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- [00:00]
Rich Mahan
Announcing Dogfish Head Grateful Dead Juicy Pale Ale Collaborating for over a decade now, Dogfish Head and Grateful Dead have crafted a light bodied pale ale brewed with sustainable kerns of grains, granola and heaps of good karma for a refreshing brew that's music to your taste buds. Check out dogfish.com for more details and to find some Grateful Dead Juicy Pale Ale in your neck of the woods. 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.
- [00:44]
Jesse Jarno
The Grateful Dead for the committed and the curious.
- [00:49]
Rich Mahan
Ladies and gentlemen, fellow Deadheads, welcome to season eight of the Good Old Grateful Dead Cast. I'm your co host Rich Mahan. Thank you very much for tuning in. In this episode of the Good Old Grateful Dead Cast, we continue our exploration into the Grateful Dead's 1973 studio album Wake of the Flood. On the turntable Today is track two from side one, let me sing your blues away. It's the 50th anniversary of Wake of the Flood and to celebrate, this rhino has a grand 50th anniversary release with which includes the original album remastered, some really cool early demos of songs from the album, and six songs from a live show at Maga Memorial hall at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois from November 1, 1973. There will be special vinyl as well as a standard black vinyl CDs and digital versions available. More info and pre orders are happening now@dead.net while you're@dead.net head over to dead.net deadcast to check out all of our past episodes, including the complete seasons 1 through 7. You can link from there to your favorite podcasting platform. That's right, you can listen how you like to listen. Please help this podcast by subscribing hitting that like button and if the spirit moves you, leave us a review online. Thank you very much. Well, we have transcripts for many of your favorite Deadcast episodes available for your reading pleasure. Hop over to dead.netdeadcast index and check them out. Thanks to everybody who has left their stories@stories.dead.net have you left one yet about Wake of the Flood or any of the songs on it? Do you have a tale about the first time you heard Eyes? Or how about a wild tour yarn about that version of Let It Grow? No story too big or too small? Record yours over@stories.dead.net and you may just hear yourself on the Dead cast. There's an option to write your story there, but if possible, please record yourself telling the story much more compelling. And if you need longer than the time allotted, leave a second one or a third. Thank you very much. Let Me Sing youg Blues Away is the only track on any Grateful Dead album sung by keyboardist Keith Gottscho. I've always dug this track and found myself singing it at times out of nowhere. It's a fun, bouncy track, but it's actually rather complicated once you dig into it. Jesse Jarno invited some of our musicologist friends to help us dissect it and get to the heart of the matter. Take it away, Jesse. In early 1973, Steve Brown was hired by the company that became Grateful Dead Records to organize its radio promotions. Steve was a longtime Dead freak and deep music fan. As a production coordinator when the band set up camp at the Record Plant for the Wake of the flood sessions in August 1973, he heard them bring in the material that would become the album he would be charged with promoting.
- [04:11]
Jesse Jarno
Well, it seemed like it was spreading out even more with different people in the band coming up with their music. There was a different feel to it.
- [04:20]
Rich Mahan
That was coming through because it had.
- [04:21]
Jesse Jarno
Come from what country and blues and.
- [04:23]
Rich Mahan
Rock and roll before, and all of.
- [04:25]
Jesse Jarno
A sudden other things were starting to kind of creep in.
- [04:28]
Rich Mahan
It felt when we heard them, oh, this is different.
- [04:30]
Jesse Jarno
It sounds kind of like a reggae song or something. Oh, well, reggae's popular. Do they catch a rabbit by his head? Come back step. It's not just Hunter and it's not just Jerry. It's a little bit of everybody kind of chipping in on this one. It's going to be different than the ones they've kind of done before. You had Barlow and you had Bob, getting the kind of things going there, planting and growing. Let it grow, let it grow. And some of them, even with Keith, you know, a nice long piece for himself.
- [05:56]
Rich Mahan
Let Me Sing youg Blues Away, written and sung by Keith God show, with lyrics by Robert Hunter, was the very first release on Grateful Dead Records, the first single from Wake of the Flood, out a few weeks before the album itself. Grateful that archivist and legacy manager David Lemieux. Let Me Sing youg Blues Away. It's not so much that it's underrated.
- [06:15]
Jesse Jarno
It'S just a little under known. And it's always been, I won't say.
- [06:19]
Rich Mahan
One of my favorites, but it kind of is.
- [06:22]
Jesse Jarno
It reminds me a lot of a song like Till the Morning Comes, that there's a Few examples like that that the songs never really were given the life in conc. Well, hop in the hack then. Turn on the key.
- [06:49]
Rich Mahan
That was one of only six live versions of Let Me Sing youg Blues Away, Its debut performed September 8, 1973, at Nassau Coliseum on Long Island. Now on Dave's picks 38.
- [07:01]
Jesse Jarno
Keith has a very nice voice. I really like that. But it's.
- [07:04]
Rich Mahan
It's a great lyric and it's got.
- [07:06]
Jesse Jarno
A nice little shuffle to it. I think that's a song.
- [07:09]
Rich Mahan
I hope with the album coming out.
- [07:11]
Jesse Jarno
For the 50th, that a lot of.
- [07:13]
Rich Mahan
People are going to reevaluate as an.
- [07:15]
Jesse Jarno
Important part of the Deads canon. You know, it's the only song on a Dead album that Keith ever sang lead on.
- [07:19]
Rich Mahan
And he's got a good voice, you.
- [07:20]
Jesse Jarno
Know, I think it works really well. Pushing the button. Let's talk.
- [07:39]
Rich Mahan
I'll wager you probably haven't spent much time thinking about Let me sing your blues away. And you know, that's cool. I'll be honest, I hadn't either until recently. It's never been my favorite Dead tune. But after putting this episode together, I have to confess that Keith God show has once again broken my brain in a really sweet way. Like Keith himself, Let Me Sing youg Blues Away possesses a musical intelligence that is both unassuming and head spinning. It's very Grateful dad.
- [08:21]
Jesse Jarno
And Grace. This ain't no knock down Drag our brains.
- [08:29]
Rich Mahan
Thanks to the Grateful Dead archive at UC Santa Cruz, we've been able to peep into the band's checkbooks and other files from 1973. And they tell part of the story of Keith and Donna God show and the Dead. One side fun tidbit to note is that the equipment crew's various expenditures are invoiced under the heading Truckin'. We're gonna recap a few bits here. Here's something Donna Jean told us last episode that we're gonna lean into today.
- [08:53]
Jesse Jarno
Wake of the Flood was kind of a real departure. It was like a new era in the Grateful Dead. It started something different. And part of that difference was Keith definitely, you know, the writing of the songs to be geared towards Keith.
- [09:11]
Rich Mahan
Keith Godcho had come into the Dead's life almost magically less than two years earlier. We told that story in our Enter Keith God show episode a few years back. He was ear trained almost from birth by musician parents and he transformed the Grateful Dead when he joined them in the fall of 1971. He'd contributed to Bob Weir's ace in 1972. But Wake of the Flood was Keith's first full studio album as band member in 1973. The dead invested in Keith and Donna that summer. Only a few days after the band got back from the shows in Washington D.C. with the Allman Brothers, Keith and Donna Godchau put money down on their first home, 125 Laurel Avenue in Stinson Beach, a five minute walk to the Garcias. Here's what Donna told us previously. If you notice on the Keith and.
- [09:59]
Jesse Jarno
Donna album, it was recorded at Studio R. In Studio R was our living room, which was basically, which was huge.
- [10:12]
Rich Mahan
Number one. It had that grand nine foot Steinway.
- [10:15]
Jesse Jarno
In it and it had, you know, it was a big living room overlooking Stinson Beach. Oh my gosh, it was fantastic.
- [10:22]
Rich Mahan
The receipt for the Steinway is in the Dead's checkbooks too.
- [10:25]
Jesse Jarno
That was bought for Keith and me personally and was at our house in Stinson Beach. It was the most beautiful, beautiful nine foot Steinway that had the most glorious sound. And I've heard a lot of Steinways and this one was just pristine. The sound was just incredible.
- [10:46]
Rich Mahan
When the God shows moved to Stinson beach, the Garcias were nearby. But directly next door was the new president of Grateful Dead Records. Please welcome back Ron Rakow.
