The Grateful Dead

 

Generally I try to avoid repeating myself.  With regard to this band, I already mentioned them in several previous blogs:  Jam Bands (11/14/08), Augustus “Bear” Owsley Stanley, III (9/8/17), Grateful TOOL (8/30/19), Not As Good <> Not Good (5/7/21) and Bootlegs Revisited (5/21/21).   This would be my first explicit blog on the band itself, so Bear with me if there is some repetition. 

Back in high school in Paris, France (1982-1986) was when I developed my core musical preferences:  heavy metal.  Our first concert was AC/DC, along with Twisted Sister, Deep Purple, DIO, Accept & Dokken, Motley Crue and Metallica.  Iron Maiden & Judas Priest were also on the radar as mandatory listening for any heavy metal fan, though I didn’t get a chance to see them until college.  The famous Judas Priest show at the Capital Centre in Maryland - the parking lot scene filmed in "Heavy Metal Parking Lot", was in May 1986, when I was still in Paris.  We didn't return to the US that summer until July.

Curious about this popular band, the Grateful Dead, I bought Reckoning at the record store.  With a name like this, and consistent skulls & skeletons in the imagery, I’m thinking, “this album will be bonecrushingly heavy!” Here goes….

Err, no.   Not even close.  WTF??? “Dire Wolf” begins an acoustic set, and I didn’t even finish that.  I gave the album to my friend Sean C., only getting the CD eons later.

College was spent at College Park, Maryland, from 1986 to 1990, surrounded by potheads and offered acid and other substances – all politely declined, alcohol being my sole form of mind-altering for those four years.

I managed to get into law school – George Mason – but my legal career got off to a slow start.  Summer after my second year, 1992, was spent putting books back on the shelf at the law library and NOT with a clerking.  Thus my prior blanket rejection of psychedelics was overcome by curiosity.  But now I was no longer in an environment where such things were easily obtained.  Solution, offered by college buddy Ken?  Try the parking lot at a Grateful Dead concert.  Thus RFK Stadium, home of the Washington Redskins, June 1992.  Fortified with two white paper squares putting me off into a multicolored, prismatic, parallel dimension where this music was now tolerable, I fully enjoyed the two sets, capped off with “Baba O’Riley” and “Tomorrow Never Knows”.  And thus began my journey into the Dead….

Who Are These Guys?  The band started out in the San Francisco Area in the mid-60s.  The classic lineup is Jerry Garcia (lead guitar, vocals) (RIP), Bobby Weir (rhythm guitar, vocals), Phil Lesh (bass, vocals), Ron “Pigpen” McKiernan (keyboards, vocals) (RIP), Bill Kreutzman (normal drums), and Mickey Hart (weird drums).   Pigpen died in 1972, replaced by Keith Godchaux, who died in 1980, replaced by Brent Mydland, who died in 1990 – prompting the “cursed keyboardist” concept for the band.  Keith was joined by his wife Donna Godchaux, who sang.  So if you see a woman on stage, it's 1972-79 era Dead.

Style.  The band takes folk and country music as a baseline and adds in various elements.  One is obscure and more offbeat lyrics, thanks to lyricist Robert Hunter, and similar to Blue Oyster Cult.  The subject matters veers off considerably from traditional country music, which tends to be fairly simple and straightforward.  The other deal is jamming.  Songs run into each other, there is extensive improvisation, and even the dreaded interminable drum solo, “Drums >> Space”.  They play a fair amount of covers.    

Acid Tests.   Few bands are as closely associated with lysergic acid diethylamide, LSD, as the Grateful Dead.  In the mid-60s, before LSD was banned, concerts would be organized in warehouses and other venues so the audience could consume from a communal vat of spiked punch, enjoying the trip together with kindred souls and a sympathetic community.  The Dead served as the house band for these acid get-togethers, more fully described in The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, by Tom Wolfe.  In London, Syd Barrett era Pink Floyd served the same function.  Though LSD and marijuana are not, strictly speaking, absolutely necessary to enjoy the band’s music, it certainly helps – and it helped me in the first place (as noted above).  LSD was banned in 1966, shutting down the Acid Tests, though the trend seems to suggest that this might change.  Oregon has already decriminalized ALL drugs; whether legalization will follow remains to be seen.  Anyhow.  It became common knowledge to avoid eating or drinking in their presence, as they were known to dose people at random.  When they appeared on Playboy After Dark, they spiked the punch.

Albums.  The core studio albums are:  Grateful Dead (self-titled), Anthem of the Sun, Aoxomoxoa, Live/Dead, Workingman’s Dead, American Beauty, Skull & Roses, Europe ’72, Bear’s Choice, Wake of the Flood, Mars Hotel, Blues For Allah, Steal Your Face, Terrapin Station, Shakedown Street, Go To Heaven, Reckoning, Dead Set, In The Dark, Dylan & The Dead, Built To Last, Without a Net.  The band also issues various special live shows (Cornell ’77, Closing of Winterland, Rockin’ the Cradle (Egypt ’78)) and there are about 40 Dick’s Picks, and almost 40 Dave’s Picks, which are especially favored bootlegs recorded by the band itself.  These are in addition to, not instead of, the bootlegs which are still out there, but it seems that many bootlegs seem to eventually wind up as official releases. 

Actually, at this point the band releases recordings of the shows themselves on their website, so along with bootlegs of prior shows, I have recordings of the shows I’ve actually been to…

It must have been around 2000 when I started actually listening to albums, starting with Anthem of the Sun and American Beauty, which remain my favorites.  Eventually I wound up getting them all, though I’m more apt to listen to the live releases than the later studio albums. 

Bootlegs.  Probably no band is as associated with bootlegs as the Dead.  Notwithstanding their record company’s insistence otherwise, the band encouraged fans to tape the shows, and many fans brought top quality recording equipment.  The bootlegs circulated widely and vastly expanded the band’s fan base.  As noted above, the band plays different sets each night, meaning that no two shows are the same, and even the same song might be played faster, slower, longer or shorter, etc. 

Spinoffs.  The Jerry Garcia Band, Phil Lesh & Friends, and Ratdog (Bobby Weir) are probably the best known.  Garcia and Weir had a fair amount of solo albums, but the Dead would play their solo songs as well as GD songs – and covers.  My impression is that you were more likely to hear Dead songs at a Ratdog show than a JGB show. 

