New Riders of the Purple Sage and Acoustic Grateful Dead: Lion’s Share, San Anselmo, July 30-August 1, 1970

(This is an updated version of an earlier post,
GD/NRPS19700731-19700801:
Lion’s Share, San Anselmo, CA
, 4/20/2011.)
Some time back, I reported
listings for “New Riders of the Purple Sage & Grateful Dead, Lion’s
Share, 9 pm” for both July 31, 1970 and August 1, 1970, in the calendar
section of the Berkeley Tribe. Here’s
the scan (click to enlarge). (FWIW, the Tribe
calendar’s name was commonly “George”. This day, it was “David” [at the tag end
of the question “how about George David?”.)
Calendar section of the
Berkeley Tribe v3 n4 (no 56) (July 31
– August 7, 1970), back page.
I have just uncovered a few more
tidbits, so I am updating the whole original post. The tidbits are a calendar
listing and a preview ‘blurb’ establishing to my satisfaction that the New Riders of the Purple Sage and
Acoustic Grateful Dead played the Lion’s Share, 66 Red Hill Avenue, San
Anselmo, CA, 94960 on Thursday, July 30, 1970
, in addition to the
previously-established shows the next two nights.
“Datebook/Opening
Today,” San Francisco Chronicle, July
30, 1970, p. 41;
“’Purple Sage’ At Lion’s Share,” San
Francisco Chronicle
, July 30, 1970, p. 41.

Let me go through some of the
points that come up out of this little bit of material, in no particular order.

1. The New Riders of the Purple Sage and Acoustic Grateful Dead played the
Lion’s Share, 66 Red Hill Avenue, San Anselmo, CA, 94960 on Thursday, July 30,
1970
, in addition to the previously-established shows the next two
nights (July 31-August 1, 1970).

