. Zooming in on the spring and summer, just before the band relocated to their far out pad at 710 Ashbury Street. By early 1966, the grateful that had found their freedom. But they next needed to find something that was subtly different. Their independence. Mother McCree's Uptown Jug champions went electric and became the Warlocks in May 1965. For a band with at least three known tapers in it, it still surprises me that the first currently known tape of the quintet doesn't come until November of that year. A studio demo recorded for Autumn Records during the weeks after they discovered a Connecticut band known as the Warlocks, but before they became the Grateful Dead, briefly calling themselves the Emergency Crew.

[C]

I can't come down it's plain to see I can't come down I've been set free who you are, what you do don't make no difference to me

[B]

After Owsley Stanley became their sound Engineer in early 1966, he began to methodically document the band. And there are several live recordings on the compilation called Live Cuts and oddities that David just alluded. If you'd like to run chronologically through the Deadcasts documenting the band's very earliest years, we've posted a [e-mail] deadcast but the episodes encompass the Silver Snarling Trumpet, Jerry, American Folkie or biographical episodes about Phil Lesh, Bobby Weir and Pigpen. A brief segment about the Warlocks and Enjoying the Ride. Bay area part one hug the heat about the Fillmore acid test and LA 66. We'll let Jerry Garcia recap that one slightly for us. Speaking with Ben Fong Torres In 1975,

[F]

we moved to LA right after the Trips festival. The Acid Test went to la and that's what we were involved. The Great Filet was involved with that at the time. And that was like our circus and Kesey just split to Mexico and so the bus and the whole scene was sort of gradually drifting onto Mexico. But with this long hangout period in LA to do some, some acid tests down there and see what they were

[B]

like, Owsley certainly made them a generous offer.

[F]

He wanted to improve the quality of the sound. I mean, what reasons were too obscure to understand, really? So some, you know, went along enthusiastically and others went along reluctantly on this trip. And we decided to get involved, you know, sure, why not? The guy is going to rent us a house in LA and work on our equipment, see if he can get a good sound coming out. Yeah, we can stand the weirdness.

[B]

We are so honored to welcome back today the wonderful Rosie McGee who drove her VW Bug to LA to move in with her new boyfriend Phil Lesh.

[G]

From January of 66 when the Grateful Dead moved to LA until September of 66 when they moved into Seven Ten Ashbury and other places. It was a nine month period where the band all lived together and had their gear set up in whatever room and could fall out of bed and play anytime they wanted. And you know, it was, I think it's a very rare thing for any band to have had that, especially when they were just starting out.

[B]

We spoke extensively for that LA66 episode with Owsley's then assistant chemist and assistant sound engineer Tim Scully.

[G]

He was down to having only one or two grams of acid left, ampules

[F]

with crystalline grams of acid.

[G]

And what we tableted in the attic that night was may have been the

[F]

last gram of crystalline acid that he had available.

[G]

So that would have made 3,600 tablets.

[B]

Another compelling reason to split town is that the heat was starting to rise. Jerry Garcia it was just around the

[F]

time that LSD was made illegal. It was right in that period because we were living in LA when it was made illegal.

[B]

The first anti LSD legislation was introduced in the California State senate on Phil Lesh's 26th birthday, March 15, 1966, while the dead were in LA. Happy birthday, Phil. Though it wouldn't pass for another month or two. Then came the March 25, 1966 issue of Life magazine, which hit the newsstands with a cover story about still legal LSD titled the Exploding Threat of the Mind Drug that Got out of Control and included photos from one of the LA acid tests. But mostly the Dead split town because they needed work. And that's pretty much where we pick up today.

[G]

The Pranksters had left. They had been the house band for the Acid Test. There were no more acid Tests. They couldn't get any gigs and was sitting around. I mean, it was all great, well and good to be all living in this house with the instruments in the living room. But there was no money and there was no audience, there were no dancers, there was no fun.

[B]

At dead.netdeadcast, we've posted links to Rosie's website, her great book Dancing with the Dead, and her new substack newsletter.

[G]

Meanwhile, back in the Bay Area, the ballroom scene was starting to flower and musicians want to play music and they were not able to get down in la. Melissa, who was Owsley's girlfriend at the time. Melissa and I were sent to the Bay Area to find a place where we could all live together.

[B]

About a month after she'd driven her VW bug south, Rosie headed back north.

[G]

Owsley gave us a big wad of money and we took off. Melissa and I drove up the Grapevine and went looking in the city. Melissa and I did go view a few houses. The most hilarious to us was something like a 10 bedroom mansion in Pacific Heights, which is like the really Shishi neighborhood in San Francisco. And we were shown the place by the butler and Melissa and I are just like looking sidelong glasses at each other going, we're never going to get this place. We probably shouldn't get this place because we'd wreck it. We started looking at want ads.

[B]

I don't know if it's what Rosie and Melissa saw, but there's a classified ad in the local papers in early April 1966 inviting readers to plan your private party at Rancho Olampali, site of the historical Bert El Mansion. Barbecue, family picnics, heated swimming pool, all grounds and pool floodlit for night functions, ideal for annual picnics of churches, banks, Business and social organizations. Inspection invited. Rosie and Melissa inspected.

[G]

It was perfect. This mansion had a bunch of bedrooms and then they had servants quarters in the back with more bedrooms. And there was plenty of room and it was certainly enough room to set up the gear. And there was a swimming pool and it was just this beautiful property and they were willing to rent it to us, you know, so, okay, so we paid $1,100 in cash up front for the six week rental and drove back down to LA to pack.

[B]

Rosie informed the band that she and Melissa had rented Paradise.

[G]

It was a paradise all by itself, even without the circumstances of the freedom that it gave us once we moved in there and being able to have parties and go in the pool and have our friends come up from the city and, you know, there were no neighbors.

[B]

The Dead would become known as a Marin county band. And that started with the idyllic late spring of 1966. The local paper, the Nevado advance, published a large front page story about the new residents, though, assuring readers that they were only there on a limited lease. There was also a letter to the editor by a concerned resident. Noisy change at Rancho Ulampali.

[G]

I don't know if it ever rained the whole time we were there, but my only recollection of music was when we set up sheets of plywood outside the main living room, where the pillars were and all of that and the windows, there was kind of a more or less flat space. And we set up a bunch of sheets of plywood and dragged out the gigantic voice of the theater speakers that had been our PA for a while and just set up on the plywood. And that became a stage for the music during the parties. And that's the only music that I specifically remember.

[B]

The times they were high, perhaps the highest archivist, Dick Lotvala, referred to the band's peak psychedelic years as Primal Dead. But today we're exploring something even earlier. Let's call it Feral Dead.

