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Here is the latest news from David Gans, producer and host of the Grateful Dead Hour.

Grateful Dead Hour #982

Week of July 16, 2007 Part 1 33:55 Grateful Dead 4/15/89 The Mecca, Milwaukee WI PLAYING IN THE BAND-> TERRAPIN-> DRUMS Part 2 21:00 Grateful Dead, Three from the Vault (2/19/71) SMOKESTACK LIGHTNIN’ Jerry Lawson and Talk of the Town WHAT A WONDERFUL WORLD Jerry Lawson was for decades the lead singer of The Persuasions. I met him in 2000 when my friend Rip Rense asked me to help him persuade Grateful Dead Records to sign the Persuasions up to record a CD of Dead songs. Having enjoyed the Persuasions many times, and having heard the band’s fantastic collection of Frank Zappa songs, I happily joined the campaign. GD Records accepted the proposal, and much to my surprise, I was engaged to co-produce the CD with Lawson, and with Rense as executive producer. The experience was a life-changing one for me, as documented in my Persuasions studio diary. The CD, Might as Well: The Persuasions Sing Grateful Dead, is currently out of print, but that could change. It’s a truly magnificent collection of performances. Lawson left the Persuasions a while back, and he surfaces now with a new band, Jerry Lawson Talk of the Town, on this eponymous CD. For this week’s GD Hour, I chose a song that Jerry Garcia also covered with the JGB: “What a Wonderful World,” made famous originally by Louis Armstrong.
Support for the Grateful Dead Hour comes this week from the Sleeping Bear Dunegrass & Blues Festival, August 2-5 in Northern Michigan on the shores of Lake Michigan, with Dark Star Orchestra, Particle, Yonder Mountain, Keller Williams, the David Grisman Quintet, Railroad Earth, Peter Rowan, and dozens more. Dunegrass Festival tickets, directions and more information are available at dunegrassfestival.com.
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Playboy trivia winners

Yesterday I offered copies if the Playboy After Dark DVD set to the first two readers who could tell me what instrument Tom Constanten played on “Mountains of the Moon.”

The correct answer is harpsichord – not just on Playboy after Dark, but on the Aoxomoxoa album as well, by the way.

The winners are Rob Folger and Mark Flory. Rob and Mark will also receive my new CD Twisted Love Songs.

Thanks to all who read the logblog! There will be more freebies in the future.

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More on Playboy After Dark

Listening closely to the first segment of the Dead’s appearance on Playboy After Dark, you hear Jerry, ostensibly offering party chatter – the conceit of the show is that it’s a party in Hugh Hefner’s penthouse apartment – saying: “So there we were. There were seven of us, armed to the teeth with Buck knives, and – ” and then Hefner says, on-microphone, “Jerry, the Grateful Dead has been part of the San Francisco scene about four-five years…” and the interview is under way.

Seems pretty obvious to me it was a contrived bit, rather than a real story, but who knows?

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GD on Playboy After Dark

I just got the DVD set Playboy After Dark, Collection Two, featuring the Dead’s January 18, 1969 appearance.

Everyone is in very colorful clothes – Jerry in a serape! and sans eyeglasses.

First song is “Mountains of the Moon,” with Jerry playing a slotted-head Martin acoustic – with nylon strings, I’m pretty sure. “St. Stephen” appears to have been edited after the fact, in two places. The song fades out during the jam after “Fortune comes a-crawlin'” – frustrating for us, of course, but that’s showbiz.

Before the music, there’s brief chat between Jerry and a tuxedoed Hugh Hefner. “Is the hippie scene changing now?”

“Yeah, well, we’re all big people now.”

Hef asks about the two drummers – “…obviously for a purpose -”

“Mutual annihilation,” Jerry explains. “They… chase each other around. It’s like the serpent that eats its own tail, you know, and if you can stand between ’em, they make big figure-eights on the sides of your head.”

“I don’t think I’m going to stand between them…”

Worth seeing; not sure if it’s worth buying. Guests on this program (in order of the billing in the opening credits): Sid Caesar [legendary comedian], Elias & Shaw [comedy team], Grateful Dead, Brendan Hanlon [pretty generic ’60 lounge singer], Noel Harrison [middling pop star], and Sydney Omarr [astrologer]. Also appearing are Hef’s girlfriend, Barbi Benton, in a minimally-speaking role, and a couple dozen pretty boys and girls as furniture.

The boxed set of three discs includes six episodes of the show, spanning November 1959 to February 1970. Guests include Tony Bennett; Joe Williams; Count Basie; Phyllis Diller; Lambert, Hendricks & Ross; Pete Seeger; Sarah Vaughn; Cal Tjader; Johnny Mathis; MJQ; Tommy Smothers; George Carlin; Don Adams; Deep Purple; Smokey Robinson & the Miracles; and others.

I’ve got a couple of extra copies of this DVD collection, sent over by the producer, who sponsored the GD Hour for a couple of weeks. First two people who email me with the name of the instrument TC plays on “Mountains” get ’em. Include your snailmail address.

UPDATE: First winner is Rob Folger.

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