Monthly Archives: January 2016

Grateful Dead, Music et al

Grateful Dead Play MSG

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Grateful Dead Play MSGGrateful Dead Play MSG

The Grateful Dead played 2,318 shows.

On January 7, 1979 they played the first of the 52 shows they’d perform at New York City’s fabled Madison Square Garden. (The Dead also played 5 shows at Madison Square Garden’s Felt Forum)

They played more often at only two other venues: Winterland, (60 times) and the Oakland-Alameda County Arena (66 x)

Grateful Dead Play MSG
ticket stub from the first Dead show at Madison Square Garden

The first Garden show was rescheduled from November 30, 1978 and thanks to the ever vigilant Deadheads, we know the set list:

One Jack Straw [6:08] ; They Love Each Other [7:48] ; Cassidy [5:00] ; Jack-A-Roe [5:16] ; Looks Like Rain [7:57] ; Tennessee Jed [8:27] ; El Paso [4:19]; Stagger Lee [6:42] ; Passenger [5:07]
Two I Need A Miracle [7:03] > Shakedown Street [10:00] ; From The Heart Of Me [3:42] ; Estimated Prophet [10:38] > Eyes Of The World [9:42] > Drums [4:55] > Space [4:11] > Not Fade Away [13:09] > Black Peter [11:34] > Around And Around [6:03]
Encore Good Lovin’ [7:37]
Grateful Dead Play MSG

Recorded

And like pretty much every Dead show, fans were there to tape it. Bob Wagner’s (transferred by the legendary Charlie Miller) is a great audience recording which the amazing Internet Archive has for you to listen to: AUD of show

AUDs sometimes have their clicks and gaps, but they can can be more fun to listen to than a soundboard recording because, if well done, you are right there with band’s sound.

Grateful Dead Play MSG

Madison Square Garden

The Dead also played the Garden the next night, a common occurrence.  And only Good Lovin’ was repeated. Another common feature of the ever-changing Dead setlists.

Grateful Dead Play MSG
ticket stub for January 8, 1979 Madison Square Garden

Set list? Of course.

One Mississippi Half-Step Uptown Toodeloo [9:37] > Franklin’s Tower [9:56] ; New Minglewood Blues [5:04] ; Candyman [7:07] ; Me And My Uncle [2:56] > Big River [5:28] ; Friend Of The Devil [10:02] ; It’s All Over Now [8:19] ; Brown Eyed Women [5:09] ; Lazy Lightnin’ [3:34] > Supplication [7:43]
Two Scarlet Begonias [11:43] > Fire On The Mountain [10:16] ; Samson And Delilah [7:09] ; Terrapin Station [12:18] > Playing In The Band [13:25] > Drums > The Other One [8:23] > Wharf Rat [10:52] > Good Lovin’ [6:27]
Encore U.S. Blues [5:31]

Bob Wagner was there again. Charlie Miller has transferred it, again. click >>> January 8 Dead AUD

Grateful Dead Play MSG

Here’s a link to the entire list of MSG Dead shows. How many did you attend?

Grateful Dead Play MSG
Today in history, Vietnam

Draft Resistance Indicted

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Draft Resistance Indicted

Indictments

On January 5, 1968 Attorney General Ramsey Clark announced the indictment five men: author and pediatrician Dr. Benjamin Spock, the chaplain of Yale University Rev. William Sloane Coffin Jr., 23-year-old Harvard University graduate student Michael Ferber, Mitchell Goodman, 44, of New York and Temple, Me., and Marcus Raskin, 33, of Washington, co-director of the Institute for Policy Studies, a private research organization on charges of conspiring to counsel young men to violate the draft laws. (NYT article)

Draft Resistance Indicted
l – r: Dr. Benjamin Spock, Rev. William Sloan Coffin, Mitchell Goodman, Michael Ferber

According to the indictment, Dr. Spock, Mr. Coffin, Mr. Raskin, and Mr. Goodman agreed to sponsor a nationwide draft-resistance program that would include disrupting the induction processes at various induction centers, making public appeals for young men to resist the draft and to refuse to serve in the military services and issuing calls for registrants to turn in their draft cards.

