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- [00:04]
A
Welcome to Rock Docs, a podcast about music documentaries. I am David Liserbram.
- [00:08]
B
And I am Andrew Keats.
- [00:10]
A
And we are. This is the finale of season two of Rock Docs.
- [00:15]
B
The train has reached the station in.
- [00:17]
A
More ways than one. Just wait for it, people. There's gonna be a lot of that. Yeah, today we're going to talk about Festival Express before we get to Festival Express. Yeah, yeah, just a little season wrap up stuff. We had a lot of really cool guests this season. We had Maria Sherman on talking about Billie Eilish, Eamon o' Flynn talking about the band and once were brothers. Excuse me, Robbie Robertson and the Band.
- [00:45]
B
Robbie Robertson and the band.
- [00:46]
A
Right. As they're famously known, of course, as everybody knows. We had Molly and Chris from N Introducing talking about it might get loud. And we had Nick. It didn't get loud.
- [00:59]
B
Did not.
- [00:59]
A
We had Nick McCann talking about Yeezus starring Donda west and also Kanye West. And yeah, thanks to all them for doing the show and everybody's listened. We are not going anywhere. We're. The plan is to kind of continue in your feed every Tuesday with like, you know, pretty, probably shorter episodes, mini episodes, kind of in between stuff for now until we gear up for season three, which will just be more of us talking about music documentaries. So, yeah, that's kind of the plan.
- [01:36]
B
Yeah, we'll have to. Let's open it up. Hit us up with some recommendations. We're in the early stages of putting together what a track list for season three might look like.
- [01:46]
A
Yeah, every season kind of. We don't really have a plan. So it sort of evolves. The first season we ended up kind of doing a lot of 90s stuff for some reason. Woodstock 99 and hype and so forth. This season we ended up kind of doing a lot of stuff related to the band.
- [02:05]
B
Which luckily they have their tentacles in all kinds of different parts of the musical world. So, you know.
- [02:12]
A
Yeah. And once again, they'll be featured tonight. So maybe, I don't know. Yeah, we'll see what season three looks like. Maybe it'll all be, I don't know, abstract jazz, improv, free jazz, documentaries.
- [02:33]
B
Full change up.
- [02:33]
A
Yeah, we're just gonna totally throw a curveball. I don't know. But yeah, we've actually gotten some really good suggestions from people and in fact, a place you can find us is the Internet. We are RockDocsPod on Twitter. That's where most of the chatters happening. We're also on Instagram where some small amount of chatters happening. But Twitter seems to be where it's at. And. Yeah. And of course, we appreciate it when people leave us nice reviews, which people have been nice enough to do. So if you feel like you need to spread some positivity in the world and, you know, be the change you want to be or something like that, you see one of those inspirational posters, you're like, how can I do that? A way you can do that is by leaving us a nice review on Apple or Spotify or something. Andy, any other business to attend to before we get into Festival Express?
- [03:24]
B
I think that's about it. I think that's about it. I'll say a couple things. The band certainly played a big role in this season, but also parenting.
- [03:33]
A
Parenting.
- [03:34]
B
Yeah, parenting. A recurring theme. And the career of Mavis Staples.
- [03:39]
A
Yeah. Mavis was the, you know, the sleeper star, I think, of this season.
- [03:45]
B
Make three appearances.
- [03:47]
A
Yeah. And. Yeah. And honestly, could have done with more if she had. If the Stable Singers had been invited on the Festival Express, this movie would have been so much better. Just another step up.
- [04:00]
B
Now, am I correct that we are about to venture into our first meaningful or extended endeavor into the Grateful Dead?
- [04:10]
A
I think so. We've kind of danced around it. I know Andrew Keats over here is familiar with the music of the Grateful Dead.
- [04:18]
B
So are you. Don't sell yourself so short. Of course, it's one of the areas in which we meet very, very well.
- [04:24]
A
Exactly. The Venn diagram of our interests. The Grateful Dead is right in the middle there. We have, in fact, gone to a few Dead and Company shows together.
- [04:31]
B
That's true.
- [04:32]
A
And. Yeah. So we're going to get into it. So let's get into Festival Express.
- [04:37]
B
Right.
- [04:38]
A
Festival Express, directed by Bob Smeaton and released in 2004. 2003. 2004. Although most of the footage was taken sometime before that, you'll be surprised to hear.
- [04:55]
B
Yeah, a few talking Head interviews around the. In the early 2000s, but otherwise, this is straight archival footage, baby.
- [05:03]
A
Okay, so what or who or why is the Festival Express?
- [05:07]
B
The Festival Express? It was a nineteen summer of 1970 touring festival. Three date, three dates in Canada where the band, the lineup, traveled from show to show in a train across the nation of Canada.
- [05:30]
A
And the titular Festival Express, if you will.
- [05:33]
B
Yes. And it was, in fact, written right there on the side.
- [05:35]
A
You couldn't miss it.
- [05:37]
B
Just in case anybody was wondering whether it was like a metaphor or something. No, highly literal.
- [05:43]
A
Okay.
- [05:44]
B
And so the band in between, as Phil Lesh, in an absolute peak of nerdiness, explains, they were A train full of insane people careening across the Canadian countryside, making music day and night. And every once in a while, they would stop and have a concert.
- [06:04]
A
Yeah, I mean, there's only like four or five concerts in this whole thing.
- [06:07]
B
Three.
- [06:08]
A
Three. There's only three. Boy. Seemed like there was more. Okay, so it was a traveling festival of three concerts across Canada.
- [06:15]
B
Did not work out financially.
- [06:17]
A
Not a big hit financially. And nobody seems to mind.
- [06:20]
B
No.
- [06:22]
A
Let's just run down who. Who was on the. Who's on the old express.
- [06:26]
B
All right, so you got Shannon. Shannon is like the headliner, obviously.
- [06:31]
A
Right.
- [06:33]
B
So the. The. The headliner of the. Of the show. We're in Canada. It's 1970. It seems not to be much of a surprise that I think the band was closing out every night. The only other person I think may have been closing out instead is Janice. Janis Joplin was there as well. Those seem to be the two big stars, interestingly. And, you know, people who know the Grateful Dead was on this tour. But if you look at the Grateful Dead sets, they almost all occurred during.
- [07:03]
A
The day and often not seemingly that well attended.
- [07:06]
B
Yes. So they were. They were like.
- [07:08]
A
They were big hits on the train.
- [07:10]
B
Yes.
- [07:10]
A
Off the train, people had yet to get on the. You know, get to get to get with it.
- [07:15]
B
And there's. This is a pivotal and important moment in Grateful Dead history, which I'm sure we'll get into at length. But also, Flying Burrito Brothers were on this tour.
- [07:24]
A
Right. The post Graham Parsons version of the.
- [07:27]
B
Flying Burrito Brothers by a few months.
- [07:28]
A
Yeah. Okay.
- [07:30]
B
So you know Bernie Lettin is. Is seen here.
- [07:33]
A
Sure. San Diego's own Chris Hillman.
- [07:36]
B
Chris Hillman. Yes, exactly. Buddy guy. Band is here as well.
- [07:40]
A
Sure.
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B
Bonnie Delaney and Friends.
- [07:43]
A
Yep. Huh.
- [07:45]
B
Huh.
- [07:45]
A
Ian and Sylvia.
- [07:46]
B
Ian and Sylvia and the Speckled Hens.
- [07:49]
A
Okay. This great Speckled Hen. Something like that.
- [07:51]
B
Bird, maybe. Speckled Bird.
- [07:53]
A
Okay.
- [07:54]
B
Seemed to just be an add on. They had some other addition, some other musicians. So they said that one band who I was not familiar with going into. Going into it, but stands out well. And I looked into them a little bit. They're a Canadian band that experienced a resurgent popularity when this movie was released is. Give me two seconds.
- [08:20]
A
Mashma Khan. Mashma Khan is the best I can guess.
- [08:25]
B
Yes. Mashma Khan. But so they have one full performance in here. And, like. Sounds pretty awesome, actually.
- [08:32]
A
Kind of instrumental.
- [08:33]
B
Very cool instrumental track.
- [08:36]
A
There are also bands that were on the festival but didn't make it into the movie Mountain. You see a little bit Of Leslie West. Yeah, Leslie west, the singer, guitar player from Mountain. Do you know them from Mississippi Queen?
- [08:51]
B
Among other.
- [08:53]
A
But yeah. So not all of the acts were at every show and not all the acts are featured in the movie. But.
- [09:00]
B
And for instance, there is no mention at any point in the movie and from what I've read up on it afterwards, that New Riders of the Purple Sage played.
- [09:08]
A
Right.
- [09:08]
B
However they were there, they were there, they're on the train. So now it's not hard to imagine that they were just in the Deads traveling, you know, party at that point. So.
- [09:21]
A
Right. There was a lot of overlap there.
- [09:23]
B
Right.