2. Michelle’s
Mc’s Midsummer 1970 Memories of Acoustic GD at Lion’s Share seem confirmed.
With the addition of the
Thursday night to our understanding of this run, we can now confirm four of the
five confirmable assertions made by Corry’s informant “Michelle Mc”,
as relayed by him at LLD:
The acoustic Grateful Dead
played a number of shows at the Lion’s Share. They played two or three nights
in a row, on a weeknight in the middle of the summer of 1970. She knows–she
went. These shows were utterly unpublicized, and only friends of the band were
given the heads up.
  • Acoustic Grateful Dead:
    confirmed.
  • “two or three nights in a row”:
    confirmed.
  • “weeknight”: confirmed.
  • Midsummer 1970: confirmed.
  • No publicity: disconfirmed. The idea that these shows were
    mostly for GD family insiders is supported by the fact that the Saturday show
    was Jerry Garcia’s 28th birthday. If it appeared in the Chron –and more importantly, given that
    there was an item in the Chron—it was no secret. However, it’s
    possible that the Share staff called the papers, but weren’t supposed to.
3. Acoustic Grateful Dead
The item and Michelle’s memory
make it clear that the Grateful Dead played acoustically (AGD). This brings the
7/30/70 and 8/5/70 tapes to mind, the only two all-acoustic GD nights –billed as
such—that I can think of.
4. What About The Tapes?
By the tapes, I refer to the New
Riders tape
and an Acoustic
Grateful Dead tape
(shnid 17077),
both dated 7/30/70 and said to be from the Matrix. First, given the relative
reliability of an “Opening Tonight” item in the Chron and a Matrix tape label, I propose that our lists (i.e., The
List) be updated to list GD at Lion’s Share this night, and not at the Matrix.
Second, I had actually offered
some analysis and speculation about all of this in the 7/30/70
installation of my still-unconcluded NRPS-Matrix-1970 series
. Let me just
quote myself at length.
Note that the first NRPS piece
(I’ll call it set I) runs only 23 minutes. Normally, we would conclude that
it’s incomplete (and probably missing the material at the start of the set,
since there’s a set break announcement over continuous tape after Lodi). I do
think it’s probably incomplete. But it could also be that this night was
different, and ended up including the mini GD
acoustic set
. That might have substituted for at least some part of the
expected additional NRPS material.
The tapes do suggest that there
was a three-part show on 7/30/70: (I) NRPS, (II) AGD, (III) NRPS. I think the
billings fit hand-in-glove with this structure, because …
5. … The NRPS Appear to Have Been
Headliners Above the GD
I think this newly-discovered
evidence supports the view that these tape fragments are of a piece, insofar as
NRPS seem to be headlining over the
Grateful Dead.
As far as I know, this is the only time such an arrangement,
a kind of inversion of the “An Evening With the Grateful Dead” set structure
(see my discussion in connection with a 5/1/70
analysis
), ever materialized.
In my post “NRPS-Matrix-1970
05 of 7: LN19700730: Thursday, July 30, 1970
”, I had run the discovery of
the Tribe listings for 7/31 and 8/1
through evidence provided by the tapes, and said this:
I am intrigued by the
possibility that the order in which the acts are listed for those shows might
reflect that NRPS was “first billed” over the GD, which might be
consistent with NRPS doing two sets and GD just a little acoustic one.
The discovery of another
(partially independent) piece of data from the Chron reinforces this connection between these shows and these
tapes, in my mind. Both of the calendar listings put the New Riders first, and
the Grateful Dead second. If I understand how such listings came about, this
correlation is partly spurious: presumably the same person from the Share or
from the GD offices called the item into both the Tribe and the Chron. But
there may be at least some independence among these observations, insofar as
the staffers at the two separate newspapers did not turn the order around and
put the GD first. That would have been the obvious, natural thing to do. As far
as I know, this is the only time the New
Riders are billed over the Grateful Dead
. I think the fact that things are
billed this way in both papers is no accident. I believe (pure conjecture, of
course) that these were quite explicitly and consciously listed as NRPS-GD.
The headline of the preview item,
“’Purple Sage’ At Lion’s Share”, especially, reinforces this. It is, I think,
incredible to imagine that, under usual circumstances, this would not have said
“Dead At Lion’s Share”. Woe betide the Chronicle
lackey who should make the mistake of headlining the second act instead of the
Grateful Goddamned Dead! No. This was quite consciously constructed with the
New Riders at the top of the bill, and the Grateful Dead at the bottom.
I view this as just one more
incremental step in the gradual speciation
of the New Riders from the Grateful Dead
.
David Torbert had been around
as NRPS
bassist
(I said, NRPS
bassist
. Or, NRPS personnel more generally!) since probably
April
. They had done a number of high-profile gigs in the An Evening With
the Grateful Dead format. I don’t have precise dates for when they started
working on the first New Riders album in the studio, but it is certainly right
around this time. Dryden said that Tolbert was brought for the express purpose
of making an album (Kahlbacher
1974
, 27). By mid-1970 the cognoscenti are starting to ask about the Riders’
studio plans (Hard Road interview,
took place on 6/22/70). In October 1970, Garcia says that the NRPS record is “about
50% underway” (Goodwin 1971).
