Some time back, I
reported
listings for "New Riders of the Purple Sage & Grateful Dead, Lion's
Share, 9 pm" for both July 31, 1970 and August 1, 1970, in the calendar
section of the
Berkeley Tribe. Here’s
the scan (click to enlarge). (FWIW, the
Tribe
calendar’s name was commonly “George”. This day, it was “David” [at the tag end
of the question “how about George David?”.)
 |
Calendar section of the
Berkeley Tribe v3 n4 (no 56) (July 31
- August 7, 1970), back page.
|
I have just uncovered a few more
tidbits, so I am updating the whole original post. The tidbits are a calendar
listing and a preview ‘blurb’ establishing to my satisfaction that
the New Riders of the Purple Sage and
Acoustic Grateful Dead played the Lion’s Share, 66 Red Hill Avenue, San
Anselmo, CA, 94960 on Thursday, July 30, 1970, in addition to the
previously-established shows the next two nights.
 |
“Datebook/Opening
Today,” San Francisco Chronicle, July
30, 1970, p. 41;
“’Purple Sage’ At Lion’s Share,” San
Francisco Chronicle, July 30, 1970, p. 41. |
Let me go through some of the
points that come up out of this little bit of material, in no particular order.
1. The New Riders of the Purple Sage and Acoustic Grateful Dead played the
Lion’s Share, 66 Red Hill Avenue, San Anselmo, CA, 94960 on Thursday, July 30,
1970, in addition to the previously-established shows the next two
nights (July 31-August 1, 1970).
2. Michelle’s
Mc’s Midsummer 1970 Memories of Acoustic GD at Lion's Share seem confirmed.
With the addition of the
Thursday night to our understanding of this run, we can now confirm four of the
five confirmable assertions made by Corry's informant "Michelle Mc",
as relayed by him at
LLD:
The acoustic Grateful Dead
played a number of shows at the Lion's Share. They played two or three nights
in a row, on a weeknight in the middle of the summer of 1970. She knows--she
went. These shows were utterly unpublicized, and only friends of the band were
given the heads up.
- Acoustic Grateful Dead:
confirmed.
- “two or three nights in a row”:
confirmed.
- “weeknight”: confirmed.
- Midsummer 1970: confirmed.
- No publicity: disconfirmed. The idea that these shows were
mostly for GD family insiders is supported by the fact that the Saturday show
was Jerry Garcia’s 28th birthday. If it appeared in the Chron –and more importantly, given that
there was an item in the Chron—it was no secret. However, it’s
possible that the Share staff called the papers, but weren’t supposed to.
3. Acoustic Grateful Dead
The item and Michelle’s memory
make it clear that the Grateful Dead played acoustically (AGD). This brings the
7/30/70 and 8/5/70 tapes to mind, the only two all-acoustic GD nights –billed as
such—that I can think of.
4. What About The Tapes?
By the tapes, I refer to the
New
Riders tape and an
Acoustic
Grateful Dead tape (
shnid 17077),
both dated 7/30/70 and said to be from the Matrix. First, given the relative
reliability of an “Opening Tonight” item in the
Chron and a Matrix tape label, I propose that our lists (i.e., The
List) be updated to list GD at Lion’s Share this night, and not at the Matrix.
Note that the first NRPS piece
(I'll call it set I) runs only 23 minutes. Normally, we would conclude that
it's incomplete (and probably missing the material at the start of the set,
since there's a set break announcement over continuous tape after Lodi). I do
think it's probably incomplete. But it could also be that this night was
different, and ended up including the
mini GD
acoustic set. That might have substituted for at least some part of the
expected additional NRPS material.
The tapes do suggest that there
was a three-part show on 7/30/70: (I) NRPS, (II) AGD, (III) NRPS. I think the
billings fit hand-in-glove with this structure, because …
5. ... The NRPS Appear to Have Been
Headliners Above the GD
I think this newly-discovered
evidence supports the view that these tape fragments are of a piece, insofar as
NRPS seem to be headlining over the
Grateful Dead. As far as I know, this is the only time such an arrangement,
a kind of inversion of the “
An Evening With the Grateful Dead” set structure
(see my discussion in connection with a
5/1/70
analysis), ever materialized.
I am intrigued by the
possibility that the order in which the acts are listed for those shows might
reflect that NRPS was "first billed" over the GD, which might be
consistent with NRPS doing two sets and GD just a little acoustic one.