Tours.  Initially they were playing clubs and concert halls, e.g. the Fillmore (S.F.), the Fillmore East (NYC), Winterland, etc. and worked their way to playing stadiums in the 80’s.  Jerry Garcia had a major health breakdown in 1986, but somehow returned to touring.  Sadly, the band wasn’t making enough money from album sales and needed to tour to support themselves, plus the touring personnel also depended on the income for their survival.  In 1995 Garcia died, which initially put the whole thing down.  However, they resumed again afterwards, first as The Dead, more recently as Dead & Company, with Bobby Weir taking over as de facto leader of the band.  As of today, him, Kreutzman and Hart remain the solo original members touring with them, now that Phil Lesh has gotten too old to tour with them.

Part of the fun of the shows is that unlike most bands, who play the same songs every night, the Dead change their sets – you never know what you’ll hear.  Deep cuts?  Covers?  Your favorite song?  It’s anyone’s guess.  That being the case, following the band around on tour actually makes sense.  Other jam bands, such as Phish and Widespread Panic, do the same.  Pearl Jam and Clutch are the only two non-jam bands I’m aware of which do the same. 

Shakedown Street.  Whenever the band plays a venue with a large parking lot – like a football stadium – a vast tailgating scene will emerge long before band even takes the stage, colloquially referred to as Shakedown Street among the fans.  Food and drinks, tie-dye t-shirts, knockoff t-shirts, and of course the usual array of cannabis, fungus, and lysergic goodies are often available – though RFK 1992 was the only show where I actually scored anything.  Depending on the state, the police might be overt or apparently completely absent.  If you don’t know anyone who sells dope, a Dead show is a good place to look.

Personal Experience.  By now I’ve attended 8 shows, 2 with Jerry Garcia still alive: 

1)         RFK Stadium, DC 6/20/1992; Grateful Dead Concert Setlist at Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Stadium, Washington on June 20, 1992 | setlist.fm

2)         RFK Stadium, DC 6/25/1995 (raining, see second set); Grateful Dead Concert Setlist at Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Stadium, Washington on June 25, 1995 | setlist.fm

3)         Merriweather Post Pavilion, Columbia, MD 6/18/03; The Dead Concert Setlist at Merriweather Post Pavilion, Columbia on June 18, 2003 | setlist.fm

4)         Nissan Pavilion, Bristow, VA 8/15/04; The Dead Concert Setlist at Nissan Pavilion, Bristow on August 15, 2004 | setlist.fm

5)         Verizon Center, DC 4/14/09; The Dead Concert Setlist at Verizon Center, Washington on April 14, 2009 | setlist.fm

6)         Jiffy Lube Live, Bristow, VA 6/22/17;  Dead & Company Concert Setlist at Jiffy Lube Live, Bristow on June 22, 2017 | setlist.fm

7)         Jiffy Lube Live, Bristow, VA 6/26/19; Dead & Company Concert Setlist at Jiffy Lube Live, Bristow on June 26, 2019 | setlist.fm

8)         Jiffy Lube Live, Bristow, VA 8/18/21.  Dead & Company Concert Setlist at Jiffy Lube Live, Bristow on August 18, 2021 | setlist.fm

Oddly, both #1 and #8 began with “Cold Rain & Snow”, but by #8 I was in the position of recognizing most of the songs.  At #1 the only song I could recognize was “Casey Jones”. 

My cousins are big Dead fans, but since they are much older than me, they enjoyed seeing the band in the 70s, well before I could.  Cousin Jimmy saw the show at Cornell ’77, and saw Egypt ’78 the following year with Eddie and Lori-Ann.  I’m guessing the Dead did NOT tour Taiwan. 

Deadheads.   While I would call myself a fan, I don’t consider myself a Deadhead.  I’m not nearly as obsessed by the band, I still like and prefer heavier bands – AC/DC and Black Sabbath remain my favorites – and I have never followed the band on tour.  But if they come by my neck of the woods, Jiffy Lube Live, I’ll make it a point to see the show – and did catch the most recent show.  

Bootlegs Revisited

 Another return to an older topic, in that case the blog was written in 2009.   Since then I’ve collected most of the King Crimson Collector Series. 

 I also picked up a few TOOL bootlegs:  one from the Fear Inoculum Tour and three from the 10,000 Days Tour (thanks, Diane!).   The band only has two official live recordings: a 1993 Lollapalooza recording, and Salival, combined with either a VHS or DVD, which dates from Undertow, the first album, and includes “You Lied”, a great non-TOOL song.  According to drummer Danny Carey, the band has a huge stash of live recordings, but has yet to release any of it, a la King Crimson Collectors Club, which is odd considering they went 13 years from 10,000 Days to Fear Inoculum AND they are not only fans of King Crimson, but toured with them.  I picture a huge warehouse full of live recordings no one has had the time or patience to wade through to determine how decent the sound quality is or whether the performances embarrass the band.  Who knows.  I dare say we’ll find out. 

 AC/DC.  I picked up a ten pack, for $50 – meaning each CD of a show was $5.  Six of them are Bon Scott shows and four from Brian Johnson.  The latter gave me a recording of Brian Johnson singing “Bad Boy Boogie”, a Bon Scott song, to complete my ersatz playlist of Paris ’84, our first concert.  Keep in mind that Bon Scott era AC/DC has only ONE official live album, If You Want Blood (You Got It), recorded on the Powerage tour.  That set was “Riff Raff”, “Hell Ain’t A Bad Place To Be”, “Bad Boy Boogie”, “The Jack”, “Problem Child”, “Whole Lotta Rosie”, “Rock’n’Roll Damnation”, “High Voltage”, “Let There Be Rock”, and “Rocker”.  The bootleg package has some intriguing song choices, including “Sin City”, “Gone Shootin’” and “Up To My Neck In You”.  One show was from September 1977, yet Powerage wasn’t released until May 1978, meaning those lucky audience members heard those songs before others did the following year.  The Bon Scott bootlegs are two from Dirty Deeds, three from Powerage, and one from Highway to Hell tours. 

 I also picked up a bootleg of their Madison Square Garden show on the Rock Or Bust tour in 2017 with Axl Rose singing.  We saw the following show, Verizon Center in DC, with an identical setlist.  Why the band didn’t see fit to record the show and release it themselves, I don’t know.  As a practical matter, Axl sounds a lot more like Brian Johnson than Bon Scott.  I found his inter-song banter to be unintelligible.  However, the song choice alone was well worth the purchase.