[G]

Looking and dropping. We're kind of the order of the day. For six weeks. We were high like 90% of the time. So the memories I have are engraved in my head, but there's a lot that I don't remember.

[B]

With Olampali as a base camp, they began to line up gigs around the Bay Area. Between Jerry Garcia's high school friend, Laird Grant and Bobby Weir's high school friend, Bob Matthews. They had the core of their first real equipment crew.

[G]

Owsley had a truck that was pretty famous in certain circles. He called it the Dread Doormammu. I think it was a 40s pickup truck, maybe even 30s, at least when we were at Olampali, it was used to haul the equipment. I believe that Billy still had a station wagon, and so he had been using that for his drum kits and probably carried the guitars. It was probably a caravan of several vehicles at the time. I had a VW Bug was too perfect. We could put Phil's bass and him and me in it. That was plenty.

[B]

There was always change on the horizon.

[G]

Owsley was our benefactor, and, you know, I used to call him our benevolent dictator, but, you know, he just dictated everything, but he held the purse strings and he paid for everything. It's been documented extensively about his imposing a all meat diet on us because that's how he believed humans were supposed to eat. And by the time we moved back to the Bay Area, the guys had had enough, the women had had enough, and the. Once we got to Olampali, the guys started to get some gigs in the city and started making a little of their own money. And so we had. I think it was the women that called it, but we had what we called a vegetable mutiny.

[B]

Owsley had also shown up late on the day when they drew straws for bedrooms and didn't land a particularly sweet spot.

[G]

Between that and the food thing and a couple of other reasons, he had another place over in the East Bay and where he was doing other things. And so pretty soon, Owsley was no longer living with us. I mean, he was a presence, definitely, but those days of that kind of overlord stuff were gone.

[B]

Over the course of the summer, Owsley and the Dead gradually uncoupled. And after the shows at the end of July, he and Tim Scully moved on to their next round of chemistry, with Owsley eventually returning as the Dead's front of house engineer in August 1968. The dead had to move forward. And to state the obvious, successful dance concerts for Bill Graham were one entirely logical step in that direction. As any suitably confident chatbot can tell you, the Grateful Dead were the house band at the acid tests thrown by the Merry pranksters in late 1965 and early 1966. But by the time they got back to the Bay Area, that wasn't worth a lot. The events had created notoriety, but not exactly the good kind. Ken Kesey was a wanted criminal and had fled to Mexico. Most of the Pranksters followed, which is where the Dead exited, the story detailed in Tom Wolfe's Electric Kool Aid acid test. In the meantime, the scene in San Francisco began to flourish with New venues and head friendly businesses. Jerry Garcia, I think the Psychedelic Shop

[F]

had already opened and all that. So it was kind of ready and they were sort of ready for us and we were ready to get out of LA for sure.

[B]

They were also broke. There's a story from Olempoly of Billy Kreutzman and Pigpen attempting to hunt for their own game in the Nevada hills and nearly shooting Bobby Weir, then wandering through the woods. It's another reason why there's not a lot of audiotape from this period. Thankfully, there was work to be had. We're going to be drawing a little bit on a radio documentary made in late 1966 and narrated by a voice that might be familiar to some of you.

[H]

This is John Dawson speaking.

[B]

I'm not sure what John Dawson was doing narrating a radio documentary for the California Network of Veterans Hospitals two years before forming the New Riders of the Purple Sage. But what's up, Marmaduke? Nice to hear your voice.

[H]

A new thing is happening in San Francisco. It is a music thing, an artistic thing, a free thing, and a people thing.

[B]

Just before the Dead split town with the Pranksters, they'd performed at the Trips Festival. The Merry Pranksters had hired a young hustler to help them get organized. Bill Graham.

[F]

For me personally, it started at the Trips Festival in January. I had never been to any San Francisco dance of any kind prior to that time. I was asked to assist in the production of the Trips Festival with some people I knew. At the same time, I had done a couple of things here for the Meme Troupe benefits.

[B]

What happened after that is slightly controversial. In the wake of the Trips Festival, two sets of promoters began to book dance concerts catering to the new dancing audience. But it's safe to say that only one of those promoters was competing. At first. Bill Graham and the much chiller family Dog alternated weekends at the Fillmore, at least until Graham renegotiated the lease.

[F]

Then when I took a lease on the Fillmore Auditorium, we tried to improve on what someone else had started at the Trips Festival.

[B]

The family dog, meanwhile, found their own slightly smaller and much looser venue. And starting in May 1966, there was lots going on every weekend in San Francisco.

[H]

It is the dance concert, and it happens primarily at the Fillmore Auditorium and the Avalon Ballroom in San Francisco.

[B]

This seems almost trivial now, but it's worth discussing. Before 1966, there were concerts where people bought tickets, sat in assigned seats and watched musicians. There were clubs where people bought drinks, sat at tables and watched musicians, and there were newfangled go Go clubs, which sometimes involved dancing. There were folk and jazz festivals, but none for rock just yet. It's all a blurry taxonomy, but the San Francisco ballrooms offered something that was recognized as new.

[H]

What is a dance concert?

[B]

Sounds like you want to tell us, Marmaduke?

[H]

It is a mixture of three live rock and roll music, colored light patterns projected on the walls, and people who come dressed in their happiest clothes to dance or listen or both. The dances are held on Friday and Saturday nights from 9pm until 2 in the morning and are attended by 1,500 to 2,000 people per evening.

[B]

The dead moved into Olampali on May 1 and played scattered gigs around the Bay Area. There are barely any recordings from between when the Dead returned in April and the Fillmore show in July, once again from the Owsley Stanley Foundation.

[E]

Hawkins it often was an issue of tape and whether there was money to buy tape. We did recently discover in one of Bear's emails a reference to the difficulty of getting substantially paying gigs in LA, and he mentioned they were getting 175 bucks a night, which was barely enough to keep them alive.

[B]

But that doesn't mean there aren't any tapes from the spring. Check out Rare Cuts and Oddities for a bunch of undated highlights from early 1966. But right now let's climb into Bear's Magical Banana Box and explore some of its remaining mysteries that lived alongside the reels from the independence ball on July 3rd. Thanks to Hawk for bringing along a few snippets.

[E]

Reel number 35 is labeled as acid test. It's 34 minutes and 31 seconds. And then there's this moment where it's like you get into an elevator and the elevator music plays and the door opens and you're in the middle of this event with this ambient, distorted, very dark sounds.

[G]

And then the door closes again and the Muzak comes up and this time the tenor sax is an alto because the tape is sped up.

