Category: Palo Alto

  • Swain’s Music Store, Palo Alto, CA

    I don’t do much pre-GD, but Andy Childs’s lengthy history of the GD in ZigZag in October 1973 mentions a Palo Alto music store, called Swain’s, which I don’t remember hearing about before. I need to read the whole piece more closely, and wonder how well it has stood up as a work of history.…

  • OAITW: Homer’s Warehouse, July 24, 1973

    **This is an update to a post originally made 9/19/2010, now updated as of 12/28/2014** In a first draft of this post, I used the occasion of a listen to an Old And In The Way set from Homer’s Warehouse in Palo Alto from Tuesday, July 24, 1973 to drop a few crumbs. I have…

  • JGMS: October 3, 1971, Frost Ampitheater, Stanford University, Palo Alto, CA

    Garcia and Saunders played the Pamoja Jazz Concert on October 3, 1971 at Frost Ampitheater, sharing a bill with Big Black and the Bobby Hutcherson – Harold Land Quintet. Love that jazz billing. Anyway, for a long time I have been aware of a show review by Paul Grushkin from the Stanford Daily a few…

  • Taking a Shit is a Political Act

    Carol Brightman’s Sweet Chaos: The Grateful Dead’s American Adventure offers the thesis that Garcia and the Grateful Dead were “apolitical” and should be condemned to that extent, having failed to stand up (as the Berkeley radicals did) to the injustices and corruptions of American and international politics in the 60s and 70s. The GD/San Francisco/Merry…