AFM6 San Francisco Sessions Dataset, 1967-1972

Tony Orbasido was running the American Federation of Musicians' Local No. 6 in San Francisco when I started asking him about researching in whatever papers they had. What they had was two 4-drawer filing cabinets stuff with studio recording contracts. I think the union didn't keep gig contracts in hard copy beyond 3-4 years for space reasons, and there were no gig contracts relevant to me.

This was before I could take legible cellphone pictures. I had to run Xerox copies of what I wanted. In later years, I progressively digitized these paper copies. The sample is biased with respect to anything in the Garciaverse, because I was explicitly looking for and only gathering out to Spudfactor = 1 musicians, in addition to Garcia himself. As I have reported, the Jerry Garcia and Grateful Dead contents of these files was dramatically light. I think Tony O said someone had come through and gathered them up. This could well have been the Jerry Garcia Estate, but I do not know that. Anyway, within the limits of the media I was working with, I was able to go through 1967-1972 pretty thoroughly.

I published the Garcia-relevant stuff in batches. By way of making an index, here they are.

San Francisco Sessions, 1967-1968 (August 4, 2015)

San Francisco Sessions, 1969 (August 5, 2015)

San Francisco Sessions, 1970 (August 9, 2015)

San Francisco Sessions, 1971 (July 3, 2016)

San Francisco Sessions, 1972 (November 18, 2017)

Altogether, this is my AFM6 San Francisco Sessions Dataset, 1967-1972

Hartbeats to New Riders: from spacesuits to OshKosh

Somewhere I have Mickey Hart saying basically what's in the title, but I cannot for the life of me find where I got this, and the Google is not helping me.

Anyone know where Mickey might have said this?

TIA!

John Coltrane has a spudfactor of 2?

Spudfactor is the number it takes to get from Jerry to another musician, using ties defined as making music together, in person.

Jerry Garcia = spudfactor 0

Anyone who played with him, live or live in studio, even picking in someone's living room, has SF1.

Then everyone they ever played with --same definition-- now has SF 2 (at most). And so forth.

The universe of SF1, when we draw all of the ties between all of the other players, defines the Side Trips Social Network.

Anyway, we were playing around with links out from Jerry to Coltrane, and my amazing commenters have determined that Jerry 0 > Ornette 1 > Coltrane 2.

So much fun. Original question was about John Chambers. We have moved on.

It's my understanding that Hartbeats era Matrix drummer John Chambers played with John Coltrane. I could check, but I wanted to pin this here before I head out to the ol' salt mines.

https://www.discogs.com/artist/1292605-John-Chambers-2

The Quick at San Quentin

http://www.sfgate.com/music/article/LSD-king-Owsley-Stanley-s-Sonic-Journals-11209700.php

And Bear was there taping. I assumed immediately this was 2/15/68, partly, I am sure, in hope that this means that the Quick sets from the Pacific Northwest Tour were taped. Hamina hamina. That said, I don't see any reference to Quick guys in the various reports of this gig.


! deadlists: http://deadlists.com/deadlists/showresults.asp?KEY=2/15/68
! ref: URL hannan, Ross. 2009. The Grateful Dead San Quentin Performances: A Theory. Lost Live Dead, December 4, 2009, URL http://lostlivedead.blogspot.com/2009/12/grateful-dead-san-quentin-performances.html, consulted 8/5/2012;
! expost: UPI 1968 ("Hippies Support Quentin Paper");
! expost: Torgerson 1968;
! ref: Abbot 2007;
! Corry: http://lostlivedead.blogspot.com/2009/12/grateful-dead-san-quentin-performances.html?showComment=1259944365140#c6637997183837294175;
! ref: Dister 2007, 150-151.

update: looks like Ross has confirmed Quick guys 2/15/68. Do we imagine Bear would have labeled his tape as QMS?

What about this 4/11/67 listing (not in Deadlists)? Any chance that a) QMS guys were there and b) Bear was taping?

In the alternative, what about the "3/7/68" thing, also putatively a San Quentin date, per Deadlists. Any chance a) this happened (w/ QMS), and b) Bear taped?

Let me step out of my Garciacentrism for a second, actually: I am only looking for QMS at San Quentin that crosses Jerry or the GD. Is there any other known QMS there? I see nothing at Bruno's list.

Anyway, man, 1,300 reels of stuff. Wow.

Investing in Marmaduke

Some notes-to-self.

Corry:

The Grateful Dead family was interested in turning John Dawson into a recording artist as early as 1968, and willing to spend their own studio time to do it, even though nothing ever came of it, so the New Riders project can be seen as a solution rather than a random idea.

I do think this slips a little into "functional fallacy", of postulating as the cause of some beneficial thing the mere fact that it is beneficial, ergo, folks must have wanted it and caused it to be produced. It might have been that they loaned him a bunch of money as friends, and then contributed so as to increase the probability of future repayment. So that would be "money -> idea" rather than "idea -> money" (in which case we are 180 degrees from our usual positions).

LIA seems to agree that the idea of Dawson as a "solution" doesn't follow from what we know: "we don't know what the purpose of the Dawson demo was, if Garcia himself had any plan or record-label in mind, or if Dawson just wanted to shop around various companies, or if there was thought to be any leverage from Dawson's 'Dead connection'."

Either way, cool insight: this is "as if" it were an early investment in a more diversified portfolio of commercializable music - absolutely fascinating.

updates

LIA comments "If indeed the Dead were giving some of their studio time to an old buddy, it strikes me as a precursor to the Round Records idea", an interesting thought. JGMF, in comments:

I agree with LIA (in comments) and you that Round becomes the formalized expression of some basic elements of the Garciaverse: he wanted to help out his friends with paying gigs, and the world demanded that he monetize himself (in addition to giving time, effort and layers of skin) to achieve that. For all of his other flaws, Garcia was an unusually generous friend. Think about how many lives were "made," how many properties in Marin and Sonoma made affordable, by professional involvement with Jerry. Man had the Midas Touch.

