June 8, 1974 Oakland Coliseum Stadium, Oakland, CA: Grateful Dead/Beach Boys/New Riders of The Purple Sage/Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen

The SF Chronicle newspaper ad for the June 8, 1974 Coliseum show

The June 8, 1974 show at Oakland Coliseum Stadium headlined by the Grateful Dead was both a harbinger of things to come, and completely different than almost all the stadium shows that would follow it. An analysis of the show makes an interesting object lesson on the Dead's status in the industry in mid-1974, and an assessment of what was and would never be. Of course, such analysis is made easier by the fact that I was there. I was still in High School, and while I made every effort to be as cool as possible, I was still completely unconnected to the greater network of Deadheads, and in that respect my observations would have been more like those of a typical rock fan. This post will attempt to put the June 8, 1974 show in the context of the time, rather than consider it from the vantage point of today.

"Day On The Green" Concerts
Thanks to Bill Graham, the Bay Area was generally ahead of the curve when it came to rock concerts. The modern rock concert was an outgrowth of the Trips Festival at Longshoreman's Hall (January 21-23, 1966), and it was Bill Graham and Chet Helms who presented it at the Fillmore on February 4, 1966. Various other trends had ebbed and flowed, but Bill Graham had either been on the forefront of innovation or quick to capitalize on growing trends. Outdoor rock concerts had evolved from the carefully organized Monterey Pop Festival, itself based on jazz and folk festivals, and on to the rock festival that featured music 24/7 in a muddy field out in the middle of nowhere. Woodstock was the most famous of these festivals, but there were a lot of other ones: Sky River (the first), Isle Of Wight, Atlanta Pop and numerous others, the Bay Area's own Altamont concert the most notorious of this breed.

Rock Festivals were tried with varying success throughout the early 1970s, culminating with the Bill Graham organized Watkins Glen Festival in New York on July 28, 1973, featuring the Grateful Dead, the Allman Brothers and The Band. Although it was the most successful and best-run event of its kind, as 600,000 people attended the show at the New York racetrack with nary a hitch, the outdoor rock festival was already a dinosaur by the time of  Watkins Glen. Communities were tired of the traffic problems, fans were tired of the privations, and most importantly such events inevitably turned into free concerts, undermining the promoter's goal of maximizing the dollars involved.

In 1973, Bill Graham Presents had been among the first promoters in the country to figure out how to translate the appeal of the Rock Festival into a convenient one-day event at a stadium. Numerous shows had been held at Football and Baseball stadiums up until this point, but BGP capitalized on both fans desire to go to an all-day outdoor event while still having access to food, water and bathrooms. The fact that stadiums had parking lots and turnstiles made the events easy to control and monetize. In contrast to the stadium shows that were to follow from the mid-70s onwards, featuring mega bands that were huge draws, the early Bay Area stadium shows were more like mini-rock festivals. They featured a couple of popular acts, but there was no pretense that the show would sell out. Rather, patrons were encouraged to spend the day catching some rays, dancing and hanging out to a variety of different bands. Tagging the concerts as a "Day On The Green" was a conscious effort to give the event a pastoral feel that was actually at odds with the pedestrian architecture of a modern "multi-use" stadium like the Oakland Coliseum.

Even for BGP, defining the 'Day On The Green' concept was not without its hiccups. The first Bay Area stadium concerts in 1973 were at Kezar Stadium, in Golden Gate Park in San Francisco. Kezar, located in the Southeast corner of Golden Gate Park (at Frederick and Stanyan), had been the home of the San Francisco 49ers, but they had moved to Candlestick Park after 1971. The largely unused Kezar would have made a perfect concert venue for BGP, but a number of factors got in the way. BGP put on two legendary shows in the early Summer of 1973: May 26 headlined by the Grateful Dead (supported by Waylon Jennings and the New Riders of The Purple Sage) and June 2 headlined by Led Zeppelin (supported by Joe Walsh and a then-unknown club band called The Tubes, among others).

The first show, with the Grateful Dead, was a smashing success. The event was not (to my knowledge) sold out, but a healthy crowd had plenty of room to dance and relax and a great time was had by all. The New Riders were their sparkling 1973 selves, Waylon Jennings showed that there was a closer link to the Dead and "Outlaw Country" than had previously been suspected, and of course the Dead played three massive sets. While it must have been a strain on parking and the neighborhoods in general, back in '73 Golden Gate Park was still Home Court for the Dead, so everything generally went swimmingly.

The next weekend's Led Zeppelin show was a different matter. The biggest issue was that because of the way the stage was constructed, the PA was pointed in a certain direction that made the sound echo all over the district, and this did not go over well with the non-rockin' residents of the area. The show was also a sellout, or close to it. I do recall that it was an easy ticket in my High School, but as a result of being an easy ticket, lots of people went (I was a lowly tenth grader without transport, so there was no chance of me attending daytime shows in San Francisco regardless of who was playing). In addition, the significant increase in attendance for Zep over the Dead must have put a much bigger strain on the neighborhoods. Finally (if I may so), based on an analysis of parking lot behavior in my High School (I am eminently qualified in this field, but I won't digress), Deadheads with a buzz on were a lot easier on a neighborhood than liquored up Zep fans, and that can't have gone unnoticed, even if the noise factor was the stated issue. In any case, the noise complaint prevented BGP from holding any further commercial rock concerts in Kezar Stadium.

BGP's solution to the lockout on Kezar was to move the next stadium concert to the Oakland Coliseum. Although the prosaic Oakland Coliseum Stadium, next door to the Arena (both opened in 1966), generally lacked charm, it was easy to get to, easy to park and had few neighbors to be bothered. The move to Oakland Coliseum was a winning decision, not surprising given the fact that the Oakland Coliseum complex inevitably housed winners in the early 1970s (the mighty Oakland A's won three World Series in a row from 1972-74, the Oakland Raiders won the Super Bowl in 1977 and the Golden State Warriors changed basketball by winning the NBA title in 1975).

Hayward Daily Review, July 27, 1973

The first Bay Area "Day On The Green" was on August 5, 1973, at the Oakland Coliseum Stadium. The headliners were Leon Russell and Loggins & Messina. Leon Russell was an established star at the time, and Loggins & Messina were rising, but neither were mega at the time. Also on the bill was local favorite Elvin Bishop. The "Day On The Green" title was to make it clear that the show was general admission, and that everyone would be able to sit out in centerfield rather than be forced to watch from a distance. My impression (from reviews) was that about 20,000 showed up for that concert, in a venue that could have handled above 60,000, but that made for a very relaxed afternoon and a much bigger crowd than would have likely seen any of the acts by themselves. The formula was set: the convenient Oakland Coliseum was the venue, and a relaxed multi-act show was on offer, with the idea that the facility would be spacious enough to accommodate everyone without standing in line and struggling all day. For teenagers who had missed the rock festivals of the 60s, or older people who had actually suffered through them, it sounded pretty good.

June 8, 1974: Day On The Green #1
BGP kicked off the 1974 outdoor concert season the same way they had in 1973, with a stadium concert featuring the Grateful Dead. As the ad shows, however, they shared top billing with The Beach Boys, and the New Riders of The Purple Sage and Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen filled out the day's entertainment. Tickets were just $8.50, and the bands would start at the unrock and roll hour of 10am. Even in the 1970s, $2.00 per band was a very low number, so it was a great deal if you were looking to see a bunch of bands for very little money.

The Oakland Coliseum was also considerably more accessible than Kezar Stadium, and in particular it was much nearer to the East Bay suburbs. Because the show was on a Saturday, patrons could come to the stadium by BART, the new Rapid Transit train that had only opened in 1972 (BART did not run on Sundays in those days). The mechanics of the show made it particularly accessible to High School and College Students, since it was cheap, all ages and BART-eligible. Also, parents (like mine) were perfectly casual about sending their kids off to a baseball stadium--my Dad and I had been to the Oakland Coliseum Stadium many times, and they didn't think twice about letting me and my friend (and his girlfriend) spend the day there. It might have been different if this was some muddy field in Northern California (or a quarter mile oval racetrack in Altamont), but this was an established venue.

As a prospective fan, I found going to the stadium very appealing. I had read about Woodstock and heard about Watkins Glen in detail from my cousin, and while I envied the music, I was too urbanized to tolerate all the various privations. The Coliseum on the other hand--I knew where to park, there were bathrooms, food and drink and anyway I was a huge A's fan. All good.

The Beach Boys' Endless Summer
The Beach Boys co-billing with the Dead was a very odd but in the end very shrewd booking. At the time, the Beach Boys had spent a few years in the wilderness, derided as an oldies band who weren't capable of making "serious" music. The group had struggled desperately to be hip, but their efforts had largely failed. Nonetheless, at the same time AM radio had lost a lot of ground to FM, and were countering it by playing more and more oldies, so 60s Beach Boys hits were well known to most local radio listeners. The co-sponsor of the show was KFRC (610), the biggest AM music station in the Bay Area. The Beach Boys were a regular part of their playlist, and the Dead gave a cachet of hipness to KFRC that it didn't deserve, but probably served them well.

BGP's goal in booking cool local favorites with an over-the-hill LA hit machine was to draw from two different fan bases. I now realize that BGP recognized that people were going to come by the carload, and the Beach Boys essentially appealed to a lot of people who wanted to go with their friends, but didn't like or know about the Grateful Dead. The Beach Boys, on the other hand, were known to everyone who was under 30 and not deaf, because even if you didn't know the names of their songs, even someone who only listened to classical music knew the opening strains to "Good Vibrations" or "Fun Fun Fun." In those days, the Grateful Dead were a "cool" band, but not to everyone's taste, and their popularity was definitely finite. The whole idea of Deadheads as a weird cult had not developed yet. Of course, Dead fans had a reputation as long-haired stoners, but Bay Area High Schools in the 1970s were full of long haired stoners (or would-be ones, anyway), so the Dead weren't out of step with the times.

