5/6/70: kresge plaza, massachusetts institute of technology.

the dead play a free outdoor concert on the student union steps to honor a national day of student protests against the vietnam war. the performance was recorded from the soundboard by MIT radio station WTBS, which is gold as the grateful dead apparently don’t have the reels of this show in their vault.

peter kaye was the sole deadhead at MIT’s radio station in the spring of 1970. as he was watching the dead set up their gear, he asked dan healy if he could get a feed off his board. when healy agreed, kaye bent the arms of the technical staff at the station to help him run a telco line on the campus to the station where the head engineer, larry killgallen, recorded the show onto an Ampex 350. that winter, a bus full of folks from the Hog Farm broke down in boston. kaye befriended a few like-minded pranksters and, at some point during their stay, “lent” them the master tapes of the kresge gig. shortly thereafter, cassette tapes of the legendary free concert were being traded with abandon.

maybe it was the occasion, or possibly it was just due to the dismally cold weather, but the band does crank out an ample amount of energy on this one. the recording perfectly captures some of the impromptu rawness of the day. the opening dancing in the streets is just as good as the celebrated harpur college version--less polished, but more potent. the china cat sunflower > know you rider couplet is quite nice, and features some blistering jamming during the midsection. the highlight of the set, though, is the morning dew, with it’s subject serving as a timely comment on why everyone was gathered in cambridge that afternoon. next up, good lovin’ is fast and heavy and contains a vigorous bass and drums jam at the 7-minute mark. after a casey jones that suffers from a dropout on the tape, the performance concludes with an extended take on saint stephen > not fade away.

the following schedule of planned events in connection with the strike and protest of the indochina war appeared in the tech, MITs student newspaper on may 6, 1970:

STRIKE! FACULTY CANCELS CLASSES

6 am onward – leaflets and canvassing information will be available in the Student Center West Lounge for use in canvassing factories.

12 noon – Humanities Department Meeting.

12 noon – Meeting of interested MIT employees in Walker Memorial.

1 pm – mass meeting in Kresge.

2 pm – There will NOT be a free concert by the Grateful Dead today.

eventually the plastic tarps weren’t enough to protect the band from the nasty rainfall that grew progressively worse throughout the set. if you listen closely you can almost hear the musician’s fingers getting cold and stiff; the resolve is there, but jerry’s lines get increasingly more ragged and dissonant. bobby sums up the sentiments of the band: “it’s too fuckin’ cold to play.” based on the invention and creativity on display that day on the plaza, one can only imagine the setlist they would have generated under more favorable weather conditions.

https://archive.org/details/gd1970-05-06.sbd.gans-hall.95.shnf

in october of ‘74, the dead retired from performing after a five-night stand at winterland. the following january, they met at bobby ace weir’s mill valley recording studio to start laying down the tracks for what would become blues for allah. outtakes from these sessions have been available on the archive for some time. last year, a new studio reel emerged of remarkable quality and historical significance. labeled “the first day,” the recording contains what audio engineer/archivist allen bershaw believes to be the first 1975 grateful dead studio session.

in a late-seventies interview with jerry garcia, he shared: "we kind of made a ground rule for that record: ‘let's make a record where we get together every day and we don't bring anything in.’ …the whole idea was to get back to that band thing, where the band makes the main contribution to the evolution of the material. so we'd go into the studio and jam for a while, and then if something nice turned up we'd say, ‘well let's preserve this little hunk and work with it, see if we can't do something with it.’ and that's how we did most of the album."

this session documents the fertile period of exploration the band was engaged in during their “retirement.” in a larger sense, the dead’s choice of material for the album indicates that they were busily carving a unique path that no one expected. do yourself a favor and spend a bit of time with “the first day.” i’m fairly certain you’ll be more than pleased that you did.

https://archive.org/details/gd1975-01-00.137598.studio.thefirstday.bershaw.flac16

october 4/5, 1970: winterland arena, san francisco, CA. the dead play two nights with the airplane/hot tuna, quicksilver messenger service, and the new riders. the sunday night opener was a significant day in the history of media: the first live quadraphonic television broadcast. the technical set up had the sound piped from the stage out to wally heider's remote truck on the street, mixed on a 16-channel machine, and then returned into winterland where bob mathews mixed it to 4 and sent it out to radio- and TV-land. for those who weren’t lucky enough to have a ticket, the audio-visual compilation made home viewing a good second option. imagine a handful of folks gathering around a television, a big FM tuner, and a few other radios to settle down to four channels of grateful dead. not quite as happening as being at winterland, but more lifelike than stereo.

two archived recordings are available in an FM/soundboard format. the first, properly dated sunday 10/4/70, begins with one of the six live takes of till the morning comes. it comes off remarkably well and it’s a shame they didn’t play this one more often. the brokedown palace that follows is achingly beautiful. the remainder of the set is very good, chock-full of fine ensemble playing. of note, the second half of good lovin’ contains some of the fiercest coda jamming of the year. the second tape we have is mislabeled as the matrix 10/17/70, but is in fact a sampling of the sunday and monday performances. the quality of the mix on this recording is considerably better, with exquisite versions of candyman and dancing in the streets.

in the end, the experiment was more a novel happening than something the artists or organizers wanted to replicate. the shows themselves provided a fine example of the band’s transitioning sound from that of the adventurous and exploratory music contained on the 1969 LP live dead, to the distinctive americana of workingmans and american beauty, awash with bright harmonies and folk and country trimmings.

without further ado, the grateful quadrophonic dead. https://archive.org/details/gd1970-12-17.sbd.unk.87356.sbeok.flac16 https://archive.org/details/gd1970-10-04.sbd.cousinit.19985.sbeok.shnf