Podcasts about turn on your lovelight

We got the Terminal Island Correctional Facility Blues. This week our host FiG is heading to San Pedro, California. It's August 4th, 1971 and the Grateful Dead are playing Terminal Island Correctional Facility. Discussions abound about Bobby Weir and the Wolf Bros in London and Herb Greene's passing. Truckin' Yellow Dog Story Bertha Me And Bobby McGee Hard To Handle China Cat Sunflower > I Know You Rider Loser Playing In The Band Next Time You See Me Me And My Uncle Casey Jones Cumberland Blues Big Boss Man Sugaree El Paso Mr. Charlie Not Fade Away > Going Down The Road Feeling Bad > Turn On Your Lovelight

Back in June, I had author David Cain on to tell us about his book Infinite Dead: A Daily Guide to Grateful Dead Concert Performances Volume 2: July. I wanted to have him back on to talk about the first volume, which covers all the Dead shows during October. David made some time to come back on and I'm so glad he did. Very few bands deserve an in-depth look at a band's live show, the Grateful Dead is at the top of that list. Infinite Dead is a new, groundbreaking guide to Grateful Dead concerts. Authoritative and entertaining, Volume 1 features detailed reviews of every Grateful Dead concert performed in the month of October—over 200 shows, including: The three-set, acoustic-electric performances at The Warfield in San Francisco and Radio City Music Hall in New York City;Their five-night “final” stand at the Winterland Ballroom in 1974; andThirteen Halloween performances, from their first in 1966 to their last in 1991.Also included in this volume is the band's revival of “Dark Star” (10/9/89 Hampton Coliseum), “St. Stephen” (10/11/83 Madison Square Garden), and “Turn On Your Love Light” (10/16/81 Melkweg). What better month to talk about The Dead than the month of October!David Cain has been listening to the music of the Grateful Dead for over forty years, including seeing live performances of the band in twenty-five cities in thirteen states during the course of three decades. David's writing on music, sports, and other subjects has appeared in publications ranging from Addicted To Noise to USA Today's Baseball Weekly. David lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.Purchase a copy of Infinite Dead: A Daily Guide to Grateful Dead Concert Performances Volume 1: OctoberVisit the Infinite Dead website Episode Playlist ---------- BookedOnRock.com The Booked On Rock YouTube Channel Follow The Booked On Rock with Eric Senich:FACEBOOKINSTAGRAMTIKTOKX Find Your Nearest Independent Bookstore Contact The Booked On Rock Podcast: thebookedonrockpodcast@gmail.com The Booked On Rock Music: “Whoosh” by Crowander / “Last Train North” & “No Mercy” by TrackTribe 

This week's second set from the August 6, 1971 at the Hollywood Paladium is a classic.  It opens with 'St. Stephan' - they'd only play this one five more times before 1976.. a nice 'Truckin' goes into drums, then they roar into 'The Other One' and segue flawlessly into 'Me & My Uncle' - the first time they tried this and it worked perfectly.. they then go back into the 'Other One' but if you listen you can hear a WRS prelude tease before they do... Things mellow a bit with 'Deal' but the rest of the set is just as intense with 'Sugar Magnolia' then a great 'Morning Dew' and Pigpen lets it loose with a 23 minute plus 'Lovelight'..      Grateful Dead Hollywood Palladium Hollywood, CA 8/6/1971 - Friday Two      Saint Stephen [6:16] Truckin' [6:50] > Drums [3:56] > The Other One [7:29] > Me And My Uncle [3:08] > The Other One [5:41] Deal [5:05] Sugar Magnolia [6:18] Morning Dew [10:42] Turn On Your Love Light [23:38]  You can listen to this week's Deadpod here:  http://traffic.libsyn.com/deadshow/deadpod081624.mp3 Thank you for your kind support of the Deadpod!   

This week, our host Knob goes solo and visits Las Vegas. No, not for the Sphere, but for the Grateful Dead's March 29th, 1969 show at the Ice Palace in Las Vegas, Nevada. Monologues abound about keeping up with the Sphere, Jerry/Pigpen interplay, and how Mickey Hart was ahead of his time. Morning Dew Good Morning Little School Girl Doin' That Rag Dark Star > Saint Stephen > The Eleven > Turn On Your Love Light 

This week's Deadpod takes us back to Irvine California for the second set of the show from April 23, 1988. This second set is well-executed, tight yet containing several delightful spacey interludes. The opening 'Playin In the Band', while short, is quite interesting and gives way to an excellent 'Crazy Fingers'. That leads into 'Uncle John's Band', afterwards the band goes into a rather extended Drums and Space, whcih are quite high powered and interesting.  Post-Drums highlights include a powerful 'Going Down the Road' and an  excellent 'Dear Mr. Fantasy> Hey Jude reprise'. Jerry's ballad slot gives us a sweet 'Stella Blue' and they close the set with a nice 'Lovelight'. A 'Knockin' On Heaven's Door' encore ends the festivities.    Grateful Dead Irvine Meadows Amphitheatre Irvine , CA 4/23/1988 - Saturday Two     Playing In The Band [7:38] > Crazy Fingers [8:04] > Uncle John's Band [8:39] > Drums [10:05] > Space [13:09] > Goin' Down The Road Feeling Bad [6:02] > I Need A Miracle [3:32] > Dear Mr. Fantasy [5:14] > Hey Jude Reprise [1:27] > Stella Blue [8:07] > Turn On Your Love Light [5:32] Encore     Knockin' On Heaven's Door   You can listen to this week's Deadpod here:  http://traffic.libsyn.com/deadshow/deadpod050324.mp3   Sorry - no 'The Race is On' this year, but nevertheless I hope you have a wonderful Derby weekend .. May is a month worth celebrating and enjoying...

"Stephen Stills & the Dead: Legendary Collaborations Unveiled" Larry Mishkin  discusses various aspects related to the Grateful Dead, December 11th, 2023 show including historical performances, the significance of particular songs like "China Cat Sunflower" into "I Know You Rider," insights into the band's music evolution, and notable appearances by Stephen Stills with the Dead during their performances. Larry also pays tribute to Denny Lane, a musician associated with Wings and the Moody Blues, following Lane's recent passing. Additionally, he delves into the musical significance of the song "Black Queen" by Stephen Stills, its themes, and its rare appearances in Dead concerts. Furthermore, he provides updates and insights into ticket sales for upcoming concerts, specifically for Phish. .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     Grateful DeadDecember 12, 1969  (54 years ago, tomorrow)ThelmaWest Hollywood, CAWith Stephen StillsGrateful Dead Live at Thelma Theater on 1969-12-10 : Free Borrow & Streaming : Internet Archive  INTRO:               I Know You Rider                           Track #1                           2:10 – 3:42               Every Deadhead knows this song, but what makes this version unusual is that it is a show opener AND is not preceded by China Cat. In the Grateful Dead universe, few song pairings stick out with such adoration and favoritism among the band's legion of fans more than “China Cat Sunflower” > “I Know You Rider”. The Grateful Dead performed the two-song combination over 500 times throughout their 30-year run, making it one of the more dependable mid-set segues capable of launching a show into orbit at any moment thanks to its dance-friendly tempo and lengthy jams transition jams.It makes it that much more special to note that the “China” > “Rider” combination made its first appearance at the legendary Cafe au Go Go in New York City on September 30th, 1969—54 years ago today, and less than a month before the venue closed its doors in October of that year."I Know You Rider" (also "Woman Blues" and "I Know My Rider") is a traditionalblues song that has been adapted by numerous artists. It has appeared in folk, country, and rock guises and is not overly identified with any particular artist. Modern versions can be traced back to Blind Lemon Jefferson's "Deceitful Brownskin Blues", which was released as a single in 1927. It appears in a 1934 book, American Ballads and Folk Songs, by the noted father-and-son musicologists and folklorists John Lomax and Alan Lomax.[2] The book notes that "An eighteen-year old black girl, in prison for murder, sang the song and the first stanza of these blues." The Lomaxes then added a number of verses from other sources and named it "Woman Blue".[2] The music and melody are similar to Lucille Bogan's "B.D. Woman Blues" (c. 1935), although the lyrics are completely different. By the mid-1960s, rock acts had begun to perform or record the song. James Taylor sang it as "Circle Round the Sun" on his 1968 debut album James Taylor).[2]Big Brother and the Holding Company featuring Janis Joplin were performing it in concert; a rendition from 1966 was released in 1984 on the live album Cheaper Thrills.[2] The Grateful Dead's interpretation was a staple of their live shows from the beginning of the band's existence in 1965, where it would soon be performed as a connected song from "China Cat Sunflower" and represented the group's forging a bridge from their psychedelic music to their more traditional country and folk side.[1] This combination was featured on their 1972 triple live album Europe '72.[1] (The Grateful Dead's segue approach was later used by Bruce Hornsby and the Range in the late 1980s, with "I Know You Rider" following their song, "The Red Plains" The combo was first released by the Dead on the original Europe '72 album.  Although Rider can be found on earlier Dead recordings.               1st – Nov. 3, 1965 at Mother's in S.F.              Last – July 8, 1995, Soldier Field              Total 563   No. 4 most played, not counting Drums and Space, China Cat is No. 3 on that list at 564  Show is at Thelma, a nightclub on Hollywood Blvd. with a very uncertain history.  First, it was a Hungarian restaurant called The Little Gypsy, then it became an upscale restaurant called The Golden Violin.  In mid-60's, the owner turned it into a rock club, Galaxy.  Was located in the middle of a block filled with music venues.  To the east, was Whisky a Go Go (most famous of them all), to the west Hamburger Hamlet (for late night munchies).  Right next door was the London Fog where The Doors, in their formative years, had a residency before Jim Morrison's behaviour got them kicked out – moved to the Whisky to become the house band.  Initially, Galaxy's house band was a fledgling Iron Butterfly.  Became Thelma in the fall of 1969. Was a three night run from 12/10 – 12/12.  Night one is the concert featured on Dave's Picks No. 10 – another great concert, but this one has one thing that the Dec. 10th show does not have – Stephen Stills playing with the boys. Recall this past spring we featured Stephen Stills playing with the Dead on April 16, 1983 at Brendan Byrne Arena in NJ when they played Stills' song, Black Queen and one of my favorite versions of Iko ever recorded by the Dead.  The next night they played Love The One Your With.  Only a 14 year gap in between!  SHOW No. 1:     Casey Jones                           Track #8                           2:48 – 4:15 The first tune Stills came on stage for (although some remember him playing in the first set as well). Just like we discussed last week (Fillmore West on 12.4.69), there is a bridge here between primal dead and americana dead.  This show features a mix of primal dead and new americana tunes.  Casey Jones was an entirely different type of song for the Dead but it rocked and Stills seems very comfortable figuring out his place in the mix.  Garcia/Hunter tuneReleased on Workingman's Dead in spring, 1970. First played on June 22, 1969 at a show in Central Park in NYCLast played on March 27, 1993 at the Kickerbocker Arena in Albany NYTotal played 313 times (No. 42) BUT, after 1972 it dropped off the regular set list rotation.  From 1973 till the end, only played 47 times and by the ‘80's it became a rarity that required good luck to catch:                                                                   1982 – 2x                                         1984 – 2x                                         1992 – 3x                                         1993 – 1x I unfortunately never saw it live.  Very disappointing. Closest I came was the '84 show at Merriweather Post pavilion outside of D.C.  I was with a group of friends on summer tour but did not head out for the east coast swing and missed that show.  But my good buddy Rick was there because he took the long car ride that I avoided.  Miss a little, miss a lot.  Article re Stills and Dead SHOW No. 2:     Good Morning Little School Girl                           Track #9                           7:00 – 8:39 We featured this song last week but had to feature it again, because on this version Stills finds his footing and jams along with Garcia and Weir as well as Pig on the harmonica.  A very cool sound.  Pig kills it as usual.  SHOW No. 3:     Black Queen                           Track No. 11                           2:15 – 3:52 We featured this song on the episode earlier this year featuring the April 16, 1983 mash up show.  This is an earlier version and just as down and dirty as the later version.  A great Stills tune that the Dead feel right at home with. As a reminder,Black Queen is a song written by American singer-songwriter Stephen Stills. It was featured on his self-titled debut solo album released in 1970. The song holds a significant place in Stills' body of work, as it explores powerful themes of love, equality, and racial injustice. Let's delve into the meaning behind this iconic song and unveil the message Stephen Stills intended to convey through his heartfelt lyrics. Black Queen is a passionate ode to the African American community, expressing solidarity with their struggle for equality and justice. The song's opening line, “White knights for the black queen, marching to the stirrings of the breeze,” immediately sets the tone for the uplifting and empathetic message throughout the song. Stills paints a vivid picture of a world where individuals of different races join hands to fight against racial discrimination.Throughout the song, Stills calls for unity and emphasizes the importance of embracing diversity. He acknowledges the strength and resilience of the Black community, praising their ability to overcome adversity and stand tall in the face of systemic racism. With lines like “Black queen, your dreams are on the ground,” Stills recognizes the struggles that African Americans have faced but encourages them to keep fighting for their rights and aspirations.This show and April '83 are the only two times the Dead played the song in concert.  SHOW No. 4:     Turn On Your Lovelight                           Track #12                           :46 – 2:25 A very short version of this tune, considering its 1969 and Pig has the lead, but after only a few minutes, they segue into a killer Cryptical/Other One which apparently was a bit too out there for Stills as he leaves the stage at the transition. Still Pig at his finest singing and rapping as only he could do.  A tune that died with Pig until Bobby brought it back in the early ‘80's and it became more of a regular after that although never as much as it was when Pig was around.  Great jamming with Stills in his final number with the band for the night.  OUTRO:              Cosmic Charlie                           Track #17                           Start – end (just about a minute because it cuts out) Released on Aoxomoxoa in June, 1969.  Grateful Dead was known for their unique and poetic songwriting style, and “Cosmic Charlie” is no exception. Released in 1969 on their album “Aoxomoxoa,” this song has captivated fans for decades with its enigmatic lyrics and psychedelic sound. Exploring themes of spirituality, love, and the human experience, “Cosmic Charlie” takes listeners on a sonic journey unlike any other. The meaning behind “Cosmic Charlie” is open to interpretation, as with many of the band's songs. Some believe it was inspired by the vision of a fictional character named Cosmic Charlie, who travels through different dimensions, spreading joy and love. Others see it as a metaphor for the human longing for connection and transcendence. The lyrics, although cryptic at times, convey a sense of wonder and mystery that invites listeners to delve deeper into their own consciousness. The overall message of “Cosmic Charlie” seems to be one of embracing the cosmic and spiritual aspects of life. It encourages listeners to let go of their inhibitions, explore the unknown, and seek connection with the universe. The song invites individuals to tap into their inner selves and discover the hidden realms of existence. Very rarely played by the Dead.  Only a total of 45 times.1st – Jan. 16, 1969, Robertson Gymnasium at UC Santa Barbara, Isla Vista, CALast  - Sept. 25, 1976, Cap Center in Landover Maryland. Played 20 times in 1969, 18 times in 1970 and one time in 1971.  The tune then went on hiatus until 1976 when it was played a total of 6 times between June and September.  Thereafter, a tune the deadheads literally begged the Dead to play again.  Around 1983 or 1984, a group started asking for signatures on a petition to the Dead asking them to play the song again.  They would also hand out cards with the song's lyrics so “when” the Dead played it, the Deadheads would be able to sing along.  Alas, they just became Dead trinkets in the same cigar box as my ticket stubs because the Dead never did play it again. Sorry this is a “cut” version of this version, but it's still great music and as any Deadhead who never heard it live would agree, this would have been an amazing tune to hear so even just a little of it is worth the listen.  Enjoy 

Sam Paddor and Tom Constanten discuss Tom's role playing with the Grateful Dead in the late 1960s.My Back Pages Website:mybackpages.orgTom Constanten's Website:tomconstanten.com

Sintonía: Instrumental de Augustus Pablo "I Put A Spell On You", "My Lonely Sad Eyes", "Out Of Sight", "It´s All Over Now Baby Blue", "Bad Or Good", "Hello Josephine", "Don´t You Know", "Hey Gir", "Bring ´Em On In", "Turn On Your Love Light" (Alternate Version), "Here Comes The Night" (Mono), "Friday´s Child", "Time´s Getting Tougher Than Tough", "Richard Cory" y "Don´t Start Cryin´ Now" Escuchar audio

This week's Deadpod contains part two of the band's performance at the Fillmore in San Francisco on November 7, 1969.  Hyper-energetic, this one contains loads of frantic jamming and amazing soaring guitar work by Garcia and Lesh. After a fairly short China>Rider, they go into a deep exploration with 'Dark Star' which goes into an unusual 'Uncle John's Jam', then back out with Lesh leading the charge into 'The Other One'. The highlight, for me, is the wonderful closing number, Pigpen in all his glory on a great 'Lovelight' rap.   Grateful Dead Fillmore Auditorium San Francisco, CA 11/7/1969 - Friday Part Two China Cat Sunflower [2:56] > Jam [2:30] > I Know You Rider [3:21] > Dark Star [18:33] > Uncle John's Jam [1:45#] > Dark Star [#5:47] > Cryptical Envelopment [1:46] > Drums [4:56] > The Other One [9:54] > Turn On Your Love Light [17:22#]  You can listen to this week's Deadpod here:  http://traffic.libsyn.com/deadshow/deadpod111023.mp3  Thanks for your kind support!    and.. Leave It On! :) 

NEW FOR NOVEMBER 1, 2023 As your wet socks dry . . . Cold Camping - The Best Radio You Have Never Heard Vol. 471 1. Lumpy Gravy (edits 1 & 2) - Frank Zappa 2. Room Full Of Mirrors (live) - Jimi Hendrix w/ Dave Mason and Chris Wood 3. Get Up, Stand Up (live) - Peter Tosh 4. No Woman, No Cry (live) - Joan Baez 5. Count Down By Threes - Ron Lazzeretti 6. Won't You Give Me One More Chance - Turnpike Troubadours 7. From The Beginning (alt) - Emerson, Lake and Palmer 8. The Ballad Of Danny Bailey (live) - Elton John 9. I Think I - David Crosby 10. Turn On Your Love Light (live) - Elvis Costello, Jerry Garcia, Bob Weir et al 11. Dear Mr. Fantasy (live) - Traffic w/ Jerry Garcia 12. Anyday (live) - Tedeschi Trucks Band 13. It's Your Amazing Grace - Glen Campbell 14. Exiles - King Crimson 15. Bringing It Back / Can I Tell You (live) - Kansas 16. Dreams Of Heaven - Flash 17. New Gold Dream (81-82-83-84) (live) - Simple Minds The Best Radio You Have Never Heard. Shivering good music for fall 2023. Accept No Substitute Click to leave comments on the Facebook page.