 Black Sabbath.  I also picked up a few Sabbath bootlegs, one (Lausanne, Switzerland in April 1970) includes “Sleeping Village >> Warning”.  Many older Sabbath shows have extended jams, “Sometimes I’m Happy”, and alternate lyrics.  I don’t think of Black Sabbath as a jam band, but some of the improvs put them in that category.  The other commonly known Sabbath bootleg, which I picked up recently and will be officially released with the Sabotage boxed set, is the Asbury Park show, known as Killing Yourself to Live.  It has “Megalomania”, “Sabbra Cadabra”, and “Spiral Architect”.  I awhile ago I picked up the Paranoid boxed set, mainly for the quadraphonic mix from 1974.  But it included the Brussels and Montreux shows from the Paranoid tour, which had been bootlegs for years.   

  Coverdale/Page.  After Deep Purple broke up, singer David Coverdale formed Whitesnake.  From 1978 to 1984 (David Coverdale’s Whitesnake through Slide It In) they were more of bluesy band (WS Mark I), and from 1987 (self-titled) to the present they’ve been more of a commercial metal band (WS Mark II).   Many accused the Mark I version of being a bit too reminiscent of Led Zeppelin.  So it was odd, or possibly appropriate, that Jimmy Page and David Coverdale collaborated on a single album, simply called Coverdale/Page, in 1993.  I bought it when it came out and listened to it a few times since then.  It sounds like Jimmy Page and David Coverdale made an album together.  What I didn’t realize was that the band actually toured – in Japan.  A bootleg of their Japanese tour (Live in Osaka) features “Slide It In”, “Here I Go Again” and “Still of the Night”, by Whitesnake – with Jimmy Page playing – and “Rock And Roll”, “Kashmir”, “In My Time of Dying”, “White Summer/Black Mountain Side”, and “Black Dog”, with David Coverdale singing (except on WS/BMS).  The remainder of the set – 50% - are C/P songs.   Overall an interesting addition.

Grateful Dead.  This band is famous for allowing audience members to tape their shows and trade them, much to their record company’s anger and frustration.  Eventually many of these wound up being officially released: no less than 38 Dick’s Picks, 38 Dave’s Picks, and 17 Road Trips, plus Cornell ’77 (probably THE most famous show), Egypt ’78, and a quadruple set of Closing of Winterland 12/31/78, a four disc set covering a bizarre show which began at midnight and ran to the morning of January 1, 1979.  I’ll repeat again:  Cousin Jimmy was a student at Cornell in ’77 and saw the concert, then my uncle Buddy took the family to Egypt and he saw the following year’s show there. (Count our blessings….!)  I suppose “official bootleg” might be a contradiction in terms, but others on this list are truly non-official.

The Dead even have a database, DeadBase, which will tell you which songs were played, and when. 

Beatles at the Hollywood Bowl.  Note that, from 1963-70, the years the band was in existence and releasing material, no live album was released.  Part of this was because those shows from 1963-66 (last concert at San Francisco) the crowd noise far exceeded the band’s tiny ampage.  Imagine if Pete Townshend had spoken to them and recommended a few Marshall stacks to even the odds.   With the screaming girls drowning out the band’s performance, it’s more novelty and morbid curiosity than an enjoyable experience.

Other General Principles

Sound Quality.  This often varies considerably, but I’ve found that even for shows which are relatively worse, after you listen for awhile your brain seems to screen out the noise and you start hearing the music.

 Song Selection.  Hearing rarely-heard songs live is one major benefit.  Again, AC/DC only have ONE official live album from Bon Scott’s era, so six bootlegs give you many songs you weren’t going to hear on If You Want Blood. 

 I Was There!!  In the unlikely event someone recorded a show I was actually at, I’m happy to get the bootleg.  As it is, the Dead shows at RFK in 1992 and 1995 seem to be the only ones I can think of off the top of my head which qualify.  

Not As Good < > Not Good

 

Oftentimes people sometimes confuse the two.  I suppose many of us who are married, and had several different romantic partners over the ages, might acknowledge that the person they settled down with was not their optimal sexual partner – but the person who was, had other issues (e.g. infidelity or general personal incompatibility) which made the current partner the overall optimal one.

 Moving away from relationships, this features for several musical groups.

 GRATEFUL DEAD.  The band began in San Francisco in 1965 and remained active until Jerry Garcia’s death in 1995.  After that time, the surviving band members reformed for several tours, playing the classic material with no new material recorded or released after Jerry died.  Veteran Deadheads will tell you that Jerry’s health issues in 1986 mean that the ’86-’95 version was never quite as good as the ’65-’86 version. 

 A colleague of mine had seen them multiple times before 1986 and never after that.  I invited him to join me for the 2020 show of Dead & Company – Jerry’s place taken by John Mayer, and original members Bobby Weir, Bill Kreutzman and Mickey Hart still on stage, bassist Phil Lesh still alive but too old to tour anymore – at Jiffy Lube Live.  Initially he dismissed this out of hand, but after listening to official recording of the 2019 show, he changed his mind.  [Update 2021: While the 2020 show was canceled due to COVID, we managed to see the show in August 2021, and both enjoyed it immensely, Jerry Garcia's absence notwithstanding.] 

 I’m not in a position to compare Dead & Company with pre-86 Grateful Dead.  My sole experience with Jerry-era Dead was two shows at RFK, 1992 and 1995.  I would say the subsequent shows I saw were comparable enough in quality to make the shows worth attending.

 AC/DC.  Bon Scott died in February 1980, soon replaced by Brian Johnson.   The first two Brian Johnson albums, Back in Black and For Those About To Rock (We Salute You) were top quality and just about as good – in my opinion – as the Bon Scott albums.  After that, the quality dropped dramatically.   Listening to the current album, Power Up, it’s occurred to me that musically, the band is still OK.  The “weakest link” is Johnson’s vocals, accurately described as “Marge Simpson”.  Of all the available singers, Brian Johnson is the best they can find?  Fortunately the band plays Bon Scott material and plenty of songs from Back in Black.  But later material from Blow Up Your Video through Stiff Upper Lip seriously straddle the distinction between “not as good” and “not good”. 