- [09:24]
A
Yeah. So basically they filmed this and so, you know, they had a camera crew rolling the entire time. So there's a lot of footage in this movie. I mean, the movie is basically like four fairly grainy, looks like 16 millimeter footage, color footage, but not in super high fidelity shot on the train and at the concerts at the time. Interspersed with some talking heads kind of narrating what's happening. Either people who are on the train, so musicians and other people who are involved, or there's a few music writers who I guess probably were there or somehow involved. I don't know if they were on the train or not.
- [10:01]
B
They each speak about it more from first hand experience than any sort of like retroactive assessment.
- [10:07]
A
It's not one of these things where you're, you know, trotting out some contemporary person to talk about what it was like back then or something. But you know, it's all people kind of reporting what happened. And even the talking head segments are always cut. So you'll see it's sort of a split screen. You'll see like on the left or on the right you'll see the talking head. So like, you know, Phyllesh or you know, talking now or Buddy Guy. And then on the other half of the screen you'll see, you know, what's happening on the train or something else, you know, that was, you know, contemporary footage from the 1970s. So at no point do you leave 1970 visually.
- [10:43]
B
Right.
- [10:43]
A
As, you know, as the experience is going on.
- [10:45]
B
Yeah. Which is a nice. And the footage. So for instance, as a Grateful Dead head, there's not that much really high quality footage of the Grateful Dead playing live in 1970.
- [10:59]
A
Right.
- [10:59]
B
They're an immensely documented band. Through tapes you can hear just like virtually any show that Grateful dead played from 1965 on, but there's not that much really high quality good footage of them. And this sort of like the. The footage in the, you know, in this movie, it's like some of the best footage of the Grateful dead playing in 1970 or in that, you know, period that you're going to find, like there's, you know, there's a six hour Grateful Dead documentary that doesn't have much more great early Dead footage than this does.
- [11:32]
A
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So, yeah, so what, you know, I mean, basically the narrative is they went, you know, they, they went on this train, they played some shows. Basically, once the first show started in Toronto, it became apparent that these, these white. These crazy Canadian kids had it in their heads that you should not be paying cold hard cash to go to a concert. It should be free. So there is a bit of a rumble and. Yeah, I mean, they were just like rushing the show and there was a lot of drama happening. Yeah, I mean, essentially the first show, what happens is that, you know, they kind of come to an agreement that they're going to play kind of a free show in a park or like a little mini show and that'll be free for whoever, you know, can't afford the 14 bucks or whatever. And then, you know, the festival will go on and there won't be a.
- [12:36]
B
Riot out front of the gates.
- [12:37]
A
Right.
- [12:37]
B
Preventing anybody who actually wants to go pay for a ticket to get in for show.
- [12:41]
A
Right. And there was some violence at that point when this happened. And then, you know, basically at that point it becomes clear that this is not going to be a financially successful operation. And it's just like, let's just keep the party going and just play the three shows and roll on.
- [12:56]
B
And the, the press in Canada picks up on the, the. This Toronto protest slash riot and writes about it in rather inflammatory terms. The musicians are very angry about this on the train. They get into an argument with some of the journalists that are traveling on the train as well. Ken Walker, the promoter, has really bad things to say about both the press and the, and the, the kids that were. That were protesting all this. But that catches. And so because it's written about in each city, the protest catches in each city. So there's. There's protests waiting for them every time they get to a new, a new city.
- [13:38]
A
Right. But by and large, the concerts happen and, you know, go off and whatever. It's fine, right?
- [13:45]
B
No, no, none of them seemed as, as violent as the Toronto one.
- [13:51]
A
Yeah.
- [13:52]
B
Which did have, you know, physical confrontations between police and protesters. They say if we're, if Bob Weir is to be believed, whether there's a period where Bob Weir and Kenny Gradney of Delaney and Bonnie and later of Little Feet are quite angry about the kid protesters and the idea that they should be playing for free. And. And Bob insists that the only people who were hurt were police and that it is preposterous that for $14 they would risk killing another person.
- [14:29]
A
Yeah, I mean, Bob at is very. This is at the time in 1970, so you'd expect these guys being pretty anti authoritarian is what you'd expect. But it's kind of a twist where Bob is, like, arguing to the press, like, listen, the tickets are $16. Is it worth $16 to bust some cop's head open? Like, he's an intensive care. He's got a plate in his head. He could have died. I spoke to these cops. They're all great guys. They're boss, as he says, they're all boss guys. And he's like, it's a human being. And that's probably a pretty rational take. And. Yeah. And, you know, he's like, look, you know, this is our job. Like, we're, you know, like, we gotta get paid to play. Like, this all isn't free.
- [15:13]
B
Well, so there's something here that, as a dead obsessive, is wild to me. It sounds. From everything I've ever read about Jerry, this sounds so out of character.
- [15:23]
A
When the.
- [15:23]
B
When the protest is going on outside of Toronto, I think it's. Ken Walker says, we're gonna get Jerry Garcia from the Grateful Dead. He's gonna tell you about what we're trying to do. And Jerry comes out and says, we're gonna get a little flatbed truck. We're gonna set up a free concert over in this other park. And people start yelling at him, and he's sort of reasoning back to them, and he says a quote in. In there. That is something has become a regular part of my vocabulary, which is, this is, like, all voluntary in nature, man, which has wide applicability, and I invite you to use it.
- [16:04]
A
Exactly.
- [16:05]
B
Like, I don't have to be. If not for the ticket price. It's not that I'd be here playing for free. I'd be in San Francisco.
- [16:17]
A
Watching that speech really made me feel like this must have been where they got the big Lebowski from.
- [16:23]
B
Right.
- [16:24]
A
Like, the cadence and speech pattern that Jerry has at that time. Yeah. Is dead on. Jeffrey Lebowski, like. But it's great.
- [16:34]
B
So. So when I say it's out of character, it's interesting because Jerry sort of famously, like a big story of the. Of the dead, when things would get out of hand was that he did not want to be a leader of that band.
- [16:47]
A
He.
- [16:47]
B
He openly abhorred the idea that he. He was so anti authoritarian that it wasn't in him to be a band leader.
- [16:55]
A
Right.
- [16:56]
B
Never mind the fact that he was Jerry Garcia and was obviously the leader. And so it sort of just meant that there could be no leader.
- [17:01]
A
Right.
- [17:03]
B
But so for him to like to accept whatever. Whoever it was that extended and said, jerry, we need you to go tell these kids to calm down so we can go play this free show. And he gets into this, like, back and forth with them screaming is. If you just read like any Dead biography is not something you would ever expect Jerry Garcia to do. Yeah, he. He would, you know, he'd be. By expectation, he'd be the one backstage going, I don't know, man, maybe the kid's got a point. I don't know. You know?
- [17:33]
A
Yeah, I mean, I think there's a couple reasons I think that that's the case. One is that this is like not even a year after Altamont.
- [17:42]
B
Six months after Altamont.
- [17:43]
A
Yeah. And so you had this scene where.
- [17:45]
B
Less than two months after Kent State.
- [17:48]
A
Right, okay, sure. But Altamont specifically, with the Dead. I mean, where, you know, most people think of Altamont, they think of the Rolling Stones, but the Dead were the opening act, and they, you know, arrange for the Hell's Angels security. So, like, famously, there's concert at Altamont Speedway. It's a free concert, and there's a famous murderer, which is caught on film, that happens during the Rolling Stone set. So, you know, I think that that memory is very fresh. So.
- [18:14]
B
And not just. And not just of Jerry. So very fresh. Sam Cutler was the manager.
- [18:21]
A
Right.
- [18:21]
B
A lot of ultimat connections here. I'll run through them.
- [18:24]
A
So. Okay, go ahead with that.
- [18:25]
B
Okay. So it's six months after Altamont. Sam Cutler was the Rolling Stones tour manager. He was part of. He first came into the orbit of the Grateful Dead because the Dead helped them put Altamont together, connected them with the Hell's Angels. He kind of in some ways took the fall for what happened at Altamont and became the Grateful Dead store manager. And he is heard many times in this movie introducing them on stage. You hear Sam Cutler come in and say, yeah. Ladies and gentlemen, the Grateful Dead. Flying Breeder Brothers are here. They played Altamont as well. And. And then certainly, you know, the Dead are here.
- [19:06]
A
Right.
- [19:07]
B
So there's all that. Also, I think it was more than just Altamont and Kent State. There's A famous, in my opinion, maybe the best Grateful Dead concert. Harper College, immortalized on Dick's Picks, Volume 8, if you're interested in listening to a truly stellar Grateful Dead show. But throughout that show, which is just a few days before Kent State, Jerry and the band are fighting with the crowd. Throughout the night, there's, like, this immense unease in the crowd, and they. And there are newspaper reports around that time talking about other concerts nearby and that concert where things were getting rowdy and restless. So I. I think there's, like, a pretty well established history of, like, significant bad vibes going on in and around the rock scene at this time.