[I]

And then the door opens a second

[G]

time and you can hear the band jamming in the distance. It's fragmented. So this tape could be from a number of different shows, but I'd like to believe that the beginning part, you know, where you're on this little elevator trip really is probably what an acid test sounded like. You could play or not. You could press record on the tape deck or not. You could wander around the hall with a tape deck or not, and not really sure the provenance of this tape and how in particular the Elevator music

[B]

was put into it after another elevator flash. There are several minutes of seemingly genuine acid test improv, something we don't have a lot of. I used the Shazam app on the elevator music, and it's the theme from the Fellini film La dolce [e-mail] deadcast we've posted a link to the Owsley Stanley Foundation's recent post of the entirety of reel 1300, a total mystery which has nothing to do with the Dead, probably. Hawk also recently came across real 1301, which for various reasons appears to be part of a sequence from the magical Banana Box with Behr's Tapes of troopers hall for March 25, and now presents us with what amounts to a 22nd blip that exemplifies why I find these tapes so much fun.

[E]

It's the second reel from whatever this performance was. It's a midnight hour the head is missing.

[C]

Tumbling down Going to wait till a midnight around I'm going to take you, girl and hold you down.

[E]

And they play for about 13 minutes and then they thank everyone for coming out.

[F]

Thanks a lot for coming, for letting us fuck around with your heads. We'll see you next time we play.

[B]

And here's where they drop something really cool. Neither a song nor a jam, but the hint of a previously unknown Grateful Dead adventure. Wow. Really cool. At least to me, if it even happened.

[F]

Well, people, and don't forget about Huntington. 6th, 7th, 8th and 9th,

[C]

the Huntington

[F]

Pavilion, Huntington beach and dear old Huntington riots near the Huntington Ocean.

[B]

The Huntington Beach Pavilion was known more properly as the Pavilon, a reference to Avalon on nearby Santa Catalina Island. It was also often known as the Pavilion Ballroom, which is funny to me for reasons you can probably understand by now. Swing bands played there in the 1940s, but it evolved into something cooler by the 60s, when Huntington beach was a center of surf culture and artists like surf guitarist Dick Dale played there for genuine surfers. There's no other evidence of the Dead playing the Pavilion other than the stage banter, though I found a newspaper report that indicates a promoter was booking some shows there on those days with the rock band tbd. Rosie doesn't remember, and it was probably when she was off looking at Olampoli. We've been talking a lot about the Dead's importance in the birth of psychedelic rock. But surf music still ruled in Southern California, a scene that also had psychedelic connections aplenty. Four nights at the Pavilion in April 1966 sounds like a pretty gnarly dance party on the beach. We'll just have to imagine. But I think that it would have been a good match. There's another potentially revealing bit in that stage banter, too.

[F]

And right across the street, our good friend Paul Butterfield. Just down in Huntington county, but he costs more money. Paul Butterfield's right across the street. Butterfield Loose Band Thanks a lot for coming.

[B]

The Golden Bear was right across the street from the Pavilion, but it's interesting to hear Phil Lesh refer to Paul Butterfield as their good friend. The year before, members of the Butterfield Band, especially guitarist Mike Bloomfield, had played with Bob Dylan in the studio and on stage, including Like a Rolling Stone and Dylan's first electric set at the Newport Folk Festival. Owsley's assistant Don Douglas told me he has a vague memory of members of the Dead and the Butterfield Band jamming in la. It's possible Huntington beach is where it happened. Later that summer, the Butterfield Blues Band recorded their sidelong East West, a jam the Dead very likely paid attention to. We got a little sidetracked. The point I was trying to make before I so rudely interrupted myself is how Owsley didn't tape, or maybe didn't manage to hold onto many complete shows until the July 3rd Fillmore gig we're working towards. The magical banana box holds mysteries but also frustrations, and that's also part of its charm.

[E]

There were definitely some discrepancies with respect to the tape that was labeled 22366, and there were multiple generations of handwriting on the box trying to correct mistakes in the set list or fill in gaps from the set list. Very faintly on the real, you can see that it says Avalon in it in faded ink.

[B]

The Dead didn't play the avalon Ballroom until May 19, and that's the way many people have since dated the reel, sometimes called February 23rd, significant because it's the only live tape of the Dead from the six weeks while they lived at Olampali when I was feeling so

[C]

bad, had my family doctor daughter with her hand.

[B]

They also recorded their debut, 7 inch, the previous year. A tiny local label launched Scorpio Records to capture the sounds of San Francisco. In late 1965 and early 1966. They issued a few singles, including one by the Golliwogs, who eventually became Creedence Clearwater Revival. This one was written by Jerry Garcia's future bandmate Tom Fogridy.

[C]

I saw a man walking on the water Coming right at me from the other side Calling out my name do

[B]

not feel free Rosie McGee what I

[G]

remember is the location, a true mansion it's up on a hill just next to Buena Vista park in San Francisco. And I remember Laird and whoever else, Bob Matthews, whoever, struggling to get gear up to the third floor.

[B]

When we spoke with the late Bob Matthews in 2018, he told us about this night.

[F]

After an acid test, we ended up at a recording studio, Gene Esterbooth, up on Buena Vista Hill. So one's perceptions were still very finely tuned.

[B]

Probably it was in the wee hours of May 30, following a gig at California Hall. Not an actual acid test, but probably acid was tested, you know, for quality

[F]

and being in this strange environment at the top of one of those old buildings, which was a treat in itself. The guy had a brand new four track. I became enthralled, just, I mean, all of the tape reels and the red lights glowing and my brain glowing.

[B]

The Dead recorded a half dozen songs that night, and the whole session can be heard on the collection Birth of the Dead. But one of their old jug band favorites became their first single, released a few weeks later on Scorpio in a very tiny pressing and only sold in local stores like the psychedelic shop.

[C]

Stealing, stealing Pretty mama, don't you tell all me, me, I'm stealing Back to

[I]

my same old used to be.

[B]

The session made an enormous impact on Bob Matthews.

[F]

And sometime after that I remember telling Bob Ware, this recording thing, for it to be done right, it's going to need to be done representationally by somebody within the family, and I'm going to be that person.

[B]

Bob Matthews and his not yet girlfriend, Betty Cantor would become the Dead's first recording team, engineering and co producing Working Man's Dead a few years later and capturing sounds for them through the early 1980s. The B side to the single stuck around longer in the band's repertoire.

[C]

Don't eat, don't eat don't ease me in I've been all night long I've been gone don't easy in the.

[B]

There was another important event unfolding that spring in the Dead's world. They had new managers making a number of new acquaintances that would shape their career for years to come. Here's Garcia again. In 1975, we were doing okay in

[F]

clubs and working that circuit and, you know, keeping jobs and stuff, but we just got really burned out on it. We got really sick of it and wanted to do something weirder.

