Grateful Dead

Whenever I take an excursion into some “World music”, as I did this week, I inevitably circle back to Mickey Hart’s discography, and I always gain a renewed appreciation for Mickey’s incredible talent and gifts to drumming. Not just his playing - first rate - but his contributions such as his field recordings, and his own wonderful releases featuring rhythms not often heard in traditional Western music. I played both RAMU and In The Groove, and just incredible the drummers he assembles on these recordings, and evokes this marvellous sound from. Usually any “drum solo” in a concert is washroom break for me, but Mickey really brings something otherworldly into drumming. Posters will argue forever if the Dead were “better” with just Bill, or just different, at a time when the stripped down sound of Beauty/Workingman’s called for less. To me, what always drove the Allmans sound was the duo of Jaimoe & Butch, and I think it more true in the Dead with both Bill and Mickey. He has an incredible catalogue, some really interesting stuff that sometimes is exactly what you need to hear. I could never imagine him just being a drummer in some band, playing a twenty song gig, rinse, repeat.
Recommended - “Drums of Passion” by Babatunde Olatunji, recorded in 1960, a favourite of Santana and Coltrane evidently. Excellent World sounds.

Closer to home, my “Next due”: Buddy & Julie Miller’s new release. An understated guitarist I saw once with Plant & Krauss, a fan ever since.

“Timothy Leary’s dead. No, no. He is outside looking in.”
And he was a poser, and did nothing for the psychedelic movement.

I've been spending a fair amount of time with this one the last couple of weeks and to my ears this thing cooks!! I love the fact that DL and crew plan on hitting this era again when the time is right. 1979 GD has plenty to offer!

Also, I guess the fact that I didn't start getting tapes from my older brother and friends till 1988 has been a blessing and enabled me to "love it all"

I seen the band 17 times from 91-95 and loved every minute of it! I loved calling the hot line for set list of prior shows on a tour so i could try and call the openers or encores!

I know 94-95 was a real hard time for Garcia. I remember on night at Philly Spectrum, 3/19/95 (UNbroken Chain breakout) during Crazy Fingers, that I thought Jerry was going to literally fall right through the mic stand and off the stage!

As a proud member of Alcoholics Anonymous, I understand the abyss of addiction. It saddens me that Jerry was stuck in hotels and Persian was his refief.

He was trying to get clean but, it was not to be.

So, I hope I didn't get to heavy on that topic. Just sitting here drinking coffee and spinning Dave's #47

Hope all is well with everyone.

Rock on, gang!

I'm listening to 47 again, it's better than I originally thought. The Black Peter> I Need A Miracle is quite something.

I see the Jerry people are selling Three Hundred Dollar photographs ? I usually credit them with not charging stupid amounts of money for stuff, like a hatchet for instance...

Leary is shit.

It seems to me that people who are 100% in favour of anything are a bit deluded. Most things have pros and cons. It pays to be wary of people who think they have the answer and try to influence other people to see things the way they do. There was an awful lot of that in the 60's - including people who were either in favour or against acid. As Charlie Watts once said - it's unfortunately very easy to con the young.

Mention of the 13th Floor Elevators - hugely entertaining if you like that kind of thing, but whether Roky Erikson would have been happier if he hadn't taken psychedelics in the way he did is a mute point.
In fact, thinking about it, Roky Erikson, and what happened to him serves as a chilling reminder of the negative effects of simple minded evangelism. He appears to have been used as a mouthpiece for non musician Tommy Hall, about 10 years his senior, to spread the gospel according to Tommy Hall. Which seemed to revolve around taking psychedelics 24/7. This had such a profound effect on Erikson, that by the end of the 60's he apparently took to the stage with a band aid wrapped round his head to close his 3rd eye, and dim the hallucinations. Enter what we used to laughingly refer to as "straight society" who incarcerated him and fed him a diet of their medication. Shocking mistreatment and manipulation all round.

and a wink to Bear, Skully, Sands and the Brotherhood of Eternal Love. Honorable mention to the Jimi Hendrix, the 13th Floor Elevators, the Grateful Dead, the Jefferson Airplane, Monterey Pop, Woodstock,.. (this list could get long). It would have happened without Leary, once the CIA opened the spigot to the general public, it was game on.

I blame my brother and my friends.. but Mama Tried to raise me better....

True, Leary did not help psychedelic research one bit.. nor did Nixon, Manson or Altamont. For good or for ill, the War on Drugs was the nail in the coffin that closed the door for scientific research for more than four decades.

....spot on review. Good job.

PT - great review, cheers. The last time I saw them was the last time they played in England with Edgar Froese - must be about 10 years ago. Good to read that they are still out there.

caught Tangerine Dream Monday night at the Orange Peel in Asheville, Nc. A small to medium sized venue holds 1000 people SRO. There were seats set up on most of the floor and mostly people sat for the show. There were of course several standing as seats were an extra 15 and the standing area was actually a really good view. I ventured back there from my seat a couple of times and the sound was intense but not too loud to annoy, but you could feel the low notes and was said that the room sounded great in E so the ending jam was in E to E flat, some bone shaking vibrations that were tremendous. I hadn't felt anything like it except maybe when Mickey would hit those low notes on the Beam, right through you and could feel it in your chest, so good. There were 2 screens, one on each side of the stage, that had some really cool graphics going on, melting and fractals swirling along with the music.
The set list was taken from their website as I only recognized three of the tunes that they played. Love on a Train from Risky Business, Raum and Phaedra.
Improvised intro>Los Santos City Map>Continuum>Love on a Train>Raum. A pause for lots of applause. Then right back at it, No Endings>Betrayal(Sorcerer Theme)>Rare Bird(1st time played on tour)>Portico >Choronzon. More applause as the three members took a slight pause and accepted everyone's love. The band is really jelling now. Logos Velvet (first time played on tour) Tangram Set (another first)>Cloudburst Flight>You're always on Time>White Eagle>Phaedra. Off the three went for a much deserved break as the 400 or so patrons and I voiced our approval of their performance. Right away, not but a minute or two out they came and showered love on us as being an excellent audience who actually listened. Then as is customary with Tangerine Dream, the encore was an improvised session that lasted about 25 minutes, sometimes turning on a dime and leaving the two screens blank or frozen in place. 2 hrs plus a 25 min improv nice show, highly recommended. Check out their facebook page for more info if interested. Quite a trippy show.

I never took any notice of Timothy Leary or Ken Kesey when carrying out my own extensive research into the effects of LSD on my grey matter. 🧠

My understanding - which might be wrong of course - was that Cary Grant took LSD as part of what was called "psychedelic therapy" under the guidance of a psychiatrist. He was clearly an advocate, but not a recreational user in the way people were in the 60's and 70's.

It's curious, reading about the history of LSD, how it became almost appropriated by Timothy Leary, and to a lesser extent Ken Kesey, who went on to define it's culture, and to some extent how it should be taken. There was nothing in the 1950's to suggest it would become a recreational drug of choice associated with rock music and young people. There is a school of thought that says Leary and Kesey were partly responsible for knocking psychedelic research back decades.