- [20:03]
A
I agree with that. My other kind of theory about why Jerry comes out and does this and why this is the general attitude is that the promoter, Ken Walker, seems to have won everybody over. And probably what happened is Ken Walker, I mean, it seems like he just said, like, look, we got to do this, that, and the other in order to make this all happen. And he just had the goodwill of everybody. I mean, you know, in the interviews, 30 years later, like, nobody's got a bad thing to say about the guy. I mean, basically, it seems like, you know, he just, you know, sucked it up and went forward with it, even though he was obviously going to be losing money on this whole thing and has no regrets about it now. It's really interesting because in the interview, I mean, to me, Ken Walker is the star of this movie in terms of the interviews. He's the guy who pops out. Everybody else is fine.
- [20:54]
B
He's also probably full of shit. A lot of things fine. Questionable.
- [20:58]
A
Just the way that he. I mean, first of all, just like the visual of him is when he's filmed in, like, the early 2000s, he's wearing a suit that's kind of rumpled. He's leaning forward and kind of hunched his, like, comb over, sort of falling over his face, sweaty mustache, and just like, you know, delivering his life. Like, he's not. He. The way that he's physically composed is very interesting. And I don't know if he's defensive, if it's just. That's just the way he looks, is kind of posture. But it's just like, you think that, like, somebody would have said, like, hey, man, just take a second, like, relax, sit back, like, you know, whatever. But no, every single moment you see of him in the movie, he's in that exact same, like, used car salesman looking kind of vibe. And, you know, nonetheless, nobody's got a bad thing to say about the guy.
- [21:51]
B
Yeah, he. He Sort of. He strikes me as like your uncle who's a good storyteller, but partially because, like, you're not supposed to believe 100 of the stories he tells you, you know.
- [22:01]
A
But he's an old time rock promoter.
- [22:03]
B
Totally.
- [22:03]
A
And he's keeping the wheels turning.
- [22:05]
B
Absolutely. He's sort of got a like a Bill Veck type approach to like, you know, sell the idea. Yeah, yeah, yeah, we're in show business.
- [22:14]
A
Yeah.
- [22:15]
B
You know, so he has. One of his memorable quotes is that the railway wanted to set them up to go from Calgary to Toronto as opposed to the other way. And he says, I told him, no, no, no, it's go west, young man.
- [22:34]
A
Like somehow. And he just presents that like it makes sense.
- [22:37]
B
I wonder, like, was he like furious when the band first played I Shall Be Released and they sang from the west down to the east? That is, everybody knows it's not that way. But he also, you know, he, he also says later that when they. I think when they get to Calgary, there's like a socialist mayor who's decided to appease the kids by demanding that the, that the concert be free. And he says, my, My response was his, his, his. He points to his knuckle and he says, his. His tooth in my, in my hand. Like, I'll just be the first. I don't believe he punched that mayor in the face that day. I don't, I don't think it happened that way. Like every time. Everything that he relays has to be very dramatic. They, you know, they run out of. Out of booze on the train at one point and he's like, we need to make a stop. And the conductor tells him, well, there's no stop, stop schedule. And he says, well, there is now. Yeah, you know, it's like it's. It's basically the same story every time.
- [23:41]
A
Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, and that's a great story. So there's. So basically what happens is he set up in. He claims that he basically set this up, that he wanted there to be music 24 7. Like not just the concerts, but like the concert on the train. And I guess maybe that's for the movie they were filming. So, like, he arranged for drums and guitar amps and a Hammond organ to be set up in a car and just the place stocked with booze, food all the time. Like, he goes into detail about the food and how it had to be high quality, not like bologna sandwiches, and that there had to be breakfast available whenever, because these guys were not just gonna be getting up at seven in the morning for breakfast and was very attentive to the needs of everybody. I mean, it seems like a cramped situation when you think of the number of people there and the fact that there was like a few sleeping cars, you know, it doesn't. It doesn't quite seem to add up.
- [24:35]
B
When they leave Toronto, they have a two and a half day train ride. Yeah. Like, it's like not. You know, these are. This is pre, like rock and roll celebrity where it's like all luxury.
- [24:47]
A
Yeah.
- [24:47]
B
But nonetheless, like two and a half days on a train is. That's like. That's a long haul trip for anybody.
- [24:52]
A
Yeah. And so they stocked it up with booze. Now, Bob Weir says that they were new to drinking.
- [24:58]
B
Yes.
- [24:58]
A
Like, they'd been doing. Smoking weed and doing LSD for the last 10 years, but they weren't really into drinking and they all got introduced. Now, Janis Joplin was not new to drinking.
- [25:07]
B
Right. And I don't think Rick Danko was either.
- [25:09]
A
No. And a few other people either.
- [25:12]
B
But it is true that the Dead were. Although, except for Pickpen. Pickpen famously did not like acid and did like alcohol.
- [25:17]
A
Yeah. And so there was a lot of drinking. And so basically they. They drank the place dry. They pulled over, they passed the hat. $800. He said he collected and bought out the contents of a liquor store somewhere in between Winnipeg and Calgary. I'm not sure how. How that translates now, but. Okay, great.
- [25:35]
B
It was in Saskatoon.
- [25:36]
A
Okay. And he also, he tells this story about how, like, as they're getting ready to leave the liquor store, he sees a case of Canadian Club whiskey.
- [25:45]
B
Like a large display bottle.
- [25:46]
A
Right, A display bottle.
- [25:47]
B
And how like, they're like, that's not for sale. It's just for display. And he's like, it's for sale now. Yeah.
- [25:53]
A
If you don't get.
- [25:54]
B
It's the same again.
- [25:54]
A
It's the same story. If you don't get it, I'm gonna send somebody to get it. Well, we got it. And then you see them loading a case of Canadian Club onto the train. It's just like a lot of like. Okay, like what? I'm not even sure why I care whether it was Canadian. Like, okay, you're in Canada. I get it.
- [26:09]
B
Those are like. It's like how you tell the story.
- [26:11]
A
Right?
- [26:12]
B
You know, like.
- [26:13]
A
Exactly.
- [26:13]
B
We didn't get whiskey. We got Canadian Club. We're on a train across Canada.
- [26:17]
A
Yeah. So as a result of that, you get a lot of footage of everybody hanging out on the train, singing songs, telling Jokes and just, you know, vibing.
- [26:25]
B
Which, like, if you like any more than one of these bands. I don't understand how you couldn't love the train footage.
- [26:32]
A
Yeah.
- [26:32]
B
I mean, the train footage is. It's like what. What you imagine of a rock doc. You get to see all the behind the stage footage, these performances where they're just figuring stuff out. Also, it really does seem like Jerry Garcia was just like the star of the Train.
- [26:48]
A
Yeah.
- [26:49]
B
Which makes sense. He's like his, like, folky elements of. Of knowing a million songs and just being able to drop in and play anything. Right.
- [26:57]
A
Like, he's singing gospel songs, he's singing country, he's playing guitar behind people. Like, he's just hanging out. Like, whatever you need this guy to.
- [27:04]
B
Do, he's going to be.
- [27:05]
A
He's going to do. Yeah. He can harmonize. He could do all these things and is chill about the entire vibe.
- [27:11]
B
Yes.
- [27:11]
A
And other people are dropping it out. There's a lot of Janice singing. There's that famous scene with Rick Danko.
- [27:19]
B
Yeah.
- [27:21]
A
Singing Ain't no more Cane with Janice harmonizing.
- [27:24]
B
And Jerry and Bob Weir also playing guitar. And Marmaduke.
- [27:29]
A
Yeah.
- [27:30]
B
John Marmaduke Dawson right over on the side.
- [27:32]
A
Exactly. So again, not mentioned that the New Rise of the Purple Sage were on the tour, but there he is. And, Yeah, I mean, Rick is just plastered.
- [27:44]
B
Absolutely plastered. And, like, Janice is kind of like doting on him.
- [27:47]
A
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- [27:48]
B
At one point, he's like, looks like he's having a tough time. And she puts her arm around him and she says, how you doing, daddy?
- [27:54]
A
Yeah, so you get some very drunken sing alongs. You get some less drunken sing alongs, you get some blues buddy guy and his, you know, his horn section are there jamming. So it's really kind of a, you know, a lot of that. That is really. That flavor is just. I mean, this is probably the only place you're going to get that. It's, you know, it's great.
- [28:15]
B
Yeah. So I'll say also at the end of that. That little jam with Jerry, Janice, Danko, Marmaduke, she says. She says, where are we going next? And they said, we're in Alberta. And she tries. I think what happens. She tries to say, alberta, let your hair hang low. Yeah, the old folk number. And as soon as she starts to say it, Jerry, like, is, like, so thrilled that she has, like, a good deep cut reference to a folk song that he loves.
- [28:46]
A
Oh, yeah.
- [28:47]
B
And he. He, like, points over to her and he starts laughing. And I think she messes up that. This name. So they laugh together for a second, and then he gets real serious and they isolate the. The audio perfectly just for him to say, janice, I loved you since the day I saw you. And now, you know.
- [29:05]
A
Yeah. And it's beautiful because she would be dead a few months later.
- [29:10]
B
Yes, she. Yes. I mean, it's. It's a pivotal point in a lot of these people's careers.
