Podcasts about so many roads

Labor Day Vibes: Grateful Dead, George Thorogood, and MoreA special Labor Day edition featuring a recap of significant events in the music world, particularly focusing on the Grateful Dead's September 2, 1988, concert at the Capitol Center in Landover, Maryland. Larry Mishkin reminisces about the band's history, including the song "Hell in a Bucket," its significance, and its evolution in the Grateful Dead's lineup. There's a detailed discussion about the song "Dire Wolf," including its origins, inspirations, and its role in the band's performances.The episode also features a tribute to Steve Silverman, a renowned science writer and Grateful Dead enthusiast who recently passed away. Silverman was celebrated for his contributions to the understanding of autism and his deep connection to the Grateful Dead community. The tribute highlights his life, his work, and his impact on both the music and science communities.Larry shares reviews of the recent George Thorogood and Journeyman Tribute the Eric Clapton  https://www.georgethorogood.com/https://vilarpac.org/https://journeymantribute.com/ Grateful DeadSeptember 2, 1988 (36 years ago)Capital CenterLandover, MDGrateful Dead Live at Capital Centre on 1988-09-02 : Free Borrow & Streaming : Internet Archive I hope everyone is having a great Labor Day weekend. Night one of a four night run at the Cap Center to kick off 1988 East Coast Fall Tour (played Friday and Saturday, 2 and 3 and Monday and Tuesday 5 and 6).  Took a night off for my wedding on Sunday 4th.  Saturday night show was my rehearsal dinner and they played second encore, final electric Ripple and final Grateful Dead Ripple.  Memorable weekend for all (except for my east coast deadhead buddies at the wedding who were bummed to have missed the Ripple. INTRO:                                 Hell in a Bucket                                                Track #2                                                0:00 – 1:34 David Dodd:  The Bob Weir / John Barlow / Brent Mydland song “Hell in a Bucket” directly references the biker scene, and I'm sure that somehow Barlow just wanted to put that element into the band's repertoire somehow. After all, there are plenty of outlaw elements sprinkled through the band's songs. In the case of this song, though, the singer/narrator seems to be wishing a sorry fate on his erstwhile main squeeze, with the argument being that once she has a biker charging up and down her halls on his chopper, she'll realize that the narrator was really pretty good, at least by contrast. “Hell in a Bucket” appeared on In the Dark, released in July 1987.  The song frequently featured as the show opener over the course of the next two-plus decades, although it wasn't used in that role until about a year after its first performance.  Played:  217 timesFirst:  May 13, 1983 at William Randolph Hearst Greek Theatre, Berkeley, CA, USALast:  June 30, 1995 at Three Rivers Stadium, Pittsburgh, PA   SHOW No. 1:                    Dire Wolf                                                Track #5                                                2:00 – 3:24 "Dire Wolf" is a ballad by the Grateful Dead, released as the third track on their 1970 album Workingman's Dead. The lyrics were written by Robert Hunter after watching a film adaptation of The Hound of the Baskervilles. The music, containing elements of country and folk music, was composed by Jerry Garcia on the same day. The song tells the story of a man who plays cards with a "dire wolf" on a cold winter's night in "Fennario"; the lyrics have been variously interpreted. The piece became a staple of the Grateful Dead's performances, and was played more than two hundred times between 1969 and 1995. A few months before the release of their album Aoxomoxoa in 1969, Grateful Dead lyricist Robert Hunter and his then-partner Christie Bourne began sharing a house with the band's guitarist Jerry Garcia, his wife, and his step-daughter. Living in close proximity gave an impetus to their collaborative song-writing: Hunter and Garcia wrote every song on Aoxomoxoa.[2] Some time later, Hunter and Carolyn Garcia spent an evening watching a film adaptation of The Hound of the Baskervilles. According to Grateful Dead historian Dennis McNally, Carolyn later remarked that the hound was a "dire wolf".[3] However, according to Hunter himself, as quoted in the Annotated Grateful Dead Lyrics, he and Garcia were speculating about the identity of the hound in the story, and came up with the idea that it may have been a dire wolf.[4] Hunter wrote the lyrics the next morning, based on images that the phrase conjured for him, and Garcia wrote the music to them later that day.[3][4] The location named "Fennario" appears in the folk song "The Bonnie Lass o' Fyvie", including in the Grateful Dead's version of that song. It refers to a fictional location; a friend of the band members commented in an interview that it was the perfect name for a generic place, because it was evocative, and had four syllables.[4] In contrast, music writer Buzz Poole speculated that the name may be derived from Fenrir, a mythical Nordic wolf who was chained up by the gods.[6] The phrase "don't murder me", repeated in the chorus, was a reference by Garcia to his experiences driving around the San Francisco Bay Area at the time that the Zodiac Killer was active.[4] The song became a staple of the Grateful Dead's live performances; the electric version of the song was typically featured on the band's first set.[4][7] According to The Grateful Dead's 100 Essential Songs, "Dire Wolf" was played 226 times between 1969 and 1995, and was played every year, except for 1975. Sixty-three of these performances were in the first two years after the song was written. In later years, the acoustic version of the piece became more common.[7] The structure and pace of the song did not change much over the years. It was sung most often by Garcia, although an early version featured Bob Weir on vocals, with Garcia playing the pedal steel guitar instead.[7] An AllMusic review of this version praised Garcia's "sweet" guitar playing as a "great feature" of the song.[5] Its lyrics have led to it being described as an essential Grateful Dead song by commentators.[7] Played:  229 timesFirst:  June 7, 1969 at Fillmore West, San Francisco, CA, USALast:  June 7, 1969 at Fillmore West, San Francisco, CA, USA  MUSIC NEWS: Steve Silberman passesPhish – Dick'sNeil Young explanation for canceled showsMiracle in MundeleinMiracle in Mundelein 2024 is an unprecedented cannabis and outdoor concert experience taking place at RISE Recreational Dispensary in Mundelein, IL on September 7-8, 202412. Presented by RYTHM Premium Cannabis, RISE Dispensaries, Dayglo, and Deep Cut, this second annual outdoor festival allows legal on-site cannabis consumption2.    SHOW No. 2:                    Althea                                                Track #7                                                3:10 – 4:53 When the Grateful Dead released “Althea” on their 1980 album Go to Heaven, it quickly became a favorite among fans. Robert Hunter, the Dead's legendary lyricist, was known for embedding multiple layers of meaning in his lyrics. “Althea” is no exception. Jerry Garcia's soulful voice brings Hunter's words to life, but it's the lyrics that leave listeners pondering. The name “Althea” itself is rooted in Greek mythology. Althea was the Queen of Calydon, whose actions led to her son's death, reflecting themes of fate and consequence. While the song doesn't explicitly connect to this myth, the allusion to “your fire” might be a subtle nod to Althea's tragic tale. “Althea” was performed live by the Grateful Dead 273 times, making it a staple in their repertoire. Despite McNally's belief that the band overplayed it in the early '80s, fans cherished its live renditions. The song's adaptability and depth allowed it to grow with the listeners, much like a trusted pair of pants with a sturdy elastic waistband. Played:  273 timesFirst:  August 4, 1979 at Oakland Civic Auditorium, Oakland, CA, USALast:  July 8, 1995 at Soldier Field, Chicago  SHOW No. 3:                    Scarlet Begonias                                                Track #10                                                0:00 – 2:02 Garcia/HunterFrom The Mars Hotel (July 24, 1974) The group first performed the song live on March 23, 1974, at the Cow Palace in Daly City, California.[1] When "Fire on the Mountain" was incorporated into the band's repertoire in 1977, "Scarlet Begonias" would often be paired with it when played live, resulting in what would be nicknamed "Scarlet > Fire" with the first iteration of this iconic pairing on Friday, March 18th, 1977 at Winterland in S.F.   Interestingly, they played the combo to close the first set.  Almost always a second set opener, once saw them open a show with it. Had to play this because the opening is so special – sends a message to the Deadheads that good things lay ahead, best second set opener in their arsenal.  Nothing like the reaction when you hear the first few notes.  “Scarlet, into Fire, a great 25 minutes of grooving music and wonderful for “mind exercises” you may be experiencing at that time. Played:  317  (Fire played 254 times)First:  March 23, 1974 at Cow Palace, Daly City, CA, USALast: June 2, 1995 at Deer Creek, Noblesville, IN MJ NEWS: Trump Supports Florida adult use measure on fall ballot, but no public smokingDeSantis says “NO” adult use in Florida, opposes TrumpState ballots this fall for MMJ in Nebraska and ArkansasIllinois awards $35 million from MJ taxes to support community reinvestmentCalifornia allows sales of MJ at Farmer's Markets SHOW No. 4:                    All Along The Watchtower                                                Track #17                                                1:50 – 3:53 Bob DylanJohn Wesley Harding "All Along the Watchtower" is a song by American singer-songwriter Bob Dylan from his eighth studio album, John Wesley Harding (1967). The song was written by Dylan and produced by Bob Johnston. The song's lyrics, which in its original version contain twelve lines, feature a conversation between a joker and a thief. The song has been subject to various interpretations; some reviewers have noted that it echoes lines in the Book of Isaiah, Chapter 21, verses 5–9. Dylan has released several different live performances, and versions of the song are included on some of his subsequent greatest hits compilations. Covered by numerous artists, "All Along the Watchtower" is strongly identified with the interpretation Jimi Hendrix recorded with the Jimi Hendrix Experience for their third studio album, Electric Ladyland (1968). The Hendrix version, released six months after Dylan's original recording, became a Top 20 single in 1968, received a Grammy Hall of Fame award in 2001, and was ranked 48th in Rolling Stone magazine's 500 Greatest Songs of All Time in 2004 (40th in the 2021 version). Dylan first played the song live in concert on the Bob Dylan and the Band 1974 Tour, his first tour since 1966. His live performances have been influenced by Hendrix's cover, to the extent that they have been called covers of a cover. Dylan has performed the song live more than any of his other ones, with over 2,250 recitals. Hendrix was a known Dylan fan. He even once cleared a dance floor by demanding that "Blowin in the Wind" be played in a New York club. In a 1967 interview, Hendrix described Dylan's influence on his own songwriting. "I could never write the kind of words he does," Hendrix said. "But he's helped me out in trying to write two or three words 'cause I've got a thousand songs that will never be finished. I just lie around and write about two or three words, but now I have a little more confidence in trying to finish one."Hendrix acquired a copy of John Wesley Harding before the album's official release and instantly knew he had to cover one of the tracks. Initially, he was planning to record "I Dreamed I Saw St. Augustine," but after further consideration he chose "All Along the Watchtower." Hendrix claimed he had a natural gravitation toward the track. "The songs Dylan usually gave me are so close to me that I feel like I wrote them myself," he added. "With 'Along the Watchtower' I had that feeling." Less than two months after Dylan recorded the original, Hendrix was in the studio laying down his version. John Wesley Harding was Dylan's return to his acoustic roots after his motorcycle accident. But rather than bring back the topical lyrics about civil rights and the Vietnam War, he continued the evocative, surreal images that made his previous three records -- Bringing It All Back Home, Highway 61 Revisited and Blonde on Blonde -- so groundbreaking, adding biblical imagery that foreshadowed his born-again phase more than a decade later. Dead started playing it while touring with Dylan in the summer of 1987.  Not necessarily their greatest tour, and Dylan was not sharp on a night by night basis, but when they got to this tune, the crowd really responded.  So after the tour ended, the Dead just kept it in their repertoire and played it until their end. Played:  118First:  June 20, 1987 at William Randolph Hearst Greek Theatre, Berkeley, CA, USALast:  June 22, 1995 at Knickerbocker Arena, Albany, NY, USA  OUTRO:                               Black Muddy River                                                Track #20                                                4:15 – 6:34 Garcia/HunterFrom:  In The Dark (1987) Black Muddy River was a song that was a pretty decent “new” song for a while.  Almost always played as an encore, it was a fan favorite in the Twin Cities, St. Louis, Memphis and New Orleans, all situated on or near the Mississippi River.  Sometimes they would play it in those cities and sometimes they would wait to play it until they were in the middle of nowhere with no river around for miles and miles.  Towards the end, Jerry seemed to lose his enthusiasm for it so, for example, when he rose to the occasion at the last show on July 9, 1995 and belted out a So Many Roads for the ages, his Black Muddy River encore left a lot to be desired.  So much so that, as the story goes, Phil decided they could not end the summer tour on such a low note so he pushed in a Box of Rain making that song the last one ever played in concert by the band and a much nicer farewell than that not very good Black Muddy River would have been. This one is “young” and strong, Jerry's voice rings true and you can hear the energy build up inside him as he belts out the final lines of the song.  A song that sent all those at the Cap Center out into the night longing for more without even knowing what awaited them the very next night.  Some were there, some weren't.  That's the story of the Dead and touring (like Phish waiting to Dick's to play Fee!). Played:  66 timesFirst:  December 15, 1986 at Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum Arena, Oakland, CA, USALast:  July 9, 1995 at Soldier Field, Chicago, IL, USA Shout outs:                         Wed – my anniversary, and H and Robbin                        Thurs. – JW's anniversary with the lovely Allie                        Bella – birthday on Monday                        Jackie G. in St. Louis on Sunday                        .Produced by PodConx Deadhead Cannabis Show - https://podconx.com/podcasts/deadhead-cannabis-showLarry Mishkin - https://podconx.com/guests/larry-mishkinRob Hunt - https://podconx.com/guests/rob-huntJay Blakesberg - https://podconx.com/guests/jay-blakesbergSound Designed by Jamie Humiston - https://www.linkedin.com/in/jamie-humiston-91718b1b3/Recorded on Squadcast

This week on the Deadpod we have a very nice latter day show from Spring 1993. This comes to us from the Nassau Coliseum on April 4, 1993, and it is a Sunday night show.  Some of the highlights of the first set include a very nice Sugaree (Jerry's voice is a bit frail at times but he carries it off the entire show). 'When I Paint My Masterpiece' is always welcome in my book. Jerry does an excellent version of 'So Many Roads' and the 'Bird Song' after 'Eternity' is a sweet way to wind up the first set.    Grateful Dead Nassau Veterans Memorial Coliseum Uniondale, NY 4/4/1993 - Sunday One     In The Midnight Hour   Sugaree > Walkin' Blues   Dire Wolf   When I Paint My Masterpiece   So Many Roads   Eternity > Bird Song  You can listen to this week's Deadpod here:  http://traffic.libsyn.com/deadshow/deadpod041224.mp3 "So many roads, I tell you New York to San Francisco So many roads I know All I want is one to take me home"  

And in the end, the dead you take is equal to the dead you make. This week on the Help on the Way pod, our hosts Game, FiG, and Knob are heading to Chicago for the Grateful Dead's July 9th, 1995 show at Soldier Field. This would be the last show Jerry Garcia ever played. Discussions abound about Robert Hunter's found manuscript, Childhood's End, and our upcoming lawsuit with Guess the Year. Touch Of Grey Little Red Rooster Lazy River Road When I Paint My Masterpiece Childhood's End Cumberland Blues Promised Land Shakedown Street Samson & Delilah > So Many Roads > Samba in The Rain > Corrina > Drums > Space > Unbroken Chain > Sugar Magnolia Black Muddy River Box Of Rain 

