November 1 or 2, 1970, Lion's Share, San Anselmo Grateful Dead (Janis Joplin's Wake)

(Update: a Commenter has shown that the Janis wake was on Monday, October 26, 1970. The general thrust of this post is true, but I now think that Jerry Garcia flew back after the St. Louis show on October 24 and then again the next week. See below for further details)

The Grateful Dead toured the East Coast extensively in October and November 1970. From October 10 through 31, playing mostly weekends, they criscrossed the East and Midwest, going from Queens (Oct 10) to St. Louis, MO (Oct 24) and back to Long Island for some famous shows at Stony Brook on October 30 and 31. The tour picked up again the next Thursday (Nov 5) for an epic stand at Port Chester, followed by extensive touring up and down the Eastern seaboard throughout November. An alert researcher, however, pointed out that not only are there PERRO tapes from San Francisco with Jerry Garcia dated November 3 and 4, there is evidence of a booked New Riders gig in San Francisco on Halloween weekend. This begs the question: why would Jerry race home that quickly for a tiny gig, knowing he was going to return to the East Coast just 5 days later?

A November 3 AP Wire story, published in many newspapers, gives the answer. Janis Joplin, who had died October 4, had left instructions in her will to throw a giant party for all her friends. The AP story says

'Pearl' Pays For All-Night Party
San Anselmo, CA (AP)
The invitations read "The drinks are on Pearl," and an estimated 200 persons participated in an all-night party paid for by the late Janis Joplin, known to her closest friends as Pearl.

Lyndall Earb, onetime roommate of the 27-year-old rock-blues singer, who died of a drug overdose in Hollywood two weeks ago, said Miss Joplin left $2,500 in her will "so my friends can have a ball after I'm gone."

The scene, Miss Earb said, was The Lions Share, a night spot in San Anselmo. The Grateful Dead and other rock music groups entertained. The tab was estimated at $1,600.

The article appears in a variety of newspapers on November 3 (I used a clipping from the Appleton, WI Post-Crescent from November 7 because it was easier to read). The party could have been no later than Monday November 2, and if it was an all-night party it could not have appeared in newspapers on the 3rd, so that points to an event on Sunday, November 1, extending well into the early morning of Monday Nov 2. Monday is typically the working musician's weekend, so Sunday night is a good time for an all-night bash.

A number of timeline threads fall into place:

• The Dead and New Riders flew home from Stony Brook on Halloween ASAP, because they were going to Janis's wake. They would have known about it some time before, and planned their getaway. Whatever the exact story of the New Riders gig in San Francisco on November 1, it could have fit in with the all-nighter at the Lions Share. 
• A Benefit show at Harding Theater in San Francisco on November 2, with Jerry Garcia and Friends, Big Brother, Cleveland Wrecking Company, Ice and Kwane and The Kwan-ditos, whether or not it occurred, now falls into the realm of the plausible
• I am hardly an expert on the PERRO sessions, but it seems the all-star sessions around November 2-3-4 were almost an after party for Janis's wake. At the very least, it explains why all those musicians were in town the same night.

The Lions Share was a tiny club at 60 Red Hill in San Anselmo. It was mainly a musicians hangout. Throughout much of 1970, the house band had been called Nu Boogaloo Express, featuring Mike Finnegan or Bill Champlin alternating on keyboards and vocals, and other local players like Danny Nudalman (guitar) Dave Schallock (bass or guitar) and Bill Vitt (drums), but I do not know if they were still featured there. Local residents like Phil Lesh or Van Morrison regularly hung out or played there.

I doubt the Dead played a formal show, and they wouldn't have had their equipment, but the jams must have been pretty interesting. Of course, no one who was there probably remembers a thing, and the one guy who could have been counted on to tape the proceedings, Augustus Owsley Stanley III, was not available due to a prior booking (at the Terminal Island Correctional Facility in San Pedro).

Update: an intrepid researcher has found a copy of the actual invitation, which puts the Janis Joplin wake definitively on Monday, October 26.  The general thrust is still true here, in that the Grateful Dead flew home for the wake, but they did it between St. Louis and Stony Brook, thus answering the question of their activities during that time. It still appears that Garcia, at least, flew back to San Francisco between the Stony Brook and Port Chester shows, based on the dating of the PERRO sessions and the likely performance at the Harding.

January 4, 1970 WUHY-fm, Philadelphia Pa Jerry Garcia (tapers alert)

The "Washington Wire" of the Kokomo (IN) Tribune includes the following brief AP Wire story:

The Federal Communications Commission has fined Philadelphia radio station WUHY-fm $100 for airing a program featuring four-letter words.