Come on Seawolves, we're heading to SBU! This week, our hosts Game, FiG, and Knob are all back and heading to SUNY at Stony Brook for the Grateful Dead's October 30th, 1970 show at the SUNY Gym. Discussions abound about New Riders of the Purple Sage, whether or not being "droll" is a good thing, and the debut of a brand new segment. Cold Rain & Snow Truckin' Sugar Magnolia Next Time You See Me Me & My Uncle Drums > Good Lovin' > Drums > Cumberland Blues > Good Lovin' Casey Jones Smokestack Lightning Beat It On Down The Line China Cat Sunflower > I Know You Rider Friend Of The Devil Truckin' Candyman It Hurts Me Too Dancin' In The Streets Big Railroad Blues Saint Stephen > Not Fade Away > Goin' Down The Road Feelin' Bad > Not Fade Away > Turn On Your Love Light 

"Middle-Aged and Older Patients Report Improved Health with Medical Marijuana"Larry Mishkin discusses a recent study from the University of Florida which shows that medical marijuana use can lead to lower pain levels and reduced dependency on opioids and psychiatric prescriptions among middle-aged and older chronic pain patients. Participants in the study reported improved physical and mental functioning, better sleep quality, and reduced anxiety. The research adds to the growing body of evidence supporting the therapeutic benefits of medical cannabis for pain management..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  Grateful Dead, October 16, 1989, Melk Weg Club, Amsterdam, the NetherlandsGrateful Dead Live at Club Melk Weg on 1981-10-16 : Free Borrow & Streaming : Internet Archive Second of two night stand at this famous hash bar that only held about 500 people in the room in which the Dead performed.  Very cool and famous club in Amsterdam, one of the best known hash bars.  Went there one time in 1988 with good buddies Mikey and H.  A highlight of our trip. Another good buddy, Freddie Burp, was spending the school year abroad in the fall of 1981 and was one of the lucky ones who were present for this show.  He's a tough guy to get a hold of, but maybe some day I can get him on the show to talk about this concert.  INTRO:                  The Race Is On                                Track No. 8                                1:10 – 2:24                 Show had an acoustic first set and an electric second set.  Many of the songs in the acoustic set we featured a few weeks ago from the September, 1980 show at the Warfield Theater in San Francisco as part of the recordings for the Dead's Reckoning album.  So I went with this one which has always been one of my favorites ever since my good buddy Mikey (who took me to three of my first four shows) used to play it for me as we drove through the northwoods of Wisconsin on nights out from the summer camp where we were spending the summer in 1981. "The Race Is On" is a song written by Don Rollins[1] (not to be confused with the Don Rollins who co-wrote "It's Five O'Clock Somewhere" for Alan Jackson and Jimmy Buffett) and made a hit on the country music charts by George Jones and on the pop and easy listening charts by the unrelated Jack Jones. George's version was the first single released from his 1965 album of the same name. Released as a single in September 1964, it peaked at number three on the BillboardHot Country Singles chart and at number 96 on the BillboardHot 100 in January 1965. Jack's version topped Billboard'sEasy Listening chart and reached number 15 on the Hot 100 the same year. The two recordings combined to reach number 12 on the Cashbox charts, which combined all covers of the same song in one listing and thus gave George Jones his only top-40 hit. The song uses thoroughbred horse racing as the metaphor for the singer's romantic relationships.                 Rockabilly artist Dave Edmunds, in collaboration with the Stray Cats, whose debut album Edmunds had recently produced, recorded a version for his 1981 album, Twangin.... Stray Cats drummer Slim Jim Phantom recalled Edmunds' affection for the song when he was courting the band to produce their debut album: "We met with Edmunds at his house. He had a little pub in his basement. He had a finished basement, outside of London. Edmunds had a jukebox, a little jukebox. He had 'The Race is On' and 'Rockabilly Boogie' by Johnny Burnette. He had those records in his jukebox. We all looked at each other and said, 'This is it.'"[3] Phantom also recalled that the song took "one or two takes" in the studio.[4]Thank you.                 Covered by:        Jack Jones                                                Loretta Lynn                                                Alvin and the Chipmunks for their 1965 album, “Chipmunks a Go Go”                                                Waylon Jennings                                                The Georgia Satellites from 1965 debut album, “Keep The Faith”                                                Elvis Costello                                                And others                                                 Dead played it 60times in concert                                                First:  December 31, 1969 at Boston Tea Party in Boston                                                Last:  May 20, 1995 at Sam Boyd Silver Bowl, Las Vegas  SHOW #1:                           Ripple                                                Track No. 9                                                1:50 – 3:06                                 We prominently featured this song form the Warfield show and talked about how it was last played ever on Sept. 3, 1988 at the Cap Center.  What makes this version we just listened to so special is that this was the last Ripple played by the Dead until the Cap Center show, a seven year gap, and that that was it, no more Ripple.  So this is the last accoustic Ripple ever played since the Cap Center was electric.  Maybe the most famous Dead tune ever, from American Beauty, Hunter's lyrics and Jerry's music mesh together in a way to make this tune not just one of the best Dead tunes ever, but one of the best tunes ever, IMHO!  SHOW #2:                           Hully Gully                                                Track No. 12                                                0:15 – 1:38                                 "(Baby) Hully Gully" is a song written by Fred Sledge Smith and Cliff Goldsmith and recorded by The Olympics, an American doo-wop group formed in 1957.  Released in 1959 on the album, “Doin' the Hully Gully”, it peaked at number 72 on the Billboard Hot 100 in February 1960[2] and sparked the Hully Gully dance craze.                         Covered by:     Buddy Guy                                                Chubby Checkers                                                The Ventures                                                The Beach Boys                                                Many others                                                Peter Pan Peanut Butter add jingle in the 1980's                                                 The Dead's version of this song from this show is the only time they played it in concert.  SHOW #3:                   Gloria                                    Track No. 15                                    2:15 – 3:45                         "Gloria" is a rock song written by Northern Irish singer-songwriter Van Morrison, and originally recorded by Morrison's band Them in 1964. It was released as the B-side of "Baby, Please Don't Go” on December 2, 1964.  The song became a garage rock staple and a part of many rock bands' repertoires.                         According to Morrison, he wrote "Gloria" while performing with the Monarchs in Germany in the summer of 1963, at just about the time he turned 18 years old.[6] He started to perform it at the Maritime Hotel when he returned to Belfast and joined up with the Gamblers to form the band Them. He would ad-lib lyrics as he performed, sometimes stretching the song to 15 or 20 minutes. After signing a contract with Dick Rowe and Decca, Them went to London for a recording session at Decca Three Studios in West Hampstead on 5 April 1964; "Gloria" was one of the seven songs recorded that day.                         Alan Henderson (guitar) contends that Them constituted the first rock group to use two drummers on a recording.[7] Although some sources claim that Jimmy Page played second guitar, other sources deny this.                         Covered by:                 The Doors –   The Doors performed the song several times in 1966 and 1967, with one recording released on Alive, She Cried (1983). It was also released as a single, which reached number 18 on Hot Mainstream Rock Tracks and number 71 on Billboard Hot 100 in 1983.[18] The song is included on Legacy: The Absolute Best (2003) and The Very Best of The Doors (2007).                                                             Patti Smith - Patti Smith recorded it for her album Horses in 1975. Based on the Van Morrison tune, the lyrics had been adapted from an early poem, 'Oath'.[5] Smith's band had started to play the song live and merged it with the poem by 1974, so the song contained half of Smith's own words.[5] For the recording of her debut album, Smith and her band recorded the song live and, after mixing, chose it as the album's opener.                                                            In 1993, Van Morrison recorded a version with John Lee Hooker, which reached the Top 40 in several countries.                                                                        For the Dead, this was the first time they played it live in concert.                                    They wound up playing it only a total of 14 times                                        Last played on June 30, 1995 at Three Rivers Stadium in Pittsburgh                                                   I was lucky enough to catch it on June 25, 1992 at Soldier Field.  SHOW #4:                   Turn On Your Lovelight                                    Track No. 16                                    1:03 – 2:33                                     "Turn On Your Love Light" is a rhythm and blues song recorded by Bobby Bland in 1961. It was both an important R&B and pop chart hit for Bland and has become one of his most identifiable songs. A variety of artists have recorded it, including the Grateful Dead, who made it part of their concert repertoire.  was written by band leader and arranger Joe Scott (with an additional credit given to Duke Records owner/producer Don Robey aka Deadric Malone). Scott's brass arrangement "upped the excitement ante"[2] with "the groove picking up momentum as the horns and percussion talk to each other" and Bland's vocal "riding on top".                                     In 1967, "Turn On Your Love Light" became a staple of Grateful Dead concerts, sung by Ron McKernan: a 15-minute rendition is on their 1969 double live album Live/Dead. McKernan's final performance of "Love Light" – complete with extended vocal raps – occurred at the Lyceum Theatre, London, during the Europe '72 tour. Versions with McKernan were often very long due to long vocal raps, instrumental jams, and drum solos throughout. A version performed at the 1969 Woodstock Festival lasted more than 45 minutes.[8] The Grateful Dead later revived the song in the early 1980s with Bob Weir singing.                                     Before this show at the Melk Weg, the last time the Dead had played it in concert was on May 24,1972 at the Lyceum Ballroom in London at the very end of the Europe '72 tour.  In other words, this was the Dead's first performance of the song without Pigpen on lead.  Dead went on to play it a lot after this show right up until the end.  Bobby played it well, but never even tried the rap that Pig made famous in his extended versions.  No Box Back Knitties when Bobby sang it.                         Dead played it 355 times in concert!  Originally part of the Dark Star>St. Stephen>The Eleven>Lovelight suite of songs that the Dead played constantly during the primal Dead years in the late ‘60's.                        First played on August 4, 1967 at the O'Keefe Center in Toronto                        Last played on June 19, 1975 at Giants Stadium in New Jersey                                     When my good buddy Marc started seeing the Dead in 1984, we joked that every time he went to a show they played Lovelight.  Not a bad thing to be associated with.  Always fun to hear it in concert even without Pig.  OUTRO:                      Sugar Magnolia                                    Track No. 20                                    6:30 – 8:05                                     One of the best Dead tunes of all time and the ultimate show closer.  Always nice to add a little Sunshine Daydream to your day! The boys jam the hell out of it here, a 10+ minute version to close out a remarkable one of a kind Dead show.  Either you were there or you missed it.  What being a Deadhead is all about. 