- [10:56]
Jesse Jarno
They were groovy. I loved them. They were my next door neighbors. Donna's great. Keith and Donna had a totally opposite life from me. I had to be on ready to be on the phone at 9am in the morning because I was a business guy. Keith would call me at 2 o' clock in the morning and ask me, say, what are you doing? What am I doing? I'm sleeping. What do you say? He said, come on that, come on by. So he was only next door. So I, I walked up there in whatever shape I was in and we got higher and you know, whatever.
- [11:31]
Rich Mahan
Rakow had watched them arrive in the Dead's World in 1971.
- [11:35]
Jesse Jarno
She was an unknown surprise. It wasn't part of the deal. She sort of ran interference and got Keith to talk to Jerry and then play for Jerry and then play for everybody. And then all of a sudden it turns out that she was a pretty well known backup singer in Muscle Shoals. And bingo, she starts working herself into the thing. At that time I was learning how to be in that band and what my place was and, and how to incorporate myself in a way that, that was not obtrusive. But yet I did what was needed.
- [12:25]
Rich Mahan
But make no mistake, Donna Jean wasn't there. To be anybody's backup singer.
- [12:30]
Jesse Jarno
I want to be in the band. And that was my ambition, you know, as far as being in the Grateful Dead, is to do what needed to be done for that band. Team player. I was not out there to make a big deal of myself.
- [12:46]
Rich Mahan
Another thing that you can see in the band's checkbooks are their pay stubs. In 1973, the members of the Dead management and road crew all received the same base salary of $275 a week, around $1,900 in contemporary money. The pay stubs reveal something fascinating. Between June and July 1973, Donna's weekly pay jumped from $50 a week to that of a full band member.
- [13:11]
Jesse Jarno
I refused to take a full salary. I just refused. And then there was some kind of meeting, and Garcia said, well, she works as hard as the rest of us, which I never did feel like I did. Felt like they worked much harder than me. Of course, they were singing and playing instruments and writing the songs and all that, but I just. I refused for a while to take a full salary. And then I guess it was really Garcia that pushed it through and said she should have full salary anyway. That's how that went down.
- [13:55]
Rich Mahan
Keith and Donna God show had done some writing together before they met Jerry Garcia and became members of the Grateful Dead. But let me sing your blues away.
- [14:02]
Jesse Jarno
With something new well, I think Keith was encouraged to write something, and. And he did. I don't remember how it came about, but all I remember is that it was difficult. That song is cordially really tough to play. It's complicated. The changes are complicated. So it was always a little bit difficult to pull off, but it's a good song.
- [14:33]
Rich Mahan
When I was a young man I.
- [14:37]
Jesse Jarno
Needed good luck When I'm a little bit old now and I know oh, my stuff Come on, honey Singing away Come on, honey Singing away Let me sing.
- [14:57]
Rich Mahan
On first listen Let me sing youg blues away seems to have a good bit in common with other music that fans might hear on FM radio. In the early 1970s, Elton John released Don't Shoot Me, I'm Only the Piano player in early 1973, and would storm the charts with Goodbye Yellow Brick Road, released a week before Wake of the Flood that fall. And of course, just days before the Dead entered the studio to make Wake of the Flood, they were hanging out with another seemingly big influence.
- [15:46]
Jesse Jarno
Either she or me or you Not a thing we could do so don't you say your word Only the thing you learn Time will tell you well, if you Truly, truly fell.
- [16:05]
Rich Mahan
There's a photo from Watkins Glenn of Keith Godshow literally looking over the shoulder of Richard Manuel as he plays piano during the band set. That's an obvious starting point for the song, which is where our next guest started with it, too. Please welcome to the Dead Cast, one of the only musicians I know to have Let Me Sing your blues Away in their current song rotation. From Wolf Rana and Joe Russo's Almost Dead guitarist Scott Metzger on tour with Lamp this fall.
- [16:32]
Jesse Jarno
I immediately was like, oh, this sounds like a song that the band would write. You know, there's something about that whole record, actually, the whole Wake of the Flood record that sounds like the band to me, like the choice of instrumentation and the production of it.
- [16:45]
Rich Mahan
But Let Me Sing youg Blues Away is not by the band, it's by the Dead. And it's really complicated.
- [16:51]
Jesse Jarno
It's a song that you have to know, like, it does not play itself. You know, when I first put it on, I was like, how am I going to learn this? Like, there's so much, you know, so much information.
- [17:00]
Rich Mahan
I asked our musicologist friend Sean o' Donnell from the City College of New York about Let Me Sing youg Blues Away too, and he described it in almost exactly the same terms.
- [17:09]
Jesse Jarno
When I first was digging a little deeper in listening, I became sort of completely exasperated with the amount of information. Scott Metzger I think it goes to five different keys. There's five verses in. Each verse is in a different key. I don't know of any other song that does that ever, like, you know, of all the songs, not just Grateful Dead songs, but other bands. That is a pretty ambitious move. Sean o' Donnell it starts in B flat on the sort of initial bit that framework is there. Like, this is going to be a normal tune. And that's where you get the sense of, like, okay, I got how this is. But then it just starts to take off.
- [17:48]
Rich Mahan
Mr. Metzger.
- [17:50]
Jesse Jarno
Then it goes to G, and then it moves up in whole steps. So the first verse is in G, second verse is in A, third verse is in B, fourth verse is in C sharp, and it goes back to B flat at the end there. And then it goes down to G for solos and then back to B flat. The song starts in B flat on a chorus, and it's bookended. It ends there, too, and there's a halftime verse in the middle of it.
- [18:13]
Rich Mahan
You know, for symmetry. This is the part that unlocked the song for Sean o'. Donnell.
- [18:26]
Jesse Jarno
When it modulates to G, it introduces a whole bunch more chords. And even in the G section, it using a lot of applied dominance. And so it managed to cycle through everything till you get that half step. This ain't no knockdown moment at the point that it was knockdown, drag out, race. And then that's when I realized that's when you finally have hit every single possible route for the chords. And I'm like, wow, that's why I'm overloaded. The sheer amount of information it's presenting is completely not noticeable on the surface. But just by the time every chord root is hit, you're just like, what is going on here? And it's just an unexpected move that adds two chords that just complete all 12 pitch classes.
- [19:26]
Rich Mahan
Let Me Sing youg Blues Away isn't 12 tone music by the classical definition, but it pulls off a pretty wild feat for a rock song.
- [19:33]
Jesse Jarno
It's not even moving through 12 keys. It's just using a chord built on every possible note. And what's interesting is it's all functional. So like a tune like High Time was very ambiguous in terms of tonal center. It like drifts and wanders and you can't be sure what key you're in for too long. But here every chord behaves pretty much the way it would in functional harmony. It's just that it's moving so fast through everything.
- [20:14]
Rich Mahan
Complicated Music wasn't new to the Dead. Some of their earliest songs, written in the year before their debut album, could be difficult to play, including one that was so convoluted that the band apparently referred to it as the Monster.
- [20:45]
Jesse Jarno
And.
- [20:45]
Rich Mahan
A Paranoid re entry flank and blast.
- [20:48]
Jesse Jarno
Beaming on the Stings I Rise.
- [20:55]
Rich Mahan
That was the Monster, officially known as Cardboard Cowboy, from the July 3, 1966 Fillmore Auditorium show, now in the 30 trips around the sun box set so far, the song's only official release. Later that same year, the Beach Boys put out a game changing single that gave a definition to the Dead's ambitions, even if those ambitions would change almost immediately.
- [21:20]
Jesse Jarno
Good Vibration Good Vibration.
- [21:47]
Rich Mahan
Good Vibrations was one of rock's first giant singles that might be called progressive, a term that would come to define an approach to music, a radio format and a style all its own. The Grateful Dead would often be lumped in as a quote unquote acid rock band, part of the great freeform psychedelic 60s. Where anything went but in old newspaper clippings, progressive shows up too. And it leads to a question posed by Wake of the Flood and the albums that followed were the Grateful Dead prog rock to discuss it? Please welcome my good Buddy David Mandel. Dave's a writer for the righteous UK music magazine the Wire, and like me, a DJ on the freeform radio station wfmu. Dave hosts a prog rock show with a perfect name, It's Complicated, which we've linked to@dead.net deadcast.