In a majority opinion the commission said the Jan. 4 broadcast had "no redeeming social value and is patently offensive by contemporary community standards."

The program featured a tape recorded interview with Jerry Garcia, leader of "The Grateful Dead" musical group.

The Dead were playing Fillmore East on January 2 and 3, 1970, and no doubt a Philly dj got a backstage interview with Jerry, who must have used the dreaded f-word at some point. Anticipating Michael Powell and the Bush-era FCC, the broadcast seems to have been deemed to have been of no redeeming social value.

Tapers, I'm counting on you--this time, there's an Internet.

November 15, 1970 Armory, Albany, NY The Grateful Dead (bomb threat)

The AP Wire story from the Monday, October 16, 1970 edition of the Edwardsville (IL) Intelligencer is worth repeating in its entirety.

Rock Group Skips Concert After Bomb Threat Sunday
Albany, N.Y. (AP)
An acid-rock concert turned sour Sunday evening for some 4,000 young people when a bomb scare forced them out onto cold, rainy streets and the featured performers disappeared before playing a note.

George Frieje of Zebra Enterprises, the local promoters of the concert, said The Grateful Dead, an eight-piece rock band, failed to return to the Armory where the concert was being held after police searched for a bomb that a caller claimed was hidden in the building.

Frieje said that the performers had received a $10,000 guarantee before the show started. He said that other performers kept the showing until 2am today, but that 4,000 people had paid $5 each to hear "The Dead" until 4am.

Let's recap what we have here:

• A hitherto unknown Grateful Dead show at an Armory in Albany on Sunday, November 15, 1970
• A bomb threat that cleared the building
• The Dead never returned to the building after a police search, after having been paid
  

Good times, good times.

The Dead had just finished a 4-night run at the 46th Street Rock Palace in Brooklyn from November 11 thru 14 (Wednesday thru Saturday). They returned to New York to play a gig on the fly at the Fillmore East on Monday, May 16, 1970 with Hot Tuna (the Fillmore East was usually dark on Mondays, and this gig was added at the last minute).

Does anyone know who the other performers were? I'll bet there's a great story behind this, and I bet no one will ever tell it.

P.S. Incidentally, why are the Dead being referred to as an "eight-piece band?" I realize its probably just a meaningless mistake, but its more fun to think that Jack and Jorma were band members for the night.

July 8, 1970 Mississippi River Festival, Edwards, IL Grateful Dead (confirmed)

Deadlists suggests that there was some question whether or not the Grateful Dead actually played the Mississippi River Festival in Edwardsville, IL on July 8, 1970. Since they played the Fillmore East the next night, the gig may have seemed unlikely. However, the review (above) in the Alton (IL) Evening Telegraph of July 9, 1970 puts that to rest. The Dead played an excellent, well-attended show.

Although the article is primarily a news article, writer Doug Thompson does describe the scene:

The Grateful Dead, a California-based "Acid Rock" group, drew a crowd of 8,500 young persons Wednesday night to the Mississippi River Festival--the largest attendance thus far of the current season.

He goes on to describe that after a late start, the band began with low-key folk and country tunes, and then "livened up the concert with a 23-minute rendition of "Good Lovin'" that included drum solos by two drummers playing simultaneously." The article continues on to describe the scene at some length, but much of the reporters time was spent amongst the crowd or backstage, rather than reviewing the band. Extra special attention is paid to what the young women in the crowd were wearing, which turns out to be not that much, but obviously the news must be reported as it happened.

As near as I can tell, the Mississippi River Festival was at least a week long, possibly longer, and held on a temporary site on the banks of the Mississippi River. There appear to have been temporary pavilions, using large tents. In between talking about miniskirts, the writer alludes to the fact that the Dead were the first rock group to play the Festival that year, and mentions that upcoming acts include composer Henry Mancini (presumably conducting an orchestra) and jazz saxophonist Cannonball Adderley.

As to the Dead's touring schedule, Amalie Rothschild mentioned in her fine book Live At The Fillmore East that the Fillmore East's sound system was so good it was the only venue where the Dead used the house sound instead of their own. Since Rothschild was not only Fillmore East staff herself, but later married the house soundman, she was in a position to know. Considering this, the Dead's touring schedule for the month of July makes sense. After finishing up in Canada, the band played the River Festival, and then their equipment turned and headed to San Francisco, while the band took their guitars and backline on a plane to New York. After a weekend at Fillmore East, the Dead returned home also, and band and sound system were recombined for two shows at the Euphoria in San Rafael on July 14 and 16.