Episode one hundred and sixty-seven of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “The Weight" by the Band, the Basement Tapes, and the continuing controversy over Dylan going electric. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a half-hour bonus episode available, on "S.F. Sorrow is Born" by the Pretty Things. Tilt Araiza has assisted invaluably by doing a first-pass edit, and will hopefully be doing so from now on. Check out Tilt's irregular podcasts at http://www.podnose.com/jaffa-cakes-for-proust and http://sitcomclub.com/ Also, a one-time request here -- Shawn Taylor, who runs the Facebook group for the podcast and is an old and dear friend of mine, has stage-three lung cancer. I will be hugely grateful to anyone who donates to the GoFundMe for her treatment. Errata At one point I say "when Robertson and Helm travelled to the Brill Building". I meant "when Hawkins and Helm". This is fixed in the transcript but not the recording. Resources There are three Mixcloud mixes this time. As there are so many songs by Bob Dylan and the Band excerpted, and Mixcloud won't allow more than four songs by the same artist in any mix, I've had to post the songs not in quite the same order in which they appear in the podcast. But the mixes are here — one, two, three. I've used these books for all the episodes involving Dylan: Dylan Goes Electric!: Newport, Seeger, Dylan, and the Night That Split the Sixties by Elijah Wald, which is recommended, as all Wald's books are. Bob Dylan: All The Songs by Phillipe Margotin and Jean-Michel Guesdon is a song-by-song look at every song Dylan ever wrote, as is Revolution in the Air, by Clinton Heylin. Heylin also wrote the most comprehensive and accurate biography of Dylan, Behind the Shades. I've also used Robert Shelton's No Direction Home, which is less accurate, but which is written by someone who knew Dylan. Chronicles Volume 1 by Bob Dylan is a partial, highly inaccurate, but thoroughly readable autobiography. Information on Tiny Tim comes from Eternal Troubadour: The Improbable Life of Tiny Tim by Justin Martell. Information on John Cage comes from The Roaring Silence by David Revill Information on Woodstock comes from Small Town Talk by Barney Hoskyns. For material on the Basement Tapes, I've used Million Dollar Bash by Sid Griffin. And for the Band, I've used This Wheel's on Fire by Levon Helm with Stephen Davis, Testimony by Robbie Robertson, The Band by Craig Harris and Levon by Sandra B Tooze. I've also referred to the documentaries No Direction Home and Once Were Brothers. The complete Basement Tapes can be found on this multi-disc box set, while this double-CD version has the best material from the sessions. All the surviving live recordings by Dylan and the Hawks from 1966 are on this box set. There are various deluxe versions of Music From Big Pink, but still the best way to get the original album is in this twofer CD with the Band's second album. Transcript Just a brief note before I start – literally while I was in the middle of recording this episode, it was announced that Robbie Robertson had died today, aged eighty. Obviously I've not had time to alter the rest of the episode – half of which had already been edited – with that in mind, though I don't believe I say anything disrespectful to his memory. My condolences to those who loved him – he was a huge talent and will be missed. There are people in the world who question the function of criticism. Those people argue that criticism is in many ways parasitic. If critics knew what they were talking about, so the argument goes, they would create themselves, rather than talk about other people's creation. It's a variant of the "those who can't, teach" cliche. And to an extent it's true. Certainly in the world of rock music, which we're talking about in this podcast, most critics are quite staggeringly ignorant of the things they're talking about. Most criticism is ephemeral, published in newspapers, magazines, blogs and podcasts, and forgotten as soon as it has been consumed -- and consumed is the word . But sometimes, just sometimes, a critic will have an effect on the world that is at least as important as that of any of the artists they criticise. One such critic was John Ruskin. Ruskin was one of the preeminent critics of visual art in the Victorian era, particularly specialising in painting and architecture, and he passionately advocated for a form of art that would be truthful, plain, and honest. To Ruskin's mind, many artists of the past, and of his time, drew and painted, not what they saw with their own eyes, but what other people expected them to paint. They replaced true observation of nature with the regurgitation of ever-more-mannered and formalised cliches. His attacks on many great artists were, in essence, the same critiques that are currently brought against AI art apps -- they're just recycling and plagiarising what other people had already done, not seeing with their own eyes and creating from their own vision. Ruskin was an artist himself, but never received much acclaim for his own work. Rather, he advocated for the works of others, like Turner and the pre-Raphaelite school -- the latter of whom were influenced by Ruskin, even as he admired them for seeing with their own vision rather than just repeating influences from others. But those weren't the only people Ruskin influenced. Because any critical project, properly understood, becomes about more than just the art -- as if art is just anything. Ruskin, for example, studied geology, because if you're going to talk about how people should paint landscapes and what those landscapes look like, you need to understand what landscapes really do look like, which means understanding their formation. He understood that art of the kind he wanted could only be produced by certain types of people, and so society had to be organised in a way to produce such people. Some types of societal organisation lead to some kinds of thinking and creation, and to properly, honestly, understand one branch of human thought means at least to attempt to understand all of them. Opinions about art have moral consequences, and morality has political and economic consequences. The inevitable endpoint of any theory of art is, ultimately, a theory of society. And Ruskin had a theory of society, and social organisation. Ruskin's views are too complex to summarise here, but they were a kind of anarcho-primitivist collectivism. He believed that wealth was evil, and that the classical liberal economics of people like Mill was fundamentally anti-human, that the division of labour alienated people from their work. In Ruskin's ideal world, people would gather in communities no bigger than villages, and work as craftspeople, working with nature rather than trying to bend nature to their will. They would be collectives, with none richer or poorer than any other, and working the land without modern technology. in the first half of the twentieth century, in particular, Ruskin's influence was *everywhere*. His writings on art inspired the Impressionist movement, but his political and economic ideas were the most influential, right across the political spectrum. Ruskin's ideas were closest to Christian socialism, and he did indeed inspire many socialist parties -- most of the founders of Britain's Labour Party were admirers of Ruskin and influenced by his ideas, particularly his opposition to the free market. But he inspired many other people -- Gandhi talked about the profound influence that Ruskin had on him, saying in his autobiography that he got three lessons from Ruskin's Unto This Last: "That 1) the good of the individual is contained in the good of all. 2) a lawyer's work has the same value as the barber's in as much as all have the same right of earning their livelihood from their work. 3) a life of labour, i.e., the life of the tiller of the soil and the handicraftsman is the life worth living. The first of these I knew. The second I had dimly realized. The third had never occurred to me. Unto This Last made it clear as daylight for me that the second and third were contained in the first. I arose with the dawn, ready to reduce these principles to practice" Gandhi translated and paraphrased Unto this Last into Gujurati and called the resulting book Sarvodaya (meaning "uplifting all" or "the welfare of all") which he later took as the name of his own political philosophy. But Ruskin also had a more pernicious influence -- it was said in 1930s Germany that he and his friend Thomas Carlyle were "the first National Socialists" -- there's no evidence I know of that Hitler ever read Ruskin, but a *lot* of Nazi rhetoric is implicit in Ruskin's writing, particularly in his opposition to progress (he even opposed the bicycle as being too much inhuman interference with nature), just as much as more admirable philosophies, and he was so widely read in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries that there's barely a political movement anywhere that didn't bear his fingerprints. But of course, our focus here is on music. And Ruskin had an influence on that, too. We've talked in several episodes, most recently the one on the Velvet Underground, about John Cage's piece 4'33. What I didn't mention in any of the discussions of that piece -- because I was saving it for here -- is that that piece was premiered at a small concert hall in upstate New York. The hall, the Maverick Concert Hall, was owned and run by the Maverick arts and crafts collective -- a collective that were so called because they were the *second* Ruskinite arts colony in the area, having split off from the Byrdcliffe colony after a dispute between its three founders, all of whom were disciples of Ruskin, and all of whom disagreed violently about how to implement Ruskin's ideas of pacifist all-for-one and one-for-all community. These arts colonies, and others that grew up around them like the Arts Students League were the thriving centre of a Bohemian community -- close enough to New York that you could get there if you needed to, far enough away that you could live out your pastoral fantasies, and artists of all types flocked there -- Pete Seeger met his wife there, and his father-in-law had been one of the stonemasons who helped build the Maverick concert hall. Dozens of artists in all sorts of areas, from Aaron Copland to Edward G Robinson, spent time in these communities, as did Cage. Of course, while these arts and crafts communities had a reputation for Bohemianism and artistic extremism, even radical utopian artists have their limits, and legend has it that the premiere of 4'33 was met with horror and derision, and eventually led to one artist in the audience standing up and calling on the residents of the town around which these artistic colonies had agglomerated: “Good people of Woodstock, let's drive these people out of town.” [Excerpt: The Band, "The Weight"] Ronnie Hawkins was almost born to make music. We heard back in the episode on "Suzie Q" in 2019 about his family and their ties to music. Ronnie's uncle Del was, according to most of the sources on the family, a member of the Sons of the Pioneers -- though as I point out in that episode, his name isn't on any of the official lists of group members, but he might well have performed with them at some point in the early years of the group. And he was definitely a country music bass player, even if he *wasn't* in the most popular country and western group of the thirties and forties. And Del had had two sons, Jerry, who made some minor rockabilly records: [Excerpt: Jerry Hawkins, "Swing, Daddy, Swing"] And Del junior, who as we heard in the "Susie Q" episode became known as Dale Hawkins and made one of the most important rock records of the fifties: [Excerpt: Dale Hawkins, "Susie Q"] Ronnie Hawkins was around the same age as his cousins, and was in awe of his country-music star uncle. Hawkins later remembered that after his uncle moved to Califormia to become a star “He'd come home for a week or two, driving a brand new Cadillac and wearing brand new clothes and I knew that's what I wanted to be." Though he also remembered “He spent every penny he made on whiskey, and he was divorced because he was running around with all sorts of women. His wife left Arkansas and went to Louisiana.” Hawkins knew that he wanted to be a music star like his uncle, and he started performing at local fairs and other events from the age of eleven, including one performance where he substituted for Hank Williams -- Williams was so drunk that day he couldn't perform, and so his backing band asked volunteers from the audience to get up and sing with them, and Hawkins sang Burl Ives and minstrel-show songs with the band. He said later “Even back then I knew that every important white cat—Al Jolson, Stephen Foster—they all did it by copying blacks. Even Hank Williams learned all the stuff he had from those black cats in Alabama. Elvis Presley copied black music; that's all that Elvis did.” As well as being a performer from an early age, though, Hawkins was also an entrepreneur with an eye for how to make money. From the age of fourteen he started running liquor -- not moonshine, he would always point out, but something far safer. He lived only a few miles from the border between Missouri and Arkansas, and alcohol and tobacco were about half the price in Missouri that they were in Arkansas, so he'd drive across the border, load up on whisky and cigarettes, and drive back and sell them at a profit, which he then used to buy shares in several nightclubs, which he and his bands would perform in in later years. Like every man of his generation, Hawkins had to do six months in the Army, and it was there that he joined his first ever full-time band, the Blackhawks -- so called because his name was Hawkins, and the rest of the group were Black, though Hawkins was white. They got together when the other four members were performing at a club in the area where Hawkins was stationed, and he was so impressed with their music that he jumped on stage and started singing with them. He said later “It sounded like something between the blues and rockabilly. It sort of leaned in both directions at the same time, me being a hayseed and those guys playing a lot funkier." As he put it "I wanted to sound like Bobby ‘Blue' Bland but it came out sounding like Ernest Tubb.” Word got around about the Blackhawks, both that they were a great-sounding rock and roll band and that they were an integrated band at a time when that was extremely unpopular in the southern states, and when Hawkins was discharged from the Army he got a call from Sam Phillips at Sun Records. According to Hawkins a group of the regular Sun session musicians were planning on forming a band, and he was asked to front the band for a hundred dollars a week, but by the time he got there the band had fallen apart. This doesn't precisely line up with anything else I know about Sun, though it perhaps makes sense if Hawkins was being asked to front the band who had variously backed Billy Lee Riley and Jerry Lee Lewis after one of Riley's occasional threats to leave the label. More likely though, he told everyone he knew that he had a deal with Sun but Phillips was unimpressed with the demos he cut there, and Hawkins made up the story to stop himself losing face. One of the session players for Sun, though, Luke Paulman, who played in Conway Twitty's band among others, *was* impressed with Hawkins though, and suggested that they form a band together with Paulman's bass player brother George and piano-playing cousin Pop Jones. The Paulman brothers and Jones also came from Arkansas, but they specifically came from Helena, Arkansas, the town from which King Biscuit Time was broadcast. King Biscuit Time was the most important blues radio show in the US at that time -- a short lunchtime programme which featured live performances from a house band which varied over the years, but which in the 1940s had been led by Sonny Boy Williamson II, and featured Robert Jr. Lockwood, Robert Johnson's stepson, on guiitar: [Excerpt: Sonny Boy Williamson II "Eyesight to the Blind (King Biscuit Time)"] The band also included a drummer, "Peck" Curtis, and that drummer was the biggest inspiration for a young white man from the town named Levon Helm. Helm had first been inspired to make music after seeing Bill Monroe and his Blue Grass Boys play live when Helm was eight, and he had soon taken up first the harmonica, then the guitar, then the drums, becoming excellent at all of them. Even as a child he knew that he didn't want to be a farmer like his family, and that music was, as he put it, "the only way to get off that stinking tractor  and out of that one hundred and five degree heat.” Sonny Boy Williamson and the King Biscuit Boys would perform in the open air in Marvell, Arkansas, where Helm was growing up, on Saturdays, and Helm watched them regularly as a small child, and became particularly interested in the drumming. “As good as the band sounded,” he said later “it seemed that [Peck] was definitely having the most fun. I locked into the drums at that point. Later, I heard Jack Nance, Conway Twitty's drummer, and all the great drummers in Memphis—Jimmy Van Eaton, Al Jackson, and Willie Hall—the Chicago boys (Fred Belew and Clifton James) and the people at Sun Records and Vee-Jay, but most of my style was based on Peck and Sonny Boy—the Delta blues style with the shuffle. Through the years, I've quickened the pace to a more rock-and-roll meter and time frame, but it still bases itself back to Peck, Sonny Boy Williamson, and the King Biscuit Boys.” Helm had played with another band that George Paulman had played in, and he was invited to join the fledgling band Hawkins was putting together, called for the moment the Sun Records Quartet. The group played some of the clubs Hawkins had business connections in, but they had other plans -- Conway Twitty had recently played Toronto, and had told Luke Paulman about how desperate the Canadians were for American rock and roll music. Twitty's agent Harold Kudlets booked the group in to a Toronto club, Le Coq D'Or, and soon the group were alternating between residencies in clubs in the Deep South, where they were just another rockabilly band, albeit one of the better ones, and in Canada, where they became the most popular band in Ontario, and became the nucleus of an entire musical scene -- the same scene from which, a few years later, people like Neil Young would emerge. George Paulman didn't remain long in the group -- he was apparently getting drunk, and also he was a double-bass player, at a time when the electric bass was becoming the in thing. And this is the best place to mention this, but there are several discrepancies in the various accounts of which band members were in Hawkins' band at which times, and who played on what session. They all *broadly* follow the same lines, but none of them are fully reconcilable with each other, and nobody was paying enough attention to lineup shifts in a bar band between 1957 and 1964 to be absolutely certain who was right. I've tried to reconcile the various accounts as far as possible and make a coherent narrative, but some of the details of what follows may be wrong, though the broad strokes are correct. For much of their first period in Ontario, the group had no bass player at all, relying on Jones' piano to fill in the bass parts, and on their first recording, a version of "Bo Diddley", they actually got the club's manager to play bass with them: [Excerpt: Ronnie Hawkins, "Hey Bo Diddley"] That is claimed to be the first rock and roll record made in Canada, though as everyone who has listened to this podcast knows, there's no first anything. It wasn't released as by the Sun Records Quartet though -- the band had presumably realised that that name would make them much less attractive to other labels, and so by this point the Sun Records Quartet had become Ronnie Hawkins and the Hawks. "Hey Bo Diddley" was released on a small Canadian label and didn't have any success, but the group carried on performing live, travelling back down to Arkansas for a while and getting a new bass player, Lefty Evans, who had been playing in the same pool of musicians as them, having been another Sun session player who had been in Conway Twitty's band, and had written Twitty's "Why Can't I Get Through to You": [Excerpt: Conway Twitty, "Why Can't I Get Through to You"] The band were now popular enough in Canada that they were starting to get heard of in America, and through Kudlets they got a contract with Joe Glaser, a Mafia-connected booking agent who booked them into gigs on the Jersey Shore. As Helm said “Ronnie Hawkins had molded us into the wildest, fiercest, speed-driven bar band in America," and the group were apparently getting larger audiences in New Jersey than Sammy Davis Jr was, even though they hadn't released any records in the US. Or at least, they hadn't released any records in their own name in the US. There's a record on End Records by Rockin' Ronald and the Rebels which is very strongly rumoured to have been the Hawks under another name, though Hawkins always denied that. Have a listen for yourself and see what you think: [Excerpt: Rockin' Ronald and the Rebels, "Kansas City"] End Records, the label that was on, was one of the many record labels set up by George Goldner and distributed by Morris Levy, and when the group did release a record in their home country under their own name, it was on Levy's Roulette Records. An audition for Levy had been set up by Glaser's booking company, and Levy decided that given that Elvis was in the Army, there was a vacancy to be filled and Ronnie Hawkins might just fit the bill. Hawkins signed a contract with Levy, and it doesn't sound like he had much choice in the matter. Helm asked him “How long did you have to sign for?” and Hawkins replied "Life with an option" That said, unlike almost every other artist who interacted with Levy, Hawkins never had a bad word to say about him, at least in public, saying later “I don't care what Morris was supposed to have done, he looked after me and he believed in me. I even lived with him in his million-dollar apartment on the Upper East Side." The first single the group recorded for Roulette, a remake of Chuck Berry's "Thirty Days" retitled "Forty Days", didn't chart, but the follow-up, a version of Young Jessie's "Mary Lou", made number twenty-six on the charts: [Excerpt: Ronnie Hawkins and the Hawks, "Mary Lou"] While that was a cover of a Young Jessie record, the songwriting credits read Hawkins and Magill -- Magill was a pseudonym used by Morris Levy. Levy hoped to make Ronnie Hawkins into a really big star, but hit a snag. This was just the point where the payola scandal had hit and record companies were under criminal investigation for bribing DJs to play their records. This was the main method of promotion that Levy used, and this was so well known that Levy was, for a time, under more scrutiny than anyone. He couldn't risk paying anyone off, and so Hawkins' records didn't get the expected airplay. The group went through some lineup changes, too, bringing in guitarist Fred Carter (with Luke Paulman moving to rhythm and soon leaving altogether)  from Hawkins' cousin Dale's band, and bass player Jimmy Evans. Some sources say that Jones quit around this time, too, though others say he was in the band for  a while longer, and they had two keyboards (the other keyboard being supplied by Stan Szelest. As well as recording Ronnie Hawkins singles, the new lineup of the group also recorded one single with Carter on lead vocals, "My Heart Cries": [Excerpt: Fred Carter, "My Heart Cries"] While the group were now playing more shows in the USA, they were still playing regularly in Canada, and they had developed a huge fanbase there. One of these was a teenage guitarist called Robbie Robertson, who had become fascinated with the band after playing a support slot for them, and had started hanging round, trying to ingratiate himself with the band in the hope of being allowed to join. As he was a teenager, Hawkins thought he might have his finger on the pulse of the youth market, and when Hawkins and Helm travelled to the Brill Building to hear new songs for consideration for their next album, they brought Robertson along to listen to them and give his opinion. Robertson himself ended up contributing two songs to the album, titled Mr. Dynamo. According to Hawkins "we had a little time after the session, so I thought, Well, I'm just gonna put 'em down and see what happens. And they were released. Robbie was the songwriter for words, and Levon was good for arranging, making things fit in and all that stuff. He knew what to do, but he didn't write anything." The two songs in question were "Someone Like You" and "Hey Boba Lou": [Excerpt: Ronnie Hawkins and the Hawks, "Hey Boba Lou"] While Robertson was the sole writer of the songs, they were credited to Robertson, Hawkins, and Magill -- Morris Levy. As Robertson told the story later, “It's funny, when those songs came out and I got a copy of the album, it had another name on there besides my name for some writer like Morris Levy. So, I said to Ronnie, “There was nobody there writing these songs when I wrote these songs. Who is Morris Levy?” Ronnie just kinda tapped me on the head and said, “There are certain things about this business that you just let go and you don't question.” That was one of my early music industry lessons right there" Robertson desperately wanted to join the Hawks, but initially it was Robertson's bandmate Scott Cushnie who became the first Canadian to join the Hawks. But then when they were in Arkansas, Jimmy Evans decided he wasn't going to go back to Canada. So Hawkins called Robbie Robertson up and made him an offer. Robertson had to come down to Arkansas and get a couple of quick bass lessons from Helm (who could play pretty much every instrument to an acceptable standard, and so was by this point acting as the group's musical director, working out arrangements and leading them in rehearsals). Then Hawkins and Helm had to be elsewhere for a few weeks. If, when they got back, Robertson was good enough on bass, he had the job. If not, he didn't. Robertson accepted, but he nearly didn't get the gig after all. The place Hawkins and Helm had to be was Britain, where they were going to be promoting their latest single on Boy Meets Girls, the Jack Good TV series with Marty Wilde, which featured guitarist Joe Brown in the backing band: [Excerpt: Joe Brown, “Savage”] This was the same series that Eddie Cochran and Gene Vincent were regularly appearing on, and while they didn't appear on the episodes that Hawkins and Helm appeared on, they did appear on the episodes immediately before Hawkins and Helm's two appearances, and again a couple of weeks after, and were friendly with the musicians who did play with Hawkins and Helm, and apparently they all jammed together a few times. Hawkins was impressed enough with Joe Brown -- who at the time was considered the best guitarist on the British scene -- that he invited Brown to become a Hawk. Presumably if Brown had taken him up on the offer, he would have taken the spot that ended up being Robertson's, but Brown turned him down -- a decision he apparently later regretted. Robbie Robertson was now a Hawk, and he and Helm formed an immediate bond. As Helm much later put it, "It was me and Robbie against the world. Our mission, as we saw it, was to put together the best band in history". As rockabilly was by this point passe, Levy tried converting Hawkins into a folk artist, to see if he could get some of the Kingston Trio's audience. He recorded a protest song, "The Ballad of Caryl Chessman", protesting the then-forthcoming execution of Chessman (one of only a handful of people to be executed in the US in recent decades for non-lethal offences), and he made an album of folk tunes, The Folk Ballads of Ronnie Hawkins, which largely consisted of solo acoustic recordings, plus a handful of left-over Hawks recordings from a year or so earlier. That wasn't a success, but they also tried a follow-up, having Hawkins go country and do an album of Hank Williams songs, recorded in Nashville at Owen Bradley's Quonset hut. While many of the musicians on the album were Nashville A-Team players, Hawkins also insisted on having his own band members perform, much to the disgust of the producer, and so it's likely (not certain, because there seem to be various disagreements about what was recorded when) that that album features the first studio recordings with Levon Helm and Robbie Robertson playing together: [Excerpt: Ronnie Hawkins and the Hawks, "Your Cheatin' Heart"] Other sources claim that the only Hawk allowed to play on the album sessions was Helm, and that the rest of the musicians on the album were Harold Bradley and Hank Garland on guitar, Owen Bradley and Floyd Cramer on piano, Bob Moore on bass, and the Anita Kerr singers. I tend to trust Helm's recollection that the Hawks played at least some of the instruments though, because the source claiming that also seems to confuse the Hank Williams and Folk Ballads albums, and because I don't hear two pianos on the album. On the other hand, that *does* sound like Floyd Cramer on piano, and the tik-tok bass sound you'd get from having Harold Bradley play a baritone guitar while Bob Moore played a bass. So my best guess is that these sessions were like the Elvis sessions around the same time and with several of the same musicians, where Elvis' own backing musicians played rhythm parts but left the prominent instruments to the A-team players. Helm was singularly unimpressed with the experience of recording in Nashville. His strongest memory of the sessions was of another session going on in the same studio complex at the time -- Bobby "Blue" Bland was recording his classic single "Turn On Your Love Light", with the great drummer Jabo Starks on drums, and Helm was more interested in listening to that than he was in the music they were playing: [Excerpt: Bobby "Blue" Bland, "Turn On Your Love Light"] Incidentally, Helm talks about that recording being made "downstairs" from where the Hawks were recording, but also says that they were recording in Bradley's Quonset hut.  Now, my understanding here *could* be very wrong -- I've been unable to find a plan or schematic anywhere -- but my understanding is that the Quonset hut was a single-level structure, not a multi-level structure. BUT the original recording facilities run by the Bradley brothers were in Owen Bradley's basement, before they moved into the larger Quonset hut facility in the back, so it's possible that Bland was recording that in the old basement studio. If so, that won't be the last recording made in a basement we hear this episode... Fred Carter decided during the Nashville sessions that he was going to leave the Hawks. As his son told the story: "Dad had discovered the session musicians there. He had no idea that you could play and make a living playing in studios and sleep in your own bed every night. By that point in his life, he'd already been gone from home and constantly on the road and in the service playing music for ten years so that appealed to him greatly. And Levon asked him, he said, “If you're gonna leave, Fred, I'd like you to get young Robbie over here up to speed on guitar”…[Robbie] got kind of aggravated with him—and Dad didn't say this with any malice—but by the end of that week, or whatever it was, Robbie made some kind of comment about “One day I'm gonna cut you.” And Dad said, “Well, if that's how you think about it, the lessons are over.” " (For those who don't know, a musician "cutting" another one is playing better than them, so much better that the worse musician has to concede defeat. For the remainder of Carter's notice in the Hawks, he played with his back to Robertson, refusing to look at him. Carter leaving the group caused some more shuffling of roles. For a while, Levon Helm -- who Hawkins always said was the best lead guitar player he ever worked with as well as the best drummer -- tried playing lead guitar while Robertson played rhythm and another member, Rebel Payne, played bass, but they couldn't find a drummer to replace Helm, who moved back onto the drums. Then they brought in Roy Buchanan, another guitarist who had been playing with Dale Hawkins, having started out playing with Johnny Otis' band. But Buchanan didn't fit with Hawkins' personality, and he quit after a few months, going off to record his own first solo record: [Excerpt: Roy Buchanan, "Mule Train Stomp"] Eventually they solved the lineup problem by having Robertson -- by this point an accomplished lead player --- move to lead guitar and bringing in a new rhythm player, another Canadian teenager named Rick Danko, who had originally been a lead player (and who also played mandolin and fiddle). Danko wasn't expected to stay on rhythm long though -- Rebel Payne was drinking a lot and missing being at home when he was out on the road, so Danko was brought in on the understanding that he was to learn Payne's bass parts and switch to bass when Payne quit. Helm and Robertson were unsure about Danko, and Robertson expressed that doubt, saying "He only knows four chords," to which Hawkins replied, "That's all right son. You can teach him four more the way we had to teach you." He proved himself by sheer hard work. As Hawkins put it “He practiced so much that his arms swoll up. He was hurting.” By the time Danko switched to bass, the group also had a baritone sax player, Jerry Penfound, which allowed the group to play more of the soul and R&B material that Helm and Robertson favoured, though Hawkins wasn't keen. This new lineup of the group (which also had Stan Szelest on piano) recorded Hawkins' next album. This one was produced by Henry Glover, the great record producer, songwriter, and trumpet player who had played with Lucky Millinder, produced Wynonie Harris, Hank Ballard, and Moon Mullican, and wrote "Drowning in My Own Tears", "The Peppermint Twist", and "California Sun". Glover was massively impressed with the band, especially Helm (with whom he would remain friends for the rest of his life) and set aside some studio time for them to cut some tracks without Hawkins, to be used as album filler, including a version of the Bobby "Blue" Bland song "Farther On Up the Road" with Helm on lead vocals: [Excerpt: Levon Helm and the Hawks, "Farther On Up the Road"] There were more changes on the way though. Stan Szelest was about to leave the band, and Jones had already left, so the group had no keyboard player. Hawkins had just the replacement for Szelest -- yet another Canadian teenager. This one was Richard Manuel, who played piano and sang in a band called The Rockin' Revols. Manuel was not the greatest piano player around -- he was an adequate player for simple rockabilly and R&B stuff, but hardly a virtuoso -- but he was an incredible singer, able to do a version of "Georgia on My Mind" which rivalled Ray Charles, and Hawkins had booked the Revols into his own small circuit of clubs around Arkanasas after being impressed with them on the same bill as the Hawks a couple of times. Hawkins wanted someone with a good voice because he was increasingly taking a back seat in performances. Hawkins was the bandleader and frontman, but he'd often given Helm a song or two to sing in the show, and as they were often playing for several hours a night, the more singers the band had the better. Soon, with Helm, Danko, and Manuel all in the group and able to take lead vocals, Hawkins would start missing entire shows, though he still got more money than any of his backing group. Hawkins was also a hard taskmaster, and wanted to have the best band around. He already had great musicians, but he wanted them to be *the best*. And all the musicians in his band were now much younger than him, with tons of natural talent, but untrained. What he needed was someone with proper training, someone who knew theory and technique. He'd been trying for a long time to get someone like that, but Garth Hudson had kept turning him down. Hudson was older than any of the Hawks, though younger than Hawkins, and he was a multi-instrumentalist who was far better than any other musician on the circuit, having trained in a conservatory and learned how to play Bach and Chopin before switching to rock and roll. He thought the Hawks were too loud sounding and played too hard for him, but Helm kept on at Hawkins to meet any demands Hudson had, and Hawkins eventually agreed to give Hudson a higher wage than any of the other band members, buy him a new Lowry organ, and give him an extra ten dollars a week to give the rest of the band music lessons. Hudson agreed, and the Hawks now had a lineup of Helm on drums, Robertson on guitar, Manuel on piano, Danko on bass, Hudson on organ and alto sax, and Penfound on baritone sax. But these new young musicians were beginning to wonder why they actually needed a frontman who didn't turn up to many of the gigs, kept most of the money, and fined them whenever they broke one of his increasingly stringent set of rules. Indeed, they wondered why they needed a frontman at all. They already had three singers -- and sometimes a fourth, a singer called Bruce Bruno who would sometimes sit in with them when Penfound was unable to make a gig. They went to see Harold Kudlets, who Hawkins had recently sacked as his manager, and asked him if he could get them gigs for the same amount of money as they'd been getting with Hawkins. Kudlets was astonished to find how little Hawkins had been paying them, and told them that would be no problem at all. They had no frontman any more -- and made it a rule in all their contracts that the word "sideman" would never be used -- but Helm had been the leader for contractual purposes, as the musical director and longest-serving member (Hawkins, as a non-playing singer, had never joined the Musicians' Union so couldn't be the leader on contracts). So the band that had been Ronnie Hawkins and the Hawks became the Levon Helm Sextet briefly -- but Penfound soon quit, and they became Levon and the Hawks. The Hawks really started to find their identity as their own band in 1964. They were already far more interested in playing soul than Hawkins had been, but they were also starting to get into playing soul *jazz*, especially after seeing the Cannonball Adderley Sextet play live: [Excerpt: Cannonball Adderley, "This Here"] What the group admired about the Adderley group more than anything else was a sense of restraint. Helm was particularly impressed with their drummer, Louie Hayes, and said of him "I got to see some great musicians over the years, and you see somebody like that play and you can tell, y' know, that the thing not to do is to just get it down on the floor and stomp the hell out of it!" The other influence they had, and one which would shape their sound even more, was a negative one. The two biggest bands on the charts at the time were the Beatles and the Beach Boys, and as Helm described it in his autobiography, the Hawks thought both bands' harmonies were "a blend of pale, homogenised, voices". He said "We felt we were better than the Beatles and the Beach Boys. We considered them our rivals, even though they'd never heard of us", and they decided to make their own harmonies sound as different as possible as a result. Where those groups emphasised a vocal blend, the Hawks were going to emphasise the *difference* in their voices in their own harmonies. The group were playing prestigious venues like the Peppermint Lounge, and while playing there they met up with John Hammond Jr, who they'd met previously in Canada. As you might remember from the first episode on Bob Dylan, Hammond Jr was the son of the John Hammond who we've talked about in many episodes, and was a blues musician in his own right. He invited Helm, Robertson, and Hudson to join the musicians, including Michael Bloomfield, who were playing on his new album, So Many Roads: [Excerpt: John P. Hammond, "Who Do You Love?"] That album was one of the inspirations that led Bob Dylan to start making electric rock music and to hire Bloomfield as his guitarist, decisions that would have profound implications for the Hawks. The first single the Hawks recorded for themselves after leaving Hawkins was produced by Henry Glover, and both sides were written by Robbie Robertson. "uh Uh Uh" shows the influence of the R&B bands they were listening to. What it reminds me most of is the material Ike and Tina Turner were playing at the time, but at points I think I can also hear the influence of Curtis Mayfield and Steve Cropper, who were rapidly becoming Robertson's favourite songwriters: [Excerpt: The Canadian Squires, "Uh Uh Uh"] None of the band were happy with that record, though. They'd played in the studio the same way they played live, trying to get a strong bass presence, but it just sounded bottom-heavy to them when they heard the record on a jukebox. That record was released as by The Canadian Squires -- according to Robertson, that was a name that the label imposed on them for the record, while according to Helm it was an alternative name they used so they could get bookings in places they'd only recently played, which didn't want the same band to play too often. One wonders if there was any confusion with the band Neil Young played in a year or so before that single... Around this time, the group also met up with Helm's old musical inspiration Sonny Boy Williamson II, who was impressed enough with them that there was some talk of them being his backing band (and it was in this meeting that Williamson apparently told Robertson "those English boys want to play the blues so bad, and they play the blues *so bad*", speaking of the bands who'd backed him in the UK, like the Yardbirds and the Animals). But sadly, Williamson died in May 1965 before any of these plans had time to come to fruition. Every opportunity for the group seemed to be closing up, even as they knew they were as good as any band around them. They had an offer from Aaron Schroeder, who ran Musicor Records but was more importantly a songwriter and publisher who  had written for Elvis Presley and published Gene Pitney. Schroeder wanted to sign the Hawks as a band and Robertson as a songwriter, but Henry Glover looked over the contracts for them, and told them "If you sign this you'd better be able to pay each other, because nobody else is going to be paying you". What happened next is the subject of some controversy, because as these things tend to go, several people became aware of the Hawks at the same time, but it's generally considered that nothing would have happened the same way were it not for Mary Martin. Martin is a pivotal figure in music business history -- among other things she discovered Leonard Cohen and Gordon Lightfoot, managed Van Morrison, and signed Emmylou Harris to Warner Brothers records -- but a somewhat unknown one who doesn't even have a Wikipedia page. Martin was from Toronto, but had moved to New York, where she was working in Albert Grossman's office, but she still had many connections to Canadian musicians and kept an eye out for them. The group had sent demo tapes to Grossman's offices, and Grossman had had no interest in them, but Martin was a fan and kept pushing the group on Grossman and his associates. One of those associates, of course, was Grossman's client Bob Dylan. As we heard in the episode on "Like a Rolling Stone", Dylan had started making records with electric backing, with musicians who included Mike Bloomfield, who had played with several of the Hawks on the Hammond album, and Al Kooper, who was a friend of the band. Martin gave Richard Manuel a copy of Dylan's new electric album Highway 61 Revisited, and he enjoyed it, though the rest of the group were less impressed: [Excerpt: Bob Dylan, "Highway 61 Revisited"] Dylan had played the Newport Folk Festival with some of the same musicians as played on his records, but Bloomfield in particular was more interested in continuing to play with the Paul Butterfield Blues Band than continuing with Dylan long-term. Mary Martin kept telling Dylan about this Canadian band she knew who would be perfect for him, and various people associated with the Grossman organisation, including Hammond, have claimed to have been sent down to New Jersey where the Hawks were playing to check them out in their live setting. The group have also mentioned that someone who looked a lot like Dylan was seen at some of their shows. Eventually, Dylan phoned Helm up and made an offer. He didn't need a full band at the moment -- he had Harvey Brooks on bass and Al Kooper on keyboards -- but he did need a lead guitar player and drummer for a couple of gigs he'd already booked, one in Forest Hills, New York, and a bigger gig at the Hollywood Bowl. Helm, unfamiliar with Dylan's work, actually asked Howard Kudlets if Dylan was capable of filling the Hollywood Bowl. The musicians rehearsed together and got a set together for the shows. Robertson and Helm thought the band sounded terrible, but Dylan liked the sound they were getting a lot. The audience in Forest Hills agreed with the Hawks, rather than Dylan, or so it would appear. As we heard in the "Like a Rolling Stone" episode, Dylan's turn towards rock music was *hated* by the folk purists who saw him as some sort of traitor to the movement, a movement whose figurehead he had become without wanting to. There were fifteen thousand people in the audience, and they listened politely enough to the first set, which Dylan played acoustically, But before the second set -- his first ever full electric set, rather than the very abridged one at Newport -- he told the musicians “I don't know what it will be like out there It's going to be some kind of  carnival and I want you to all know that up front. So go out there and keep playing no matter how weird it gets!” There's a terrible-quality audience recording of that show in circulation, and you can hear the crowd's reaction to the band and to the new material: [Excerpt: Bob Dylan, "Ballad of a Thin Man" (live Forest Hills 1965, audience noise only)] The audience also threw things  at the musicians, knocking Al Kooper off his organ stool at one point. While Robertson remembered the Hollywood Bowl show as being an equally bad reaction, Helm remembered the audience there as being much more friendly, and the better-quality recording of that show seems to side with Helm: [Excerpt: Bob Dylan, "Maggie's Farm (live at the Hollywood Bowl 1965)"] After those two shows, Helm and Robertson went back to their regular gig. and in September they made another record. This one, again produced by Glover, was for Atlantic's Atco subsidiary, and was released as by Levon and the Hawks. Manuel took lead, and again both songs were written by Robertson: [Excerpt: Levon and the Hawks, "He Don't Love You (And He'll Break Your Heart)"] But again that record did nothing. Dylan was about to start his first full electric tour, and while Helm and Robertson had not thought the shows they'd played sounded particularly good, Dylan had, and he wanted the two of them to continue with him. But Robertson and, especially, Helm, were not interested in being someone's sidemen. They explained to Dylan that they already had a band -- Levon and the Hawks -- and he would take all of them or he would take none of them. Helm in particular had not been impressed with Dylan's music -- Helm was fundamentally an R&B fan, while Dylan's music was rooted in genres he had little time for -- but he was OK with doing it, so long as the entire band got to. As Mary Martin put it “I think that the wonderful and the splendid heart of the band, if you will, was Levon, and I think he really sort of said, ‘If it's just myself as drummer and Robbie…we're out. We don't want that. It's either us, the band, or nothing.' And you know what? Good for him.” Rather amazingly, Dylan agreed. When the band's residency in New Jersey finished, they headed back to Toronto to play some shows there, and Dylan flew up and rehearsed with them after each show. When the tour started, the billing was "Bob Dylan with Levon and the Hawks". That billing wasn't to last long. Dylan had been booked in for nine months of touring, and was also starting work on what would become widely considered the first double album in rock music history, Blonde on Blonde, and the original plan was that Levon and the Hawks would play with him throughout that time.  The initial recording sessions for the album produced nothing suitable for release -- the closest was "I Wanna Be Your Lover", a semi-parody of the Beatles' "I Want to be Your Man": [Excerpt: Bob Dylan with Levon and the Hawks, "I Wanna Be Your Lover"] But shortly into the tour, Helm quit. The booing had continued, and had even got worse, and Helm simply wasn't in the business to be booed at every night. Also, his whole conception of music was that you dance to it, and nobody was dancing to any of this. Helm quit the band, only telling Robertson of his plans, and first went off to LA, where he met up with some musicians from Oklahoma who had enjoyed seeing the Hawks when they'd played that state and had since moved out West -- people like Leon Russell, J.J. Cale (not John Cale of the Velvet Underground, but the one who wrote "Cocaine" which Eric Clapton later had a hit with), and John Ware (who would later go on to join the West Coast Pop Art Experimental Band). They started loosely jamming with each other, sometimes also involving a young singer named Linda Ronstadt, but Helm eventually decided to give up music and go and work on an oil rig in New Orleans. Levon and the Hawks were now just the Hawks. The rest of the group soldiered on, replacing Helm with session drummer Bobby Gregg (who had played on Dylan's previous couple of albums, and had previously played with Sun Ra), and played on the initial sessions for Blonde on Blonde. But of those sessions, Dylan said a few weeks later "Oh, I was really down. I mean, in ten recording sessions, man, we didn't get one song ... It was the band. But you see, I didn't know that. I didn't want to think that" One track from the sessions did get released -- the non-album single "Can You Please Crawl Out Your Window?" [Excerpt: Bob Dylan, "Can You Please Crawl Out Your Window?"] There's some debate as to exactly who's playing drums on that -- Helm says in his autobiography that it's him, while the credits in the official CD releases tend to say it's Gregg. Either way, the track was an unexpected flop, not making the top forty in the US, though it made the top twenty in the UK. But the rest of the recordings with the now Helmless Hawks were less successful. Dylan was trying to get his new songs across, but this was a band who were used to playing raucous music for dancing, and so the attempts at more subtle songs didn't come off the way he wanted: [Excerpt: Bob Dylan and the Hawks, "Visions of Johanna (take 5, 11-30-1965)"] Only one track from those initial New York sessions made the album -- "One Of Us Must Know (Sooner or Later)" -- but even that only featured Robertson and Danko of the Hawks, with the rest of the instruments being played by session players: [Excerpt: Bob Dylan (One of Us Must Know (Sooner or Later)"] The Hawks were a great live band, but great live bands are not necessarily the same thing as a great studio band. And that's especially the case with someone like Dylan. Dylan was someone who was used to recording entirely on his own, and to making records *quickly*. In total, for his fifteen studio albums up to 1974's Blood on the Tracks, Dylan spent a total of eighty-six days in the studio -- by comparison, the Beatles spent over a hundred days in the studio just on the Sgt Pepper album. It's not that the Hawks weren't a good band -- very far from it -- but that studio recording requires a different type of discipline, and that's doubly the case when you're playing with an idiosyncratic player like Dylan. The Hawks would remain Dylan's live backing band, but he wouldn't put out a studio recording with them backing him until 1974. Instead, Bob Johnston, the producer Dylan was working with, suggested a different plan. On his previous album, the Nashville session player Charlie McCoy had guested on "Desolation Row" and Dylan had found him easy to work with. Johnston lived in Nashville, and suggested that they could get the album completed more quickly and to Dylan's liking by using Nashville A-Team musicians. Dylan agreed to try it, and for the rest of the album he had Robertson on lead guitar and Al Kooper on keyboards, but every other musician was a Nashville session player, and they managed to get Dylan's songs recorded quickly and the way he heard them in his head: [Excerpt: Bob Dylan, "Most Likely You Go Your Way and I'll Go Mine"] Though Dylan being Dylan he did try to introduce an element of randomness to the recordings by having the Nashville musicians swap their instruments around and play each other's parts on "Rainy Day Women #12 & 35", though the Nashville players were still competent enough that they managed to get a usable, if shambolic, track recorded that way in a single take: [Excerpt: Bob Dylan, "Rainy Day Women #12 & 35"] Dylan said later of the album "The closest I ever got to the sound I hear in my mind was on individual bands in the Blonde on Blonde album. It's that thin, that wild mercury sound. It's metallic and bright gold, with whatever that conjures up." The album was released in late June 1966, a week before Freak Out! by the Mothers of Invention, another double album, produced by Dylan's old producer Tom Wilson, and a few weeks after Pet Sounds by the Beach Boys. Dylan was at the forefront of a new progressive movement in rock music, a movement that was tying thoughtful, intelligent lyrics to studio experimentation and yet somehow managing to have commercial success. And a month after Blonde on Blonde came out, he stepped away from that position, and would never fully return to it. The first half of 1966 was taken up with near-constant touring, with Dylan backed by the Hawks and a succession of fill-in drummers -- first Bobby Gregg, then Sandy Konikoff, then Mickey Jones. This tour started in the US and Canada, with breaks for recording the album, and then moved on to Australia and Europe. The shows always followed the same pattern. First Dylan would perform an acoustic set, solo, with just an acoustic guitar and harmonica, which would generally go down well with the audience -- though sometimes they would get restless, prompting a certain amount of resistance from the performer: [Excerpt: Bob Dylan, "Just Like a Woman (live Paris 1966)"] But the second half of each show was electric, and that was where the problems would arise. The Hawks were playing at the top of their game -- some truly stunning performances: [Excerpt: Bob Dylan and the Hawks, "Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues (live in Liverpool 1966)"] But while the majority of the audience was happy to hear the music, there was a vocal portion that were utterly furious at the change in Dylan's musical style. Most notoriously, there was the performance at Manchester Free Trade Hall where this happened: [Excerpt: Bob Dylan, "Like a Rolling Stone (live Manchester 1966)"] That kind of aggression from the audience had the effect of pushing the band on to greater heights a lot of the time -- and a bootleg of that show, mislabelled as the Royal Albert Hall, became one of the most legendary bootlegs in rock music history. Jimmy Page would apparently buy a copy of the bootleg every time he saw one, thinking it was the best album ever made. But while Dylan and the Hawks played defiantly, that kind of audience reaction gets wearing. As Dylan later said, “Judas, the most hated name in human history, and for what—for playing an electric guitar. As if that is in some kind of way equitable to betraying our Lord, and delivering him up to be crucified; all those evil mothers can rot in hell.” And this wasn't the only stress Dylan, in particular, was under. D.A. Pennebaker was making a documentary of the tour -- a follow-up to his documentary of the 1965 tour, which had not yet come out. Dylan talked about the 1965 documentary, Don't Look Back, as being Pennebaker's film of Dylan, but this was going to be Dylan's film, with him directing the director. That footage shows Dylan as nervy and anxious, and covering for the anxiety with a veneer of flippancy. Some of Dylan's behaviour on both tours is unpleasant in ways that can't easily be justified (and which he has later publicly regretted), but there's also a seeming cruelty to some of his interactions with the press and public that actually reads more as frustration. Over and over again he's asked questions -- about being the voice of a generation or the leader of a protest movement -- which are simply based on incorrect premises. When someone asks you a question like this, there are only a few options you can take, none of them good. You can dissect the question, revealing the incorrect premises, and then answer a different question that isn't what they asked, which isn't really an option at all given the kind of rapid-fire situation Dylan was in. You can answer the question as asked, which ends up being dishonest. Or you can be flip and dismissive, which is the tactic Dylan chose. Dylan wasn't the only one -- this is basically what the Beatles did at press conferences. But where the Beatles were a gang and so came off as being fun, Dylan doing the same thing came off as arrogant and aggressive. One of the most famous artifacts of the whole tour is a long piece of footage recorded for the documentary, with Dylan and John Lennon riding in the back of a taxi, both clearly deeply uncomfortable, trying to be funny and impress the other, but neither actually wanting to be there: [Excerpt Dylan and Lennon conversation] 33) Part of the reason Dylan wanted to go home was that he had a whole new lifestyle. Up until 1964 he had been very much a city person, but as he had grown more famous, he'd found New York stifling. Peter Yarrow of Peter, Paul, and Mary had a cabin in Woodstock, where he'd grown up, and after Dylan had spent a month there in summer 1964, he'd fallen in love with the area. Albert Grossman had also bought a home there, on Yarrow's advice, and had given Dylan free run of the place, and Dylan had decided he wanted to move there permanently and bought his own home there. He had also married, to Sara Lowndes (whose name is, as far as I can tell, pronounced "Sarah" even though it's spelled "Sara"), and she had given birth to his first child (and he had adopted her child from her previous marriage). Very little is actually known about Sara, who unlike many other partners of rock stars at this point seemed positively to detest the limelight, and whose privacy Dylan has continued to respect even after the end of their marriage in the late seventies, but it's apparent that the two were very much in love, and that Dylan wanted to be back with his wife and kids, in the country, not going from one strange city to another being asked insipid questions and having abuse screamed at him. He was also tired of the pressure to produce work constantly. He'd signed a contract for a novel, called Tarantula, which he'd written a draft of but was unhappy with, and he'd put out two single albums and a double-album in a little over a year -- all of them considered among the greatest albums ever made. He could only keep up this rate of production and performance with a large intake of speed, and he was sometimes staying up for four days straight to do so. After the European leg of the tour, Dylan was meant to take some time to finish overdubs on Blonde on Blonde, edit the film of the tour for a TV special, with his friend Howard Alk, and proof the galleys for Tarantula, before going on a second world tour in the autumn. That world tour never happened. Dylan was in a motorcycle accident near his home, and had to take time out to recover. There has been a lot of discussion as to how serious the accident actually was, because Dylan's manager Albert Grossman was known to threaten to break contracts by claiming his performers were sick, and because Dylan essentially disappeared from public view for the next eighteen months. Every possible interpretation of the events has been put about by someone, from Dylan having been close to death, to the entire story being put up as a fake. As Dylan is someone who is far more protective of his privacy than most rock stars, it's doubtful we'll ever know the precise truth, but putting together the various accounts Dylan's injuries were bad but not life-threatening, but they acted as a wake-up call -- if he carried on living like he had been, how much longer could he continue? in his sort-of autobiography, Chronicles, Dylan described this period, saying "I had been in a motorcycle accident and I'd been hurt, but I recovered. Truth was that I wanted to get out of the rat race. Having children changed my life and segregated me from just about everybody and everything that was going on. Outside of my family, nothing held any real interest for me and I was seeing everything through different glasses." All his forthcoming studio and tour dates were cancelled, and Dylan took the time out to recover, and to work on his film, Eat the Document. But it's clear that nobody was sure at first exactly how long Dylan's hiatus from touring was going to last. As it turned out, he wouldn't do another tour until the mid-seventies, and would barely even play any one-off gigs in the intervening time. But nobody knew that at the time, and so to be on the safe side the Hawks were being kept on a retainer. They'd always intended to work on their own music anyway -- they didn't just want to be anyone's backing band -- so they took this time to kick a few ideas around, but they were hamstrung by the fact that it was difficult to find rehearsal space in New York City, and they didn't have any gigs. Their main musical work in the few months between summer 1966 and spring 1967 was some recordings for the soundtrack of a film Peter Yarrow was making. You Are What You Eat is a bizarre hippie collage of a film, documenting the counterculture between 1966 when Yarrow started making it and 1968 when it came out. Carl Franzoni, one of the leaders of the LA freak movement that we've talked about in episodes on the Byrds, Love, and the Mothers of Invention, said of the film “If you ever see this movie you'll understand what ‘freaks' are. It'll let you see the L.A. freaks, the San Francisco freaks, and the New York freaks. It was like a documentary and it was about the makings of what freaks were about. And it had a philosophy, a very definite philosophy: that you are free-spirited, artistic." It's now most known for introducing the song "My Name is Jack" by John Simon, the film's music supervisor: [Excerpt: John Simon, "My Name is Jack"] That song would go on to be a top ten hit in the UK for Manfred Mann: [Excerpt: Manfred Mann, "My Name is Jack"] The Hawks contributed backing music for several songs for the film, in which they acted as backing band for another old Greenwich Village folkie who had been friends with Yarrow and Dylan but who was not yet the star he would soon become, Tiny Tim: [Excerpt: Tiny Tim, "Sonny Boy"] This was their first time playing together properly since the end of the European tour, and Sid Griffin has noted that these Tiny Tim sessions are the first time you can really hear the sound that the group would develop over the next year, and which would characterise them for their whole career. Robertson, Danko, and Manuel also did a session, not for the film with another of Grossman's discoveries, Carly Simon, playing a version of "Baby Let Me Follow You Down", a song they'd played a lot with Dylan on the tour that spring. That recording has never been released, and I've only managed to track down a brief clip of it from a BBC documentary, with Simon and an interviewer talking over most of the clip (so this won't be in the Mixcloud I put together of songs): [Excerpt: Carly Simon, "Baby Let Me Follow You Down"] That recording is notable though because as well as Robertson, Danko, and Manuel, and Dylan's regular studio keyboard players Al Kooper and Paul Griffin, it also features Levon Helm on drums, even though Helm had still not rejoined the band and was at the time mostly working in New Orleans. But his name's on the session log, so he must have m

