1977 was an epic year for Grateful Dead shows, they were full of energy and psychedelic adventurism. The spring tour started on Saturday, February 26, 1977, at the Swing Auditorium, San Bernardino, CA., and is the subject of today's freeload.
Over the years, I've lost count of how many Dead shows my husband, Jerry, and I attended. But in 1977, due to raising children, navigating the politics of being a woman on Wall Street, and Jerry teaching Physics at Columbia University, we only saw one show, which was at Raceway Park in Englishtown, New Jersey, on the Labor Day weekend. You can read about it in the screed I wrote for False Memory foam here: https://falsememoryfoam.blogspot.com/search?q=scrolls
The San Bernardino show is one of my favorite dead shows, and debuts the songs 'Terrapin Station' and 'Estimated Prophet' from the album 'Terrapin Station', that wouldn't be released until late July. They also play 'Dancin' in the Streets' also from 'Terrapin', but it had been on and off in their set lists for many years prior. The transitions from one song to another of this show are flawless, approach psychic, and a typical highlight of the 1977 shows.
Here's the setlist:
Set One:
Terrapin Station
Minglewood Blues
They Love Each Other
Estimated Prophet
Sugaree
Mama Tried
Deal
Playin' In The Band -> The Wheel -> Playin' In The Band
Set Two:
Samson & Delilah
Tennessee Jed
The Music Never Stopped
Help on the Way -> Slipknot -> Franklin's Tower
Promised Land
Eyes Of The World -> Dancin' In The Streets -> Around & Around
Encore:
U.S. Blues
Jerry Garcia – guitar, vocals
Bob Weir – guitar, vocals
Keith Godchaux – keyboards
Phil Lesh – bass guitar
Donna Jean Godchaux – vocals
Mickey Hart – drums and percussion
Bill Kreutzmann – drums and percussion
This show was officially released as 'Dave's Picks Volume 29' in 2019, but today's freeload is a "Betty Board" from a 7 1/2 ips reel to reel tape, with tuning/stage chatter preserved, and it has a, "You are There" kind of sound.
"Betty Boards" are sound board recordings by Betty Cantor-Jackson (left), who worked as a sound engineer for the Dead, her live recordings are coveted by Dead Heads.
Back in my tape trading days, I corresponded with and met Betty on many occasions. Betty and I, bonded quickly, as we were pretty much the same age, and both female audiophiles.
During the Brent Mydland era, (when Betty and Brent were sweethearts), she got Jerry and I backstage three times. The backstage shenanigans that took place will be the subject of forthcoming 'Good Ol’ Grateful Dead' features here.
To freeload the "San Bernardino '77" show, tell us, in your life, what was your favorite year or years.
I was at this show. When the Dead were still on hiatus in 1976, I saw the JGB which included Keith & Donna. Later in 1976 I went to Oakland to see The Dead & The Who. So this show may have been my 2nd Dead show I attended. I guess if I had to pick an era of the Dead it would be the Keith & Donna years because that was where I started. I enjoyed all the different keyboards that came before and after but those with Keith & Donna hold the fondest memories.
ReplyDeleteI think I misunderstood the question. Now I have to think again.
DeleteThe present. Living in Europe has taught me to enjoy life while you can.
ReplyDeleteFor all my life, living in Europe has seemed like a fantastic stroke of good luck to have been born here. However I am so worried about Putins war in Ukraine spreading - will he want to bomb Poles, Bulgarians, Romanians or others into becoming ‘one people’ with Russia in his rewriting of history.
DeleteSorry Babs, rant over.
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DeleteThird time lucky (and I used to run a blog!):
DeleteI'm with pmac on this. Never had a better relationship, home, or life than right now. I had to go seventy turns around the sun, but they were worth it. I only just got here!
The road to my best year starts with leaving school and getting a job in an advertising agency. I had enough money for gigs and records and a social life. Seven or eight years later I bought the house that I still live in today.
ReplyDeleteSo 1987 best year because of the freedom that leaving home gave me (at the age of 24!). In those days most of my friends had left home to rent flats as soon as they got a job, in the uk during the 80’s housing was cheap, at least compared to the utterly stupid prices of buying or renting now.
Never heard of these lads. What type of music do they play, sea shanties perhaps? Anyway I'll go with living in the present. The past is just a memory, the future is a dream. Although I'm looking forward to the flying car they promised me about now.
ReplyDeleteDefinitely the present, I'm semi-retired, occasionally working a bit, practicing art, and indulging in my musical hobbies. Family is doing fine on the whole and I'm about to embark on a cycling trip alongside the Mighty Mekong!
ReplyDeleteDefinitely my college years which was in two phases - 1985-1989 at UC Santa Barbara when I had an awesome group of friends and was in an indie rock band playing all the time and then 1990-1994 when my girlfriend (now wife) and I moved off to The Happy Valley for graduate studies at UMass Amherst and had all sorts of new adventures and experiences all over New England. My life by comparison now SUCKS (lol) -- no friends, no culture, no exciting adventures. My fault I know, life is what we make it -- but environs and life situations definitely play a role in that.