This wasn't unprecedented: for many years it was a mystery how the Dead could have played Kirkwood, MO on May 14, 1970 and the Fillmore East on the following day, but they followed the same pattern. The Dead flew to New York for a gig at Fillmore East, leaving their equipment an extra day to get to Temple University in Philadelphia on May 16.

October 1968 Grateful Dead European Tour (canceled)

Billboard Magazine has been the Music Industry's leading trade journal for over half a century. In the 1960s, Billboard often filled its news sections with brief articles excerpted from record company press releases, often about new record releases or forthcoming tours. Because of the lag between the creation of the press release and the advance notice of publishing, sometimes these Billboard articles were outdated by the time they were published. Thus music historians have to focus on Billboard articles as an indicator of what was planned rather than what actually happened.

A correspondent sent me a particularly intriguing example from Billboard of what might have been. Page 70 of the October 12, 1968 Billboard features the brief article "'Dead' On Tour"(above), with a Dateline of London, which blandly states

Warner Group the Grateful Dead arrive here Wednesday ([Oct] 9) for the start of a one-month European tour. The group opens at the Revolution Club, London, October 10 and follow with dates in Birmingham, Leicester and Liverpool.

From Oct. 22 to 31, the Grateful Dead will continue their tour in Belgium, Holland, Sweden and Denmark, then will return to Britain for further dates.

Unfortunately, of course, none of these things happened. The Dead stayed home in October, playing some weekends at the Avalon (11-13) and The Bank in Torrance (18-19), and Jerry Garcia and others played numerous gigs at the Matrix in various configurations known today as Mickey Hart and The Hartbeats.

The Billboard article begs a couple of interesting questions:

• What conclusions can we draw from the fact that the article was published, even thought the tour never occurred, and
• Why might the tour have been scheduled, and then canceled

Since the dateline of the article was London, we have to assume the Billboard correspondent used a Warners (England) press release, which would have been common practice for Billboard news items. The date of publication (October 12, 1968) would have been the last date the magazine could be distributed by mail, so the issue would have been scheduled for the week of October 6-12, and mailed on October 6. Given the time required for printing and so on, the press deadline had to be about October 1, and factoring in the time taken for mailing press releases, the Warners release must have been from mid-September, probably based on information from early September.

It was common for Billboard to publish notices of forthcoming tours that were changed or canceled by the time they occurred. Billboard's readership would have understood this, and in any case would have been just as interested in the fact that a tour was scheduled as that it actually occurred. So we can conclude that as of early September, Warners England anticipated a European tour by the Grateful Dead, with the following itinerary outlined

• Oct 9-arrive London
• Oct 10-Revolution Club, London
• Oct 11-12 Middle Earth Club, London (ads exist for these shows)
  
• Oct 13-21: London, Birmingham, Leicester, Liverpool
• Oct 22-25: Belgium and Holland (approximate dates)
  
• Oct 26-31: Sweden and Denmark (approximate dates)
• Nov 1-5: England (approximate dates)

With such an ambitious plan, why did the Grateful Dead fail to go on their scheduled European tour? The Dead were always eager to try out new places, the farther out the better, so it seems unlikely that the band itself would be an impediment to going on tour. The usual reason for canceled tours was poor ticket sales, but I do not believe that to be the case, for reasons I will explain. At the minimum, the Grateful Dead were already quite legendary, and they could have sold out European venues with ease on reputation alone. Based on contemporary tours (see below), the venues would likely have been fairly small and easy to fill on the Dead's reputation.

European tours by American West Coast "underground" rock bands were a very new venture with little precedent. Given the Dead's always precarious financial situation, I believe Warner Brothers was going to finance the tour and backed out. Although I have no special knowledge, I have to assume the set up was that Warners would finance the flights from San Francisco to London for the Dead, their crew and their equipment, and the band would earn money overseas to travel around, just as they would for a normal tour. Warners would have charged back the expense of the transportation to future Grateful Dead royalties. From Warners point of view, the purpose of the tour would have been to accelerate Grateful Dead record sales in Northern Europe. To my knowledge, up until October 1968 Warners had not sponsored an American rock band on a European tour (see below).

In September 1968, according to Dennis McNally (p.278), the Dead began recording Aoxomoxoa at Pacific Studios in San Mateo, which had a state-of-the-art 16-track recording facility. By all accounts, the band recorded endlessly and rapidly ran over budget--way over budget, many tens of thousands of dollars over budget--with the endless tracking opportunities offered by the technology. Whatever plans Warners may have had for the group, they can not have been optimistic about financing even more debt for a record that showed no signs of immediate completion.