- [22:35]
Jesse Jarno
Originally there was progressive rock and it meant sort of post sergeant Pepper, right, You know, we're okay. We're tired of playing three chord stuff. We're going to use weird instruments, we're going to do funny trickery in the studio. It's progressive rock. How can you argue with that? It's just like, okay, what's next? Of course it applies to the Dead. You know, they were breaking all kinds of boundaries and, you know, getting away from three chord rock and roll. But, you know, in the 70s, like when I was a teenager, there was progressive rock and that generally meant the English bands. There was some kind of US UK split and it's hard to imagine any American band being called a progressive rock band at the time.
- [23:17]
Rich Mahan
In the next few years, the Dead would start to cross the divide between progressive and Prague. They weren't there just yet, but that was one intersection their music was approaching in 1973. Let me sing youg Blues Away might have been at home on progressive radio, but also might not be called prog rock or even progressive, at least at the time. It's progressive rock by a different literal cycling through keys. One reason why Let Me Sing youg Blues Away puts the Dead more in the country pop band than the prog rock is its easy bounce, which masks all the wild changes. But there's also Robert Hunter's lyrics, which are so straight as to almost be surreal.
- [23:55]
Jesse Jarno
Roll, pop in the hat then turn on the key Hop in the clutch Let the wheels roll free.
- [24:06]
Rich Mahan
It might be Robert Hunter's first car song, unless you count the lyric about not a cloud in the sky, such a sunny day. It's also the only song in Wake of the Flood that doesn't build its lyrics on natural imagery. They're certainly Robert Hunter's most traditional pop lyrics to date.
- [24:22]
Jesse Jarno
Not Cloud in Sky's a Sunny Day. Pushing the button, let's Pop them Play. Come on, honey.
- [24:44]
Rich Mahan
I'm amused by Hunter's literal reference to top 10 radio on a song that would at least generate a brief attempt at making it onto top 10 radio. I do kind of think this feels like Robert Hunter's earnest attempt to write what felt like good time pop music for 1973 that stood a fair chance in the marketplace. Like lots Of Robert Hunter's lyrics, there were antecedents.
- [25:08]
Jesse Jarno
Time and time again, day by day, pain and song may come your way. You ought to sing and shout. You ought to dance about and pray. If your burdens seem hard to bat don't give up the fight in despair you ought to tell the news. You ought to sing your blues are real.
- [25:24]
Rich Mahan
That was the Blackwood Brothers in 1971 with Sing youg Blues Away. Not that they were necessarily an influence. The phrase Sing youg Blues Away pops up in popular culture as far back as the late 19th century, and there seem to be numerous pop songs with variations on that name from the early part of the 20th century. And as with Truckin, perhaps Hunter sensed that the time was right to revive it. And I think in this exact moment of August 1973, Robert Hunter and Keith Godchau might have been onto something. The Dead had surfed the edges of popular trends before, and the same week that the band was entering the Record Plant to record Wake of the Flood, and maybe even the same week that Robert Hunter was still finishing the lyrics to Let Me Sing youg Blues Away, a new trend hit American popular culture.
- [26:09]
Jesse Jarno
American Graffiti.
- [26:13]
Rich Mahan
Where Were you in 62?
- [26:25]
Jesse Jarno
Grab that special one and jump into.
- [26:26]
Rich Mahan
Your candy colored custom or your screaming machine Cruise downtown and catch American Graffiti American Graffiti, baby.
- [26:34]
Jesse Jarno
What's that? It's a movie. Can you dig it? Can you dig it? Go back in time. Where Were you in 62?
- [26:41]
Rich Mahan
George Lucas's American Graffiti opened on August 2, 1973, and kicked off a new trend of nostalgia for the 50s and 60s before John F. Kennedy's assassination. Did Robert Hunter see American Graffiti that opening weekend and immediately write lyrics that vibed with it? Or did he merely sense the change coming? One for the money and two for the show has its roots in English nursery rhymes, but also made its rock and roll roots in Carl Perkins immortal Blue Suede shoes.
- [27:19]
Jesse Jarno
Well, it's one for the money, two for the show three to get ready now go cat, go but don't you step on my blue suede shoes you can do anything.
- [27:36]
Rich Mahan
Maybe Hunter had been sniffing at the Zeitgeist through Moondog Matinee, the band's new album of covers. Maybe he'd finally caught up with Shannon. Or maybe he'd picked up on Jerry Garcia and Merle Saunders version of Mystery Train and other Elvis affiliated tunes. There'd be another reference to Blue Suede Shoes a few months later when Hunter and Garcia turned the early draft called Wave that Flag into the finished US Blues. Wherever it came from Let Me Sing youg Blues Away was in some ways the most authentic kind of ephemeral pop single absolutely of the moment, perhaps responding to current demands, flashing briefly and disappearing With Let Me Sing youg Blues Away, the Dead were trying to have it all, a roots pop hit in a subliminal progressive package. I have no idea when they decided it might make for a good single. The band had never performed the song live before recording it for Wake of the Flood. No demo for the song has surfaced, but Phil Lesh visited the Record Plant over the weekend of August 11th to make a solo demo for Unbroken Chained, another difficult song the band planned to tackle that week but had yet to perform live. It's possible Keith did the same for Let Me Sing youg Blues Away. There were no full Dead sessions over the weekend of August 11th and 12th, and no apparent recordings from the 13th or 14th. But when the band convened on August 15th to record Let Me Sing youg Blues Away sessions you can hear on the Angel Share, they've clearly at least temporarily mastered the song's changes. It would make sense that they spent at least the previous day drilling the song, if not both getting it to feel natural. Engineer Brian Kehue did their audio restoration.
- [29:22]
Jesse Jarno
On the Angel Share Let me sing your blues Away. I think that's the one they worked on the most, except for Weather Report Suite. They are going again and again and again. Something like over 40, almost 45 minutes on Keith's song.
- [30:01]
Rich Mahan
You'll notice immediately that Martin Fiero's saxophone part on Let Me Sing youg Blues Away is no overdub. He's live in the room with the band, in fact. Take one and take two on the tape boxes aren't takes at all. They're just the band and Fiyero looping through the song's intro and solo section to give the saxophonist a fuel for it. Take two is ten pretty chill minutes of Martin Fierro getting ready to take the first saxophone solo on a Dead album. Since he earned the honor of taking the first saxophone solo on a Dead album, now is the time on the Dead cast when we get to talk about Martin Fierro Martin Fierro is not new to the Grateful Dead's musical universe. His group Shades of Joy had shared the stage with the Dead at the Fillmore west, but it was through keyboard player Howard Wales that Martin Fierro entered the Garciaverse. Martin Fierro received a songwriting credit for south side Strut, the opening track on the collaborative Garcia Wales album Hooterol, recorded in late 1970 we spoke with the late Howard Wales during our American beauty season, and he had nothing but love for Martin Fierro, born in Mexico in 1942, but who grew up over the border in El Paso.
- [31:57]
Jesse Jarno
Martine and I met each other in El Paso, Texas. I was working at an all black club. And this is really a long time ago, man. 65, I think it was. Martine walked into the club, man, that was the funniest thing, man. He walked out. You ever see one of those Robert hall or someone of those sport coats? He kind of looked like a cat that just walked out of New York, you know, with those big goggles, those jazz. The jazz look. So he sat in with us.
- [32:29]
Rich Mahan
Howard Wales and Martin Fierro had all kinds of adventures inside, music and out. And Martin was part of the regular crew that played at the Matrix in 1970 alongside Wales, bassist John Kahn, drummer Bill Vitt, and the new guitarist on the bandstand, Jerry Garcia. Hooteroll didn't make it to the stores until early 1972, but by then Martine was still a regular with the Matrix band, even though Howard Wales was replaced by Merle Saunders and then moved on from the Matrix itself. He's on Garcia Live Volume 15, recorded in May 1971. By 1973, Martine had joined Doug Somme's band and appeared on the album Doug Somm and Friends, formerly the leader of the Sir Douglas Quintet. Somm's new booking agent in 1973 was Sam Cutler's out of Town tours. When the Dead hit the road in the fall, Doug Somm would open the east coast leg and his horn players would do double duty with the Dead. Donna Jean got to know Martine in these years.
