11/1/68: silver dollar fairgrounds, chico, CA. w/gunge.

by late 1968, chico was becoming somewhat of a hip satellite of san francisco. a number of national acts made their way to the sacramento valley city, including the cannonball adderley quintet, johnny cash, it's a beautiful day, lou rawls, the 5th dimension, and rod mckuen. by fall of the year, chico's silver dollar fairgrounds armory was starting to host regular gigs. quicksilver messenger service played a date in october, along with the all-female bay area band ace of cups. the grateful dead, already established in san francisco, made their way up to the armory the following month. the local psych garage band gunge, featuring frontman martin taylor, opened the show.

the dead's chico debut is a beauty. the 12-minute dark star opener-although less freeform-is a little more energized than the october versions. tonight's take is an exercise in precision, with punctilious leads by garcia that drive the jam between verses. it serves as a nice prelude to an absolutely shredding that's it for the other one. the cryptical intro is oh so sweet, played with delicate fidelity until it drops, with the force of a cannon, into the other one. weir ignites the band with some ferocious, guttural vocals. just prior to the first verse he yells, "yoo hoo" into the mic, as if he's calling out for a lost pet. with lesh and garcia in full assault mode, the band forges maniacally along in 12/8 psychedelic euphoria. the cryptical reprise is awash with brightly lit tonalities and subtle touches before transitioning to another round of psychotic jamming, highlighted by a savvy display of rabid finger-picking by jerry and tomahawking counter rhythms from kreutzmann and hart. in time, the music drifts into deep space-which the sextet is happy to explore for a few measures-before drifting into 7+ minutes of glorious feedback.

the segue into new potato caboose is like a portal opening into another world, but then somebody kicks out a plug or something and we land in the back half of a lengthy alligator > caution > feedback > we bid you goodnight. the tape cut is unfortunate, and one can only imagine how amazing the middle of this set must have been, given the energy of the music we have. and when the short but sincere, bid you goodnight rises out of the output signals of the amplifiers, it's easy to picture the kids from chico removing their hands from over their eyes to clap along.

a month after the dead's visit, LSD guru timothy leary made a stop at CSU chico. following the appearance, the chico state yearbook quoted leary, “raising the hedonic level of chico is not child’s play.” i don't know about you, but i think the dead's performance might have pushed it up a notch or two.

https://archive.org/details/gd1968-11-01.150968.sbd.eaton-latvala.miller.flac1644