3/21/70: capitol theatre, port chester, NY.

another superb ken and judy lee field recording, produced when the pair were working at the port chester venue. the original audience master cassettes (4 Ampex C361-90) were recorded on a Sony TC124 with unknown dynamic mics, spread approximately 25-30 feet across the balcony. no noise reduction was applied.

from february 1970 to near the end of 1971, the rock promoter howie stein did his best to make the capitol theater into the westchester version of the fillmore east. like the fillmore, the capitol was a converted movie theater. it was really a better place to hear music than to see a film. it was much smaller than the fillmore, so it was hard to get a bad seat. in addition, the staff was a little less uptight about dancing and milling around so concertgoers could usually get up and dance. the sound system was excellent, and rarely did technical difficulties impair the music. and the stage crew, like the fillmore's, knew what they were doing.

of the two performances on this evening, it is the late affair that most heads point to and rave about. i’d like to direct your attention to the early set, which is equally as satisfying, albeit a tad shorter. the tape opens with the first recorded version of rufus thomas’s walkin' the dog since ’66. it's a playful extended take with alternating vocals between weir, pigpen, and garcia. a rousing me & my uncle follows and afterwards it’s clear that the crowd is animated to the point that they won't shut up. garcia: "calm down, you unruly freaks." the cacophony of audience noise continues, and the boys roll out the last taped version of death don’t have no mercy until 1989. the tune completely quiets the crowd as the band draws all attention into the music.

the quiet awe is short-lived before more shouting and obligatory calls for st. stephen ensue. phil breaks the ice by asking for an E-flat for tuning purposes. jeering and laughter follow, then more song requests. weir stokes the fire by remarking that they don't know the names of their own songs, and that everything the audience is shouting towards the stage is completely meaningless to the band. the motley sextet’s riposte to the mutinous crowd is a solid and compact good lovin,' followed by a peppy dire wolf (with tasty intro guitar licks, most likely added during the workingman’s dead sessions), and a sultry big boss man that allows the pigger to stretch his legs nicely. next up, we get the last known version of mark spoelstra's he was a friend of mine and it's a beautiful send-off at that. garcia's outro solo is long and articulate. goddamn lovely, really.

the early show ends with a unique 19-minute sequence of viola lee blues > the seven > cumberland blues. viola lee gets quiet and lyrical before exploding and melting into fiery immolation mode. the soundscape shifts, threatening to redetonate, before garcia coyly transitions the outfit into the second and final taped version of the seven, which serves as a perfectly weird bridge to the cosmic bakersfield of cumberland.

https://archive.org/details/gd70-03-21.early.lee.pcrp.20184.sbeok.shnf

2/28/70: family dog at the great highway, san francisco, CA w/commander cody and the lost planet airmen.

the period from October '69 to february '70 in grateful dead history is especially plagued with incomplete recordings. there are a bunch of gigs where a soundboard reel or two exists, but subsequent reels have somehow vanished from the vault. the biggest reason 1970 has such a recording void of course is that bear, the benefactor and primary taper, wasn't with the band for much of the year. after the january 30th new orleans bust, he wasn't allowed to travel on tour, and the last thing he taped outside california was the fillmore east shows. thankfully for us, he was still able to tape their san francisco gigs including most of the celebrated fillmore west shows.

of the available 1970 soundboards, there exists a mostly intact family dog run at the end of february. on the whole these performances are pretty mellow, and it's notable that they ignore the dark star> st. stephen> eleven medley every night. of the three shows, february 28th is perhaps the best sounding tape of the lot. back in my tape-trading days, the only recording we had of this show was a pretty good sounding (though particuarly bassy) harry ely audience tape. in the early aughts this all changed when a clean soundboard recording from an anonymous source made its way onto the archive.

