Posts Tagged ‘Grateful Dead’

Test of the Boomerang: Soundchecks, Rehearsals and Outtakes, Part One

The Grateful Dead collection at the Live Music Archive contains not only thousands of Grateful Dead concerts, it also holds a good number of band rehearsal, soundcheck, and studio session recordings. As the latest incarnation of The Dead kick off their 2009 tour, I wanted to take a look at some of these hidden gems.

Today we’re looking at a couple soundcheck jams from the ’90s, and a rehearsal from 1976. In future installments we’ll look at some of Keith Godchaux’s first rehearsals with the band, some more backstage antics in the later days, and a look at what studio outtakes are still in taper circulation, ie: the stuff Rhino left off the studio album reissues.

March 17th, 1995, The Spectrum, Philadelphia
Of course by now, virtually no stone has been left unturned in the Dead’s back catalog. Between Phil Lesh and Friends, Ratdog, and Mickey and Billy’s various projects, we’re pretty far removed from the days when rumors of “they soundchecked ‘St. Stephen’!” ran like wildfire over motel payphones, archaic BBS systems or in actual Grateful Dead fanzines.

When the Grateful Dead had settled into a fairly rigid template for songs and sets, any deviation from the formula or “break out” of an old tune was cause for much celebration and a renewed enthusiasm within the group-mind of band and audience. The best-known example of this is the great Hampton Coliseum ‘Dark Star’ breakout of 1989. The band’s signature psychedelic showcase had fallen in and out of the repertoire since the 1970s and was back in rotation throughout the early 1990s.

But while fan favorites like “St. Stephen” and “Cosmic Charlie*” never reappeared, in the otherwise bleak year of 1995, the Grateful Dead did blow collective minds when they broke out “Unbroken Chain” at the Philadelphia Spectrum on March 19th.

“Unbroken Chain” originally appeared on the band’s 1974 sleeper From the Mars Hotel — a proggy Phil Lesh composition with lyrics by his longtime collaborator Robert M. Petersen. The song was one of the handful of songs on the album that were never performed live. It’s a complex tune filled with unusual chords, myriad changes and a funky, funky bridge.

This remarkable tape recorded two days prior to showtime illustrates Phil’s enthusiasm and intensity for teaching his bandmates the material. He even uncharacteristically bitches out a roadie at one point. Even Jerry is on-board and enthusiastic about breaking out this long, lost gem. (more…)

Test of the Boomerang: Spring Mix

Spring is here. Blue skies, green grass, allergens. Rainy afternoons and cool evenings.

Spring, of course, is time for renewal, and I like to think of it as a time for some mental housecleaning as well,  so I’ve selected some music that I feel is somewhat transitive and uplifting. A little more meditative than usual. Hopefully it will take you places.

Enjoy the tunes, and I’ll meet you back here next week.

Tom Waits – You Can Never Hold Back Spring
from Orphans: Brawlers, Bawlers, & Bastards (2006)
Hugo Largo – Grow Wild from Drum (1987)
Zilla – Wicker Pilots from Egg (2005)
Sanjay Mishra with Jerry Garcia – Nocturne Evening Chant from Blue Incantation (1995)
Carlos Santana and Alice Coltrane – Angel of Sunlight from Illuminations (1974)
Lotus – Behind Midwest Storefront from Hammerstrike (2008)
Widespread Panic – Pickin’ Up the Pieces from Everyday (1993)
Medeski Martin & Wood – Amber Gris from Radiolarians II (2009)
Grateful Dead – Dark Star from Ladies and Gentlemen the Grateful Dead: Fillmore East 1971 (2004)
Solar Quest – Singtree from Orgship (1994)
The Police – Darkness from Ghost in the Machine (1981)

Lo-Fi Mojo: Proto-Little Feat

Lo-Fi Mojo

The original Lowell George-led Little Feat had a string of classic albums in the 1970s, from their self-titled debut on through 1978’s live Waiting For Columbus, their best seller.

After George died at the age of 34 in a hotel room in 1979, of an apparent heart attack, during a tour in support of his one and only solo album (Thanks, I’ll Eat It Here), Little Feat reformed in the late ‘80s, featuring all the surviving former members. They’ve been successfully touring and releasing albums in one incarnation or another ever since.

But as successful as late-model Little Feat is (was?) – their 1988 “comeback” album Let It Roll went gold and contained the band’s career-first No. 1 hit (on the Mainstream Rock Chart at least), “Hate to Lose Your Lovin’” – and even though they’ve been Little Feat longer without him than with him, the shadow of Lowell George will forever hang over them.

Lowell George was best known for his phenomenal slide guitar playing. He got a distinctive sound primarily due to his use of a socket wrench instead of the traditional glass or steel tube, which he apparently started using due to an injury to his hand involving a model airplane propeller.