"From Chicago to Egypt: Collecting Dead Memorabilia and Memories with Jay Blakesburg"Larry Mishkin features a nostalgic recounting of a Grateful Dead concert from March 11th, 1993, at the Rosemont Horizon in Rosemont, Illinois. The discussion covers various aspects of the event, including the venue's challenges, the band's performance, and reflections on specific songs played during the show. Larry also touches on recent music events, such as Phil Lesh and Friends' performances and upcoming Phish summer tour dates. It also highlights an exhibition by photographer Jay Blakesburg and his collection of Grateful Dead memorabilia, along with personal anecdotes related to Dead history.  Grateful DeadMarch 11, 1993 (31 years ago)Rosemont HorizonRosemont, Illinois (Chicago)Grateful Dead Live at Rosemont Horizon on 1993-03-11 : Free Borrow & Streaming : Internet ArchiveFinal night of 3 show run March 9 – March 11 (Tuesday – Thursday)  INTRO:                  Help On The Way                                Track #1                                :20 – 2:06                                 Released on Blues For Allah (1975)                                Played 111 times                                First time:  June 17, 1975 at Winterland, S.F.                                       Last time:  June 22, 1995 at Knickerbocker Arena, Albany, NY       SHOW No. 1:      When I Paint My Masterpiece                                Track #6                                1:36 – 3:12                 "When I Paint My Masterpiece" is a 1971 song written by Bob Dylan. It was first released by The Band, who recorded the song for their album Cahoots, released on September 15, 1971. Dylan himself first recorded the song at New York's Blue Rock Studio when he was backed by Leon Russell and session musicians, including Jesse Ed Davis on lead guitar, appeared on Bob Dylan's Greatest Hits Vol. II, released November 17, 1971, with Russell credited as the producer.             Dylan and The Band performed the song together live, in the early hours of January 1, 1972, at a New Year's Eve concert by The Band; a recording was released as a bonus track on the 2001 CD reissue of The Band's live album Rock of Ages. Douglas Brinkley, while interviewing Dylan for the New York Times in 2020, noted that "When I Paint My Masterpiece" was a song that had grown on him over the years and asked Dylan why he had brought it "back to the forefront of recent concerts". Dylan replied, "It's grown on me as well. I think this song has something to do with the classical world, something that's out of reach. Someplace you'd like to be beyond your experience. Something that is so supreme and first rate that you could never come back down from the mountain. That you've achieved the unthinkable. That's what the song tries to say, and you'd have to put it in that context. In saying that though, even if you do paint your masterpiece, what will you do then? Well, obviously you have to paint another masterpiece". According to his official website, Dylan played the song live 182 times between 1975 and 2019.[4] Five live performances of the song from Dylan's 1975 Rolling Thunder Revue tour were released on the box set The Rolling Thunder Revue: The 1975 Live Recordings in 2019. The live debut occurred at the War Memorial Auditorium in Plymouth, Massachusetts on October 30, 1975 and the most recent performances occurred on the Rough and Rowdy Ways World Wide Tour in 2023. Played 146 timesFirst: June 13, 1987 at Ventura County Fairgrounds, Ventura, CALast: July 9, 1995 at Soldier Field, Chicago My favorite Dylan cover.  Would rotate in first set with other Dylan covers including Queen Jane Approximately, Stuck Inside of Mobile With Memphis Blues Again and Desolation Row.            SHOW No. 2:      So Many Roads                                Track #7                                :39 – 2:21                 So Many Roads was first performed by the Grateful Dead on February 22, 1992. It was then played regularly through to the last performance of the song on July 9, 1995. In total the song was played just over 50 times.Jerry Garcia spoke about So Many Roads in an interview with Dave DiMartino in 1992;“It's Hunter writing me from my point of view, you know what I mean? We've been working together for so long that he knows what I know. The song is full of references to things that have to do with me.... “....Hunter is the only guy that could do that. He can write my point of view better than I can think it, you know what I mean? So that's the kind of relationship we have. And he frequently writes tunes from my point of view that are autobiographical. There actually biographical I guess. He's the one writing them, but even so they express my point of view - and more than that they express the emotional content of my soul in a certain way that only a long-term and intimate relationship with a guy as brilliant as Hunter coughs up ... I can sing that song, feel totally comfortable with it.” Robert Hunter's comments on the origins of this song in the notes in Box Of Rain: Lyrics 1965-1993; “One afternoon, Jerry was playing some unstructured changes on the piano. Figuring they might be forgotten otherwise, I clicked on my tape recorder. Ten years later I found the tape and listened to it, liked it, and set these words to it. Listening to the pitifully recorded and time-degraded tape, Jerry protested that, although he liked the words, his changes were not very good and unfinished besides. This didn't seem to be the base and I requested that he at least give it a run through. The result was one of the better received new GD songs and one that almost got away.” Never released on a Dead studio album but was a centerpiece of the Dead's first Box Set:  So Many Roads, 5 disc retrospective of the band from 1965 to 1995. Many commentators said this was the best one ever.  When I saw the show, we were still just all hearing the song fort the first few times and getting used to it.  Over time, it has become a favorite thanks to Hunter's lyrics and Jerry's playing and singing. Very emotional.    SHOW No. 3:      Iko Iko                                Track No. 9                                4:04 – 5:38                 "Iko Iko" (/ˈaɪkoʊˈaɪkoʊ/) is a much-coveredNew Orleans song that tells of a parade collision between two tribes of Mardi Gras Indians and the traditional confrontation. The song, under the original title "Jock-A-Mo", was written and released in 1953 as a single by James "Sugar Boy" Crawford and his Cane Cutters but it failed to make the charts.             The story tells of a "spy boy" (i.e. a lookout for one band of Indians) encountering the "flag boy" or guidon carrier for another "tribe". He threatens to "set the flag on fire". Crawford set phrases chanted by Mardi Gras Indians to music for the song. Crawford himself states that he has no idea what the words mean, and that he originally sang the phrase "Chock-a-mo", but the title was misheard by Chess Records and Checker Records president Leonard Chess, who misspelled it as "Jock-a-mo" for the record's release.             The song first became popular in 1965 by the girl groupthe Dixie Cups, who scored an international hit with "Iko Iko". In 1967, as part of a lawsuit settlement between Crawford and the Dixie Cups, the trio were given part songwriting credit for the song. In 1972, Dr. John had a minor hit with his version of "Iko Iko".  Second set opener.  From intro, it was hard to tell if they were going into Women Are Smarter to Iko.  Really enjoyed Women Are Smarter, but always extra happy when it turns out to be Iko. Great version.  Jerry very energetic and really getting into it.                 Played 185 times                First: May 15, 1977 at The Arena in St. Louis                Last: July 5, 1995 at Riverport Amphitheater in St. Louis (first and last time in St. Louis!!)                 SHOW No. 4:      Space                                Track #15 (note that there are 2 “Space” tracks, this is the first one, Track 15)                                4:25 – 5:42 (The Island – Ken Nordine)                               Ken Nordine (April 13, 1920 – February 16, 2019) was an American voice-over and recording artist, best known for his series of word jazz albums.[2] His deep, resonant voice has also been featured in many commercial advertisements and movie trailers. One critic wrote that "you may not know Ken Nordine by name or face, but you'll almost certainly recognize his voice.”             In 1955, he provided the voiceover on Billy Vaughn's version of "Shifting Whispering Sands", which peaked at number 5 on the Billboard Hot 100. He subsequently attracted wider attention when he recorded the aural vignettes on Word Jazz (Dot, 1957). Love Words, Son of Word Jazz (Dot, 1958) and his other albums in this vein feature Nordine's narration over cool jazz by the Fred Katz Group featuring Chico Hamilton recording under an alias.             Nordine began performing and recording such albums at the peak of the beat era and was associated with the poetry-and-jazz movement. However, it has been observed that some of Nordine's writings "are more akin to Franz Kafka or Edgar Allan Poe" than to the beats.[8] Many of his word jazz tracks feature critiques of societal norms.[9] Some are lightweight and humorous, while others reveal dark, paranoid undercurrents and bizarre, dream-like scenarios. Nordine's DVD, The Eye Is Never Filled was released in 2007.[9]Nordine hosted the weekly Word Jazz program on WBEZ, also carried on other stations, from the 1970s for over forty years.In 1990, Nordine was approached by Jerry Garcia of The Grateful Dead to be the anchor for their New Year's Eve radio broadcast from Oakland, California.[13] For the broadcast he recorded some improvisations with Garcia, drummer Mickey Hart and Egyptian musician Hamza El-Din.[13] This subsequently led to an album Devout Catalyst, released on the Grateful Dead's own label in 1991[13] and Upper Limbo in 1993[14] and an appearance with the band live at a show at Rosemont, Illinois, in March 1993.            Ken Nordine died February 16, 2019.                OUTRO:                Days Between                                Track No. 18                                4:51 – 6:51                 “Days Between,” a late song in the Robert Hunter / Jerry Garcia songbook, was perhaps their last collaboration on a big, significant song, one that ranks with “Dark Star” and “Terrapin Station” as ambitious and intentionally grand. (I was talking the other day with a friend, about Garcia's playing and songwriting, and the thought came up that Garcia, like few others, was unafraid of grandeur, and could successfully pull it off. Same with Hunter.)            It appeared like the ghostly ships it describes, as if gradually from a fog and only slowly revealing itself as something very big, towering above everything around. It's hard to say it any better than Phil Lesh did in his autobiography, Searching for the Sound:“Achingly nostalgic, ‘Days Between' evokes the past. The music climbs laboriously out of shadows, growing and peaking with each verse, only to fall back each time in hopeless resignation. When Jerry sings the line ‘when all we ever wanted / was to learn and love and grow' or ‘gave the best we had to give / how much we'll never know,' I am immediately transported decades back in time, to a beautiful spring morning with Jerry, Hunter, Barbara Meier, and Alan Trist—all of us goofing on the sheer exhilaration of being alive. I don't know whether to weep with joy at the beauty of the vision or with sadness at the impassable chasm of time between the golden past and the often painful present.”            Each verse in the song contains fourteen lines, and each evokes a different season of the year, although not in sequence. The first verse contains the lines “Summer flies and August dies / the world grows dark and mean.” I can't hear that line without thinking about August West, in Wharf Rat, and, by extension, Garcia himself. “The singing man is at his song / the holy on their knees.” Who is the singing man, if not Garcia, when it comes to Hunter and his words?                Played 42 times by the band, always in the second set, almost always out of drums                First:  February 22, 1993 at the Oakland Alameda County Coliseum in Oakland, CA                Last:  June 24, 1995 at RFK Stadium, Washington, D.C. This was just the second time it was ever played “Gave the best we had to give, how much we'll never know” No chorus in this song, just verses that keep building on each other. .Produced by PodConx Deadhead Cannabis Show - https://podconx.com/podcasts/deadhead-cannabis-showLarry Mishkin - https://podconx.com/guests/larry-mishkinRob Hunt - https://podconx.com/guests/rob-huntJay Blakesberg - https://podconx.com/guests/jay-blakesbergSound Designed by Jamie Humiston - https://www.linkedin.com/in/jamie-humiston-91718b1b3/Recorded on Squadcast

More than ten thousand people with big dreams arrived in the Mile High City for this year's Denver Startup Week, and AI was the talk of the town. So will Denver become a hub for this massive tide-changing trend in technology that has congress confused and tech folks energized? Adeel Khan founded his first startup earlier this year, and he was in the thick of networking-palooza all week long. So host Bree Davies and producer Paul Karolyi sit down with Adeel to talk about the debates dividing Denver's business community, Mayor Mike Johnston's approach to the economy, and all things AI. Plus, our Rocky Mountain Highs and Lows of the week touch on a new hotel project that just got new support from City Council, the definition of Colorado green chile, and more.  Become a founding member of City Cast Denver today! It's the best way to support local journalism and all the hard work that goes into making a daily podcast. Join now for as little as $8 per month and get access to an ad-free podcast feed. Learn more and sign up at membership.citycast.fm. Paul discussed this Jam Band Hero, our 2021 episode on the allegations against Jay Bianchi, and forgot to mention this update to the situation with his Grateful Dead-themed bar So Many Roads. Bree talked about her uncle Ed Kutz and his bff Reed Weimer's role in saving the Sid King's Crazy Horse sign from going to the dump 40 years ago. She also mentioned a past City Cast Denver episode about the story of Colorado Mexican Food with Patty Calhoun and Gustavo Arellano.  For even more news from around the city, subscribe to our morning newsletter Hey Denver at denver.citycast.fm. Follow us on Instagram: @citycastdenver Chat with other listeners on reddit: r/CityCastDenver Learn more about the sponsors of this episode: “Arooj Aftab, Vijay Iyer & Shahzad Ismaily: Love in Exile” at the Newman Center (Sept. 30) BadBoyBoards Lighthouse Writers Workshop Looking to advertise on City Cast Denver? Check out our options for podcast and newsletter ads at citycast.fm/advertise Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

