4/18/70—family dog on the great highway, san francisco, CA: new riders of the purple sage/charlie musselwhite/mickey hart & the heartbeats/bobby ace and the cards off the bottom of the deck.
the 1970 soundboard tape archive is full of holes, mostly stemming from bear's unfortunate february new orleans arrest and court imposed travel restrictions. as such, more shows survive on audience-only recordings from this year than any other. that made the unexpected discovery of a pristine quality mostly acoustic soundboard performance by the grateful dead from April 18, 1970, a real find. unearthed by mountain girl from an old box of jerry's personal effects, the tape soon made its way onto an official rhino 2-LP release in 2013. a notice on the album cover reads, "this rare recording was made on a non-professional machine at low level and contains some tape hiss and other undesirable stuff. several procedures were employed to clarify the sound, but artifacts may still be heard. however, the music shines through, and the performance is too good not to bring to you. enjoy."
what made this tape all the more unique and equally peculiar in the grateful dead historical record was the billing of the band. the moniker mickey hart & the heartbeats had only been used a few times previously for a few electric jam sessions at the matrix in 1969. bobby ace and the cards off the bottom of the deck was a new name that had not been used before, and was probably included as more of a joke. the NRPS, who had opened a scant number of dead shows in the bay area, would have been largely unknown to the family dog audience. as to why the blues harmonica player and singer charlie musselwhite was added to the weekend performances, we can surmise that his presence-with future LA express guitarist robben ford-was more of a guarantee that there would be something upbeat and danceable, no matter what the dead rolled out.
lineups and aliases aside, the purpose of these billed acoustic shows on the weekend of april 17-19 seems to be a tuneup for the series of performances known as "an evening with the grateful dead," that would commence on 5/1/70 at alfred college. in order to meet their goal of a four hour grateful dead concert with three different configurations, the band had to whip the pieces into shape. the electric grateful dead was all set, battle tested and road ready; the acoustic arrangement and the new riders set were a different story though. the wooden portion of the show was unfledged with very little precedent (save for a few shows in december '69 and january/february of 1970 when garcia and weir had played some acoustic duets and, once or twice, pigpen was even induced into playing a song or two). this owsley tape paints a clear picture of what was planned and what would go down in the subsequent months on the road.
the recording opens with the first taped acoustic version of i know you rider, a tune that would be a staple the rest of the year. lesh gets increasingly annoyed at owsley and the monitor situation amidst much classic stage banter and laughter from garcia and weir, though they both get pissed, too. jerry: “[the guitars] are as though invisible, unheard, unstruck!” “this is an electric guitar,” he announces, “something new,” before they roll out an acoustic/electric cumberland blues and new speedway boogie. both sound great with dampened drums, the latter sounding much like the recently recorded workingman’s dead version, with sweet garcia blues riffs. while someone fetches pigpen from backstage, we get a mini-set from bobby ace—me & my uncle and mama tried, with vocals by marmaduke and some funky guitar work from david nelson.
the remainder of the tape is all pig, sounding much like he might have saddled up to his kitchen table late at night with a guitar. it begins with his usual katie mae before moving on to a bunch of debuts, some never heard again. ain't it crazy (aka the rub) is a lightnin’ hopkins standard from the old jugband days. bring me my shotgun, also by hopkins, is unflashy and low key. roberta appears to be assembled from several sources. the set closes with mckernan’s versions of a pair of john lee hooker tunes, black snake and tupelo blues, both among the quietest songs ever performed on a dead stage.
in the relatively short acoustic history of the grateful dead, this owsley soundboard tape at the family dog is a remarkable discovery. it finds the band-a week after headlining the fillmore west-test driving a brand new configuration that would format many performances in 1970, concluding with the remarkable capitol theatre run in early november. after the three april shows, the dead would never play again at the dog, as they simply got too big for the venue. it's a fortunate break indeed that jerry inadvertently hung on to a final relic from that weekend. sound issues, episodic feedback, and monitor problems aside, it's a tape that deserves your full aural attention.
https://archive.org/details/09newspeedwayboogie