[B]

Acid chemist Owsley Stanley saw them at the Muir beach acid test and freaked out, maybe in a good way. Brian Anderson wrote about that event recently, and we've posted a [e-mail] deadcast we've also linked to David Ganza's conversations with the Dead, where you can read this full interview with Owsley. Here's Owsley on how he came into the Dead's world.

[F]

The next time I saw them was at the Fillmore acid test and I met Phil and I walked over to him and I said, I'd like to work for you guys, because I decided that they. That this was the most amazing thing I'd ever run into. He says, oh. He says, we don't have a. We don't have a manager.

[B]

I said, I don't think I want

[I]

to be a manager.

[F]

He said, well, you don't have a sound man. I said, well, I don't know anything about that either, but I guess I could probably learn. Sounds like more fun.

[B]

Owsley also began to fund the Dead's adventures and almost immediately found someone to help, or rather someone's.

[F]

And Owsley introduced it to Scully and Danny Rifkken, who is Scully's pal.

[B]

I think this story starts in early January 1966, either the night of the Fillmore acid test or a few days later. This is from the audiobook to Rock Scully's memoir, Living with the Dead, released by Atlantic Records in 1995.

[F]

Around 11 o', clock, the inscrutable Owsley Stanley, the Acid King, shows up. I know him from various scenes in the Hate, where he would turn up a mysterious presence in cloaks and operatic hats, lurking and dispensing samples of his latest batch of acid to those he deemed worthy. Apparently, I am now one of the elect, because here he is, handing me a tiny, misshapen orange barrel of LSD Rock. Come on over to the Fillmore later. There's something I want you to see, he says, without telling me what it is.

[B]

Rock Scully was a member of the Family Dog Collective, responsible for booking shows at the Avalon Ballroom and other venues.

[F]

Listen to me. All you have to know is the Grateful Dead are going to be the greatest band in the history of the world. Poor deluded man. How can I tell him? From my brief acquaintance with Alcey, I know better than to argue with him, even if I had enough brain function left to do so. He's decided that I'm just the person to manage this band.

[B]

Within a few weeks, the band was off to la, where Rock Scully and Danny Rifkin showed up soon thereafter. They hadn't yet officially signed on for managerial duties, but were quickly convinced, and they showed up with some rather swanky wheels that weren't exactly theirs when they

[I]

went to la, they showed up in a brand new Imperial convertible and they borrowed it from me. And it was big, it was enormous.

[B]

You might recognize that voice, which belongs to Ron Rakow. I told you we wouldn't be able to get rid of him. A few episodes ago we told the story of Ron Rakkow's chaotic exit from the dead scene in 1976. Today we detail his arrival almost exactly a decade earlier. And why should it be anything less than colorful?

[I]

Ainie Courson, one of the world's great chefs, cooked meals for the psychedelic community at her home, for which they paid. And she that was part of her living. So one evening Rock and Danny went to dinner at Annie's Table just outside of the Haight Ashbury. And they were talking about how the do you get the resource and the background and the shit to make a band popular? And Anson Pryor said, I shoot arrows with this guy from Wall street who's like a sicko archer and he only talks about multi millions and how you do this and how you do that. It all goes over my head. But I got his card. His name is Ron Rakow.

[B]

Rakow had recently arrived in San Francisco with a job as a private financial advisor. Rock Scully and Danny Rifkin hustled their way right in.

[I]

Rock and Dana came to my office unannounced with no appointment. And they proceeded to sell me on the concept of a music scene developing. They had what they thought would be the best band. They started a company called Furniture limited and they anticipated that they would each own a third and I would own the other third.

[B]

This is around the time Rackow lent his new car to Rock and Danny, who were hanging around with the band in la.

[I]

By the end of March it was a convertible. It was enormous. And so they. They took that, they borrowed that and they came back, I don't know, 10 days later with 4,500 more miles on the car.

[B]

Ron Rackow could be impulsive, like lending his convertible to a pair of hippies he just met. But he also genuinely fell fully in love with Danny Rifkin and Rock Scully.

[I]

Me, Danny and Rock are three guys. I am the dumbest guy. Let me. I. You have to know that Danny and Rock were fucking brilliant. Brock was a PhD almost in German Renaissance literature. Danny was a master in social anthropology. Danny is unbelievable. There's nobody like Danny.

[B]

So I think this story happens not long after they all returned from LA in mid April.

[I]

A week later they called and made an appointment and came back with another guy. And they said when they went back to the band and told the band about me, somebody chiped up and said, you know, they. We're not hiring anybody without me meeting them. That voice was Owsley Stanley. So they came back to my office with Owsley, and we had the whole same meeting over again.

[B]

But the meeting took an unexpected turn.

[I]

Bear wanted to know the facts of my life so that he could ascertain my spirit. I'm guessing now, but that's what I believe is accurate. And I had just received a delivery from B and H Photo Supply in New York of a new hostile blood and a lens, what's called the normal lens and the back. Oh, and the pistol grip so that I can hold it up. And so I had the boxes open, but put back together, which that sloppy way that you do when you have to open stuff and try to cover it with the COVID And I was talking to them, and he said, what the hell is that? I said, I. I do photography. I'm majorly into photography. This is photography equipment. And I opened it all up and I said, it's a hostelblad. And we went through it, and we didn't talk about the band after that at all. We talked about photography and photographic equipment. And he went back to the Grateful Dead and said, this is the guy.

[B]

He was through the first gate.

[I]

The next week or two weeks later, I went to a show at, I believe it was Longshoreman's Tonight and tomorrow night, the outline presents Trip 66 at

[F]

Longshoreman's hall, beach and Mason streets on

[I]

Fisherman's Wharf, featuring the sounds of the Grateful Dead, the Loading Zone, the Answer, the Seance of Sound.

[F]

All these in continuous music from 9 to 1.

[B]

Sometimes Ron Rackow remembers this next story as happening at the Fillmore, and I should mention that, but if it times out with the band's return from la, and if my math is right, Braow saw the band at the knockoff non Prankster quote unquote Trips Festival held over three nights in April at the Longshoremen's hall, site of the original Trips Festival. But despite the branding and a mention of their name in the ad, the Merry Pranksters had nothing to do with this one.

[F]

You'll encounter such spectacles as Columbus Needs

[I]

Indians, the Merry Pranksters, Hetty the Witch, liquid projections, colored tar pits, royal trumpets, air dome projections, and much, much more.

[F]

Four full hours of ceaseless entertainment and happenings in this, the biggest and best Trips festival yet.

[B]

Whatever you say, little dude. But the Owsley Stanley foundation has some fragmentary Tapes from these nights

[C]

well, this job I got is a little too hard Running out of money load I need more bed oh, yeah I'm gonna wake up in the morning lol I'm gonna pack my back I'm gonna.