In 1975, the Beach Boys would release a double album of their greatest hits, called Endless Summer, which would establish them as America's premier oldies band, a title I believe they hold to this day. In 1974, however, this wasn't fully established. Nonetheless, stations like KFRC were playing their old songs, and music fans (myself included) were starting to notice that amidst the catchy hooks and dopey lyrics, the Beach Boys had made some pretty well sculpted music. Thus in 1974, the Beach Boys were on the verge of a comeback. BGP would book the Beach Boys with more current groups at a number of stadium shows in the next few years, and they went over very well, but this June booking with the Grateful Dead was the first test of the concept.

Commander Cody And His Lost Planet Airmen
We arrived at the show well before the 10am kickoff. The stage was in Center Field, extending from Left Center to Right Center. The infield was blocked off, but the outfield grass was open for sitting or dancing. Almost all the seats in the stands were available, too, but there were no reserved seats. As it happened, there were "only" about 30,000 people there, so there was plenty of room to hang out and run around. Those who wanted to get close to the stage had a relatively easy time doing so, but we hung out in mid-centerfield, near enough to see the action, but still with plenty of room to relax.

The most dramatic sight upon entry was the Dead's legendary "Wall Of Sound" looming behind the stage. This was my fourth Dead show (Dec 12 '72, then Feb 9 '73, then Feb 22 '74), so I had seen portions of the system, but it was somehow more dramatic to see it blocking out the back of the stadium (for Oaklanders: this was way before Mt. Davis ruined the view). I realize some or perhaps many people had seen the Dead at the Cow Palace (March 23 '74), but for me personally it was a dramatic tableaux. Even more remarkably, in retrospect, there was an entirely different sound system rising up from both sides of the stage. This system was for the other three acts, who would not be using the Dead's system, and this made for an entire mountain range of equipment, with the Wall as the towering peak.

Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen kicked off soon after 10am with (I think) "Armadillo Stomp." I was a huge fan of the group, and they were suitably great and did many of their best known songs from their four albums. I now realize this was on purpose--they were trying to make new fans, and thus played their best known or most convincing material, but I couldn't have been happier. There had been some minor changes in the band lineup (Ernie Hagar was on pedal steel instead of Bobby Black) but it was a great way to start the day as far as I was concerned.

About half-way through their set, the band brought out Commander Cody from behind his piano by playing a little intro music and saying, "Ladies and Gentlemen, the 29-year old Perfect Master himself, Commander Cody!" (extra points if you recognize the contemporary Guru Maharaj Ji reference). Cody stalked out front and stared at the crowd. Then, quite hilariously, he said "how come I don't see more of you hippies at baseball games?" In 1974, the "jock" and "stoner" crowds in most High Schools and Colleges were still pretty separate, but Cody and his band had bridged that gap long ago (by virtue of being from Ann Arbor, MI). I was a huge A's fan, and this was at odds with most of the rock fans I knew, particularly older ones. Cody and the Airmen were ahead of the curve here, but Cody's remark was the only reference all day to the fact that the event took place in a sports venue. Of course, Cody launched into "Smoke That Cigarette" and the inevitable "Hot Rod Lincoln" and brought down the house. People were still coming into the Coliseum in great numbers throughout Cody's set.

The New Riders Of The Purple Sage
Cody and the Airmen probably played about an hour. The New Riders of The Purple Sage must have come on about 11:30 am. I was a huge New Riders fan, and had all their albums. I was a lot less knowledgeable about country and country rock than I am today, so I saw the Riders as more unique than they actually were, but that hardly mattered. Under normal circumstances it would have been difficult or impossible for me to see them live in the Bay Area, and here I was seeing another band I really liked for the first time. Dave Torbert had left the New Riders several months before, much to my dismay, and the band had not yet recorded with new bassist Skip Battin, but I was still thrilled to see them.

I no longer recall precisely which songs the New Riders played, but since I had all their records and knew every song by heart it hardly mattered. The only song I didn't like was a new one by Battin, but I had only just heard it. Buddy Cage was awesome, just as I had hoped. Given that it was in a baseball stadium, albeit an only half-filled one, the most interesting thing was that mid-set the Riders invited out mandolinist Frank Wakefield to sing and play his song "Teardrops In My Eyes." Now, the Riders had recorded it on Panama Red, with Nelson singing lead, so I knew the song, and I recognized Wakefield's name from the songwriting credits [update: an astute correspondent points out that "Teardrops" was written by Red Allen and Tommy Sutton, and Wakefield didn't play on the record, so I'm imposing something on my own memory--I didn't actually know who Wakefield was]. I don't recall whether Nelson or Wakefield sang lead at the stadium, but to me this was what concerts were supposed to be like: if a band had a friend in town, they invited him up on stage to sing a song.

Of course this wasn't some gig at the Keystone Berkeley, but rather a showcase event at a baseball stadium, and the Riders had probably carefully rehearsed the performance. Knowing what I know now, I realize that David Nelson, Frank Wakefield and The Good Old Boys were going to open for the Great American String Band at Keystone Berkeley a few days later (June 13-14, discussed at length by JGMF), so there was nothing casual about it at all. But what did I know? It was only later, when I became more knowledgeable about bluegrass, that I realized that Wakefield was not just (or only) a pal of Nelson's, but the man who, in David Grisman's phrase, "split the bluegrass mandolin atom." About 23 years later, I saw Wakefield at the Freight And Salvage, and I knew what I was hearing, but in 1974 he was just a guy who came on stage.

However, as if to cement my ideas that musicians were just happy-go-lucky guys who liked to hang out, Commander Cody joined the New Riders for the last two numbers, which were "Dim Lights, Thick Smoke (And Loud, Loud Music)" and "Glendale Train." Cody had played on the first NRPS album, so it all made sense to me, even if it gave me an inaccurate picture of reality. In the mid-70s, the Airmen and the Riders had the same manager (Joe Kerr) and played many bills together, so Cody had probably played these two songs many times with the band. While I'm sure it was fun, it was a safe and popular thing to do. Nonetheless, it sure sounded good to me.

The Beach Boys
The New Riders must have left the stage by or before 1:00pm. There was the usual rapid set change, and after a little while people were getting restless in the hot sun, looking forward to seeing the Beach Boys. I was less interested in the Boys than the other groups, but there was nothing to do and I wanted to see them or anyone rather than just bake. After more than half an hour, people were starting to get restless. Eventually, someone--maybe Bill Graham--came on stage and announced that the Beach Boys were having travel problems and were going to be late, but that the Dead had given up some of their time to let them do their set.

Well, even if this was just musician's courtesy, it didn't sit well with me, baking in the sun so a band I didn't really want to see could play their entire set, but there wasn't anything I could do about it. It did leave ample time to socialize with the people in the crowd. The most surprising and telling thing was the discovery nearby of two girls from my high school, neither of whom liked the Grateful Dead, and thus rather less likely to be found at such a concert. In the interests of not embarrassing their no-doubt-by-now-adult children, I will redact their names, but while they sort of liked rock music, they were both violinists in the Youth Symphony and knew nothing about rock beyond The Beatles. One of them claimed to have never heard of or heard the Beach Boys.

The two of them had come to the show with two older guys from San Jose (shocking to a Palo Altan). In fact the boys were probably about 19 and must have been San Jose State students, but it was an interesting marker of how the show appealed to different sorts of people. Here were two girls from my High School who would never have attended a Dead show, but because it was an easy ticket at a convenient venue, and two (presumably) college guys invite them on a double date, so here they were. Now, to give the violinists their Palo Alto cred, they had arrived during the New Riders and slept through them, because they were too stoned--at 11:30am. It was another mark of the half-filled Coliseum that patrons could cheerily take a nap in right field (Reggie Jackson territory in those days) whenever they felt the need. At about 2:00, when we bumped into them, they were still three sheets to the wind.

The Beach Boys came on at about 2:30 or even 3:00pm. Lead singer Mike Love irritated many people by saying, "sorry about being late, man, but we're all on Universal Time," a sentiment not shared by me. However, that aside, the Beach Boys played and sang very well, and ended up winning over the Deadhead crowd along with entertaining violinists and other more casual fans. While Brian Wilson had stopped touring many years before, obviously, the other two brothers (guitarist Carl and drummer/singer Dennis) and cousin Al Jardine (guitar) were still in the band. Bruce Johnston took Brian's parts, so the band's five part vocals (Love, Johnston, Jardine, the Wilsons) were still intact. The rest of the band was pretty solid too, including Blondie Chaplin (lead guitar) Ricky Fataar (guitar and drums) and Billy Hinsche (on piano--from Dino, Desi and Billy; don't tell me you've forgotten them?). I no longer recall if producer Jim Guercio played bass on that tour.

The Beach Boys were real professionals, cranking out all their 60s hits (and "Sail On Sailor") with enthusiasm, hitting all the high notes, and putting in just enough genuine guitar solos to seem like they belonged in the 1970s to pull off playing in a baseball stadium. Whatever reservations Deadheads like me may have had about the group were forgotten while we all sang along to "Help Me Rhonda" and "Wouldn't It Be Nice." I looked over and saw my violinist friends singing along too--it turned out they knew a bunch of Beach Boys songs, even if they hadn't known that beforehand.

The Main Attraction
As I recall, the changeover to the Grateful Dead was relatively quick. This must have been because the Beach Boys were using one sound system and the Grateful Dead were using another, but in any case the wait wasn't too long. By this time we had all been baking in the sun for many hours, and we knew that the show would not go on into the dark (I don't know how we knew this but we did). Now, of course, we would pay the price for the Beach Boys lateness by losing out on the Dead. Again, considering what I now know, the Dead had played three sets at Kezar the year before, and they only played two at the Coliseum, so thanks to the Beach Boys transit issues, I personally lost a set of primo 1974 Dead.

Since the tapes circulate widely, I won't bother to analyze them, as there are better people than me for that, and I will just confine myself to a few observations. First of all, the Wall Of Sound was absolutely amazing. Concert sound has improved tremendously in the last few decades, and I assume that the qualities of the Wall Of Sound can be duplicated by modern technology. For 1974, however, it was light years ahead of its time. Most rock sound systems in the day were loud enough, but had all sorts of holes in them--you couldn't hear the piano, or the highs were fuzzy, or the bass sounded different all over the house, or whatever. Standing in Center Field at the Coliseum that day, however, I really felt I was peering into the Future Of Sound. The band played loud enough that I could hear every note, yet at the same time I could carry on a conversation in a normal tone of voice with my friend. I recall watching Kreutzmann at one point, and seeing him break a stick. Now, breaking a drumstick is a common enough thing, but I could hear the audible 'click' on the mic as it broke, and I was absolutely amazed.

