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Check this out from youTube! A live “Viola Lee Blues” from 1967 Gary Lambert just posted these comments about the video in The WELL:

The stage looks too big (and high) to be the Fillmore of that period. I think it may well be a Monterey Pop outtake, which would make this a very significant find. The camera work looks consistent with the way Pennebaker and his crew shot the rest of the Monterey footage. And there’s a clue at the end: at the end of the song — almost before the last note has sounded — you see a guy with blonde, Beatlesque hair commandeer the microphone to make some kind of announcement. I would bet that this is Peter Tork, who was dispatched by the panicky festival promoters to interrupt the Dead’s set, in an effort to calm down some purportedly unruly behavior in the crowd (and who was pretty much laughed off the stage for his efforts).

It was long rumored that the Dead had gone unfilmed at Monterey because, mistrustful of the L.A. industry types behind the festival, they wouldn’t allow it. But I met Donn Pennebaker at a film festival in the mid-70s and asked him about it, and he set the record straight, telling me that he had filmed them, and thought the performance of “Viola Lee” was one of the very best things that happened during that amazing weekend — so much so that he put together a full assemblage of the song in the editing room — but that several things conspired to keep the GD out of the film. From a practical standpoint, the “Viola” was just too long for what was always planned as a 90-minute film (and which already had a 15-minute Ravi Shankar performance as its climax). And the Dead were disinclined to be included anyway, for a variety of rumored reasons (from their aforementioned disdain for the promoters to having hated their performance — or, at least, having felt as though they had musically outgrown it by the time the film finally came out in 1969). That disinclination seems to have persisted right through to the release a few years ago of the expanded 3-DVD Monterey Pop box, which remains GD-free, despite renewed Pennebaker efforts to secure the band’s permission.

I wish all who read this the very best for 2006.

I can’t upload the next GD Hour yet because the power is out here in Oakland. We lost power for a couple of hours yesterday morning, momentarily a number of times last night. The juice was on when we got up this morning, but it went out again at around 9:30. I’m logged in on dial-up. I’ll post the show as soon as the power is restored.

(Anyone who isn’t able to get the GD Hour via a radio station is invited to contact me for instructions for downloading it.)

What did you do last night? We had a few friends over for dinner. We weren’t really paying attention as midnight approached, but the very loud of fireworks heralded the new year in no uncertain terms.

Update: the power is back on, and GDH902 is uploading.

Word is just starting to get out about this blog, so I don’t expect there are too many people reading it yet, but here’s a palce to say hello, ask a question, or whatever.

Welcome!!