We also know, conventionally, that
on the Festival Express train a month or so prior to 7/30/70, Garcia had spotted
a hotshit pedal steel wizard named Buddy Cage and appeared immediately to have
conceived the idea of bringing the Canadian on as his own full-time and
permanent replacement. This seems only to have put flesh on the bones of a
general plan that he harbored all along, to help found and launch the Riders,
help his friends out financially by getting them a record deal (and the
attending patch of land in Marin or Sonoma or wherever) and making them famous,
and then stepping out gracefully. He was already public with a desire to step
back by late 1970: “I think eventually it would be groovy if they auditioned
other steel players so they could go out and tour, without having to depend on
the Dead” (12/27/70 KPPC-FM interview, shnid
26583
).
So, why would NRPS have been
top-billed at a local show in a little Marin club that held like 212 people? It’s
not like this was their big break. I don’t think they were planning on this
being the launch of a national tour in this configuration, of course. Most
plausible seems to be just that they wanted to keep things low key, and
probably especially the GD guys. These quiet acoustic sets, with loads of
wonderful spirituals and such (Jordan, A Voice From On High), along the lines
of show known as 8/5/70 San Diego, are profoundly relaxed. From my listen to
the NRPS set dated 7/30/70, I said “sounds like just a good old time foolin’
around at the bar. It seems to run quite late.” Here are Cousin Ace (Bob Weir)
and Marmaduke to a sparse and shrinking late-night crowd:
Cousin Ace: “Well the rats are
desertin’ the sinkin’ ship. And, uhh, in the meanwhile we’re gonna do a …”
[interruption by Marmaduke: “Welcome to the campfire folks… “] “…
hot lead and bloodshed ballad …” [“… this is story time …”] “…sad
story time …” [“… here on the plains”] …
All of the tapes in the NRPS-1970-Matrix nexus (feels redundant, but better than NRPS-1970-Matrix matrix!) have that kind of feel. More of alcohol vibe (a la the Festival Express
train) than an acid- or coke-fueled one.
So, putting this all together,
I think it was probably just a fun, low key, local trial balloon designed to try
on what it would look like to have the New Riders go first.
6. What About The Tapes? Part II
So, do the tapes that circulate come from the Lion’s Share? I
don’t know. I am honestly pretty stumped.
Everything I know about Lion’s Share tapes has pretty much
been posted. Garcia shows are overrepresented since Betty taped so much.
Outside of those the only period in which I
know tape was regularly spinning at the Share was June 1971-January 1972, when
soundman Lou Judson made an impressive handful of recordings.
I cannot explain why the “7/30/70” material comes out of “Matrix
Tapes”. The likeliest possibilities, it seems to me, are
  1. that the material is from the Matrix, and is mis-dated
    (though not by much), and the similarities of the tapes and these Lion’s Share shows is spurious. Maybe the tapes really are from 7/27/70, as “Mickey Hart and the Hart Beats, with Jerry Garcia”, a billing I have just confirmed at LIA’s place, also from the Chron (7/27/70, p. 37); or
  2. the material is correctly dated, but comes from the Lion’s
    Share (e.g., taped by the GD folks), and somehow eventually made it into (or became conflated with) the Matrix Tapes; or
  3. the 7/30/70 show was moved from the Share to the Matrix.
I doubt #3, but #1 and #2 seem about equally plausible to me.
7. NRPS : GD :: Hot Tuna : Jefferson Airplane
Just wanted to note that the Chron item draws this analogy. It’s
true for a time, and interesting. Around the same time that Jack and Jorma are branching
out from well-known “day-bands” to play some American roots music on the side
(alongside, early on, some really hot rock jamming) –which seems to begin in
earnest ca. January 1969—Garcia and others in the GD are doing the same thing.
It’s obvious, but since I have Jerry and the Jeffersons on the brain I thought
I’d bring it up.
Of course, after the initial period, the arcs of Hot Tuna and NRPS diverge. NRPS ends up completely speciated from the GD in terms of personnel and, eventually, organization. Garcia builds it up and then walks away from it. Hot Tuna, of course, always has and always will include (no, really, “be”) Jack and Jorma.
8. Summary
Summarizing, six take home points.
  1. This began as a way to just put another event into
    The List: NRPS/GD at Lion’s Share on Thursday, July 30, 1970, based on evidence
    from the San Francisco Chronicle.
  2. It seems to confirm the recollection by Corry’s informant
    Michelle Mc of Acoustic GD sets at Lion’s Share in midsummer 1970.
  3. It is suggestive of one of the only all-acoustic GD sets,
    ever (alongside San Diego, 8/5/70).
  4. It dovetails almost perfectly with the tapes we have that
    are dated 7/30/70, though said to be from the Matrix: two NRPS sets sandwiched
    around a homey AGD set that also features David Nelson and Marmaduke.
  5. It seems to be a rare (perhaps the only) instance of the
    NRPS headlining over the GD, a kind of reversal of the “An Evening With the
    Grateful Dead” format (AGD, NRPS, EGD) of 1970. I have argued that this is a
    small milestone in the gradual (over two year!) differentiation of the NRPS
    from the GD, which culminated in Buddy Cage taking over Garcia’s pedal steel
    bench in November 1971.
  6. I don’t know how to reconcile the tapes (said to be from the
    Matrix) with the rest of the evidence.
There we have it. Why say it in 50 words when you can say it
in 2,300?!?
SOURCES:

Comments

22 responses to “New Riders of the Purple Sage and Acoustic Grateful Dead: Lion’s Share, San Anselmo, July 30-August 1, 1970”

  1. Light Into Ashes Avatar

    I was wondering when Part 7 of your NRPS-Matrix-1970 series would appear! (Guess this will do for now.)
    This is a pretty interesting find, both to see NRPS get the main billing, and to see confirmation that the Dead were playing acoustically. (Not only that, but someone specifically wanted Chronicle readers to know that "the Dead will work with acoustic instruments.")

    It kind of confirms my theory that the Dead did not play acoustic-only shows without previously announcing them as such (or appearing under a covert name like "Bobby Ace" or such). [One of the reasons I believe our "8/5/70" tape can't possibly be the San Diego show.]
    Making NRPS the headliners may also serve to subdue audience expectations, so people wouldn't expect a 5-hour Lovelight coming in. (That said, some people were probably disappointed anyway, as Weir mentions during the NRPS show: "the rats are desertin' the sinkin' ship…" I don't recall the crowd sounding very large during the Dead's set either!)
    I agree about the very low-key nature of the Dead's acoustic set.

    I am still puzzled as to why an SBD tape would come from the Lion's Share rather than the Matrix – but we have to admit, a 7/30/70 newspaper announcement that the Dead would play acoustically with NRPS, combined with a tape dated 7/30/70 wherein the Dead play acoustically with NRPS, fits too perfectly to shrug off or call a misdating!

  2. Fate Music Avatar

    Yep.

    Part VII will happen at some point, I guess.

    What we really need is someone to check out the San Diego counterculture paper door, and maybe even the main paper (the Union-Tribune, or whatever it is, to see if there are any listings for the GD on 8/5/70 at Golden Hall.

  3. Corry342 Avatar

    This is a great find, and utterly convincing. I don't see any problem with the fact that the existing July 30 '70 tape was supposedly from the Matrix. In the day, before any list, people just guessed, and since (relatively) well-recorded tapes in front of tiny audiences pretty much only came from the Matrix, everyone just assumed it was a Matrix tape.

    As to the tape itself, I believe the soundman at the Lion's Share at the time was Charlie Kelly, on hiatus from the Sons Of Champlin, as the Sons themselves were temporarily in limbo. Kelly doesn't have an historical reputation as a taper, but he was friends with everybody, so if one of the Dead's crew guys wanted to plug in, Kelly would have known them and assented.

    Bob and Betty were on tour with Stoneground and the Medicine Ball Caravan, but one of the other regulars could have been running a deck, even Owsley.

  4. Corry342 Avatar

    I've been thinking about this–what's our source for the San Diego Aug 5 '70 listing? A tape box? Sadly, I don't have my original Soto list, but I don't think it was on there. In any case, even if it was, San Diego could have been a canceled date for which there was still a contract.

    Here's what I'm thinking–there's an apparently correctly dated July 30 acoustic Dead tape, but the venue is wrong. Maybe the venue is wrong on August 5, too. For that matter, maybe the "August 5" tape is just another night at the Lion's Share, such as August 1. Or maybe August 5 is an accurate date, but its some other stealth gig, like at The Matrix.

    I'm leaning more towards LIA's thinking here–I just don't see the 1970 Dead playing a one-off acoustic gig out of town. The only scenario I can imagine is where the band has a booked gig, and the only way they feel they can fulfill the contract is by playing acoustic. I guess in the end we have to check San Diego papers somehow. In any case, I'm starting to wonder if maybe the "August 5 San Diego" tape is from somewhere else altogether.

  5. Fate Music Avatar

    I expect to be able to check the San Diego paper door in the next few days for any hint of 8/5/70. I have a sneaking suspicion that I have already done so and come up empty, but it's worth a look.

    I am coming around to your view as well, LIA. And I agree totally that the tape is stripped of any context.

    My only thoughts in favor of the 8/5/70 dating are as follows.

    1) as we discussed earlier, and as Corry put it, the date/venue combination is so implausible as to be plausible.

    2) I'd want some theory as to how or why the tape would have ended up with an "8/5/70, Golden Hall, San Diego" designation. a) It's not unheard of, of course for folks to have intentionally mislabeled tapes to make them appear distinctive, thus attractive to other traders, and leverageable to gain more tapes. But this is not material that masquerades as this and something else, so that incentive doesn't operate. b) It's possible that whoever let the tapes out into the wild was trying to cover tracks so the supplier of the tape (let's say, Bob Mathews) didn't know they had circulated it (presumably in face of a promise not to do so). But I don't find that plausible either. That tape is so utterly distinctive that, and the relevant community of people so small in 1972, that efforts to conceal its provenance would almost certainly have come to naught.