- [33:55]
Jesse Jarno
I have Martine stories that kind of go in one direction, that he was always Martine all the time, 24 7. One of the things that I totally remember about him in whatever band I was in and whatever situation that we were playing, he would always talk to the audience, well, fuck this and fuck this. And I mean, he would tell me, you need to drink tequila. That's the best thing to drink. You know, it's spiritual. And then he would get out there and just. He was the sweetest, dearest, most darling man in the world. And then he would get out there on the mic and just rail, you know, and whatever was on his mind at the time, he would let it fly. And he did. And he was just the most gracious, wonderful person. I just loved him so much.
- [34:53]
Rich Mahan
Martin Fierro would play with Jerry Garcia in the Legion of Mary and remained a beloved and colorful figure in the Bay Area music scene into the 21st century. He died in 2008. In 1973, at the record Plant, he had a job to do. He'd never played Let Me Sing youg Blues way before. Nobody had. But you can hear Keith Godchau reassure him.
- [35:13]
Jesse Jarno
That simple. It's simple.
- [35:18]
Rich Mahan
It was not simple. Here's Weir and Garcia sort of trying to translate things to Martin on behalf of their shy piano player.
- [35:25]
Jesse Jarno
There's a billion changes in it. You want to shape it. You may just want to play in.
- [35:29]
Rich Mahan
Some of the holes, but you might.
- [35:30]
Jesse Jarno
Want to play Mean. He'll dig it right.
- [35:34]
Rich Mahan
When there's a spacer.
- [35:35]
Jesse Jarno
We're going to be playing in one change. Rock and deck between the one and the four chord for any time. I'll just holler the tonic of that particular.
- [35:41]
Rich Mahan
Because it modulates, it's got a lot of chords. But Garcia is confident Martin can get it.
- [35:49]
Jesse Jarno
We picked it up. Yeah.
- [35:57]
Rich Mahan
Wish I could make out what happens under that saxophone honk about how long it took engineer Brian Kehue.
- [36:03]
Jesse Jarno
They definitely get there. It just tries a bunch of different versions of it, and he's kind of leading it, but maybe not as strong a leader as Jerry is with his sense of humor. And Jerry has so much intelligence in what he's perceiving that there's a little more guidance going on. When you hear most of the other songs being recorded, as we heard a.
- [36:22]
Rich Mahan
Moment ago, Weir and Garcia were left to explain the changes. Keith Godschow is not the most gregarious musician.
- [36:28]
Jesse Jarno
Let Me Sing youg Blues Away. I forget how many takes there were, but there's numerous takes of that one.
- [36:34]
Rich Mahan
I differ a little with the tape boxes about what constitutes a complete take, but to my ears, the Dead got seven complete takes of the song from start to finish.
- [36:42]
Jesse Jarno
That was a good one. Yeah. Had a lot of spirit. Might have been funky, but it had that spirit.
- [36:50]
Rich Mahan
But by the numbering on the tape box, the keeper is officially take 10, the fifth full pass through the song. It's not until take nine that Martin Fiero nails his big soaring entrance. If you listen to this on headphones, you can hear somebody say whoa in surprise after the initial flourish. I think maybe Bill Kreutzman. And with Take 9, Martin nails his part. Here's the beginning of Take 10 on the album. Scott Metzger from JRAD.
- [37:37]
Jesse Jarno
I liked it immediately. Maybe it's because I'm a New Yorker or something, because, you know, the opening sequence is right out of Saturday Night. Live like that saxophone sound, you know, you can totally hear him being like, you know. Kenan Williams live from New York.
- [37:53]
Rich Mahan
While I'm happy to detour into prog rock, this is neither the appropriate time nor place for the oral history of the Saturday Night Live saxophone sound. I said good day. For all its moving parts, take 10 of let me Sing youg Blues Away is a winner. There's a little bit of overdubbing. You can hear some organ pop up midway through.
- [38:17]
Jesse Jarno
Baby, baby, what can I say? I need to drive those blues away.
- [38:25]
Rich Mahan
And I like the last part of the song where there are some stacked vocals and you can hear Donna singing against herself. The song debuted at Nassau Coliseum on September 8, three weeks after they'd recorded it. A performance now on Dave's picks 38. On the live versions, Jerry Garcia doubles Keith Godsha's vocal part in the later verses.
- [39:14]
Jesse Jarno
The rear. Baby, baby, what can I say? I'm here to drive those news away.
- [39:24]
Rich Mahan
The Deadhead DJs at Waer in Syracuse caught the new song and asked Keith about it when they interviewed Keith, Donna and Weir a few weeks later. As always, Keith is a bit self deprecating. Donna and Weir step up for him.
- [39:36]
Jesse Jarno
How about that new song that you did at Ass off your vocal curiosity here. Oh, that was crazy. That's purely. That's really funny. Is that like newly written? Yeah, Hunter and I wrote that we never had a chance to write. We never practiced it so nobody could sing it or play it at the same time. Came off pretty well. It was bizarre. A lot better on the album, I'll say. Yeah, it's really good on the album.
- [40:08]
Rich Mahan
By dint of Grateful that History, it was the only time the band performed the song without Martin Fierro on saxophone.
- [40:14]
Jesse Jarno
Well, the last couple of gigs we've been working with Doug Song's horn players.
- [40:20]
Rich Mahan
Martin Fierro joined the band on stage for a number of shows in September, performing Let Me Sing youg Blues Away nearly a half dozen times. At around the same moment, the song was released to radio as a single, a decision made by Ron Rakow.
- [40:34]
Jesse Jarno
I was making the calls and I would present the calls to the band and I would, you know, I was persuasive.
- [40:41]
Rich Mahan
So why let me sing your blues away?
- [40:43]
Jesse Jarno
Well, you know, you were assuming that I knew what the fuck I was doing. Why would you assume that?
- [40:49]
Rich Mahan
Well, there's that to consider.
- [40:50]
Jesse Jarno
The fact is you have to try something. So that's what, you know, that's what I picked to try. You know, I just said, let's try a single. Let's try this one. What was on the other side?
- [41:01]
Rich Mahan
That'd be Here Comes Sunshine, Let Me Sing youg Blues Away was gone from the Dead's repertoire before the single even came out. Perhaps a victim of too many chords, Billboard barely acknowledged its release. Shout out to the forward thinking program directors at WNEW in New York, WOWI in Norfolk, WO RJ in Orlando, WABX in Detroit and KZEL in Good ol Eugene. It's somewhat surreal to see it on Fall 1973 playlists alongside Uriah Heap, Elton John and the Steve Miller Band, and more specifically, when you pushed in the button and let the top 10 play in October 1973, let me sing youg Blues Away would have been going head to head with 70s classics that included Edgar Winter's Free Ride, Gladys Knight's Midnight Train to Georgia, Eddie Kendrick's Keep on Truckin, Grand Funk Railroads, we're an American Band, the Allman Brothers, Ramblin man and Stevie Wonder's Higher Ground.
- [42:08]
Jesse Jarno
Soldiers. Keep on mooring, keep on turning cause.
- [42:22]
Rich Mahan
It won't be too long. As far as I can tell, the Keith and Donna Band that existed in 1975 and 1976 never played it. Our forever buddy Joe Jupiel of Jerrybase.com turned us onto a document buried in a folder in the dead archive at UC Santa Cruz, a song list from 1977 and Jerry Garcia's handwriting containing some two dozen Grateful Dead songs not then in the Dead's repertoire. Perhaps suggestions of tunes to relearn. Some, including Broke Down Palace, Dupree's Diamond Blues, China Cat, Sunflower and Truckin, would re enter the band's repertoire by the end of 1977. Over the next decades, most of the songs on the list would make it back. Let Me Sing youg Blues Away would not. Robert Hunter did perform it a few times in the late 70s, apparently sounding pretty together.
- [43:17]
Jesse Jarno
With style and grace. This ain't no knock down, drag out.
- [43:24]
Rich Mahan
Race.