 Black Sabbath.  For their part, Sabbath have their classic Ozzy Osbourne era, followed by two excellent albums with Ronnie James Dio, then a slew of albums which aren’t nearly as impressive.  However, I listened to Eternal Idol and Headless Cross, both with singer Tony Martin, and found them enjoyable enough.  Not quite up to Heaven & Hell or Vol 4, but enjoyable enough.  I’m revisiting TYR right now, and will tackle Cross Purposes, Forbidden, and 13 in the coming weeks.  I can’t say there’s any Black Sabbath album, with any singer, I’d describe as “not good”.  Moreover, on the Cross Purposes tour, they pulled out “Sabbath, Bloody Sabbath”, “The Wizad”, “Into the Void”, and the full “Symptom of the Universe”, including the second acoustic part.  I’ve heard bootlegs from the ‘70s with Ozzy, and even then they weren’t playing the full song.  So give them some credit for putting on an awesome show, even if it wasn’t even Martin’s own material.

 Van Halen.  I haven’t heard the Gary Cherone album (Van Halen III), nor the fourth Sammy Hagar album (Balance), and of course I have heard all the David Lee Roth albums – offhand, I don’t recall much about A Different Kind of Truth, the only post-Hagar DLR album.  I prefer the DLR material, but Hagar’s stuff is good enough to qualify as “not as good” instead of “not good”.  Having said that, also prefer Hagar on his own and with The Circle (with Vic Johnson and Jason Bonham) or Chickenfoot (with Joe Satriani and Chad Smith).  I can’t say I’ve heard anything by Hagar I could call “not good”. 

Wishbone Ash.  Here's a band that's been around since the early 70s.  The classic lineup, for the first four albums, S/T, Pilgrimage, Argus, and Wishbone IV, was Andy Powell (guitar/vocals), Ted Turner (guitar/vocals), Martin Turner (actually not related to Ted) (bass/vocals), and Steve Upton (drums).  After IV the various band members left, leaving Andy Powell the only original member.  The classic lineup reunited in the late 80s for Nouveau Calls, but soon Powell was left by himself again, at this point I don't know why.  By the time I got into them and was looking to see them live, (2000), Powell remained the only original member of the band.  I chose to see the band anyway, and lo and behold, it was a worthwhile experience.  Of course, Powell's lineup plays plenty of classic tunes, and the current group puts out new material of competitive quality.  Maybe not as good as the first four, but certainly "good enough". 

The GRATEFUL TOOL

My topic for today had been aesthetics, but it looks like the release of Fear Inoculum, the fifth and latest TOOL album, and my receipt thereof as normally scheduled for 8/30 (thank God!), has provided me with a compelling topic.   In particular, the behavior of TOOL fans in the days leading up to the release brought to mind another fan base, that of the Grateful Dead.

Both bands have a fairly rabid base of fans who often behave irrationally, sometimes to the point of fanaticism.   With Jerry Garcia’s passing in 1995 the fervor over the older band has subsided.  With the exception of bassist Phil Lesh, the oldest surviving member, who is apparently too old to tour these days, the remaining members Bobby Weir (guitar and vocals), Bill Kreutzmann (drums) and Mickey Hart (percussion) accompanied by John Mayer, continue to tour without releasing new material.   I’ve seen a few shows and the fan base appears to be 70% old enough to have seen the band back with Jerry Garcia in 1995 or earlier.   Myself, I managed to see the band in 1992 and 1995, catching the very tail end of the original era, then a few more times more recently after the band reunited after Garcia’s death to play again. 

TOOL don’t have cursed keyboardists (Ron “Pigpen” McKiernan, Keith Godchaux, or Brent Mydland) and only one personnel change, original bassist Paul D’Amour replaced by current bassist Justin Chancellor around the time of the second album, Aenima.   The remainder of the band is charismatic frontman Maynard James Keenan (aka “MJK”), guitarist Adam Jones, and drummer Danny Carey.  Albums #1, 3 and 4 are Undertow, Lateralus, and 10,000 Days, plus EPs Salival and Opiate, partially live.  As my meme notes, TOOL do not have a proper live album as such.  By way of comparison, Clutch, who have been around the same length of time as TOOL, have put out 12 studio albums between Transnational Speedway League (1993) and Book of Bad Decisions (2018). 

Both bands give a unique live experience.  The Dead play two full 90 minute sets with a 30 minute intermission, and its famous “Drums/Space” jam with Kreutzmann and Hart is in the second set.  Every set is completely different, and you might even hear covers.  The light show is nice but not as impressive as TOOL’s.

TOOL sets are 80% the same night by night with 2-3 slots changing up.  With only 4 albums to choose from, and a principled objection to playing covers, the repertoire is limited.  The Dead had 13 studio albums from 1967 (self-titled) to 1990 (Without a Net), some of them effectively live albums, and a fair amount of covers thrown in. 

Maynard affects weird stage costumes which are mostly wasted as he sings in back of the stage, next to Carey, in darkness.  The band are overshadowed by their elaborate Alex Grey imagery behind them, which melts sound and vision together into an organic whole.   Both bands are strongly associated with not merely cannabis but also Hofmann/Sandoz inspired psychedelics, but such substances are helpful but not necessary to enjoy the experience of the live spectacle or the music itself.

Musically I’d describe the Grateful Dead as country music made by hippies with an infinite supply of LSD.  Oddly, country music fans don’t seem to like the Dead and vice versa.  Thanks to lyricist Robert Hunter, the words are more along the lines of Blue Oyster Cult than Blake Shelton.  TOOL are more like Pink Floyd morphed into as heavy as they could possibly be – David Gilmour pumped with steroids.  But unlike many of their peers, TOOL have a singer, Maynard, who ACTUALLY SINGS.  Yes, Cookie Monster is not in this band. 

Sadly, the fans of each can, as noted above, be somewhat obtuse.  With TOOL currently touring and putting out new material – as glacial as that now seems to be, with 13 years separating 10k Days and Fear Inoculum – the TOOL crowd is far more front and center than the Dead fans are. 