At the same time, after a tumultous band meeting in August (McNally p.276-278), Garcia and Lesh tried to fire Weir and Pigpen on the grounds of insufficient musical commitment, but with typical confrontation avoidance tried to get Rock Scully to bear the bad news (Owsley taped the meeting) and Weir and Pig, while hurt, did not quite grasp that they were fired. The Dead continued to play gigs while recording the album, with Weir and Pig onboard, and eventually their musical commitment improved and the firing was forgotten.

Nonetheless, whatever the Dead's plans to tour Europe, by the end of September the band was nowhere near finishing their next album, and there was some doubt as to who would be in the band. Warners must had some inkling of this, and the band's management may not have been anxious to push Warners when the entire enterprise was about to grind to a halt. In the pre-Internet era, news traveled more slowly, so European promoters may have been carefully planning a tour, only to find that neither Warners support nor the Dead's esprit de corps were flying high, and no European tour was forthcoming.

As it happened, the Dead continued working on Aoxomoxoa, and played some local gigs with Weir and Pigpen for ready cash. The gigs at the now-struggling Avalon and the apparently always struggling Bank in Torrance would have been easy to schedule with very little notice. Many nights in October of 1968 were taken up with gigs at The Matrix featuring Jerry Garcia, Phil Lesh, Bill Kreutzmann and Mickey Hart in conjunction with various other friends, including Jack Casady, Elvin Bishop and Paul Butterfield. Given that the four Dead members were the ones who objected to Weir and Pigpen's playing, its hard not to think that there was some casual auditioning going on for new members. Elvin Bishop must have been considered, whether or not he knew it, but he was an exceptional guitarist used to working with a high powered lead player and he would have fit in well. Various other rumors abound of David Nelson rehearsing with the Dead or Bob Segarini being asked to join (referred to in the liner notes to the Family Tree Miss Butters cd re-release).

None of it happened--In the end, Weir and Pigpen stayed in the band, Weir became a unique and exceptional guitarist, Aoxomoxoa got finished, Elvin Bishop, David Nelson and Bob Segarini went on to their own successful careers. Still, given the fluid weirdness of the 1968 Dead, it is interesting to speculate on how the organism would have reacted to the different scenes in London, the Low Countries and Scandinavia, given how powerful they were there less than 4 years later.

Appendix 

1967-68 European Tours by West Coast "Underground" Bands

Rock touring as we know it today was in its infancy. By late 1968, English bands were starting to come over to America in great numbers, but there was very little action going the other way.  Here is a brief survey of European tours prior to October 1968 by the Dead's contemporaries.

The Mothers Of Invention September 23-October 2, 1967 

England, Netherlands, Germany, Sweden, Denmark

Frank Zappa (then on Verve/MGM) seems to have completed the first European tour by an American band from the West Coast.

Country Joe and The Fish December 20-21, 1967

The Roundhouse, London, GB

Country Joe and The Fish (then on Vanguard) were flown over for two quick shows. They would return for a lengthier tour in November 1968.

Jefferson Airplane/The Doors August 28-September 20, 1968

England, Denmark, Belgium, Germany, Netherlands, Sweden

The Airplane (on RCA) and The Doors (on Elektra) had an extensive month long tour that included the Isle of Wight Festival. I believe both bands shared the same booking agency.

Canned Heat September 3-September 30, 1968

England, France, Denmark, Sweden, Germany

In a creative arrangement, Canned Heat (on Liberty) borrowed John Mayall's van and road crew for the English and European gigs, while Mayall in turn used the Canned Heat crew in America. Canned Heat worked with the William Morris talent agency in Los Angeles.

The Mothers Of Invention September 27-Ocotber 20, 1968

Germany, Sweden, Denmark, France, Austria, Netherlands, England

Zappa returns for a larger and more successful tour in 1968.

San Francisco's Blue Cheer also did a two week tour of Europe in October 1968, and the San Francisco-based Sir Douglas Quintet toured Europe sometime in the second half of 1968.

March 19, 1971 The Syndrome, Chicago, IL The Grateful Dead (canceled)

The February 6, 1971 Billboard mentions in its "News From The Music Capitals Of The World" for Chicago that the Grateful Dead are scheduled to play The Syndrome on March 19. There is indeed a blank spot on the Dead's Spring tour for Friday, March 19, between the Fox Theater in St. Louis (Thursday March 18) and the University of Iowa Fieldhouse (Saturday, March 20), but no sign of a Chicago show. The reason for this is simple: the April 10, 1971 edition of Billboard remarks on the abrupt closure of The Syndrome. It seems clear that the Dead had a gig booked there, and when the venue closed the band was simply stuck with an open date.