RE:WARM 016 – FOLK FUNK & TRIPPY TROUBADOURS VOL 2 COMPILED BY PAUL HILLERY PREORDER RELEASE DATE – 23.06.2023 RELEASE DATE: 15.09.2023 FORMATS: VINYL, DIGITAL & CD

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

This week's Deadpod features a fine second set from the band's performance on April 15, 1988 at the Rosemont Horizon in Chicago Illinois.  The band is tight throughout on this night, starting from the opening Bucket, which goes into a very nice 'Crazy Fingers'. Garcia gives a lovely solo here, and it sets the mood for a reflective 'Looks Like Rain' which follows and on which Weir provides a lovely rendition. 'Terrapin Station' follows, and the boys rev this one up as that train pulls into the station! Drums and Space follows (probably with a bit of a cut somewhere here), followed by a slinkly 'Other One'. Bobby follows that with 'I Need a Miracle' which seems a bit out of place but Brent follows with the 'Dear Mr. Fantasy>Hey Jude' combo which was performed quite often during this period. The 'Lovelight' that follows is a perfect counter coming out of that.  Jerry gives the crowd a wonderful encore with 'Knockin' On Heaven's Door' to close the evening.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                          Grateful Dead Rosemont Horizon Chicago , IL 4/15/1988 - Friday Two     Hell In A Bucket [6:28] > Crazy Fingers [8:05] > Looks Like Rain [8:28] > Terrapin Station [11:31] > Drums [2:15#] > Space [#7:13]> The Other One [5:01] > I Need A Miracle [3:19] > Dear Mr. Fantasy [4:28] > Hey Jude [2:05] > Turn On Your Love Light [5:11] Encore     Knockin' On Heaven's Door [7:37]   You can listen to this week's Deadpod here:  http://traffic.libsyn.com/deadshow/deadpod042823.mp3  Thanks for your kind support. 

