Things have been hectic at the Test of the Boomerang headquarters: I just became a father, and things have been understandably hectic. I took a break from changing nappies, though, to put together a little mix. It’s a real mixed bag today, folks — I have Jarboe’s sweet cover of Blind Faith’s “Can’t Find My Way Home” from Swans’ out-of-print classic The Burning World, brooding folk from Neurosis guitarist Steve Von Till, King Crimson’s full “Providence” improv jam from the fantastic Great Deceiver live set, and a little taste of Merl Saunders (rest in peace, brother Merl) and Jerry Garcia. As well as some other musical goodies. Enjoy with some Fordham Scotch Ale and I’ll meet you back here in the New Year. (more…)

Free Phil!

Phil Lesh has just released a free Soundboard recording of the Phil Lesh and Friends concert at the Warfield in San Francisco, May 13th of this year. That was the first night of the run to close out the historic theater before being renovated and re-opened by new management. Fitting, since so many historic Dead and Dead family shows went down in that beautiful place. Myself, I saw everybody from Sonic Youth to The Allman Brothers there.

May 13th was the night that the band played the first two Grateful Dead albums in their entirety - 1967’s self-titled debut and 1968’s Anthem of the Sun. Bob Weir sat in that night as well for vocals and some serious jamming. A fantastic night of music and it’s all available here! (more…)

Its unthinkable now. A crusty old rock band packing up family and crew to play a series of concerts at the Giza Necropolis. To kick out the jams at the last wonder of the ancient world. But in September 1978, that’s just what the Grateful Dead did.

To bankroll the trip, the band planned on releasing a live album. It would have been their first live set since the abysmal Steal Your Face two years prior. The band was coming off a smokin’ summer tour and they had a new studio album, the Lowell George-produced Shakedown Street, in the can and ready for release that fall.

The concerts themselves have become a key chapter in Dead lore. The lunar eclipse the second night. The bedouins on camels, watching silently from the dunes. Merry Pranksters and Dead members hoisting a flag at the peak of the Great Pyramid. Nubian musician Hamza El Din and his ensemble jamming with the band. But, alas, the tapes were deemed unusable for a proper release. Of course in true Dead fashion, tapes of the show - recorded by the audience and the band alike (including Ken Kesey’s home movies of the trip) have been in Deadhead circulation since the band shook the sand from their guitar cases.

So now 30 years later, Rhino has finally released Rocking the Cradle: Egypt 1978 as a three-disc set. Two cds of music and 1 dvd of live footage. Rhino has the uneviable task of taking music that has been in free trader circles for years and trying to get people to buy it. In this case, the audio has been scrubbed clean and sounds fantastic. The dvd footage is a great improvement over the numerous bootleg versions I have seen over the years, and heck, the packaging is pretty darn cool. As with the monstrous Winterland 73 box that came out earlier this year, Rhino has done a great job of making it worth the money. The only gripe I could think of is that this is only a compilation of the last two nights rather than the full concerts (and is missing the mighty Terrapin > Sugar Magnolia from the night of the Eclipse), but this is not a Dick’s Picks release, a Vault release, but a proper live album. In the same spirit as Skullfuck, Europe ‘72 or Reckoning and Dead Set. The only difference here is that it took 30 years to be released. (more…)

I. Report from the Land of the Dead
It has a been a busy time in Deadland. Most notably, tickets went on sale this past weekend for the Deadheads For Obama show on October 13th at Penn State. Many of you will remember that earlier this year, Phil, Bobby, Mickey and friends got together at the Warfield for the first Deadheads for Obama concert. This time out, Bill Kreutzmann and Mr. Soulshine Himself, Warren Haynes, will also be in attendance.

Phil Lesh’s son is a volunteer for the Obama campaign, and he got the old man involved. While the formally “non-partisan” band stumping for Obama did cause some bad vibes among some ‘Heads (especially the Ron Paul contingent) the important thing here is to let the show speak for itself.

II. Bill Kreutzmann/Oteil Burbridge/Scott Murawski Trio
Quietly on tour earlier this year was Bill Kreutzmann’s new musical brigade. There was some debate as to what the name of the combo actually was, but Kreuztmann, Burbridge & Murawski became the standard. Some people call it the Kreutzmann Trio, others call it ‘3,’ but whatever you call it, it’s a tight, dynamic outfit.

There aren’t any shows up at the LMA yet, however, many recordings of their shows can be found (in beautiful lossless FLAC) on http://bt.etree.org. I did find this (along with several other clips) on YouTube. Here is “The Bill Kreutzmann Trio” live, 4/20/08, at the Lincoln Park Zoo in Chicago for the Earth Day Festival: (more…)

John C. Hughes: Puppets!  Well, marionettes.  Everything is better with puppets/marionettes.  Except for this.

Jon Cummings: In which the Dead pretended to be a mainstream rock band for, oh, 4:43, and the folks at corporate radio said, “What the heck, let’s play along.” Of course, it’s a damn catchy tune, and a fun and inventive video. I just noticed something in seeing this for the first time in years: Jerry’s voice, at times, sounds distinctly like late-period George Harrison, and the song’s ironic-oldster stance would have fit perfectly on the Traveling Wilburys’ records.

Dw. Dunphy: Twenty-plus years, a couple thousand shows and a couple thousand drugs, and it was 1987 when The Dead finally had a hit. The power of persistence, I guess. And while I never minded the band in passing, I was never a fan, not even of this, their poppiest tune. An injection of bounce in the song is about all that separates it from standard Dead. Listen carefully, and you recognize their sound owed a whole lot more to Chet Atkins than the Haight.