the show opens with a solid turn on your lovelight > me and my uncle pairing. the cumberland blues that follows is hot, and tonight's take is psychedelic bluegrass to the highest degree. a wooden set is next. garcia: “we’re gonna take everybody back about 60 billion notches, man, and play some acoustic guitars here for a little spell.” the boys roll out a spirited monkey and the engineer, the last taped dead version of the traditional little sadie, and a gorgeous, almost perfect black peter. neither garcia nor weir can keep their guitars in tune, which they discuss off-mic before jerry announces, “okay it’s back to the electric world, everybody can get back up again.” the electric dead commences with a china cat sunflower > know you rider > high time combination; the original sextet are fully tuned in to each other and the sequence is superb. after a perky dire wolf, we move to the more exploratory portion of the show. good lovin' is rock solid and the drum duo and outro jam are smoking. from there, the audience is treated to 38 minutes worth of two sequences: alligator > drums > the other one, followed by the final performance of mason's children that seques into the second turn on your lovelight of the night.

this tape is a very good record of what the dead sounded like at the beginning of 1970. they were riding high on the recent pressing of live/dead and rolling out a bunch of excellent new material from the soon-to-be-released workingman's dead. it wasn't all roses though. their manager lenny hart cleaned out all the bank accounts and left town. ironically, in late january hart had proposed merging grateful dead operations with chet helms' struggling family dog. that said, it must have been odd to play a weekend at the venue that their crooked manager had proposed merging with. listening to the relaxed nature of this performance, it's pretty apparent that the good ol' grateful dead were none the worse for wear.

https://archive.org/details/gd70-02-28.sbd.cotsman.9377.sbeok.shnf

june 8 & 9, 1968: carousel ballroom, san francisco, CA.

the dead share a double bill with the venue co-operators jefferson airplane. unfortunately, fleetwood mac missed the run (their would-be U.S. debut) due to visa issues. beginning in march of '68, the dead and the airplane played the carousel friday, saturday and sunday nights for dancing. san francisco chronicle music critic ralph gleason described the 'dance-concert' scene at the carousel at that time as more concert than dance. "...they are still much better than the night club atmosphere, freer, more informal, and with much better vibrations," he wrote. as for the june 9th show, gleason noted, "the house was jammed but people stood, rooted by the physical proximity of others, and danced from the ankles up."

the 6/8 tape opens with the earliest full st. stephen. it's raw, accelerated, and not settled into its groove yet. only jerry seems to have the words down, but the music flows reaching an impressive drive before garcia and lesh use the old dark star intro as a signal to end. from here, they roll out an ace that's it for the other one > turn on your lovelight combination. the cryptical envelopment outro into lovelight is played in a different key than usual, which throws off pigpen. weir semi-awkwardly takes the first verse before the band drops into a drum break, and recovers. the recording concludes with a fantastic early reading of morning dew, and a flavorful take on it hurts me too.

the 6/9 fragment begins with commentary from weir: “whoever stole our scratcher, please bring it back. you can just unobtrusively start passing it forward and no one will ever know. reward offered. we need it for the next number.” and with that, the set kicks off with the first extended dark star, 16 minutes, and the only one recorded between march-august of 1968. it takes five minutes before the first verse. the middle section is played well with garcia liberating the sextet around the 11 minute mark; the music begins to soar before a tape flip and a soft landing in some hand percussion that subtly shifts to the drum kit. st. stephen is next up and the transition is flawless. the band is starting to hedge closer to the classic st. stephen bounce, still working on the phrasing and dynamic flow. the set concludes with another spin through turn on your lovelight. mckernan is very much in his element on this version.

in march of 2022, the owsley stanley foundation broke the news that they had unearthed some lost reels from bear's archive. the announcement read: "grateful dead, carousel ballroom, june 1 or june 8, 1968: this very special set of three mystery reels was preserved thanks to the generous contributions of adopt-a-reel patrons: dean budnick, aaron barksdale, and the minnesota white lightning alliance." the tape boxes indicate only that it's a dead show recorded on a saturday night. one of the tape boxes, labeled by bear after-the-fact, indicates that it might be "'68?" and "possibly the carousel."

i don't know about you, but i'm very ready for more grateful dead music from these final carousel ballroom shows. hearing these tracks in their early stages of development is such a gift. let's hope there's an official bear's sonic journals release of the june closing run in the not-too-distant future.

https://archive.org/details/gd1968-06-08.158612.remaster.disk4.danielfutureanimation02.flac1644