- [43:27]
Jesse Jarno
It don't matter much, Pick any gear, Grind you a pound and drop the rear Baby baby, what can I say I'm here to sing those blues away.
- [43:40]
Rich Mahan
As we've made clear, it's not the easiest song for musicians to remember, and sure, it wasn't a hit, but it's good fun. Not too many Dead Adjacent or Dead cover bands have tackled it regularly. Even Joe Russo's Almost Dead didn't get to it until somewhat recently, debuting it in late 2022 with Scott Metzger on vocals. I dig the groove. They play it with Layton in the Deads version, but pulled out and made a bit more obvious here. One of the other reasons I think the song never found a place in Deadhead memory is because in some ways, Deadhead memory was built without it, for reasons that had less to do with the song's musical qualities and more to do with building a collective memory through technology. The fall of 1973 saw another quiet turning point in Dead history, one that made the necessity of having a hit single that much more obsolete. Ron Rakow had brainstormed a number of alternatives to the contemporary record industry, including the idea of having ice cream trucks to distribute records. Steve Brown, who worked the radio promotions for the label, was sad it never came to fruition.
- [45:22]
Jesse Jarno
I just wish we would have done.
- [45:23]
Rich Mahan
It once somewhere just for the fun of it.
- [45:26]
Jesse Jarno
But in fact it never got much further than all the other business we had to take care of just to do a real show somewhere. But going around in a place where you go up and down streets with their music coming out of the truck, you know, like that. Oh, and the people running out of their house.
- [45:43]
Rich Mahan
Grateful Dead Records was intended to be a radical enterprise from the ground up. As we learned last time, they acquired some startup money by selling the foreign rights to Atlantic Records. But their initial seed money came by tapping a slightly more underground source.
- [45:58]
Jesse Jarno
The very, very first money, I got it from Cousin David. He's just Cousin David. He's your cousin David. Also Cousin David was the head of a 7 airplane, small airplane smuggling operation with about 12 people really tight that smuggled Mexican weed into the United States. And it wasn't in blocks of bricks. So Cousin David lent me $41,000. I had a line of credit with Cousin David. I needed it.
- [46:30]
Rich Mahan
One idea that I find brilliant and truly far thinking was the notion of creating Grateful Dead franchises to distribute the product, essentially building a wholesale distribution network through the Deadheads themselves. They would distribute the product to local head shops and such. But Rakow's vision was even more inclusive and unusual.
- [46:48]
Jesse Jarno
Ron I went on a tour and I broke away from the band during a four or five hour spell. And I went and I did two things. One was I walked up to people on the street and introduced myself and said, if I had a band that you had heard of with a brand new record and it was only available for me right here, right now, would you buy it? And they, and most people said yes. So that's what I envisioned. I envisioned people walking up to people on the street and putting together little parties in their home, like Tupperware Tupperware was at that, you know, that kind of thing. And anyway, that was my plan. But it was, it was difficult. What I did was I took an ad in the New York Times business opportunity station which really doesn't even exist anymore and said Grateful Dead is looking for franchisees across the country. I got 60 responses. Once we had a franchise network, we would have found other things to send through it because we have an obligation now to give these guys enough stuff to make a living.
- [48:03]
Rich Mahan
Unfortunately, it didn't quite make it to the next level.
- [48:05]
Jesse Jarno
It's a question of human resources. You know, we didn't have any people that knew anything about how to make a profit. We had fucking lunatics everywhere. Oh yeah.
- [48:16]
Rich Mahan
This idea from the summer of 73 would fall more under promotion than distribution.
- [48:21]
Jesse Jarno
One time I had an idea for a promo where I was going to have a guy walk into Grand Central Station and with a suitcase. This was well before 911 obviously. And to walk into Grand Central Station with a suitcase and have the suitcase pop open and inside is a big rubber balloon and a compressed air cylinder. And all of a sudden this balloon fills up and it gets to be 50ft around and you know, people run out of the way and it causes a great stir. And Garcia said, you know, you're going to get busted, you're going to get busted. I said that's what I want, I want to get busted. Just as I said, I want to get busted. Leave this or not. The phone rings and it's Mountain Girl. He rings at my office and she's. And you know, she, I pick up the phone and she said I just passed your house, you're busted. The cops are all over your place. Isn't that funny?
- [49:29]
Rich Mahan
That was July of 73, just before Watkins Glen. And the busdee was one of Rakow's housemates. Long story. A few weeks later, in August of 1973 as the dead were in the record plant working on wake of the flood rackow would acquire the more traditional funding.
- [49:45]
Jesse Jarno
My first hire was a woman by the name of Jean, Jeannie Jones and she was a licensed cpa. He was going to be our, our money person. She had a hobby, her hobby. She had two hobbies. One was some kind of embroidery and the other was calligraphy. It was because of the calligraphy that I hired her. I went to the paper museum in San Francisco and I bought real old parchment, a bunch of it. And she calligraphy all the cash flows that you see in the silhouette papers. She calligraphied onto parchment, parchment sheets that were 36 by 24 big sheets of parchment. And I had about. I had about 15 of them all hand calligraphy. And each one, it started. Page one was the Grateful Dead sales at Warner Brothers for the last album we put out before Wake of the Flood. So those were the numbers. Then I had a 10% above that and a 10% below that. What would happen financially if we put out an album and it went 10% more than that or 10% below that? Then I did 20% above and below, 30% above and below, 40% above and below and 50% above. And I walked in with this sheath of hand calligraphy pages at the First national bank of Boston. And I presented them to Jim Dollar. And I went through every item on every page. And I showed them that no matter what happens, we would make money and they would not be stuck for any bread. He said, this guy from the Grateful Dead came into our office and presented parchment scrolls. They looked like it came from God. And we analyzed them, and we figured that we had no risk the Dead.
- [51:52]
Rich Mahan
Would employ the more traditional network of independent record distributors to get their product out. But something remarkable was happening in the exact moment that Ron Rakow was contemplating organizing Grateful Dead franchises. Grateful that franchises were organizing themselves, kinda. That was the Dead at Roosevelt Stadium on July 31, 1973, just days before the Wake of the Flood sessions began. It's one of the first audience recordings made by a Bronx Dead freak named Jerry Moore. By 1973, the amount of tapers was growing by leaps and bounds. The earliest known audience tape recorded by a Dead fan was actually made in March 1968. The dead playing for free on Haight street by our friend Steve Brown. A story we told in our Listen to the River October 1973 episode. But by fall 1973, Steve was actually working for Grateful Dead Records and watched as the taping scene blew up. It didn't seem like a problem because.
- [53:04]
Jesse Jarno
I knew what happens when you make a copy and then other people you're going to share those copies with start.
- [53:10]
Rich Mahan
Bringing out more people.
- [53:12]
Jesse Jarno
And these people go to the concerts to buy tickets that go to the Grateful Dead. So it's like, you know, it seemed to me to be not a bad idea on a certain level, because it's.
- [53:23]
Rich Mahan
Promoting, promoting, promoting, promoting. More, more, more, more.
- [53:26]
Jesse Jarno
The fact that they wouldn't still buy albums. No, they would still buy the albums. So as long as I knew they had to have in their hands the.
- [53:34]
Rich Mahan
Thing that has a beautiful cover on.
- [53:36]
Jesse Jarno
It with stuff that is on this album, you could play over and over. And it's a better quality than the one I recorded it up in the balcony.
- [53:45]
Rich Mahan
Sounds like something a taper would say. Ron Rakow had his own relationship with taping. Like some, he reacted negatively at first.
- [53:53]
Jesse Jarno
When I first started at the Grateful Dead, I regarded the Tapirs as a threat. I went draconian at some points during the thing. One time I went out into the audience and cut microphone cables with a wire cutter. That incident happened at the Fillmore west, but may not. It was a Bill Graham gig in San Francisco, and it might have been Winterland. It was completely alien to me. I never addressed it. I never thought about it. I never was involved with anything like that. It's not. It was not normal. It wasn't normal.
- [54:26]
Rich Mahan
You personally cut some tapers, cables.