- [29:14]
A
Yeah.
- [29:14]
B
She dies two months later. The Dead have recorded. And I, you know, I think within a couple weeks of release on either side of Working Man's Dead.
- [29:25]
A
Right.
- [29:26]
B
They had just started performing the Working Man's Dead and American Beauty albums around this time.
- [29:32]
A
Right.
- [29:33]
B
The band are, like, now celebrities, and they're, like, in the middle of their, like, first extended successful touring period, right? As. As the band, the Flying Burrito Brothers, had just lost grandparents, Right.
- [29:49]
A
So they were trying to figure out if they're going to be a going concern, which. Not really.
- [29:52]
B
Yes.
- [29:52]
A
And. But the Eagles were about to happen.
- [29:55]
B
And then, yeah, Bernie Laden goes over to the Eagles. Right. So it's, you know, it's. It's really interesting. I. I should also mention, for a Ultima connection, we get an entire performance of New Speedway Boogie here.
- [30:08]
A
Right, right, right. So, yeah, I think maybe let's talk about the music, because other than that, you know, other than Ken Walker, I mean, the Talking Heads don't jump out that much in this movie. I. I just don't think, like, it's interesting. None of the music critics, they say a thing here or there, but it doesn't stand out to me. I can't remember.
- [30:30]
B
There's a one music critic says Woodstock was for the fans. Festival Express was for the bands.
- [30:36]
A
Okay, sure.
- [30:36]
B
It's a good line.
- [30:38]
A
Yeah, it's all right. But there's.
- [30:40]
B
It's not like Kenny Gradney's kind of funny. Kenny Gradney's got some. Some good lines. He says. He says, you know, you got a bunch of crazy people on a. On a train. And they say, just try to have a good time. Wasn't going to be a problem.
- [30:55]
A
Right?
- [30:56]
B
Was not going to be a problem.
- [30:57]
A
Yeah. I mean, buddy guy talks very fondly.
- [30:59]
B
About it and about how, like, cherishes the memories of being. Having that time with Jerry and Janice.
- [31:06]
A
Yeah. And. And how, like, you know, he would be, like, tired because he just couldn't do this 24 hours a day, and he would go to his bunk and, like, sleep for an hour and then, like, get back up and get back at it because he just didn't want to miss the jam.
- [31:19]
B
Yeah, yeah. He just had full fomo.
- [31:21]
A
Yeah, yeah, exactly. So, like, you don't really see any drugs happening.
- [31:26]
B
Now, Bob says that he at one point looked into the Canadian club bottle and there's a bunch of acid tabs.
- [31:32]
A
That's right. That's true. He does say that it was dosed.
- [31:34]
B
Yes.
- [31:34]
A
The famous.
- [31:36]
B
The Dead were dosing everyone at this period. Sure.
- [31:38]
A
Okay. But.
- [31:40]
B
But no, it doesn't look like anybody's nodding off or smoking even. Yeah, yeah.
- [31:46]
A
It's just a lot of booze.
- [31:47]
B
Right.
- [31:49]
A
So, yeah. And then, I mean, the movie is a lot of music. A lot of music. There's a part of me that says this is a concert film and therefore we should just turn off the tape right now.
- [31:59]
B
I was wondering if you were going to say that and I was prepared with a hot take on the matter. Well, this is exactly the ratio of rock to doc that I want in my rock. This is it. This is the precise rock to dock ratio I'm looking for. Okay? Because, look, I think the music is so good, and as you say, that maybe, maybe none of these talking heads jump off the. Off the screen, but Ken Walker's telling good stories. Everybody's telling really good stories. The footage on the train, which is not. Not concert footage.
- [32:36]
A
No, no, no.
- [32:37]
B
Is also good. The whole package, all of that together, is like the best hang.
- [32:42]
A
Yeah, this.
- [32:43]
B
I mean, this. This is the best hanging out movie you could. You could get, I think.
- [32:46]
A
Right? Yeah. And it's interspersed with concert footage. And it is full performance. It's like you get a whole song basically, you know, every couple minutes, like, boom, here's the band, you know, doing Slipping Inside, and here's, you know, the Dead.
- [33:00]
B
You know, like, we get like three full band performances. We get like three, maybe four full Dead performances. To Janice. Yeah, buddy guy.
- [33:09]
A
Yeah, it's definitely clear, like you said, that, like, the Dead were not the headliner. They weren't that, you know, they weren't commercially as big of a deal at the time. But because this movie was so basically like, the movie didn't make any money. I mean, the tour didn't make any money. This footage was basically shelved. Then 30 years later, they just dug it up and restored it and put this. Put this movie together.
- [33:32]
B
So this was the first time you saw this movie?
- [33:34]
A
This was the first time I saw it. Yeah. I've seen it twice this week.
- [33:36]
B
And did you. Do you recall when it came out?
- [33:39]
A
Yeah, yeah, I remember it. And I was like, that looks Cool. I should check that out.
- [33:42]
B
And then just didn't have.
- [33:43]
A
Twenty years later, I found other things to do.
- [33:45]
B
Yeah, it was. So this movie, as far as, like, rock doc influences go, this is near the top of my list. I bought the DVD of this when I was in college, and this was on in my college dorm now.
- [33:58]
A
Does the dvd. Did the DVD have other stuff?
- [34:00]
B
They had a lot more performances.
- [34:04]
A
Oh, okay.
- [34:04]
B
There was a few other stories, but there was a second disc of, like, another hour and a half of more performances.
- [34:11]
A
I mean, that sounds killer.
- [34:12]
B
Yeah, it's awesome.
- [34:13]
A
It's Amazon prime where I watch this. Please.
- [34:16]
B
Yeah.
- [34:18]
A
Why can't we get that?
- [34:19]
B
All these bonus features that were jammed onto DVDs that made people, like, rush to Best Buy for Black Friday. The streamers have no interest in that.
- [34:28]
A
Criterion Collection is the only one that does the bonus features. It seems, like, kind of dumb. Like, it seems like there's nothing preventing Amazon Prime. Maybe it's a rights issue. I don't know. But, like, you know, it's not like they don't have the server space. They literally own all the servers.
- [34:44]
B
Yeah, it's your space.
- [34:46]
A
It's aws, guys. You can make it happen.
- [34:49]
B
Yeah. So, yeah, I don't know. I think there's. There are long performances, and they're very interested in documenting the music of the Festival Express. But the whole story of the Train is clearly, to me, enough to qualify it as a rock talk.
- [35:10]
A
Right. Fair enough. It's definitely on the edge. No, no, no, no. So, okay, so performances.
- [35:19]
B
Yeah. Well, so I want to say performance, early performance. That absolutely stands out to me. When they get the free concert set up in Toronto, right? And the Dead take the stage on a little flatbed truck, and there's. It's. You're coming off of all this tension, all this violence, chaos in front of the festival. Jerry's getting shouted down when he's trying to tell him. And then they. They play. They go over and they play Friend of the Devil.
- [35:48]
A
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Which was like, maybe. Maybe none of these people had ever heard this song.
- [35:53]
B
Probably most people hadn't. I mean, so the dead, in spring 1970, they go on tour. And throughout that tour, their first set every night would be a full acoustic set, right? And they would play these songs, which you hear a lot of in this movie, because this. This movie comes right on the heels of that spring, spring 70 tour. Then new writers of Purple Sage would play a set, and then the Dead would come out and play their psychedelic Full Dark Star.
- [36:21]
A
So yeah. So.
- [36:22]
B
But. So Friend of the Devil's not. Not old by any. It's not even a year old at this point and has only been played a handful of times.
- [36:29]
A
Right. Unless you happen to have been at one of those concerts.
- [36:31]
B
Yeah.
- [36:32]
A
Because there wasn't really like too much tape trading and bootlegging happening.
- [36:35]
B
Not in like real time, like.
- [36:37]
A
Right, right, exactly. It's not like today where it's like, oh, some band played a new song last night. It's on Instagram that second.
- [36:44]
B
But there's. There's a guy. There's a clip of a guy during that part where they're, they're going through the whole crowd and Friend of the Devil's on. It's a fantastic version of it. And there's this mutton chopped, having long hair.
- [36:57]
A
Yeah.
- [36:57]
B
Sitting Indian style. And it's like he, he kind of not. He's dancing a little bit and he, he nods to himself and then this like wry smile comes across his face with that music coming off of the. The tension from the, the riot that had preceded it is, is. It is a warm blanket for me. That scene specifically, I have like a genuine reaction to like a, like a muscle memory. Like it's, it's like, like a familiar smell.
- [37:29]
A
Yeah.
- [37:29]
B
When I see that clip every time I watch this movie, you're on that guy's level. It reminds me what, what it most reminds me of is. Is in. Is the tiny dancer scene in Almost Famous.
- [37:40]
A
Yeah.
- [37:40]
B
When, when the guys finally start like grabbing Russell's shoulders and, and, and he smiles and, and like looks around and like com music completely cuts the tension. That is the, the Friend of the Devil performance in this movie.