ReplyDeleteIn 1970, I was living in Boston, Massachusetts, and working on my PhD (stochastic calculus) at M. I. T., and Jerry (my future husband) was working on his PhD in (applied physics) at Wellesley College. Jerry used to say, “Babs and I, went to different schools together.” We also had all sorts of new adventures and experiences all over New England.
DeleteI hear you loud and clear on “life is what we make it -- but environs and life situations definitely play a role in that.”
I had an unexpected and dramatic shift of life to the Far East - which is still how I think of it - and everything before the move now seems like a blurred black and white movie. Set and setting, as Tim Leary said. It would be nice to think we can change "within ourselves" and so change our surroundings for the better, but that's not my experience. Thai culture has rewired my brain in a way that I could never have managed back in the Near West. It wasn't only my carefully-curated culture-collections I left behind, but a shitload of shit I didn't need. What you own, owns you.
DeleteFunny that you describe your pre-Thailand life as a 'blurred black and white movie'!
DeleteJokonky Enterprises just posted something along those lines triggered by the way Thais paint their houses: https://jonderblog.blogspot.com/2024/02/houses-in-motion-collection-of-house.html
On my own blog I went more into details of my 'black & white life' spent as a kid on the Dutch countryside...
https://www.art58koen.net/single-post/houses-in-motion
I didn't know you had a blog Art, and a fine one at that!
DeleteThanks Babs, plenty of pics & art there.
DeleteNineteen eighty-five. For various reasons.
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ReplyDeleteIf you check the "remove completely" box, you won't see this message.
DeleteYo Farq,
ReplyDeleteconsidering the subject of the day, any chance we get your entire remodeled Terrapin Station album?
https://workupload.com/file/HqrzYd8bgKn
DeleteThanks!
DeleteThe compass always points to Terrapin > https://we.tl/t-Ypbh7aAdZX
ReplyDeleteTerrapin is a really interesting, adventurous, and often beautiful album. DeadHead purist pressure gave it no chance - I remember then saying "live is the only way to hear it" - that old elitist thing - but the live versions I've heard miss the strange marriage of S.F. culture and L.A. professionalism that makes it so fascinating. It's a shame the band lost confidence in it during its making - Robert Hunter's lofty "I'm a poet, me" stance wasn't exactly made more credible by his own solo version of the complete Terrapin Station, as dull a listen as I ever had, and it's hardly surprising they only recorded "Part One". It's not perfect (although I like to think my edit makes it a better listen), but the moments of sheer beauty, lyrically and musically, are the equal to anything they ever did.
DeleteThank you much Babs. My favorite time was the mid seventies. I was in art college and my life was significantly better and more interesting than what had come before, plus I met my wife close to the tail end (in 77 as it happens).
DeleteThe eighties and what came after were pretty great as well, but they've had more in the way of challenges and drawbacks.
Whilst in 2024, I'm living the best life I can, the summers of 1968 and 69, in SoCal were idyllic.
ReplyDeleteTerrapin Station and Mars Hotel Studio Outtakes
ReplyDeleteTerrapin Station Outtakes:
01. Samson & Delilah
02. Dancing in the Streets
03. Sunrise
04. Passenger
05. Estimated Prophet
06. Fire on the Mountain
07. Equinox
08. Terrapin Station
Mars Hotel Outtakes:
09. Pride of Cucamonga (two false starts, then full version)
10. Money Money
11. Unbroken Chain (false start, then full version)
https://we.tl/t-mSMmuC5OFj
I'm going to say my best years were the early 1980s, when I first moved to this smaller, flat town. I had lovely friends, some of them got me into performing at the Northern California Renaissance Faire, and that made me a bunch more friends - and, delightfully, many have stayed friends with me for all these decades.
ReplyDeleteI also had a sense of the kind of community and world I wanted to build back then. By then end of that decade, I'd started working at the job that I kept for the next 27 years. I felt like we made some difference.
The decades since have also had some real joys, as well as challenges. I'm now retired, and life is pretty good - although I wish I was both a better spouse and had a spouse who was ... less depressed. However, I feel blessed overall.
I'm also very appreciative of this blog, both for the great links provided and the generally literate and stimulating conversations. Thank you!
D in California
Soulful question.
ReplyDeleteTop favored year was 1954, September 2 precisely. My fraternal twin was the pathfinder—and the premature duo sprung the joint so-to-speak.
Otherwise, most of my adult, (opinions vary,) years have peak, favored moments, yet, I'm a 'presentist,' even to a fault.
So it is that right now is most favored, and this also is flavored with too much loss and more than several extremely close calls.
(Presentist? The psychologist Philip Zimbardo offers an online assessment about one's orientation to time; search: "Zimbardo Time Perspective Inventory")
1971
ReplyDelete