Maynard vs. Jerry.   Garcia was really non-objectionable.  Both had side projects:   MJK has A Perfect Circle and Puscifer, both of which go in one ear and out the other.  Garcia had the Jerry Garcia Band, who I saw in 1991 before even seeing the Dead themselves.  Maynard can be somewhat arrogant at times.  He runs a vineyard, produces a wine – Caduceus, which I haven’t bothered to overpay for as I’m not a wine fanatic – and loves guns, which doesn’t bother me.  To hear TOOL fans talk, though, Jones, Chancellor and Carey are session musicians who guest on TOOL albums to help out Maynard.  

I’d say the #1 fault of Deadheads is only listening to the Dead.   I was at a Dark Star Orchestra (DSO – one of the top Dead tribute bands) show at the 9:30 Club in DC wearing a Pink Floyd shirt and got a dirty look.  At the very least, Dead fans should listen to Pink Floyd.  Beyond that I can’t say that Deadheads are annoying enough to draw too much negative attention to the band itself.  Actually, Garcia himself said in a Playboy interview that the band is apolitical by nature and Republicans can listen and come to the shows.   Can’t imagine Trump at a Dead & Company show.  Or at a TOOL show, for that matter. 

I’m a member of the TOOL Army, but only joined recently and only got into the band when 10,000 Days came out and the band voiced its support for King Crimson.  All four shows I saw were 10K Days tour shows.   The fans can be a little pretentious, to say the least, like latter day Beatles fans.  The biggest issue I have is the fans who didn’t wait for 8/30, didn’t order the expensive, fancy Fear Inoculum package, illegally downloaded the album and were bursting forth with their reviews of it.   Yes, those of us who waited felt a little superior – rightfully so.

Revision 9/1/19.  As of now I’ve been able to listen to Fear Inoculum in its entirety three times, though as yet not the video itself; prior to that I heard “Descending” at the Fairfax concert (5/24/17) and “Descending”, “Invincible” and “Chocolate Chip Trip” at the Hampton show (5/10/19).   My assessment?  Excellent quality, comparable in quality to the prior four albums.  Six major songs ranging from 10:05 to 15:44 in length: “Fear Inoculum”, “Pneuma”, “Invincible”, “Descending”, “Culling Voices”, and “7empest”.  It’s TOOL people.

The Facebook Reaction from the TOOL CULT appears to vary as follows:

1.   Best album ever, naming my next child “Fear”

2.   Good, but not better than [prior album] – instigating massive debate on relative merits of the 5 albums

3.   Good, but breaking up the Fibonacci spiral of quality improvement and year intervals of 1/3/5/5/13 from Opiate to the current album.   Sorry.

4.  Good, but not worth the 13 year wait.

5.   Good, but not worth $40 for that damn CD packaging

6.   Sounds too much like TOOL

7.   Sounds too much like A Perfect Circle

8.   Not enough Maynard

The rest of you are welcome to join the cult or slam us as idiots for worshipping these four mortals whose music is inexplicably given such reverence.   You know, like us who worship Neil, Tim, Dan and Jean-Paul in Clutch.   Sadly, much of the contempt thrown as us TOOL fanatics is coming from the Maryland cult, as if these two bands, of admittedly much different styles and certainly far different productivity and stage shows, are necessarily mutually exclusive.   I say we can worship both Maynard AND Neil.   AMEN, brothers.  

Santana

On Wednesday afternoon I made the snap, last minute decision to see Santana in concert at Jiffy Lube Live in Bristow, Virginia.  Despite having been aware of, and a fan of, this band since college (1886-1890) I had never gotten around to seeing them in concert. 

If you have finite time and money, do you exclusively attend concerts of bands you’ve already seen before, or do you seek out some new experiences?   For my part, 60% of the bands I saw in 2019 were ones I’d seen before, and 40% were new bands.   DesertFest NYC featured The Skull, Monolord, and Windhand – who I’d seen before – but also Elder, ASG, Danava and Weedeater, who I hadn’t.   As it was, Elder, the final headliner on Sunday night, was the band I was most interested in seeing.  This Boston, MA band wasn’t scheduled to tour anywhere close to DC, so I had to traipse all the way up to NJ/NY to see these shows.  Well worth it, as Elder were as satisfying as their studio albums would indicate. 

For that matter, have I ever NOT enjoyed a concert?  Does this happen often enough to dissuade me from seeing a band I’d never seen before?  It happened ONCE.   

The Mars Volta.   Those of us familiar with Pink Floyd’s Live at Pompeii movie know that the band interviews during the Dark Side of the Moon sessions, interrupting the prior jams of much earlier material at Pompeii, are oddly as entertaining as the musical performances themselves.   Gilmour’s denial of drug use on the part of the band is amusing, of course, but so is Roger’s bold but true assertion that “if people go to a show and they don’t like it, they don’t come again.”  That was the case with the only concert I really disliked and left early:  The Mars Volta, at the Ram’s Head Live in Baltimore, September 21, 2008.   Normally the band’s material is 1/3 nonstop aggression and 2/3 prog and psychedelic, an acceptable mix.  But live, the band seemed to be nonstop nonstop aggression, which I did not like.  (Even guitarist Omar Rodriguez-Lopez admitted that no one wants to be punched in the face nonstop for 90 minutes).  Bye bye!

Here I went as a last minute decision to see a band I’d never seen before.   I got the cheapest lawn tickets they had and made no effort to reiterate my prior solicitations of companionship.    With the TV screens we could see much of what was going on stage anyway.   The grooves were infectious and the overall experience highly enjoyable.  

Che Guevara.   Before the right had Trump to idolize and ignore his numerous deficiencies, the Left had Che Guevara.   In Exposing The True Che Guevara:  And The Useful Idiots Who Idolize Him, Humberto Fontova, a Cuban immigrant who is clearly NOT a fan of his, described encountering Carlos Santana and giving him grief for wearing a Che Guevara t-shirt as so many people do, citing the man’s many atrocities under Castro’s regime.  Santana’s reaction – imagine this in Tommy Chong’s voice – “you’re getting hung up on the facts, man!”

Broken SG.   Nowadays it seems Santana plays exclusively Paul Reed Smith guitars.  But back in the day, he had a cherry red Gibson SG Special with dot inlays and P90 pickups, which he played at Woodstock.  For some reason – most likely the guitar wouldn’t stay in tune – he wanted a replacement, but wasn’t actually running the band (!), so it vetoed his demand.  So he smashed the guitar, destroying it, and then said, “THERE.  Now you have to buy me a new guitar.”