But George’s talents weren’t limited to his guitar playing. He also had an amazingly soulful voice, and as a songwriter he’s penned enough classics to ensure his place in the pantheon of great rock ‘n’ roll songwriters. George also played on John Cale’s landmark 1973 album Paris 1919. And as a producer, his most famous credit (beyond Little Feat’s own albums) was the Grateful Dead’s 1978 masterwork Shakedown Street (though due to his drug use he had to be replaced.

Here at lo-fi central, however, we’re not as interested in the classics as we are the prototypes of those classics. So in regards to Lowell George and Little Feat, we’re reaching back to a few tracks recorded prior to their 1971 self-titled Warner Bros. debut, all pulled off the career-spanning box set Hotcakes & Outtakes: 30 Years of Little Feat released in 2000.

”Lightning-Rod Man” was recorded in late 1966 by The Factory, a pre-Little Feat Lowell George group that also contained Martin Kibbee (a future George songwriting partner co-writer of such Little Feat hits as “Dixie Chicken” and Rock & Roll Doctor), Richie Hayward (the drummer who’s still in Little Feat more than 40 years later), and none other than Frank Zappa, who, in addition to adding piano and distinctive backing vocals, also produced the cut. Two years later, in fact, George joined Zappa’s band (Weasels Ripped My Flesh era) for a stint. The story goes that George was booted from the Zappa camp because of George’s song “Willin’,” which contains some none-too-subtle references to drug use (“weed, whites and wine”) – though it could just have easily been due to a violation of Zappa’s well-known no-drug policy for his players.

The next three songs were recorded in 1969 by the earliest version of Little Feat, and feature bassist Roy Estrada (an original member of Zappa’s Mothers of Invention), as well as Hayward and keyboardist Bill Payne (the second-longest member of the group who’s tenure has remained current through the present day). The recordings also feature Elliot Ingber (guitar) on “Teenage Nervous Breakdown” and “Juliet.” Ingber went on to play in Capt. Beefheart’s Magic Band (after being renamed Winged Eel Fingerling).

“Little Feat – Crack In Your Door”

“Little Feat – Teenage Nervous Breakdown”

“Little Feat – Juliet”

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Test of the Boomerang: Equinox Edition

Welcome back to Test of the Boomerang. Happy Spring Equinox!

The folks over at Lostpedia offered up an interesting tidbit about the recent Lost episode “La Fleur.” Could the names of the three Dharma-ites at the beginning of the episode — Jerry, Phil and Rosie — be a reference to Jerry Garcia, Phil Lesh and “Rosie”?

Phil and Jerry, brownie eating 1970s hippies, seem to be references to Phil Lesh and Jerry Garcia of The Grateful Dead. Rosie may be a reference to the reoccurring symbol of roses in Grateful Dead songs and art…

In keeping up with the show’s increasing use of ancient Egyptian symbols and motifs, they also offer up that infamous quote from the Egyptian Book of the Dead:

“We now return our souls to the creator, as we stand on the edge of eternal darkness. Let our chant fill the void in order that others may know. In the land of the night the ship of the sun is drawn by the grateful dead.”

Even the most casual viewer of Lost can see that the show is rife with symbiology and archetypes found in myth and folklore, like the Grateful Dead’s music and lyrics — song-poems culled from the shadows of the American campfire as well as the cosmic realms beyond. A familiar tale of survivors waiting to be rescued turns into something far more complex. A jugband from Palo Alto decide to go electric and it becomes one of the longest and strangest tales of them all. (more…)

Test of the Boomerang: Knockin’ on the Golden Door

No test this week, folks, as I am going out to California to visit friends and family and show off the newest member of our tribe. I’ll be back soon with more kind sounds and commentary. Until then, enjoy these street musicians jamming on “Shakedown Street” in Jerusalem.

Test of the Boomerang: An interview with Noah Weiner of the Grateful Dead Listening Guide

Noah Weiner has been the force behind The Grateful Dead Listening Guide for the past year. A longtime collector and fan of the Grateful Dead’s music, Noah digs deep into the deepest and darkest recesses of the cosmic realm of live Grateful Dead recordings and posts reviews of the shows. Best of all, Noah has a great gift of explaining what makes this music great. Like Matt Kramer or Robert Parker disassembling a bottle of Petrus into prose, Noah writes at length about this music with a passionate and descriptive voice -

