Monday, December 3, 2007

Dosing on the Dead, SoCal Style

Pressure... yup, 12 hours at work, there's plenty of that. All friggin' day. All afternoon. All evening. Part of the night. 12 hours. Missed most of Monday Night Football. Oh well. I guess since I only do 4 of these a week, sometimes 3, it ain't so bad. Then again, I'm ready to explode sometimes. Why do we need to work? It was built into us, I'm sure of that. Mostly sure. Some people can adapt to a life of laziness without work. I know I sure could. But I won't. I'll get out of being an EMT eventually, it's rewarding, it's something needed in the community, but I'm ready to get out... but not until I'm ready to dive into something else. Until then... there's more work but thankfully some rest, too. And some Dead, too...

Grateful Dead - Skull and Roses
Grateful Dead -- 5.11.69
Aztec Bowl, San Diego State University
San Diego, California


Morning Dew,
Cryptical Envelopment
-> Drums ->
The Other One -> Cryptical Envelopment ->
Good Morning Little Schoolgirl, Me and My Uncle,
Alligator
-> Drums*-> Jam*-> Drums*->
Turn On Your Lovelight*

* with members of Santana

The problem, if you wanna call it that, with having this blog and picking GD (and related) dates nearly completely at random, is that I'm never gonna score an A+ quality show every time out. That's the case here... but that don't mean it's a bad show, yo, and not worth listening to.

Right from the opening here I thought along the lines of -- "I'm gonna suffer through this one." But ya know what? It gets better... or my mind just adjusts, it learns to accept the noise (hiss) and slightly muddy sound, and just enjoy the music.

The opening Dew rolls along and picks up some steam setting the up what's to come. That was just the tip of the iceberg! As soon as they barrel into The Other One, it's on!! As far as blissful therapy to melt away stress, the 17 minutes here of O1-> Cryptical almost couldn't be topped. Simply amazing to just get lost in Garcia's fire. Oh, to have a dose or three or perhaps some magic shrooms right now... nah, not needed... the sound these guys are making is already coming alive in my brain like nothing else!

Pigpen stomps through a pretty cool Schoolgirl... definitely another highlight of this show. Yet another 9 minutes of juicy fun Dead goodness.

Post-Alligator is where some new sound is introduced and things get a little different. Apparently some dudes from Santana hop in on the action here. At one spot early in Lovelight, Pig's ready to start up the next verse but the music behind him is completely on another planet for a short time... Pig, he was lost there momentarily, but grooved with it. Kinda funny actually.

Like most shows, if this is in the vault, it really needs to see the light of day so we can feed our ears and our Dead souls with cleanliness, not something mildly muddy. But if this is all there is, well, that's too bad but the quality here's not so horrible that the mind can't filter it in order to be able to dig it just as much as any show.

"This has circulated as 5-29-69, though it seems much more likely to be from
the 11th. Deadbase lists Canned Heat & Santana as sharing the billing with
the Dead for the 11th. Deadlists.com lists a partial setlist for 5-11-69,
from Dew through Schoolgirl. A radio announcer can briefly be heard
speaking of Canned Heat during the Cryptical Reprise. The guests almost
certainly include multiple percussionists from Santana, their singer briefly
during Lovelight, and some guitar from Carlos Santana, though his
contributions seem low in the mix and infrequent.

The lineage is unknown, although the radio announcers would indicate this
being from a radio broadcast. There are probably several analog
generations, but quality improves towards the end and is listenable. There
is a brief dropout in volume level during the Cryptical Reprise. The first
few notes of Me & My Uncle have been clipped as radio announcers were
talking. The cut at the beginning of Alligator is minor."

Great show!  Jerry Garcia, Phil Lesh, Bob Weir, Bill Kreutzmann, Mickey Hart, Ron Pigpen McKernan... Tom Constanten at this time?  Certainly no Donna Godchaux or Keith Godchaux.  No Bruce Hornsby, Brent Mydland or Vince Welnick.  Lyrics here from Robert Hunter but not from John Perry Barlow... wait, what about The Other One?  I'm not sure.  And was Mickey even in the band here?  Again, I'm not sure.  In any case, cool show from the great band from San Francisco, Haight-Ashbury, during the Vietnam War era... but amazingly the Dead never went up on stage and protested like many dooshbags do today.  Hmmmm...

The (fm) soundboard of 5/11/69 San Diego
is @ Archive.org for your listening pleasure...
- or -
download the show right here

GD 5/11/69 Aztec Bowl, San Diego

Grateful Dead poster - 5/11/69 Aztec Bowl, San Diego State University

*up soon*

P&F 4/20/98 -- go grab it now!
GD spring 1991 (SBD)
a December GD flashback (SBD)

Got a Request?
Just ask in the Comments.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Any chances for the Canned Heat part?

Zoooma said...

Yes.

I'm not a Canned Heat fan so if you pay me, and supply me with recording equipment, and supply me with one DeLorean or other type of Time Machine, I will go Back In Time to, say, the night before the show, I'll then get there early the next day and set up the recording equipment and tape the Canned Heat portion of the show, and I suppose the Santana part, too. I'll hang in SD that night, do some surfing the next day, then, after that nice little trip is done, I'll go Back To The Future and post up Canned Heat for ya!

Just e-mail me and let me you know you're arranging everything and I'll pack my bags!

(I checked and the Canned Heat part of this day either doesn't exist or it's not in circulation. Sorry.)

Anonymous said...

thank you! I Love 1969. Do you have 6-14 Monterey orthe Ark Shows! Thanks again!!

MACIEJBLUES said...

Hi, let me know which part of this show is with Canned Heat?

one says one number and the other another
but they were set at the same time. Hmmm...

i love you amy uzarski.  always!
 
Calvin and Hobbes in the snow -- animated