[I]

I met the leader of the band. Danny took me in there. He didn't call him the leader of the band. I sussed that out myself. And Danny introduced me to Jerry, and Jerry and I talked. And during that talk, he asked me a question that blew my mind. What would you do for a living if there was no such thing as money? The question is utterly and completely brilliant in that it took my breath away physically and laid me on this incredible defensive, ancient Jewish process of trying to suss out whether or not I was in a trap or a comfortable spot. And I would say my answer came out between four and a half and six minutes later. And Jerry didn't move, nor did he take his eyes off my face. I went through, what the is going on here? Is this guy trying to with me? What's the win for him? What's what? Huh? And then I said, well, you know, you've been talking to this guy for over an hour. He's such a soft teddy bear, like, nice guy maybe. He's really curious and he's very bright. So I made that assumption right there at that time, and I said, yeah, this guy, he could not have been spending all this time with me to fuck me around. So I answered him the only way I could, And I said, I can take pictures and my medium is photography. And he said, oh, I love photography. Do you know who you'd be like if you were a photographer? Who would. Who do you admire? And I said, well, you wouldn't know his name. His name is Henri Cartier Bresson. And he said, I know Bresson's work. He said, if you want to do that, join us. The whole world is going to be in front of our stage and. And it's not going to take a long time either.

[B]

And so through the second gate, Rackow hung around for the show. Just because it wasn't a real acid test doesn't mean somebody wasn't going to get tested with real acid. Pedantic trigger warning. We're going to mix some audio from the July 3rd show into this next story.

[I]

And I went to the gig and somebody gave me a Pepsi Cola that was dosed. The fifth, sixth or eighth song changed my life irretrievably. Totally, Period. Viola Lee Blue. I can't say it without getting chills up and down my body and goose flesh on my arms.

[C]

The judge Peter Clarky wrote it, Plucky wrote it. Out of Needa Judge and Creed It Cracky wrote it down.

[I]

And I was on the verge of slipping into chaos during the Viola Lee Blues when they got into the whacked out part. I thought the world was going to end and I couldn't breathe. I was on the floor, laying on my coat with my eyes closed, writhing on the floor because I was going to die. And all of a sudden they. They had a. A1. And they were back in three, four time. And Jerry was singing I Got a Friend Somewhere. But he could hardly say it because he was laughing at me so hard he could hardly keep it together because I was gonna die. And then I didn't die.

[C]

You may know that I have got a friend.

[B]

And out from the far side of the third gate, welcome to the Dead. Ron Rakow, a not quite silent partner with Rock Scully and Danny Rifkin in the Dead's early management.

[I]

Frontage Road Limited was the name of our little entity. Frontage Road Limit was intending to get three, four or five San Francisco bands and become the management company for San Francisco bands. But none of us knew anything about management. After a very, very short while, like eight or 10 weeks, we saw that the Grateful Dead was going to be a big time job.

[B]

If Ron Rakow got his mind blown in April, I think he had some loose ends to tie up back on planet Earth before jumping fully into the picture. Because he only turns up again in the aftermath of this next story. Once again, here's Jerry Garcia speaking with Ben Fong Torres.

[F]

When we first moved back up, we had a place out in Nevada for a couple of months. And we lived there for a while and had some parties and stuff out there.

[B]

That'd be the idyllic Rancho Olampali. Of course, it was there that Rock Scully and Danny Rifkin began the Grateful Dead tradition of free shows.

[F]

They were sort of. Sort of unifying gestures. Scully went ahead, you know, he knew all the people from the Haight Ashbury and all that. The San Francisco scene, like the family dog scene and all that. And so he invited a lot of those to go out. And we had these places, parties when everybody had a great time. Got real high rock.

[B]

Scully was operating at full charm, though he told the story differently and perhaps more accurately at other times. Paul Simon once said that he wrote Feeling Groovy in Rock, Scully's car. After hearing Rock use the word groovy one too many Times which would place the writing around the time Simon and Garfunkel played at the Berkeley Community Theater on May 28, 1966.

[C]

Slow down, you move too fast, you got to make them all and laughs Just kicking down the cobblestones Looking for fun and feeling groovy,

[B]

Feeling groovy Simon and or Garfunkel didn't make it to Olampali. Nevertheless, the parties and especially the May 22, 1966, blowout, were legendary once again. Rosie McGee.

[G]

Before I got a little too high to function, it was just a wonderful, wonderful afternoon. You know, lots of people, a lot of nudity and people in the pool, and we had made a bunch of food and there was bands playing and Quicksilver came up and Airplane came up and, you know, we were all like a group of friends. Once we moved back to the city from la, we fell back in. We fell in with our, you know, our best friends, which was the other San Francisco bands and the artists and all these people from the hate.

[B]

Guests included dozens of local musicians and friends, including the Jefferson Airplane, who the Dead knew from their Palo Alto folk years, but also the Great Society, Quicksilver Messenger Service, the Charlatans, Big Brother and Holding Company and every other pal who can make it.

[G]

We were all just friends and families. You know, we mixed and merged all the time and partied together and, you know, had barbecues or baseball games or whatever. And Olampoli was like that. And so the party was like that on steroids. And just because there was a. Because there was a formal invitation and it was a thing.

[B]

There are no tapes from Olenpolly from when the Dead lived there, but many awesome photos by Rosie and many happy memories from the Dead. Sentimentality would never be a popular emotion in the world of the grateful dead, Dennis McNally wrote in the band's official history, but if ever there was an exception, Olampoli was it.

[G]

It was paradise for us for six weeks, and especially after three, four months in la, crowded into a small house with no gigs and nothing to do and no money.

[B]

One of the Olampali soirees was the site of one of Jerry Garcia's most harrowing but memorable LSD experiences. This story is from Dennis McNally's audiobook Jerry on Jerry, which we've linked [e-mail] Deadcast.

[F]

We were living at the time in a kind of a large sort of ranch kind of place in Northern California. The band was. And we were all tripping that day, all us and a lot of friends.

[B]

It was a trip so Momentous. That Garcia even had a name for it.

[F]

The All Experience.

[B]

The All Experience was pretty intense.