This week we bring you the conclusion of the band's performance on February 28, 1970 at the Family Dog at the Great Highway in San Francisco California.  The set starts with 'Good Lovin' complete with a very interesting drum solo followed by a wonderful jam.  The drummers return for a unique set between 'Alligator' and 'The Other One', which is followed by the rare 'Mason's Children'. The band returns to 'Lovelight' to close out the set. Sadly we don't have the encore, which was supposedly 'Uncle John's Band'.  Grateful Dead Family Dog at the Great Highway San Francisco, CA 2/28/1970 - Saturday Part 2 Good Lovin' [1:43] > Drums [3:13] > Good Lovin' [8:00];[0:22]%[0:02] ; Big Boss Man [5:05];[0:07] % Casey Jones % [0:20] ; Alligator [3:48] > Drums [6:25] > The Other One [9:27] > Mason's Children [5:13] > Jam [0:50] > Turn On Your Love Light [12:24];[0:09]  You can listen to this week's Deadpod here:  http://traffic.libsyn.com/deadshow/deadpod021023.mp3 Thanks for your kind support. 

Featured Songs: 00:38 - Eggy - 10-01-22 - Ricky Gervais 14:30 - Widespread Panic - 10-02-22 - Honkey Red 23:40 - Billy Strings - 10-02-22 - Lonesome LA Cowboy 27:36 - Goose - 10-04-22 - Turn On Your Love Light     34:02 - Gov't Mule - 10-06-22 - Rocking Horse See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This week we continue with the second set of the show on February 20, 1971 at the Capitol Theater in Port Chester NY, one of the famous 'ESP experiment shows'.  This show features an electric version of 'Ripple' - one of only three that were ever performed live. I think the 'Goin' Down the Road'>'Not Fade Away'> 'Goin' Down the Road' is quite exceptional as well. Then there is the classic Pigpen version of 'Lovelight'.. if you're a fan you're going to enjoy this one!      Grateful Dead Capitol Theater Port Chester, NY 2/20/71 - Saturday     Two     Truckin' [7:36] ; Loser [6:19] ; Next Time You See Me [3:14] ; Greatest Story Ever Told [4:05] > Johnny B. Goode [3:26] ; Ripple [4:12] ; Not Fade Away [4:31] > Goin' Down The Road Feeling Bad [4:51] > Jam [3:13] > Not Fade Away [1:45] > Turn On Your Love Light [24:09]   You can listen to this week's Deadpod here:  http://traffic.libsyn.com/deadshow/deadpod021822.mp3   My thanks for your kind support. 

With many of being hit this week with some ungodly cold and snowy weather I figured it was time to bring out the smokin' hot primal Dead.. so here is a good one... this comes to you from February 21, 1969 at the Dream Bowl in Vallejo California.. We only have the second set, but perhaps that is for the best - who knows if I could handle more of this one ;)  We start with a great version of 'Good Morning Little Schoolgirl' with Pigpen in fine voice. 'Doin' That Rag' follows - don't be surprised by the wierd and NSFW ending courtesy of Mr. Lesh...  We move into the heart of the space, with a long wonderful 'Dark Star, then a short but sweet 'St. Stephen' That moves into a 23 minute jamming classic version of 'The Eleven'. Not to be outdone by all the psychedelia, Pigpen closes the set with a fabulous long 'Lovelight' full of his fabulous raps and Garcia's masterful runs.  Not enough yet? Well the boys supply a wonderful 'Morning Dew' encore.    Grateful Dead Dream Bowl Vallejo, CA 2/21/69 - Friday      Two       Good Morning Little Schoolgirl [#12:41] Doin' That Rag [6:39];[0:17] ; Dark Star [22:22] > Saint Stephen [5:59] > The Eleven [23:00] > Turn On Your Love Light [26:18] Encore      Morning Dew [11:44] %   You can listen to this week's Deadpod here:  http://traffic.libsyn.com/deadshow/deadpod020422.mp3  Thank you for listening and for your kind support!  Stay warm and Let that Light Shine! 

Merry Christmas!  On this Christmas Eve edition of the Deadpod we get to listen to the second set of this fine performance from December 27, 1970 in El Monte California.  The tape begins with an abbreviated 'Good Lovin' - while I wish we had all of this song, what we have is really good. Pigpen follows with 'In the Midnight Hour' and boy its clear in these two songs what he means to the band. Fine versions of 'Attics' and 'Bobby McGee' follows, then the Chuck Berry 'Around and Around'. The jamming in the following 'St. Stephen>Not Fade Away>Goin' Down the Road>Lovelight' show us the power of this young band. We hear the start of 'Uncle John's Band' but the jig is up and the show has to end...     Grateful Dead Legion Stadium El Monte, CA 12/27/70 - Sunday Two - 1:13:48     Good Lovin' [#9:20] [0:18]   In The Midnight Hour [7:55] [0:26]   Attics Of My Life [6:47] [1:00]   Me And Bobby McGee [6:14] [0:50]   Around And Around [4:12] [1:08]   Saint Stephen [6:50] > Drums [0:10] > Not Fade Away [4:49] > Goin' Down The Road Feeling Bad [10:23] > Turn On Your Love Light [8:16] [0:20]   Uncle John's Band Tease [0:06] [0:44]     You can listen to this week's Deadpod here:  http://traffic.libsyn.com/deadshow/deadpod122421.mp3 May Christmas find you and yours healthy and happy.  Peace. 

What a great Scarlet>Fire on this week's Deadpod!  This comes to us from the second set of the band's performance at Madison Square Gardin on October 14, 1994.  This opening Scarlet>Fire is clearly the highlight of the show, clocking in at over 30 minutes of intensive, improvisational joy. You probably won't believe that they could hit on all cylinders like this at this point of the band's history but just sit back and enjoy. I am particularly impressed by the pace of the arrangement and how they don't take a breath through this.. amazing. You can hear some of the loud, standing ovation the crowd sent back after the end of Fire.. The rest of the set for the most part is no slouch either. I enjoyed Bobby's 'Look Like Rain' and while 'Samba' is one I'd rather skip, I am happy to include 'Corrina' which features a nice jam into Drums and Space. 'Attics' always provides an emotional hit, and while we can hear how far Jerry has aged here and in the 'Liberty' encore, I feel this one is well worth hearing. I hope you do too.    Grateful Dead Madison Square Garden New York , NY 10/14/94 - Friday Two     Scarlet Begonias [9:14] > Fire On The Mountain [22:03] ; Looks Like Rain [8:05] ; Samba In The Rain [6:51] ; Corrina [17:02] > Drums > Space [17:18] > I Need A Miracle [5:16] > Attics Of My Life [5:23] > Turn On Your Love Light [5:43] Encore     Liberty [5:45]   You can listen to this week's Deadpod here:  http://traffic.libsyn.com/deadshow/deadpod101521.mp3  Thank you for listening. 

In this week's episode we hop back to 1969 to hear two shows from the spring that showcase The Grateful Dead in significant transition. We hear two Midwestern shows: April 26, 1969 from Chicago, IL and April 27, 1969 from Minneapolis, MN. Hearing the band shift between the summer of love English Folk of their late-60's output to Pigpen bar blues to the Live Dead inspired suite from Minneapolis, is a revealing insight into who The Dead were & who they could've become.Disc One opens with a string of songs the band would essentially leave in the 60's, highlighting the Garcia/Hunter penchant for pastoral lyrics & fitting 3-4 songs together into one. The highlight is undeniably the “Mountains Of The Moon” which fades into a “Dark Star” jam. The disc ends with a stunning jam from 4/27 out of “Turn On Your Lovelight -> Me & My Uncle” which showcases the looseness the band could play with during this period. Disc Two continues on 4/27 with a suite based around “Dark Star” that essentially mimics the Live Dead release, showcasing a similar selection of songs through different passages of improvisation. On the whole, the set proves to be a controversial one for Rob & Steve as the two find numerous disagreements with Disc One, as well as with the place The Dead find themselves in early 1969. The Velvet Underground co-headlined the 4/26 show with The Dead, offering another avenue for discourse on this release.36 from the Vault is a production of Osiris Media. It is edited, produced and mastered by Brian Brinkman. All music composed by Amar Sastry, unless otherwise noted. Logo design by Liz Bee Art & Design. The executive producer of 36 from the Vault is RJ Bee. ---We're thrilled to be sponsored by Grady's Cold Brew. Use Promo Code: VAULTCheck out Green Future Wealth and mention OSIRIS to get a free report on your existing investmentsVisit Sunset Lake CBD and use promo code VAULT for 20% off your purchaseWe're thrilled to be sponsored by Melophy. Use Promo Code VAULT to save 20% on virtual music lessonsWe're grateful to be sponsored by Garcia Cannabis. Discover Garcia Hand Picked at GarciaHandPicked.com, and connect with Fellow Fans at @garciahandpicked on Instagram---Please consider reviewing this podcast on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. We invite you to listen to Dick's Picks Vol. 27 in anticipation of our next episode, OUR SEASON FINALE which will drop on Monday, July 26! See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Sintonía: "(Do The) Mashed Potatoes, Pt. 1" - Nat Kendrick & The Swans "Last Night" - The Mar Keys; "Just a Little Bit" - Rosco Gordon; "Watch Your Step" - Bobby Parker; "When You See Me Hurt" - Carl Lester & The Showstoppers; "Hurricane" - Dave "Baby" Cortez; "Turn On Your Love Light" - Bobby Bland; "If You Gotta Make a Fool of Somebody" - James Ray; "I Like It Like That (Part 1)" - Chris Kenner; "Whole Lotta Woman" - The Contours; "My Girl Josephine" - Bill Black; "Hey! Baby" - Bruce Channel; "The Hunch" - Paul Gayten; "Bye Bye Baby" - Mary Wells; "Gonzo" - James Booker; "You Better Move On" - Arthur Alexander; "Baby It´s You" - The Shirelles; "Well, I Told You" - The Chantels; "You Can´t Sit Down (Part One)" - Phil Upchurch Escuchar audio

Here is the second set of the band's performance at the 'In Concert Against AIDS' event that took place on May 27, 1989 at Oakland California.  Clarence Clemmons sits in on the first four songs of set 2 and the closing Lovelight, and I think to particularly nice effect on the 'Fire On the Mountain' and 'Lovelight'. There are two very nice Brent tunes here - a good version of 'Blow Away' and a sweet 'I Will Take You Home' out of space.  Jerry delivers a perfect version of 'Wharf Rat' out of  'The Other One' and the 'Lovelight' provides a great rocking ending to the set. The pretty 'Brokedown Palace' encore is a nice way to end the set...    Grateful Dead Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum Stadium Oakland, CA 5/27/89 - Saturday     Two     Hell In A Bucket (1) ; Fire On The Mountain (1) ; Blow Away (1) ; Truckin' (1) ; Drums ; Space ; I Will Take You Home ; The Other One ; Wharf Rat ; Turn On Your Love Light (1) Encore     Brokedown Palace (1) In Concert Against AIDS. (1) with Clarence Clemons on saxophone.  You can listen to this week's Deadpod here:  http://traffic.libsyn.com/deadshow/deadpod060421.mp3   

In this week’s episode we jump back in time to February 1968 for a pair of shows - unheard prior to their Dick’s Picks Release - from the King’s Beach Bowl in King’s Beach, California. Primordial Dead. We hear the band working through a number of tunes that would find their way onto Anthem Of The Sun while experimenting with dynamic-less jamming. As Steve notes at the top, this show kicks off at 11 before ending up at 35. It’s a wild ride. Disc One opens with a near-20min jam off “Viola Lee Blues” and doesn’t look back. Both discs in this set flow with thematic precision & youthful vigor that defines the overall period for the dead. From there, we hear Pigpen croon on “Hurts Me Too” before segues take over in “Dark Star -> China Cat Sunflower -> The Eleven> Turn On Your Lovelight” and finally a wild “Born Crosseyed -> Spanish Jam.” In Disc Two we hear the early power of “Morning Dew” before Pigpen lets loose again in a massive “Good Morning Little School Girl.” From there we’re back into the segues, as we hear part of the band’s Anthem Of The Sun segment in “That’s It For The Other One -> New Potato Caboose -> Alligator -> China Cat Sunflower -> The Eleven -> Alligator> Caution -> Feedback.” The volume closes with noise & sonic energy as the visceral power of the Grateful Dead comes through with tape hiss, piss, and vinegar. We’re not yet at the foundation of The Dead, we’re somewhere just before the Live Dead/Workingman’s Dead/American Beauty era that would set the band up for their 25yr period of greatness. The sounds are weird, the jams are heavy, and the songs aren’t fully formed. We can hear The Dead in there, ready to break out of their shell. 36 from the Vault is production of Osiris Media. It is edited, produced and mastered by Brian Brinkman. All music composed by Amar Sastry, unless otherwise noted. Logo design by Liz Bee Art & Design. The executive producer of 36 from the Vault is RJ Bee. ---We’re thrilled to be sponsored by Grady’s Cold Brew. Use Promo Code: VAULTCheck out Green Future Wealth and mention OSIRIS to get a free report on your existing investmentsVisit Sunset Lake CBD and use promo code VAULT for 20% off your purchase---Please consider reviewing this podcast on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. We invite you to listen to our Curveball Show in anticipation of our next episode, which will drop on Monday, May 17! See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

This week the Deadpod goes back to the Spring of 1969 for a set the Dead played in Chicago at a place either called 'The Electric Theater' or the 'Kinetic Playground' depending on where you look :)  While this is a short set, the story goes that the Velvet Underground was on the same bill, and played before the Dead. Apparently they played a very long set and the Dead were left with only enough time for a short set. The story goes that the Dead returned the favor the next night...  Their set opens with a rather sloppy 'Hard To Handle' - apparently Jerry was experimenting with using the pedal steel on this one, and it doesn't come off so well. 'Doin' That Rag' follows and has a nice jam in it, but they really get going with the 'Good Morning Little Schoolgirl' that follows  - some classic Pigpen here and throughout. An early 'Morning Dew' follows, then, unfortunately, Bobby's Yellow Dog story.  The set closes with two excellent pieces, 'Sitting on Top of the World' and and a great 'Lovelight'.    Grateful Dead Electric Theater Chicago, IL 4/25/69 - Friday One - Hard to Handle [4:25] % Doin' That Rag [7:32] % Good Morning Little Schoolgirl [11:28] % Morning Dew [7:32] % Yellow dog story [1:58] % Sitting on Top of the World [3:46] % Turn On Your Love Light [23:30]  You can listen to this week's Deadpod here:  http://traffic.libsyn.com/deadshow/deadpod042321.mp3   Have a great week! and thanks for your support!         

 It's a new year but I've decided to go *way* back for some primal Dead on this week's Deadpod.  This comes to us from January 17th, 1968 at the Carousel Ballroom in San Francisco. What a treasure of early/classic tunes we have here! Now I'll admit, the sound is sometimes muddy and the vocals are at times less than clear.. however give the age and provinance of this recording I thought it very worth listening to and hope you enjoy it as well.  Some of the highlights of course are Pigpen on the Lovelight, and check out the fast pacing throughout. Jerry sounds so different on China Cat! I always love hearing the old 'New Potato Caboose' and 'Born Cross-eyed', but what is probably the highlight is the great almost 16 minute 'Spanish Jam'.  The sound is psychedelic throughout, and if you can overlook the flaws I think you will enjoy this return to some of the roots of our favorite band!    Grateful Dead Carousel Ballroom San Francisco, CA 1/17/68 - Wednesday     One     Turn On Your Love Light [15:22] % Dark Star [#4:48] > China Cat Sunflower [4:04] > The Eleven [10:01] > New Potato Caboose [8:30] > Born Cross-Eyed [2:34] > Spanish Jam [15:47]   Two      Beat It On Down The Line [2:52] ; Morning Dew [7:43] ; Cryptical Envelopment > The Other One > Cryptical Envelopment [10:05] ; Good Morning Little Schoolgirl [13:49]    You can listen to this week's Deadpod here:  http://traffic.libsyn.com/deadshow/deadpod012221.mp3   Thanks for your kind support of the Deadpod!  ... and leave it on!   

Two factors influnced this week's Deadpod; first a request for more 1969 Dead from a friend of the 'pod, and secondly my desire to find a one-set tape that wouldn't run over into next week's Thanksgiving podcast. The result, I think, is this outstanding recording from October 25, 1969 at Winterland.  Sure, its only four songs... but what songs these are.. I know I played a 'Dark Star' last week but I'm confident you'll forgive me when you hear this rendition, complete with the very first 'feeling groovy' jam.. The 'Lovelight' is totallly unique as well, with Steven Stills sitting in on guitar and vocals. Man I wish we had the rest of this night!  Hope you enjoy it, and be sure and check on Thanksgiving morning  for the annual Thanksgiving day Deadpod...  Grateful Dead Winterland Arena San Francisco, CA 10/25/69 - Saturday One Dark Star [21:42] > Saint Stephen [6:00] > The Eleven [9:26#] > Turn On Your Love Light [21:57]* Ending remarks from Bill Graham * w/Steven Stills on guitar and vocals You can listen to this week's Deadpod here:  http://traffic.libsyn.com/deadshow/deadpod112020.mp3    thanks for your support!!

