9/20/68: berkeley community theater. ali akbar college of music benefit w/ace of cups, steve miller band, tabla master shankar ghosh, and vince delgado.

in 1968 mickey hart was studying at ali akbar college with the hindustani classical musician, pandit shankar ghosh. mickey would work on a number of compositions with shankar which included rhythmic cycles of 4, 6, 16, 5 & 7, teachings he would take to bill kreutzmann and add to the pair's repertoire. the influence of classical indian drumming on the dead's percussion breaks-including the improvisational rhythm devils segment folded into many second sets-can be traced to their early exposure to ali akbar khan, and to indian tabla players like alla rakha and zakir hussain. mickey would inlist rakha and hussain on his first solo album, rolling thunder. hart's second long player would join zakir, vince delgado, jordan amarantha, aushim chaudhuri, and a handful of other accomplished drummers as the diga rhythm band. in fact, one could easily speculate that the origins of diga are directly yoked to this fall of '68 berkeley performance.

the partial owsley soundboard tape cuts into a rough and tumble good morning little schoolgirl, which has an unusually raw feel—more akin to alligator. the revved-up number ends in a wash of feedback and some amusing mckernan howls. the banter that follows is hilarious. issues with the onstage mics prompt weir to inquire "what's happening?" there's no immediate reply. more microphone chatter ensues. "it's coming to life," rails garcia. "the first shock is free," he continues. in time, bear clears up the audio delivery matter and the band goes with st. stephen. the song has matured since its spring debut in st. louis, and tonight's version is compact and highly spirited. by the midpoint of the song it appears that the owsley kool-aid is starting to kick in as evidenced in jerry cracking up, and weir starting the wrong verse and singing over a laughing garcia—classic grateful dead shenanigans. consistent with the general practice, st. stephen jams into the eleven. tonight's take is short and layered with dense instrumentation.

as the eleven winds down the dead's amps are partitioned and two risers are rolled on stage between hart and kreutzmann. perched atop are shankar gosh and vince delgado. over the next 26 minutes, the four men perform a number of fixed compositions, taking a rhythmic journey through many talas cylces. composed by ali akbar khan for this occasion, the playing is hypnotic and riveting. there is nothing plodding or sloppy about it; this is a perceptive interplay between four astute percussionists who are listening and collaborating with each other. the energy is high and there is an alternating push of rhythmic patterns that contradict the tala and melodic structures that continually circle back to the fundamental scheme. at the end of the piece, the drumming becomes very quiet and the players begin to chant 'taketa, taketa,' before exploding into a final, powerful theka.

of all the 1968 grateful dead performances committed to tape, this owsley recorded fragment is one of the most unconventional sets you'll find. i know that a half hour of drums isn't everybody's thing, but where else in the dead's history can one find a percussive break with such distinguished guests in tow? the berkeley crowd's vibrant applause seems to readily acknowledge the exceptionalness of the event. and one can only imagine that the vedic sage-musician narada might have been smiling down in reverence and admiration, as well.

https://archive.org/details/gd1968-09-20.sbd.miller.115682.flac16

12-7-68: bellarmine college, louisville, KY.

1968 soundboards are few and far between, with over two-thirds of the shows unaccounted for. the first few months of the year are pretty well represented as the band was taping shows for anthem of the sun. after this, the spring and early summer is essentially a black hole for dead tapes until owsley re-upped as their soundman in june. the remainder of the year, though, is rather spotty, and it seems that many of bear’s tapes have disappeared. a couple of nice audience tapes fill the gaps but, unfortunately, there were very few people making field recordings in 1968. aside from the renowned mickey & the hartbeats matrix shows and some interesting garcia jam sessions, there's only a handful of tapes from the fall, and even less from the winter dates.

december 7 is notable in that it is the first archived performance with tom constanten. it's also the dead's first outing to kentucky (and the only time the band would ever play a gig at bellarmine college). you might ask what were the grateful dead doing at a small catholic college in louisville? well, the most reasonable motivation is they needed a stopover at the end of their fall midwest tour, and the 2600 seat knight's hall venue neatly fit the bill. either that, or the boys were dying to visit the repository for all of thomas merton's manuscripts.

the owsley tape opens with an abbreviated take on the dark star > st. stephen > the eleven sequence. the music flows with hints of free percussion & harmonics. TC's organ gyrates in the mix before the second dark star verse, st stephen is concise and energized, but the eleven derails due to a bad onstage echo. as the crew works out the technical issues, weir expounds: “nobody knows where present time is,” directly followed by a sedated promoter who provides stoned crowd control: “the curfew’s been cancelled, the kids are all in bed.” the tape cuts back in for the final four minutes of death don't have no mercy, which is fierce and can only make us wonder what the front end of the tune sounded like. jerry follows with a few words for the audience: "thanks, alot. we're gonna play a bunch more, we're not finished at all...and also you know you don't have to pay strict attention to us, we don't do very much that's funny. and if you want, you can dance. it feels good to dance. after a while you'll be pretty used to us." and with that, we're greeted with an adventurous 29 minutes of that's it for the other one > new potato caboose. the other one middle jam is really starting to catch and the energy is palpable. the cryptical reprise winds down delicately and the segue into new potato is seamless; tonight's take on the bobby peterson/phil lesh-composed tune is a bit more sloppy than in august, but it still evinces all of the anthem of the sun qualities with its intricate harmonies, rapid changes in tempo and meter, and instrumental weirdness.

billy kreutzmann is absent for the second frame. “one of our drummers, uh, broke down,” jerry explains. mickey adeptly covers his portion of the battery. the set begins with the only version of rosemary the dead would ever play to a live audience. it is an extremely quiet recording and you'll have to crank up the volume to really hear it. despite the levels, it's completely worth your full aural presence—a delicate, sensitive performance. he was a friend of mine is next and, unfortunately, is cut off right in the chorus. pig gets in the mix after this with a fine rendition of it hurts me too. his harp work is subtle and blends flawlessly with the rich tone of jerry's guitar. the set closes with an audience-requested morning dew, followed by a short, but sweet we bid you goodnight. “you’ve just been victimized by the grateful dead,” barbs garcia.

this one-off performance at bellarmine U captures the band in one of their most pivotal years for stage improvisation. both sets are loaded with boundary pushing compositions and the septet is in full experimental mode, ready to push many of their showcase songs to their fullest extent. despite the drops, cuts, gouges, and warts, i'm more than happy to be a victim of this late '68 recording.

https://archive.org/details/gd1968-12-07.sbd.miller.88674.sbeok.flac16