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