“From here the music taps into quintessential Dead imagery for me, drawing forth familiar interlocking and pinwheeling galaxies of light and color -hundreds of wheels with crisscrossing orbits in infinite dimensions. There is a lurking dissonance to the jam, mostly at the hand of Vince on keyboards, and just as it seems to be infusing the entire pallet of color, Jerry returns to his acoustic tone and a veil of beauty and grace settles over everything. From here there is then a wonderful ebb and flow between this graceful state and the more chaos-born energy as the music finds itself firmly hinting its way into Uncle John’s Band. In quite fine fashion, the song appears…”

When the plug was pulled on downloadable soundboard (SBD) recordings from the Live Music Archive, the audience (AUD) recordings (recorded at the shows by fans) remained free and clear. Heads scrambled to find which audience recordings were worth downloading.  Sure, that 3/3/68 show on Haight Street was an old hissy favorite, but what else was out there?  That’s when I found the Grateful Dead Listening Guide. Noah makes a point of reviewing quality audience recordings as well as the ‘boards.

I had a chat with Noah via email about the Grateful Dead, the listening guide, and what makes this crazy psychedelic/folk/bluegrass/rock/jazz/face-melting music so constantly engaging.

What was your first introduction to the music of the Dead?

Well, I won’t credit growing up through the ’70s and only being exposed to the Dead on FM radio as an introduction.  Introduction assumes some instructive hand in the matter.  The radio was hardly that.  It left me feeling no affinity whatsoever for this band that played Sugar Magnolia, Friend Of The Devil, and Casey Jones – Country Rock drivel, as far as I could tell back then.  I walked through my high school halls in the early ’80s not understanding what on earth these otherwise stoner, partying types were possible getting into when I saw them all hanging around in their Dead concert shirts (fresh off of the Uptown Theater ‘81 and then Alpine ‘82 runs). (more…)

Test of the Boomerang: Happy Valentine’s Day!

Hola Amigos! I know it’s been a while since I last rapped at you, but with being a new dad and all, I’ve been busier than a one-armed bass player. No disrespect to any one-armed bass players out there, but you know what I’m saying. We’re still a long way off from the beginning of Festival Season, but lots of information is coming out every day.

As I’m sure you’ve heard by know, Bonnaroo announced its 2009 lineup this past week — Springsteen, Phish, Nine Inch Nails, Beastie Boys, and a cast of thousands. It’s a hell of a strong lineup so far, and more are to be announced. Last year’s ‘Roo was probably remembered for Metallica’s old-school set, My Morning Jacket fresh and tumescent off the release of Evil Urges, and of course Kanye West making folks wait for two hours while his crew set up his enormous light show. Oh yeah, and who could forget Lez Zeppelin?

While no artists have been announced yet, Rothbury 2009 is going to go down July 2nd-5th, again at the Double JJ Ranch. This comes a week after Langerado 2009 was cancelled due to sluggish ticket sales. Folks weren’t too happy when Langerado was going to be held at a different location this year. I’m told that the organizers are going to try and host Langerado 2010 once again at Big Cypress Indian Reservation.

Mountain Jam has announced its preliminary line-up for this year: The Allman Brothers, Government Mule, Michael Franti and Spearhead, Coheed and Cambria, Girl Talk, U-Melt, Ray LaMontagne, and others are scheduled to jam out in Hunter Mountain, New York, May 29th-31st.

Yonder Mountain String Band, STS9, Sly & Robbie, my man Matisyahu, Buckethead and others are set to rage Wakarusa in Ozark, Arkansas, June 4th through 7th.

The Disco Biscuits have announced dates for their 2009 Camp Bisco. Once again at the Indian Lookout Country Club in Mariaville, New York. The eclectic festival has hosted the likes of Snoop Dogg, Shpongle, Infected Mushroom, Soundtribe Sector Nine, and others in the past, and this year’s lineup is still in the works. I’ll send out information as it comes in for this, and other festivals.

If you can’t wait until the warm days of festival season, there’s plenty of good music coming at your face — Soundtribe Sector Nine are getting on the road with their winter tour including a historic four-night stand at The Fillmore in San Francisco at the end of this month. Lotus are kicking off their tour with a pair of shows at the Recher Theater in Towson, Maryland. Their new album Hammerstrike was one of my favorite releases last year. They’re a great band, tight and precise, and totally uplifting. Check ‘em out.

The Improv-Electro-Trance-Your-Ass-Off unit EOTO is bringing the heat to your town with some newly-announced dates. Every EOTO show is completely improvised, and if you have the time, check out some live recordings. The musical ground this duo cover is amazing. I saw Michael Travis a couple years back (remember that night Arnold?) with the improv trio Zilla (with Aaron Holstein and Jamie Janover) and they were amazing. Travis is an incredible drummer and I hope to see EOTO, or Zilla for that matter, soon.