- [37:54]
A
It's awesome. There are some. I mean, there's. The dad's performances are all great. I mean, you know, you're not going to get, you know, an 18 minute. The other one or something. You know what I mean? It's like you're not gonna get. If you're a serious Deadhead, you're not gonna get a long jam. Like this is mostly like Don't Use Me in Casey Jones, you know, shorter, you know, songs. Because a. They're playing a festival, they didn't probably have that much time. I don't know their set list, but they probably didn't got to do a lot of jams. And also, you know, it's a 90 minute movie or whatever and they're, you know, one of many performances in the movie.
- [38:31]
B
And this is dead in the summer of 1970. Like that's what they're doing right now.
- [38:34]
A
Yeah.
- [38:35]
B
You know, that's what they're more excited about. And if you were. If you have that footage, like, that's. That's the gold. That's the gold. In the summer of 1970 is seeing all the early performances of the Working Man's Dead and An American Beauty songs. Right.
- [38:49]
A
The band. I mean, you get slipping in a.
- [38:52]
B
Slide in Sweet Robbie solo in this.
- [38:55]
A
So good.
- [38:56]
B
Absolutely. All over the.
- [38:57]
A
Really unhinged.
- [38:58]
B
Yes.
- [38:59]
A
Yeah, really. Robbie can be a little precise, but this is. He is off the chain.
- [39:03]
B
Yes. And Richard. Richard Manuel in that slippin aside and looks like energetic dialed in. He's all over the keys. It's an absolutely fantastic performance that comes back to back with Fred of the Devil.
- [39:19]
A
It's so good.
- [39:19]
B
At that point, it's just like, man, this movie f and rules.
- [39:22]
A
Later, you see the band doing the famous Jimmy Page the Edge, Jack White song the Wait, which you may have heard that Davis ripped off from Jimmy Page the Edge.
- [39:32]
B
And Jack White is the fourth performance of the Weight. This season. We have four the Weight appearances.
- [39:39]
A
Okay. Rank the Weight performances that we've seen.
- [39:42]
B
This is number one. This is the. This is the best one.
- [39:44]
A
Better than the. Maybe it's the last waltz one.
- [39:47]
B
Oh, yeah, I'm sorry. I take back that. Okay. The Staples singles. Staples singles at the centers in Lost Waltz and then this.
- [39:53]
A
Right.
- [39:53]
B
And then Mavis's.
- [39:55]
A
And then Mavis Elderly Mavis's performance in the Mavis documentary.
- [39:58]
B
And then the worst one. And then way down at the bottom Loud.
- [40:02]
A
The grand finale to it, Mike.
- [40:05]
B
Yes.
- [40:06]
A
Okay. What. What other forms of stand out?
- [40:10]
B
Well, so we get like, a little, like, Buddy Guy, just, like blues vamping on the train.
- [40:16]
A
Money. That. Oh, yeah, yeah.
- [40:17]
B
Before. Before his performance of Money, which is great. So let's see. Oh, the. The Mashmakan instrumental, which. Which they first set to the. The train taking off. And the. It's like this driving instrumental solo in the beginning.
- [40:32]
A
Yeah.
- [40:34]
B
That goes perfect with the. With a. A train coming across the countryside.
- [40:39]
A
Yeah.
- [40:40]
B
And then makes me, like, actually really interested to check them out and listen a little bit more of their music.
- [40:46]
A
Yeah. Check out Mashmacon, everybody, and let us know.
- [40:50]
B
Then you get a Flying Burrito Brothers performance, which Lazy day.
- [40:54]
A
Yeah, it's fine.
- [40:55]
B
It's. It's fine.
- [40:56]
A
At best, it's a Graham song without Graham. It's just not quite. I mean, you get his weird chord changes in there, and the song's great, but, like, it's. You know, I mean, it's not that great. Of the lyrics aren't great. It's just, you know, kind of an interesting construction, but it doesn't. It's like that kind of that that band is. It's at. It's on its last legs at that point.
- [41:16]
B
And I mean, I might be mistaken here. Flying Burrito Brothers, Grand Parsons Heads may absolutely be furious about this, but they don't exactly have a long history of, like, being a successful live band.
- [41:31]
A
Well, I don't know. Okay, we can. We can table that one.
- [41:34]
B
Okay, fair enough. But so then, so then we get the weight.
- [41:38]
A
Yeah, sure.
- [41:40]
B
Which is great.
- [41:41]
A
Yeah, of course.
- [41:42]
B
Lavon Rippon.
- [41:43]
A
Yeah.
- [41:45]
B
So, Janice. Let's talk about Janice first. First lengthy appearance. How do you feel about Janice? I knew it. I absolutely knew it. I. It. This occurred to me as soon as I was watching Janice. I was like, I would bet anything that David does not like Janice. You can't even look at me right now. That is so predictable. Unbelievable.
- [42:08]
A
I said nothing.
- [42:08]
B
All right, go ahead, say it.
- [42:10]
A
I.
- [42:11]
B
What do you.
- [42:12]
A
What I'm going to.
- [42:14]
B
I'm only.
- [42:15]
A
This is going to be a cross examination. I'm only answering yes or no questions.
- [42:20]
B
You tell me.
- [42:20]
A
Freeform.
- [42:21]
B
How do you feel about Janis Joplin? The musician, the figure icon?
- [42:28]
A
I think her death was a great tragedy. I think she seems like a lovely person. Interesting historical figure. You know, I've never particularly been a fan of her music, per se. I mean, look, okay, she does two real performances in this movie. Live performances, like, on stage. And the problem with Janice, for me is that, like, she's always at 11. Like, it just never ends. There's no real dynamics. Like she's, you know, it's just blasting away the entire time. It just doesn't do it for me. What like. And I started watching this, and here's Janice, who I've never been a fan of, and I'm like, okay, cool. Here's a good opportunity for me to, like, get down with Janis Joplin. I don't like not liking things. Like, that's not like, I'm not trying to sit here and have a bad time when she was on the train, kind of harmonizing. You get a little bit of that with Danko and a few other points. Just either singing more quietly or harmonizing. Like, that works for me. I'm like, cool that I, like, I could totally see her charisma and her talent. I mean, you know, her commitment to the music and everything. Great. When she's on stage and it's just like blasting away. It's Like, I don't. It does not. It's not an enjoyable sound for me to hear.
- [43:57]
B
Interesting. Do you think, because the Dead before this period in the 68, say, 68 dead, we're sort of just like a party band. Right, right.
- [44:11]
A
You know, sure.
- [44:12]
B
And they were covering, you know, dancing in the Streets and playing a lot of blues numbers and stuff like that. Right.
- [44:20]
A
Pig Pen stuff.
- [44:21]
B
Pig Pen stuff. Right.
- [44:22]
A
Yeah.
- [44:22]
B
Love Light. Did I think the. The magic of what a lot of people like about the dead and 70s dead isn't always there during that period, but it sure seems like it would be a fun time. Right?
- [44:39]
A
Yeah, sure.
- [44:39]
B
Like a good, boozy, bluesy rock show.
- [44:44]
A
Okay.
- [44:45]
B
Does Janice not strike that chord for you at the very least?
- [44:50]
A
I mean, I. I'm convinced that people are having a good time.
- [44:55]
B
Okay.
- [44:56]
A
Enjoying her concert, and I don't wish that anybody did not have a good time.
- [45:00]
B
Yeah.
- [45:01]
A
If that's. You're asking me, but like, am I going to like, hop on YouTube now and try to watch some Janice Live clips or whatever? No, that's not for me.
- [45:11]
B
Not for you? Yeah, that's fine. Well, so let's. So she.
- [45:16]
A
She's not Bob Marley. I mean, come on, she's not that bad. No. I don't know.
- [45:21]
B
These two big revelations of season two, Bob Harley and Janis Joplin are on your list.
- [45:26]
A
This is why you're an award winning journalist?
- [45:30]
B
Because I steer clear of these sensitive matters?
- [45:32]
A
No, because you extracted from me the hot takes that I was sort of trying to. I was like, can I steer? Can I get through this whole podcast without being interrogated about my Janis Joplin non. Fandom and. No, you just sniffed it out.
- [45:51]
B
To be fair, I sniffed it out last night when I was rewatching this movie.
- [45:54]
A
I didn't even have to be in.
- [45:55]
B
The room to be in the room. I just knew you weren't gonna like it. Okay, all right, well, so let's talk then in her vein in this. This late 60s psychedelic style. Ian and Sylvia.
- [46:10]
A
Sure.
- [46:12]
B
Sylvia's singing. Not really Janice. More Grace slickish in a lot of ways. How do you feel about that? They sing like Cece Ryder with a bunch of sit ins up there. Y.
- [46:22]
A
It's fine, it's fine. It's kind of like a. You know, it's the type of thing.
- [46:26]
B
You expect to see at a festival where it's like, it's kind of a mess, but. Hey, what are you doing? You've got four people up there who probably never played the song together, and it's at least novel to see them all up there together.
