Garcia said “We were great for seconds on end.” I was lucky to see Jerry play for about 1,000,000 seconds exactly. Thanks for your 1,000,000 views here . Dave Davis wrote this blog for 500 posts and 5 years from 2015 to 2019. Contact me at twitter @gratefulseconds

Thursday, August 30, 2018

Something in the Dirty Water Show, Paradise Waits with Help>Slip>Fire, Boston Garden, September 20, 1991



Touch Of Gray, Little Red Rooster, Jack A Roe, Black Throated Wind, Stagger Lee, When I Paint My Masterpiece, Bird Song

Help On The Way-> Slipknot!-> Fire On The Mountain, Estimated Prophet-> Truckin'-> Jam-> Drums-> Jam-> All Along The Watchtower-> Morning Dew, E: Turn On Your Love Light

After a sweet sounding 1991 first sweet with every tune ON ending in a 15+ min Bird Song, the Dead rested.   There is some interesting discussion on archive about banter between Bruce and Jerry, where some say that Jerry wasn't performing well in recent shows. I say BS. Just listen to the MSG shows just prior to this.  This is the last best month in the GD history according to me (so beware!).

Then, the sky breaks and we get Help on the Way>Slipknot!>Fire on the Mountain. I could go home there. But the remainer ending in Dew always make me sad for stopping to see the boys in 1987 and missing the 1989-1991 resurgence.  Enjoy and read one million grateful seconds below from the Globe, Herald and the Zines of the day.  Thanks for writing these so we can rediscover them 27 years later.

I recommend the DSDB flac below. I thinks the DSDB one :)
FLAC
MP3 and Goodies


























Monday, August 27, 2018

How I Missed Dark Star at the Greek, July 13, 1984

I saw all the first 6 shows at the Greek from 1981 to 1982 (and like 13 of the first 18).

For some crazy reason, my 25 year old self skipped this night. My housemate Robo when to the show for free as an usher (which I could have done too) and around 1am when he came home I said how was the show? He said it was great and they encored with Dark Star.

And I laughed. Sure Sure. Never did it before. Never did it since. Played more than 220 times and never played as Encore. Except they did. Fuck me.




I called my brother Ralph the next day and Cormac scored me tickets for the next night, when Why Don't We Do It In the Road. But still I missed the Dark Star.  Lucky I saw the prior one on December 31, 1981 (actually 2am on January 1, 1982), but only one in 80 shows.

The problem for a chronically underemployed young guy was there were simply too many shows.  I had to stop seeing the Jerry Band in 1981 for the same reason. $5 for the Keystone did not grow on trees for the kid making $5 an hour.

Bay Area Shows, When I Lived There, December 1980 to July 14, 1984

December 1980, when 48 hours of moving to California, I saw 5 of 5
1981  Saw 10 of 10 including the Fiesta with Joan Baez and the acoustic show at the Warfield
1982 Saw 7 of 10, missed the December 26-28 shows (I think, maybe saw some)
1983 Saw only 4 of  14  missed Warfield 3, 2 Greeks, 2 Frosts, 1 in Marin and first 2 at New Years
1984 Saw 0 of 5 at Marin and Sacramento

Missing shows also correlated with the commonly accepted decline of the band's performances and Jerry's voice between 1976 and 1984. This comment is my own based on the amazing shows I had witnessed in this years (of my 80 Dead shows, 9 of first 11 are on CD (1976-1977), 6 of my next 35, (1978-1980) and 1 of my last 34 (View Vault #4) (1981-1987, 1994)

But missing this Dark Star really shook me cold. I gave up going in 1987 (except for one Branford surprise show in LA in 1994), faded away to West LA, went to grad school and started my career and I missed the resurgence of the band in the great late 1989-1991 era, which I could have had a 4x better chance of seeing another Dark Star then seeing an Estimated>Eyes!

Dead Listening does another outstanding job on the aud tape of this show (one of many from the sweet spot in the Greek

http://www.deadlistening.com/2008/03/1984-july-13-greek-theatre.html


Dead Essays Critiques the Few Dark Stars in the Dark Star Drought Era

http://deadessays.blogspot.com/2013/05/dark-star-1978-1984-roundtable.html

Link to Charlie Miller music from this show

A rare mid-1980's review of the Dead show in the local paper

My Brother Ralph with Dead Doctor Jordan at the Greek












https://glidemagazine.com/142656/dark-star-stories-the-greek-07131984/

Saturday, August 25, 2018

Teen Bob Weir: A Tale of Two Worlds, A Society Cat or A Student of Eastern Meditation?


It's funny to compare the portrait of young Bobby Weir in the SF Examiner Society Pages (i.e. Woman Today) and the underground papers as he began his career with the Dead.

FYI , go five minutes into the first The Other One above and hear Bobby sing completely different lyrics :) October 15, 1967 was Bobby's last day as a teenager, so a 20 year old Weir shared The Other One with the world for the first time a week later.

In the Chronicle, we saw Bobby and his sister Wendy:






In the Examiner, Bobby was give prominent feature in the Society Pages.  His very first two mentions are here:

September 5, 1967 at a Society event attended by his deb sister Wendy.


On February 19, 1967, Bob is mentioned again.

 


Meanwhile, the University of Indiana's  underground Spectator has this to say about Bobby



Meanwhile right after their Berkeley Greek debut on October 1, 1967, Bobby is busted.  According to the Barb, neither Pig or Bobby "turn on".



Bobby the Actor reviewed in the Helix, March 6, 1969, Seattle



Some Stanford Daily snapshots

that's 1966




In the in-between Marin Independent , Bobby was just Cowboy on the bus to never ever land


Driving That Train in July 1966