Okay, now on to the Valentine’s treats. (more…)

Test of the Boomerang: A Midwinter Mix

Now is the time of year when thoughts turn to the warmer days of spring and summer just ahead. It’s also the time of celebrations. Chinese New Year or Spring Festival is celebrated between January and February. The old Celtic holiday of Imbolc on February 2nd marks the halfway point between the Solstice and Equinox. February is Black History Month. Valentines Day, Presidents Day. We have a lot to occupy ourselves while we wait for spring. Robert Nesta Marley’s birthday is February 6th, and so today’s Test of the Boomerang features a Bob-inspired mix of music to warm up with during these waning cold days.

There are some cuts from Bob himself, as well as Stephen “Raggamuffin” and Damien “Jr. Gong” representing the rest of the Marley family. You’ll hear from the great Bill Laswell (born Feburary 12th) with the Algerian band Maghrebika, as well as a cut from Laswell’s brilliant Bob Marley tribute, Dreams of Freedom: Ambient Translations of Bob Marley in Dub. I’m also sharing with you some music by the lost great band Catalyst, whose essential collected discography set, The Funkiest Band You Never Heard Of, seems to sadly have gone out of print yet again. If you find it at a decent price, definitely pick it up. Some brilliant stuff there.

Last on the playlist today is a live recording from the Grateful Dead, taped on March 21st, 1991. This is a improvised jam on “Stir It Up” that appeared in the second set out of “Fire on the Mountain” and leading into the “Drums” portion of the night. The inclusion of new keyboardists Bruce Hornsby and Vince Welnick in 1990 infused some new energy and a renewed sense of adventure to the band, and this is a good example of that. A lot of fun.

Enjoy the tunes, folks. Stay warm. Beware of black ice, and I’ll meet you all back here next week. (more…)

Bottom Feeders: The Ass End of the ’80s, Part 37

This week we have a ginormous, gigantic, gargantuan post, as we finish up with the letter G on our trek through the bottom of Billboard’s Hot 100 charts during the ’80s.

Michael Gore
“Theme From ‘Terms of Endearment’” — 1984, #84 (download)

You know, it feels like every week here at Bottom Feeders starts with something completely bland or just plain douche-a-rific now. I guess if you’re listening to everything from top to bottom you can consider this your intro song. Or if you’re putting together a nice light-rock CD for grandma, you can make this your centerpiece. That’s it — grandma music.

Go West
“We Close Our Eyes” — 1985, #41 (download)
“Call Me” — 1985, #54 (download)
“Eye to Eye” — 1985, #73 (download)

If I didn’t collect ‘80s music I most certainly would have missed out on these gems and thought that “King of Wishful Thinking” (1990) was Go West’s first single and Indian Summer (1992) their first album. If you ever wanted to get into Go West for some reason, that album could easily be the place to start and stop. However, you’d be doing yourself a disservice by not going back and listening to their 1985 self-titled debut. The follow-up, 1987’s Dancing on the Couch, wasn’t quite as good as Go West, but it still contains some catchy-as-hell pop tunes. All three of the great songs featured here are from Go West, and though they sound dated today, if you think back to 1985 they actually sound a little too sophisticated for that era. Maybe that’s why none of them made an impact on the charts. Go West had one single in ‘87 barely crack the Top 40 — “Don’t Look Down (The Sequel)” hit #39, but it isn’t even included on the British version of Dancing on the Couch.

(more…)

Test of the Boomerang: DVD Review: “Rhythm Devils Concert Experience”

A 2-DVD set and 24-page hardcover book featuring Mickey Hart, Bill Kreutzmann (Grateful Dead), Mike Gordon (Phish), Steve Kimock, Sikiru, and Jen Durkin (Bomb Squad, Deep Banana Blackout). The ultimate jam band! With original material from Robert Hunter along with their own compositions, this experience is unlike any other concert. Sit back, relax and take a magic ride through time and space. Recorded at The Chicago Theatre, Chicago, IL, and The Starland Ballroom, Sayreville, NJ. Book includes photos, lyrics, and artwork.

Back in 1979, Grateful Dead beat-meisters Mickey Hart and Bill Kreutzmann created a soundtrack of exotic percussion and jungle ambiance for Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now. The subsequent album, The Apocalypse Now Sessions, was released under the moniker Rhythm Devils.

(In the 80s, the Dead’s second set drum workout was frequently referred to as “Rhythm Devils” before taper lists shortened the mid-set improv to simply “Drums,” followed by “Space” – an improvisational freak-out by the rest of the band.)

Billy and Mickey decided to join forces in the spring of 2006 with a solid band consisting of Mike Gordon of Phish on bass, Steve Kimock on guitar, Sikiru Adepoju on talking drum, and Goapele on vocals – soon to be replaced by Jen Durkin of the band Deep Banana Blackout. (more…)