The discovery of another
(partially independent) piece of data from the Chron reinforces this connection between these shows and these
tapes, in my mind. Both of the calendar listings put the New Riders first, and
the Grateful Dead second. If I understand how such listings came about, this
correlation is partly spurious: presumably the same person from the Share or
from the GD offices called the item into both the Tribe and the Chron. But
there may be at least some independence among these observations, insofar as
the staffers at the two separate newspapers did not turn the order around and
put the GD first. That would have been the obvious, natural thing to do. As far
as I know, this is the only time the New
Riders are billed over the Grateful Dead. I think the fact that things are
billed this way in both papers is no accident. I believe (pure conjecture, of
course) that these were quite explicitly and consciously listed as NRPS-GD.
The headline of the preview item,
“’Purple Sage’ At Lion’s Share”, especially, reinforces this. It is, I think,
incredible to imagine that, under usual circumstances, this would not have said
“Dead At Lion’s Share”. Woe betide the Chronicle
lackey who should make the mistake of headlining the second act instead of the
Grateful Goddamned Dead! No. This was quite consciously constructed with the
New Riders at the top of the bill, and the Grateful Dead at the bottom.
I view this as just one more
incremental step in the gradual speciation
of the New Riders from the Grateful Dead.
David Torbert had been around
as
NRPS
bassist (I said,
NRPS
bassist. Or,
NRPS personnel more generally!) since
probably
April. They had done a number of high-profile gigs in the An Evening With
the Grateful Dead format. I don’t have precise dates for when they started
working on the first New Riders album in the studio, but it is certainly right
around this time. Dryden said that Tolbert was brought for the express purpose
of making an album (
Kahlbacher
1974, 27). By mid-1970 the cognoscenti are starting to ask about the Riders’
studio plans (
Hard Road interview,
took place on 6/22/70). In October 1970, Garcia says that the NRPS record is “about
50% underway” (Goodwin 1971).
We also know, conventionally, that
on the Festival Express train a month or so prior to 7/30/70, Garcia had spotted
a hotshit pedal steel wizard named Buddy Cage and appeared immediately to have
conceived the idea of bringing the Canadian on as his own full-time and
permanent replacement. This seems only to have put flesh on the bones of a
general plan that he harbored all along, to help found and launch the Riders,
help his friends out financially by getting them a record deal (and the
attending patch of land in Marin or Sonoma or wherever) and making them famous,
and then stepping out gracefully. He was already public with a desire to step
back by late 1970: “I think eventually it would be groovy if they auditioned
other steel players so they could go out and tour, without having to depend on
the Dead” (12/27/70 KPPC-FM interview,
shnid
26583).
So, why would NRPS have been
top-billed at a local show in a little Marin club that held like 212 people? It’s
not like this was their big break. I don’t think they were planning on this
being the launch of a national tour in this configuration, of course. Most
plausible seems to be just that they wanted to keep things low key, and
probably especially the GD guys. These quiet acoustic sets, with loads of
wonderful spirituals and such (Jordan, A Voice From On High), along the lines
of show known as 8/5/70 San Diego, are profoundly relaxed. From my listen to
the NRPS set dated 7/30/70, I said “sounds like just a good old time foolin'
around at the bar. It seems to run quite late." Here are Cousin Ace (Bob Weir)
and Marmaduke to a sparse and shrinking late-night crowd:
Cousin Ace: “Well the rats are
desertin' the sinkin' ship. And, uhh, in the meanwhile we're gonna do a ...”
[interruption by Marmaduke: "Welcome to the campfire folks... "] “...
hot lead and bloodshed ballad ...” ["... this is story time ..."] “...sad
story time ...” ["... here on the plains"] …
All of the tapes in the
NRPS-1970-Matrix nexus (feels redundant, but better than NRPS-1970-Matrix matrix!) have that kind of feel. More of alcohol vibe (a la the Festival Express
train) than an acid- or coke-fueled one.
So, putting this all together,
I think it was probably just a fun, low key, local trial balloon designed to try
on what it would look like to have the New Riders go first.
6. What About The Tapes? Part II
So, do the tapes that circulate come from the Lion’s Share? I
don’t know. I am honestly pretty stumped.
Everything I know about Lion’s Share tapes has pretty much
been posted. Garcia shows are overrepresented since Betty taped so much.
Outside of those the only period in which
I
know tape was regularly spinning at the Share was June 1971-January 1972, when
soundman Lou Judson made an impressive handful of recordings.