JGMF, in comments, where apparently I have already had the same urge to think through the titular proposition. At least I agree with myself that this is interesting!

[Corry says] "I find it strange that no record company was interested in John Dawson's demos." Here's a flyer: maybe the record companies insisted on some demonstrable GD/Garcia connection, e.g. a playing contribution from Jerry, as a condition of signing on his friends? This necessity drove (at least to some extent) Garcia's constitutive role in the NRPS, which is consistent with your idea that the NRPS was a solution (a band with Garcia, i.e., one that could sell records) to a problem (Jerry's desire to help his ol' pal Marmaduke).

Grateful Dead at Clifford's Catering, Walnut Creek, March 1-2, 1968

In 2011 I made a post under the heading of "GD in Walnut Creek; East Bay Psychedelic Scene?" in which I noted the mystery surrounding the Dead's Listed gigs in Walnut Creek on March 1-2, 1968.

John Fernbach has shared the following handbill. Yeah! Thanks!

Reader Brad Vicknair has graciously shared an ad for the show and some wonderful recollections, which I reproduce here with his permission. Thanks, Brad!

I saw The Grateful Dead at Clifford's Catering in Walnut Creek on Saturday, March 2nd, 1968.

I was friends with twin brothers and their older brother was one of the guitar players for The Looking Glass. They were a band from Concord/Walnut Creek that played locally in the late 60's. The drummer's father booked The Grateful Dead and The Looking Glass at Clifford's on Friday, March 1st and Saturday March 2nd. The Dead played the weekend before at Kings Beach Bowl in Lake Tahoe and the day after their Saturday night gig in Walnut Creek, they played on two flatbeds on Haight Street.

The venue was originally Portuguese Hall. A poster from 1963 promoting Bobby Freeman, Wally Cox, and The Untouchables lists the venue as Walnut Creek Hall. In 1965 and 1966 the venue was called Holy Ghost Hall. Local bands and major recording artists appeared, including Sonny & Cher, Martha and the Vandellas, Dick and Dee Dee, Dobie Gray and others. In 1967, the venue was called Scuzzy Mouse. The venue has gone through many name changes over the years, but is best remembered as Holy Ghost Hall.

The venue was called Clifford's Catering when The Grateful Dead appeared. Clifford's was a restaurant/catering business that would rent out the hall on occasion. I have a copy of an advertisement for The Grateful Dead at Clifford's [see above-ed]. I don't remember seeing a poster, but there may I have been one. I had a ticket, but it's long gone. It was black and white, about 3" x 5", with a I drawing of a hippie as the central image and LSD, a peace sign and other symbols in the I background. I have a Looking Glass business card and the art is similar in style to the ticket that I remember. The ticket and poster, if there was one, was probably band generated.

The hall at Clifford's was upstairs. There was a table at the top the top of the stairs where a couple of girls were selling tickets. We bought our tickets and entered the hall, which had a raised stage with curtains in the back and on the sides. It wasn't overly crowded, but more people may have attended on Friday night.

When The Dead came on, it was easy to move freely in front of the stage. Pigpen was having problems with his Hammond B3. The sound was going in and out, and he spent the first two or three songs under the keyboard, by the foot pedals. There was a sound man helping, but it was mostly Pigpen working on the organ.

Mickey Hart was playing wildly! He broke drumsticks and in one seamless motion, sent them flying over his back shoulder and grabbed another drumstick from his bass drum. He impulsively ran off stage mid song and returned with a large gong. Mickey seemed to be enjoying himself and was entertaining to watch!

Several people in the audience kept shouting requests for "The Golden Road". Finally, Jerry responded, "We don't know that one I anymore". They played "Cold Rain & Snow". The Looking Glass also played the song regularly. My friend said that on Friday night, The Looking Glass asked the Dead if they minded if they played "Cold Rain & Snow". Supposedly, they played it and The Dead complimented them, saying that they liked The Looking Glass version better than their own.

Pigpen took control when they played a long version of "Turn On Your Lovelight".

Later in the evening, the band was stretching out musically. Behind me in the back corner of the hall were friends and family of the band. A woman with dark shoulder length hair, wearing a black floor length dress with multiple overlay and a little girl about two years old with curly blond hair, walked up to the front of the stage. It was Mountain Girl and her daughter Sunshine Kesey. Mountain Girl put Sunshine on the stage in front of Bob Weir and he handed her the mic. As the band continued to play, Sunshine screamed into the mic at the top of her lungs like in a horror movie! Mountain Girl eventually took Sunshine off the stage and they returned to the back of the hall.

I was blown away by the whole experience of seeing The Grateful Dead!

My friend later told me that some of The Dead were looking for a place to crash on Friday night. His brother, the guitar player for The Looking Glass, lived with his parents in Walnut Creek and their response was, absolutely not! Supposedly the drummer and his father took in some of the band at their apartment in Concord.

When leaving Clifford's there was a sign at the top of the stairs announcing Country Joe & the Fish would be playing in two weeks. The Grateful Dead were paid $3,000 for the two nights and the promoter ended up losing money, so Country Joe & the Fish never appeared. Bands continued to play at the venue, which was called The Saranap Inn until 1973. In 1974, the Sufis bought the building and Sufism Reoriented (Meher Baba) established the Spiritual Training Center at the location.

San Francisco Sessions, 1967-1968