Mars Hotel would not be released until the end of June. In 1974, there was little access to the secret world of tapes or even word-of-mouth. I know now when various songs were debuted, but "Scarlet Begonias," "US Blues," "Ship Of Fools" and "It Must Have Been The Roses" were all new to me. I realize that many people would have heard these songs at the Cow Palace or elsewhere, but even for those people they mostly would have heard them once. Indeed, I had heard "Wave That Flag" at Maples the year before, but of course I had no idea.  I was locked in enough by this time that I recalled all the songs and recognized them on Mars Hotel (and Tales Of The Great Rum Runners, in the case of "Roses"). It was exciting to get a foretaste of the next Dead album, and to be excited about the songs on it.

The highlight of the show, in person and on tape, was the lengthy "Playing In The Band>Wharf Rat>Playing In The Band." My recollection was that it was quite hot, and that the stadium blocked the usual bay breeze, so we were all pretty melted, so the laid back jamming was right in tune with the day. I do recall a Hammond organ on stage, covered over but seemingly ready to go, and wondering if Keith or anyone else was ever going to play it. I have often wondered if they bought the organ to every show or just a few of them, or if they ever asked Keith if he was going to play it. The few times that Keith played organ he seemed quite good (Oct 27 '73 comes to mind), but I guess it was one of those weird non-confrontational Dead things. Still, it was only much later when I thought about the fact that it was sitting on stage unplayed.

Who knows what we missed by the Beach Boys lateness. Was there supposed to be a Phil and Ned "Seastones" set? Would I have gotten a third set "Dark Star"? In any case, the June 8, 1974 Oakland Coliseum Stadium show laid out the blueprint for the next several years of Day On The Greens (or DOGs, as they were affectionately known): a couple of headliners with distinct audiences, some fun opening acts, and a relaxed atmosphere, with some occasional great moments mixed in. Having established the structure of the Bay Area "Day On The Green," however, the Grateful Dead would not play another one on home turf until they played with Bob Dylan in 1987. By that time, stadium concerts were just really big concerts with a single headline act, sold out to the gills and no different than any other concert  

[Update: An alert Commenter pointed out that I completely forgot about the October 9-10, 1976 Oakland Stadium concerts with The Who and The Grateful Dead. Whoops--particularly galling, since I attended the second one. However, The Who/Dead extravaganza, although still presented in the all-day format of other DOGs, was yet another harbinger of Things To Come. There were two mega-headliners and no opening acts. The shows were expected to be totally sold out, although in fact for a variety of reasons that was not the case. Nonetheless, despite my brain fade, the Who/Dead shows were more like 80s stadium concerts than 70s rock festivals in a stadium. The big event of the Summer of '76 had been Peter Frampton/Fleetwood Mac/Gary Wright shows on April 26 and May 1, and although Frampton had "come alive" by then, Fleetwood Mac and Gary Wright were just breaking out. High School attendance was probably better at the Coliseum that day than it had been the previous Friday at Bay Area schools.]

Aftermath
The multi-act Day On The Green concept was very popular in the Bay Area for the balance of the 70s, and spread to other cities. The next DOG was CSNY/The Band/Joe Walsh/Jesse Colin Young, at Oakland Stadium on July 13-14, 1974. All of the 70s Day On The Greens in the Bay Area were held at Oakland Coliseum (SNACK was at Kezar, but that was a Benefit held under a different aegis). The Dead were supposed to play a DOG in early Summer '78 with the Steve Miller Band, but the booking fell through for unknown reasons. The Beach Boys were regulars at many DOGs, even headlining one on July 2, 1976.

In 1974, the size and expense of the Wall Of Sound required the Dead to play huge venues with certain kind of technical accommodations (indoor arenas had to have concrete floors, and so on).While the June DOG was a big success, and the Dead were surely well compensated, in order for the show to happen they had to be double billed with another act who ended up cutting into their time. As professionals, I don't think the Grateful Dead dwelt on it per se, but it was another way in which the Grateful Dead were going to have to act like a "normal" band, and on some level it must have given them pause. This and many other factors combined to force the band to go on a performance hiatus after the five night stand at Winterland on October 16-20, 1974.

Had I been really cool and not just a high schooler, I would have known that Jerry Garcia was playing at the Great American Music Hall on the night of June 8. Imagine--four hours in the sun, and then killing the evening by funking out with Merl Saunders and John Kahn late into the night. According to legend, anyway, Jack Casady and Stephen Stills showed up to jam. Wow--maybe musicians did just like to jam and hang out.

At least one of the two violinists saw the Grateful Dead again, during the Dead's "last five nights" (as they were known) back in October 1974. I recall quizzing her relentlessly about it at school--I'm sure she has forgotten it--but it was just a date to her, and she had no useful information. Still, I took some measure of satisfaction that she had liked the Dead enough to be willing to go again. Within a few years, I took to hoping that people wouldn't like the Dead, because I didn't want competition for tickets. From what I know (fifth hand), she has managed to live a happy and productive life, so at the very least it didn't harm her.

Update I: Backstage Report
I am fortunate to be in touch with keyboardist Ned Lagin, who had a unique perspective on the Grateful Dead's music in the first half of the 1970s. I asked him

do you recall if Seastones (or "Phil and Ned") was supposed to play in Oakland Stadium on June 8, 1974? The Beach Boys were also on the bill, and they were late, so the Dead agreed to shorten their show to help out. The band still played two full sets and an encore, so I wondered what was missing. I know that you started appearing between sets later in June.

While it turns out that Lagin was not scheduled to play, he was indeed present, and had a remarkable story to tell

My girl friend and I rode to the gig with Phil and his girl friend, all four of us happy and excited, flying (in Phil's car) over the Bay (on the Richmond Bridge) and down the east shore of the bay to Oakland. Everything (the PA) was set up when we arrived and the NRPS were playing, but after walking in through the performer's entrance area, and seeing the NRPS finish, the real story of that day for us became quickly apparent - that the Beach Boys were seriously afraid of the GD and possible psychic or liquid or other physical "infection" or contact, or the appearance of contact or association. It seemed that an underlying reason they as co-headliners were booked to go on first (meaning before the GD played and things got loose, but after CC and NRPS) was for them to play and get away unharmed, untainted (and, the thinking was, the Beach Boys' audience as well if they wanted). The Beach Boys did not allow any one from the GD on stage or backstage with minor exceptions. They put yellow police crime tape all around the sides of the stage and the back stage area to keep the GD out while they were present. I remember them being very late in starting (but not so late arriving as Bill Graham said at the gig) - only that they were there but didn't come out on stage for a very long time, for whatever reasons. I had great respect for the singing abilities of the Beach Boys, and their becoming a part of mainstream Americana, but really otherwise didn't care much about them one way or the other - seeing them in some full GD phobia mode was hysterical to say the least (even knowing their personal history). They did put on a good show that was them, the Beach Boys. But I'm not sure why no one ever reported one of the more bizarre and funny occurences in Rock and Roll, especially since it was the first (Oakland) Day on the Green and an important bell-weather for Bill Graham's future stadium summer gigs. I guess out of respect for the Beach Boys. The GD played as long really as they wanted (or felt the need to, given the constraints on Graham to have a reasonably well controlled and contained, and hence reproducible, stadium event). 

Phil and I had no plans to play (it wasn't considered) because no one thought it would be a good start (for us) at a large outdoor party show. Particularly one with such an eclectic mix of mainstream outdoor summer pop audience attendees. (Soon on tour though we would play outdoors at Hollywood Bowl (much smaller, but with CC and Maria Muldour on the bill), and Roosevelt Stadium, and do well....). We also skipped the first cities on the tour because we (prejudicially) thought it unlikely to get a reasonable response from Southern audiences. As it turned out the least favorable response we ever got was later in (northern liberal) New Haven.

So, it turns out that the "story" about the Beach Boys being late was concocted for the crowd, and much more mysterious behavior was happening backstage. On the positive side, it seems that the Grateful Dead played more or less what they wanted to. 

Update II: Another Backstage Report
As if this post weren't great enough already, I was contacted by Kevin Smith, one of the road managers of the Beach Boys' 1974 tour, who had yet another perspective:

There are a few inaccuracies I'd like to correct.  I am qualified to do so because I was also there that day on the green!  I was the roadie/stage manager for the Beach Boys in 1974.  We arrived in Oakland with the Beach Boys backline gear June 7th to set up gear that evening.  We were set and ready to go as specified by the Grateful Dead's crew.  I had met the Dead in Chicago in October of 1971.  They were playing the Auditorium Theatre great shows!!  Phil had just got the first quadraphonic bass from Alembic and was really jazzed!!  So I knew the Dead's crew already and they showed me the in and outs of the wall of sound concept.  Amazing!!  No monitor console, they each mixed their own monitors onstage!  
   Which is why the Beach Boys had their own PA system.  Our production manager didn't trust the concept of the wall of sound.  In regards to the band line up.  Yes Ricky Fataar was playing drums but Blondie was long gone from the band then. If I recall the band line up was Dennis and Carl Wilson, Mike Love, Al Jardine, Billy Hinshe, Carlos Munoz, Ed Brewer  and Ricky Fataar.   Al or Carl played the leads.  James Guercio, Chicago's producer didn't join us until later that year. 
   Your assumption that the Beach Boys had you waiting in the sun because they had some problem with the Dead is totally untrue.  The reason the Boys were late is because they chose to stay in San Fransisco instead of Oakland like the crew did.  They misjudged the amount of traffic going to Oakland and got stuck in it.  Believe me I was dealing with Bill and his staff regarding there tardiness. That is why Bill Graham's people came onstage and made that announcement!  We knew we were holding things up by being late!!   I was waiting for them to arrive at the backstage entrance.  The last thing we wanted to do was screw up a Grateful Dead Show.  The Beach Boys have a lot of respect for Grateful Dead!  When they arrived I escorted them directly to the stage and put them on!!  I don't recall any yellow tape being around the stage at all.  If there was it might have been there to keep people from wandering into the tech area where the Dead's crew had several of their McIntosh Power Amps in various states of repair.  They were the weak link in the system since they would literally shake themselves to pieces during transport. 
   There was one fact that you neglected to mention although you may not have been aware of it at the time.  After we did the set change, Osley Stanley came up to me on the side of stage to ask me why the Beach Boys weren't using the wall of sound.  He told me he had designed the PA himself and was a bit upset by our decision not to use it. I explained to him it was not my call.  We had gotten most of our gear down and in the truck when an EMT wagon showed up backstage.  It was there for Stanley who had fallen off the scaffolding while pulling down the PA we had just used.  He broke his leg!!
    I felt really bad about it and told Jerry Garcia so as he was making his way to the stage and I was making my way to my truck. You were right about one thing, we did do a really good show once we got there.