[F]

That whole day that included the experience of dying many deaths of these started to get more and more kind of a feedback loop of this thing where I was suddenly in the last frames of my life. And then it was like, you know, here's that moment where I die. You know, I run up the stairs and there's this demon with a spear who gets me right between the eyes, you know, Or I run up the stairs and there's this. There's a woman with a knife who stabs me in the back, you know, I run up the stairs and there's a business partner who shoots me. It got into this thing of the last seen and of hundreds of lives and thousands of incarnations and insect deaths and then like kinds of life, you know, where I remember. I remember spending some long amount of like eons as kind of sentient fields of wheat, you know, that kind of stuff. Incredible things and these sort of long paths, pastoral, extraterrestrial kind of cultures. And I was lying on the grass. I closed my eyes and I had this sensation of perceiving with my eyes closed. It was as though they were open. I still had this field of vision. And the field of vision had kind of a pattern in it. It was partly visible. And then I had this thing that the outside of the field of vision was like, started to unravel like an old time coffee can, you know, the little thing that you spin around and take the little strip of metal off, it was like that. It began stripping around the outside of the field until I had a 360 degree view. And it revealed this pattern. And the pattern said all incredible neon.

[B]

If you'd like to roll your own All Experience, we've used bits of Tucker Martin's Broken Hearted Dragonflies, the Environment Series track, Wind in the Trees and Chris Richmond's Bells of St. Mary. Ron Rackow missed the big parties when the dead lived there, but offers a funny addition to the story of Garcia's All Experience.

[I]

I went to Olampali after they lived there, and I walked around the place with Gary after they had an acid trip that I was not at at Olampali. And Gary walked me over to a side of the house and he showed me a rather large hole in the ground, not really deep, maybe a foot deep. And he said, I kicked that hole in the ground. I said, really? He said, we had acid here and I was having 360 degree vision. So I buried my head. It was Driving me nuts.

[B]

The Dead's lease on Olampali was only six weeks, but it was eventually taken over by a simpatico hippie commune and continued to be a hangout spot and site of occasional jam sessions and was the site of the Oxymoxo a back cover photo. It's now a state park where you can see the ruins of the mansion where the dead lived in 66 and archaeologists have even studied the artifacts left behind by the commune that lived there after the Dead. We've posted some Olampali related [e-mail] deadcast in my liner notes for the new Independence Ball album, I mistakenly noted that the dead were still at Olampali at the time of the performance. But there's even a newspaper clip noting that the Dead moved out of Olampaly and left the place in shockingly decent shape. Rosie's going to post it in her newsletter. You should subscribe. In the meantime, she found a new spot for them. They moved into even deeper Marin.

[G]

I found the Lagunitas place, which was between Olampali and 710. We were at a former Girl Scout camp in Lagunitas, which is also in Marin County. And then we all moved into the city around September.

[B]

But it wasn't Olampali.

[G]

It was a bit of a comedown from Olampali just because it was very small. Was on a royal road in Lagunitas and is up against some hills. It did have a swimming pool, much smaller swimming pool. The main house was pretty small. It's kind of like a three or four bedroom bungalow. You went down the stairs from the the road into the house and then come back up the stairs. You had. You walked past the swimming pool to the rest of the property and the first place you encountered was this big dining hall. You remember this had been a Girl Scout camp that had not been in service for quite some time. So it was a little bit not derelict, but it was a little funky. And there was this dining hall with a kind of a commercial kitchen and a bunch of picnic tables all lined up.

[B]

There had been a children's camp on the site since at least 1933, but Camp Lagunitas operated on Arroyo Road in Lagunitas through the summer of 1965. It seems it's one street over from Serenity Knolls where Jerry Garcia died in 1995 and which he chose because he'd originally thought it was the same property as Camp Lagunitas. From what I can tell, there's nothing on the property currently except for an air quality Station beaming onto the Internet. We don't get to hear too much from Pigpen in these stories, and this isn't a lot either. But here's a little from his 1970 conversation with Hank Harrison.

[I]

We were living in Olden Pond before,

[F]

and then we ended up living in Lagunitas. It was Camp Lagunitas and Big Brother

[G]

lived about, I don't know, a mile or two away.

[B]

A little later, the same summer, Pigpen would meet his forever love. But the Dead's time in Lagunitas was also the window in which Pigpen had a brief fling with his new neighbor and bff, a recent Texas transplant and brand new singer for Big Brother, Janis Joplin.

[G]

And then further out that same road, which was the road that goes out to Point Reyes and all of that, and Olima out in Olema was on a small ranch, was Quicksilver Messenger Service. And those guys and I think they actually had horses out there and were really into the cowboy thing for real, you know, not just dress up.

[B]

David Freiberg of Quicksilver Messenger Service recalled the summer of 66 when we spoke a few years ago.

[J]

They were living at the, at the kids camp during the summer in Lagunitas, and Quicksilver was out in Olima at the dairy farm, practicing.

[B]

The two bands began a playful beef after Jerry Garcia and John Cipollina got into an argument about who was cooler, Native Americans or cowboys. Garcia knew the right answer, obviously Native Americans, though maybe the band didn't express that in the most culturally sensitive way.

[J]

They became the Indians and we became the cowboys. And they came and war whooped and raided us after dinner one night. And we ended up as we were rolling, getting out the bowl and rolling up some smoke. And they, they showed up just in time to smoke it all with us.

[B]

The beef extended outwards. This is probably about the early June 1966 shows at the Fillmore.

[J]

Then we decided to get them back. We were going to ambush them at the Fillmore while they were playing with, had a gig with the airplane and we were going to come in with bandanas and, you know, John's old antique rifles and hold them up and tie them to their amps and take their instruments and sing Kalijo as a wooden Indian and leave.

[I]

Elijah was a wooden Indian standing by the door.

[C]

He fell in love with an Indian

[I]

made over in the antique store, Collijah,

[J]

and tried to get in and realized that the airplane was playing too long and we had to wait. So we got out and went and threw all the stuff in the Back of the old panel truck. There was Quicksilver's equipment hauler at that point and sat in the back and everybody else went to get some coffee. And we were just smoking dope in the back. And all of a sudden there's a gun comes in the front door. And we said, oh, come on, guys, and it has to be the cops.

[B]

Members of Quicksilver Messenger Service ended up in jail for neither the first nor last time. Just another night in the San Francisco scene. There were no other bands like the Grateful Dead, of course, but this is the musical scene in which they blossomed. And it's worth using the Independence Ball as a way to provide a quick overview of what San Francisco sounded like when the Dead arrived, as well as a picture of the Dead's blooming social network as they shared backstages and sound checks and parties with new co workers on the new ballroom circuit. We're not going to go through every band of the Independence Ball weekend, but it's a great window into the scene.

[C]

Lord, look at me. I'm rooted like a tree, Hell I am. Now I got to sit down and cry. Oh, Lord, I know that I do.