- [46:36]
A
I'm not, you know, an Ian. Ian and Sylvia head.
- [46:39]
B
No, me neither.
- [46:41]
A
I don't begrudge them anything. They probably have some good music that I need to discover and would get, you know, benefit from discovering. Sylvia is interviewed in this movie, and she's, you know, has nice things to say. The performance is fine. You know, it's not really a knock on her, per se, that she's got kind of a bunch of random hodgepodge of musicians behind her kind of, you know, banging away. Yeah, but it's fine. Yeah, it's. It was enjoyable.
- [47:08]
B
Yeah. That's. I think that's a fun. And then. And then let's do Buddy Guy.
- [47:13]
A
Yeah.
- [47:13]
B
So Buddy Guy has, I think, one of the better performances here.
- [47:17]
A
Well, sure. Yes. Buddy Guy. I mean, you know, it's not a smooth vocal performance from him.
- [47:23]
B
I mean, you.
- [47:23]
A
This is like.
- [47:24]
B
But affected, right?
- [47:25]
A
Yeah, yeah. So this is the finale of his set. He's doing money. That's what I want. You know, he's got the whole horn section there. I mean, the entire time that he's singing, he is, like, really at a falsetto screech.
- [47:37]
B
Yeah.
- [47:37]
A
When he could sing, you know, in a much smoother manner than that. But he was just blasting out. Maybe it was the end of the set. He was just letting it rip. I don't know. But it's rocks. And then his guitar playing, of course, shreds.
- [47:50]
B
Absolutely shreds.
- [47:51]
A
He is the, you know, innovator of having a very long guitar chord and then walking into the crowd and just jamming with the crowd around him. He's been doing that forever, and he does that in this, which is great. And I don't know why people don't do that still. But, yeah, he just. He's. It's his thing.
- [48:08]
B
I wonder how old he was during this. He looks very young. Yeah.
- [48:13]
A
I'm guessing in his early 20s.
- [48:15]
B
Early 20s. I mean, I guess they all were probably.
- [48:17]
A
I mean, that's 50 years. 52 years ago. And he's. I don't know. I think he's like, 80. Yeah, I think he's close to 80. So, yeah. 20s. No, because he had. Yeah, he couldn't have been early 20s because he had recordings, like in the kind of early to mid-60s. I mean, he really was an inspiration to Jimi Hendrix.
- [48:36]
B
Yeah.
- [48:37]
A
Like. And in fact, Buddy Guy tells a story, not in this movie, but one time I. Tom. Clip of him or whatever, telling a story where, like, he. He must have Kids at the time and, you know, who are old enough to know what was going on. So, you know, he basically like, Jimi Hendrix was on tv, you know, doing his thing, like playing the guitar behind his dad and doing all these tricks. And the kids are like, oh, this is great. This is incredible. And Buddy's like, well, I kind of did that. I showed him how to do that stuff. And they're like, really? You know what I mean? Like, you know, and he wasn't like really bragging about it. You know, he always comes off like, you know, humble in his own way.
- [49:11]
B
Comes up very humble in his talking head segments. Here he always comes like, you would. You would be forgiven if you just listened to his interview, not realizing that he is a legend himself.
- [49:22]
A
Yeah, yeah, yeah, sure.
- [49:24]
B
He's spends the whole time talking about how cool it was to be around these other legends.
- [49:29]
A
Right. I mean, he's no Mashmakan, but. But yeah, no, I mean, he just. He rips.
- [49:37]
B
So I just looked this up. Buddy guy was 34 at this point.
- [49:40]
A
Really? So he's in his late 80s now.
- [49:42]
B
Yeah, he was born in 1936. Yeah.
- [49:44]
A
Okay, so that's why he had kids who were old enough to be watching in the late or late mid to late 60s, Jimi Hendrix on TV and having this conversation with him.
- [49:50]
B
Yeah.
- [49:50]
A
Okay, so Sean Ana. Okay, so Sean Ana. First of all, you don't get any of Shannon. The only thing you get is no.
- [50:02]
B
Kant is the performance.
- [50:04]
A
One performance. They don't seem to be on the train at all or whatever. Yeah, but famously they're at Woodstock now. I have a lot of affection for Shana. I know they're kind of a butt of a joke, but they had a TV show from 1977 to 1981. I looked it up. So I must have been really young at the time. I was born in 76, but I remember watching that TV show with my mom and my mom loves doo wop. And I mean, I remember it specifically. Like, I remember Bowser and his sign off and the whole thing. And yeah, like, I mean, and the crowd is really enjoying it. I mean, it is a very cheesy performance of like, rock and roll is here to stay, not particularly on key. And what you get is the guys like all dressed up like 50s Brooklyn Greasers performing this doo wop song, you know, with three dancers in like the, the, the, the. The suit, the gold lame suit that Elvis is wearing on the COVID of the like 50 million Elvis fans can't be Wrong, you know, greatest hits record. And they are just doing the. The craziest cornball dances behind, you know, rock and roll is here to stay. And, you know, it is. It's super cheesy, but the crowd is loving it.
- [51:28]
B
It is super cheesy. So when I first. When I saw this for the first time, this movie, this was my introduction to Shannon.
- [51:36]
A
Yeah. Okay. You were previously a Shanana head.
- [51:39]
B
I didn't even know that there was a band called Shanana.
- [51:42]
A
Okay.
- [51:42]
B
And I was so confused. Now I was just like, what?
- [51:47]
A
They're not giving you any context for Shannon in this movie.
- [51:49]
B
They just say, boom. And now Shanana. Yeah. And then they come out and they do it. And it is spirited. It is well received. It's clearly all intentional.
- [51:59]
A
Yeah.
- [52:00]
B
And so I was like, boy, there's like, either levels of irony here that I can't quite process on my own, or I missed some sort of, like,'50s revival that was happening at this point.
- [52:16]
A
Yeah.
- [52:18]
B
And it's kind of a little bit of both.
- [52:20]
A
Yeah. Yeah.
- [52:21]
B
But so, like, luckily, when I saw this movie is a healthy Internet by that point, I was able to. To just go answer that question. That's the type of thing. If you had, like, encountered that in 1991 and be like, well, hopefully you. One of your friends has an older brother who's willing to school you on this, because otherwise you just have to wait until you meet the right person to explain it to you.
- [52:42]
A
Right.
- [52:42]
B
But luckily I had the Internet, so I was at the bottom of it quickly.
- [52:45]
A
But there was a 50 years revival happening at the time. I mean, Sean and I was there. There were kind of these revival tours where these bands that doo wop groups and so forth that had fallen out of favor were now kind of like picking up steam. American graffiti came out 72. So that's another big moment in this. It's obviously before Happy Days, but that's coming down. That's coming along two years later.
- [53:06]
B
Right.
- [53:07]
A
And it was a thing, in fact, like, little Steven Miami, Steve Van Zant from the E Street Band sort of cut his teeth. I mean, he grew up with Bruce in the 60s playing in these bands together around the Jersey Shore. And then he went off and he was the guitar player for some of these 50s bands who were doing these kind of big tours, revival tours going around the country as these reviews. So that was definitely a commercially viable thing at the time. And you got to remember, okay, so the people at these festivals, you know, express concerts, they're like 19, 20. Right. They're like college students, more or less the audience Right. So the music that Sean and I was performing is, like, from, you know, 59.
- [53:51]
B
Yeah.
- [53:51]
A
60, 58.
- [53:53]
B
Like, it's like they have childhood memories.
- [53:54]
A
Yeah. It's the music that was popular when you were 8, 9, 10 years old, dancing with your friends or the jukebox or whatever. Like, it's that nostalgia factor, you know? Like, I don't know, kids today listening to some, you know, whatever song that was popular in 2011. You know, it's like the same exact kind of thing that was just catching at the time. And, you know, all the. You know, the Dead and all those other bands, like, they all love. You know, they're all playing Chuck Berry and those Buddy Holly and those kind of tunes. So it's not that they're a million miles away. Even though if you're watching this movie, you might be like, what is happening here? How does this relate to, like, the cool, you know, bands that are critically acclaimed, you know, the. Janis Joplin's, the. You know, the. The band, the Dayton, the Dead. I mean, it sort of was all of a piece at the time.
- [54:41]
B
Yeah. Yeah. It's. And it fits in well because at the very least, it shows you the sense that you get during any good festival, which is you're seeing lots of different types of music.
- [54:56]
A
Yeah. And you're like, oh, that's interesting.
- [54:58]
B
Oh, that's interesting. What the hell that's going. I can sit here, stand here for 40 minutes before I need to go to the restroom.
- [55:02]
A
Yeah. And by the way, you see Jerry watching Sean and I and loving it.
- [55:06]
B
Yes. Yeah.
- [55:07]
A
He is having a good time.
- [55:08]
B
And that. That tracks completely. Jerry would, like, make time to go see that and be into it.
- [55:13]
A
Yeah. But now it just looks super like Broadway cheeseball.