Featured Songs: 1. 00:38 - Goose - Me and My Uncle - 09-16-20 - South Farms - Morris, CT 2. 06:48 - Warren Haynes and Danny Louis - Turn On Your Lovelight > Smokestack Lightning > Turn On Your Lovelight - 09-13-20 - South Farms - Morris, CT 3. 23:33 - Pigeons Playing Ping Pong - Abracadbra - 09-18-20 - Champlain Valley Expo - Essex Junction, VT 4. 27:31 - Billy Strings - Sénor - 09-12-20 - Mohegan Sun Arena - Wilkes Barre, PA 5. 32:16 - Steve Kimock Band - Merle’s Boogie - 12-10-2004 - Private Party - Redwood City, California See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Welcome back to 36 from the Vault! In Episode 4 we explore Dick’s Picks Vol. 4, from the Fillmore East in New York City, on February 13 & 14, 1970. We find the Dead at a transitional period in their career, peaking as they move from the psychedelic madness of the 60s into the most remarkable decade of their career. This show is capstoned by a seamless chunk of music: “Dark Star -> That’s It For The Other One -> Turn On Your Lovelight.” Later, we hear a fantastic “China Cat Sunflower -> I Know You Rider,” “Dancing In The Streets,” as well as a wild “Caution (Do Not Stop On The Tracks) -> Feedback.”Steven and Rob focus on the fascinating run of shows The Dead played in early 1970, the band’s transition to perhaps the greatest period of their career, their Sonic Youth jams of the era, Bobby’s phenomenal rhythm work and much more. 36 from the Vault is production of Osiris Media. It is edited and produced by Brian Brinkman, and mastered by Matt Dwyer. All music composed by Amar Sastry, unless otherwise noted. Logo design by Liz Bee Art & Design. The executive producer of 36 from the Vault is RJ Bee. Please consider reviewing this podcast on Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. We invite you to listen to Dick’s Picks Vol. 5 in anticipation of our next episode on March 11. See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

From STUDIO 67 in Hollywood, join the BIG W for the next two hours as he explores, with drink in hand, swingin' Space-Age Pop songs of LOVE in LIVING STEREO! Original aired on Metromedia Radio 2/14/14 and rebroadcast 2/11/17 on WFSN-96.7fm / WJUB 1420am Show 236 playlist: • Your Love - Nat King Cole • Love Me Tonight – Ted Heath • You Bring out the Lover in Me – Eydie Gorme • People Will Say We’re In Love – Bob Thompson • I Love You, and Don’t You Forget It – Sarah Vaughan • Love Potion No. 9 – Herb Alpert & The Tijuana Brass • I Love You – The Kirby Stone Four • Wives and Lovers – Wayne Newton • Loads of Love – Peggy Lee • So in Love – Julie London • Love Is Just around the Corner – Sid Ramin • L.O.V.E. – Buddy Greco • I Wish I Were in Love Again – Ella Fitzgerald • Lover – Si Zentner • What Now, My Love – Lou Rawls • Let’s Do It, Let’s Fall in Love – Skip Martin • Turn On Your Love Light – Tom Jones • You Can’t Love ‘Em All – Sammy Davis, Jr. • The Tunnel of Love – Doris Day • From Russia with Love – Dick Schory • I Can’t Believe that You’re in Love with Me – Dean Martin • What Is This Thing Called Love – Frankie Avalon • Lover’s Concerto – Xavier Cugat • Hooray for Love – The Skylarks • Love Won’t Let You Get Away – Rosemary Clooney & Bing Crosby • When Love Walked in with You – Dakota Staton • Almost Like Being in Love – Beverly Kenney • The Lady’s in Love with You – Mel Torme • Falling in Love with Love – Lena Horne • The Pagan Love Song – Arthur Lyman • Hello Young Lovers – Martin Denny • I’ve Never Been in Love Before – Bobby Darin • Lover Come Back to Me – Ray Conniff Singers • Swing, You Lovers – Keely Smith

Set 1:TuningThat's It For The Other One ->New Potato CabooseDupree's Diamond BluesDoin' That RagSet 2:Dark StarTurn On Your Lovelight ->Drums

One of my favorite periods of Dead music to explore is this January 1969 run at the Avalon Ballroom in San Francisco CA, and this week I decided to feature this set form January 26th. Is it complete? probably not.. is it pristine? certainly not the opening Cryptical which has a spot not far from the beginning that will test your patience.. be patient it is worth it, most of this tape sounds *great*, both in sound quality and the quality of the music. This set contains a rare version of 'Clementine'.. check out the lyrics.. it's quite a rarity. The 'Death Don't Have No Mercy' is as powerful as ever.. and the rest of the set, from 'Dark Star' on is pure powerful psychedelic Grateful Dead. These versions of 'The Eleven' and 'Turn on Your Lovelight' were used for the 'Live/Dead' release.          Grateful Dead Avalon Ballroom San Francisco, CA 1/26/69 - Sunday     One - 36:31     Cryptical Envelopment [1:53] > Drums [0:15] > The Other One [7:39] > Cryptical Envelopment [6:21] > Clementine [10:45] > Death Don't Have No Mercy [9:34] Two - 41:07     Dark Star [9:45] > St Stephen [7:01] > The Eleven [10:24] > Turn On Your Love Light [14:32]    You can listen to this week's Deadpod here:  http://traffic.libsyn.com/deadshow/deadpod012420.mp3   ...and leave it on...    thanks for your support of

Playlist: Jake Kulak, How Much Longer, Paul Gabriel, Second Story Man, Misty Blues, No More To Give, Tom “The Suit” Forst, She Was Right, The Jimmys, Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet, Will Jacobs, Funky Woman, Junior Watson, Louella, Justine and the Unclean, Sweet Denial, Duke Robillard, Got The South In My Mouth, “Big” Al Dorn & the Blues Howlers, Jack Hammer, Whitney Shay, Don’t You Fool Me no More, Kern Pratt, Loving That Feeling, The Lee Boys, Turn On Your LOve Light, The Sherman Holmes Project, Rock Of Ages, Genya Ravan, Fool For A Pretty Face, Joanna Connor, Joanna In A, Pierce Dipner And The Shades Of Blue, Get Out Of Your Life, Paul Edelman & Jangling Sparrows, Joshua Chamberlain, Georgia Randall, Big Oak Tree, Andrew “Jr Boy” Jones & Kerrie Lepai Jones, She Shed, Val Starr & The Blues Rocket, If She Can Get A Man (Anyone Can), Wildmen Blues Band, Boogie Man, Frank Bey, Calling All Fools, Thorbjorn Risager & The Black Tornado, Nobody But The Moon, Bywater Call, Talking Backwards, Sugar Blue, Good Old Days, Jay Gordon & Blues Venom, Lost In Time, Popa Chubby, If You’re Looking For Trouble, Rick Estrin & The Nightcats, Bo Dee’s Bounce, Brandon Santini, Don’t Come Around Here, Dennis Gruenling, Count Chromatic, Billy Branch And The Sons Of THe Blues, You’re So Fine, Kim Wilson, Bonus Boogie, Betty Fox Band, Green Light, Tomislav Goluban, Hayloft Blues, Christian Collin, Highway Song, Eight To The Bar, Everybody Rock N Go, Mojomatics, Soy Baby Many Thanks To: We here at the Black-Eyed & Blues Show would like to thank all the PR and radio people that get us music including Frank Roszak, Rick Lusher ,Doug Deutsch Publicity Services,American Showplace Music, Alive Natural Sounds, Ruf Records, Vizztone Records,Blind Pig Records,Delta Groove Records, Electro-Groove Records,Betsie Brown, Blind Raccoon Records, BratGirl Media, Mark Pucci Media, Mark Platt @RadioCandy.com M.C. Records, Gulf Coast Records, Bigtone Records, Whiskey Bayou Records and all of the Blues Societies both in the U.S. and abroad. All of you help make this show as good as it is weekly. We are proud to play your artists.Thank you all very much! https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/id502316055

This is episode #218 Out of the ashes of the demise of On Target's bi-monthly night at in Winnipeg Marty consoles himself (and his listners) with pure vinyl vibes. Starting with some Hammond groove from Mr. Dynamite, James Brown, and a healthy serving of Motown. Get Into It! Please like the Facebook page here: facebook.com/ontargetpodcast ------------------------------------------------- The Playlist Is: "Papa's Got A Brand New Bag" James Brown At The Organ - Philips "Two Lovers" Mary Wells - Tamla "All That's Good" The Miracles - Tamla "You've Got To Earn It" The Tempations - Tamla-Motown "The Hunter Gets Caught By The Game" The Marvelettes - Tamla "Devil In His Heart" Carolyn Crawford - Motown "Emmeretta" Deep Purple - Tetragrammaton "Natural Born Bugie" Humble Pie - Immediate "No Return" The Third Rail - Epic "Don't You Want My Lovin'" The Orlons - Cameo "Do What'cha Wanna" Donnie Elbert - Gateway "Over Again" The Dells - Cadet "Your Kind Of Lovin'" Judy Clay - Scepter "Third Finger, Left Hand" Martha & The Vandellas - Tamla-Motown "Turn On Your Love Light" The Bob Kuban Band - Norman "Uh-Huh" Paul Anka - MGM "At The Hop '65" Len Barry - Decca "Shoily Klein" The Lovin' Cohens - MGM "Watermelon Man Ska" Byron Lee & The Dragonaires - Atlantic "Oh Lawdy" Candy - Carnival "Funky Funky Boogaloo" Jimmy Brown - A-Bet

We go back to 1968 in today’s episode with a central figure in Grateful Dead mythology, a member of the groups road crew, Big Steve Parish. Of course, if you’re any sort of historian on the Grateful Dead you are very aware of Steve’s place and role within the band. As you’ll soon hear, he not only was on the crew, but served as Jerry Garcia’s road tech, bodyguard, and eventual manager of the Jerry Garcia Band. Steve has a regular show on SiriusXM’s Grateful Dead channel, “Big Steve Hour”, and he is taking that storytelling format on the road, for more fun and frivolity. This guy loves the road. For dates and more visit bigstevehour.com. Show Notes: First Song: 00:40 - Turn On Your Lovelight (live) Interview Begins: 11:09 Extro Song: 32:55 - Catfish John (live) See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Intro Song, The Knickerbocker All-Stars, “Turn On Your Love Light”, Open Mic At The Knick First Set – Jimmy Thackery, “Write If You Find Love”, Extra Jimmies Scott Sharrard, “High Cost Of Loving You”, Saving Grace Dennis Herrera, “You Stole My Heart”, You Stole My Heart Second Set – Keith Stone With Red Gravy, “Love Done Put Me Down”, Keith Stone With Red Gravy J Edwards, “You Said You Loved Me”, J Edwards Guitar Shorty, “Too Hard To Love You”, Bare Knuckle Third Set – WIB Bloodest Saxophone, “I Just Want To Make Love To You”, Texas Queens 5 Janiva Magness, “That's What Love Will Make You Do”, What Love Will Do Beth Hart (w/ Joe Bonamassa), “A Sunday Kind Of Love”, Seesaw Fourth Set – Nick Schnebelen, “Altar Of Love”, Crazy All By Myself Colin James, “I Nedd Your Love So Bad”, Miles To Go Dave Keller, “Baby, I Love You”, Every Soul's A Star

Winter Time is Good Ol' Grateful Dead Time!   I hope you're not sick of primal Dead, because in looking about for a show for this week I came across this set from January 17th, 1970 and decided that it tickled me in just the right spot so I'm going to share it this week. The boys are clicking and transitioning to new vistas and I love hearing them work out jams like Phil on this Cumberland Blues or the great 'Dark Star' jam here. Naturally hearing Pigpen in his prime is just another bonus, (although I've read the reason the organ sounds different is that it came from a nearby church *lol* not sure how true that one is).   It's not all peaches and creme, this 48 year old tape has some flaws, including the beginning of Dire Wolf and a cut in High Time. Most heartbreaking is the missing ending of Lovelight, but I do hope you enjoy what we have here - we are really lucky to be able to relive it!     Grateful Dead Gill Coliseum - Oregon State University Corvalis, OR 1/17/70 - Saturday One - 1:57:08 Dire Wolf [#3:26];[0:37] % China Cat Sunflower [#2:13] > Jam [2:55] > I Know You Rider [4:24];[0:29] ; Hard To Handle [5:00];[0:25] ; Cumberland Blues [4:49];[1:04] ; Me And My Uncle [3:04];[0:18] ; Black Peter [9:32];[1:10] ; Good Lovin' [1:40] > Drums [0:15] > Good Lovin' [5:44];[1:41] ; Mason's Children [4:49] > High Time [6:#31];[1:19] ; Dark Star [20:51] > Saint Stephen [6:48] > The Eleven [11:16] > Turn On Your Love Light [16:56#]   You can listen to this week's Deadpod here: http://traffic.libsyn.com/deadshow/deadpod011119.mp3   Stay warm .. and thanks for listening and for your kind support!  

We close out 2018 with the second part of the band's performance back on on April 3rd, 1970 at the Field House at the University of Cincinnati. A great representation of the band's raucous and spirited style this set features some great jamming on some real classics like 'Cryptical Envelpment' into 'The Other One', 'Cosmic Charlie' and a wonderful 'Turn on Your Lovelight'. It's easy to see why Pigpen was considered the real frontman during this period when you listen to that Lovelight.    I hope you enjoy this small slice of classic Dead as we turn the page on another year.  May the next one bring you and yours much joy and good health, and all of us peace and brotherhood.      Grateful Dead Field House - University of Cincinnati Cincinnati, OH 4/3/70 - Friday   part 2 Good Lovin' [#0:22] > Drums [2:16] > Good Lovin' [4:37];[0:02] % Cryptical Envelopment [2:01] > Drums [3:05] > The Other One [7:44] > Cryptical Envelopment [5:26] > Cosmic Charlie [6:29] % Not Fade Away [5:30] > Turn On Your Love Light [17:#16] Encore And We Bid You Good Night     You can listen to this week's Deadpod here:  http://traffic.libsyn.com/deadshow/deadpod122118.mp3     Thanks for listening my friends. 

This week's Deadpod features a fine second set from the band's show in Oakland California on December 4, 1990. They open with a nice 'Eyes of the World' - Bruce's piano here really shines. 'Saint of Circumstance' follows then a strong Jerry vocal performance on 'Ship of Fools'. 'Truckin' is where things really get going though with a great Jerry jam especially into the 'Smokestack Lightning' which has some nice interplay between Jerry, Vince and Bruce. The band doesn't slow down, post-drums, with a strong 'Other One' (sans the Phil bombs) and a good Wharf Rat. Lovelight closes the set, but Jerry returns for a sweet 'Baby Blue' encore.     Grateful Dead Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum Arena Oakland, CA 12/4/90 - Tuesday Two  [1:47:57]   Eyes Of The World [13:02] > Saint Of Circumstance [7:16] Ship Of Fools [7:31] ; Truckin [8:55] > Smokestack Lightning [6:00] > Drums [15:10] > Space [11:13] > The Other One [10:56] > Wharf Rat [10:10] > Turn On Your Love Light [6:55] Encore It's All Over Now, Baby Blue [6:35]   You can listen to this week's Deadpod here: http://traffic.libsyn.com/deadshow/deadpod121418.mp3   Special thanks to those of you who have kindly made year-end contributions to the Deadpod. Thanks to everyone who  helps us continue to roll.  

It's been far too long since Mod Marty has been in the booth so this week he marks the beginning of an "interuption-free" season. We still have dozens of new finds to get through and hours of outstanding Mod music to explore. Join us! Please like the Facebook page here: facebook.com/ontargetpodcast/ ------------------------------------------------- The Playlist Is: "Bye Bye Baby" Mary Wells - Motown "I Won't Be Back" Magica Brown - 20th Century "Heartbreak (It's Hurtin' Me)" Little Willie John - King "What You're Doin' To Me" Roscoe Robinson - Wand "As Long As The Feeling Is There" The Fantastic Four - Ric-Tic "That's The Way That It Goes" Bobby Marchan - Volt "Come On Down To My Boat" Every Mother's Son - MGM "Without A Word Of Warning" Gary Lewis & The Playboys - Liberty "And I Always Will" The Dynatones - HBR "Emulsified" Rex Garvin & The Mighty Cravers - Okeh "Stronger Than Love" James Carr - Bell "Recovery" Fontella Bass - Checker "She's Together" Little Richard - Brunswick "Give Me One More Chance" Wilmer & The Dukes - Apex "If You Love Her" Bobby Taylor & The Vancouvers - Gordy "Turn On Your Love Light" The Human Beinz - Capitol "It's A Day" The Druids - Columbia "Help Me Girl" The Animals - MGM "Hootenanny Hoot" Al "TNT" Braggs - Peacock "I Just Can't Get Over You" Al "TNT" Braggs - Peacock "On The Move" Willie Hobbs & The Dirte Four - Mercury

