Here is the latest news from David Gans, producer and host of the Grateful Dead Hour.
Grateful Dead Hour #1031
Bob and Phil make a good solid attempt at “Me and My Uncle†about five minutes before the song actually starts, but Jerry and Billy are still out in the far reaches so the jam goes on a while longer. Fun!
Support for the Grateful Dead Hour comes this week from Grateful Dead Productions, announcing the release of Road Trips volume 1 number 3. Summer ’71 has a full CD of music from July 31 ’71 at the Yale Bowl and a full disc recorded August 23 of ’71 at the Auditorium Theater in Chicago, plus liner notes and rare photographs. There’s also a bonus disc with two more tracks from the Yale Bowl, and eight more songs from August 4 and 6, 1971. Information, cover art, reviews and message board are online at dead.net
Steve Parish at 12 Galaxies 6/25
From Dark Star Dan McGonagle:
Hey friends & family…
Our next Grateful Dead Night will be on Wednesday, June 25 at 12 Galaxies in the SF Mission district. We are very honored to have legendary GD crew member & JGB manager Steve Parish coming down to do a spoken word tribute of his many years traveling with Jerry Garcia and the GD. He will be accompanied by a keyboard player – I believe it will be composer George Michalski – for this performance.
Much like with John Perry Barlow, this is the real deal for us at GDN. It’s a great honor to have Steve come down and hang with us in this intimate space to share with us his personal stories and experiences. Arguably, no one spent more time with Jerry Garcia over the last 20 years of his life than on the road with Steve Parish and the GD. Let’s not let him down and have a great turn-out.
To put things into perspective; Steve was Jerry’s guitar tech, the last line of defense to get near Jerry -a brother- and “best man” at his wedding in the early 90’s. Steve was also the last friend to see Jerry Garcia alive on August 08, 1995. Please come out and share a little love with big Steve.
For more on Mr. Parish:
https://deadnews.blogspot.com/2005/11/where-are-they-now-steve-parish.html
https://www.dead.net/features/jerry-garcia-steve-parish
We’ll have a mic set up for a Q & A session after his performance. Check out Steve’s book, Home Before Daylight – My Life On The Road With the Grateful Dead. It’s a lot of fun to read this book.
We’re also very happy to have Stu Allen (JGB/Melvin Seals/Workingman’s Ed) & Pat Nevins (Workingman’s Ed/Ragged Glory) back for their fifth acoustic engagement of just about everything good – Dead, Neil, Dylan, Van, Graham, Beatles, and more. We’ll be starting at 9:00 pm to maintain Steve’s schedule so please get there early and let’s build-up some great energy .
I’ll both open and close the night with the usual mix of Grateful Dead, Jerry Garcia Band, Legion of Mary, Reconstruction, Jerry Acoustic Band, Grateful Dawg and all things related. We won’t be straying too far from all things Dead this week.
We have nothing scheduled for July so this may be the last Dead Night until Friday, August 01 (w-Montana Slim!)
So come meet Steve, hear some great music, Shake yer bones, and have a real good time!
Doors @ 8PM – Cover is $7
12 Galaxies is a dead-head owned and operated nightclub and a very friendly ‘head space where we can all congregate and stay close. We have no set formula on how or when we will do these nights. We just kind of look at the calendar and see if it fits and feels right. It’s wide open as to how it will evolve in regards to music, art, performances, vending, special guests, spoken word, plays/skits, video, open mic/forums, special events, etc… this is our community, let’s let it grow.
“Support your local Dead Night!â€
2565 Mission St @ 22nd – SF, CA
*-Dark Star Dan
https://www.12galaxies.com
https://www.stuallen.net
https://www.workingmansed. com
https://www.myspace.com/patricknevins
https://www.myspace.com/djdarkstardan
Mastering with Joe
Spent Wednesday in Oak Park CA, right on the line between LA and Ventura Counties, with this guy:
Joe Gastwirt is one of a handful of top-flight mastering engineers in the country. I’ve worked with him on several Grateful Dead projects. He’s a great guy to hang with, too. We have a zillion friends and the weird, eventful underworld of the Grateful Dead in common, so plenty to talk abut. And over the course of the day, we discovered a love of food and the farmers’ market, too.
I have a friend in Philadelphia working on the CD package art, which is based on my own photos of voluptuous produce from the Grand Lake market. The CD is titled The Ones That Look the Weirdest Taste the Best – a line from “The Bounty of the County,” a song I wrote with my beloved produce-expert spouse, Rita Hurault. If all goes well, the CD will be ready by the end of July.
Mastering is the process of making audio ready for replication. In the old days, mastering meant operating a disc lathe and cutting the groove in a lacquer master from which metal mothers were made; from the metal mothers were made stampers, which turned little hockey pucks of vinyl into discs. The art and science of that process involved making sure the deep bass notes didn’t knock the needle right out of the groove, and packing as much magic as you could into the mechanical limitations of that medium.
Mastering for CD is easier in certain respects, because the limitations if the medium aren’t as oppressive. The job is to place the tracks in the proper sequence for the CD, arrange them in time so the next song starts at the right moment, make seemingly-minor adjustments to level, dynamics and equalization (a much more granular set of adjustments than “bass” and “treble”) to give the collection as much sonic consistency as possible. With the whole project up in an edit window, you can spot-check the levels from track to track so you don’t have a quieter song seem to disappear if it follows a louder one.
My new CD has eleven songs and a “spoken word” hidden track. Four songs were recorded in January 2007 with an acoustic ensemble (and drums overdubbed on one song); six songs were recorded in the same studio in August 2007 with a different bass player, a fukl drum kit, and an additional musician playing pedal steel, electric guitar, and lap steel. The eleventh song was recorded in February of this year, in a studio 3000 miles away from the other sessions, with a third bassist and a different mandolin player. One of my songs has five clarinets; one has two electric guitars, banjo, and baritone sax; another has pedal steel, bowed cymbals, and prepared piano; etc. The artist and the producer collaborated on the song selections, and we collaborated with the players on the performances.
The mastering engineer’s job is to make the whole thing sound like a coherent musical presentation.
Joe Cocker decoded
This is kinda silly, but hilarious. Tip o’ the hat to Phil Catalfo for tossing it my way.
Yet another online music outlet
Look for me on Indiependencemusic.net. I’ve got a few songs for sale, including my new hit “The Bounty of the County.”