[B]

By any conventional metric, the biggest band in San Francisco at that moment and for quite a while thereafter was the Jefferson Airplane. Preparing to release their debut album, Jefferson Airplane Takes off, later in the summer of 66. They were out of town the weekend Bill Graham held three nights of dance concerts billed as the independence ball, on July 1, 2nd and 3rd, 1966. But with the best of the rest, Graham showcased some of the city's brightest new sounds and then some. Headlining on Friday was the Sprung From Jail Quicksilver Messenger Service in their semi stable quintet lineup. Below them on the bill was Big Brother and the Holding Company. They'd come together from a Haight Ashbury jam session at 1090 Page street and only a month before the Independence Ball, they debuted with their fireball new singer, Janis Joplin. Saturday's Bill was taught by the Great Society, starring Grace Slick, about four months before she boarded the airplane.

[C]

Don't you want somebody to love? Don't you need somebody to love? Wouldn't you love somebody to love? You better find somebody to love.

[B]

There were SOP with Camel, whose debut single, hello, hello, released later that year, would get to number 26 on the national singles chart. The first hit from the San Francisco scene.

[C]

Now at last I can say hello. Hello, hello, hello. You got pretty hair. You got pretty hair. Hello, hello. Can't you tell I care?

[B]

And the Charlatans, who have claims on being the scene's first psychedelicized band and certainly their snappiest dressers. Worth a podcast of their own for sure. One of the Olampali parties included an incident in which George Hunter thought he'd accidentally killed Garcia. We've posted a link to A Long Charlatan's History at dead.net deadcast

[I]

Woo hoo.

[C]

I think I'm gonna.

[B]

This brings us finally to the night of music on the new July 3, 1966 release. The dead played in the middle slot on Sunday, which is perhaps as good an indicator of their stature as any. They were one band among many in an exploding scene. Opening was the Sacramento rooted Group B, whose bassist Dickey Peterson went on to found Blue Cheer. They were the Dead's brand new label mates on Scorpio Records with a new single of their own, I know your name girl,

[C]

Your name is love Girl I'm looking at you.

[B]

The headliners on Sunday were from LA, Arthur Lee and Love, who'd put out their first single, My Little Red Book, which charted at number 52 and were putting out their second that month, 7 and 7 is, which would get as far as number 33. Their biggest hit My father's in the

[C]

fireplace and my dog lies Hilt must die Through a crack of mine I wasn't able to find my way Trapped inside a night But I'm a day and I go Ooh bim bim ooh bimp bimp yeah.

[B]

The Dead played their two sets sandwiched by these bands. We're going to shift into talking about the Dead's music from this night, but want to mention that based on a Facebook post by Love guitarist Johnny Echols, Love's late set included a guest appearance by Jerry Garcia on the jam Revelation, the song that would take up the entirety of side B on Love's second album, Da Capo, which they just started recording. There's no tape of Garcia playing it with them, but we might imagine. Group B opened their first set probably around 9pm, with the Dead's first set of the night starting maybe at around 10. If Owsley could get things going in time. This recording is an example of Owsley or assistant Tim Scully not hitting record until everything else was in order. This is where the tape starts midway through Nobody's Fault But Mine. Nowhere in the course of the evening did the Dead play either side of the new Scorpio single. We'll let John Dawson set the mood a little more.

[H]

The Fillmore auditorium has two of its four huge walls covered with movie type screens, a Battery of various types of opaque slide and film projectors mounted opposite them bombard the walls with a brilliant array of colored patterns superimposed and images and pictures sent through colored moving fluids. The effect is a constantly changing artistic experience, both on the parts of those watching and those producing the show, which combines with the drive of the music to produce the free environment which is the Fillmore.

[B]

By the beginning of the autumn, the Dead would move to their legendary house at 7:10 Ashbury, in part to be closer to the Fillmore. A story for another day.

[H]

The people who frequent these functions are as important as any of the parts of the actual production. Here, then, are a few of them recorded at the Fillmore. The question was, why do you come to the Fillmore auditorium?

[B]

You might be interested to note that these answers are laid on top of an otherwise uncirculated version of the Dead jamming on caution, probably from late 1966.

[C]

My loving,

[G]

Because my old man works for Phil Graham.

[I]

I come to the Phil because it's chippy.

[G]

When you walk in into the ballroom and it's this cocoon, there was almost always a light show, liquid light, light show. And the lighting was very dim. The house lights were down and just people dancing and enjoying the music and talking and visiting and going upstairs. In both places they had a mezzanine with couches all around the edges and. And so you'd go to the bar or whatever, get a drink, and then four or five people cluster on a big velvet couch up in the second floor. And still you could hear the music. I mean, you're just overlooking the stage, but maybe you just retreat to a corner and have a conversation or make out or something. There was a lot of that going on, too.

[B]

After the Dead's first set, they cooled their heels backstage while Love played. After that, Bill Graham cleared the house or maybe let you stay if the late show wasn't gonna sell out and you didn't piss him off too much. And the bands repeated.

[G]

We probably were in the dressing room if there was nothing going on. But we'd watch other bands and we'd dance, or at least I would. We spent a lot of time in the funky dressing rooms, just sitting around and shooting the breeze, smoking weed. I don't know. I think in those days we smoked a lot of hash. It was a lot more convenient and compact to carry around. We had these little tiny pipes.

[B]

The Dead made a few dedications over the course of their two sets. The first one is missing from the

[F]

tape, along with our previous dedication dedicating this evening's sets on our part to the Sun Dancers in Ignacio, Colorado. We'd also like to dedicate a certain portion of this to Masidica, this little clothes store, you know, down on Haight street that has some things and it's alright.

[B]

I'm not sure what the Dead's connection was to the Sun Dancers of the Ute tribe of Ignacio, Colorado, honestly. Missitika was a clothing boutique owned by Peggy Caserta, who would become Janis Joplin's girlfriend of many years. That fall, the Dead modeled clothing from Assytica. We've posted a link to them looking pretty [e-mail] deadcast while the band had partied their faces off at Olampali, they also practiced as much as they could. There aren't a lot of Dead tapes from the months just before this, but five of the nine songs in the early set from the Independence Ball appear on a Dead tape for the first time, including a few instant favorites. There are another three new to them songs during the late set probably learn poolside at Olampali or in the dining hall at the Girl Scout camp in Lagunitas. Grateful Dead archivist David Lemieux it's the

[D]

Dead discovering who they are. It's a blues band. It's a rock and roll band. It's originals, it's covers of old traditionals that they turn into these great rock and roll songs. Songs that everyone would know. Dancing in the street.

[C]

Come alive around the world.

[D]

That there are a couple of songs that they do stretch out on. I mean, 1966 versions of stretching Out, Dancing in the street, violently blues. They come in maybe seven or eight minutes.