- [55:16]
B
Whatever.
- [55:16]
A
Yeah. Any other performances, anything else pops out of you?
- [55:21]
B
Those are the big ones. I. You know, I'm very thankful for the. The Dead performances here.
- [55:29]
A
Really?
- [55:29]
B
As good of footage as you get from. From them in this time period.
- [55:32]
A
You think that's the best stuff? Or is it the band, I think. Or Janice? I don't know. What's your take on Janice? You obviously like her more than I do.
- [55:39]
B
I mean, I'm not.
- [55:41]
A
Maybe not.
- [55:41]
B
I don't, like, go deep on Janice's catalog or anything, but I like, like everything I've ever heard from Janice, basically. And I like the. And I think the performances here are really good.
- [55:51]
A
The band.
- [55:52]
B
I mean, the band is tricky because, like, Last Waltz exists.
- [55:55]
A
Well, sure.
- [55:56]
B
You know, like, this is like primo. Primo Dead performance footage.
- [56:04]
A
Yeah.
- [56:05]
B
Like, as good as it gets.
- [56:06]
A
Yeah, sure. But I mean, for the band, I mean, this is like them in their prime. Like, this is them in their end, obviously, and you've got them performing with all kinds of other musicians so forth. But here, it's just like, this is what you would have seen, you know, in 1970, like.
- [56:20]
B
Yeah.
- [56:20]
A
And, I mean, if you were going to go. If I was going to give you a time machine and say, you can go see the band at any time, I would rather. You can't go to the Last Waltz.
- [56:27]
B
Yeah, yeah.
- [56:27]
A
This is what you want to see.
- [56:28]
B
This is what you would see. That's true. And, like, Richard is in good health and good spirits here. Right. Danko is, like, singing really well.
- [56:37]
A
Yeah. On stage.
- [56:38]
B
On stage. Yeah, exactly. Not great. Not doing great on the train there. And Robbie's fretting. One thought occurred to me. Is there any chance. Any chance that Robbie Robertson was on that train?
- [56:53]
A
Oh, interesting. You never see him on the train.
- [56:56]
B
Just doesn't seem like something.
- [56:58]
A
You really only see Danko.
- [56:59]
B
I mean, Danko is the only member of the band that you see on the train that I'm aware of. Yeah, right.
- [57:03]
A
Like, I mean, you don't see Garth. You don't see any of them. That's interesting. You don't even see Levon. I feel like he would have been hanging out.
- [57:07]
B
You would think Levon would like the train.
- [57:09]
A
Yeah, but again, like, it's kind of like a cramped train car where this little. This camera is, like, filming. That's kind of whatever it captures. So you don't. Yeah, there's a lot of people you don't see.
- [57:17]
B
That's true.
- [57:17]
A
Most of the dead you never see on the train.
- [57:19]
B
Well, it seems like Mickey Hart was really hanging out a lot on the train.
- [57:24]
A
No surprise there.
- [57:25]
B
And it seems like Bobby and Jerry were really hanging out on the train. Now, Phil talks about it, but we don't really. If I'm not mistaken, we don't see any of Phil on the train.
- [57:33]
A
Yeah. You don't see pig. There's a lot of people you don't see.
- [57:36]
B
Yeah. You know, but knowing what you know about Robbie Robertson, was he on the train?
- [57:41]
A
I don't know. I feel like Robbie.
- [57:43]
B
I bet.
- [57:43]
A
I bet Robbie had his own train car behind him.
- [57:45]
B
I bet Robbie and his wife were driving with their kid.
- [57:48]
A
Yeah, that's true. Yeah, it's Canada. Yeah, it's probably. I mean, because Sean and Nas says, like, they got to catch a plane. Yeah. So that. So that's definitely somebody who like, you know, flew in and out and did a show and was, you know, missed the whole train vibe.
- [58:03]
B
Yeah.
- [58:03]
A
Much to their eternal regret, I'm sure.
- [58:05]
B
That, you know, when they bring out the festival organizers to thank them, Jerry and Janice come out. I mean, like, Jerry.
- [58:11]
A
Oh, yeah. That's a cool scene at the end.
- [58:13]
B
Cool scene at the end in.
- [58:14]
A
In King Calgary, the last show.
- [58:16]
B
Yes. They.
- [58:16]
A
They give them a train.
- [58:18]
B
They give them a train that they've all signed the base of.
- [58:20]
A
Right.
- [58:21]
B
And Janice, I can't tell if it's.
- [58:22]
A
An HO scale train or an N scale. As a. As a model railroad nerd.
- [58:29]
B
Yes.
- [58:30]
A
A person in the model railroad industry.
- [58:32]
B
How much. As a person in the model railroad industry, how much would you pay for that train? The one that they gave to Ken Walker as a gift? How much would you pay for that item?
- [58:40]
A
If I could display that train at our museum.
- [58:43]
B
Yeah. It would be.
- [58:45]
A
I don't know, a lot. But I want it. I want to know. I should track it down. Somebody's got to know. I bet one of my employees knows where that train is. We'll get back to you people.
- [58:53]
B
All right. So Janice, so that they also give. She. She personally gives them a case of tequila.
- [59:00]
A
Yeah.
- [59:00]
B
And she says the trains for remembering. The tequila's for continuing, man.
- [59:06]
A
Which is so good.
- [59:07]
B
The trains for remembering, man. The tequila's for continuing, man.
- [59:11]
A
I mean, Janice is a cool Hank. Yeah.
- [59:14]
B
Oh, she seems like the best hag.
- [59:16]
A
Yeah.
- [59:16]
B
I mean, she says about them, she's like, I finally met somebody who can throw a better party than I can.
- [59:21]
A
That's what I'm saying. Ken Walker. Like, people just love the guy.
- [59:24]
B
Yes. And I mean, like, again, for Jerry to be deputized to, like, come up and do that, it's like.
- [59:31]
A
Yeah, it's.
- [59:32]
B
It's awesome. It's great. It's great that Jerry seemed to be like, the mayor of this. Of this train or whatever. And I can understand why he would be so fun to hang out with. And he looks like he's really lending a lot to the vibe.
- [59:45]
A
Yeah.
- [59:45]
B
Which all makes sense to me. But it just, like, making himself the front man in that way seems so out of character.
- [59:52]
A
Yeah, yeah. It's just. He was feeling the vibe so much. Yeah, it was beautiful.
- [59:57]
B
We should talk about the director a little bit. Bob Smeaton.
- [59:59]
A
Okay. No, I did no research.
- [60:02]
B
This man is like a working rock doc guy.
- [60:07]
A
Okay. Like, we should get this.
- [60:08]
B
We should probably get this guy.
- [60:10]
A
Okay, so Smeaton heads.
- [60:12]
B
Smeaton heads.
- [60:13]
A
Track this guy down. And get him on.
- [60:14]
B
He has done, like dozen of made for TV rock documentaries.
- [60:22]
A
Hit me with some good ones.
- [60:23]
B
Well, so he's done a lot of Jimi Hendrix. He seems to have mostly dedicated his career to Jimi Hendrix.
- [60:29]
A
Okay. He did the Experience Hendrix.
- [60:31]
B
Did you do that?
- [60:32]
A
That was an older one.
- [60:33]
B
He did 1999 Hendrix, Band of Gypsies. Sure. He did. In 2002, Jimi Hendrix on the Dick Cavett Show. He did. He did seven episodes of Classic Albums. Ooh, good.
- [60:48]
A
Tell me. He did Steely Dan, Asia, the best one of them all.
- [60:51]
B
I would love. I. I'm. It's a little complicated to see.
- [60:54]
A
Okay.
- [60:55]
B
He did Jimi Hendrix. Voodoo Child.
- [60:57]
A
Sure. Ok.
- [60:59]
B
I've seen that. That was on Netflix for a while.
- [61:02]
A
Okay.
- [61:02]
B
He did Hendrix 70 live at Woodstock. He did Jimi Hendrix, the Road to Woodstock.
- [61:09]
A
Okay. Hendrix is well documented.
- [61:12]
B
Yeah. So he's done a lot of that. He did an episode of the Beatles Anthology.
- [61:17]
A
Sure.
- [61:18]
B
He did a documentary on Pink Floyd behind the wall in 2000. He did Elton John's Story. He did the Making of the Beatles. First US visit in 2004.
- [61:30]
A
I've not even heard of most of these.
- [61:32]
B
He did a Spice Girls TV movie documentary in 2007.
- [61:37]
A
Okay. A little late to the game.
- [61:39]
B
2008, he did a documentary on the Roxy Music story.
- [61:42]
A
Sure. Roxy Music touring again.
- [61:44]
B
Yes. Saw that. He did Mark Knopfler A Life in songs in 2011.
- [61:51]
A
Huh.
- [61:52]
B
This is like.
- [61:53]
A
This is quite a roster.
- [61:55]
B
Quite. I mean, this is one of our. This is like one of our guys.
- [61:59]
A
Come on.
- [62:00]
B
Bob Smeaton. And also, I mean, truly Festival Express. Formative in my life.