Thanks Kevin, for letting me include this. It's amazing to imagine the idea of the Beach Boys' harmonies soaring out over the Wall Of Sound, although I hardly blame their crew for not wanting to try out a new system in front of a whole stadium.

Grateful Dead/Jerry Garcia Tour Itinerary March 1970

An ad for a Howard Wales led jam session: SF Chronicle, March 16, 1970

I have been constructing tour itineraries for the Grateful Dead for brief periods of their history. There is so much information circulating on websites and blogs (including my own) that go beyond published lists on Deadlists and Dead.net that these posts make useful forums for discussing what is known and missing during each period. So far I have reviewed

• The Warlocks May-December 1965
• The Grateful Dead January-April 1967
• The Grateful Dead May-June 1967
• The Grateful Dead November-December 1967
• The Grateful Dead/Jerry Garcia January 1968
• The Grateful Dead March-April 1968
• Grateful Dead/Jerry Garcia July-August 1969
• Grateful Dead/Jerry Garcia September-October 1969 
• Grateful Dead/Jerry Garcia November 1969 
• Grateful Dead December 1969 
• Grateful Dead January 1970 
• Grateful Dead February 1970
• Grateful Dead November 1970 

Rather than go in strictly chronological order, I am focusing on periods where recent research has been done by myself or others. Over time I hope to have the entire 1965-70 period. My principal focus here is on identifying which dates have Grateful Dead shows, which dates might have Grateful Dead shows, and which dates are in dispute or may be of interest. Where relevant, I am focusing on live appearances by other members--mostly Jerry Garcia, as a practical matter--in order to get an accurate timeline.

What follows is a list of known Grateful Dead performance dates for March, 1970. I am focused on which performances occurred when, rather than the performances themselves. For known performances, I have assumed that they are easy to assess on Deadlists, The Archive and elsewhere, and have made little comment. As a point of comparison, I am comparing my list to Deadlists, but I realize that different databases may include or exclude different dates (I am not considering recording dates, interviews or Television and radio broadcast dates in this context).

My working assumption is that the Grateful Dead, while already a legendary rock band by 1968, were living hand to mouth and scrambling to find paying gigs. Most paying performances were on Friday and Saturday nights, so I am particularly interested  in Friday and Saturday nights where no Grateful Dead performances were scheduled or known.

March, 1970
February 1970 had been a particularly momentous month for the Grateful Dead, notwithstanding the string of fantastic live performances. Sometime in the late January-early February period they began recording Workingman's Dead. The exact date has never been determined, to my knowledge, but it appears they completed recording it during March. While the band had been touring madly throughout the beginning of 1970, riding high on their new album Live/Dead, they realized that manager Lenny Hart was stealing from them. In late January 1970 Hart had proposed merging Grateful Dead operations with Chet Helms's struggling Family Dog on The Great Highway. This was actually a brilliant and intriguing idea, but while Helms may have kept somewhat casual accounts, he was no crook--when Lenny Hart refused to show him the Grateful Dead books, Hart had to scurry back to Novato.

Lenny Hart had stolen $155,000, bankrupting the band for all intents and purposes. Throughout this, the Dead played absolutely remarkable music, and Hart's perfidy ironically condemned the Dead to endless touring, and their 1970 and '71 peregrinations produced legions of Deadheads.Yet somehow, in the midst of an irrational and ill-advised touring schedule--one of Lenny Hart's many failings as a manager--the Grateful Dead played epic performances throughout Winter 1970, while still finding time to fire their manager and record one of their classic albums.

At the same time, remarkably, while Jerry Garcia's first formal "side" band, the New Riders Of The Purple Sage, were on hiatus in March because they appear to have had no bass player, Garcia found time to start jamming at the Matrix with Howard Wales. The jams with Wales led ultimately to the partnership with Merl Saunders and eventually to the Jerry Garcia Band, so the month of March 1970 was fruitful indeed for the future of the Grateful Dead.

I have linked to existing posters where available.

Grateful Dead/Jerry Garcia Tour Itinerary March 1970
February 27-March 1, 1970: Family Dog On The Great Highway, San Francisco, CA: Grateful Dead/Commander Cody And His Lost Planet Airmen
Although the exact timing of the firing of Lenny Hart remains uncertain, the deed had been done by the end of February. It must have been odd to play a weekend at the venue that their crooked manager had proposed merging with. The band was friendly with Chet Helms, so the situation was probably manageable socially, but it still must have been weird.

Commander Cody and The Lost Planet Airmen opened the shows all weekend. Cody had opened for the Dead at the Family Dog the previous August, and they would go on to play many shows with the Dead over the years.

March 2, 1970: The Matrix, San Francisco, CA: Jam Session with Howard Wales
As I have discussed at length in my history of John Kahn's performing history, the Matrix had generally hosted a Monday night jam for local musicians from 1968 onwards (the listing above is actually from the March 16, 1970 San Francisco Chronicle). Usually there was a "host" musician or band, but anyone might show up. Jerry Garcia had dropped by regularly if rather intermittently over the years. Around February 16, 1970, the jam session started to be hosted by organist Howard Wales. His regular partner was drummer Bill Vitt.

Garcia knew Wales and had jammed with him on occasion. At least one tape endures from The Family Dog on August 28, 1969. It's impossible to be certain when Garcia first started showing up at Wales's Matrix jam sessions (I discuss the subject at length in the John Kahn 1970 entry), but the likeliest dates seem to be March 2 or March 9,1970.

March 7, 1970: Santa Monica Civic Auditorium, Santa Monica, CA: Grateful Dead/Cold Blood
The Santa Monica Civic Auditorium, at 1855 Main Street, was a multipurpose venue built in 1958. It seats about 3000 for rock concerts. Still in use, it remains the home of the Santa Monica Symphony Orchestra. It has only been used intermittently for rock shows (it may be viewed in the famous TAMI Show movie), despite its central location. March 7 was a Saturday night, which makes me wonder if there wasn't a canceled Friday show (on March 6). On the other hand, the band were busy recording Workingman's Dead, so they may have had different imperatives for their schedule. Its still uncertain the exact days that the album was recorded, but the band would still have been overdubbing and mixing in March, even if they had finished recording the basic tracks.

March 8, 1970: Travelodge Theater In The Round, Phoenix, AZ: Grateful Dead
This Phoenix Theater went under a variety of names over the years. Phoenix was not yet the booming metropolitan area it would become in later decades. The timing of this weekend's shows suggests that the band was playing some quick shows for cash on the weekend, and then returning to San Francisco to work on the album.

One interesting detail about this show was that area resident Vince Welnick attended the show as a fan--little could he have expected....

March 9, 1970: The Matrix, San Francisco, CA: Jam Session with Howard Wales

I assume that the band members flew back from Phoenix (the crew may have driven a truck with the equipment), so Garcia could have been in town in time to drop by the Matrix for some late night jamming with Howard Wales and Bill Vitt.  

SF Chronicle: March 11, 1970

March 12, 1970: Inn Of The Beginning, Cotati, CA: New Riders Of The Purple Sage (likely canceled)
After extensive gigging around the Bay Area in late 1969, the New Riders of The Purple Sage ground to a halt at the beginning of the New Year. We know that Nelson and Dawson were still working on music, because they worked up "Friend Of The Devil" with Robert Hunter (only to have Jerry Garcia add a bridge and co-opt the song), but we can find little evidence of any shows. JGMF found one January show (Jan 19 '70), but we can't determine for certain if that show was actually played.

The Inn Of The Beginning was a tiny out of the way place where San Francisco and Marin musicians could play a show and have a little fun. The New Riders had played there a few times in 1969, and this show was booked for March. After an extensive discussion, this corner of the blogospheric community determined that the IOTB show was never played. It appears that the New Riders did not have a bass player in March, 1970 (itself another topic I have discussed), as Phil Lesh had simply opted out, so the few scheduled gigs were never played.

Berkeley Barb: March 13, 1970

March 13-14, 1970: New Orleans House, Berkeley, CA: New Riders Of The Purple Sage/Canyon (NRPS canceled--replaced by Big Brother)
Part of our argument for assuming that the Cotati show was canceled was the fact that while the Riders were scheduled for a weekend of shows at Berkeley's New Orleans House, they were actually replaced by Big Brother and The Holding Company.

March 17, 1970: Kleinhans Music Hall, Buffalo, NY: Grateful Dead/Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra
In one of the Grateful Dead's most unexpected pairings, they played a show with the respected Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra. Apparently, this was a true collaboration, with members of the symphony improvising along with the Dead. Quite an odd show for a Tuesday night in Buffalo.

Because of the practical matter of getting to upstate New York in the Winter, I have assumed that Garcia would have flown to Buffalo the day before, and thus would not have been in town for the March 16 Monday night jam at the Matrix.  

March 20-21, 1970: Capitol Theater, Port Chester, NY: Grateful Dead/Catfish (early and late shows)
The Grateful Dead played four shows in two nights at the Capitol Theater in Port Chester, near the Connecticut border on Long Island Sound. This converted movie theater had only recently re-opened as a rock venue. While Port Chester was impossibly far from Manhattan, the population of the Tri-State area insured that the Capitol largely drew from a different pool of potential audiences than city venues like the Fillmore East.