- [54:29]
Jesse Jarno
I did everything. At least sometime, personally, I cut two or three of them. And I felt like a piece of shit. And I went backstage. I really didn't like it. And. And I started to think about it. And then I remembered my time at Montauk Junior High School in Brooklyn. I was in the seventh, eighth, and ninth grade. That's the junior high school years. And when I was in the eighth grade. How old is someone in the eighth grade? Thirteen. Like, right? Went out of school one day, and there was a station wagon outside, and they were giving out three, four packs of Camels. In thinking about that, I realized that the Tapirs were making us, not hurting us.
- [55:18]
Rich Mahan
In their earliest days, when the Dead visited a city for the first time, they would often play for free in the local park in advance of their paying gigs. It was a form of promotion.
- [55:28]
Jesse Jarno
If you really sit down and think about it, they're not that dissimilar. Cigarettes are an addictive product. So is music.
- [55:36]
Rich Mahan
First one's free. And actually, thanks to what unfolded, all the tapes after the first one remained free, too. In part because of the Dead themselves and in part because of what was far out of their control.
- [55:47]
Jesse Jarno
It was either we allow it or we don't. And it just became, in my world, very smart to let it happen. And Jerry dismissed the whole issue in one sentence. It was very far out at a meeting when he just said, I play music. When I play it, I'm finished with it. Anybody can do whatever they want with it.
- [56:15]
Rich Mahan
It's an often repeated quote from a legal point of view that remains complicated.
- [56:21]
Jesse Jarno
You can analyze it in some way and. But that's. That is what he said, period. Being a business guy inside the Grateful Dead was not the easiest task.
- [56:32]
Rich Mahan
By 1973, Ron Rackow experimented with taping.
- [56:36]
Jesse Jarno
Himself, hanging out with Owsley. I bought Inaugura for myself. I only bought equipment that Owsley recommended. So I was a very acceptable person because I believed that he knew all about the right stuff to have. So I, you know, for example, I bought a Nagra because he told me to. I did the original recording of Olden in the way. Pre Bear. Yes. In that I set it up and then called Bear to come. And then he came and that was at the Stinson Beach Firehouse. And he put the headphones on and he said, amazing. You have. Every piece of equipment is exactly right. Exactly what I have exactly right. You copied exactly. But everything is set up up. It could not, could not be more up. I couldn't even hear what he was talking about. But he went and straightened everything out. He wound up starting to record all it in the way and put recorded there what we put out as an album.
- [57:43]
Rich Mahan
In 1973, taping was blowing up. More of the Dead's crew were starting to tape the band internally, but it was really the Deadheads that were firing the energy. That September, when Bob Weir and the God Shows spoke with Waer, there was some talk of the taper phenomenon. This is dead manager John McIntyre.
- [58:01]
Jesse Jarno
Some of those guys have as many as 500 separate performances.
- [58:05]
Rich Mahan
Keith was down with the Tapers, though Bob Weider was a little more skeptical.
- [58:09]
Jesse Jarno
I think it's far out. I think it's okay as long as they don't try to make a lot of bread off of it and try to promote it in a big way. Because most of those performances, the recordings are just not up to any sort of quality.
- [58:22]
Rich Mahan
Heath was pretty clear that taping was an act perpetrated by serious music fans.
- [58:27]
Jesse Jarno
As far as I can tell, the people that are in like the music. I mean, if they want to take it, tape it and take it home and listen to it rolling or whatever, it's perfectly fine by me. A lot of times our onstage performances come off being stingless and during not too close scrutiny. I mean, you don't want to listen to it 50 or 60 times.
- [58:46]
Rich Mahan
If the Dead didn't have much choice in the matter before Wake of the Flood came out on October 15, just a few days before the album's release, Rolling Stone ran a story that changed the game, permanently shining a spotlight on the people who'd been taping, trading and collecting Grateful Dead tapes and hipping Dead freaks who read Rolling Stone to the idea that they could do this for themselves. The Dead taping scene was already pretty big. But it really blew up from here and would slowly change the complexion of who the Grateful Dead were as a band, building what amounted to an alternative distribution system for music by the Dead that extended to other acts as well. I focused a lot on this network in my book, Heads, and interviewed a number of the original tapers. Most of the time they tried to keep themselves off microphone on the tapes they were making. But today we're going to hear some of their voices. We'll start with the subject of the Rolling Stone article, which was titled Mr. Tapes of He Rules the Grateful Dead tape empire. The Mr. Tapes in question was a Brooklyn Deadhead named Les Capell. He'd started taping in 1970, but didn't start to connect to other tapers for a little bit.
- [59:52]
Jesse Jarno
The Jerry Garcia Band was playing at the Academy of Music, if I remember correctly, on 14th street in Manhattan. And I was with my friend Ramblin rt And there were two people from New Jersey.
- [60:13]
Rich Mahan
I'm pretty sure Les was remembering the Jerry Garcia Howard Wales show at the Academy of Music in January 1972.
- [60:20]
Jesse Jarno
Four of us were just sitting around, and at that time I might have had about five or six tapes. And they were taping and they had some tapes, and we started trading. And we came up with the idea of a tape exchange. And we felt it was extremely important that no one made money on it. So therefore, that was just about the date of the creation of the first free underground Grateful Dead tape exchange.
- [60:52]
Rich Mahan
They named it Dead Relics. R E L I C S. In the next year, the tape exchange would morph into Relics magazine, still running today. But in 1972 and 1973, the dead relics tape exchange was a white hot center of the underground taping world.
- [61:08]
Jesse Jarno
We made a decision that there's no reason there shouldn't be a free underground tape exchange of New Jersey. A free underground tape exchange of San Francisco or Australia or England. So we said to all these people, this is what you do. Get a tape machine, go record shows and start trading. And almost immediately we had 13 tape exchanges. Rolling Stones magazine picked up a story, Charlie Rosen wrote it, about Mr. Tapes, the ruler of the underground tape empire, who lives in Brooklyn and works for the New York City Housing Authority. And I was getting letters coming to me from all over the world.
- [61:57]
Rich Mahan
In setting up tape exchanges, Les discovered the other recordists who'd started taping the Dead. The Rolling Stone article ended with Les pouring a glass of wine for Marty Weinberg, the original east coast audience taper.
- [62:09]
Jesse Jarno
Marty is like The God, you know, he's due all the respect and courtesies because he was really first on the scene.
- [62:18]
Rich Mahan
By 1973, Marty Weinberg was pretty much gone from the Dead scene. But he'd influenced a whole generation of fellow New York teens since starting to tape the dead as a 15 year old in 1968, I interviewed Marty over dinner, not imagining anybody might want to hear it, but here's a little bit of the late Marty Weinberg. I miss him. I began to watch the Dead a.
- [62:39]
Jesse Jarno
Bunch starting in 67.
- [62:42]
Rich Mahan
And I said.
- [62:43]
Jesse Jarno
Wow, this music is amazing. And I felt that there was something about the music that was very different. And the music was extremely fleeting, almost like, you know, Charlie Parker. He played something that will never be played again. No one will ever hear that again. That solo that he just played, it wasn't recorded. And the world will never hear that solo again. And it was so insane. But he won't be heard again. Not every song, not every concert, but.
- [63:17]
Rich Mahan
There were things that I was listening.
- [63:19]
Jesse Jarno
To that just were like listening to Bach and Speed. How do these guys do it? How does this band. They're like one unit. And it was like they were playing music that was written for them very tightly, but they were free from jazz at a given point. I said, you know, I should record this for me. I wasn't thinking globally, trust me. Later on, I really regretted that. I was thinking very me only and maybe a friend or two.
- [63:53]
Rich Mahan
Marty's full story is outside our scope today, though. I wrote more about him in my book Heads and an adjacent article which we've linked to@dead.net deadcast. He didn't trade with many people, but he was an influence on the Dead fans who encountered him. We spoke with Howie Levine in our episode about the RFK 73 shows.
- [64:11]
Jesse Jarno
I knew the Bronx Heads, but no, we were. We were in Brooklyn. I had a friend whose brother. My friend was Howie Weinberg. His brother was Marty Weinberg. Marty was one of the original Tapers. So, you know, I used to get tapes, you know, way early on.
- [64:27]
Rich Mahan
Marty's younger brother, Howie Weinberg, would go on to an illustrious career in the music business himself. And if you've ever looked at the mastering credits on a cd, you've probably caught the name Howie Weinberg.