    3) Owsley was around on 7/14/70, right, and you are saying that he was in prison by the end of the month. We know that the GD went down to play Golden Hall during or at the end of Bear's prison stint at Terminal Island (8/7/71). I find it plausible that they sent him off to prison with a little show, as well.

    4) The two acoustic sets doesn't bother me so much. If this really was just an impromptu send off to Owsley (or a little gig after having sent him off), and given that gear was off on the Caravan, and given the tenor of the times –including the work being done this very month at Heider's for American Beauty— I find the out-of-pattern gig less troubling than I otherwise might.

    All in all, I think LIA has offered a quite compelling suggestion that the "8/5/70" tape is from the Matrix/Bay Area. But for the reasons listed above, I am not prepared to conclude that he's right, and that The List should be changed … yet.

  6. Light Into Ashes Avatar

    The comment I made this morning has disappeared…

  7. Light Into Ashes Avatar

    Anyway, to respond, I don't have any theory about why this tape would have been attributed to 8/5/70. I believe a comparison with the audience sound on other Golden Hall shows indicates that it can't be the same venue, regardless of any plausibility in dating. (The audience is both small and close to the mikes, to the point where you can almost count individual clappers.)

    The Taping Compendium lists other tapes that came out around the same time (p.23), and they include "10/25/69" (actually the 5/3/69 AUD) and "7/10/70" (actually 4/12/70). It also notes that shows were coming out only in incomplete parts, rather than as whole shows.
    I think asking WHY tapes back in '72 were coming out so grievously edited/misdated is kind of futile, unless an old-time collector speaks up. The chain of transmission was broken long, long ago; and the initial traders' motives are impossible to recover… But at any rate, I think it provides a useful context for the "8/5/70" tape.

    BTW, 7/16/70 was the farewell-party show for Bear.

    It's a minor point, but the two-set distinction doesn't bother me that much except in its implausibility & suspect timing. It seems more likely to me that it's an artificial division between the 2 sides of a cassette. Hence it adds a little more weight to the "false labeling" argument.

    Hopefully, at least an ad in a San Diego paper can shed a little light!

  8. Fate Music Avatar

    I don't see it in the spam folder … weird.

    I agree that the two thirty-minute chunks are suspicious. Damn those edits to hell.

  9. Light Into Ashes Avatar

    Well, geez. Now disappearing comments worry me more than disappearing 1970 shows!
    For the record, this is more or less what I wrote in the vanished comment:

    Owsley couldn't have taped 7/30/70 because he was in prison. Bob Matthews might have, since the Medicine Ball tour did not start until August 4. Whether he WOULD have is unknown. (The last show he's known to have taped is 6/13/70.)
    But the existence of two Dead acoustic sets from this time indicates that SOMEONE was taping – so Occam's razor points to the Matrix, though it may not point true.

    "8/5/70" could not possibly be from the Golden Hall. It came out around '72, when accurate dating for many tapes was an idle fantasy. (On top of that, it was clearly edited down from a longer tape, removing any hints as to the source. The traditional division into two sets is also suspicious, since each "set" is exactly 30 minutes; which also violates the usual Dead show structure.)
    In short, while it may not be the Matrix, it must be a small-club show from somewhere…

    OK, carry on!

  10. Fate Music Avatar

    Funny, because I did read that. Perhaps I deleted it accidentally. Either that, or it was the part about buying some [insert name of "brand name" item].

    LIA, I want to push you on pinning down the date that Owsley went into prison. The truth is, as far as I know, we do not know the precise dates. My files say he was busted at 6024 Ascot Drive, Oakland, CA, 94611 on July 15, 1970 ("'LSD King' Nabbed Again in Drug Raid," Oakland Tribune, July 16, 1970, p. 19). Deadlists says of 7/16/70 that "This was the Bear's going away party", but unless it comes from the later reference do Deadbase IX (which I don't have at hand), I am not sure the source of that information. I don't see it on the poster at the Deadlists Poster Annex.

