Morning Dew
Me and My Uncle
Doin’ That Rag
I’m a King Bee
Dark Star->
Cosmic Charlie
St. Stephen->
The Eleven->
Lovelight – Grateful Dead 5/30/69 Springer’s Inn, Portland OR
Down to Eugene – David Gans (unreleased)
Song for Adam – Nina Gerber Live
Can’t Come Down – The Warlocks (pre-Grateful Dead), from Love Is the Song We Sing: San Francisco Nuggets 1965-1970
I Love You – People, from Love Is the Song We Sing: San Francisco Nuggets 1965-1970
I forgot to mention in my intro to the last GD segment: the intro to “St Stephen” goes on for FIVE MINUTES before they start singing. (Listening as it goes out over the air) We’re not hearing Jerry, so maybe he was changing another string – he’d broken a couple earlier in the set. Yup – you can hear him tuning that string up about four minutes in.
The tape runs out during Lovelight, but we get quite a ride before the fade.
Larry Kelp reminds me that “I Love You” was a Zombies song. But I remember seeing this band, People, do it at the Burlingame Recreation center when I was a kid – must have been some time in 1967.
Garcia broke more strings that night than I saw him bust in any/all my thirty or forty shows…was that the SG or was he on a Les Paul?
The new Grateful Dead channel received some free advertising on both Fox and CNN this morning. Sirius or no; it sounds like we will continue hearing some mind blowing music on KPFA too. This Springer’s Inn show was never even in the archive.org vault…
Beside myself with the intensity of being alive again.
Cipollina: SG…
Melton: SG…later Strat
Gurley: SG
But maybe JG played an SG at some point.
He did.
This is a show that is described by Michael Lydon in the first extended Rolling Stone coverage of the band, in an August 1969 issue. Interestingly, he makes no explicit reference to Cosmic Charlie, though he does note a ‘quiet new’ song that emerges in the middle of Dark Star. In contrast with what preceded, perhaps it seemed that way. In any case, this tape may contain the first identification on record of that unknown tune.
Lydon had a great piece on the Dead that ran in RS in August 1970 (and can be found in his book ROCK FOLK). Do you have the 1969 story?
“Cosmic Charlie” debuted in October 1968, and it appears on the album AOXOMOXOA, released in June 1969.
The Lydon article that I have in mind is definitely from August 1969, e. g. TC is still in the band, Garcia is on the cover, and I do have the actual issue (not at my immediate disposal, but I believe that the exact date is Aug. 23, 1969). I vaguely recall that a 1970 RS article, in contrast, recounts the band’s transition to a rootsier ‘more legible’ incarnation.
A more careful re-reading of the 1969 piece shows that Lydon has the earlier part of the show accurately, but, go figure, it gets a little fuzzier once Dark Star gets going. It misses Cosmic Charlie completely, and he has the ‘quiet’ mystery song in fact emerging in the middle of St. Stephen, contrary to my previous comment. So, perhaps he had in mind William Tell, or maybe even The Eleven, which though in the live repertoire for over a year, were not on the just released Aoxomoxoa, and, hence, still not familiar to him. Or, maybe he was just a little fuzzy by that point of the show, go figure.
Maybe the “mystery song” is just the bridge of St. Stephen?
Rock Folk – Michael Lydon (Dial Press, New York, 1971) Includes a chapter
about life on the road with the Dead during May, 1969, mostly the shows at
Springer’s Inn in Oregon. This chapter is a reprint of a Rolling Stone
magazine article from August 23, 1969.
(The Baron Wolman pic of Garcia, in black, is on the cover.)
Yeah, the ‘William Tell’ bridge would seem more likely than Cosmic Charlie or The Eleven to answer to the description of “quiet”, though Lydon has it as emerging before the end of St. Stephen, and it was certainly not new to the repertoire at that point. Regardless–it is great to finally hear the show first-hand.
I snagged a copy of, “Filmore West – 1969”, and Lo and Behold: Jerry Garcia is seen on SG inside…The Live Dead sound is SG! Any comments?