"A Night of Rock and Roll Remembrance: Grateful Dead at MSG, 1990"Larry Mishkin pays tribute to Jimi Hendrix, reflecting on his iconic rock career and tragic passing 53 years ago. He shares anecdotes about Hendrix's influence on rock music and highlights the infamous 27 Club, a group of rock legends who died at the age of 27. The episode also previews upcoming music events, including Fish Fest and Tedeschi Trucks Band's shows with special guests like Warren Haynes and Norah Jones, promising an exciting lineup for music enthusiasts..Produced by PodConx  Deadhead Cannabis Show - https://podconx.com/podcasts/deadhead-cannabis-showLarry Mishkin - https://podconx.com/guests/larry-mishkinRob Hunt - https://podconx.com/guests/rob-huntJay Blakesberg - https://podconx.com/guests/jay-blakesbergMeetLoaf Website - https://meetloaftribute.com/performance-schedule/Recorded on Squadcast Grateful Dead, September 18, 1990, MSG, NYCGrateful Dead Live at Madison Square Garden on 1990-09-18 : Free Borrow & Streaming : Internet Archive This show was on the 20th anniversay of Jimi Hendrix's death.  Interesting because I see it in headlines re this show, but they really didn't play anything Jimi related as far as I can tell and none of the comments even mention that.  Neverthless, it is a noteworthy anniversary (53 years he has been gone, almost double his life span of 27, he's in that club). Dead also did a show on this date in 1970, the day Jimi died but when I  checked that show there was no acknowledgement (that I could hear) of Jimi dying but of course, back then with no interenet, they may not even have known on that date anyway. Nevertheless, Jimi is Jimi so I'm openkng the episode with him on the intro and then switching over to the Dead show.  INTRO:               Foxey Lady                           Jimi Hendrix                           Miami Pop Festival, 1968 (great You Tube video , check it out)                           The Jimi Hendrix Experience - Foxey Lady (Miami Pop 1968) - YouTube                           Start – 1:30                            One of my favorite openings of any rock song out there.  Just loud Jimi from the outset,  Even if you are not a big Jimi fan, you may also recognize this because of how distinctive it is.               Jimi born on Nov. 27, 1942 in Seattle              Died in 1970 in London              Member of the “27” club along with; Brian Jones (Stones), Alan Wilson (Canned Heat), Jim Morrison (Doors),Janis Joplin,Kurt Cobain (Nirvana),Pig PenAmy WinehouseDave Alexander (Stooges – with Iggy Pop)Peter Ham (Badfinger) Created three of the most famous albums in rock:               Are you Experienced              Axis: Bold as Love              Electric Ladyland Jimi died 53 years ago today. Hendrix aspirated his own vomit and died of asphyxia while intoxicated with barbiturates.Still considered the greatest rock guitarist ever although there are a few who could give him a serious run for the money.  Dead Great show, Vince's third show (started on 9.7.90) and Bruce Hornsby's 3d as well.  Show known for all of its epic jams which I will primarily be focusing on. SHOW #1:          Minglelwood Blues                           Track #2                           3:15 – 4:23                            Perenial tune that the Dead played from Day one (and even before) through the end.  Check out Bruce's jam on this clip and then band comes crashing back in.  Very cool. SHOW #2:          To Lay Me Down                           Track #7                           Start – 1:33                            I know I have mostly been featuring jams, but Jerry's vocals are so beautiful here, with great crowd reaction, that on this one I had to go with the vocals.  A nine minute version of one of Jerry and Hunter's  prettiest ballads.  When Jerry's voice is on, like here, you can make a strong argument is is their best. SHOW #3:          Promised Land                           Track #8                           3:33 – 5:00                           Love this song whether it opens the show or closes the set as here.  Just a rocker written by Chuck Berry while he was in jail – used the prison library atlas to help him pick out the geographic route taken by the “Poor Boy” on his trip from Norfolk VA to LA via bus, plain and the houstontown people who care a thing about him and won't let him down. But check out this jam at the end of the song.  Normally breaks right off after the final lyrics but today they just jam it out – the spirit of Jimi? SHOW #4:          Foolish Heart (jam out of – from So Many Roads Boxed Set)                           Track # 11                           6:20 – 7:45                            Classic Dead jam that got a lot of attention when it was included in the Dead's original box set, So Many Roads, released a long time ago (Nov. 7, 1999) as a separate track actually titled, “Jam Out Of Foolish Heart”.  At their improvisational best here. Strong Other One foreshadowing which plays out as advertised after a strong drums and funky Space.  The whole second set just rolls along.  A good night to be in MSG seeing the boys.  OUTRO:              Knockin On Heaven's Door                           Track # 18                           Start – 1:30                            Again, the music intro jam is so great that's what I am featuring.  Be sure to check out Bruce Hornsby's jumping in on the accordion!  Really nice Bob Dylan cover, Jerry played it for years.  Was released on his Run For The Roses album.

Tips for guessing within two years when a song was played.Larry Mishkin reviews the Grateful Dead concert from August 4th, 1994, at Giant Stadium. He discusses the show and welcomes guest   Christian Sauska, who attended that concert and shares his love for New Orleans-style music and his journey as a Deadhead. The conversation delves into the 80s and 90s eras of the band, and they discuss their musical backgrounds and the band's new music.Produced by PodConx  Deadhead Cannabis Show - https://podconx.com/podcasts/deadhead-cannabis-showLarry Mishkin - https://podconx.com/guests/larry-mishkinRob Hunt - https://podconx.com/guests/rob-huntChristian Sauska -  https://www.linkedin.com/in/christian-sauska-5aab2310/Jay Blakesberg - https://podconx.com/guests/jay-blakesbergRecorded on Squadcast  Grateful DeadAugust 4, 1994Giant's StadiumEast Rutherford, NJTraffic opened the show              Jerry sits in with Traffic on Dear Mr. Fantasy and Gimme Some Lovin  INTRO:              Box of Rain                           Track No. 2                           3:42 – 4:51 SHOW #1:        Jack Straw                           Track No. 3                           5:00 – 6:09  SHOW #2:        Eternity                           Track No. 7                           0:36 – 1:45               A “new” Bob Weir song, music by Bob and Rob Wasserman and lyrics by Willie Dixonfirst played on February 21, 1993 at Oakland Alameda County Coliseum              Played 44 times in concert              Last played July 8, 1995 at Soldier Field  – second to last show              Released on Dead's first post-Jerry box set, So Many Roads               Rob Wasserman (Rat Dog with Bobby)  Wasserman started playing violin, and graduated to the bass after his teenage years. He studied at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music where he studied composing with John Adams and double bass with San Francisco Symphony bassists.[5]He worked with Van Morrison, Oingo Boingo, and David Grisman. His 1983 album Solo won Down Beat magazine's Record of the Year award. On the albums Duets and Trios, he worked with Bobby McFerrin, Rickie Lee Jones, Cheryl Bentyne, Lou Reed, Stéphane Grappelli, Jerry Garcia, Brian Wilson, Willie Dixon, Branford Marsalis, Bob Weir, Edie Brickell, Les Claypool, Neil Young, and Elvis Costello.Duets was nominated for three Grammy Awards. Bobby McFerrin won for "Brothers", which was performed with Wasserman. Wasserman also won Holland's Edison Award for Record of the Year.His 2000 album, Space Island, incorporated more contemporary musical elements. RatDog, which he co-founded with Bob Weir from the Grateful Dead, occupied much of his time. He toured extensively with Lou Reed.Wasserman was a judge for the sixth-tenth annual Independent Music Awards.[8]Rob Wasserman died on June 29, 2016. Cause of death was cancer.[9] Entombment was made in Salem Memorial Park and Garden at Colma, California.[10]                Willie Dixon (1915-1992) was one of the preeminent blues songwriters and performers of all time. The Grateful Dead covered a fairly lengthy list of his songs, attesting to his influence on the band: “Down in the Bottom,” “I Ain't Superstitious,” “I Just Want to Make Love To You,” “Little Red Rooster,” “The Same Thing,” “Spoonful,” and “Wang Dang Doodle.”            The song was written during the sessions for Rob Wasserman's Trios album. “Guitar Player” magazine ran an interview with Weir in 1993:“I had this chord progression and melody that I wanted to run by Willie to see if he liked it .... he did, so he started dashing off words. He wanted me to run a certain section by him again and stuff like that, and we started working on a bridge. Then he dashes off this sheet of lyrics and hands it to me. Now I'm really stoked to be working with the legendary Willie Dixon and I'm prepared for just about anything.“He hands these lyrics to me and I'm reading through them. And they seem, you know, awfully simplistic. Like there wasn't a whole lot to them....“....Now he wants me to read through it and sing the melody I have and see if they fit. And so I started singing through these simplistic lyrics, and that simplicity takes on a whole other direction.“By the time I had sung through them, it's like my head is suddenly eons wide. I can hear what's happening just sort of echoing around in there and I'm astounded by the simple grace of what he has just presented to me. I'm sitting there with my mouth open literally, and Willie's laughing. He's just sitting there laughing, saying, 'Now you see it. Now you see it. That's the wisdom of the blues.'”           David Dodd (author of Complete Grateful Dead Annotated Lyrics) – “Weir's songs from this era (anything from “Victim or the Crime” forward) seem aggressively innovative, shall we say. The rhythmic patterns, the big multi-layered chords, the changes in meter and tone, all add up to something that seems calculated to disrupt any comfort we might have been sinking into. OK, I didn't say that very well, but anyone who has struggled with these late-period Weir songs knows what I mean.”           SHOW #3:        Childhood's End                           Track No. 8                           3:10 – 4:15               A “new” Phil tune, first played July 24, 1994 at Deer Creek Music Center, Noblesville, IN              Played 11 times in concert              Last played July 9, 1995 at Soldier Field – last show              Never released on a studio album                “Childhood's End” on 7/20/94 – the last original Grateful Dead song to enter the live repertoire, written and sung by Phil Lesh.             Per John Hilgart of 4CPComics, the background story is that Lesh (and perhaps the others) felt that new songs would help fuel Garcia engagement in a period when Jerry was headed in the same direction as in the mid-1980s, when his drugged-out-bad-health put him in a coma that he narrowly survived – living on to drive the 1989-onward renaissance of the band. In the 1995 remake, Jerry died. The big musical difference between those two episodes is that everyone else in the band had their shit together in 1994, whereas the whole band was a mess in 1986.              John's general take on post-Brent 1990's Dead is that they were not to be dismissed – a band that had stopped depending on Garcia's leadership to determine the musical outcome, but who were always therefore also ready when Garcia was feeling spry. Weir has said something to that effect. And when Garcia was feeling spry, it was just as you would wish it to be. SHOW #4:        Way To Go Home                           Track No. 14                           2:59 – 4:12                           A “new” Vince song music by Vince and Bob Bralove, lyrics by Robert Hunter.              First played February 23, 1992 at Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum              Played 92 times              Last played June 28, 1995 at The Palace of Auburn Hills, Auburn Hills               Also wrote Samba In The Rain for the Dead.               Bob Bralove is a keyboard–synthesizer player who worked as a sound technician with the Grateful Dead from 1986 to 1995. Throughout his tenure, he performed as an auxiliary musician throughout "Drums" and "Space", the band's signature aleatoric music segments.[1]Accordingly, he played a key role in their integration of MIDI technology (Musical Instrument Digital Interface) is a technical standard that describes a communications protocol, digital interface, and electrical connectors that connect a wide variety of electronic musical instruments, computers, and related audio devices for playing, editing, and recording music.[1]  ; Before the development of MIDI, electronic musical instruments from different manufacturers could generally not communicate with each other. This meant that a musician could not, for example, plug a Roland keyboard into a Yamaha synthesizer module. With MIDI, any MIDI-compatible keyboard (or other controller device) can be connected to any other MIDI-compatible sequencer, sound module, drum machine, synthesizer, or computer, even if they are made by different manufacturers.), first working with drummers Mickey Hart and Bill Kreutzmann, keyboardist Brent Mydland, and later guitarist Bob Weir and synthesizer/piano player Vince Welnick. He also co-wrote several songs with Weir and Welnick, including "Picasso Moon" on Built to Last (1989) and "Way to Go Home" and "Easy Answers", which were slated to appear on the band's unfinished fourteenth studio album. (A live reconstruction, Ready or Not, was ultimately released in 2019 and contains both songs.) Perhaps his most significant project with the band was curating excerpts from "Drums" and "Space" on Infrared Roses, a 1991 compilation album. "Parallelogram" and "Little Nemo in Nightland" are some of his most notable "compositions" from this release.Bralove was also a member and producer of the Psychedelic Keyboard Trio, along with Welnick and fellow former Grateful Dead keyboardist Tom Constanten.[2] Bralove and Constanten also collaborated as Dose Hermanos, a showcase for their improvisational keyboard work; since 1998, they have toured irregularly and released five albums under the moniker. Bralove also worked with Stevie Wonder, setting up and programming Wonder's synthesizers including while he was touring.[3]  OUTRO:            Days Between                           Track No. 20                           5:55 – 7:24                           “new” Jerry tune              First played February 22, 1993 at Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum Arena              Played 42 times by the Dead              Last played June 24, 1995 at RFK Stadium in D.C.               It has become a favorite of the surviving band members, played the third night at the 50th Anniversary Shows at Soldier Field in 2015 and frequently played by Dead & Co. with Bobby singing,  Also played by Bob Weir and Wolf Bros. and Phil and Friends.  Great tune to end this episode.               David Dodd:  “Days Between” has come to be an anthem that makes us remember Garcia in a particular way, and, in particular, the days between his birth date of August 1 and his death date of August 9. It's a fitting song for such thoughts, with its big sweeping chords and its lyrics heavy with nostalgia and longing.There's a word in German, sehnsucht, that lacks a proper emotional counterpart in English, but which means, roughly, “longing.” It carries a sense of wishing you could see something—see something again, see something at all—that something is missing from your eyes and from your presence. I find that “Days Between” belongs with a raft of songs that induce this feeling in me.“Days Between,” a late song in the Robert Hunter / Jerry Garcia songbook, was perhaps their last collaboration on a big, significant song, one that ranks with “Dark Star” and “Terrapin Station” as ambitious and intentionally grand. (I was talking the other day with a friend, about Garcia's playing and songwriting, and the thought came up that Garcia, like few others, was unafraid of grandeur, and could successfully pull it off. Same with Hunter.) During its relatively short time in the live repertoire, they played it 41 times, always in the second set, and fairly frequently rising out of the Drums. Phil:  “I don't know whether to weep with joy at the beauty of the vision or with sadness at the impassable chasm of time between the golden past and the often painful present.”

You won't believe it, but this Grateful Dead listening project has taken us back to Shoreline again. This week our hosts Game, FiG, and Knob are heading to California to discuss the Grateful Dead's August 25th, 1993 show at the Shoreline Amphitheatre. Discussions abound about So Many Roads, a pamphlet of Easy Answers, and our hosts discover the wonders of Gold Bond at the start of the D&C tour. Touch Of Grey Greatest Story Ever Told Peggy-O The Same Thing Friend Of The Devil Easy Answers So Many Roads Promised Land Scarlet Begonias > Fire On The Mountain Estimated Prophet > Terrapin Station > Drums > Space > All Along The Watchtower > Attics Of My Life > Sugar Magnolia Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds 