Jam Band.   If you listen to the Fillmore show from 1968, or the Woodstock performance, or the first album, it’s clear that early Santana is very similar to the Grateful Dead and the Allman Brothers – definitely a jam band.   In fact, Gregg Rolie and Neil Schon, better known from Journey, were in his band early on (Rolie from the beginning).   Not only that, if you listen to Journey’s first album, they’re more like a prog band and don’t sound much, if anything, like the band that gave us “Don’t Stop Believing” and “Open Arms” with later singer Steve Perry. 

This is why I needed to see him in concert.  I checked Setlist.fm and verified that live, he’s still playing his classic tunes.  Of the rest, fairly recent album Supernatural gets the most coverage, 6 songs, including “Smooth”.  The later tunes are shorter.   Live, he’s still giving some good jams. 

I’m ambivalent about otherwise talented guitarists who bury their decent guitar solos in music I really don’t care for:  Prince comes to mind, plus late model Don Felder.   His two songs on the Heavy Metal soundtrack, recorded exclusively for that album, are far superior (in my humble opinion) to any of his solo work since leaving the Eagles. 

With Santana there’s a ton of African rhythms, latin and jazz stuff which can tax my tolerance for jam band material.   But then I was hearing a strong Ray Manzarek influence with the keyboardist – and then Santana himself started off the distinctive and instantly recognizable solo intro for “Light My Fire”, followed by snippets of Stones material, and even a bit of “Day Tripper”, giving us some classic rock material amidst all the worldbeat stuff we might get from Mickey Hart.   Suffice to say he’s all over the place.  And for a guy born in 1947, he can still play guitar.  If he has any health issues I couldn’t see them from where I was in the audience. 

College Park (Origins).   Along with early Scorpions – Lonesome Crow and Fly to the Rainbow – Santana, in particular Viva Santana, was another learning experience of College Park.  Eventually that led me to Peter Green era Fleetwood Mac to seek out the original “Black Magic Woman”, and check out Live in Boston Vol 1, which also has “Green Manalishi” – better known from Judas Priest’s cover of it.  Of course, PG era FM are also a jam band – and Green was a big fan of the Dead.  “Oh Well” is probably the go-to jam song for his era of ‘Mac.

WTF?   As I expected, Santana made one “speech” exhorting the crowd to get crazy.  It was couched in metaphysical language guaranteed to confuse everyone.  I think he tries it out beforehand with the band members and roadies and if anyone can figure out what he’s trying to say, he scratches it out and starts over. 

Concessions.   By now I’ve seen enough shows that I’m not compelled to buy a t-shirt as a matter of principle.  My preference is for a shirt with tour dates on the back.   A blank back t-shirt doesn’t tell the world I purchased it at a concert.  Sadly, the best front design is not always the one with tour dates on the back, and the latter shirt may well have a dull or suboptimal design.  Sadly, that was the case here. Santana did have guitar-shaped magnet/bottle openers which were nice enough.   It won’t go any further than my fridge, which I don’t take around in public with me, but it will open bottles and stay on the fridge.  Just as well.

Parking Lot.   I had to leave early, before hearing “Smooth”, to avoid being trapped in the parking lot for eternity.  The venue, originally Nissan Pavilion, has been here since May 1997, but to date they still do not have a legitimate system to allow the parking lot to empty at the end of the show (though I did see an Uber/Lyft pickup location identified, which might actually work for people who live somewhere close to Bristow).  The only way to avoid idling with everyone else for an hour after the show is to leave before the encore.   With Alice in Chains a few weeks before, my problem was solved by Alice in Chains going on first and KORN being the final band, who I didn’t care to see, least of all to endure the parking issue. 

 

In any case, here is the Jiffy Lube Live set.  My favorites are “Evil Ways”, “Oye Como Va”, “Black Magic Woman”, and “Smooth” – though I didn’t get to hear that last tune.

https://www.setlist.fm/setlist/santana/2019/jiffy-lube-live-bristow-va-739ff601.html

Texas Hippie Coalition

Back in high school in Paris in the early 80s, I discovered heavy metal.  AC/DC, Black Sabbath, Ozzy Osbourne, Metallica, Judas Priest, Iron Maiden, etc.   I’d also heard of this band called the Grateful Dead.

With a name like that, they had to be hardcore metal, right?  And all these album covers with skulls and roses, you know?  So I bought Reckoning, a double live acoustic album, and was …”HUH?”  A helpful friend, Sean C., observed that this material was in fact standard fare for the band and agreed to take this album off my hands.   Decades later, he still has the vinyl I gave him, and I replaced it with the CD version (with extra tracks).  Suffice to say that the Grateful Dead were not nearly as heavy as their name would imply.

Fast forward to 2018 and I found the opposite with regard to this band, Texas Hippie Coalition.  I suspect they wanted everyone to know they smoked weed and wanted a band name which fit tetrahydracannabinol (THC), which we all know is the active ingredient of marijuana and gives it the ability to make you stoned.  All well and fine, but while “Texas” and “coalition” don’t necessarily imply any particular type of music – except maybe ZZTop – “hippie” certainly implies the type of music hippies generally listen to, the #1 being…the Grateful Dead.   So with a name like that, the most obvious implication is that this is a jam band. 

Nope.  THC sound like Pantera mixed with Lynyrd Skynyrd.  They are definitely heavy and brutal.  Mind you, there is no law that says everyone who smokes MJ and listens to music has to listen to the same music.  Rappers love weed.  Deadheads love weed.  Floyd fans love weed.  And metal fans – particularly fans of so-called “stoner rock” (mostly highly influenced by Black Sabbath with about 25% Pink Floyd added in) – also love weed.  Not everyone, of course.  Plenty of us stoner rock fans are happy with a beer or two and don’t need a joint or bong to appreciate even songs like “Sweet Leaf”.  I enjoyed the THC show on Monday night with nothing more than a 16 oz Blue Moon consumed while the last opening act, Kobra and the Lotus, was playing.

