Week of December 3, 2007
Featured: an interview with Alec Palao, producer of Love Is the Song We Sing: San Francisco Nuggets 1965-1970. From Rhino's catalog page:....Released to coincide with the 40th anniversary of the psychedelic, free-spirited Summer Of Love - that began just after the historic Monterey Pop Festival in June '67 - LOVE IS THE SONG WE SING: SAN FRANCISCO NUGGETS 1965 - 1970 weighs in at 77 tracks totaling over 4-_ hours of music.... The 4-disc compilation, produced by rock historian Alec Palao, comes in the form of a deluxe hardbound book with 120 pages of sumptuous, rarely seen photos, plus track notes by Palao and essays by Ben Fong-Torres, a writer and editor at Rolling StoneMagazine during its earliest days (and many years after), and music journalist Gene Sculatti, all three with deep roots in the S.F. Bay area.
This program was excerpted from a live broadcast on KPFA, in which I collaborated with "Sing Out!" host Larry Kelp on an extended interview with Palao. From Alec's bio on the Ace Records page:
Writer, musician and full-time rock'n'roll fanatic, and Ace's man on the west coast. As token 1960s expert, work for the label includes, amongst many others, critically-acclaimed collections on the Charlatans and Sly Stone, as well as the recent Zombies box set "Zombie Heaven". Intensely proud of his garage-psychedelic Nuggets From The Golden State series, but has been recently creeping into fellow consultants' territories with soul and 1950s rock packages: he loves it all. Enjoys fondling master tapes, and also regards performing with the likes of the Chocolate Watchband and Beau Brummels as an important part of the "archive research".
Included here, also courtesy of Alec Palao, are unfinished Grateful Dead studio tracks, "Dark Star" and "Born Cross-Eyed" (eventually released as the A and B sides of a single), and a recording I made of Robert Hunter reciting the words he spoke at the very end of the studio recording of "Dark Star."
Rounding out the show are "Althea" from the then-new Road Trips vol. 1 no. 1, and a couple of songs from 6/30/74, which was broadcast in its entirety over a period of several weeks.
Enjoy!
The music:
The Warlocks (aka Grateful Dead), from Love Is the Song We Sing: San Francisco Nuggets 1965-1970
CAN'T COME DOWN
Grateful Dead (unreleased studio rough mixes 1968)
DARK STAR
BORN CROSS-EYED
Grateful Dead, from Love Is the Song We Sing: San Francisco Nuggets 1965-1970
THE GOLDEN ROAD (To Unlimited Devotion)
Grateful Dead, Rare Cuts and Oddities 1966
CREAM PUFF WAR
Grateful Dead, Road Trips vol. 1 no. 1
ALTHEA
Grateful Dead 6/30/74 Civic Center Arena, Springfield MA
GREATEST STORY EVER TOLD
CUMBERLAND BLUES
DIRE WOLF
Take a look at the GD Hour program logs and let us know what you'd like to hear. Feel free to post requests and comments here or by email to gdhour@dead.net
Thanks for listening!
David Gans