A detailed look at black, African-American, culture during the "Sixties". (1960-1969) (Bonus Artists: hidingtobefound & Luck Pacheco)   Overview   "The Sixties":  the counterculture and revolution in social norms about clothing, music, drugs, dress, sexuality, formalities, and schooling – or - irresponsible excess, flamboyance, and decay of social order.   Also labeled the Swinging Sixties because of the fall or relaxation of social taboos especially relating to racism and sexism that occurred during this time.   Also described as a classical Jungian nightmare cycle, where a rigid culture, unable to contain the demands for greater individual freedom, broke free of the social constraints of the previous age through extreme deviation from the norm.   The confrontation between the US and the Soviet Union dominated geopolitics during the '60s, with the struggle expanding into developing nations in Latin America, Africa, and Asia characterized by proxy wars, funding of insurgencies, and puppet governments.   In response to civil disobedience campaigns from groups like the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), U.S. President John F. Kennedy, pushed for social reforms. Kennedy's assassination in 1963 was a shock.   Liberal reforms were finally passed under Lyndon B. Johnson including civil rights for African Americans· and healthcare for the elderly and the poor. Despite his large-scale Great Society programs, Johnson was increasingly reviled. The heavy-handed American role in the Vietnam War outraged student protestors around the globe.   The assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., anti-Vietnam War movement, and the police response towards protesters of the 1968 Democratic National Convention, defined a politics of violence in the United States.   The 1960s were marked by several notable assassinations:   12 June 1963 – Medgar Evers, an NAACP field secretary. Assassinated by Byron de la Beckwith, a member of the Ku Klux Klan in Jackson, Mississippi.   22 November 1963 – John F. Kennedy, President of the United States. Assassinated by Lee Harvey Oswald while riding in a motorcade through Dealey Plaza in Dallas, Texas.   21 February 1965 – Malcolm X. Assassinated by members of the Nation of Islam in New York City. There is a dispute about which members killed Malcolm X.   4 April 1968 – Martin Luther King, Jr., civil rights leader. Assassinated by James Earl Ray in Memphis, Tennessee.   5 June 1968 – Robert F. Kennedy, United States Senator. Assassinated by Sirhan Sirhan in Los Angeles, after taking California in the presidential national primaries.   Social and political movements (counterculture)   Flower Power/Hippies In the second half of the decade, young people began to revolt against the conservative norms of the time. The youth involved in the popular social aspects of the movement became known as hippies. These groups created a movement toward liberation in society, including the sexual revolution, questioning authority and government, and demanding more freedoms and rights for women and minorities. The movement was also marked by the first widespread, socially accepted drug use (including LSD and marijuana) and psychedelic music.     Anti-war movement The war in Vietnam would eventually lead to a commitment of over half a million American troops, resulting in over 58,500 American deaths and producing a large-scale antiwar movement in the United States. Students became a powerful and disruptive force and university campuses sparked a national debate over the war. The antiwar movement was heavily influenced by the American Communist Party, but by the mid-1960s it outgrew this and became a broad-based mass movement centered in universities and churches: one kind of protest was called a "sit-in".   Civil rights movement Beginning in the mid-1950s and continuing into the late 1960s, African-Americans in the United States aimed at outlawing racial discrimination against black Americans and voting rights to them. The emergence of the Black Power movement, which lasted roughly from 1966 to 1975, enlarged the aims of the civil rights movement to include racial dignity, economic and political self-sufficiency, and anti-imperialism. The movement was characterized by major campaigns of civil resistance. Forms of protest and/or civil disobedience included boycotts such as the successful Montgomery Bus Boycott (1955–1956) in Alabama; "sit-ins" such as the influential Greensboro sit-ins (1960) in North Carolina; marches, such as the Selma to Montgomery marches (1965) in Alabama.; and a wide range of other nonviolent activities. Noted legislative achievements during this phase of the civil rights movement were passage of Civil Rights Act of 1964, that banned discrimination based on "race, color, religion, or national origin" in employment practices and public accommodations; the Voting Rights Act of 1965, that restored and protected voting rights; the Immigration and Nationality Services Act of 1965, that dramatically opened entry to the U.S. to immigrants other than traditional European groups; and the Fair Housing Act of 1968, that banned discrimination in the sale or rental of housing.   Hispanic and Chicano movement Another large ethnic minority group, the Mexican-Americans, are among other Hispanics in the U.S. who fought to end racial discrimination and socioeconomic disparity. In the 1960s and the following 1970s, Hispanic-American culture was on the rebound like ethnic music, foods, culture and identity both became popular and assimilated into the American mainstream. Spanish-language television networks, radio stations and newspapers increased in presence across the country.   Second-wave feminism A second wave of feminism in the United States and around the world gained momentum in the early 1960s. While the first wave of the early 20th century was centered on gaining suffrage and overturning de jure inequalities, the second wave was focused on changing cultural and social norms and de facto inequalities associated with women. At the time, a woman's place was generally seen as being in the home, and they were excluded from many jobs and professions. Feminists took to the streets, marching and protesting, writing books and debating to change social and political views that limited women. In 1963, with Betty Friedan's revolutionary book, The Feminine Mystique, the role of women in society, and in public and private life was questioned. By 1966, the movement was beginning to grow and power as women's group spread across the country and Friedan, along with other feminists, founded the National Organization for Women. In 1968, "Women's Liberation" became a household term.   Gay rights movement The United States, in the middle of a social revolution, led the world in LGBT rights in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Inspired by the civil-rights movement and the women's movement, early gay-rights pioneers had begun, by the 1960s, to build a movement. These groups were rather conservative in their practices, emphasizing that gay men and women are no different from those who are straight and deserve full equality. This philosophy would be dominant again after AIDS, but by the very end of the 1960s, the movement's goals would change and become more radical, demanding a right to be different, and encouraging gay pride.   Crime The 1960s was also associated with a large increase in crime and urban unrest of all types. Between 1960 and 1969 reported incidences of violent crime per 100,000 people in the United States nearly doubled and have yet to return to the levels of the early 1960s. Large riots broke out in many cities like Chicago, Detroit, Los Angeles, New York City, Newark, New Jersey, Oakland, California and Washington, D.C. By the end of the decade, politicians like George Wallace and Richard Nixon campaigned on restoring law and order to a nation troubled with the new unrest.   Economics The decade began with a recession and at that time unemployment was considered high at around 7%. John F. Kennedy promised to "get America moving again." To do this, he instituted a 7% tax credit for businesses that invest in new plants and equipment. By the end of the decade, median family income had risen from $8,540 in 1963 to $10,770 by 1969. Minimum wage was $1.30 per hour / ~$2,700 per year (~$18,700 in 2018)   Popular culture   The counterculture movement dominated the second half of the 1960s, its most famous moments being the Summer of Love in San Francisco in 1967, and the Woodstock Festival in upstate New York in 1969. Psychedelic drugs, especially LSD, were widely used medicinally, spiritually and recreationally throughout the late 1960s, and were popularized by Timothy Leary with his slogan "Turn on, tune in, drop out". Psychedelic influenced the music, artwork and films of the decade, and several prominent musicians died of drug overdoses. There was a growing interest in Eastern religions and philosophy, and many attempts were made to found communes, which varied from supporting free love to religious puritanism.   Music   British Invasion: The Beatles arrive at John F. Kennedy International Airport, 7 February 1964   "The 60's were a leap in human consciousness. Mahatma Gandhi, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Che Guevara, Mother Teresa, they led a revolution of conscience. The Beatles, The Doors, Jimi Hendrix created revolution and evolution themes. The music was like Dalí, with many colors and revolutionary ways. The youth of today must go there to find themselves." – Carlos Santana.     As the 1960s began, the major rock-and-roll stars of the '50s such as Chuck Berry and Little Richard had dropped off the charts and popular music in the US came to be dominated by Motown girl groups and novelty pop songs. Another important change in music during the early 1960s was the American folk music revival which introduced Joan Baez, Pete Seeger, The Kingston Trio, Harry Belafonte, Bob Dylan, Odetta, and many other Singer-songwriters to the public.   Girl groups and female singers, such as the Shirelles, Betty Everett, Little Eva, the Dixie Cups, the Ronettes, and the Supremes dominated the charts in the early 1960s. This style consisted typically of light pop themes about teenage romance, backed by vocal harmonies and a strong rhythm. Most girl groups were African-American, but white girl groups and singers, such as Lesley Gore, the Angels, and the Shangri-Las emerged by 1963.   Around the same time, record producer Phil Spector began producing girl groups and created a new kind of pop music production that came to be known as the Wall of Sound. This style emphasized higher budgets and more elaborate arrangements, and more melodramatic musical themes in place of a simple, light-hearted pop sound. Spector's innovations became integral to the growing sophistication of popular music from 1965 onward.   Also during the early '60s, the “car song” emerged as a rock subgenre and coupled with the surf rock subgenre. Such notable songs include "Little Deuce Coupe," "409," and "Shut Down," all by the Beach Boys; Jan and Dean's "Little Old Lady from Pasadena" and "Drag City," among many others.   While rock 'n' roll had 'disappeared' from the US charts in the early '60s, it never died out in Europe and Britain was a hotbed of rock-and-roll activity during this time. In late 1963, the Beatles embarked on their first US tour. A few months later, rock-and-roll founding father Chuck Berry emerged from a 2-1/2-year prison stint and resumed recording and touring. The stage was set for the spectacular revival of rock music.   In the UK, the Beatles played raucous rock 'n' roll – as well as doo wop, girl-group songs, show tunes. Beatlemania abruptly exploded after the group's appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show in 1964.   As the counterculture movement developed, artists began making new kinds of music influenced by the use of psychedelic drugs. Guitarist Jimi Hendrix emerged onto the scene in 1967 with a radically new approach to electric guitar that replaced Chuck Berry, previously seen as the gold standard of rock guitar. Rock artists began to take on serious themes and social commentary/protest instead of simplistic pop themes.   A major development in popular music during the mid-1960s was the movement away from singles and towards albums.   Blues also continued to develop strongly during the '60s, but after 1965, it increasingly shifted to the young white rock audience and away from its traditional black audience, which moved on to other styles such as soul and funk.   Jazz music during the first half of the '60s was largely a continuation of '50s styles, retaining its core audience of young, urban, college-educated whites. By 1967, the death of several important jazz figures such as John Coltrane and Nat King Cole precipitated a decline in the genre. The takeover of rock in the late '60s largely spelled the end of jazz as a mainstream form of music, after it had dominated much of the first half of the 20th century.   Significant events in music in the 1960s:   Sam Cooke was shot and killed at a motel in Los Angeles, California [11 December 1964] at age 33 under suspicious circumstances.   Motown Record Corporation was founded in 1960. Its first Top Ten hit was "Shop Around" by the Miracles in 1960. "Shop Around" peaked at number-two on the Billboard Hot 100 and was Motown's first million-selling record.   The Marvelettes scored Motown Record Corporation's first US No. 1 pop hit, "Please Mr. Postman" in 1961. Motown would score 110 Billboard Top-Ten hits during its run.   The Supremes scored twelve number-one hit singles between 1964 and 1969, beginning with "Where Did Our Love Go".   John Coltrane released A Love Supreme in late 1964, considered among the most acclaimed jazz albums of the era.   In 1966, The Supremes A' Go-Go was the first album by a female group to reach the top position of the Billboard magazine pop albums chart in the United States.   The Jimi Hendrix Experience released two successful albums during 1967, Are You Experienced and Axis: Bold as Love, that innovate both guitar, trio and recording techniques.   R & B legend Otis Redding has his first No. 1 hit with the legendary Sitting on the Dock of the Bay. He also played at the Monterey Pop Festival in 1967 just before he died in a plane crash.   The Bee Gees released their international debut album Bee Gees 1st in July 1967 which included the pop standard "To Love Somebody".   1968: after The Yardbirds fold, Led Zeppelin was formed by Jimmy Page and manager Peter Grant, with Robert Plant, John Bonham and John Paul Jones; and, released their debut album Led Zeppelin.   Big Brother and the Holding Company, with Janis Joplin as lead singer, became an overnight sensation after their performance at the Monterey Pop Festival in 1967 and released their second album Cheap Thrills in 1968.   Gram Parsons with The Byrds released the extremely influential LP Sweetheart of the Rodeo in late 1968, forming the basis for country rock.   The Jimi Hendrix Experience released the highly influential double LP Electric Ladyland in 1968 that furthered the guitar and studio innovations of his previous two albums.   Woodstock Festival, 1969   Sly & the Family Stone revolutionized black music with their massive 1968 hit single "Dance to the Music" and by 1969 became international sensations with the release of their hit record Stand!. The band cemented their position as a vital counterculture band when they performed at the Woodstock Festival.   Film Some of Hollywood's most notable blockbuster films of the 1960s include: 2001: A Space Odyssey, The Apartment, The Birds, I Am Curious (Yellow), Bonnie and Clyde, Breakfast at Tiffany's, Bullitt, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Carnival of Souls, Cleopatra, Cool , and Luke, The Dirty Dozen, Doctor Zhivago, Dr. Strangelove, Easy Rider, Exodus, Faces, Funny Girl, Goldfinger, The Graduate, Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, , Head, How the West Was Won, The , Hustler, Ice Station Zebra, In the Heat of the Night, The Italian Job, It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, Jason and the Argonauts, Judgment at Nuremberg, The Jungle Book, Lawrence of Arabia, The Lion in Winter, The Longest Day, The Love Bug, A Man for All Seasons, The Manchurian Candidate, Mary Poppins, Medium Cool, Midnight Cowboy, My Fair Lady, Night of the Living Dead, The Pink Panther, The Odd Couple, Oliver!, One Hundred and One Dalmatians, One Million Years B.C., Planet of the Apes, Psycho, Romeo and Juliet, Rosemary's Baby, The Sound of Music, Spartacus, Swiss Family Robinson, To Kill a Mockingbird, Valley of the Dolls, West Side Story, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, The Wild Bunch.   Television   The most prominent American TV series of the 1960s include: The Ed Sullivan Show, Star Trek, Peyton Place, The Twilight Zone, The Outer Limits, The Andy Williams Show, The Dean Martin Show, The Wonderful World of Disney, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, The Beverly Hillbillies, Bonanza, Batman, McHale's Navy, Laugh-In, The Dick Van Dyke Show, The Fugitive, The Tonight Show, Gunsmoke, The Andy Griffith Show, Gilligan's Island, Mission: Impossible, The Flintstones, The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet, Lassie, The Danny Thomas Show, The Lucy Show, My Three Sons, The Red Skelton Show, Bewitched and I Dream of Jeannie.   The Flintstones was a favored show, receiving 40 million views an episode with an average of 3 views a day.   Some programming such as The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour became controversial by challenging the foundations of America's corporate and governmental controls; making fun of world leaders, and questioning U.S. involvement in and escalation of the Vietnam War.   Fashion   Significant fashion trends of the 1960s include:     The Beatles exerted an enormous influence on young men's fashions and hairstyles in the 1960s which included most notably the mop-top haircut, the Beatle boots and the Nehru jacket.   The hippie movement late in the decade also had a strong influence on clothing styles, including bell-bottom jeans, tie-dye and batik fabrics, as well as paisley prints.   The bikini came into fashion in 1963 after being featured in the film Beach Party.   Mary Quant invented the miniskirt, which became one of the most popular fashion rages in the late 1960s among young women and teenage girls. Its popularity continued throughout the first half of the 1970s and then disappeared temporarily from mainstream fashion before making a comeback in the mid-1980s.   Men's mainstream hairstyles ranged from the pompadour, the crew cut, the flattop hairstyle, the tapered hairstyle, and short, parted hair in the early part of the decade, to longer parted hairstyles with sideburns towards the latter half of the decade.   Women's mainstream hairstyles ranged from beehive hairdos, the bird's nest hairstyle, and the chignon hairstyle in the early part of the decade, to very short styles popularized by Twiggy and Mia Farrow in Rosemary's Baby towards the latter half of the decade.   African-American hairstyles for men and women included the afro.       James Brown "Papa's Got A Brand New Bag" (1965) "I Got You (I Feel Good)" (1965) "Say It Loud--I'm Black and I'm Proud" (1968)     Ray Charles "Georgia On My Mind' (1960) "Hit the Road Jack" (1961) "I Can't Stop Loving You" (1962)     Marvin Gaye "Ain't That Peculiar?" (1965) "I Heard It Through the Grapevine" (1968) "Too Busy Thinking About My Baby" (1969)     The Temptations "My Girl" (1965) "Ain't Too to Beg" (1966) "I Can't Get Next to You" (1969)     Bobby "Blue" Bland "I Pity the Fool" (1961) "Turn On Your Lovelight" (1961) "Ain't Nothing You Can Do" (1964)     Aretha Franklin "I Never Loved a Man (The Way I Love You)" (1967) "Respect" (1967) "Chain of Fools" (1967-68)     The Supremes "Where Did Our Love Go?" (1964) "Stop! In the Name of Love" (1965) "Love Child" (1968)     Smokey Robinson & The Miracles "Shop Around" (1960-61) "You've Really Got a Hold On Me" (1962-63) "The Tracks of My Tears" (1965)     The Impressions "Gypsy Woman" (1961) "It's All Right" (1963) "People Get Ready" (1965)     Brook Benton "Kiddio" (1960) "Think Twice" (1961) "Hotel Happiness" (1962-63)     Jackie Wilson "Doggin' Around" (1960) "Baby Workout" (1963) "(Your Love Keeps Lifting Me) Higher and Higher" (1967)     Sam Cooke "Wonderful World" (1960) "Bring It On Home To Me" (1962) "A Change is Gonna Come" (1965)     Otis Redding "These Arms of Mine" (1963) "Try a Little Tenderness" (1966-67) "(Sittin' On) The Dock of the Bay" (1968)     Jerry Butler "He Will Break Your Heart" (1960) "Never Give You Up" (1968) "Only the Strong Survive" (1969)     Wilson Pickett "In the Midnight Hour" (1965) "Land of 1000 Dances" (1966) "Funky Broadway" (1967)     Stevie Wonder "Fingertips, Part 2" (1963) "Uptight (Everything's Alright)" (1965-66) "I Was Made to Love Her" (1967)     B.B. King "Beautician Blues" (1964) "Waiting on You" (1966) "Paying the Cost To Be the Boss" (1968)     Joe Tex "Hold What You've Got" (1964-65) "A Sweet Woman Like You" (1965-66) "Skinny Legs and All" (1967)     The Marvelettes "Please Mr. Postman" (1961) "Beechwood 4-5789" (1962) "Too Many Fish in the Sea" (1965)     Mary Wells "Bye Bye Baby" (1960-61) "The One Who Really Loves You" (1962) "My Guy" (1964)     The Four Tops "Baby, I Need Your Loving" (1964) "I Can't Help Myself (A/K/A Sugar Pie, Honey Bunch)" (1965) "Reach Out, I'll Be There" (1966)     Martha & The Vandellas "Heat Wave" (1963) "Dancing in the Street" (1964) "Nowhere to Run" (1965)     Dionne Warwick "Don't Make Me Over" (1962-63) "Anyone Who Had a Heart" (1963-64) "Walk On By" (1964)     Solomon Burke "Just Out of Reach (Of My Two Open Arms)" (1961) "Everybody Needs Somebody To Love" (1964) "Got To Get You Off My Mind" (1965)     Etta James "At Last" (1960-61) "Tell Mama" (1967-68) "I'd Rather Go Blind" (1967-68)     The Shirelles "Will You Love Me Tomorrow? (1960-61) "Dedicated to the One I Love" (1961) "Baby It's You" (1961-62)     Chuck Jackson "I Don't Want to Cry" (1961) "Any Day Now (My Wild Beautiful Bird)" (1962) "Beg Me" (1964)     Gene Chandler "Duke of Earl" (1962) "Rainbow" (1963) "I Fooled You This Time" (1966)     The Drifters "This Magic Moment" (1960) "Save the Last Dance for Me" (1960) "Up on the Roof" (1962-63)     Jr. Walker & The All-Stars "Shotgun" (1965) "(I'm A) Road Runner" (1966) "Home Cookin'" (1968-69)     Gladys Knight & The Pips "Every Beat of My Heart" (1961) "I Heard it Through the Grapevine" (1967) "Friendship Train" (1969)     Carla Thomas "Gee Whiz (Look at His Eyes)" (1961) "B-A-B-Y" (1966) "Another Night Without My Man" (1966)     Chubby Checker "The Twist" (1960) "Pony Time" (1961) "Dancin' Party" (1962)     Sam & Dave "Hold On! I'm A Comin'" (1966) "When Something is Wrong With My Baby" (1967) "Soul Man" (1967)     Joe Simon "My Adorable One" (1964) "Nine Pound Steel" (1967) "The Chokin' Kind" (1969)     The Dells "There Is" (1967-68) "Stay in My Corner" (1968) "Oh, What a Night" (1969)     Little Milton "So Mean To Me" (1962) "We're Gonna Make It" (1965) "Grits Ain't Groceries" (1969)     Ben E. King "Spanish Harlem" (1960-61) "Stand By Me" (1961) "That's When it Hurts" (1964)     Betty Everett "You're No Good" (1963) "The Shoop Shoop Song (It's in His Kiss)" (1964) "There'll Come a Time" (1969)     Hank Ballard & The Midnighters "Let's Go, Let's Go, Let's Go" (1960) "Finger Poppin' Time" (1960) "Nothing But Good" (1961)     Major Lance "The Monkey Time" (1963) "Um, Um, Um, Um, Um, Um" (1964) "Investigate" (1966)     Booker T. & The MGs "Green Onions" (1962) "Hip-Hug-Her" (1967) "Time is Tight" (1969)     The Intruders "Together" (1967) "Cowboys to Girls" (1968) "(Love is Like a) Baseball Game" (1968)     Ike & Tina Turner "A Fool in Love" (1960) "Goodbye, So Long" (1965) "River Deep--Mountain High" (1966)     Johnnie Taylor "I Got to Love Somebody's Baby" (1966) "Who's Making Love" (1968) "I Could Never Be President" (1969)     The Orlons "The Wah Watusi" (1962) "Don't Hang Up" (1962) "South Street" (1963)     Barbara Lewis "Hello Stranger" (1963) "Baby, I'm Yours" (1965) "Make Me Your Baby" (1965)     Maxine Brown "All in My Mind" (1960-61) "Oh No, Not My Baby" (1964) "One in a Million" (1966)     Garnet Mimms & The Enchanters "Cry Baby" (1963) "Tell Me Baby" (1964) "I'll Take Good Care of You" (1966)     Ramsey Lewis "The In Crowd" (1965) "Hang On Sloopy" (1965) "Wade in the Water" (1966)  