I cannot explain why the “7/30/70” material comes out of “Matrix
Tapes”. The likeliest possibilities, it seems to me, are
- that the material is from the Matrix, and is mis-dated
(though not by much), and the similarities of the tapes and these Lion's Share shows is spurious. Maybe the tapes really are from 7/27/70, as "Mickey Hart and the Hart Beats, with Jerry Garcia", a billing I have just confirmed at LIA's place, also from the Chron (7/27/70, p. 37); or
- the material is correctly dated, but comes from the Lion’s
Share (e.g., taped by the GD folks), and somehow eventually made it into (or became conflated with) the Matrix Tapes; or
- the 7/30/70 show was moved from the Share to the Matrix.
I doubt #3, but #1 and #2 seem about equally plausible to me.
7. NRPS : GD :: Hot Tuna : Jefferson Airplane
Just wanted to note that the Chron item draws this analogy. It’s
true for a time, and interesting. Around the same time that Jack and Jorma are branching
out from well-known “day-bands” to play some American roots music on the side
(alongside, early on, some really hot rock jamming) –which seems to begin in
earnest ca. January 1969—Garcia and others in the GD are doing the same thing.
It’s obvious, but since I have Jerry and the Jeffersons on the brain I thought
I’d bring it up.
Of course, after the initial period, the arcs of Hot Tuna and NRPS diverge. NRPS ends up completely speciated from the GD in terms of personnel and, eventually, organization. Garcia builds it up and then walks away from it. Hot Tuna, of course, always has and always will include (no, really, "be") Jack and Jorma.
8. Summary
Summarizing, six take home points.
- This began as a way to just put another event into
The List: NRPS/GD at Lion’s Share on Thursday, July 30, 1970, based on evidence
from the San Francisco Chronicle.
- It seems to confirm the recollection by Corry’s informant
Michelle Mc of Acoustic GD sets at Lion’s Share in midsummer 1970.
- It is suggestive of one of the only all-acoustic GD sets,
ever (alongside San Diego, 8/5/70).
- It dovetails almost perfectly with the tapes we have that
are dated 7/30/70, though said to be from the Matrix: two NRPS sets sandwiched
around a homey AGD set that also features David Nelson and Marmaduke.
- It seems to be a rare (perhaps the only) instance of the
NRPS headlining over the GD, a kind of reversal of the “An Evening With the
Grateful Dead” format (AGD, NRPS, EGD) of 1970. I have argued that this is a
small milestone in the gradual (over two year!) differentiation of the NRPS
from the GD, which culminated in Buddy Cage taking over Garcia’s pedal steel
bench in November 1971.
- I don’t know how to reconcile the tapes (said to be from the
Matrix) with the rest of the evidence.
There we have it. Why say it in 50 words when you can say it
in 2,300?!?
SOURCES:
- Arnold, Corry. 2011. John
Kahn Live Performance History 1970 (John Kahn IV). Lost Live Dead, March 20, 2011, URL http://lostlivedead.blogspot.com/2011/03/john-kahn-live-performance-history-1970.html,
accessed 2/21/2012.
- “Datebook/Opening Today,” San Francisco Chronicle, July 30, 1970, p. 41.
- Goodwin, Michael. 1971. Jerry Garcia at
700 MPH: Incidental Music at the
Celebration of Life. Flash no. 0:
32-39.
- “Jerry Garcia,” Hard Road 1, 1
(July 20, 1970), pp 1-4 (unnumbered).
- JGMF. 2011. “GD/NRPS19700731-19700801:
Lion's Share, San Anselmo, CA.” Jerry
Garcia’s Middle Finger, April 20, 2011, URL http://jgmf.blogspot.com/2011/04/gdnrps19700731-19700801-lions-share-san.html,
accessed 2/21/2012. Deprecated as of 2/21/2012
- Kahlbacher, Gene. 1974. Aquarian Interview: New Riders of the
Purple Sage. Aquarian, January 29-February 12, 1974, pp. 14, 27, 31. Annotated at http://jgmf.blogspot.com/2011/03/reading-notes-kahlbacher-gene-1974.html.
- Light Into Ashes [LIA]. 2011. The Hartbeats - July 1970. Grateful Dead Guide, March 30, 2011, URL
http://deadessays.blogspot.com/2011/03/hartbeats-july-1970.html,
accessed 2/12/2012.
- “’Purple Sage’ At Lion’s Share,” San Francisco Chronicle, July 30, 1970, p. 41.
