Have some ice cream with your Bird Song?

Yesterday when the lady next door answered the bell, there was a man there. And the man said to the lady, "I'm terribly sorry, I just ran over your cat." See? That's sad. The poor cat. And then the man said, "I'd like to replace your cat."

And the lady said, "That's alright with me, but how are you at catching mice?"

HAAA!

I was flipping through channels and I caught the ceiling tea party part of Mary Poppins... good stuff. I need to watch that someday... been ages, simply ages I tell you. Ages!

Anyyyyyway... I'm at work and we're closing in on what'll be the the deadest hour. I'm soooooo bored. Wait, back up... that was actually a bad choice of words... or word, singular -- deadest. Technically that would mean, well, death and that's bad. Don't want death therefore it'll be the quietest hour, yeah, quietest works.

But quietest doesn't jive with using deadest hour in another way, you see. I thought of saying something like: how about I turn the deadest hour into the Deadest hour. You see how that works? Genius, huh? Yeah... I thought so, too.

I put together most of this post earlier but time ran short, I had to leave to get to the station for work at 9. When my shift is on I need to be ready to get into the ambulance and on the street in a moment's notice... no, really, like lickety-split up & out. That means I usually mostly avoid being on the internet which is cool with me... but now, since it's currently one of the quietest hours of the morning and odds are soooooooooo high that there won't be a call to go out on, I'm bettin that I can write this part up and Publish without bein interrupted.

Right, so, so far so good. Did I even need to put all of this up? Of course not... but it's what I do. Got a problem with that? Well... do ya? Punk!?

Good. What's good? Life in general, ya know. And it's good that I'm about to wrap this up! Sheesh, could I ramble any more? Probably. But nahhh... on with the show...

Before there were Jerry's Kids... there were Jerry's Kids!

Grateful Dead - December 6, 1980 Mill Valley Recreation Center Mill Valley, California

Dire Wolf, On The Road Again,
I've Been All Around This World, Monkey & The Engineer,
Jack-A-Roe, Cassidy, Bird Song,
Oh Babe It Ain't No Lie, Ripple

"This is sorta like rock and roll."
-Jerry Garcia-

Twas just over a year ago that I gave this show a listen and since then I've gotten the book that has a picture, maybe the only one known to exist, from this cool little performance... so I thought I'd do a whole entire re-post with a scan of the snapshot included.

Five weeks before this "show" the Dead had finished up a string of 25 shows with an acoustic set included in each. The Reckoning album was released (and re-released in an expanded version) featuring beautiful soundboard recordings from those acoustic sets. So why then is this rather brief set needed? Well, I'll tell ya why. Because I say so, that's why!

In all seriousness, if I live till I'm 500 and I've heard every Grateful Dead show, every Jerry show, every Ratdog & Phil show... in the end I will probably dig this set of music more than any other. There were no tickets sold, no pot smoking hippies here or Heads who had dropped acid... just some adults throwing this shindig, maybe some parents and some counselors or what-have-you... but primarily just kids with muscular dystrophy. Someone from the Marin-Sonoma chapter of the Muscular Dystrophy Association had invited them to entertain and they did.

I almost hate to criticize this show but it's kind of unfortunate the boys weren't inspired to throw something into the setlist to help add to the theme of the gathering which was a Christmas party. Maybe a little Rockin' Around The Christmas Tree? And late in the set a kid says, "I want rock and roll." Man, what cool thing it coulda been for them to throw something else in the mix. Ah well.

Still, what's here is simple and straightforward but beautiful none-the-less. It's interesting to hear, or not hear, the applause from the crowd where it should be at times, like at the first notes of Cassidy. It should be there... but this crowd doesn't know that. Also interesting to hear how small this gathering of people is. I really kinda wonder how many were in this room... 30 maybe? I don't know. Just an intimate, private audience and for a wonderful reason, to help bring some smiles to some kids' faces.

Source
Betty Cantor-Jackson's Master Audience Cassette > DAT > CD
·
Sound Quality
A/A+ ... Could seriously be a Soundboard,
it's not but really has that great of a feel to it.

12-6-80 Mill Valley @ Archive.org
for your listening or downloading pleasure

12-6-80 aka 12-06-80 aka 12/6/80 aka 12/06/80 aka 80-12-06 setlist download mp3 320 kbps