- [62:05]
A
We've been sleeping on Bob Smeaton, everybody.
- [62:07]
B
Yeah.
- [62:08]
A
If you're listening to this and you've not gotten down with some Bob Smeaton content, it's time.
- [62:13]
B
Yeah.
- [62:14]
A
Get into it.
- [62:15]
B
Kudos to the producers of Festival Express. They reached out to the right guy. Yeah.
- [62:20]
A
They're like the only man. I don't want Scorsese. Yeah. I don't want Peter Bogdanovich. I don't want Ron Howard. I want Smeaton.
- [62:29]
B
It's. It's very vindicating to me that he got in, saw all this footage and was like, the Dead, Jerry. This is the heart of this movie.
- [62:37]
A
This is it. And Shawna now, I mean.
- [62:40]
B
I mean, honestly, I have to say, like, this is sort of low key. A Grateful Dead movie.
- [62:46]
A
I'm not even sure. Low key?
- [62:47]
B
Yeah.
- [62:47]
A
Medium key.
- [62:48]
B
Yeah. I mean, it's like you get. Maybe Bob Weir might be the most prevalent talking head. He's he's used a lot.
- [63:00]
A
Sure.
- [63:01]
B
Jerry's like the most prevalent piece of the archival footage they use. And I think probably screen time of actual performances. The Dead have to lead the way.
- [63:12]
A
Yeah. If you like Andrew Keats, enjoy the Grateful Dead, this is a movie you would enjoy. Yeah, I think that's what we're learning here.
- [63:18]
B
It's great. It's great. But they don't tell you. They're not. There's no, like, oh, here's what was going on with the Dead at the time. Here's what was going on with the band. No real context about any of these musicians.
- [63:27]
A
If you don't know.
- [63:28]
B
Yeah. You can figure that out.
- [63:29]
A
If you don't really know what some of these people look like, you're not gonna, you know, I mean, you're gonna have to.
- [63:34]
B
Yeah. They don't interrupt and say, like, Marmaduke right here.
- [63:37]
A
Exactly. Yeah. No, they expect you to either figure it out or just go with the flow.
- [63:41]
B
Yeah, well, because it doesn't matter. You don't need it. They're all musicians. They're on the train, they're jamming. It's pretty self explanatory.
- [63:48]
A
Right. If you're ahead and you're like, that's Rick Danko. Okay, cool. If not, it's just a dude singing with Janis Joplin. You're having a good time.
- [63:54]
B
Right.
- [63:55]
A
Okay. Andy.
- [63:57]
B
Yes.
- [63:58]
A
Somebody's not necessarily.
- [64:00]
B
Yes.
- [64:00]
A
Somebody's not a Shanan head. Do you recommend this movie as an entertaining evening, something to watch?
- [64:06]
B
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. I mean, if you don't like. If you don't like rock and roll, this is going to be a tough hang for you.
- [64:12]
A
If you don't like rock docks.
- [64:14]
B
But. But otherwise. Yeah, I like. I think this is. Like I said, the rock to dock ratio here is just exquisite.
- [64:24]
A
Yeah. I think, as always, I always want more of everything.
- [64:27]
B
Yeah.
- [64:28]
A
Because I'm just short movie.
- [64:29]
B
So it's a short movie.
- [64:31]
A
Yeah, it's 90 minutes. And there's a lot of that is music, which is great. So you just get a lot of it is either music or just footage on the train. So you don't get a lot of context and narrative. Again, there's the stories about the drama at the shows and a few other, you know, cool anecdotes about, you know, buying out a liquor store and Saskatoon or whatever. But, you know, it's. It's a lot of rock. I would like more, Doc. But nonetheless, sure. I mean, if you can.
- [64:59]
B
I mean, you could. You could recut this and add all the context that I was talking about. About six months after Altamont, two months after Kent State, three months before Janice dies. American Beauty's being really, you know, working man said American Beauty are being released. You know, it's a, it's like a, a 10 months of significance in rock and roll history.
- [65:22]
A
Yeah. I mean, so you wanted to do that.
- [65:24]
B
You could, you could do that.
- [65:26]
A
Yeah. And what this is not, is like Summer of Soul. Right? Summer of Soul, like, which won the Academy Award. Well deserved. And it's great. Really gives you a lot of information, gives you a lot of context. They're specifically trying to tell you a historical story, situate something in a moment and really lay that out for you. And it's done very skillfully. Even though there is a lot of concert footage that clearly is a documentary with a point of view. Yeah. And a, and a writing a historical wrong. This is not that. No, it's not. You know, there's no point of view. They're not trying to, you know, tell you whatever. Like you can know nothing about the Grateful Dead or any of these artists going in and you won't know that much going out. You know, you'll enjoy the music, but you're not going to. You're not really learning that much.
- [66:12]
B
It's a little sampler. Yeah.
- [66:16]
A
But, you know, that's all what it's not. But what it is is a good hang. Good stories, trains love it. Good music. If you can put up a Janis Joplin, the rest of it is all gold. Yeah, I mean, I'm sorry, that was in bad taste.
- [66:34]
B
Just a stray bullet.
- [66:37]
A
It's late and we're getting punchy.
- [66:38]
B
Yeah, I mean, I, I would say that I prefer the choice they made not to situate all these things that are happening, although it's there for somebody who knows those things to piece it together on their own and say, oh, you know, these sorts of demonstrations breaking out of these concerts weren't entirely uncommon at the time. Right, right.
- [67:01]
A
But.
- [67:01]
B
But just letting you do that work if you want, I kind of prefer that it's the, the heavy handed documentaries of today. And I don't mean Summer of Soul, I mean other ones that, that need to tell you about the, the context in which this thing happened.
- [67:16]
A
Well, I mean, Velvet Underground is a lot of telling you about the context in which these things happen. And it works great. I mean, that can be done. Well, it's just a different style. Like 20 years ago it, you know, it was more like verite. Here you are like we're showing you what's happening. You know, we'll give you a little bit of information, just enough so that you know what's happening, and then you're just on the. On the ride with these people. Nowadays, documentaries tend to be much more informative and telling you everything.
- [67:42]
B
And.
- [67:43]
A
And I. I think we've. Through this, you know, series, we've. We've learned that that can be done well or poorly.
- [67:51]
B
Yeah.
- [67:51]
A
It's not, you know, it's not. Neither of them are good or bad, man.
- [67:53]
B
Yeah, I think that's right.
- [67:55]
A
Anyway, but this is a good hang.
- [67:56]
B
Yeah, great hang. Great hang.
- [67:58]
A
Good recommendation, Keats.
- [68:00]
B
All right, good.
- [68:00]
A
I enjoy it. And if you enjoyed this, you can give us a review. Or just. If you didn't enjoy it or you like Janice chopping and think I'm an asshole, that's fine too. You can certainly jump on at RockDocsPod and tell us about it.
- [68:13]
B
Yeah. And scroll back in your feed. Listen to David's thoughts about Mavis Staples. Effusive. Absolutely adored her.
- [68:20]
A
There's a lot of people I like.
- [68:21]
B
Yeah, there's a lot of people I like everything.
- [68:23]
A
Sorry.
- [68:25]
B
Does not like Bob Marley or Janis Joplin.
- [68:27]
A
Yes. Okay.
- [68:29]
B
You just. I have a theory now.
- [68:31]
A
Yeah.
- [68:31]
B
You walked through a college Dorm Room in 1996, and you saw the people who were most situated on posters and you were like, they're all assholes.
- [68:44]
A
No, I actually kind of. I liked Bob Marley when I was in college.
- [68:47]
B
Okay.
- [68:48]
A
Janice Job that I never liked.
- [68:50]
B
Okay.
- [68:53]
A
Oh, yeah. I like the Doors.
- [68:55]
B
Okay.
- [68:56]
A
Yeah. I mean, I think maybe now I probably would. I'm not as much of a fan of the Doors, but I liked it at the time.
- [69:02]
B
Yeah.
- [69:03]
A
No, I. Yeah.
- [69:04]
B
I don't know. Hendrix is probably the other most frequently of a. On a dorm room poster.
- [69:10]
A
Yeah. Yeah, he's. Yeah, some of it works. It's a lot of the. Hendrix's hits are great and he's got some good jams and some. Not great one. I don't know, man. What can I tell you?
- [69:22]
B
I didn't. I didn't even try to pull this one out of you. You could have let it go. I didn't realize that you didn't like Jimi Hendrix either.
- [69:29]
A
I do like Jimi Hendrix. Listen, we want to watch all those Jimi Hendrix documentaries you just listed. I'll do it and I'll enjoy it.
- [69:37]
B
We have Smeaton's whole Hendrix Oof. To get through, for crying out loud.
- [69:43]
A
I don't know how many more skeletons are in my closet. For you on Earth, but I'm sure with your journalistic skill.
- [69:48]
B
Yeah.
- [69:48]
A
You will continue to do so on future seasons of Rock Dogs.
- [69:52]
B
All right. It.