Monday, May 12, 2008

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!

STEAL YOUR FACE - Jerry Lewis MDA Telethon design kinda thingGrateful 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.

TINY DANCING BEAR - YELLOW

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


TINY STEAL YOUR FACE

Grateful Dead - 12/6/80 Mill Valley Recreation Center, Mill Valley, California
12-6-80 aka 12-06-80 aka 12/6/80 aka 12/06/80 aka 80-12-06 setlist download mp3 320 kbps
TINY STEAL YOUR FACE

10 comments:

Sugarmag said...

This is my favorite music. You know, when I was in high school I had some friends who were into The Grateful Dead and I thought they were ok and then I watched Dead Ahead and then I understood and after that I really listened to their other songs and it was like I was in love. Wow. Thank you! Acoustic Grateful Dead and coffee. What a great way to start my day. My little boy loves it too, he says he's a dead head.

Sugarmag said...

Oh and I have to get that book. How much fun is that? Cool stuff!

Zoooma said...

Hey Now Sugar Mag! Great to hear! Some cool tunes to begin the day, huh? I'm glad I got that book... and that the pic is in there, otherwise I'd most likely someday have listened to this again but not re-posted it like I did, especially since there's no Soundboard download for people. But even still, it was well worth putting it up again!

Acoustic Dead and coffee in the morning -- ahhhhhh. I thought you'd dig this show :)

I hope some others get to discover it, as well!

Catchya later!

Nazz Nomad said...

wow- i have 9 millions old dead show tapes and cds and i didn't even KNOW about this! very cool and thanks for the write-up.

Zoooma said...

Nazz, my New York friend, you had 9 millions old dead show tapes and cds? Wow, dude, that's a freakin' lot. I only had 7 million and I didn't have this one either... but I found it on Archive one day, I think one of the first shows I dloaded from there (I got there after the removal of SBD downloading.)

Anyway, I'm glad again that I re-posted it and glad you've discovered it, man.

P.S. Mets ain't gonna get anywhere in the standings playing crappy .500 ball ... pretty pathetic. Win 2 of 3 -- okay. Lose 1. Back to .500 ball. It's crap, CRAP, I say.

Nazz Nomad said...

what gets me about the NY media is that everyone is crapping on Delgado and meanwhile Beltran sucks just as bad with the exception of the reds series this past weekend). but no one wants to get on Beltran's case becuse he is a pussy and will pack it in due to the criticism.
AND the Mets got him stinking it up for another 5 years!

Anonymous said...

Wow, thanks for pointing us to this one! Nice write-up also.

Zoooma said...

Thank you for stopping by and leaving a comment, Jack. Amongst so many giants (all the Warfield and Radio City shows with an acoustic set) this is definitely an interesting little gem! It was my pleasure to do this post!!

Anonymous said...

Hey and lets not forget the generosity shown here... both from the Dead, and the blogger

cheers

Anonymous said...

Great stuff man,very noble of you to focus so much on charity, looks like you have some pretty cool links up there to that go to deserving charitable organizations.

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