- [64:38]
Jesse Jarno
Of course, that got me into starting to tape. So, you know, we would go there with our. With our reel to reel deck and, you know, plug it in and have our microphones.
- [64:47]
Rich Mahan
We take it for granted these days that a taping scene emerged around the Grateful Dead in the late 60s and early 1970s. But one important underlying condition was the emergence of tape itself. Reel to reels had been around since the early 1950s, and Marty Weinberg and a few other bold early tapers smuggled reel to reels into the fillmores and other places. But it was really the innovation of the compact cassette that broke it open for dead freaks. In fact, 1973 was the 10th anniversary of the format's introduction, but it had taken a while to spread. Mark Masters is the author of a really wonderful new book titled High the Distorted History of the Cassette Tape, available in October from the University of North Carolina Press, which we've linked to@dead.net deadcast Please welcome to the Deadcast Mark Masters. The technical birth of the Compact cassette is 63 or so when Lou Ottens both creates it. And then Philips decides that instead of.
- [65:43]
Jesse Jarno
Trying to sell it to people, they're going to let the license be had.
- [65:46]
Rich Mahan
For free, thinking hopefully that they're going.
- [65:49]
Jesse Jarno
To be able to do better selling it if it's a standard thing than.
- [65:52]
Rich Mahan
If they're competing with other people's formats. There's also a little bit Sony kind.
- [65:55]
Jesse Jarno
Of said to them, if you don't.
- [65:56]
Rich Mahan
Let us have this for free, we're.
- [65:57]
Jesse Jarno
Going to go buy it from someone else.
- [65:59]
Rich Mahan
Definitely a case of an open format driving innovation.
- [66:02]
Jesse Jarno
The late 60s is when it really starts, when it mostly indicated by the way mass media started to respond to it.
- [66:08]
Rich Mahan
In like 68, 69, there was all these kind of articles that say, you know, the great new thing in music.
- [66:13]
Jesse Jarno
Is the compact cassette.
- [66:15]
Rich Mahan
And cassettes are rolling, cassettes are. Kids are buying cassette players, kids are taping the things off the radio. That kind of thing, I think was the first where it became recognized as.
- [66:24]
Jesse Jarno
Sort of, this is a mass media.
- [66:26]
Rich Mahan
And certainly this is the exact period when the first audience tapes start turning up. The opening of the Overton window, perhaps through the 1970s and beyond. As cassettes got more popular, incremental improvements made them better suited for recording live shows. Much of the quality had to do with the quality of the tape because the tape had to be so thin.
- [66:46]
Jesse Jarno
To be able to have a decent.
- [66:48]
Rich Mahan
Speed, but also fit into such a small package. So the more they found certain oxides and different kind of materials were going to work to make these thin tapes, then the sound got better that way. In Mark's book, he focuses on different subcultures that use the cassette in various creative ways. And it's clear that dead tapers were really among the earliest adopters. Of the format. Most of the subcultures I discussed come after the Dead. Tape trading culture started.
- [67:15]
Jesse Jarno
Hip hop is basically mid to late.
- [67:18]
Rich Mahan
70S and it's really centered around DJs, not rappers. These guys were sort of innovating this kind of DJ mixing and people wanted to hear it.
- [67:26]
Jesse Jarno
Who if they couldn't get to the show or they wanted to hear it.
- [67:28]
Rich Mahan
Again after the show. So cassette tapes became a way for.
- [67:31]
Jesse Jarno
People to trade them and for the DJs to eventually sell them on the streets and actually make a living. Mingo is somewhat parallel a few years.
- [67:38]
Rich Mahan
Later probably, but around the same time.
- [67:41]
Jesse Jarno
And very concentrated in Washington D.C. a very similar thing. People were. It was a very much a live music more than a recorded music, although.
- [67:48]
Rich Mahan
Some records came out eventually. And so people wanted to trade tapes of shows. And there were shows happening every night, much like there were hip hop parties.
- [67:56]
Jesse Jarno
Happening every night in New York. And that actually spawned in dc.
- [67:59]
Rich Mahan
They were actually full on stores. They were called PA Tapes. Mark's book High Bias has a cool section on Deadpapers, but we know plenty of those. Please welcome back Jim Cooper. We spoke a bunch with Jim in our RFK and Watkins Glenn episodes. He started taping at the same filmware shows as les Capell in January 1970.
- [68:17]
Jesse Jarno
I had a couple of friends who were into the Dead and they said we're going to get a tape recorder. They bought a Hitachi. It's a Hitachi TRQ222, the big ass deck with two speakers that could come off. So it had a little lamp in it and 6D cells. So I bought one of those in late 69 and then started 1-3-1970, the Fillmore, getting the dead. And that was it.
- [68:49]
Rich Mahan
Everybody seemed to know or know about Marty Weinberg.
- [68:51]
Jesse Jarno
Marty Weinberg was really cool. I knew Marty back then. He was an early taper in the Bronx.
- [68:58]
Rich Mahan
A teenager named Harvey Lubar discovered the dead, then discovered Dead tapes, then discovered Marty Weinberg's dead tapes through a mutual friend.
- [69:06]
Jesse Jarno
I just sat there with my mouth open. I had never heard anything like this in my life. And what he had played for me was Marty Weinstein's. His first gen reel from Marty's your master seven and a half IPS. Marty calls it July 11th, but it technically the 12th of July 1970. The show where they opened with the easy win and I just sat there. I remember he had a couch that converted into a bed. And trust me when I tell you we did not play this music at 60 or 70 decibels. I was pinned. I was pinned against the wall, sitting there. And I'm like, holy shit. This is so much better than listening to deaths on have no Mercy. It's a feedback.
- [70:03]
Rich Mahan
Around the same time that Les Capell was organizing the Dead Relics tape exchange in 1972, Harvey Lubar took his own collecting to the next level. Harvey wasn't really a Taper, but he's a good example of how dead tape trading fostered friendships. I also miss Harvey.
- [70:19]
Jesse Jarno
I had a style bound notebook for every class. So I just tore out the last six pages from one of the spiral notebooks and I wrote Grateful Dead tapes Live Grateful Dead tapes with the Hell Huntes Tape Club or something like that. And I put my name and phone number and I said, okay, I'll put one up at Lehman, you know, because they always had an activity board that you didn't need to get the student government to approve. And I put one down to Columbia. I put one up at Queens College, probably nyu. And people started calling me. Out of nowhere. This guy at Columbia called me. I remember his name was Nick. A couple of people at Queens College called. A couple of people in the Bronx called me and some guy named Jerry Moore.
- [71:13]
Rich Mahan
The idea of taping spread alongside the tapes themselves. It was also a period when the rock underground was flush with bootleg LPs that weren't always available through normal means. These so called undergrounds are what inspired Jerry Moore, who turned out to be Harvey Lubar's classmate at Lehman College in the Bronx. Jerry would become one of the most pivotal of the early Dead Tapers. I never got to speak with him. Thanks to David Ganz for this interview from 2008.
- [71:38]
Jesse Jarno
I was in high school. This was along about maybe 1971. And one of my friends brought in a Grateful Dead bootleg album. I'd never seen such a thing before. So I asked, it's very interesting, where'd you get this artifact?
- [71:53]
Rich Mahan
And he said he bought it down in the Village.
- [71:55]
Jesse Jarno
He'd been walking around Sheridan Square and there was some guy walking around with an armor, these things, selling them. So I said, cool, I'm gonna go get me one of those things.
- [72:02]
Rich Mahan
Except I couldn't.
- [72:03]
Jesse Jarno
I never saw that guy.
- [72:04]
Rich Mahan
Believe me, I haunted that neighborhood too.
- [72:06]
Jesse Jarno
Looking for him, could not find him. I've never been good at dealing with frustration. So somehow or other this eventually led.
- [72:12]
Rich Mahan
To my making my own. In the early 70s, papers often met by accident.
- [72:16]
Jesse Jarno
I met Louis Flang under the George Washington Bridge like as the Hell's Angels boat ride. Sailed around like out there. Like you couldn't hear Garcia.
- [72:23]
Rich Mahan
That would have been in September 1973, just before the Rolling Stone article. By then, Harvey Lubar and Jerry Moore in the Hell's Honkies Tape Club were in full operation.