Catfish was a blues/rock band that featured lead singer Bob "Catfish" Hodge.

March 22-23, 1970: Pirate's World, Dania, FL: Grateful Dead/New Society Band
Deadlists shows the Pirate's World show as Tuesday, March 24, but an alert Commenter has pointed out that the extant ticket stub (above) lists shows on March 22 (Sunday) and March 23 (Monday) and none for Tuesday March 24.

Pirate's World was an amusement park in Dania, FL, just North of Miami. There had been a variety of efforts to find suitable rock venues in the Miami area in the 1960s, and the Dead had played a critical role, if to little avail. Early in 1968, the Dead had played Thee Image, Miami's own Fillmore, and the band had also kicked off a series of free concerts at Graynolds Park. Later in 1968, the band had played a rock festival in nearby Hallandale (Dec 28 '68) and then, after Thee Image had closed, at a rock festival on the Seminole Indian Reservation in West Hollywood (May 23-24 '69),and at a speedway in Hollywood (Dec 28 '69). By 1970, police and civic pressure had forced touring rock bands to play outdoors in the Pirates World amusement park in Dania, just North of Hallandale (and just South of Fort Lauderdale). Note that the ticket stub suggests that when purchasing a ticket "all rides free." I wonder how "The Eleven" would sound on a roller coaster?

A Commenter elsewhere recalled

The concert area at Pirates World was inside the large amusement park. Maybe 2,000 people? 100 feet of floor space between the stage and a row of wooden bleacher seats that faced the stage. Totally open air, don't even think there was a roof over the stage.

The odd sequence of shows suggests that the Dead were flying to shows and then flying back home to work on the album. I doubt they bought that much equipment with them.

March 27, 28 or 29, 1970: Winter's End Festival, Orlando, FL (canceled)
JGMF discovered an ad for a rock festival in Orlando, FL on the weekend of March 27-29. As a Commenter has observed, it may be that the Dead scheduled in the Festival date and then added the Pirate's World shows as filler. The canceled show would explain the otherwise empty weekend.


March 30, 1970: The Matrix, San Francisco, CA: Jam Session with Howard Wales
There was a nine day gap between the Pirate's World show and the next Grateful Dead show, which was in Cincinatti, OH on April 3. That show, too, was a sort of one-off, leading me to think the band was flying to shows with comparatively minimal equipment. However, the length of that gap suggests that it was very likely that Jerry Garcia went over to the Matrix on Monday, March 30 to jam with Howard Wales and Bill Vitt. If Garcia had been cloistered in the studio mixing Workingman's, I'm sure he would have been in the mood to let off steam by going over to the Matrix and play some weird space music with Wales and Vitt.

The interesting thing about the March 30 is not whether Garcia showed up, since I'm pretty sure he did, but whether it was the night that John Kahn first showed up as well. The long partnership of Garcia and Kahn began around this period at the Matrix, but as I discussed elsewhere, I can't tell for certain whether Kahn first showed up on March 30, April 6 or April 13. A symphonically trained bassist named Richard Favis actually played one night (invited by Vitt), who did not work out, so Vitt invited Kahn. My own guess is that April 6 was Kahn's first night jamming with Garcia, but it's impossible for me to be certain at this time.

March 1970 was an intriguing month for the Grateful Dead and Jerry Garcia: they played some interesting shows, they finished working on an important album, and Garcia used a New Riders hiatus to set himself on a critical path in his own career. Until some intrepid researcher can come close to determining Garcia and the band's precise studio timeline for Workingman's Dead, the chronology of the month and thus Garcia's live activity will remain a bit murky.

"Keith And Donna"-Keith And Donna Godchaux (Round Records RX-104 March 1975)

Keith And Donna, Round Records RX-104, 1975

Keith and Donna Godchaux's album Keith And Donna was released in March, 1975 to little acclaim, even in Deadhead circles. When the album is mentioned at all, it is generally alluded to as a sign of casual self-indulgence by the Grateful Dead, releasing an uncommercial, unfocused album that had no chance of succeeding, and a mark that Jerry Garcia's Round Records label was just a vehicle for stoned vanity project. I do not believe Keith And Donna has ever been re-released on cd, but in any case few Deadheads have ever heard the album. In fact, the songs are unfocused and the production is rather muddy, so despite the presence of Jerry Garcia on every track, its not much of an album. People interested in Keith And Donna's own music are better served by finding live performances of the Keith And Donna band, who performed for about 8 months in 1975.

However, I am going to make the rather radical claim that the Keith And Donna album was a serious effort to make a successful commercial album, and even more radically, that doing so was a pretty good idea. In any record making enterprise, there is a tremendous amount of luck involved, regardless of best efforts, and in the end the Keith And Donna album was neither a musical nor financial success. Nonetheless, I think it was well worth the financial risk that Garcia took to get the album made, and Warner Brothers, or anyone else who would have been willing to back the Grateful Dead had they not gone out on their own in 1973, would have made the same decision and actively encouraged Keith And Donna to make the record just as readily as Garcia. Just because a project doesn't succeed doesn't mean that the idea was ill-conceived, and I am going to make the case that within the context of the 70s music business, Keith And Donna was a calculated risk that Garcia and any other financial backers took seriously as a sound investment.

the back cover photo to the Keith And Donna lp

Recording Keith And Donna
The Deaddisc site, as always, has all the details about the recording of the Keith And Donna album. In an interview with Blair Jackson, Donna said

Almost all of it was recorded at our house in Stinson Beach. Bob Matthews brought in a Neve board and we had our nine-foot Steinway there and we had our whole living room set up as a recording studio for a while. Jerry was just a couple of minutes away, so it was real easy to get together and work on it.

Since most of the recording was done at the Godchauxs' home, however long the album took, the costs would have been considerably lower than if a regular studio had been used.  Thus the album project was relatively low-cost from the beginning. The album was mixed at a professional studio (His Master's Wheels in San Francisco, formerly Pacific High Recorders, at 60 Brady Street) by experienced hands (including Merl Saunders), but the basic work was done at the Godchaux's house, so the number of takes and the amount of tinkering wouldn't have mattered that much.

Of course, I don't think the album sounds that good. This may explain why Bob Weir custom built a studio in his basement rather than just using his living room. This is not a minor point. Mickey Hart was the first member of the Dead to have a studio, in his barn in Novato, and Keith and Donna attempted to set up a temporary studio in their living room. It didn't sound that great, so Weir has to have learned from that when he built his studio in his basement. Jerry Garcia and John Kahn, by extension, must have learned from Weir's experience when they bought a Neve Console to set up a recording studio to make at Front Street (Le Club Front) to make Cats Under The Stars. Keith And Donna were working band members with their own studio--Hart was on hiatus in the early 70s--and however unsatisfying the recording sound may have been, it was part of an ongoing effort to make the Grateful Dead self-sufficient.

The Early 70s Music Business
There was a lot of money being made in the record business in the early 70s--a lot. Even a modestly successful record could pay back its costs pretty quickly. Who got screwed in the early 70s was the artist. However, if the artist owned the record company, the equation was very different indeed. I have no idea about the business arrangement between Jerry Garcia and any other partners in Round Records (presumably Ron Rakow) and their artists, but it had to have been better than a conventional deal with Warners or Columbia or the like.

For various reasons I won't go into here (mostly involving distribution and cash flow), Round Records did not work out, but it was still a good idea. Labels like Sub Pop and others would finally make independent, DIY records a profitable enterprise in the 1990s, so the Dead's idea was good in principle. A Keith And Donna album recorded cheaply would not have had to sell a lot of albums to break even.

The general thinking of record companies in the early 70s was to sign a lot of artists and record a lot of albums, figuring that one of them would hit. It may seem easy in retrospect to hear a record like "Stuck In The Middle With You" by Stealer's Wheel and say, wow, that was obviously a hit, but whoever signed that band probably just heard a crummy demo on acoustic guitars or something. Whenever a band had a modest following and broke up, it was common for companies to sign the singers or songwriters or lead guitarists in the band, just in case any of them had some good ideas that they hadn't used yet (sometimes the company could force this, using something called a "Key Man" clause). Jim Messina had left Poco, for example, and became a much bigger artist with Loggins And Messina, and Billy Joel had been in the Hassles (on UA) and then Attilla (an organ-drum duo who released a "heavy rock" album in 1969) before hitting it big as a solo act, so you never knew.

Singer Songwriters
Popular music in the 1970s was skewed towards more introspective, personal music with a more melodic, acoustic feel. This had been inspired by Crosby, Stills And Nash's debut album, but by the early 1970s the best selling album was Carole King's Tapestry. James Taylor was big, so was Cat Stevens, so were Loggins And Messina, Linda Ronstadt was catching on and so was Jackson Browne. From that perspective, a married singer and piano player writing personal songs, in a California rock style with just a bit of Southern soul made perfect sense. Leon Russell was a huge act at the time, with a lot of airplay on both AM and FM radio, and Keith And Donna's music seemed headed in that direction.

Since record companies released thousands of albums every year, the hardest thing for a record company was getting some attention for any of them. FM djs still had a lot of say over what records they played on their shows, but with hundreds of records arriving at a radio station each week, it was hard to cut through the clutter. However, Keith and Donna Godchaux were in a world famous band,  Donna made for a photogenic album cover (this means more than you might think when sorting through a stack of new LPs) and Jerry Garcia would be on the record, so Keith And Donna had a better chance of getting some notice than an album by two unknowns with no pedigree. If Warner Brothers or Columbia had signed the Grateful Dead in 1972, they would have been happy to give Keith And Donna a contract as part of the deal. In fact, compared to a Mickey Hart soundtrack to a martial arts film (which Warners had paid for previously), they would have been pretty optimistic about it.