Episode 165 of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “Dark Stat” and the career of the Grateful Dead. This is a long one, even longer than the previous episode, but don't worry, that won't be the norm. There's a reason these two were much longer than average. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a twenty-minute bonus episode available, on "Codine" by the Charlatans. Errata I mispronounce Brent Mydland's name as Myland a couple of times, and in the introduction I say "Touch of Grey" came out in 1988 -- I later, correctly, say 1987. (I seem to have had a real problem with dates in the intro -- I also originally talked about "Blue Suede Shoes" being in 1954 before fixing it in the edit to be 1956) Resources No Mixcloud this week, as there are too many songs by the Grateful Dead, and Grayfolded runs to two hours. I referred to a lot of books for this episode, partly because almost everything about the Grateful Dead is written from a fannish perspective that already assumes background knowledge, rather than to provide that background knowledge. Of the various books I used, Dennis McNally's biography of the band and This Is All a Dream We Dreamed: An Oral History of the Grateful Dead by Blair Jackson and David Gans are probably most useful for the casually interested. Other books on the Dead I used included McNally's Jerry on Jerry, a collection of interviews with Garcia; Deal, Bill Kreutzmann's autobiography; The Grateful Dead FAQ by Tony Sclafani; So Many Roads by David Browne; Deadology by Howard F. Weiner; Fare Thee Well by Joel Selvin and Pamela Turley; and Skeleton Key: A Dictionary for Deadheads by David Shenk and Steve Silberman. Tom Wolfe's The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test is the classic account of the Pranksters, though not always reliable. I reference Slaughterhouse Five a lot. As well as the novel itself, which everyone should read, I also read this rather excellent graphic novel adaptation, and The Writer's Crusade, a book about the writing of the novel. I also reference Ted Sturgeon's More Than Human. For background on the scene around Astounding Science Fiction which included Sturgeon, John W. Campbell, L. Ron Hubbard, and many other science fiction writers, I recommend Alec Nevala-Lee's Astounding. 1,000 True Fans can be read online, as can the essay on the Californian ideology, and John Perry Barlow's "Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace". The best collection of Grateful Dead material is the box set The Golden Road, which contains all the albums released in Pigpen's lifetime along with a lot of bonus material, but which appears currently out of print. Live/Dead contains both the live version of "Dark Star" which made it well known and, as a CD bonus track, the original single version. And archive.org has more live recordings of the group than you can possibly ever listen to. Grayfolded can be bought from John Oswald's Bandcamp Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript [Excerpt: Tuning from "Grayfolded", under the warnings Before we begin -- as we're tuning up, as it were, I should mention that this episode contains discussions of alcoholism, drug addiction, racism, nonconsensual drugging of other people, and deaths from drug abuse, suicide, and car accidents. As always, I try to deal with these subjects as carefully as possible, but if you find any of those things upsetting you may wish to read the transcript rather than listen to this episode, or skip it altogether. Also, I should note that the members of the Grateful Dead were much freer with their use of swearing in interviews than any other band we've covered so far, and that makes using quotes from them rather more difficult than with other bands, given the limitations of the rules imposed to stop the podcast being marked as adult. If I quote anything with a word I can't use here, I'll give a brief pause in the audio, and in the transcript I'll have the word in square brackets. [tuning ends] All this happened, more or less. In 1910, T. S. Eliot started work on "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock", which at the time was deemed barely poetry, with one reviewer imagining Eliot saying "I'll just put down the first thing that comes into my head, and call it 'The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock.'" It is now considered one of the great classics of modernist literature. In 1969, Kurt Vonnegut wrote "Slaughterhouse-Five, or, The Children's Crusade: A Duty-Dance with Death", a book in which the protagonist, Billy Pilgrim, comes unstuck in time, and starts living a nonlinear life, hopping around between times reliving his experiences in the Second World War, and future experiences up to 1976 after being kidnapped by beings from the planet Tralfamadore. Or perhaps he has flashbacks and hallucinations after having a breakdown from PTSD. It is now considered one of the great classics of modernist literature or of science fiction, depending on how you look at it. In 1953, Theodore Sturgeon wrote More Than Human. It is now considered one of the great classics of science fiction. In 1950, L. Ron Hubbard wrote Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health. It is now considered either a bad piece of science fiction or one of the great revelatory works of religious history, depending on how you look at it. In 1994, 1995, and 1996 the composer John Oswald released, first as two individual CDs and then as a double-CD, an album called Grayfolded, which the composer says in the liner notes he thinks of as existing in Tralfamadorian time. The Tralfamadorians in Vonnegut's novels don't see time as a linear thing with a beginning and end, but as a continuum that they can move between at will. When someone dies, they just think that at this particular point in time they're not doing so good, but at other points in time they're fine, so why focus on the bad time? In the book, when told of someone dying, the Tralfamadorians just say "so it goes". In between the first CD's release and the release of the double-CD version, Jerry Garcia died. From August 1942 through August 1995, Jerry Garcia was alive. So it goes. Shall we go, you and I? [Excerpt: The Grateful Dead, "Dark Star (Omni 3/30/94)"] "One principle has become clear. Since motives are so frequently found in combination, it is essential that the complex types be analyzed and arranged, with an eye kept single nevertheless to the master-theme under discussion. Collectors, both primary and subsidiary, have done such valiant service that the treasures at our command are amply sufficient for such studies, so extensive, indeed, that the task of going through them thoroughly has become too great for the unassisted student. It cannot be too strongly urged that a single theme in its various types and compounds must be made predominant in any useful comparative study. This is true when the sources and analogues of any literary work are treated; it is even truer when the bare motive is discussed. The Grateful Dead furnishes an apt illustration of the necessity of such handling. It appears in a variety of different combinations, almost never alone. Indeed, it is so widespread a tale, and its combinations are so various, that there is the utmost difficulty in determining just what may properly be regarded the original kernel of it, the simple theme to which other motives were joined. Various opinions, as we shall see, have been held with reference to this matter, most of them justified perhaps by the materials in the hands of the scholars holding them, but none quite adequate in view of later evidence." That's a quote from The Grateful Dead: The History of a Folk Story, by Gordon Hall Gerould, published in 1908. Kurt Vonnegut's novel Slaughterhouse-Five opens with a chapter about the process of writing the novel itself, and how difficult it was. He says "I would hate to tell you what this lousy little book cost me in money and anxiety and time. When I got home from the Second World War twenty-three years ago, I thought it would be easy for me to write about the destruction of Dresden, since all I would have to do would be to report what I had seen. And I thought, too, that it would be a masterpiece or at least make me a lot of money, since the subject was so big." This is an episode several of my listeners have been looking forward to, but it's one I've been dreading writing, because this is an episode -- I think the only one in the series -- where the format of the podcast simply *will not* work. Were the Grateful Dead not such an important band, I would skip this episode altogether, but they're a band that simply can't be ignored, and that's a real problem here. Because my intent, always, with this podcast, is to present the recordings of the artists in question, put them in context, and explain why they were important, what their music meant to its listeners. To put, as far as is possible, the positive case for why the music mattered *in the context of its time*. Not why it matters now, or why it matters to me, but why it matters *in its historical context*. Whether I like the music or not isn't the point. Whether it stands up now isn't the point. I play the music, explain what it was they were doing, why they were doing it, what people saw in it. If I do my job well, you come away listening to "Blue Suede Shoes" the way people heard it in 1956, or "Good Vibrations" the way people heard it in 1966, and understanding why people were so impressed by those records. That is simply *not possible* for the Grateful Dead. I can present a case for them as musicians, and hope to do so. I can explain the appeal as best I understand it, and talk about things I like in their music, and things I've noticed. But what I can't do is present their recordings the way they were received in the sixties and explain why they were popular. Because every other act I have covered or will cover in this podcast has been a *recording* act, and their success was based on records. They may also have been exceptional live performers, but James Brown or Ike and Tina Turner are remembered for great *records*, like "Papa's Got a Brand New Bag" or "River Deep, Mountain High". Their great moments were captured on vinyl, to be listened back to, and susceptible of analysis. That is not the case for the Grateful Dead, and what is worse *they explicitly said, publicly, on multiple occasions* that it is not possible for me to understand their art, and thus that it is not possible for me to explain it. The Grateful Dead did make studio records, some of them very good. But they always said, consistently, over a thirty year period, that their records didn't capture what they did, and that the only way -- the *only* way, they were very clear about this -- that one could actually understand and appreciate their music, was to see them live, and furthermore to see them live while on psychedelic drugs. [Excerpt: Grateful Dead crowd noise] I never saw the Grateful Dead live -- their last UK performance was a couple of years before I went to my first ever gig -- and I have never taken a psychedelic substance. So by the Grateful Dead's own criteria, it is literally impossible for me to understand or explain their music the way that it should be understood or explained. In a way I'm in a similar position to the one I was in with La Monte Young in the last episode, whose music it's mostly impossible to experience without being in his presence. This is one reason of several why I placed these two episodes back to back. Of course, there is a difference between Young and the Grateful Dead. The Grateful Dead allowed -- even encouraged -- the recording of their live performances. There are literally thousands of concert recordings in circulation, many of them of professional quality. I have listened to many of those, and I can hear what they were doing. I can tell you what *I* think is interesting about their music, and about their musicianship. And I think I can build up a good case for why they were important, and why they're interesting, and why those recordings are worth listening to. And I can certainly explain the cultural phenomenon that was the Grateful Dead. But just know that while I may have found *a* point, *an* explanation for why the Grateful Dead were important, by the band's own lights and those of their fans, no matter how good a job I do in this episode, I *cannot* get it right. And that is, in itself, enough of a reason for this episode to exist, and for me to try, even harder than I normally do, to get it right *anyway*. Because no matter how well I do my job this episode will stand as an example of why this series is called "*A* History", not *the* history. Because parts of the past are ephemeral. There are things about which it's true to say "You had to be there". I cannot know what it was like to have been an American the day Kennedy was shot, I cannot know what it was like to be alive when a man walked on the Moon. Those are things nobody my age or younger can ever experience. And since August the ninth, 1995, the experience of hearing the Grateful Dead's music the way they wanted it heard has been in that category. And that is by design. Jerry Garcia once said "if you work really hard as an artist, you may be able to build something they can't tear down, you know, after you're gone... What I want to do is I want it here. I want it now, in this lifetime. I want what I enjoy to last as long as I do and not last any longer. You know, I don't want something that ends up being as much a nuisance as it is a work of art, you know?" And there's another difficulty. There are only two points in time where it makes sense to do a podcast episode on the Grateful Dead -- late 1967 and early 1968, when the San Francisco scene they were part of was at its most culturally relevant, and 1988 when they had their only top ten hit and gained their largest audience. I can't realistically leave them out of the story until 1988, so it has to be 1968. But the songs they are most remembered for are those they wrote between 1970 and 1972, and those songs are influenced by artists and events we haven't yet covered in the podcast, who will be getting their own episodes in the future. I can't explain those things in this episode, because they need whole episodes of their own. I can't not explain them without leaving out important context for the Grateful Dead. So the best I can do is treat the story I'm telling as if it were in Tralfamadorian time. All of it's happening all at once, and some of it is happening in different episodes that haven't been recorded yet. The podcast as a whole travels linearly from 1938 through to 1999, but this episode is happening in 1968 and 1972 and 1988 and 1995 and other times, all at once. Sometimes I'll talk about things as if you're already familiar with them, but they haven't happened yet in the story. Feel free to come unstuck in time and revisit this time after episode 167, and 172, and 176, and 192, and experience it again. So this has to be an experimental episode. It may well be an experiment that you think fails. If so, the next episode is likely to be far more to your taste, and much shorter than this or the last episode, two episodes that between them have to create a scaffolding on which will hang much of the rest of this podcast's narrative. I've finished my Grateful Dead script now. The next one I write is going to be fun: [Excerpt: Grateful Dead, "Dark Star"] Infrastructure means everything. How we get from place to place, how we transport goods, information, and ourselves, makes a big difference in how society is structured, and in the music we hear. For many centuries, the prime means of long-distance transport was by water -- sailing ships on the ocean, canal boats and steamboats for inland navigation -- and so folk songs talked about the ship as both means of escape, means of making a living, and in some senses as a trap. You'd go out to sea for adventure, or to escape your problems, but you'd find that the sea itself brought its own problems. Because of this we have a long, long tradition of sea shanties which are known throughout the world: [Excerpt: A. L. Lloyd, "Off to Sea Once More"] But in the nineteenth century, the railway was invented and, at least as far as travel within a landmass goes, it replaced the steamboat in the popular imaginary. Now the railway was how you got from place to place, and how you moved freight from one place to another. The railway brought freedom, and was an opportunity for outlaws, whether train robbers or a romanticised version of the hobo hopping onto a freight train and making his way to new lands and new opportunity. It was the train that brought soldiers home from wars, and the train that allowed the Great Migration of Black people from the South to the industrial North. There would still be songs about the riverboats, about how ol' man river keeps rolling along and about the big river Johnny Cash sang about, but increasingly they would be songs of the past, not the present. The train quickly replaced the steamboat in the iconography of what we now think of as roots music -- blues, country, folk, and early jazz music. Sometimes this was very literal. Furry Lewis' "Kassie Jones" -- about a legendary train driver who would break the rules to make sure his train made the station on time, but who ended up sacrificing his own life to save his passengers in a train crash -- is based on "Alabamy Bound", which as we heard in the episode on "Stagger Lee", was about steamboats: [Excerpt: Furry Lewis, "Kassie Jones"] In the early episodes of this podcast we heard many, many, songs about the railway. Louis Jordan saying "take me right back to the track, Jack", Rosetta Tharpe singing about how "this train don't carry no gamblers", the trickster freight train driver driving on the "Rock Island Line", the mystery train sixteen coaches long, the train that kept-a-rollin' all night long, the Midnight Special which the prisoners wished would shine its ever-loving light on them, and the train coming past Folsom Prison whose whistle makes Johnny Cash hang his head and cry. But by the 1960s, that kind of song had started to dry up. It would happen on occasion -- "People Get Ready" by the Impressions is the most obvious example of the train metaphor in an important sixties record -- but by the late sixties the train was no longer a symbol of freedom but of the past. In 1969 Harry Nilsson sang about how "Nobody Cares About the Railroads Any More", and in 1968 the Kinks sang about "The Last of the Steam-Powered Trains". When in 1968 Merle Haggard sang about a freight train, it was as a memory, of a child with hopes that ended up thwarted by reality and his own nature: [Excerpt: Merle Haggard, "Mama Tried"] And the reason for this was that there had been another shift, a shift that had started in the forties and accelerated in the late fifties but had taken a little time to ripple through the culture. Now the train had been replaced in the popular imaginary by motorised transport. Instead of hopping on a train without paying, if you had no money in your pocket you'd have to hitch-hike all the way. Freedom now meant individuality. The ultimate in freedom was the biker -- the Hell's Angels who could go anywhere, unburdened by anything -- and instead of goods being moved by freight train, increasingly they were being moved by truck drivers. By the mid-seventies, truck drivers took a central place in American life, and the most romantic way to live life was to live it on the road. On The Road was also the title of a 1957 novel by Jack Kerouac, which was one of the first major signs of this cultural shift in America. Kerouac was writing about events in the late forties and early fifties, but his book was also a precursor of the sixties counterculture. He wrote the book on one continuous sheet of paper, as a stream of consciousness. Kerouac died in 1969 of an internal haemmorage brought on by too much alcohol consumption. So it goes. But the big key to this cultural shift was caused by the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956, a massive infrastructure spending bill that led to the construction of the modern American Interstate Highway system. This accelerated a program that had already started, of building much bigger, safer, faster roads. It also, as anyone who has read Robert Caro's The Power Broker knows, reinforced segregation and white flight. It did this both by making commuting into major cities from the suburbs easier -- thus allowing white people with more money to move further away from the cities and still work there -- and by bulldozing community spaces where Black people lived. More than a million people lost their homes and were forcibly moved, and orders of magnitude more lost their communities' parks and green spaces. And both as a result of deliberate actions and unconscious bigotry, the bulk of those affected were Black people -- who often found themselves, if they weren't forced to move, on one side of a ten-lane highway where the park used to be, with white people on the other side of the highway. The Federal-Aid Highway Act gave even more power to the unaccountable central planners like Robert Moses, the urban planner in New York who managed to become arguably the most powerful man in the city without ever getting elected, partly by slowly compromising away his early progressive ideals in the service of gaining more power. Of course, not every new highway was built through areas where poor Black people lived. Some were planned to go through richer areas for white people, just because you can't completely do away with geographical realities. For example one was planned to be built through part of San Francisco, a rich, white part. But the people who owned properties in that area had enough political power and clout to fight the development, and after nearly a decade of fighting it, the development was called off in late 1966. But over that time, many of the owners of the impressive buildings in the area had moved out, and they had no incentive to improve or maintain their properties while they were under threat of demolition, so many of them were rented out very cheaply. And when the beat community that Kerouac wrote about, many of whom had settled in San Francisco, grew too large and notorious for the area of the city they were in, North Beach, many of them moved to these cheap homes in a previously-exclusive area. The area known as Haight-Ashbury. [Excerpt: The Grateful Dead, "Grayfolded"] Stories all have their starts, even stories told in Tralfamadorian time, although sometimes those starts are shrouded in legend. For example, the story of Scientology's start has been told many times, with different people claiming to have heard L. Ron Hubbard talk about how writing was a mug's game, and if you wanted to make real money, you needed to get followers, start a religion. Either he said this over and over and over again, to many different science fiction writers, or most science fiction writers of his generation were liars. Of course, the definition of a writer is someone who tells lies for money, so who knows? One of the more plausible accounts of him saying that is given by Theodore Sturgeon. Sturgeon's account is more believable than most, because Sturgeon went on to be a supporter of Dianetics, the "new science" that Hubbard turned into his religion, for decades, even while telling the story. The story of the Grateful Dead probably starts as it ends, with Jerry Garcia. There are three things that everyone writing about the Dead says about Garcia's childhood, so we might as well say them here too. The first is that he was named by a music-loving father after Jerome Kern, the songwriter responsible for songs like "Ol' Man River" (though as Oscar Hammerstein's widow liked to point out, "Jerome Kern wrote dum-dum-dum-dum, *my husband* wrote 'Ol' Man River'" -- an important distinction we need to bear in mind when talking about songwriters who write music but not lyrics). The second is that when he was five years old that music-loving father drowned -- and Garcia would always say he had seen his father dying, though some sources claim this was a false memory. So it goes. And the third fact, which for some reason is always told after the second even though it comes before it chronologically, is that when he was four he lost two joints from his right middle finger. Garcia grew up a troubled teen, and in turn caused trouble for other people, but he also developed a few interests that would follow him through his life. He loved the fantastical, especially the fantastical macabre, and became an avid fan of horror and science fiction -- and through his love of old monster films he became enamoured with cinema more generally. Indeed, in 1983 he bought the film rights to Kurt Vonnegut's science fiction novel The Sirens of Titan, the first story in which the Tralfamadorians appear, and wrote a script based on it. He wanted to produce the film himself, with Francis Ford Coppola directing and Bill Murray starring, but most importantly for him he wanted to prevent anyone who didn't care about it from doing it badly. And in that he succeeded. As of 2023 there is no film of The Sirens of Titan. He loved to paint, and would continue that for the rest of his life, with one of his favourite subjects being Boris Karloff as the Frankenstein monster. And when he was eleven or twelve, he heard for the first time a record that was hugely influential to a whole generation of Californian musicians, even though it was a New York record -- "Gee" by the Crows: [Excerpt: The Crows, "Gee"] Garcia would say later "That was an important song. That was the first kind of, like where the voices had that kind of not-trained-singer voices, but tough-guy-on-the-street voice." That record introduced him to R&B, and soon he was listening to Chuck Berry and Bo Diddley, to Ray Charles, and to a record we've not talked about in the podcast but which was one of the great early doo-wop records, "WPLJ" by the Four Deuces: [Excerpt: The Four Deuces, "WPLJ"] Garcia said of that record "That was one of my anthem songs when I was in junior high school and high school and around there. That was one of those songs everybody knew. And that everybody sang. Everybody sang that street-corner favorite." Garcia moved around a lot as a child, and didn't have much time for school by his own account, but one of the few teachers he did respect was an art teacher when he was in North Beach, Walter Hedrick. Hedrick was also one of the earliest of the conceptual artists, and one of the most important figures in the San Francisco arts scene that would become known as the Beat Generation (or the Beatniks, which was originally a disparaging term). Hedrick was a painter and sculptor, but also organised happenings, and he had also been one of the prime movers in starting a series of poetry readings in San Francisco, the first one of which had involved Allen Ginsberg giving the first ever reading of "Howl" -- one of a small number of poems, along with Eliot's "Prufrock" and "The Waste Land" and possibly Pound's Cantos, which can be said to have changed twentieth-century literature. Garcia was fifteen when he got to know Hedrick, in 1957, and by then the Beat scene had already become almost a parody of itself, having become known to the public because of the publication of works like On the Road, and the major artists in the scene were already rejecting the label. By this point tourists were flocking to North Beach to see these beatniks they'd heard about on TV, and Hedrick was actually employed by one cafe to sit in the window wearing a beret, turtleneck, sandals, and beard, and draw and paint, to attract the tourists who flocked by the busload because they could see that there was a "genuine beatnik" in the cafe. Hedrick was, as well as a visual artist, a guitarist and banjo player who played in traditional jazz bands, and he would bring records in to class for his students to listen to, and Garcia particularly remembered him bringing in records by Big Bill Broonzy: [Excerpt: Big Bill Broonzy, "When Things Go Wrong (It Hurts Me Too)"] Garcia was already an avid fan of rock and roll music, but it was being inspired by Hedrick that led him to get his first guitar. Like his contemporary Paul McCartney around the same time, he was initially given the wrong instrument as a birthday present -- in Garcia's case his mother gave him an accordion -- but he soon persuaded her to swap it for an electric guitar he saw in a pawn shop. And like his other contemporary, John Lennon, Garcia initially tuned his instrument incorrectly. He said later "When I started playing the guitar, believe me, I didn't know anybody that played. I mean, I didn't know anybody that played the guitar. Nobody. They weren't around. There were no guitar teachers. You couldn't take lessons. There was nothing like that, you know? When I was a kid and I had my first electric guitar, I had it tuned wrong and learned how to play on it with it tuned wrong for about a year. And I was getting somewhere on it, you know… Finally, I met a guy that knew how to tune it right and showed me three chords, and it was like a revelation. You know what I mean? It was like somebody gave me the key to heaven." He joined a band, the Chords, which mostly played big band music, and his friend Gary Foster taught him some of the rudiments of playing the guitar -- things like how to use a capo to change keys. But he was always a rebellious kid, and soon found himself faced with a choice between joining the military or going to prison. He chose the former, and it was during his time in the Army that a friend, Ron Stevenson, introduced him to the music of Merle Travis, and to Travis-style guitar picking: [Excerpt: Merle Travis, "Nine-Pound Hammer"] Garcia had never encountered playing like that before, but he instantly recognised that Travis, and Chet Atkins who Stevenson also played for him, had been an influence on Scotty Moore. He started to realise that the music he'd listened to as a teenager was influenced by music that went further back. But Stevenson, as well as teaching Garcia some of the rudiments of Travis-picking, also indirectly led to Garcia getting discharged from the Army. Stevenson was not a well man, and became suicidal. Garcia decided it was more important to keep his friend company and make sure he didn't kill himself than it was to turn up for roll call, and as a result he got discharged himself on psychiatric grounds -- according to Garcia he told the Army psychiatrist "I was involved in stuff that was more important to me in the moment than the army was and that was the reason I was late" and the psychiatrist thought it was neurotic of Garcia to have his own set of values separate from that of the Army. After discharge, Garcia did various jobs, including working as a transcriptionist for Lenny Bruce, the comedian who was a huge influence on the counterculture. In one of the various attacks over the years by authoritarians on language, Bruce was repeatedly arrested for obscenity, and in 1961 he was arrested at a jazz club in North Beach. Sixty years ago, the parts of speech that were being criminalised weren't pronouns, but prepositions and verbs: [Excerpt: Lenny Bruce, "To is a Preposition, Come is a Verb"] That piece, indeed, was so controversial that when Frank Zappa quoted part of it in a song in 1968, the record label insisted on the relevant passage being played backwards so people couldn't hear such disgusting filth: [Excerpt: The Mothers of Invention, "Harry You're a Beast"] (Anyone familiar with that song will understand that the censored portion is possibly the least offensive part of the whole thing). Bruce was facing trial, and he needed transcripts of what he had said in his recordings to present in court. Incidentally, there seems to be some confusion over exactly which of Bruce's many obscenity trials Garcia became a transcriptionist for. Dennis McNally says in his biography of the band, published in 2002, that it was the most famous of them, in autumn 1964, but in a later book, Jerry on Jerry, a book of interviews of Garcia edited by McNally, McNally