    I once emailed Bear and asked him about the precise dates of his incarceration. Quite understandably, he did not provide me any information on this. I'd be the State of California would have prison records that could be requested under some open information provision. Might be worth looking in to.

    Again: do we have any evidence of the date on which Bear went into prison, and when he came out, ca. 1970-1971?

    It's important to me to know the precise dates, because, as I have said, I imagined that 8/5/70 might fit into that picture. I also have an instinct to distrust the conventional wisdom and to want to triangulate across sources of evidence.

  11. Light Into Ashes Avatar

    Ah, you got me – I didn't even know he was busted on July 15.
    The band talks to him at the 7/14 show (the usual "turn up the guitars!" banter), but there's no proof he was even at the 7/16 show except for the Deadlists comment – and I don't know where they got that. (Not from deadbase.)
    I think it's his recording, though.

    I do know his first show back was 8/21/72, after serving two years. (Per McNally and also an audience witness.)

    David Lemieux made a comment in one Taper's Section:
    http://www.dead.net/features/tapers-section/july-16-july-22
    7/16/70 "is the last concert recorded by the Grateful Dead’s sound crew until December, 1970 (aside from a couple of multi-track shows from October). Bear went away for a couple of years after this show, and no one recorded the second half of 1970."

    Now, that's no authority on Bear's prison dates, BUT, it does indicate that the Vault collection of shows stops after 7/16/70, hence does not include these acoustic SBDs that we have. And that would point towards non-band taping of these sets.

  12. Fate Music Avatar

    I am not sure I agree that the absence of tapes from the Vault means that the shows weren't taped by the band. (I am not nitpicking: I agree it makes it less likely. But I think only very slightly less so.) Think of the Houseboat Tapes. It's possible that some random was taping the shows for the band, but decided that he/she was also free to take possession of the tapes (if only temporarily, or "accidentally", or whatever). I think it's pretty well known that Kidd Candelario had a whole mess of stuff, presumably stuff that he himself taped at the soundboard.

    LIA: "the initial traders' motives are impossible to recover". I am not sure we should give up on the possibility of reasoning through all of this. I, for one, would love to know how GD sbd tapes came into the possession of early traders.

    Anyway, I suspect that we are at an impasse barring more evidence. And, unfortunately, though I haven't noted it, I have listened to 8/5/70 pretty closely in the last 8-10 months or so (after doing the NRPS-1970-Matrix posts) and didn't learn anything about the dating/venue question. As we both agree, the edits make it tough. But I appreciate your ears telling you it's a small club like environment. I don't trust my ears to tell me what I heard in regard to the room, but I'll probably try again.

  13. Light Into Ashes Avatar

    For an early SBD to be in circulation but not in the Vault usually infers outside taping – especially for one that came out as early as '72, when the crew wasn't giving out tapes and the only shows in circulation were ones that had been taped by fans. (Looking at the shows available at that time, they were almost all AUDs or FMs, or the SBDs of the Stony Brook & Fillmore East shows.)
    But you're right, 1970 saw a lot of tapes that "vanished" from the Dead's archive by one means or another, so that's not a certainty.

    I would also love to know the process by which, say, a falsely-dated "1/27/67 Avalon" or "5/5/67 Fillmore" tape could start circulating. Sadly, I think that thread has been snipped long ago, unless someone grills the earliest traders who are still left. Even back then, though, (or especially then) sources were often shrouded in mystery.

    But, noting how many partial pieces of shows tended to come out (in the days before many radio broadcasts of Dead tapes), I suspect many restrictions came from the 1:1 nature of tape-trading – part of a show might first come out only as a tape-filler, or be edited down to fit onto a tape. (The 2/5/70 AUD, for instance, only surfaced as tape-filler for 2/8; and that show is STILL incomplete.)
    Misdating of tapes, of course, was so prevalent throughout the tape-trading days, it's a bit hard to account for in terms of rational logic, or widespread carelessness, or even intentional misinformation. (Other than just the old bootlegger's motive to make an old tape appear "new"; but that doesn't always apply.)

    But yeah, "8/5/70 Golden Hall, San Diego" is a strange label to pick out of the blue, if it really was taped at, say, the Matrix the week before. Whoever labeled it had to first know there WAS an 8/5/70 Golden Hall show. I agree we're at an impasse now since several pieces of this puzzle are missing… But heck, it makes speculation all the more fun!