Band Names.  While I’m on the topic…  THC is not the only band openly expressing its love for the weed.  Of course, Black Sabbath sang “Sweet Leaf”, pot leaves can be seen on the cover of Second Helping by Lynyrd Skynyrd, and of course many rappers like Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg, and Cypress Hill are likewise open and notorious about their habits.  Many stoner rock bands make it a point to name themselves accordingly, such as Bongzilla, Weedeater, and my favorite (from Poland), Weedpecker.  The bands vary in how brazen they are about displaying the pot leaf – which itself is fairly distinctive and recognizable by now (and is NOT on Ohio State football helmets, by the way) – on their albums or t-shirts, Brant Bjork these days being the most so, competing with Wino in that regard.  This band’s pot leaf shirt is long sold out. 

As MJ legalization gains momentum I dare say we’ll see more of this.  Eventually I expect the straight edge crowd to follow suit to remind us that not everyone smokes weed.  (No, really?)  Anyhow.

Band. Their prior bassist, John Exall, left the band recently and was replaced by a left-handed guy un-named on the website and in the show, who did a remarkably good job of looking cool and getting the job done.  Whether he earned the right to remain in the band after the tour remains to be seen.  Drums are done by Timmy Braun, twin guitars by Nevada Romo and Cord Pool, and – last but not least - the vocals handled by the large, verbose and unmistakable “Big Dad Rich”, whose mike stand was a double-barreled shotgun.  Like AC/DC, this band has one member who vastly outshines the rest of the band, and BDR is definitely that guy.  In addition to his powerful singing voice and imposing stage presence by sheer mass alone, he loves to tell the audience about his prior career smuggling weed from Mexico and selling it in the US at a profit.

Discography.  Pride of Texas (2008), Rollin’ (2010), Peacemaker (2012), Ride On (2014), Dark Side of Black (2016).  Of these, I purchased the newest and listened to the prior albums on Spotify in reverse order.  Pride of Texas could be considered a de facto Pantera tribute album, released 8 years after Pantera themselves released their last album, Reinventing The Steel.  Mind you, THC made no secret of their love for Pantera, and as fellow Texas metalheads it’s hardly a surprise.   As the band developed the material gets a bit looser and groovier, leaving Pantera not far behind but at least no longer being a verbatim copy anymore.

The point of all this is because on Monday night, April 30, I caught the band live at the Baltimore Soundstage, a small club in downtown Baltimore just north of the Inner Harbor.  Of the three opening acts, I caught the last one, Kobra & the Lotus, essentially a heavy hair metal band with a leather-clad female singer who looks like Britney Spears as a Motley Crue fan. 

With time and money in finite supply, we can’t see every show we want, and usually we end up seeing bands we’ve seen already because we know we’ll enjoy the show.  But every now and then we see a band we’ve never seen before, like this one.  [I say “we” but in fact I saw the show alone.]

I got there a bit early, and before sundown, so I took the liberty of parking on the street and walking around.  Although I’d been to a few shows at the Soundstage before, at those times I arrived just in time for the show, already dark, and wasn’t able to relax and look around.  I briefly cruised through Buns & Nubile in the power plant building, complete with huge smokestacks – no longer active – rising up through the store and up through the roof.  I had dinner at Chipotle (not much different there).  I walked around the pier, which is parallel to where the Pier Six Pavilion is to the east.  I recalled a date back in September 2006 with an annoying Filipino woman – right here at this exact place.  Then once all the random and restless nonsense was out of my system and I calculated that the last opening act was due to go on, I returned to the venue and checked in.

Before a band goes on to play, particularly a headliner, the venue plays songs on the PA specially chosen by the band the prep the audience for the upcoming musical festivities.  These aren’t random songs.  Before Clutch went on at Terminal 5 in NYC in December 2015, a few days after Lemmy had died, they played Motorhead songs in tribute to the fallen Hawkwind bassist.  See next entry…

Clutch.  Oh, this is funny.  I was wearing my Clutch hoodie to the show.  Clutch are from Germantown, Maryland, and with KIX long off the radar, are probably the premiere rock band from Maryland at this time.  THC put the Clutch song “Spacegrass” on the PA before they took the stage.  This is the song that starts off slow and includes lyrics about “Galaxie 5 0 0” and “Jesus on the dashboard” (often deliberately misheard as “Jesus on the dance floor”).  You would think a Baltimore, Maryland crowd would react to Clutch – and this being one of their most popular songs and most commonly played live despite set lists changing every night - but I was the only one in the audience wearing Clutch gear and the only one who recognized the song, prompting a high five from the security guy at the side of the stage – the only other Clutch fan in this place.  Anyhow.

Live.   Big Dad sings.  Nevada and Cord play guitar.  Drummer drums, bassist basses, and Big Dad belts out the tunes and tells us about weed in Texas.  All highly entertaining and worth enjoying at least once in a lifetime.

Augustus "Bear" Owsley Stanley III

Recently I picked up a book, Practical LSD Manufacture, by someone named “Uncle Fester”, clearly an alias.  My impression going into the book is that of all the clandestine substances  you might attempt to make yourself, LSD is among the hardest and least amenable to those of us (e.g. me) who struggled through high school chemistry and stayed light years away from it from graduation onward.  I lack (A) the lab or space to make it, (B) the precursor chemicals (most of which are closely watched by The Man), (C) the equipment (unlike Walter White, I don’t have chemistry lab to raid for my own use), and most importantly, (D) the skill set necessary to do any of the necessary procedures.  In the unlikely event that I could cook it up, what would I do with it?  I’d have several lifetimes of LSD at my disposal, and the examples of excessive personal consumption aren’t good: (1) Charles Manson – still in prison, (2) Syd Barrett, baked out of Pink Floyd and retired, now dead, and (3) Roky Ericksson, who went insane.  No thanks.  

Although 90% of the material went over my head, many of the comments were fairly amusing.  A “cook” (clandestine LSD chemist) in the UK was nabbed in “Operation Julie”, so named after the female operative who took down the operation, much of which involved orally stimulating the chemists’ genitals.  This particular cook had come up with yet another way of making LSD, which itself was of major interest to the author.  And yet another method – there appear to be several – involves phosgene, evoking images of WWI chemical warfare. 

But reviewing this gave me more understanding and appreciation of this famous counterculture personality, Augustus Owsley Stanley III, often known as either “Bear” or “Owsley”.  Of course, reading a biography on him also helped.

Bear: the Life and Times of Augustus Owsley Stanley III, by Robert Greenfield.  “Bear”, as in the Dead album “Bear’s Choice”, is mainly known for two things:  developing the Grateful Dead’s on-stage sound system (and recording countless shows) and making killer LSD he claimed was more pure than Sandoz’.  [Note, Hofmann’s book, LSD – My Problem Child, does not mention him, nor does it mention Ken Kesey, but Timothy Leary does come up.]