talks about it being when Garcia was nineteen, which would mean it was Bruce's first trial, in 1961. We can put this down to the fact that many of the people involved, not least Garcia, lived in Tralfamadorian time, and were rather hazy on dates, but I'm placing the story here rather than in 1964 because it seems to make more sense that Garcia would be involved in a trial based on an incident in San Francisco than one in New York. Garcia got the job, even though he couldn't type, because by this point he'd spent so long listening to recordings of old folk and country music that he was used to transcribing indecipherable accents, and often, as Garcia would tell it, Bruce would mumble very fast and condense multiple syllables into one. Garcia was particularly impressed by Bruce's ability to improvise but talk in entire paragraphs, and he compared his use of language to bebop. Another thing that was starting to impress Garcia, and which he also compared to bebop, was bluegrass: [Excerpt: Bill Monroe, "Fire on the Mountain"] Bluegrass is a music that is often considered very traditional, because it's based on traditional songs and uses acoustic instruments, but in fact it was a terribly *modern* music, and largely a postwar creation of a single band -- Bill Monroe and his Blue Grass Boys. And Garcia was right when he said it was "white bebop" -- though he did say "The only thing it doesn't have is the harmonic richness of bebop. You know what I mean? That's what it's missing, but it has everything else." Both bebop and bluegrass evolved after the second world war, though they were informed by music from before it, and both prized the ability to improvise, and technical excellence. Both are musics that involved playing *fast*, in an ensemble, and being able to respond quickly to the other musicians. Both musics were also intensely rhythmic, a response to a faster paced, more stressful world. They were both part of the general change in the arts towards immediacy that we looked at in the last episode with the creation first of expressionism and then of pop art. Bluegrass didn't go into the harmonic explorations that modern jazz did, but it was absolutely as modern as anything Charlie Parker was doing, and came from the same impulses. It was tradition and innovation, the past and the future simultaneously. Bill Monroe, Jackson Pollock, Charlie Parker, Jack Kerouac, and Lenny Bruce were all in their own ways responding to the same cultural moment, and it was that which Garcia was responding to. But he didn't become able to play bluegrass until after a tragedy which shaped his life even more than his father's death had. Garcia had been to a party and was in a car with his friends Lee Adams, Paul Speegle, and Alan Trist. Adams was driving at ninety miles an hour when they hit a tight curve and crashed. Garcia, Adams, and Trist were all severely injured but survived. Speegle died. So it goes. This tragedy changed Garcia's attitudes totally. Of all his friends, Speegle was the one who was most serious about his art, and who treated it as something to work on. Garcia had always been someone who fundamentally didn't want to work or take any responsibility for anything. And he remained that way -- except for his music. Speegle's death changed Garcia's attitude to that, totally. If his friend wasn't going to be able to practice his own art any more, Garcia would practice his, in tribute to him. He resolved to become a virtuoso on guitar and banjo. His girlfriend of the time later said “I don't know if you've spent time with someone rehearsing ‘Foggy Mountain Breakdown' on a banjo for eight hours, but Jerry practiced endlessly. He really wanted to excel and be the best. He had tremendous personal ambition in the musical arena, and he wanted to master whatever he set out to explore. Then he would set another sight for himself. And practice another eight hours a day of new licks.” But of course, you can't make ensemble music on your own: [Excerpt: Jerry Garcia and Bob Hunter, "Oh Mary Don't You Weep" (including end)] "Evelyn said, “What is it called when a person needs a … person … when you want to be touched and the … two are like one thing and there isn't anything else at all anywhere?” Alicia, who had read books, thought about it. “Love,” she said at length." That's from More Than Human, by Theodore Sturgeon, a book I'll be quoting a few more times as the story goes on. Robert Hunter, like Garcia, was just out of the military -- in his case, the National Guard -- and he came into Garcia's life just after Paul Speegle had left it. Garcia and Alan Trist met Hunter ten days after the accident, and the three men started hanging out together, Trist and Hunter writing while Garcia played music. Garcia and Hunter both bonded over their shared love for the beats, and for traditional music, and the two formed a duo, Bob and Jerry, which performed together a handful of times. They started playing together, in fact, after Hunter picked up a guitar and started playing a song and halfway through Garcia took it off him and finished the song himself. The two of them learned songs from the Harry Smith Anthology -- Garcia was completely apolitical, and only once voted in his life, for Lyndon Johnson in 1964 to keep Goldwater out, and regretted even doing that, and so he didn't learn any of the more political material people like Pete Seeger, Phil Ochs, and Bob Dylan were doing at the time -- but their duo only lasted a short time because Hunter wasn't an especially good guitarist. Hunter would, though, continue to jam with Garcia and other friends, sometimes playing mandolin, while Garcia played solo gigs and with other musicians as well, playing and moving round the Bay Area and performing with whoever he could: [Excerpt: Jerry Garcia, "Railroad Bill"] "Bleshing, that was Janie's word. She said Baby told it to her. She said it meant everyone all together being something, even if they all did different things. Two arms, two legs, one body, one head, all working together, although a head can't walk and arms can't think. Lone said maybe it was a mixture of “blending” and “meshing,” but I don't think he believed that himself. It was a lot more than that." That's from More Than Human In 1961, Garcia and Hunter met another young musician, but one who was interested in a very different type of music. Phil Lesh was a serious student of modern classical music, a classically-trained violinist and trumpeter whose interest was solidly in the experimental and whose attitude can be summed up by a story that's always told about him meeting his close friend Tom Constanten for the first time. Lesh had been talking with someone about serialism, and Constanten had interrupted, saying "Music stopped being created in 1750 but it started again in 1950". Lesh just stuck out his hand, recognising a kindred spirit. Lesh and Constanten were both students of Luciano Berio, the experimental composer who created compositions for magnetic tape: [Excerpt: Luciano Berio, "Momenti"] Berio had been one of the founders of the Studio di fonologia musicale di Radio Milano, a studio for producing contemporary electronic music where John Cage had worked for a time, and he had also worked with the electronic music pioneer Karlheinz Stockhausen. Lesh would later remember being very impressed when Berio brought a tape into the classroom -- the actual multitrack tape for Stockhausen's revolutionary piece Gesang Der Juenglinge: [Excerpt: Karlheinz Stockhausen, "Gesang Der Juenglinge"] Lesh at first had been distrustful of Garcia -- Garcia was charismatic and had followers, and Lesh never liked people like that. But he was impressed by Garcia's playing, and soon realised that the two men, despite their very different musical interests, had a lot in common. Lesh was interested in the technology of music as well as in performing and composing it, and so when he wasn't studying he helped out by engineering at the university's radio station. Lesh was impressed by Garcia's playing, and suggested to the presenter of the station's folk show, the Midnight Special, that Garcia be a guest. Garcia was so good that he ended up getting an entire solo show to himself, where normally the show would feature multiple acts. Lesh and Constanten soon moved away from the Bay Area to Las Vegas, but both would be back -- in Constanten's case he would form an experimental group in San Francisco with their fellow student Steve Reich, and that group (though not with Constanten performing) would later premiere Terry Riley's In C, a piece influenced by La Monte Young and often considered one of the great masterpieces of minimalist music. By early 1962 Garcia and Hunter had formed a bluegrass band, with Garcia on guitar and banjo and Hunter on mandolin, and a rotating cast of other musicians including Ken Frankel, who played banjo and fiddle. They performed under different names, including the Tub Thumpers, the Hart Valley Drifters, and the Sleepy Valley Hog Stompers, and played a mixture of bluegrass and old-time music -- and were very careful about the distinction: [Excerpt: The Hart Valley Drifters, "Cripple Creek"] In 1993, the Republican political activist John Perry Barlow was invited to talk to the CIA about the possibilities open to them with what was then called the Information Superhighway. He later wrote, in part "They told me they'd brought Steve Jobs in a few weeks before to indoctrinate them in modern information management. And they were delighted when I returned later, bringing with me a platoon of Internet gurus, including Esther Dyson, Mitch Kapor, Tony Rutkowski, and Vint Cerf. They sealed us into an electronically impenetrable room to discuss the radical possibility that a good first step in lifting their blackout would be for the CIA to put up a Web site... We told them that information exchange was a barter system, and that to receive, one must also be willing to share. This was an alien notion to them. They weren't even willing to share information among themselves, much less the world." 1962 brought a new experience for Robert Hunter. Hunter had been recruited into taking part in psychological tests at Stanford University, which in the sixties and seventies was one of the preeminent universities for psychological experiments. As part of this, Hunter was given $140 to attend the VA hospital (where a janitor named Ken Kesey, who had himself taken part in a similar set of experiments a couple of years earlier, worked a day job while he was working on his first novel) for four weeks on the run, and take different psychedelic drugs each time, starting with LSD, so his reactions could be observed. (It was later revealed that these experiments were part of a CIA project called MKUltra, designed to investigate the possibility of using psychedelic drugs for mind control, blackmail, and torture. Hunter was quite lucky in that he was told what was going to happen to him and paid for his time. Other subjects included the unlucky customers of brothels the CIA set up as fronts -- they dosed the customers' drinks and observed them through two-way mirrors. Some of their experimental subjects died by suicide as a result of their experiences. So it goes. ) Hunter was interested in taking LSD after reading Aldous Huxley's writings about psychedelic substances, and he brought his typewriter along to the experiment. During the first test, he wrote a six-page text, a short excerpt from which is now widely quoted, reading in part "Sit back picture yourself swooping up a shell of purple with foam crests of crystal drops soft nigh they fall unto the sea of morning creep-very-softly mist ... and then sort of cascade tinkley-bell-like (must I take you by the hand, ever so slowly type) and then conglomerate suddenly into a peal of silver vibrant uncomprehendingly, blood singingly, joyously resounding bells" Hunter's experience led to everyone in their social circle wanting to try LSD, and soon they'd all come to the same conclusion -- this was something special. But Garcia needed money -- he'd got his girlfriend pregnant, and they'd married (this would be the first of several marriages in Garcia's life, and I won't be covering them all -- at Garcia's funeral, his second wife, Carolyn, said Garcia always called her the love of his life, and his first wife and his early-sixties girlfriend who he proposed to again in the nineties both simultaneously said "He said that to me!"). So he started teaching guitar at a music shop in Palo Alto. Hunter had no time for Garcia's incipient domesticity and thought that his wife was trying to make him live a conventional life, and the two drifted apart somewhat, though they'd still play together occasionally. Through working at the music store, Garcia got to know the manager, Troy Weidenheimer, who had a rock and roll band called the Zodiacs. Garcia joined the band on bass, despite that not being his instrument. He later said "Troy was a lot of fun, but I wasn't good enough a musician then to have been able to deal with it. I was out of my idiom, really, 'cause when I played with Troy I was playing electric bass, you know. I never was a good bass player. Sometimes I was playing in the wrong key and didn't even [fuckin'] know it. I couldn't hear that low, after playing banjo, you know, and going to electric...But Troy taught me the principle of, hey, you know, just stomp your foot and get on it. He was great. A great one for the instant arrangement, you know. And he was also fearless for that thing of get your friends to do it." Garcia's tenure in the Zodiacs didn't last long, nor did this experiment with rock and roll, but two other members of the Zodiacs will be notable later in the story -- the harmonica player, an old friend of Garcia's named Ron McKernan, who would soon gain the nickname Pig Pen after the Peanuts character, and the drummer, Bill Kreutzmann: [Excerpt: The Grateful Dead, "Drums/Space (Skull & Bones version)"] Kreutzmann said of the Zodiacs "Jerry was the hired bass player and I was the hired drummer. I only remember playing that one gig with them, but I was in way over my head. I always did that. I always played things that were really hard and it didn't matter. I just went for it." Garcia and Kreutzmann didn't really get to know each other then, but Garcia did get to know someone else who would soon be very important in his life. Bob Weir was from a very different background than Garcia, though both had the shared experience of long bouts of chronic illness as children. He had grown up in a very wealthy family, and had always been well-liked, but he was what we would now call neurodivergent -- reading books about the band he talks about being dyslexic but clearly has other undiagnosed neurodivergences, which often go along with dyslexia -- and as a result he was deemed to have behavioural problems which led to him getting expelled from pre-school and kicked out of the cub scouts. He was never academically gifted, thanks to his dyslexia, but he was always enthusiastic about music -- to a fault. He learned to play boogie piano but played so loudly and so often his parents sold the piano. He had a trumpet, but the neighbours complained about him playing it outside. Finally he switched to the guitar, an instrument with which it is of course impossible to make too loud a noise. The first song he learned was the Kingston Trio's version of an old sea shanty, "The Wreck of the John B": [Excerpt: The Kingston Trio, "The Wreck of the John B"] He was sent off to a private school in Colorado for teenagers with behavioural issues, and there he met the boy who would become his lifelong friend, John Perry Barlow. Unfortunately the two troublemakers got on with each other *so* well that after their first year they were told that it was too disruptive having both of them at the school, and only one could stay there the next year. Barlow stayed and Weir moved back to the Bay Area. By this point, Weir was getting more interested in folk music that went beyond the commercial folk of the Kingston Trio. As he said later "There was something in there that was ringing my bells. What I had grown up thinking of as hillbilly music, it started to have some depth for me, and I could start to hear the music in it. Suddenly, it wasn't just a bunch of ignorant hillbillies playing what they could. There was some depth and expertise and stuff like that to aspire to.” He moved from school to school but one thing that stayed with him was his love of playing guitar, and he started taking lessons from Troy Weidenheimer, but he got most of his education going to folk clubs and hootenannies. He regularly went to the Tangent, a club where Garcia played, but Garcia's bluegrass banjo playing was far too rigorous for a free spirit like Weir to emulate, and instead he started trying to copy one of the guitarists who was a regular there, Jorma Kaukonnen. On New Year's Eve 1963 Weir was out walking with his friends Bob Matthews and Rich Macauley, and they passed the music shop where Garcia was a teacher, and heard him playing his banjo. They knocked and asked if they could come in -- they all knew Garcia a little, and Bob Matthews was one of his students, having become interested in playing banjo after hearing the theme tune to the Beverly Hillbillies, played by the bluegrass greats Flatt and Scruggs: [Excerpt: Flatt and Scruggs, "The Beverly Hillbillies"] Garcia at first told these kids, several years younger than him, that they couldn't come in -- he was waiting for his students to show up. But Weir said “Jerry, listen, it's seven-thirty on New Year's Eve, and I don't think you're going to be seeing your students tonight.” Garcia realised the wisdom of this, and invited the teenagers in to jam with him. At the time, there was a bit of a renaissance in jug bands, as we talked about back in the episode on the Lovin' Spoonful. This was a form of music that had grown up in the 1920s, and was similar and related to skiffle and coffee-pot bands -- jug bands would tend to have a mixture of portable string instruments like guitars and banjos, harmonicas, and people using improvised instruments, particularly blowing into a jug. The most popular of these bands had been Gus Cannon's Jug Stompers, led by banjo player Gus Cannon and with harmonica player Noah Lewis: [Excerpt: Gus Cannon's Jug Stompers, "Viola Lee Blues"] With the folk revival, Cannon's work had become well-known again. The Rooftop Singers, a Kingston Trio style folk group, had had a hit with his song "Walk Right In" in 1963, and as a result of that success Cannon had even signed a record contract with Stax -- Stax's first album ever, a month before Booker T and the MGs' first album, was in fact the eighty-year-old Cannon playing his banjo and singing his old songs. The rediscovery of Cannon had started a craze for jug bands, and the most popular of the new jug bands was Jim Kweskin's Jug Band, which did a mixture of old songs like "You're a Viper" and more recent material redone in the old style. Weir, Matthews, and Macauley had been to see the Kweskin band the night before, and had been very impressed, especially by their singer Maria D'Amato -- who would later marry her bandmate Geoff Muldaur and take his name -- and her performance of Leiber and Stoller's "I'm a Woman": [Excerpt: Jim Kweskin's Jug Band, "I'm a Woman"] Matthews suggested that they form their own jug band, and Garcia eagerly agreed -- though Matthews found himself rapidly moving from banjo to washboard to kazoo to second kazoo before realising he was surplus to requirements. Robert Hunter was similarly an early member but claimed he "didn't have the embouchure" to play the jug, and was soon also out. He moved to LA and started studying Scientology -- later claiming that he wanted science-fictional magic powers, which L. Ron Hubbard's new religion certainly offered. The group took the name Mother McRee's Uptown Jug Champions -- apparently they varied the spelling every time they played -- and had a rotating membership that at one time or another included about twenty different people, but tended always to have Garcia on banjo, Weir on jug and later guitar, and Garcia's friend Pig Pen on harmonica: [Excerpt: Mother McRee's Uptown Jug Champions, "On the Road Again"] The group played quite regularly in early 1964, but Garcia's first love was still bluegrass, and he was trying to build an audience with his bluegrass band, The Black Mountain Boys. But bluegrass was very unpopular in the Bay Area, where it was simultaneously thought of as unsophisticated -- as "hillbilly music" -- and as elitist, because it required actual instrumental ability, which wasn't in any great supply in the amateur folk scene. But instrumental ability was something Garcia definitely had, as at this point he was still practising eight hours a day, every day, and it shows on the recordings of the Black Mountain Boys: [Excerpt: The Black Mountain Boys, "Rosa Lee McFall"] By the summer, Bob Weir was also working at the music shop, and so Garcia let Weir take over his students while he and the Black Mountain Boys' guitarist Sandy Rothman went on a road trip to see as many bluegrass musicians as they could and to audition for Bill Monroe himself. As it happened, Garcia found himself too shy to audition for Monroe, but Rothman later ended up playing with Monroe's Blue Grass Boys. On his return to the Bay Area, Garcia resumed playing with the Uptown Jug Champions, but Pig Pen started pestering him to do something different. While both men had overlapping tastes in music and a love for the blues, Garcia's tastes had always been towards the country end of the spectrum while Pig Pen's were towards R&B. And while the Uptown Jug Champions were all a bit disdainful of the Beatles at first -- apart from Bob Weir, the youngest of the group, who thought they were interesting -- Pig Pen had become enamoured of another British band who were just starting to make it big: [Excerpt: The Rolling Stones, "Not Fade Away"] 29) Garcia liked the first Rolling Stones album too, and he eventually took Pig Pen's point -- the stuff that the Rolling Stones were doing, covers of Slim Harpo and Buddy Holly, was not a million miles away from the material they were doing as Mother McRee's Uptown Jug Champions. Pig Pen could play a little electric organ, Bob had been fooling around with the electric guitars in the music shop. Why not give it a go? The stuff bands like the Rolling Stones were doing wasn't that different from the electric blues that Pig Pen liked, and they'd all seen A Hard Day's Night -- they could carry on playing with banjos, jugs, and kazoos and have the respect of a handful of folkies, or they could get electric instruments and potentially have screaming girls and millions of dollars, while playing the same songs. This was a convincing argument, especially when Dana Morgan Jr, the son of the owner of the music shop, told them they could have free electric instruments if they let him join on bass. Morgan wasn't that great on bass, but what the hell, free instruments. Pig Pen had the best voice and stage presence, so he became the frontman of the new group, singing most of the leads, though Jerry and Bob would both sing a few songs, and playing harmonica and organ. Weir was on rhythm guitar, and Garcia was the lead guitarist and obvious leader of the group. They just needed a drummer, and handily Bill Kreutzmann, who had played with Garcia and Pig Pen in the Zodiacs, was also now teaching music at the music shop. Not only that, but about three weeks before they decided to go electric, Kreutzmann had seen the Uptown Jug Champions performing and been astonished by Garcia's musicianship and charisma, and said to himself "Man, I'm gonna follow that guy forever!" The new group named themselves the Warlocks, and started rehearsing in earnest. Around this time, Garcia also finally managed to get some of the LSD that his friend Robert Hunter had been so enthusiastic about three years earlier, and it was a life-changing experience for him. In particular, he credited LSD with making him comfortable being a less disciplined player -- as a bluegrass player he'd had to be frighteningly precise, but now he was playing rock and needed to loosen up. A few days after taking LSD for the first time, Garcia also heard some of Bob Dylan's new material, and realised that the folk singer he'd had little time for with his preachy politics was now making electric music that owed a lot more to the Beat culture Garcia considered himself part of: [Excerpt: Bob Dylan, "Subterranean Homesick Blues"] Another person who was hugely affected by hearing that was Phil Lesh, who later said "I couldn't believe that was Bob Dylan on AM radio, with an electric band. It changed my whole consciousness: if something like that could happen, the sky was the limit." Up to that point, Lesh had been focused entirely on his avant-garde music, working with friends like Steve Reich to push music forward, inspired by people like John Cage and La Monte Young, but now he realised there was music of value in the rock world. He'd quickly started going to rock gigs, seeing the Rolling Stones and the Byrds, and then he took acid and went to see his friend Garcia's new electric band play their third ever gig. He was blown away, and very quickly it was decided that Lesh would be the group's new bass player -- though everyone involved tells a different story as to who made the decision and how it came about, and accounts also vary as to whether Dana Morgan took his sacking gracefully and let his erstwhile bandmates keep their instruments, or whether they had to scrounge up some new ones. Lesh had never played bass before, but he was a talented multi-instrumentalist with a deep understanding of music and an ability to compose and improvise, and the repertoire the Warlocks were playing in the early days was mostly three-chord material that doesn't take much rehearsal -- though it was apparently beyond the abilities of poor Dana Morgan, who apparently had to be told note-by-note what to play by Garcia, and learn it by rote. Garcia told Lesh what notes the strings of a bass were tuned to, told him to borrow a guitar and practice, and within two weeks he was on stage with the Warlocks: [Excerpt: The Grateful Dead, “Grayfolded"] In September 1995, just weeks after Jerry Garcia's death, an article was published in Mute magazine identifying a cultural trend that had shaped the nineties, and would as it turned out shape at least the next thirty years. It's titled "The Californian Ideology", though it may be better titled "The Bay Area Ideology", and it identifies a worldview that had grown up in Silicon Valley, based around the ideas of the hippie movement, of right-wing libertarianism, of science fiction authors, and of Marshall McLuhan. It starts "There is an emerging global orthodoxy concerning the relation between society, technology and politics. We have called this orthodoxy `the Californian Ideology' in honour of the state where it originated. By naturalising and giving a technological proof to a libertarian political philosophy, and therefore foreclosing on alternative futures, the Californian Ideologues are able to assert that social and political debates about the future have now become meaningless. The California Ideology is a mix of cybernetics, free market economics, and counter-culture libertarianism and is promulgated by magazines such as WIRED and MONDO 2000 and preached in the books of Stewart Brand, Kevin Kelly and others. The new faith has been embraced by computer nerds, slacker students, 30-something capitalists, hip academics, futurist bureaucrats and even the President of the USA himself. As usual, Europeans have not been slow to copy the latest fashion from America. While a recent EU report recommended adopting the Californian free enterprise model to build the 'infobahn', cutting-edge artists and academics have been championing the 'post-human' philosophy developed by the West Coast's Extropian cult. With no obvious opponents, the global dominance of the Californian ideology appears to be complete." [Excerpt: Grayfolded] The Warlocks' first gig with Phil Lesh on bass was on June the 18th 1965, at a club called Frenchy's with a teenage clientele. Lesh thought his playing had been wooden and it wasn't a good gig, and apparently the management of Frenchy's agreed -- they were meant to play a second night there, but turned up to be told they'd been replaced by a band with an accordion and clarinet. But by September the group had managed to get themselves a residency at a small bar named the In Room, and playing there every night made them cohere. They were at this point playing the kind of sets that bar bands everywhere play to this day, though at the time the songs they were playing, like "Gloria" by Them and "In the Midnight Hour", were the most contemporary of hits. Another song that they introduced into their repertoire was "Do You Believe in Magic" by the Lovin' Spoonful, another band which had grown up out of former jug band musicians. As well as playing their own sets, they were also the house band at The In Room and as such had to back various touring artists who were the headline acts. The first act they had to back up was Cornell Gunter's version of the Coasters. Gunter had brought his own guitarist along as musical director, and for the first show Weir sat in the audience watching the show and learning the parts, staring intently at this musical director's playing. After seeing that, Weir's playing was changed, because he also picked up how the guitarist was guiding the band while playing, the small cues that a musical director will use to steer the musicians in the right direction. Weir started doing these things himself when he was singing lead -- Pig Pen was the frontman but everyone except Bill sang sometimes -- and the group soon found that rather than Garcia being the sole leader, now whoever was the lead singer for the song was the de facto conductor as well. By this point, the Bay Area was getting almost overrun with people forming electric guitar bands, as every major urban area in America was. Some of the bands were even having hits already -- We Five had had a number three hit with "You Were On My Mind", a song which had originally been performed by the folk duo Ian and Sylvia: [Excerpt: We Five, "You Were On My Mind"] Although the band that was most highly regarded on the scene, the Charlatans, was having problems with the various record companies they tried to get signed to, and didn't end up making a record until 1969. If tracks like "Number One" had been released in 1965 when they were recorded, the history of the San Francisco music scene may have taken a very different turn: [Excerpt: The Charlatans, "Number One"] Bands like Jefferson Airplane, the Great Society, and Big Brother and the Holding Company were also forming, and Autumn Records was having a run of success with records by the Beau Brummels, whose records were produced by Autumn's in-house A&R man, Sly Stone: [Excerpt: The Beau Brummels, "Laugh Laugh"] The Warlocks were somewhat cut off from this, playing in a dive bar whose clientele was mostly depressed alcoholics. But the fact that they were playing every night for an audience that didn't care much gave them freedom, and they used that freedom to improvise. Both Lesh and Garcia were big fans of John Coltrane, and they started to take lessons from his style of playing. When the group played "Gloria" or "Midnight Hour" or whatever, they started to extend the songs and give themselves long instrumental passages for soloing. Garcia's playing wasn't influenced *harmonically* by Coltrane -- in fact Garcia was always a rather harmonically simple player. He'd tend to play lead lines either in Mixolydian mode, which is one of the most standard modes in rock, pop, blues, and jazz, or he'd play the notes of the chord that was being played, so if the band were playing a G chord his lead would emphasise the notes G, B, and D. But what he was influenced by was Coltrane's tendency to improvise in long, complex, phrases that made up a single thought -- Coltrane was thinking musically in paragraphs, rather than sentences, and Garcia started to try the same kind of th

