Fun with Color

Here is all kinds of color, from one John L. Wasserman column in the San Francisco Sunday Examiner and Chronicle Datebook from August 13, 1972:

Mike Bloomfield, Elvin Bishop, and Johnny Winter jammed together a few days ago at Keystone Korner. This interests me because I am trying to piece Summer 1972 back together (see Corry), and Bloomfield's movements are probably just as relevant (and more helpful, since he's more in the press) as the Merl and/or John Kahn movements. Of course, I am sure the music was good, though I actively don't love the first two, and have barely listened to the latter.

Pierce Street Annex has moved around the corner and now occupies the old Matrix club at 3138 Fillmore. This puts some time parameter around the Garcia-Guaraldi crossings at the Pierce Street Annex in the summer of '72 - presumably couldn't have been very much before this 8/13/72 publication (where "very much" might mean two weeks?).

There are also several Country Joe items in here, Yellow Shark take note.

Reading Notes: Constanten, Tom. 1992. Between Rock and Hard Places: A Musical Autobiodyssey. Eugene, OR: Hulogosi Press.

update 20120107: how could I have missed LIA's post "Constanten on Constanten"? Anyway, there it is, excellent as always.

Spent some time with this, mostly trying to get some more anchoring around Tarot, which has become quite a productive discussion in comments to my post on a "Rubber Duck Mime Band and Jerry Garcia" billing at Mandrake's in Berkeley on June 2-3, 1970.

A few drive-by take-home points for me.

• Tarot still really confuses me, and especially the nature and extent of Garcia's involvement.
• We have a Vince Guaraldi and a Howard Wales sighting. Regarding the latter, and based on the context, We can't rule out that he's talking about the GD-Wales encounter on Thursday, August 28, 1969 at the Family Dog at the Great Highway. But it's certainly before 2/1/70. Similarly, we get a data point on GD-Guaraldi that points to sometime before 2/1/70 for his sit-in(s) with the band.

Reading Notes, focused only really on GD/Garcia and points of interest to me, follow. (I.e., I am certainly not representing this as anything other than a data-mining and breadcrumb-establishing enterprise.)

Constanten, Tom. 1992. Between Rock and Hard Places: A Musical Autobiodyssey. Eugene, OR: Hulogosi Press.

 

Constanten 1992, 70: TC saw Warlocks at The In Room.

Constanten 1992, 70-71: saw GD 5/29/66, spent a few days staying with the band at Olompali.

Constanten 1992, 71: joined them in LA for studio work on Anthem, ca. November 1967?

Constanten 1992, 72: Pigpen, Tom Constanten and Nicky Hopkins hung out talkin' music in a hotel room at Woodstock. Sessions at Columbia Recorders overdubbing a vocal track for Alligator, TC in control room.

Constanten 1992, 74: returning to St. Louis early April 1969.

Constanten 1992, 75: Fillmore West acid spiked apple juice. “I remember Janis venting her high dudgeon at Owsley backstage that night – her trumpet player had got dosed. … When it came time for us to play, Phil’s bass was loosely draped over his shoulders and he was pushed onstage, muttering the while about the Fall of the Roman Empire. … I found Robert Hunter painted onto the stairs on our way out the back door. He and Pete Grant were then decanted into their respective back seats for the rid back home across the Golden Gate Bridge.”

Constanten 1992, 75: Bull Frog festival in Oregon.

Constanten 1992, 76: 4/28/71 he just happened to be in town because of the Tarot project.

Constanten 1992, 76: Dylan was in attendance GD 4/27/71.

Constanten 1992, 76: More NYC. Café a Go Go. Hey Jude encore at Fillmore East (2/11/69). Fillmore East. Woodstock. “a musically warm afternoon at the Central Park bandshell” (6/22/69).

Constanten 1992, 77: LA 1967 met Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, who didn’t like the band’s name, wanted to call it “Everlasting Life”.

Constanten 1992, 77: “We were supposed to be the band in the movie Zachariah. It got as far as touring the MGM back lot, getting fitted for costumes, and impacting the script, but no farther.” NB movies.

Constanten 1992, 77: mention of Big Rock Pow Wow show. Playboy after Dark.

Constanten 1992, 77: “The band even went horseback riding as a group a couple of times out at Mickey’s ranch in Novato”. Helps to paint the Mickey’s Barn picture: not like they rode every day.

Constanten 1992, 78: 3/15/69 Black and White Ball. 

Constanten 1992, 78: TC had met Garcia 1962.

Constanten 1992, 78-79: Aoxomoxoa. 

Constanten 1992, 79-82: why he left the band. Mostly it sounds like there just wasn’t enough musical or auditory space for him.

Constanten 1992, 80: “comparing the problems more experienced players, like Vince Guaraldi and Howard Wales, encountered in interacting with the band, I began to suspect that some of the band members themselves didn’t have that clear an idea of the keyboard’s role in a guitar band context”

Constanten 1992, 81: “It was unsettling enough for Phil to pointedly remark how much he preferred Howard Wales’s playing when he sat in with the band. But what really hurt was his apparent insensitivity to the fact that Howie’s system was driving twice as many Leslie speakers as mine.”

Constanten 1992, 81-82: New Orleans bust, early 1970

Constanten 1992: notice that neither the narrative nor the information in the TC Base at the end of the book ever lists Garcia as performing Tarot live, or really involved with it in any way.

Constanten 1992, 84-89: whole Tarot story, but still quite hard to parse exactly who/what/when/where [OCR scanned .doc]

Constanten 1992, pp. 195-197 are the parts of “T.C. Base 3” which cover the years to Tarot [images scanned]. The GD data in TC Base have a number of known errors which I won't try to catalog.

more on the keyboardist change, ca. 1971

We have been going around on the various blogs about the engagement of Vince Guaraldi and Howard Wales with the GD/Garcia, and especially about Weir's recollection that Howard Wales had a tryout as GD keyboardist.

LIA has wondered aloud whether some of the 1970 "Hartbeats" gigs, e.g., in late July, were, effectively, the Wales tryouts.

I have argued that September 1971 seems more likely. More importantly, LIA cites McNally as giving this timeframe, as well.

The other day I was wondering how Pigpen felt about all of this. He was sick and getting sicker, so maybe it just was what it was. But it must have been depressing and awkward. Then I remembered about the September 9, 1971 gig that Corry uncovered (which had also been listed in the Barb, I had found), the only solo Pigpen gig that I have ever even heard of or seen reference to. I suspect that if the gig happened Pigpen just brought out his guitar and sang some sad blues.

We already know, if tape labels are to be believed (and I think in this case they make too much sense not to be), that Keith Godchaux would be rehearsing with the GD within three weeks of this, if he wasn't already. And I admit that a Pig gig says nothing about the timing of a Wales tryout. But I thought it was an interesting piece of context, and the tickle in the back of my brain has me really believing that the Wales tryout was ca. September, 1971.