Given the timing of the release, the Keith And Donna album was probably conceived in the Summer of 1974. At the time, I have to suspect that the Godchauxs had some unfinished songs, and the suggestion was made that they could make an album by adding a couple of cover versions. It's easy to listen to the finished album now and say "who thought any of those songs would hit it big?" However, most successful songs--and therefore records--begin in a pretty raw form. True record men could listen to a poorly recorded demo and think "with the right production, that could be a hit," and you wouldn't hear it yourself. So while Keith and Donna's demos may not have sounded great, they wouldn't necessarily have sounded worse than, say, what Bob Weir and John Barlow had started with for Ace.

(Denny Siewell drumming with Paul McCartney and Wings at a soundcheck in Tivoli Gardens, Copehnagen, early 70s--from Denny Siewell.com)

Denny Siewell and Chrissy Stewart
When the Grateful Dead made the decision to stop touring after the Fall of 1974, I think they hoped that their solo recordings would provide enough of an income that they could all continue to make music around the Bay Area without having to tour constantly. That is why I think there were solo albums planned for all of the band members, including Hunter, so that everyone would have a source of income. It may not have worked out that way, but I don't think it was a vanity project. My principal evidence for the seriousness of the Keith And Donna enterprise is on the back of the album, where it says "Denny Siewell-drums, Chrissy Stewart-bass." Siewell and Stewart play drums and bass on six of the eight tracks (John Kahn/Bernard Purdie and Bill Wolf/Jim Brererton are the other two bass/drum combos). Who were Siewell and Stewart?

Denny Siewell was an established New York session drummer, so well regarded that Paul McCartney invited him to join the original version of his band Wings. Siewell played on several McCartney and Wings albums, and was part of the first tours that McCartney made after leaving the Beatles. The best known of McCartney's songs that Siewell recorded with Paul was "Live And Let Die." Siewell left Wings in August 1973 (before Band On The Run--Paul played the drums himself for that album), and returned to lucrative studio work in New York and Los Angeles (you can read more extensively about Siewell's career on his own website).

The cover to Spooky Tooth's 1973 Island album Witness

Eric Christopher "Chrissy" Stewart had been in the Irish band The People, who had changed their name to Eire Apparent when they toured America supporting the Jimi Hendrix Experience. They shared management with Hendrix and Eric Burdon (the story is too byzantine to go into here) and as a result EIre Apparent played numerous shows across North America in 1968-69, and Hendrix produced their first album. After that band broke up, Stewart ended up in the reformed version of the English group Spooky Tooth. I am the only person who liked the reformed Spooky Tooth better than the original, but in any case Stewart was a member of the Tooth for the albums You Broke My Heart So I Busted Your Jaw and Witness. To my ears, Stewart was a fine example of the sort of English bass playing where a funky Duck Dunn/James Jamerson style of soulful playing was converted to a rock context. Stewart played low and simple, but he was a powerful bassist. Since he had left Spooky Tooth by 1974, I assume he had at least temporarily relocated to Los Angeles to work in the studios.

How did Denny Siewell and Chrissy Stewart come to play on most of the Keith And Donna album? Neither of them had a pre-existing friendship with anyone in the Dead, to my knowledge, and Siewell in particular would not have come cheaply. It's one thing to suggest that professional studio musicians may have done something as a favor to a friend, just for fun, but that would at most explain a single track at a convenient location, like Stephen Stills sitting in on BeeGees albums recorded in Miami (really, he did). But Siewell and Stewart didn't know the Dead and weren't based in San Francisco. If they came to the Bay Area to play, much less to the Godchauxs' living room, it was a paid trip and they didn't play for free. Since we have to assume Round Records paid for their services, its a clear sign that Round took the project seriously and backed it up by hiring a top-of-the-line rhythm section.

My own theory is that Siewell and Stewart never came to Keith and Donna's house in Stinson Beach. I think the tapes were completed with a different rhythm section, and the sound was unsatisfactory so the bass and drums were re-recorded. I think Siewell and Stewart were hired to do the overdubs, and they did it in a studio in Los Angeles. Someone like John Kahn or Merl Saunders probably oversaw the sessions. It would be a lot cheaper to hire Siewell and Stewart for a day or two to overdub parts than to have flown them to Stinson Beach, put them up in a hotel and have them hang out for weeks on end while arrangements were worked out and so on. In any case, if I am correct and Siewell and Stewart were just overdubbing, it's still a sign of seriousness on the part of Round Records: if Keith And Donna was just a cheap vanity project, some muddy bass and drums wouldn't have been a big deal. It they were hoping for FM airplay and some record sales, however, a punchy bottom was critical.

If Siewell and Stewart dubbed over pre-recorded parts--a pretty common practice, by the way--it does beg the question of who played bass and drums on the original recordings. Its possible that the problem with the original recording was not the performances per se but the sound, so it may have been some established friends like John Kahn and Bill Kreutzmann on many of the tracks. I suspect that Kahn's bass part on "River Deep, Mountain High" was overdubbed as well, because drummer Bernard Purdie was another super-heavy player who would not have been likely to be hanging out at Stinson Beach. Bill Wolf, an engineer who also had played bass for the Rowan Brothers, seems like a more likely candidate to have actually been on the original sessions in the living room (drummer Jim Brererton is unknown to me).

Regardless of whether Denny Siewell and Chrissy Stewart went to Stinson Beach or overdubbed parts in a Southern California recording studio, their very presence on the Keith And Donna album was implicit proof that Round Records took the project seriously indeed. The album did not succeed, and the inherent cash flow problems of Round Records very well would have doomed it even if it had started to sell. Nonetheless, when viewed in the context of the 70s record industry, Keith And Donna was a sincere effort by Jerry Garcia and Round Records to find a source of income for band members that did not lock them into large scale touring, however frustratingly the project itself turned out.

November 23, 1969, Boston Music Hall, Boston, MA: Grateful Dead/Country Joe and The Fish/Pacific Gas & Electric (canceled?)

(A handbill advertising two shows at The Boston Music Hall on Sunday, November 23, 1969, featuring The Grateful Dead, Country Joe and The Fish and Pacific Gas & Electric. The show was probably canceled)

Periodically the Universe brings forth strange artifacts for our contemplation. A recent auction for a handbill for this hitherto unknown handbill for two Grateful Dead concerts at the Boston Music Hall on November 23, 1969 raises a host of questions. The most important question is whether the shows took place at all. My assessment is that they did not, which is why the handbill is so rare--it's an advertisement for a show which was ultimately canceled. However, while I would love to be proved wrong and discover that the shows did actually occur, the fact that the shows were ever planned at all sheds some interesting light on the Dead's late November 1969 plans.

The Handbill
The handbill advertises two shows at The Boston Music Hall on Sunday, November 23, 1969, featuring The Grateful Dead, Country Joe and The Fish and Pacific Gas & Electric. The ad says "The groups that rocked The Coast will now rock Boston." Both the Dead and Country Joe and The Fish had played Boston numerous times and would have been very popular. Both also had current albums, and the just-released Live/Dead was probably getting heavy play on WBCN-fm, Boston's leading rock station. Pacific Gas & Electric was a Los Angeles band, with a new album on Columbia.

The handbill advertises two shows, at 6:15 pm and 9:30 pm. With three bands, even a short set by the opening act would insure that both the Dead and CJF would play about 45 minute sets. Outside of hippie enclaves like the Fillmores, shorter performances were common, even for San Francisco bands.

The Boston Music Hall
The Boston Music Hall was at 270 Tremont Street. It was built in 1925 as the Metropolitan Theater, but in 1962 it became the home of the Boston Ballet and its name was changed to the Boston Music Hall. It seated more than 3,600 people, so it was a substantial auditorium. The Music Hall primarily featured opera and symphony as well as ballet, but shows by popular artists, including rock bands, were not unknown. It is not surprising, however, that the show was booked for a Sunday night. Weekend dates were probably typically reserved for regular performances by the Boston Ballet or other regular performers.

The venue is now known as the Citi Performing Arts Center.

The Planned Concert
The Boston Music Hall was a reserved seat show, and a close look at the handbill shows that seat prices ranged from four to six dollars. Six dollars was a lot for a rock show in the 60s, even with the guarantee of good seats. Two shows of 3600 plus at high prices was a substantial booking indeed. While rock shows at the Boston Music Hall in the 60s were not typical, they were not unheard of. Just a few weeks after this scheduled show, Janis Joplin and The Butterfield Blues Band played the Boston Music Hall. Janis and Butter played on Thursday, December 11, another sign that weekends were typically reserved. I would note that Janis was a huge rock star in 1969, and Butterfield wasn't small, so it gives some idea of the scale of the intended rock concert. Two shows on a Sunday night in Boston was intended as a major booking, well worth flying out for.

In late 1969, Country Joe and The Fish were as big or bigger than the Grateful Dead. Their first two Vanguard albums (Electric Music For The Mind And Body and I-Feel-Like-I'm-Fixin'-To-Die) had been huge hits on the underground and in the early days of FM radio. Country Joe and The Fish were front and center at every anti-war protest and political rally, and that endeared them to many people who found it attractive that a band they really liked shared their political views. The group's fourth and current album, Here We Are Again, had not had the impact of the first two, but it was still a good record. The band had undergone numerous changes (see here for a better picture of the dizzyingly complex story of Country Joe And The Fish), but Joe McDonald and Barry Melton still lead the group and were as engaging performers as ever.

The Grateful Dead had been famous, or infamous, since well before they released an album. However, that had not translated much into record sales. Their first three albums had found their adherents, but only those lucky enough to see the band had really been drawn to them. This was starting to change with the release of Live/Dead, giving every FM radio listener in the country a taste of what they had been missing. The album had just been released in November 1969 (60s release dates are murky), so in an odd way the Dead's popularity as a band was just starting to catch up with their fame. Since both the Dead and CJF were longstanding San Francisco legends, it made sense to pair them up. 7200 plus tickets was a lot of tickets, particularly at high prices, so two headliners would be needed to make it happen. Note that neither band's name is higher than the other on the handbill. The bands probably didn't care, but I'm sure their booking agents did.

I don't know why there was a third band on the bill, but I think Pacific Gas & Electric may have touring with Country Joe and The Fish, so they needed to be booked as well.