A detailed look at black, African-American, culture during the "Sixties". (1960-1969)   Overview   "The Sixties":  the counterculture and revolution in social norms about clothing, music, drugs, dress, sexuality, formalities, and schooling – or - irresponsible excess, flamboyance, and decay of social order.   Also labeled the Swinging Sixties because of the fall or relaxation of social taboos especially relating to racism and sexism that occurred during this time.   Also described as a classical Jungian nightmare cycle, where a rigid culture, unable to contain the demands for greater individual freedom, broke free of the social constraints of the previous age through extreme deviation from the norm.   The confrontation between the US and the Soviet Union dominated geopolitics during the '60s, with the struggle expanding into developing nations in Latin America, Africa, and Asia characterized by proxy wars, funding of insurgencies, and puppet governments.   In response to civil disobedience campaigns from groups like the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), U.S. President John F. Kennedy, pushed for social reforms. Kennedy's assassination in 1963 was a shock.   Liberal reforms were finally passed under Lyndon B. Johnson including civil rights for African Americans· and healthcare for the elderly and the poor. Despite his large-scale Great Society programs, Johnson was increasingly reviled. The heavy-handed American role in the Vietnam War outraged student protestors around the globe.   The assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., anti-Vietnam War movement, and the police response towards protesters of the 1968 Democratic National Convention, defined a politics of violence in the United States.   The 1960s were marked by several notable assassinations:   12 June 1963 – Medgar Evers, an NAACP field secretary. Assassinated by Byron de la Beckwith, a member of the Ku Klux Klan in Jackson, Mississippi.   22 November 1963 – John F. Kennedy, President of the United States. Assassinated by Lee Harvey Oswald while riding in a motorcade through Dealey Plaza in Dallas, Texas.   21 February 1965 – Malcolm X. Assassinated by members of the Nation of Islam in New York City. There is a dispute about which members killed Malcolm X.   4 April 1968 – Martin Luther King, Jr., civil rights leader. Assassinated by James Earl Ray in Memphis, Tennessee.   5 June 1968 – Robert F. Kennedy, United States Senator. Assassinated by Sirhan Sirhan in Los Angeles, after taking California in the presidential national primaries.   Social and political movements (counterculture)   Flower Power/Hippies In the second half of the decade, young people began to revolt against the conservative norms of the time. The youth involved in the popular social aspects of the movement became known as hippies. These groups created a movement toward liberation in society, including the sexual revolution, questioning authority and government, and demanding more freedoms and rights for women and minorities. The movement was also marked by the first widespread, socially accepted drug use (including LSD and marijuana) and psychedelic music.     Anti-war movement The war in Vietnam would eventually lead to a commitment of over half a million American troops, resulting in over 58,500 American deaths and producing a large-scale antiwar movement in the United States. Students became a powerful and disruptive force and university campuses sparked a national debate over the war. The antiwar movement was heavily influenced by the American Communist Party, but by the mid-1960s it outgrew this and became a broad-based mass movement centered in universities and churches: one kind of protest was called a "sit-in".   Civil rights movement Beginning in the mid-1950s and continuing into the late 1960s, African-Americans in the United States aimed at outlawing racial discrimination against black Americans and voting rights to them. The emergence of the Black Power movement, which lasted roughly from 1966 to 1975, enlarged the aims of the civil rights movement to include racial dignity, economic and political self-sufficiency, and anti-imperialism. The movement was characterized by major campaigns of civil resistance. Forms of protest and/or civil disobedience included boycotts such as the successful Montgomery Bus Boycott (1955–1956) in Alabama; "sit-ins" such as the influential Greensboro sit-ins (1960) in North Carolina; marches, such as the Selma to Montgomery marches (1965) in Alabama.; and a wide range of other nonviolent activities. Noted legislative achievements during this phase of the civil rights movement were passage of Civil Rights Act of 1964, that banned discrimination based on "race, color, religion, or national origin" in employment practices and public accommodations; the Voting Rights Act of 1965, that restored and protected voting rights; the Immigration and Nationality Services Act of 1965, that dramatically opened entry to the U.S. to immigrants other than traditional European groups; and the Fair Housing Act of 1968, that banned discrimination in the sale or rental of housing.   Hispanic and Chicano movement Another large ethnic minority group, the Mexican-Americans, are among other Hispanics in the U.S. who fought to end racial discrimination and socioeconomic disparity. In the 1960s and the following 1970s, Hispanic-American culture was on the rebound like ethnic music, foods, culture and identity both became popular and assimilated into the American mainstream. Spanish-language television networks, radio stations and newspapers increased in presence across the country.   Second-wave feminism A second wave of feminism in the United States and around the world gained momentum in the early 1960s. While the first wave of the early 20th century was centered on gaining suffrage and overturning de jure inequalities, the second wave was focused on changing cultural and social norms and de facto inequalities associated with women. At the time, a woman's place was generally seen as being in the home, and they were excluded from many jobs and professions. Feminists took to the streets, marching and protesting, writing books and debating to change social and political views that limited women. In 1963, with Betty Friedan's revolutionary book, The Feminine Mystique, the role of women in society, and in public and private life was questioned. By 1966, the movement was beginning to grow and power as women's group spread across the country and Friedan, along with other feminists, founded the National Organization for Women. In 1968, "Women's Liberation" became a household term.   Gay rights movement The United States, in the middle of a social revolution, led the world in LGBT rights in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Inspired by the civil-rights movement and the women's movement, early gay-rights pioneers had begun, by the 1960s, to build a movement. These groups were rather conservative in their practices, emphasizing that gay men and women are no different from those who are straight and deserve full equality. This philosophy would be dominant again after AIDS, but by the very end of the 1960s, the movement's goals would change and become more radical, demanding a right to be different, and encouraging gay pride.   Crime The 1960s was also associated with a large increase in crime and urban unrest of all types. Between 1960 and 1969 reported incidences of violent crime per 100,000 people in the United States nearly doubled and have yet to return to the levels of the early 1960s. Large riots broke out in many cities like Chicago, Detroit, Los Angeles, New York City, Newark, New Jersey, Oakland, California and Washington, D.C. By the end of the decade, politicians like George Wallace and Richard Nixon campaigned on restoring law and order to a nation troubled with the new unrest.   Economics The decade began with a recession and at that time unemployment was considered high at around 7%. John F. Kennedy promised to "get America moving again." To do this, he instituted a 7% tax credit for businesses that invest in new plants and equipment. By the end of the decade, median family income had risen from $8,540 in 1963 to $10,770 by 1969. Minimum wage was $1.30 per hour / ~$2,700 per year (~$18,700 in 2018)   Popular culture   The counterculture movement dominated the second half of the 1960s, its most famous moments being the Summer of Love in San Francisco in 1967, and the Woodstock Festival in upstate New York in 1969. Psychedelic drugs, especially LSD, were widely used medicinally, spiritually and recreationally throughout the late 1960s, and were popularized by Timothy Leary with his slogan "Turn on, tune in, drop out". Psychedelic influenced the music, artwork and films of the decade, and several prominent musicians died of drug overdoses. There was a growing interest in Eastern religions and philosophy, and many attempts were made to found communes, which varied from supporting free love to religious puritanism.   Music   British Invasion: The Beatles arrive at John F. Kennedy International Airport, 7 February 1964   "The 60's were a leap in human consciousness. Mahatma Gandhi, Malcolm X, Martin Luther King, Che Guevara, Mother Teresa, they led a revolution of conscience. The Beatles, The Doors, Jimi Hendrix created revolution and evolution themes. The music was like Dalí, with many colors and revolutionary ways. The youth of today must go there to find themselves." – Carlos Santana.     As the 1960s began, the major rock-and-roll stars of the '50s such as Chuck Berry and Little Richard had dropped off the charts and popular music in the US came to be dominated by Motown girl groups and novelty pop songs. Another important change in music during the early 1960s was the American folk music revival which introduced Joan Baez, Pete Seeger, The Kingston Trio, Harry Belafonte, Bob Dylan, Odetta, and many other Singer-songwriters to the public.   Girl groups and female singers, such as the Shirelles, Betty Everett, Little Eva, the Dixie Cups, the Ronettes, and the Supremes dominated the charts in the early 1960s. This style consisted typically of light pop themes about teenage romance, backed by vocal harmonies and a strong rhythm. Most girl groups were African-American, but white girl groups and singers, such as Lesley Gore, the Angels, and the Shangri-Las emerged by 1963.   Around the same time, record producer Phil Spector began producing girl groups and created a new kind of pop music production that came to be known as the Wall of Sound. This style emphasized higher budgets and more elaborate arrangements, and more melodramatic musical themes in place of a simple, light-hearted pop sound. Spector's innovations became integral to the growing sophistication of popular music from 1965 onward.   Also during the early '60s, the “car song” emerged as a rock subgenre and coupled with the surf rock subgenre. Such notable songs include "Little Deuce Coupe," "409," and "Shut Down," all by the Beach Boys; Jan and Dean's "Little Old Lady from Pasadena" and "Drag City," among many others.   While rock 'n' roll had 'disappeared' from the US charts in the early '60s, it never died out in Europe and Britain was a hotbed of rock-and-roll activity during this time. In late 1963, the Beatles embarked on their first US tour. A few months later, rock-and-roll founding father Chuck Berry emerged from a 2-1/2-year prison stint and resumed recording and touring. The stage was set for the spectacular revival of rock music.   In the UK, the Beatles played raucous rock 'n' roll – as well as doo wop, girl-group songs, show tunes. Beatlemania abruptly exploded after the group's appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show in 1964.   As the counterculture movement developed, artists began making new kinds of music influenced by the use of psychedelic drugs. Guitarist Jimi Hendrix emerged onto the scene in 1967 with a radically new approach to electric guitar that replaced Chuck Berry, previously seen as the gold standard of rock guitar. Rock artists began to take on serious themes and social commentary/protest instead of simplistic pop themes.   A major development in popular music during the mid-1960s was the movement away from singles and towards albums.   Blues also continued to develop strongly during the '60s, but after 1965, it increasingly shifted to the young white rock audience and away from its traditional black audience, which moved on to other styles such as soul and funk.   Jazz music during the first half of the '60s was largely a continuation of '50s styles, retaining its core audience of young, urban, college-educated whites. By 1967, the death of several important jazz figures such as John Coltrane and Nat King Cole precipitated a decline in the genre. The takeover of rock in the late '60s largely spelled the end of jazz as a mainstream form of music, after it had dominated much of the first half of the 20th century.   Significant events in music in the 1960s:   Sam Cooke was shot and killed at a motel in Los Angeles, California [11 December 1964] at age 33 under suspicious circumstances.   Motown Record Corporation was founded in 1960. Its first Top Ten hit was "Shop Around" by the Miracles in 1960. "Shop Around" peaked at number-two on the Billboard Hot 100 and was Motown's first million-selling record.   The Marvelettes scored Motown Record Corporation's first US No. 1 pop hit, "Please Mr. Postman" in 1961. Motown would score 110 Billboard Top-Ten hits during its run.   The Supremes scored twelve number-one hit singles between 1964 and 1969, beginning with "Where Did Our Love Go".   John Coltrane released A Love Supreme in late 1964, considered among the most acclaimed jazz albums of the era.   In 1966, The Supremes A' Go-Go was the first album by a female group to reach the top position of the Billboard magazine pop albums chart in the United States.   The Jimi Hendrix Experience released two successful albums during 1967, Are You Experienced and Axis: Bold as Love, that innovate both guitar, trio and recording techniques.   R & B legend Otis Redding has his first No. 1 hit with the legendary Sitting on the Dock of the Bay. He also played at the Monterey Pop Festival in 1967 just before he died in a plane crash.   The Bee Gees released their international debut album Bee Gees 1st in July 1967 which included the pop standard "To Love Somebody".   1968: after The Yardbirds fold, Led Zeppelin was formed by Jimmy Page and manager Peter Grant, with Robert Plant, John Bonham and John Paul Jones; and, released their debut album Led Zeppelin.   Big Brother and the Holding Company, with Janis Joplin as lead singer, became an overnight sensation after their performance at the Monterey Pop Festival in 1967 and released their second album Cheap Thrills in 1968.   Gram Parsons with The Byrds released the extremely influential LP Sweetheart of the Rodeo in late 1968, forming the basis for country rock.   The Jimi Hendrix Experience released the highly influential double LP Electric Ladyland in 1968 that furthered the guitar and studio innovations of his previous two albums.   Woodstock Festival, 1969   Sly & the Family Stone revolutionized black music with their massive 1968 hit single "Dance to the Music" and by 1969 became international sensations with the release of their hit record Stand!. The band cemented their position as a vital counterculture band when they performed at the Woodstock Festival.   Film Some of Hollywood's most notable blockbuster films of the 1960s include: 2001: A Space Odyssey, The Apartment, The Birds, I Am Curious (Yellow), Bonnie and Clyde, Breakfast at Tiffany's, Bullitt, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, Carnival of Souls, Cleopatra, Cool , and Luke, The Dirty Dozen, Doctor Zhivago, Dr. Strangelove, Easy Rider, Exodus, Faces, Funny Girl, Goldfinger, The Graduate, Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, , Head, How the West Was Won, The , Hustler, Ice Station Zebra, In the Heat of the Night, The Italian Job, It's a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, Jason and the Argonauts, Judgment at Nuremberg, The Jungle Book, Lawrence of Arabia, The Lion in Winter, The Longest Day, The Love Bug, A Man for All Seasons, The Manchurian Candidate, Mary Poppins, Medium Cool, Midnight Cowboy, My Fair Lady, Night of the Living Dead, The Pink Panther, The Odd Couple, Oliver!, One Hundred and One Dalmatians, One Million Years B.C., Planet of the Apes, Psycho, Romeo and Juliet, Rosemary's Baby, The Sound of Music, Spartacus, Swiss Family Robinson, To Kill a Mockingbird, Valley of the Dolls, West Side Story, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf?, The Wild Bunch.   Television   The most prominent American TV series of the 1960s include: The Ed Sullivan Show, Star Trek, Peyton Place, The Twilight Zone, The Outer Limits, The Andy Williams Show, The Dean Martin Show, The Wonderful World of Disney, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, The Beverly Hillbillies, Bonanza, Batman, McHale's Navy, Laugh-In, The Dick Van Dyke Show, The Fugitive, The Tonight Show, Gunsmoke, The Andy Griffith Show, Gilligan's Island, Mission: Impossible, The Flintstones, The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet, Lassie, The Danny Thomas Show, The Lucy Show, My Three Sons, The Red Skelton Show, Bewitched and I Dream of Jeannie.   The Flintstones was a favored show, receiving 40 million views an episode with an average of 3 views a day.   Some programming such as The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour became controversial by challenging the foundations of America's corporate and governmental controls; making fun of world leaders, and questioning U.S. involvement in and escalation of the Vietnam War.   Fashion   Significant fashion trends of the 1960s include:     The Beatles exerted an enormous influence on young men's fashions and hairstyles in the 1960s which included most notably the mop-top haircut, the Beatle boots and the Nehru jacket.   The hippie movement late in the decade also had a strong influence on clothing styles, including bell-bottom jeans, tie-dye and batik fabrics, as well as paisley prints.   The bikini came into fashion in 1963 after being featured in the film Beach Party.   Mary Quant invented the miniskirt, which became one of the most popular fashion rages in the late 1960s among young women and teenage girls. Its popularity continued throughout the first half of the 1970s and then disappeared temporarily from mainstream fashion before making a comeback in the mid-1980s.   Men's mainstream hairstyles ranged from the pompadour, the crew cut, the flattop hairstyle, the tapered hairstyle, and short, parted hair in the early part of the decade, to longer parted hairstyles with sideburns towards the latter half of the decade.   Women's mainstream hairstyles ranged from beehive hairdos, the bird's nest hairstyle, and the chignon hairstyle in the early part of the decade, to very short styles popularized by Twiggy and Mia Farrow in Rosemary's Baby towards the latter half of the decade.   African-American hairstyles for men and women included the afro.       James Brown "Papa's Got A Brand New Bag" (1965) "I Got You (I Feel Good)" (1965) "Say It Loud--I'm Black and I'm Proud" (1968)     Ray Charles "Georgia On My Mind' (1960) "Hit the Road Jack" (1961) "I Can't Stop Loving You" (1962)     Marvin Gaye "Ain't That Peculiar?" (1965) "I Heard It Through the Grapevine" (1968) "Too Busy Thinking About My Baby" (1969)     The Temptations "My Girl" (1965) "Ain't Too to Beg" (1966) "I Can't Get Next to You" (1969)     Bobby "Blue" Bland "I Pity the Fool" (1961) "Turn On Your Lovelight" (1961) "Ain't Nothing You Can Do" (1964)     Aretha Franklin "I Never Loved a Man (The Way I Love You)" (1967) "Respect" (1967) "Chain of Fools" (1967-68)     The Supremes "Where Did Our Love Go?" (1964) "Stop! In the Name of Love" (1965) "Love Child" (1968)     Smokey Robinson & The Miracles "Shop Around" (1960-61) "You've Really Got a Hold On Me" (1962-63) "The Tracks of My Tears" (1965)     The Impressions "Gypsy Woman" (1961) "It's All Right" (1963) "People Get Ready" (1965)     Brook Benton "Kiddio" (1960) "Think Twice" (1961) "Hotel Happiness" (1962-63)     Jackie Wilson "Doggin' Around" (1960) "Baby Workout" (1963) "(Your Love Keeps Lifting Me) Higher and Higher" (1967)     Sam Cooke "Wonderful World" (1960) "Bring It On Home To Me" (1962) "A Change is Gonna Come" (1965)     Otis Redding "These Arms of Mine" (1963) "Try a Little Tenderness" (1966-67) "(Sittin' On) The Dock of the Bay" (1968)     Jerry Butler "He Will Break Your Heart" (1960) "Never Give You Up" (1968) "Only the Strong Survive" (1969)     Wilson Pickett "In the Midnight Hour" (1965) "Land of 1000 Dances" (1966) "Funky Broadway" (1967)     Stevie Wonder "Fingertips, Part 2" (1963) "Uptight (Everything's Alright)" (1965-66) "I Was Made to Love Her" (1967)     B.B. King "Beautician Blues" (1964) "Waiting on You" (1966) "Paying the Cost To Be the Boss" (1968)     Joe Tex "Hold What You've Got" (1964-65) "A Sweet Woman Like You" (1965-66) "Skinny Legs and All" (1967)     The Marvelettes "Please Mr. Postman" (1961) "Beechwood 4-5789" (1962) "Too Many Fish in the Sea" (1965)     Mary Wells "Bye Bye Baby" (1960-61) "The One Who Really Loves You" (1962) "My Guy" (1964)     The Four Tops "Baby, I Need Your Loving" (1964) "I Can't Help Myself (A/K/A Sugar Pie, Honey Bunch)" (1965) "Reach Out, I'll Be There" (1966)     Martha & The Vandellas "Heat Wave" (1963) "Dancing in the Street" (1964) "Nowhere to Run" (1965)     Dionne Warwick "Don't Make Me Over" (1962-63) "Anyone Who Had a Heart" (1963-64) "Walk On By" (1964)     Solomon Burke "Just Out of Reach (Of My Two Open Arms)" (1961) "Everybody Needs Somebody To Love" (1964) "Got To Get You Off My Mind" (1965)     Etta James "At Last" (1960-61) "Tell Mama" (1967-68) "I'd Rather Go Blind" (1967-68)     The Shirelles "Will You Love Me Tomorrow? (1960-61) "Dedicated to the One I Love" (1961) "Baby It's You" (1961-62)     Chuck Jackson "I Don't Want to Cry" (1961) "Any Day Now (My Wild Beautiful Bird)" (1962) "Beg Me" (1964)     Gene Chandler "Duke of Earl" (1962) "Rainbow" (1963) "I Fooled You This Time" (1966)     The Drifters "This Magic Moment" (1960) "Save the Last Dance for Me" (1960) "Up on the Roof" (1962-63)     Jr. Walker & The All-Stars "Shotgun" (1965) "(I'm A) Road Runner" (1966) "Home Cookin'" (1968-69)     Gladys Knight & The Pips "Every Beat of My Heart" (1961) "I Heard it Through the Grapevine" (1967) "Friendship Train" (1969)     Carla Thomas "Gee Whiz (Look at His Eyes)" (1961) "B-A-B-Y" (1966) "Another Night Without My Man" (1966)     Chubby Checker "The Twist" (1960) "Pony Time" (1961) "Dancin' Party" (1962)     Sam & Dave "Hold On! I'm A Comin'" (1966) "When Something is Wrong With My Baby" (1967) "Soul Man" (1967)     Joe Simon "My Adorable One" (1964) "Nine Pound Steel" (1967) "The Chokin' Kind" (1969)     The Dells "There Is" (1967-68) "Stay in My Corner" (1968) "Oh, What a Night" (1969)     Little Milton "So Mean To Me" (1962) "We're Gonna Make It" (1965) "Grits Ain't Groceries" (1969)     Ben E. King "Spanish Harlem" (1960-61) "Stand By Me" (1961) "That's When it Hurts" (1964)     Betty Everett "You're No Good" (1963) "The Shoop Shoop Song (It's in His Kiss)" (1964) "There'll Come a Time" (1969)     Hank Ballard & The Midnighters "Let's Go, Let's Go, Let's Go" (1960) "Finger Poppin' Time" (1960) "Nothing But Good" (1961)     Major Lance "The Monkey Time" (1963) "Um, Um, Um, Um, Um, Um" (1964) "Investigate" (1966)     Booker T. & The MGs "Green Onions" (1962) "Hip-Hug-Her" (1967) "Time is Tight" (1969)     The Intruders "Together" (1967) "Cowboys to Girls" (1968) "(Love is Like a) Baseball Game" (1968)     Ike & Tina Turner "A Fool in Love" (1960) "Goodbye, So Long" (1965) "River Deep--Mountain High" (1966)     Johnnie Taylor "I Got to Love Somebody's Baby" (1966) "Who's Making Love" (1968) "I Could Never Be President" (1969)     The Orlons "The Wah Watusi" (1962) "Don't Hang Up" (1962) "South Street" (1963)     Barbara Lewis "Hello Stranger" (1963) "Baby, I'm Yours" (1965) "Make Me Your Baby" (1965)     Maxine Brown "All in My Mind" (1960-61) "Oh No, Not My Baby" (1964) "One in a Million" (1966)     Garnet Mimms & The Enchanters "Cry Baby" (1963) "Tell Me Baby" (1964) "I'll Take Good Care of You" (1966)     Ramsey Lewis "The In Crowd" (1965) "Hang On Sloopy" (1965) "Wade in the Water" (1966)