The government accused the men of having violated Title 50, Section 462(A) of the United States Code Appendix, a section of the Universal Military Training and Service Act that dates to World War I. It declared that any person was guilty of violating the law if he “knowingly counsels, aids, or abets another to refuse or evade registration or service in the armed forces” or if he “shall knowingly hinder or interfere or attempt to do so in any way, by force or violence or otherwise,” with the administration of the draft. It also makes it a crime to conspire to commit these acts.

Draft Resistance Indicted

Draft resistance increases

On January 12, 1968, the New York Times reported that,  The Government disclosed…that more young men were prosecuted and convicted last year for draft violations than in any year since World War II. (Draft convictions)

On May 12, 1968 a jury was selected. It was an all-male jury (Jury selected).

Draft Resistance Indicted

Four guilty

On June 14, 1968, the jury found the four men guilty.

On July 10, 1968, Judge Francis J W Fort sentenced the four men to two years in prison

On July 11, 1969, because of insufficient evidence of a conspiracy, “The United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit reversed today the convictions of Dr. Benjamin Spock and three other men who were found guilty in 1968 of conspiring to counsel evasion of the draft.”

Draft Resistance Indicted
Anniversary, Music et al, Music of the 60s

January 4 Music et al

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January 4 Music et al

More than psychedelic 

It is a common point in many of my blog entries that music of the 1960s was much more than the psychedelic brume made by Hendrix, the Airplane, the Beatles, the Stones, or the Dead. As with anything, there was much more to it. Today’s date is an easy way to demonstrate both that variety and evolution.

January 4 Music et al

Marty Robbins

On January 4 – 17, 1960, Marty Robbins’s country style “El Paso” was the Billboard #1 single Of course, Deadheads  will recognize the song as one the Dead often often covered–396 times according to the excellent Deadlists dot com site.

Oddly, El Paso was the first of three #1 songs in a row in which someone died. The other two were Johnny Preston’s Running Bear and Mark Dinning’s Teen Angel.

January 4 Music et al

South Pacific & the Kingston Trio

For most listeners, 1960 was pre-stereo and an interesting aside is at that time Billboard had two #1 album categories: stereo and mono. Not until August 1963 did Billboard have a single list. Home stereo systems were simply not as common…yet. So…

January 4 Music et al

Kingston Trio/South Pacific

January 4 – 10, 1960: the soundtrack to South Pacific was the Billboard #1 stereo album and from January 4 – February 14, 1960: the Kingston Trio’s Here We Go Again mono album was Billboard’s #1.

January 4 Music et al

There! I’ve Said It Again

January 4 Music et al

Four years later on January 4 – 31, 1964, just days before the Beatles arrived and that British avalanche forever changed the US pop landscape, Bobby Vinton’s There! I”ve Said It Again was the #1 single. The Dead didn’t cover Vinton.

January 4 Music et al
The Doors The End

January 4 Music et al

That avalanche covered the US and the world and three years later, on January 4, 1967, The Doors released their first album, The Doors.

Did you first hear AM’s 2:52 version of Light My Fire or, sitting amazed, hear FM’s 7:06 album cut? So many great cuts by a group that few realized named themselves after Aldous Huxley’s 1954 mescaline memoir,  The Doors of Perception.

To ask what was your favorite cut is perhaps a foolish one since the album is the album. One listens to it in total. But when you did get to that last cut on side two, well to use a 21st century acronym, OMG!

January 4 Music et al
Lyrics

A November 19, 1967 New York Times article began with: The Doors is one pop music group that may make it to the end of this rock generation, which is to say it may last another five years. (click for full article >>> NYT article

Rolling Stone review

January 4 Music et al