Not surprisingly, Chicago had a huge rock market, but various efforts to establish a Fillmore type venue were not successful. One such effort was The Syndrome. The site of The Syndrome was actually the Chicago Coliseum on Wabash Avenue (between 14th and 16th Streets). The Coliseum, actually the second building with that name, was built in 1899 and mostly housed sports teams, including the Chicago Blackhawks (NHL 1926-29), Roller Derby and the Chicago Packers (NBA 1962-63, they moved to Baltimore and became the Bullets). Starting in the late 1960s, it was used periodically for rock concerts. The capacity of the room for basketball was about 7,000. I do not know the rock concert capacity, but I have been told that Chicago promoters had a tendency to pack in as many people as humanly possible, since any fire or other building codes that were being violated could be overlooked for a modest consideration.

The venue had been used for rock concerts under the name Chicago Coliseum in the 1960s, generally for acts too large to play the Kinetic Playground or Auditorium Theater, Chicago's main rock venues. Cream played there on October 13, 1968, and Jimi Hendrix Experience played there on December 1, 1968. The venue became known as The Syndrome sometime in 1970. The promoters seem to have been The 22nd Century, and put on shows at both the Syndrome and the smaller, seated Auditorium Theater. The Dead played there on Friday, November 27, 1970. Since The Syndrome probably held at least 7,000, it was considerably larger than the usual venues that the Dead played in during the early 1970s.

Things must have gone well enough to be re-booked, but The Syndrome closed in early March. The building remained largely unused afterwards, and was torn down in 1982. Coliseum Park, at 1400 Wabash, stands on the site today.

October 17, 1973 Tarrant County Convention Center, Fort Worth, TX Grateful Dead (canceled show?)

A correspondent sends a listing (above) from the Texas Monthy of October, 1973, available through Google Books. There is a tantalizing listing for a Grateful Dead show on Wednesday, October 17 at the Tarrant County Convention Center in Forth Worth, TX, just three days after John Denver and two days before Guy Lombardo (note: when I initially posted this, I thought the venue was the Dallas Convention Center, but alert commenters have proved otherwise, and I changed the post accordingly. The general points still hold, however).

The Fall 1973 Grateful Dead tour is generally known to have begun at the Oklahoma City Fairgrounds Arena on Friday October 19. This show, featuring an epic "Dark Star," was released as Dicks Picks 19. Nothing would make me happier to know that there was a show before that, since every note the Dead played in 1973 was gold as far as I am concerned, and I hope there is another one out there. It certainly fits the touring schedule, where there were two day gaps between cities (Omaha was October 21, Bloomington October 23, Madison October 25 and so on).

However, much as I want there to be another show on the Fall 1973 tour, I have to fall on the side of believing it didn't happen. If a Fort Worth show on October 17 didn't happen, then the tour simply started two days later, a very different scenario than leaving an empty date in the middle of the tour. While the Dead were always admirable in their willingness to invade new territory, I am not surprised to find that they did not play the Fort Worth Convention Center.

The Tarrant County Convention Center, now the Fort Worth Convention Center, features an 11,000+ capacity arena. Strange as it may seem to modern Deadheads, despite their legendary status the Grateful Dead were not at all a big draw outside of the two Coasts and some Midwestern strongholds for many decades. I find it an unlikely proposition that the Dead could fill an 11,000 seater in Dallas/Fort Worth in the 1970s. While even in the 1970s Deadheads were famous for traveling a long way for shows, Dallas was a long way from New Jersey or San Francisco, and Texas itself was a forbidding place for longhairs in the 1970s (Austin perhaps excluded).

Nonetheless, an alert commenter pointed out that there is an extant handbill for the show:

The discovery of this flyer (h/t Psyclops) suggests that the plans for this show were a lot farther along than merely a listing in some monthly magazine. While most shows after 1971 are taped, it was not unheard of for shows to lack a circulating tape, and Texas was far from the circle of regular tapers, so while the lack of a tape or review points away from this show having occurred, its not completely out of the question.

Although I retain hope that another 1973 tape lies in wait, I have to assume that this show was booked to open the Dead's Fall Tour and quietly canceled when ticket sales did not live up to expectations. Dallas is a big city, but a glance at the other acts in October gives a hint to entertainment in Dallas. Three Dog Night (October 13), John Denver (October 14) and James Brown (October 26) were all huge acts with hit singles on the charts and substantial track records behind them. Jerry Reed (October 27) was a big country star, and while he is in fact a fine guitarist and an excellent performer, it is telling that a Nashville star (with an occasional crossover hit like "Polk Salad Annie") was playing the same venue as multi-platinum stars Three Dog Night.