Steve Silberman is an award-winning science writer whose articles have appeared in Wired, the New York Times, the New Yorker, and the Boston Globe. He is the author of "NeuroTribes: The Legacy of Autism and the Future of Neurodiversity" - a widely-praised bestseller in the US and the UK. His TED talk, “The Forgotten History of Autism,” has been viewed nearly 2 million times online. Steve also won a gold record from the Recording Industry Association of America for co-producing the Grateful Dead's career-spanning box set So Many Roads (1965-1995), which was Rolling Stone's box set of the year in 1999. His liner notes have been featured in CDs and DVDs by Crosby, Stills, and Nash, the Jerry Garcia Band, and many other groups. As a young man, he was Allen Ginsberg's teaching assistant at Naropa University.   On today's episode, Steve talks to Jack about the how The Beatles impacted his life, the importance of Sgt. Pepper in the counter culture revolution, and the influence of The Beatles on bands such as The Grateful Dead and Crosby Stills Nash and Young.   Check out Steve's website: https://www.stevesilberman.com/ Follow Steve on Twitter: https://twitter.com/stevesilberman   This episode is dedicated to David Crosby, who was one of the most influential musicians in rock history and a very close friend of Steve's. To the surprise of the world, David passed away just two weeks after this podcast was recorded.    One of the reasons I started this podcast was to ask great minds such as David's how The Beatles inspired his music - and thanks our guest Steve Silberman and his recent phone call with David Crosby, that question is answered in today's episode.   David will be sorely missed here on Earth, but as he once said, music is love. - and David has left behind a legacy of music and love that will live on forever.   If you like this episode, be sure to subscribe to this podcast! Follow us on Twitter and Instagram. Or click here for more information: Linktr.ee/BeatlesEarth   ----- The Beatles were an English rock band, formed in Liverpool in 1960, that comprised John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr. They are regarded as the most influential band of all timeand were integral to the development of 1960s counterculture and popular music's recognition as an art form. Rooted in skiffle, beat and 1950s rock 'n' roll, their sound incorporated elements of classical music and traditional pop in innovative ways; the band later explored music styles ranging from ballads and Indian music to psychedelia and hard rock. As pioneers in recording, songwriting and artistic presentation, the Beatles revolutionised many aspects of the music industry and were often publicised as leaders of the era's youth and sociocultural movements. Led by primary songwriters Lennon and McCartney, the Beatles evolved from Lennon's previous group, the Quarrymen, and built their reputation playing clubs in Liverpool and Hamburg over three years from 1960, initially with Stuart Sutcliffe playing bass. The core trio of Lennon, McCartney and Harrison, together since 1958, went through a succession of drummers, including Pete Best, before asking Starr to join them in 1962. Manager Brian Epstein moulded them into a professional act, and producer George Martin guided and developed their recordings, greatly expanding their domestic success after signing to EMI Records and achieving their first hit, "Love Me Do", in late 1962.   Lennon, McCartney, Harrison and Starr all released solo albums in 1970. Their solo records sometimes involved one or more of the others; Starr's Ringo (1973) was the only album to include compositions and performances by all four ex-Beatles, albeit on separate songs. With Starr's participation, Harrison staged the Concert for Bangladesh in New York City in August 1971. Other than an unreleased jam session in 1974, later bootlegged as A Toot and a Snore in '74, Lennon and McCartney never recorded together again. Two double-LP sets of the Beatles' greatest hits, compiled by Klein, 1962–1966 and 1967–1970, were released in 1973, at first under the Apple Records imprint. Commonly known as the "Red Album" and "Blue Album", respectively, each has earned a Multi-Platinum certification in the US and a Platinum certification in the UK. Between 1976 and 1982, EMI/Capitol released a wave of compilation albums without input from the ex-Beatles, starting with the double-disc compilation Rock 'n' Roll Music. The only one to feature previously unreleased material was The Beatles at the Hollywood Bowl (1977); the first officially issued concert recordings by the group, it contained selections from two shows they played during their 1964 and 1965 US tours. The music and enduring fame of the Beatles were commercially exploited in various other ways, again often outside their creative control. In April 1974, the musical John, Paul, George, Ringo ... and Bert, written by Willy Russell and featuring singer Barbara Dickson, opened in London. It included, with permission from Northern Songs, eleven Lennon-McCartney compositions and one by Harrison, "Here Comes the Sun". Displeased with the production's use of his song, Harrison withdrew his permission to use it.Later that year, the off-Broadway musical Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band on the Road opened. All This and World War II (1976) was an unorthodox nonfiction film that combined newsreel footage with covers of Beatles songs by performers ranging from Elton John and Keith Moon to the London Symphony Orchestra. The Broadway musical Beatlemania, an unauthorised nostalgia revue, opened in early 1977 and proved popular, spinning off five separate touring productions. In 1979, the band sued the producers, settling for several million dollars in damages. Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (1978), a musical film starring the Bee Gees and Peter Frampton, was a commercial failure and an "artistic fiasco", according to Ingham. Accompanying the wave of Beatles nostalgia and persistent reunion rumours in the US during the 1970s, several entrepreneurs made public offers to the Beatles for a reunion concert.Promoter Bill Sargent first offered the Beatles $10 million for a reunion concert in 1974. He raised his offer to $30 million in January 1976 and then to $50 million the following month. On 24 April 1976, during a broadcast of Saturday Night Live, producer Lorne Michaels jokingly offered the Beatles $3,000 to reunite on the show. Lennon and McCartney were watching the live broadcast at Lennon's apartment at the Dakota in New York, which was within driving distance of the NBC studio where the show was being broadcast. The former bandmates briefly entertained the idea of going to the studio and surprising Michaels by accepting his offer, but decided not to.   Steve Silberman is an award-winning science writer whose articles have appeared in Wired, the New York Times, the New Yorker, the Financial Times, the Boston Globe, the MIT Technology Review, Nature, Salon, Shambhala Sun, and many other publications. He is the author of NeuroTribes: The Legacy of Autism and the Future of Neurodiversity (Avery 2015), which Oliver Sacks called a “sweeping and penetrating history…presented with a rare sympathy and sensitivity.” The book became a widely-praised bestseller in the United States and the United Kingdom, and won the 2015 Samuel Johnson prize for non-fiction, a California Book Award, and a Books for a Better Life award. It was chosen as one of the Best Books of 2015 by The New York Times, The Economist, The Financial Times, The Boston Globe, The Independent, and many other publications, and is being translated into 15 languages. In April 2016, Silberman gave the keynote speech at the United Nations for World Autism Awareness Day. He has given talks on the history of autism at Yale, Harvard, MIT, Oxford, the National Academy of Sciences, Queen Mary University, Apple, Microsoft, Google, the 92nd Street Y, Imperial College London, the MIND Institute at UC Davis, and many other major institutions. His TED talk, “The Forgotten History of Autism,” has been viewed more than a million times and translated into 25 languages. His article “The Placebo Problem” won the 2010 Science Journalism Award for Magazine Writing from the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the Kavli Foundation, and was featured on The Colbert Report. His writing on science, culture, and literature has been collected in a number of major anthologies including The Best American Science Writing of the Year and The Best Business Stories of the Year. Silberman's Twitter account @stevesilberman made Time magazine's list of the best Twitter feeds for the year 2011. He is proud to be a member of the PEN American Center. Silberman also won a gold record from the Recording Industry Association of America for co-producing the Grateful Dead's career-spanning box set So Many Roads (1965-1995), which was Rolling Stone's box set of the year. His liner notes have been featured in CDs and DVDs by Crosby, Stills, and Nash, the Jerry Garcia Band, and many other groups. As a young man, he was Allen Ginsberg's teaching assistant at Naropa University. He lives with his husband Keith in San Francisco.  