[B]

Besides their jamming, if you turn up your ears, you can also listen between songs to hear the Dead working without a set list, something unusual for any band in any era. As we've heard, the Dead were arguably in the thickest part of their psychedelic years. But it would take a few years longer for them to learn how to translate those experiences into music. But even if the band wasn't yet unfurling 30 minute dark stars, the vibe was palpably psychedelic.

[F]

It's the greatest place on earth.

[B]

Of the original songs the Dead played, only one would make it to their debut album, recorded about six months later. Cream Puff War.

[G]

Wait a minute Watch what you're doing

[C]

with your town Only in this ruins of the past but stay behind you

[B]

A little bit later in the year, the jam would go modal, the musical doorway that eventually led to places like Darkstar, but not yet. They also play one of My favorite early songs now known as yous don't have To Ask, though I think its name at the time was Otis On a Shakedown Cruise. Oftentimes people refer to this song as garage rock, but it's not really that. Very few garage rock bands would be capable of playing this song. Love Phil's motowny bass line during the beginning. If you want to know what the

[C]

time it is, you don't have to ask, you don't have to ask. If you want to know what stuff is, you don't have to ask, you don't have to ask.

[B]

It's hilariously complicated. The first verse had lead vocals by Bobby Weir with answer vocals by Garcia and Lesh. But then the next verse was this.

[C]

If you want to go and lose your life.

[B]

There's a dual guitar keyboard solo with actual key changes. And then the solo resolves into this little arranged delight. To my ears, this is one of the dad's early attempts to express their psychedelic experience in music. A fast moving kaleidoscope of dense ideas. Earlier in the spring they'd consider recording it for their self released debut single. Had they released it, it would have been an early bit of psychedelic prog rock. But by the end of the summer it seems to have disappeared, as did Phil Lesh's song Cardboard Cowboy AKA no Left Turn Unstoned, AKA the Monster. Because it was so complicated to play another song that shared their big early ambitions. Lyrics also by Phil Lesch.

[F]

Through the screen

[I]

up into the.

[C]

Paranoid re entry blanket blast.

[B]

Pigpen's original blues taste bud would make it as far as their first album sessions the next year, though not past those.

[C]

When the Blues Come On Falling down,

[B]

there's a somewhat mysterious song labeled Keep Rolling by. David Lemieux.

[D]

We put that out years ago on the rare cuts and oddities and there was research done. Nobody could figure out what it was the band we'd asked. This was 25 years, 20 years ago. Nobody really knew. We weren't sure it was original, I don't think so based on what the band told us. So it became traditional arranged by Grateful

[B]

Dead, but I'm not entirely sure about that really. Some of our best Dead freak musicologists have spelunked pretty deep and there aren't really any folk or pop songs that match anything in this one. And it also sounds very much in the vein of the other wordy and heavily arranged songs like youe don't have To Ask and Cardboard Cowboy. And like those songs, I've certainly never crossed paths with a Dead cover Band who play Keep Rolling By. If you have any concrete ideas about this song's origins, get in touch. Some songs might sound more familiar.

[C]

Next time you see me, things won't be about the same. And if it hurts you, my darling, you only have yourself to blame.

[B]

They'd play Next Time youe see Me almost exactly the same way for the next half dozen years through Pigpen's final shows with the Dead in 1972.

[D]

It was that mix of songs that were very current for the Dead at the time. And then the timeless classics Cold Rain and Snow, Minglewood, Beat it on down the Line. I mean, those songs stuck around for 30 years.

[C]

Yeah, I'm on that. I'm too busy. Yeah, way up from the real that I'm going back where all along hell yeah. I got a pretty old woman oh, yeah, she's waiting for me and that's where I'm going to make my happy home. Happy home.

[B]

And some things that are less familiar. There are two songs that only appear on this July 3, 1966 tape and are therefore on a Dead release for the first time outside the 30 trips box. Jerry Garcia sings Gangster of Love by Texas guitarist Johnny Guitar Watson. It was first recorded in 1957, but the Dead more likely learned it from his 1963 re recording.

[C]

I robbed a local beauty contest for their first place winner. They found her with me out in

[B]

Hollywood eating a big steak dinner.

[C]

They tried to get her to go back to pick up her prize.

[B]

She stood up and told them, you

[C]

just don't realize that he's a gangster, homie.

[B]

And they did Don't Mess Up a Good Thing, which was an RB hit for Fontella, bass and Bobby McClure only the year before.

[C]

You've been cheating on me now you know I know it's true. But ain't nobody in the whole wide world gonna love you like I do. Don't you know not your beloved food. You're gonna keep on fooling around our baby. You're gonna mess up a good thing. You're gonna mess up a good thing.

[B]

The Dead's version featured Pigpen singing lead, doing both the his and hers parts, with answer vocals by Jerry Garcia and Bob.

[C]

You keep messing around now, baby.

[B]

The last song of the set was almost certainly familiar to the audience.

[C]

Wait till midnight.

[D]

Midnight hour. They really stretch out on. And that's. I mean, this is one of the earliest things where the Grateful Dead really, really stretched out on a song that we have on recording.

[B]

They go for a solid 15 minutes like the rest of the band. Pigpen was still working out his chops, but his ad libbed matchmaking is in pretty good form already.

[C]

I see there's some men in the audience right now, you standing up, standing right there, looking cool, getting yourself together. And I know that you got your eye on some little girl right next

[D]

to you,

[C]

and you figured out just about what kind of wave that you could get to strike up some kind of conversation or some kind of motion behind that. Now what else are you gonna do but just stand there and look like a fool, huh?

[B]

Pigpen also makes a rare onstage shout to Veronica Barnard, who would move in with him by the end of the year.

[C]

I want to say hello I want to say hello to a little girl

[I]

named V that I know and she

[C]

ought to be here tonight if she said I want to say hi and I hope you say hi back to me and that's all right too Because I'm gonna wait till the midnight when my love I'm a tumbling hand down Gonna wait till the midnight hour but now no one else around

[B]

Something else I'll note is the sound of the crowd after midnight hour. Louder than they'd been all night, the Dead had won them over.

[I]

Well, that's it for the Sundance tonight.

[C]

I will be back there to debut a little while.

[F]

Thanks, Otis, but we don't care.

[B]

I love the way this particular tape ends. So that's how we're going to end today as well.

[C]

Hello.

[F]

That's what's known as talent.

[I]

Let's say good night to the Grateful

[C]

Dead just once more, huh?

[F]

Just a special Good night, Pig Pen

[I]

on vocals on that last summer. Let's say good night to Pig Pen, huh?

[B]

Good night, Pig.

[A]

Thanks very much for tuning in to the good old Grateful Dead cast. Friends, we'd like to thank our special guests in this episode. Rosie McGee, Ron Racow, Bob Matthews, David Freiberg, David Lemieux, and Hawk. 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. All rights reserve.