- [72:33]
Jesse Jarno
My first efforts didn't turn out very well, to say the least. And I didn't keep them even through 1972. They weren't turning out too well by.
- [72:40]
Rich Mahan
By the time we got into the middle of 1973, they were doing okay. Jerry would eventually connect with Les Capell and become the first editor of Dead Relics, the tape trading magazine that Les published. It was also during this period that the consumer gear surrounding taping began to improve noticeably. With a number of new cassette decks and microphones introduced into the ecosystem that made the collective project that much easier.
- [73:02]
Jesse Jarno
I'm not even going to describe the.
- [73:03]
Rich Mahan
Failed experiments, but the first ones I.
- [73:05]
Jesse Jarno
Made that turned out okay.
- [73:06]
Rich Mahan
With the Sony 110 monoportable cassette machine.
- [73:09]
Jesse Jarno
And an AKG D1000E.
- [73:11]
Rich Mahan
The TC110A was introduced in 1971. The AKG in the late 1960s. That was also when Jim Cooper upgraded. Having had his gear stolen after RFK.
- [73:21]
Jesse Jarno
In June 73, we decided that we needed to step up our game for Watkins Glen. We bought a pair of Sony ECM 22P condenser mics and. And we use those still with the Hitachi.
- [73:37]
Rich Mahan
The Sony ECM 22P had been introduced in 1972. Both Jim Cooper and Jerry Moore started using homemade mic stands at around the same moment that summer of 1973. Harvey Lubar.
- [73:49]
Jesse Jarno
So somewhere along the line he got the idea of a pole. I don't know if he saw someone else using it or he thought it up himself, but there was nobody using it. And I know he had the pole because when he came back after the two Roosevelt shows, they sounded like soundboards and there was no screaming. And he said, I used a pole. I think he might have also used one for Watkins Glenn, but I just thought it was a brilliant idea. And it caught on really quickly. At Roosevelt in 74, there were a bunch of poles.
- [74:25]
Rich Mahan
I love Harvey's description of the life of a tape training Deadhead in 1973.
- [74:30]
Jesse Jarno
I would take my reel to reel, put it in the back seat. I wouldn't put it in the trunk because it would rust it out. And I was just scared it would land up on the Major Deegan Expressway. I'd put it on the back seat and I drive to different people's homes. Usually it was on a Saturday or a Sunday, I would take my reel to reel and go to Person X's house and plug in. And in real time, which meant every hour and a half because most of us did it at three and three quarters. At seven and a half it got really expensive. Jerry did it at seven and a half. I did it at three and three quarters with Dolby D, which was very common because we felt the Dolby B would keep the quality that it would at seven and a half. It didn't. But it was better than three and three quarters with nothing, provided we decoded with our Dolby machines correctly. It was set up a Dolby signal. We all had what were called outboard Dolby machines. They were not part of the tape recording. So we would always start signal. We had a hum, we would set our signals and then start taping. And then we would listen and sit around for seven or eight hours. So guess what? What happened in the seven or eight hours? We would start becoming friends and we would start talking. Not like email, but actually people, two people or three people sitting together. And we all learned about each other's families and the difficulties, our dreams, our aspirations, inspirations while the music was playing. And every now and then we go, oh, oh, that was a good solo he just took. Yeah. So what's going on with your sister and her boyfriend? I bonded with so many people. You know, we were all around the same age. We weren't rich kids. We weren't, you know, poverty stricken either. I mean, we weren't from the hood, but we were all like lower middle class kids who had this wonderful hobby that was all consuming. And we had the same outlook on life. And we would just sit there and just. I bonded with so many people, whether.
- [76:53]
Rich Mahan
They had real names or were just heads hanging out with each other. Grateful that tape exchanges had sprung up over the previous year. Each one set up to distribute Grateful Dead music. Just like a little Grateful Dead franchise. Exactly how Ron Rakow planned, except free. The Dead's own idea to franchise themselves was unknown to Dead Relics.
- [77:13]
Jesse Jarno
We came to them with a proposal for a tapirs club, the Connoisseurs Club. And what we suggested was that we recharge $10 for a concert, you know, and be on two cassettes. First set, second set set up, table shows. You pay because they didn't have instant duplication back then. Pay, and we'd mail the concerts to the people.
- [77:47]
Rich Mahan
But the Dead weren't biting.
- [77:48]
Jesse Jarno
Ron Rack out Les Capell. I think he's the guy that started Relics. It didn't come across My desk, I would remember it, and I would have turned it down with less words than you just made explaining it to me.
- [78:02]
Rich Mahan
It does seem to have gone across Rakow's desk briefly in the summer of 1973, though. In Mark Rodriguez's remarkable recent book, After All Is Said and Done, he reproduces the full proposal for the Connoisseurs Club and some correspondence indicating that Rakow turned it down instantly. Not sure about the word count of his reply, though. But the tape exchanges wouldn't be converted to Dead franchises. Selling their own recordings was an idea the Dead had talked about among themselves. In 1971, the legendary Marty Weinberg met Phil Lesh backstage at New York's Felt Forum, and they discussed his concert taping. You can read much more about this story in my book. Heads.
- [78:41]
Jesse Jarno
He told me. And I'll never forget this, because it.
- [78:44]
Rich Mahan
Was actually pretty cool.
- [78:45]
Jesse Jarno
He said, you know, we dreamed about being able to play A Few Diamonds, and people get it the next day. How great would that be, what you're doing?
- [78:55]
Rich Mahan
Just do it, and then the next.
- [78:56]
Jesse Jarno
Day people can buy it. They like the show, and then they.
- [78:59]
Rich Mahan
Would have a record of it.
- [79:00]
Jesse Jarno
And I said, oh, yeah, that's great.
- [79:02]
Rich Mahan
It was another idea that would have to wait. Librarians have an acronym LOX with two S's. It stands for Lots of Copies. Keep Stuff Safe. And that's true, and it's true for memory just as much as it is for preservation. The Dead played many of their songs many hundreds of times, resulting in their preservations on many thousands of tapes and countless digital files. But more importantly, imprinted in the memories of the people who listened to them. The half dozen versions of Let Me Sing youg Blues Away from only six shows didn't go forth and multiply in quite the same way. The versions on the angel share more than double that amount. It was less about the quality of the song and more about the success of free tape trading. Which in turn, probably has a good deal to do with why we're still here talking about Let Me Sing youg Blues Away today and why, hopefully you'll have it stuck in your head tomorrow.
- [79:53]
Jesse Jarno
Come on, honey let me sing them away Come on, honey let me sing them away oh, honey, let me sing your blues away Come on, honey, let me sing them away Come on, honey Honey, let me sing them away Whoa, honey, let me sing all blues that was really neat. Yeah. All right. Yeah. Okay, let's take that one. Let's take that one.
- [80:28]
Rich Mahan
I used to work at the Old Sweetwater in Mill Valley, California. Back in the 90s when Martin Fierro was playing there regularly with Zero. He was a first rate musician on stage and a first rate joker on stage and off stage. He had a habit of jumping off stage in the middle of their set and turning off the lights in the men's room, leaving me in complete darkness wondering how the hell I was going to make it out without falling into the toilet.
- [80:53]
Jesse Jarno
Ah, chat up.
- [80:55]
Rich Mahan
Thanks very much for tuning in to the good old Grateful Dead cast. We'd like to thank our guests in this episode Donna Jean, Gottschill McKay, Ron Rackau, Steve Brown, Howard Wales, Marty Weinberg, Les Kipple, Harvey Lubar, Howie Levine, Jim Cooper, David Lemieux, Brian Kehue, Scott Metzger, Sean o', Donnell, Mark Masters and Dave Mandel. Extra special thanks to friend of the Dead cast David Ganz for contributing audio from his interview archive. Thank you very much for tuning in. Don't forget to like subscribe and share an episode on your social media and give us your Wake of the Flood related stories by recording yours@stories.dead.net executive producers for the good old Grateful Dead cast Mark Pincus and Dorin Tyson, produced for Rhino Entertainment by Rich Mahan Productions and Jesse Jarno. Special thanks to David Lemieux. All rights reserved.