As I noted in my introductory post to this little San Francisco blogging tangent, I had a girlfriend who loved the city. She also loved jam bands, the Grateful Dead perhaps chief among them. This isn't to say she enjoyed this kind of music alone - she didn't - but I think songs like "China Cat Sunflower" held a special place in her heart.
I've been meaning to listen to a performance of the Dead at one of the Acid Tests for a while as part of a regimen of listening to famous, infamous, and/or historically important rock concerts. Shows such as when Dylan went electric, that night a wasted Grace Slick called her German audience Nazis, or Jimi Hendrix's last concert. These Grateful Dead performances at Ken Kesey's big LSD parties fit the bill as they not only document the early days of one of the most popular and successful rock bands, but also are a part of a larger cultural movement that had a profound impact on America.
And now that I am writing about various things San Francisco, it seemed like an opportune time to blast some early Dead into my earholes.
From what I gather, The Warlocks changed their name to the Grateful Dead just a few weeks before their performance at the Fillmore Auditorium in San Francisco on 8 January 1966. Wikipedia says this was the 5th Acid Test. I read The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test because my hippie girlfriend loved it but I cannot recall much of the book. That's drugs for ya, I guess. So I'm not sure if the book described anything that went down on this particular night but I would bet that it involved a lot of black lights, DayGlo paint, and a very trippy liquid light show.
I've wondered what the Dead's music was like at the Acid Tests and assumed they were playing these lengthy psychedelic jams - epic versions of a proto-"Dark Star", perhaps, where audience members danced to endlessly improvised guitar solos that penetrated their very essences or simply watched the tracers of their cigarette cherries create nicotine-laced mandalas in the air before them.
But that's not what they played. At this gig, anyway.
The recording we have seems to be a soundboard and contains 4 songs. Those are bookended by stage banter, most of which I assume is Ken Kesey, speaking to the audience about Neal Cassady, the captain taking everyone on Operation Cystalization, and other profundities of that moment. That's drugs for ya, I guess. I found it as part of a 6 CD set that collects (some of?) the Dead's Acid Test performances and related recordings.
After a couple minutes of chaos relating to microphones not working, the Dead launch into a cover of Slim Harpo's "I'm a King Bee". At just under 7 minutes, they have doubled the running time of the original but they've also slowed it down a bit and made it into more of a slow blues tune than Harpo's original with its insistent beat.
This is followed by a fun cover of The Coasters' "I'm A Hog For You, Baby". Mickey Hart hadn't joined the party yet so Bill Kreutzmann's playing stands out. Here he really propels the song forward and throws in some nice fills too. A Dead original comes next: "Caution (Do Not Step On Tracks)". This would appear on their second album, Anthem of the Sun, in the summer of '68. It's a speedy blues rock jam with Pigpen doing the vocals, I believe, and adding harmonica. Kreutzmann is manic here.
The set closes out with a slow blues rendition of Rev. Gary Davis' "Death Don't Have No Mercy". At 9 minutes, we get a lot of guitar soloing but also some organ that I don't think we heard much of in the preceding tunes.
This was definitely not the kind of stuff I figured the Dead would be playing at the Acid Tests. Very bluesy, lots of covers. The band sound like any number of late 60s blues rock groups here but I suppose that was their M.O. at that time. Still finding their feet. Kreutzmann is fantastic on this night with his drumming leading the charge. It seems that in later years the drumming took a back seat, it became cautious lest it trample on Jerry Garcia's delicate, fluttery guitar sound.
While there is a generic white boy blues rock thing going on here, the show has a wonderful energy to it and the songs are great.
Buy the lysergic ticket, take the ride.
No comments:
Post a Comment