Owsley was a remarkable character.  AOS I – his grandfather – was governor of Kentucky during WWI.  His father (AOS II) was a drunken Navy guy who survived the sinking of the Lexington at the Battle of Leyte Gulf in WWII.  AOS3/Bear lived in the DC area for awhile, went to Washington & Lee High School (down the street from GMUSL, and I even took a car class there), and briefly went to UVa in Charlottesville (long before my Cousin Eddie went there).  

Much of the story involves the other of Owsley’s major roles with the Dead: taping their shows and developing their sound.  He was more effective at the former, much of which was intended as feedback for the band to improve their live performances.  Garcia himself once confessed that he had been unhappy with Phil Lesh’ bass playing during one early show, so much so that he threw Lesh down a flight of stairs.  After listening to the tapes (most likely recorded by Bear) he was so impressed that parts of that show wound up on Anthem of the Sun, their second album.  Naturally, Garcia was remorseful about his.  [Ah, so this is why Lesh doesn’t tour with the Dead any more.]

Owsley’s later “Wall of Sound”, a massive and unwieldy PA system which overtaxed the band’s logistics, proved too much and had to be abandoned in favor of more mundane and conventional concert amplification.  As of 2017, a more tangible and lasting legacy of Owsley’s work with the Dead are several live albums and bootlegs, the most notable being The History of the Grateful Dead, Part 1: Bear’s Choice.  Naturally, Greenfield’s book has a fairly extensive list of all those recordings.  They also include non-Dead recordings, e.g. Janis Joplin & Big Brother & the Holding Company.  Owsley also recorded supporting acts and other bands playing with the Dead.  His tangential relationship with Blue Cheer (and the LSD they named themselves after) is briefly mentioned.  While not nearly as famous as the Dead, Janis, Quicksilver, etc. they were still part of the San Francisco, Haight Ashbury scene – the hairy edge of that scene and its connection to the Hell’s Angels (e.g. “Gut”, ‘Cheer’s famous manager). 

Of all the “cooks”, Owsley is probably the most famous.  He supplied Ken Kesey with his doses.  What I found funny was that Kesey’s preferred dose was 400 micrograms, which even veteran tripper Bear thought was excessive (100-200 is the ideal, 250 being Hofmann’s famous bicycle ride dosage).  Owsley also supplied the Beatles with their LSD.   Remarkably, Owsley often gave about half his output away free not only to various celebrity musicians, but also anonymous festival patrons.  Of the half he sold, he did so practically at cost.  His goal was to distribute as much top quality LSD as he could to as many different people.  Unlike Walter White – who so far as we know, never sampled his own meth (and in any case was a fictional character anyway) – Owsley could and did trip on his own supply.  For one thing, he enjoyed it, but also it was a sincere question of quality control.  Owsley would not expect anyone to trip on a batch he wasn’t sure was up to his standards, and he took immense pride in the quality and purity of his LSD.   

Acid Tests.  These were public gatherings at which people could trip on LSD amidst friendly comrades with a house band playing the appropriate music, occurring in the San Francisco, CA area.  The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, by Tom Wolfe, is the most famous description of these.  They occurred from 1965 to 1968.  The house band was the Grateful Dead; the LSD was supplied by Owsley.  Note: over in London, similar gatherings were done, mimicking the California version.  The house band at these was Syd Barrett-era Pink Floyd.  The SF version was organized by Ken Kesey and his Merry Pranksters.

Owsley himself estimated his lifetime production to have been somewhere close to 5 million doses.  Since LSD doses are measured in micrograms, as opposed to milligrams, a relatively modest amount of LSD can produce an unusually high amount of effective doses.   In fact, for some time the Guinness Book of World Records listed LSD as the world’s most powerful drug. 

What’s also remarkable about Owsley’s LSD operation is that technically he had no background in chemistry and “taught himself” how to make it.   Again, the prior book explains how difficult this is.

However, there are two major caveats to this assessment of his achievement.  First, his GF at the time was a chemist, so undoubtedly she taught him the procedures necessary to do so.  This goes a long way to explaining how he was able to “teach himself”, very likely taught by her, as she was also closely involved with him and his lifestyle and also helping him consume and distribute the top quality acid he was making.  Second, he was doing so before it became illegal and shortly after it was banned, at a time at which the feds were far less sophisticated at tracking down cooks by precursor chemicals and such.  He would have had a much easier time than a contemporary cook at acquiring what he needed.    

Owsley was busted eventually and went to prison for two years (Terminal Island).   Oddly, although he taped many Dead shows – and the opening acts too, which supposedly included Blue Cheer – it seems only a fraction of these recordings have been released to the public.  He moved to Australia and made a compound out in the outback.  He long since stopped doing interesting like doing the Dead’s sound or making killer LSD – but his cause of death was actually a car accident in the outback.    

While I’m on the topic of cooks.

Nick Sand & Tim Scully.  I recently watched “The Sunshine Makers”, a 2015 documentary on this pair of cooks, essentially Owsley’s successors.  Scully trained under Owsley himself.  With Owsley’s arrest and incarceration, this pair became the biggest and most important producers of LSD – until they themselves were caught.  Sand died in April of this year in exile; Scully served his time and permanently retired from the LSD business. 

William Pickard.   If you believe the Feds, this man was the biggest cook, as the supply of LSD dropped dramatically after he was caught – though Pickard himself insists (quite plausibly) that LSD production has always been decentralized since its banning in 1966, and the end of the Grateful Dead’s regular touring schedule (Jerry Garcia died in September 1995) essentially shut down the most important distribution network the drug had.  [If you don’t know anyone personally who sells LSD, a jam band concert is probably the best place to score acid.]  What’s interesting is that Pickard had been particularly careful about his operations.   He was arrested in 1999 and is serving a life sentence.   

One thing you notice: every major “cook” – and while “Uncle Fester” falls short of identifying himself as one, his extensive knowledge of the intimate details of LSD production would infer that he was one, or maybe still is – has eventually been caught, sooner or later.  None of them were stupid or careless, they were all aware their activities were illegal, and all took the matter of evading notice or capture seriously.  But it wasn’t good enough.