9/28/75: golden gate park, san franciso, CA.

this tape is one of my all-time favorite field recordings of the grateful dead, in a year that they only played four shows. in addition to recording blues for allah, 1975 found the individual band members gravitating to a number of interesting side projects: jerry was rehearsing and playing with a jgb line-up that included bassist john kahn, drummer ronnie tutt and keyboard ace nicky hopkins; bill kreutzmann joined keith and donna godchaux's jazz and r&b band (dubbed keith & donna, though manager john mcIntire was tempted to rename it the godchaux-kreutzmann band, "just to make it more interesting"); phil lesh teamed up with MIT trained composer ned lagin to create seastones, a venture into bioelectric music (with a fine release on the round records label); bob weir gigged for several months around california with kingfish, which featured ex-new riders dave torbert on bass; and finally, mickey hart created the innovative diga rhythm band, a lively percussion ensemble that showcased the tabla master, zakir hassain.

the lindley meadows gig was officially billed as a free concert sponsored by the Haight-Ashbury People's Ballroom, with the good ol' grateful dead in their first public performance in nearly a year since their so-called “retirement." this recording was made possible by bob menke, who stood about 10-15 feet from the stage with two sony mics mounted on broomsticks (handheld), split about 20 feet apart. the result is undoubtedly one of the best audience recordings ever made of the band. here's a link with a downloadable mp3 zip:

https://archive.org/details/gd1975-09-28.fob.menke-falanga.motb-0069.91769.flac16