  14. Corry342 Avatar

    I should really stop, but I can't help myself. We haven't really considered the possibility that the Aug 5 70 show from "San Diego" could be from the Aug 28 or 29 show at Thee Club in Los Angeles. We know that the show was advertised at least, and presumably the Acoustic Dead played it. It's a lot easier to posit a tape of a known event than an unknown one.

  15. Fate Music Avatar

    I am sure it's possible. We really need someone with ears for that sort of thing to listen for room dynamics, to affirm (or not) LIA's perceptions about the room.

  16. Light Into Ashes Avatar

    Owsley would not have been running a deck on 7/30/70 because he was in prison. I think Bob Matthews could have, though, because the Medicine Ball tour didn't start until August 4, as far as I know. Whether Matthews WOULD have, that's an unknown… (I think 6/13/70 is the last known tape he did.) Two Dead acoustic tapes from this time period indicate that SOMEBODY was taping, so Occam's Razor points to the Matrix – though it may not point true.

    My own theory about the "8/5/70" tape is that it's from the Matrix. There is no way it's from the Golden Hall. (On top of that, the only tape circulating was clearly edited down from the master, removing us from source clues. The tape came into circulation around '72, and accurate tape-dates in those days were a miracle. I would also question whether the show was actually two brief acoustic sets, as tradition has it, since there's no internal evidence for that from the tape; plus that violates the usual Dead show structure. It's quite suspicious that each "set" is exactly 30 minutes.)
    At any rate, it's definitely a laid-back small-club show from somewhere…

  17. Fate Music Avatar

    I note that on August 1, 1970, Jerry's bday, Billboard's "From the Music Capitals of the World" feature leads, out of Ell-Lay, with this: "The Grateful Dead's 'Workingman's Dead' LP is Warner Bros. top-selling album. The label has placed a billboard atop Fillmore West in San Francisco and on the Sunset Strip …" You all already knew this, I assume, but I bet after Lennie's perfidy, getting some good money news was reason to celebrate! Lion's Share must have been a good time that night.

    Oh yeah, I am just tying threads together, but on the principle of All Hooterollin, All The Time, it's no wonder Clive was salivating for this stuff.

    "From the Music Capitals of the World," Billboard, August 1, 1970, p. 2?8? (could be 3).

  18. Fate Music Avatar

    LIA, above: "I do know [Bear's] first show back was 8/21/72, after serving two years. (Per McNally and also an audience witness)

    Wasserman: "The Grateful Dead drew a capacity 14,400 to four concerts recently at Berkeley Community Theater but, according to some reports, were not as together as they have been known to be on occasion. Stanley Owsley or Owsley Stanley, not former manufacturer of LSD, is now out of the slammer and handled the Dead's sound."

  19. Light Into Ashes Avatar

    Looking back at this years later, I must correct myself: Bear was back on tour well before 8/21/72. Indeed he'd returned by 7/22/72. He made a cassette recording that night, and Phil asks on tape, "Are you there, Bear?"

    Per Robert Greenfield's book, Bear went to prison after 7/21/70 and was released on 7/15/72.
    He must have dashed straight from the prison gates to the Dead tour!

    Re: the suggestion that the "8/5/70" tape might be from the Aug 28-29 Los Angeles shows — there are no American Beauty songs on the tape (aside from To Lay Me Down), and Pigpen's not there. I wouldn't read too much into that, but it suggests that the show is from before the August '70 Fillmore West run (where the Dead introduced many AB songs), and probably is not from out of town.
    For what it's worth, the crowd on "8/5/70" is noticeably more boisterous (and perhaps larger) than the subdued 7/30/70 audience. Combined with the different stage mix & tape source, this indicates to me it's a different venue. Which tape might be from the Matrix, or the Lion's Share, or elsewhere, I now think is hopeless to determine!

  20. runonguinness Avatar

    I'll see your 7/22 and raise you 7/18. Phil calls "Hey Bear!" after Tennessee Jed at Roosevelt.

  21. Fate Music Avatar

    I heard them yelling at Bear on 7/26/72 the other day.

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