The Grateful Dead? Country pickers? Don’t act so shocked!

Zack Dennis: This is the only Grateful Dead song I can remember ever hearing on the radio. With my secret love of Phish, I was always predisposed to like the Dead, but when it comes down to brass tacks, I’ve never found their music particularly engaging. This is a nice, light song, nothing for me to complain about, but nothing to really get excited about, either. I remember finding it amusing to see Jerry Garcia described as a “skinny kid” in The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, and later there was an idiotic “dramatized” documentary about his death, which basically showed a faceless chubby guy rolling around a few times on a cot, apparently having a heart attack.

David Medsker: I am just not a Dead kind of guy. I can see why people like them, and even I love “Friend of the Devil.” Good for them that they finally cracked the Top 40. Now please leave. (more…)

I had originally intended to post this during the week of August 1st and August 9th, but I wanted to give a shout to Isaac Hayes last week. Get out your copy of Hot Buttered Soul, throw it on the hi-fi, and get with somebody.

Jerry Garcia waltzed into this world on August 1st, 1942, and waltzed back out on August 9th, 1995. We’re already 13 years out from Jerry’s death, the demise of the Dead, and that really, really horrible summer tour.

I was already “off the bus” when Jerry died. My Dead train derailed after a miserable cold December night at the Oakland Coliseum. There was such an air of joylessness that night. I was third-wheeling it with a friend and her new boyfriend. I overheard people talking about speed and guns in the men’s room. The music was anemic at best. That entropy had started to show, but worst of all, it just wasn’t fun anymore.

So the new issue of Relix features a cover story about Jerry and how once again, Jerry Garcia is considered “hip” and “cool” among the folks at the “cool kid’s table” in the pop culture cafeteria. The article sites the presence of some humorous Dead graffiti in a subway station - (”…tagging the Grateul Dead’s Steal Your Face skull over a smiling Asian woman in surgical scrubs…”) as well a drunk college kid stumbling along singing “Box of Rain” in the hipster streets at dawn, as proof of the Dead’s new status as hipster iconica. A few musicians (Devendra Banhart, Bonnie Prince Bill aka Will Oldham, and others) weigh in on the matter and come up with a collective “I guess they’re pretty cool.”

The ultra-slick entertainment magazine The Fader did a double-sided cover story on Jerry last summer to much greater effect.

But the real message of the story isn’t Relix’s own need for validation from the Indie community, it’s about how the Dead continues to influence a whole new generation of musicians who are of a much different stripe than the likes of Phish or Widespread Panic. But is it really the Dead who are inspiring Akron/Family or Animal Collective or any other band that might let their music get lost on a lysergic space jam? Or is it just that preternatural sonic stew of bluegrass, blues, modern jazz, folk, and rock and roll that initially fueled the Warlocks? Besides, Relix telling readers that Jerry is cool because the guys in Animal Collective say he is is one thing; the fact that Relix started as a Grateful Dead fanzine back in 1974 is quite another. (more…)

For Test of the Boomerang III, I retired to a simple cottage in the Welsh countryside to reflect. This post was done acoustically.

Hey gang, today I have brought three shows for show and tell. Each has been dredged up from the depths of the Live Music Archive. They’re all totally different, but they’re all 100% live and ready to be streamed, shared, downloaded, burned, and loved.

Kawabata Makoto Live - June 18, 2008, Hemlock Tavern, SF

A solo gig by Kawabata Makoto of Acid Mothers Temple which I, like Gandalf, will not speak of here, other than they have my vote for the greatest album title of all time: STARLESS AND BIBLE BLACK SABBATH.

This is not your ex-girlfriend’s Spiritualized CD. This is not your college roommate’s experimental guitar noise project he put together for his Music Appreciation class and got a C+ on. These are serious hyperdelic drones from the vast depths of space. This is what Terence McKenna’s self-transforming machine elves listen to on their little self-transforming turntables. Do not listen to this while driving or while operating heavy machinery, lest you become one with the heavy machine figuratively and spiritually, man.

Makoto explains his interstellar muse: (more…)

“I would like to thank everybody here for coming, thank you to the clowns for their nice entertainment. They were quite good. Thank you…”

Grateful Dead 12/6/80 Mill Valley Recreation Center, Mill Valley, CA

This is a pretty remarkable and strange little show. Just a couple months after their acoustic residencies at The Warfield and Radio City Music Hall, this great recording finds the band playing a Christmas party at the Mill Valley Rec Center for some kids and their parents. After a lady calls for quiet from the audience, she proceeds to introduce the band to hilarious effect. Before “Cassidy,” a young man can be heard saying “I want rock and roll,” to which Jerry replies, “You do? This is sorta like rock and roll.” Also I’ll be damned if I don’t hear a ping pong ball being volleyed around in the background.

Oh and the “Special Guest” the emcee lady mentions was none other than Santa Claus.

All novelty aside, this is a real solid performance (killer “Jack-A-Roe,” great “Cassady,” and check out that jam in “Bird Song”), and the sound quality is pretty good. Recorded by the famous Betty Cantor, it’s a Betty AUD tape, and when was the last time you came across one of those? And because it’s an AUD recording, you can go ahead and download the sucker!

For more acoustic Dead, check out:

“Phil and Friends” Berkeley Community Theatre 9-24-94

Bob: “I was plugged in, I was just plugged in backwards.”
Jerry: “Just like you always are man…” (more…)