Grateful Dead Touring Schedule, November 1969
I have already done a detailed touring itinerary for the Grateful Dead and Jerry Garcia for November 1969, and there was no trace of this show. However, the band's presumed activities on the weekend would make sense if a substantial East Coast show was canceled. The presumed Dead activities for the weekend were:

November 21, 1969 Cal Expo Building "A", Sacramento Grateful Dead/Country Weather/AB Skhy/Commander Cody/Wildwood KZAP Birthday Party
KZAP-fm was the progressive FM station in the Sacramento area. The Cal Expo was part of the California State Fairgrounds.

November 22-23, 1969 Family Dog On The Great Highway, San Francisco New Riders Of The Purple Sage/Anonymous Artists Of America/Devil's Kitchen
Crack research staff found this date, advertised in the Berkeley Tribe. 

We can be confident that the Friday, November 21 event occurred. It was mentioned in the SF Chronicle, and a tape endures. The Family Dog appearance by the New Riders Of The Purple Sage was recently discovered, but I had wondered why the Dead did not play anywhere on a Saturday night (November 22), after they had saddled up the horse the night before.

Country Joe And The Fish Touring Schedule
Country Joe And The Fish's touring schedule for November 1969 was murky, but there were definitely booked shows throughout the country. They had played Cal Expo themselves on November 15, and they had booked a show in Kansas City on November 29, followed by an appearance at a rock festival in Palm Beach, Florida. So national touring was at least contemplated for that week, whether or not it actually happened.

Summary
Pending further evidence, here are some propositions for what may have happened. I have no more evidence than I have presented here, and that ain't much, so any other suggestions or long-ago memories from Bostonites are very welcome. 

Hypothesis #1
The show was booked, and both the Dead and Country Joe and The Fish planned to fly East and play other shows during the weekend, not necessarily together. However, the Boston show fell through due to poor advance ticket sales, and any shows surrounding the Sunday night show were canceled.

Two big shows in Boston would have been well worth flying out for. However, if the Dead were going to fly out for a Sunday night show, they would surely play a weekend show somewhere on the East Coast, albeit not too near Boston. Country Joe and The Fish would have done the same, albeit most likely in a different city, and the bands would have convened in Boston. However, once the Boston Music Hall dates fell through, the financial justification for flying East fell through as well, and wherever the Dead had planned to play that weekend fell through as well.

The cancellation left a hole in the Dead's touring schedule for the weekend of November 21-23. They seemed to have managed to hook onto the KZAP Birthday party in Sacramento, but weekend activities for Saturday, November 22 would already have been planned and the Dead could not find a paying show. The last-second booking of the New Riders at the Family Dog was a low risk, low reward event to keep the compulsive Garcia busy as much as anything.

Hypothesis #2
Here's an alternative proposition. The Grateful Dead were scheduled to play three nights at the relatively small Boston Tea Party on December 29, 30 and 31. This would have been a big event in Boston. The booking at the Boston Music Hall may have violated the contract with the Boston Tea Party, so the show at the Music Hall was canceled. Although Country Joe And The Fish were popular, they could not have carried two shows at Boston Music Hall by themselves, so they dropped out as well.

The net result for the Dead's touring schedule would have been the same, as it would have created an opportunity for the band to play Sacramento on Friday, November 21, but too late to find a Saturday night show.

Hypothesis #3
It is remotely possible that the Dead played Sacramento on Friday, November 21 and then flew to Boston the next day. If we assume that the New Riders did not play the Family Dog on November 22-23, which is plausible enough, I guess we could imagine that the Dead played two shows in Boston on Sunday, November 23.

If the Grateful Dead did play two shows at the Boston Music Hall on Sunday, November 23, it has escaped our notice until now. I find it extremely unlikely that there was no tape, review or ad of the show, and that the band just flew home the next day. But hey--it's my blog and I can hope.

Conclusion
I personally find Hypothesis #2 the most likely. The show was booked, and handbills were printed, though possibly never circulated, but the show was blocked by a conflict with the Boston Tea Party New Year's Eve event. Any interesting speculation or long-buried memories are more than welcome in the Comments.

Update
Better to be lucky than good. Hypothesis #3 seems to be the most likely answer, thanks to some excellent research from the Lone Star Dead Research Institute. Someone remembers it, and even has a ticket stub. So I guess NRPS didn't play Family Dog that night, and probably not the night before either (Nov 22).

A ticket stub from the Boston Music Hall, November 23, 1969, featuring the Grateful Dead and Country Joe And The Fish

Boston Globe November 21 1969--The Youngbloods replace the Dead

Update 2
The show took place, but the Youngbloods replaced the Grateful Dead, per the Boston Globe. This confirms the report of an Anonymous commenter.

October 31, 1986 Henry J. Kaiser Convention Center, Oakland, CA: Jerry Garcia Band/Kingfish with Bob Weir

my notes from Oct 31 '86 Oakland

One of the remarkable things about Grateful Dead historiography is the startlingly high level of documentation. Thanks to Deadlists, Dead.net, Deadbase, TheJerrySite, Weirworks, The PhilZone and numerous other sites, there are numerous links to tapes and very accurate setlists for most shows by the Dead and the various spin-off bands featuring Dead members. Once we get into the 1980s, there is very little that has not been taped and integrated into the various sites and databases. However, a peculiar side effect to the admirable effort to categorize all Grateful Dead knowledge is the tendency for tapes to become decontextualized. While this is inevitable, some concerts take on a different meaning when considered in their moment, independent of whatever fine music may have been preserved.

I was fortunate enough to attend the Jerry Garcia Band/Kingfish concert on Halloween 1986 at the Henry J. Kaiser Convention Center in Oakland. The setlists and tapes circulate, and others do a better job of analyzing tapes, so I will generally step aside from the music and consider this unique event in the framework of its time. There are quite a number of things about this concert that set it apart from events at the time, and the post will allow me to consider some interesting aspects of this period that are rarely remarked upon today.

Backdrop: Jerry's Coma
In a typical year, the Grateful Dead were usually on tour during Halloween, often in the Northeast. Halloween equals skeletons, and skeletons equal the Grateful Dead, so the synergy has been self-evident since 1967. Once Jerry Garcia lapsed into a coma on July 8, 1986, the balance of the year became anything but typical. The Grateful Dead generated a lot of cash from touring, but touring was their only meaningful source of income in the mid-80s. With Garcia's health uncertain, all tour dates for the balance of 1986 were canceled. The various sound and lighting professionals who worked Dead tour scrambled to find other paying gigs, and some of the individual members of the band went on tour by themselves. The unique 'Ranch Rock '86' event, featuring multiple bands with Dead members, including a rare electric appearance by Robert Hunter, was one of the byproducts of Garcia's absence.

Although information was hard to come by in the pre-Internet era, there was a little bit of coverage by Joel Selvin in the San Francisco Chronicle as well as elsewhere. After several weeks it was clear that Garcia was going to recover, but the timing of his return to performing and the Dead's return to touring was still unsettled. The seminal event for Deadheads was the Jerry Garcia Band performance at The Stone in San Francisco, on October 4, 1986. A low-key JGB show at a familiar haunt was a lot less of an effort than a long, stressful Grateful Dead concert or tour, and it made perfect sense. I did not go, but I heard from various people that it was a joyous occasion, with a happy Garcia making good but not spectacular music, much to the relief of the entire community.

Surprisingly, however, Garcia's return to active duty did not presage a flurry of Dead shows. One of the admirable features of the Grateful Dead's self-definition was that every Grateful Dead show was planned as the maximum Grateful Dead experience, with a full complement of band members, sound equipment and lights. When the balance of the year's Dead tour had had to be canceled following Garcia's coma, the sound and light equipment and their accompanying crews had to commit to other rock tours. Thus the Grateful Dead would not have been able to play without their preferred sound and lighting rig, and the band implicitly refused to undermine their own credibility by doing otherwise.

As a result, the Jerry Garcia Band spent much of the Fall of 1986 playing The Stone in San Francisco. I have discussed Garcia's professional relationship with the Keystone family of clubs at great length elsewhere, but in general they were the easiest place for the Garcia Band to have a quick, profitable performance. Nothing could be more valuable to an operation whose principal source of income--Grateful Dead concerts--had been abruptly interrupted. By the end of 1986, however, the "Keystone Family" was down to just The Stone, since the Keystone Berkeley and Keystone Palo Alto had closed. Thus the Jerry Garcia Band played The Stone 9 times between October 4 and December 21, 1986.

In fact, prior to the Grateful Dead's return to performance on December 15, 1986, Garcia made 18 performances. While a few were benefit performances and personal favors, the Halloween show at the Henry J. Kaiser (capacity: 7,000) was far and away the biggest show that Garcia played in the Fall. From one point of view, it may seem surprising that Garcia played a large hall on October 31 show, just 27 days after his return to performing, and less than 4 months from the hospital. The presence of Bob Weir and Kingfish on the bill leads me to think that the purpose of the concert was to provide cash for Grateful Dead operations for the next few months, until regular touring revenue started to return.

If my thesis is correct, it implicitly suggests that the Dead were unwilling to have a Grateful Dead show without their full complement of lights and sound. I think their experiences with "outside" sound systems over the years were poor enough that they refused to consider it. It is also an interesting indicator of Garcia's commitment to the Grateful Dead that he played a high profile rock show so early in his recovery, apparently because the band needed the cash. It is easy to assert platitudes like "The Grateful Dead are like a family, man, and Garcia would never let down his brothers," but bands have broken up over lesser things. And while the Grateful Dead were (and are) like family, try borrowing several thousand dollars from your brother while he's recovering from an illness, and see how that goes. Garcia's commitment to the Dead was so integral that no one seems to have even commented on it.

Bob Weir And Kingfish
Kingfish had formed in 1974, and Bob Weir joined the group later in that year, performing and recording with them while the Dead were on hiatus. Although Weir had dropped out of the group in mid-1976, leader Matthew Kelly had kept the group going ever since, if somewhat intermittently. At various times in 1984, '85 and '86, Weir, Brent Mydland and Bill Kreutzmann had performed with Kingfish, although not usually at the same time. In late 1984, Weir had done a number of shows with Kingfish where they performed their own set, Weir had played solo and then joined Kingfish for a reprise of their older material. Kingfish had undergone various personnel changes over the years, but Weir returned for a few more shows with the band in early 1986.