It's EPISODE 77 OF FRIENDS AND RIVALS and we are ALL winners! I heard that once from a guy that finished behind me in a 5 mile race and I tend to agree with him. But in this episode, we talk about REAL winners! Who REALLY won the NHL awards, who REALLY predicted Shesterkin winning the Vezina, who is REALLY going to win the Stanley Cup, and who REALLY are our top 5 bands? It's NOT DEBATABLE! Have you ever heard someone butcher the lyrics to timeless songs? We got that too! And the REAL lesson that we learn today is best summed up by the immortal lyrics of Neal Morse from the song So Many Roads; "As I look to the grand horizon, gazing out at the auburn sky, there's..." ................................................................................................................................................................................................................... Wait, how the hell did they manage to mute me when I'm doing the episode write up??? Only on FRIENDS AND RIVALS EPISODE 77!  

In this episode, we're joined by Patreon Playlister Erik Chale, to battle over who created the best Joe Bonamassa playlist. Time to see those different shades of the blues! Vote now for YOUR favorite playlists, hear the results of past episodes & listen to ALL of the playlists at: http://www.playlistwarspodcast.com If you'd like to support Playlist Wars, then consider becoming a Patreon subscriber: http://www.patreon.com/playlistwars. Tiers include: Patreon exclusive content; early access to ad-free episodes; & join the show as a guest for a "Playlist An Album" mini episode or a full-length episode! SONGS DISCUSSED INCLUDE Ball Peen Hammer, Blues Deluxe, Blue & Evil, Cradle Rock, Dirt In My Pocket, Drive, Driving Towards The Light, Dust Bowl, Evil Mama, High Class Girl, I Got All Ya Need, Just Got Paid (Live at the Royal Albert Hall), Man In The Middle (Black Country Communion), Meaning Of The Blues, Mind's Eye, Miss You Hate You, Sloe Gin, So Many Roads, Spanish Boots, Steal Your Heart Away, Tennessee Plates, The Ballad of John Henry, The Ghost Of Macon Jones, The Heart That Never Waits, The Last Matador Of Bayonne, The River, Traveling South & Walking Blues AS HEARD IN THE EPISODE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1gS5ibUPUvg CONNECT WITH PLAYLIST WARS Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/playlistwars Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/playlistwars Twitter: http://twitter.com/playlistwars Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/playlistwarspodcast YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCcW7NibxehYRf8_UZ88Qtbg --- Support this podcast: https://anchor.fm/playlistwars/support

Rob kicks back with an iced out dark roast coffee and some environmentally friendly cannabis called Verde Natural from Colorado. He talks about the different comedy tours he has done in the past, longing to see more live music and the song  "So Many Roads" by the Grateful Dead.  Show's IG - Cannabiscoffeehour