When Garcia had lapsed into his coma, it might have seemed like a perfect idea for Weir to temporarily hitch his wagon to Kingfish, and perhaps it would have been. Unfortunately for Weir, however, he had injured his shoulder in a mountain biking accident, and his musical activities were limited to singing. Weir did perform at the Ranch Rock event as vocalist, and sang with a jazz group called Nightfood, featuring drummer Brian Melvin and bassist Jaco Pastorius, but in general Weir had had to lay low during Garcia's hiatus, which can not have helped his own or the Dead's cash flow. Thus when Weir and Kingfish were booked with the Jerry Garcia Band, it heralded Weir's return to active duty performing as well as Garcia's, even if it was fraught with considerably less tension.

Kaiser Convention Center, Oakland, CA, near Lake Merritt

Henry J. Kaiser Convention Center, 10 Tenth Street, Oakland, CA
The Henry J. Kaiser Convention Center was the name of the newly remodeled Oakland Auditorium Arena near Lake Merritt. The Oakland Auditorium had been built in 1913. Strictly speaking, the Oakland Auditorium was a smaller, seated venue in the same complex, rarely used for rock shows, while the Arena had been used for trade shows, sports events and even a rodeo (Buffalo Bill's Wild West show, in the early 20th century) as well as major rock events. Nonetheless, by the 1980s just about everybody in the Bay Area called the Arena the "Oakland Auditorium." Although the Dead had played there a few times in the past, after Winterland closed the Arena became the Grateful Dead's new Bay Area home court. The Dead's first BGP promoted shows at the venue were on August 4-5, 1979.

The Oakland Auditorium looms large in Grateful Dead history, because the beginnings of a promoter-sanctioned camp out began in 1980, when BGP casually allowed numerous traveling Deadheads to put up tents on the lawn across from the Arena. The story is too long to go into here, but suffice to say that outdoor camping was perfectly viable in Oakland in December, and a new tradition was born literally overnight. By 1986, however, the neighborhood around the Auditorium did not appreciate the Deadhead invasion every time the band played a run there, and the band would soon graduate to the much larger Oakland Coliseum Arena few miles away. In Fall 1986, however, the Oakland Auditorium Arena was still the Grateful Dead's home court, and a concert there headlined by Garcia and Weir definitely counted as a home game.

Bill Graham Presents, The Grateful Dead and Jerry Garcia
The Grateful Dead had had a long professional and personal relationship with Bill Graham. Whatever their earlier points of contention may have been, by the mid-80s the Grateful Dead and BGP had a close working partnership. It was both appropriate and lucrative for the last two intact survivors of the San Francisco 60s to depend on each other. However, although Jerry Garcia genuinely liked Bill Graham, he had a somewhat different professional relationship with BGP. As I have documented elsewhere, Jerry Garcia had his own set of loyalties for his performing aggregations. In particular, Garcia had worked regularly with the same club promoters since the 70s, particularly Freddie Herrera and the Keystone family. Garcia had played a fair share of shows for Bill Graham Presents, but only in cities such as San Rafael, where one of his favored clubs was not operating. There were very few exceptions to this practice (I will eventually address all the exceptions, but not in this post).

By 1986, however, Freddie Herrera's Keystone Berkeley had closed, so Garcia would not have been faced with a question of loyalty for booking a show with Bill Graham in Oakland. Given the need for money, would Garcia have played the Oakland show if Keystone Berkeley had been open? Its impossible to say. Nonetheless, with only the Stone remaining, I don't think its a coincidence that Garcia played an Oakland venue rather than a San Francisco one, even if the Oakland Auditorium was the best choice for a proxy Dead event in any case.

October 31, 1986
The Kaiser Convention Center Arena was full on Halloween, though I am not certain that the show was actually sold out. The atmosphere was extremely positive, as you might expect, but it was different than a regular Dead show for any number of reasons. For one thing, there seemed to be almost no one from out of town. Most runs at the Kaiser had been filled with people making the trek from wherever to see the Dead "at home," and it made the Kaiser crowds among the most interesting to query (if you were me, and the internet hadn't yet
been invented). Also, I think a lot of Deadheads who rarely went to Garcia shows because they saved their money and time for the Grateful Dead made an exception for this show. Finally, a lot of people were not able to go The Stone either because it was a nightclub or because the late night hours of the club made it an ordeal. In my own case, I had to be at work at 6:00am in those days, so even a weekend event that went until 2am was very difficult for me. All in all, everybody was happy to be in Oakland that night, no doubt starting with Jerry and Bob.

Although BGP had provided their usual full, professional sound system, the stage was generally bereft of the paraphernalia of a Dead show. The elaborate backdrops and painted amplifiers were nowhere to be found, and the "backline" of equipment was considerably smaller as well. There was a pro lighting rig--it was BGP, after all--but it wasn't the multi-faceted extravaganza that was par for the course at a Grateful Dead concert. I am never late, but that isn't true of all Deadheads (or members of the Grateful Dead, I might add). Mine was a fortunate habit, however, since there was no opening act and a quick glance at the equipment on stage made it clear that the Jerry Garcia Band would be opening the show.

I had seen the Jerry Garcia Band and Kingfish at concerts twice before, on October 17 and December 19, 1975. While that was 11 years prior to the Oakland show, 11 years isn't much in Jerry time, so I wasn't surprised to see that Garcia was preceding Kingfish. In both previous shows, after some opening acts (Clover and Keith and Donna), Garcia had played his usual show, without an encore, leaving the harder rocking Kingfish the duty of getting the crowds to let it all hang out. I do know that when the Jerry Garcia Band had toured the East with Bobby And The Midnites in 1982, the bands had alternated closing sets. This may have had something to do with the load-out, but in any case Garcia was rare among rock stars in that he had no stake in closing the show even though he was the headliner (does anyone know if Garcia closed the June 8, 1975 Garcia/Kingfish show in Palo Alto? Amazingly, I didn't go).

The Jerry Garcia Band played one extended set on Halloween at the Kaiser, to a rapturous reception. My impression was that much of the crowd mainly felt relieved, although perhaps I was just projecting. There was nothing particularly special about his choice of songs or Garcia's soloing, but he played with a lot of feeling if not with stunning dexterity, and that was enough. Garcia never played encores at the Keystones, and sometimes didn't play encores even at concerts, but there was no way he was getting away with that on this night. After thunderous applause, the Garcia Band returned with "Werewolves Of London." It wasn't a special version, and indeed it was more of a fun song than an interesting song, but in any case it was a Halloween encore celebrating Jerry's return--"A Day Of The Dead" indeed. Jerry said nothing to the crowd, as per his practice, but there was no need, not on this night. I saw Jerry Garcia on Halloween, and his hair was perfect.

After the usual "short break," Kingfish came on stage, without Weir. Really, this had to be quite daunting. It's tough to follow the headline act in any case, but to follow Jerry Garcia returning from a coma, on Halloween? Very difficult indeed. Over the years, Kingfish had had various members, with Matthew Kelly as the only constant. The band had a consistent sound, but its personnel changed over time. Keyboardist Barry Flast was Kelly's main partner, singing many of the lead vocals. Flast was from Boston, and had been in a group (with Billy Squier) called The Tom Swift Electric Band. It's likely that the Tom Swift Electric Band had opened for the Grateful Dead in 1967 at Boston's Psychedelic Supermarket. Other vocals were handled by Anna Rizzo, formerly of the Berkeley groups Sky Blue, Grootna and Country Joe's All Star Band. The lead guitarist was Steve Kimock, a relatively new addition to the Bay Area scene. Bass and drums were handled solidly by Steve Evans and Jimmy Sanchez, respectively.

Although Kingfish personnel had changed dramatically over the years, to Matt Kelly's credit their sound remained consistent. Kingfish had a spare, rocking sound with just enough extended soloing to keep Deadheads engaged. They played their usual mixture of covers and originals. At the time, I was very interested in hearing Steve Kimock play, since I recognized his name as a hot new player in the area (he was from Pennsylvania, I think), but I had not yet heard him. Ironically, I though Kimock was the weakest link for Kingfish. Kimock, at least at the time, was already a very fluid, melodic player, but he lacked the stinging drive that had been provided by his predecessors Garth Webber and Robbie Hoddinott. The rest of Kingfish didn't really "space out" very well, as it wasn't their sound, so Kimock's solos seemed out of place to me. Kimock could probably fit in well with the band now, not that he has any need for that, but at the time he sounded like a mismatch to me. Of course, he was coming on right after Garcia, so that was a pretty high bar to jump over.

After about 40 minutes of Kingfish, Bob Weir joined the band. At some club shows, Weir had played a solo acoustic set, but this wouldn't have been good night for that. Weir jumped right into it with "Festival," and then "Winners." Weir always insisted on keeping his solo material separate from the Grateful Dead, but by the same token his original material outside of the Dead wasn't always that strong. Then Weir and Kingfish played some classics from their old Kingfish days, like "Youngblood" and "Battle Of New Orleans" (sung by Weir, per my notes, whereas previously it had been sung by the late Dave Torbert), and then a few other numbers.

I recall enjoying Weir and Kingfish well enough, but I can tell by my own notation (the down arrow on the last song) that I actually left before it was over. It was Friday night, probably past 1:00 am by that point, and I would have been up since 5:00 am or so. Although it wasn't options expiration, I had probably had a fairly intense day at work (for those who care, I think I was the Sell Clerk at the X15/AMI pit) and I was probably simply wiped out.

Some searching today reveals what I missed for the last few numbers. It was probably nice, but I was happier to have taken the quick drive around Lake Merritt and gone home. In any case, I can tell from my last note, listing "Minglewood" as the last song before I left, that I wasn't paying attention at that point, since it seems Kingfish didn't actually play it. Jerry was back in black, the Garcia Band had played a nice show and I had seen my share of Weir shows over the years, so it was definitely time to call it a night.