Terminamos el repaso del doble elepé "Super Blues World" V.A. – Super Blues World (II) Decca – DCS 15000. España Columbia 1970 Lista de canciones C1 Savoy Brown– A Hard Way To Go C3 John Mayall con Peter Green– So Many Roads C6 Ten Years After– Going To Try D1 Keef Hartley Band – Don't Be Afraid D3 John Mayall, tocando él solo todos los instrumentos– Don't Kick Me D5 Black Cat Bones– Save My Love Bonus interludio no incluido en ninguno de los elepés que estamos repasando: Frijid Pink - The House of the Rising Sun. Una vez terminado el repaso de este fenomenal disco, y el Bonus Interludio, vamos con otro mejor: "Blues and Rock" publicado dos años después, donde se eligieron las canciones con más mimo. Aquí no se puede prescindir de ninguna. Nos ocupará el programa del lunes y parte del próximo martes. Fue edición 'made in Spain' que tuvo réplica dos años después en Alemania. Por una vez, nos adelantamos. V.A – Blues & Rock (I) Decca – DCS 15020/21 España, Columbia 1972 Lista de Títulos A1 John Mayall & The Bluesbreakers & Eric Clapton– All Your Love 3:34 A2 Ten Years After– Spoonful 6:03 A3 Savoy Brown– Taste And Try Before You Buy 2:21 A4 John Mayall & The Bluesbreakers & Peter Green – Greeny Mañana haremos un interludio con "El Blues en el Jazz Moderno". Escuchar audio

Terminamos el repaso del doble elepé "Super Blues World" V.A. – Super Blues World (II) Decca – DCS 15000. España Columbia 1970 Lista de canciones C1 Savoy Brown– A Hard Way To Go C3 John Mayall con Peter Green– So Many Roads C6 Ten Years After– Going To Try D1 Keef Hartley Band – Don't Be Afraid D3 John Mayall, tocando él solo todos los instrumentos– Don't Kick Me D5 Black Cat Bones– Save My Love Bonus interludio no incluido en ninguno de los elepés que estamos repasando: Frijid Pink - The House of the Rising Sun. Una vez terminado el repaso de este fenomenal disco, y el Bonus Interludio, vamos con otro mejor: "Blues and Rock" publicado dos años después, donde se eligieron las canciones con más mimo. Aquí no se puede prescindir de ninguna. Nos ocupará el programa del lunes y parte del próximo martes. Fue edición 'made in Spain' que tuvo réplica dos años después en Alemania. Por una vez, nos adelantamos. V.A – Blues & Rock (I) Decca – DCS 15020/21 España, Columbia 1972 Lista de Títulos A1 John Mayall & The Bluesbreakers & Eric Clapton– All Your Love 3:34 A2 Ten Years After– Spoonful 6:03 A3 Savoy Brown– Taste And Try Before You Buy 2:21 A4 John Mayall & The Bluesbreakers & Peter Green – Greeny Mañana haremos un interludio con "El Blues en el Jazz Moderno". Escuchar audio

John Mayall & Friends ‎– Along For The Ride ”A World Of Hurt” “Along For The Ride” “Put It Right Back” “That's Why I Love You So” “Yo Yo Man” “Testify“ “Early In The Morning” “Something About My Baby” “So Many Roads” “World War Blues” “California” “She Don't Play By The Rules” Escuchar audio

Robert Hunter Tribute show. There really are no words and totally not about me and more about all of us. Robert Hunter passed to the other side last week, there are no words other then Thank you! I will do my best to tribute him here with a few words and songs to fill the air. Text Jerry Garcia spoke about So Many Roads in an interview with Dave DiMartino in 1992; It's Hunter writing me from my point of view, you know what I mean? We've been working together for so long that he knows what I know. The song is full of references to things that have to do with me.... ....Hunter is the only guy that could do that. He can write my point of view better than I can think it, you know what I mean? So that's the kind of relationship we have. And he frequently writes tunes from my point of view that are autobiographical. There actually biographical I guess. He's the one writing them, but even so they express my point of view - and more than that they express the emotional content of my soul in a certain way that only a long-term and intimate relationship with a guy as brilliant as Hunter coughs up ... I can sing that song, feel totally comfortable with it. Robert Hunter's comments on the origins of this song in the notes in Box Of Rain: Lyrics 1965-1993 ;

Welcome to the first episode! Conrad Life Report is a podcast about life, including digital media, music, books, food, drink, New York City, and more. Episode 1 topics: Rick Webb's Webb Chatham Report, theme music by Takka Takka, Grateful Dead Pacific Northwest '73 - '74, David Byrne at Forest Hills, VIP experience at Forest Hills Stadium, Shellac at the Bell House, Leigh Brackett, The Three Body Problem, So Many Roads by David Browne, Oliver in kindergarten, first PTA meeting, fellow parents, Vermont beer, Heady Topper by The Alchemist, Sip of Sunshine, Upper Pass, naming the podcast, outro music by Takka Takka.

Pantheon is proud to present a mini-series of shows 'Deadicated' to discussing Amazon Studios 'Long Strange Trip: The Untold Story of the Grateful Dead' documentary. Over the next six weeks we will be recapping each Act with guest host Tim Lynch of KPFA's 'Dead to the World' radio program. Tim will be joined by Christian & Peter as well as very special guests that are part of the film, Dead scholars, academics or had another important role in the 50+ year story. The other weekly guest on roundtable will be...'The UnDeaducated'. This guest will know little to nothing of the band and be exposed to them mostly the first time through this film. Be sure to head over to Amazon to watch Act II of the documentary before joining us! The film is directed by Amir Bar-Lev and executive produced by Martin Scorsese. This week's special guest is Steve Silberman, who not only is a Deadhead that has written on the band and has co- produced the Grateful Dead's career-spanning box set So Many Roads (1965-1995), and Steve appears in Long Strange Trip. He is an award-winning science writer whose articles have appeared in Wired, the New York Times, the New Yorker, and many other publications. He is the author of NeuroTribes: The Legacy of Autism and the Future of Neurodiversity ) published in 2015, it won the Samuel Johnson Prize for non-fiction, and was named one of the best books of 2015 by the New York Times, the Economist, and the Guardian. This week's Undeaducated is Erika Brett. Erika is the vocalist and keyboardist of indie Americana band, The Empty Pockets, from Chicago. She has been featured in Rolling Stone Magazine and her band's latest record, 'The Ten Cent Tour', recently charted on Billboard. Since her pockets are always empty anyway, she's giving away 2 songs from the album to our Listeners. Text Pockets to 444999. Please subscribe, rate and review and head over to Patreon to help support our network of rock based podcasts. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Doug and Kirk welcome David Browne, author of So Many Roads: The Life and Times of the Grateful Dead to discuss the history of this iconic band. Sponsor: Drobo, simple to use storage arrays designed to keep your data safe forever. Visit Drobo.com. This week’s guest: David Browne’s website So Many Roads: The Life and Times of the Grateful Dead Show notes: Kirk’s review of So Many Roads The Grateful Dead’s Wall of Sound Our next tracks: Kirk: The Grateful Dead Movie Soundtrack Doug: The Grateful Dead: Terrapin Station If you like the show, please subscribe in iTunes or your favorite podcast app, and please rate the podcast. Special Guest: David Browne.

Episode 043 - August 2016 Set 1Shady Grove[1] (1991-12-08)I'm Just Here To Get My Baby Out Of Jail[1] > The Wind And Rain[1] (1987-12-04)Ragged But Right[1] (1987-10-21)Spike Driver Blues[1] (1986-11-14)Troubled In Mind[1] (1987-10-31)Turtle Dove[1] (1987-12-17)Diamond Joe[1] (1987)Russian Lullaby[1] (1991-08-25)Summertime[1] (1993)The Streamlined Cannonball[1] (1975)The Maker[1] (1994-02-06)Shining Star (1994-08-14)I Shall Be Released[1] (1990)So Many Roads[1] (1995-07-09)After Midnight-> Eleanor Rigby Jam-> After Midnight (1980-01-20)[1] Dead Fantasy Debut

GEP Podcast #8 "All success is built on failure. So go fail - screw it up!" -Wayne Hoover For more on how you can get started with photography today, visit: http://www.greatescapepublishing.com/start/photography. Great Escape Radio Episode 8: So Many Roads to Photography Success Great Escape Publishing member, Wayne Hoover didn't set out to become a photographer. In fact, he originally wanted to try travel writing, but a GEP one-day photography workshop set a new career in motion for him. And in the last year, he’s had so much success with his photography business that he returned to a recent Great Escape Publishing photo workshop to present his story on their success panel. As Wayne says… "Remember when you were in kindergarten and they gave you crayons and told you to start coloring. Color anything you want, they said…there's no right or wrong. You were thrilled. But then as you got older they gave you an algebra book, told you to grow up and get prepared to climb the ladder of success. But then when you get to be about 40 or 50, you realize that ladder is on the wrong wall. Someone comes in and says they are replacing you with a 20-something worker - who is cheaper. And you start trying to find a way to get your crayons back." Wayne’s story is motivational for anyone hoping to move away from a 9-5 desk job and start earning an income doing something they love. Wayne and his wife own an interior design business. His wife was frustrated with trying to find quality artwork to complete her interior design projects. So, when a client requested to have his family's life story photographed on a 22 foot wall in his home. Wayne accepted the challenge. He photographed the spot where the client had proposed to his wife, the church they were married in, their son's birth, his high school and many other places of nostalgia. He put the photos on a 2x3 canvas and sold it for $2500. And the rest is history… You can hear more about Wayne's story in this week's broadcast… For more on how you can get started with photography today, visit: http://www.greatescapepublishing.com/start/photography.

Show #111, Hour 1 | Guest: Steve Silberman is an award-winning science writer whose articles have appeared in Wired, the New Yorker, and many other publications. His writing on science, culture, and literature has been collected in a number of major anthologies including The Best American Science Writing of the Year and The Best Business Stories of the Year. Silberman’s Twitter account @stevesilberman made Time magazine’s list of the best Twitter feeds for the year 2011. Silberman also won a gold record from the Recording Industry Association of America for co-producing the Grateful Dead’s career-spanning box set So Many Roads (1965-1995), which was Rolling Stone’s box set of the year. | Show Summary: Award winning science writer Steve Silberman turned his incredibly successful TED talk “The Forgotten History of Autism” into the 2015 Samuel Johnson Prize for Non-Fiction, NeuroTribes: The Legacy of Autism and the Future of Neurodiversity.

show#4874.26.13Bill Perry - My Life (Greycourtlightning 1998)Bob Brozman - Get Your Ashes Hauled (A Truckload Of Blues 1992)Thumper Jones (George Jones) - Rock It (1956 single)Artie "Blues Boy" White - No More (Can We Get Together 1999)ZZ Top - I Gotsa Get Paid (La Futura 2012)Leo The Texas Blues Machine Hull - Pistol #69 (Bootleggin' The Blues 2012)Rabbit Foot - Burn Burn (Swamp Boogie 2012)Aaron Williams & the Hoodoo - Tease Me, Please Me (10:49 - Aarom Williams and the Hoodoo 2011)Tommy Castro - Nasty Habits (Exception To The Rule 1995)Mason Casey - Take It Easy (Deep Blue Dream 2004)Spinner's Section:another rainy sectionJohn Mayall: sitting in the rain (2:56) (So Many Roads, 1967)Los Lobos: can't stop the rain (3:36) (Colossal Head, 1996)Amos Garrett: rainy night in Georgia (4:25) (Third Man In, 1992)Ann Peebles: I can't stand the rain (2:30) (Greatest Hits, 1988)Todd Sharpville: why does it rain? (7:01) (Porchlight, 2010)Eric Bibb: buckets of rain (2:22) (Diamond Days, 2006)Willie Nelson (ft. Jonny Lang): rainy day blues (5:09) (Milk Cow Blues, 2000)Jonny Lang: still rainin' (4:50) (Wander This World, 1998)Joe Cocker: out of the rain (4:38) (Night Calls, 1991)Denny Freeman: Acapulco rain (4:03) (Out Of The Blue, 1987)Madeleine Peyroux: California rain (2:58) (Half The Perfect World, 2006)Lovin' Spoonful: rain on the roof (2:13) (Hums Of The Lovin' Spoonful, 1966)Back To Beardo:Albert Castiglia - Living the Dream (Living the Dream 2012)Hadden Sayers - Alone with the Blues (Rolling Soul 2013)David Migden and the Dirty Words - Desert Inside (Killing It 2012)The Micronite Filters - Ladies Man Blues (Chasing Ghosts 2013)The Nighthawks - Down To My Last Million Tears (Damn Good Time 2012)

I've had a fair number of requests for 90's Dead shows recently, and this week's shows features one of the best shows that took place back in 1993. This one is a favorite not only because the second set features an appearance by Ken Nordine, but also because I really enjoy Jerry's playing and the rest of the band puts in a solid performance. This starts with a tight Help->Slip into a nice long Franklin's Tower. Althea is always a favorite, and the Masterpiece as well as So Many Roads is quite enjoyable. Grateful Dead  3/11/93 - Thursday  Rosemont Horizon Arena - Rosemont, IL  One:Help On The Way >  Slipknot! >  Franklin's Tower ;  Little Red Rooster ;  Althea ;  When I Paint My Masterpiece ;  So Many Roads >  The Music Never Stopped ;   You can listen to this week's Deadpod http://traffic.libsyn.com/deadshow/deadpod102811.mp3">here:http://traffic.libsyn.com/deadshow/deadpod102811.mp3">http://traffic.libsyn.com/deadshow/deadpod102811.mp3 Thanks for your kind Support of the Deadpod - it keeps us rolling!     

show#37602.19.11ALL VINYL!!!! Picture is a hint.... The Nighthawks - Upside Your Head (The Nighthawks (Mercury poisoning)1980)Toru Oki and The Nighthawks - Pretty Girl, Cadillac & Money (Bad Boy Live 1983)Mark Wenner - My Starter Won't Start (Nothin' But... 1989)Buzzy Linhart - Eye 1-2-C-U Shuffle (Buzzy)Dean Friedman - S & M ("Well, Well," Said The Rocking Chair)Spinner's Section:Peter Green: rubber duck (3:40) (45 rpm single, Decca, 1967) (So Many Roads, Decca, 1968)Climax Chicago Blues Band: a stranger in your town (4:14) (-, Sire, 1969)Mike Morgan & Crawl: I've got a good thing (5:30) (Raw & Ready, Black Top, 1990)Howlin Wilf & the VeeJays: don't have to take no more (3:11) (Blue Men Sing The Whites, Waterfront, 1987)John Mayall: me and my woman (3:59) (Crusade, Decca, 1967)Blues Burglars: hoochie coochie man (4:58) (Breaking In, Red Lightnin, 1986)Amos Garrett, Doug Sahm, Gene Taylor: teardrops on your letter (4:02) (The Return Of The Formerly Brothers, Stony Plain, 1987)Steve Samuels: be careful with a fool (6:31) (Saturday Night Blues, Blue Sting, 1984)Solomon Burke: cry to me (2:31) (45 rpm single, Atlantic, 1962)Back To Beardo:Climax Blues Band - You Make Me Sick (FM Live 1973)Edison Electric Band - Smokehouse (Bless You, Dr. Woodward)Pete Brown - Aeroplane Head Woman (Pete Brown and pibloklo Collection 1969)John Hammond - It's Too Late (Southern Fried 1970)The Belairs - Too Hot To Handle (Need Me A Car 1984)The Amazing Rhythm Aces - Who Will The Next Fool Be (Full House/Aces High 1981)Nick Lowe - Ba Doom (Nick the Knife 1982)