Cloud Surfing

Roy Schneider’s Humble Stumble comic strip mentions The Waybacks and Jerry Garcia today.
I’ve met Roy a couple of times at the Suwannee SpringFest and MagnoliaFest. He’s a musician himself, and he’s used the Suwannee fests (with a different name) as a setting a couple of times.
I don’t get the strip out here in the Bay Area, but I read it online.

David Dodd, editor of The Complete Annotated Grateful Dead Lyrics, interviewed on KPFA 11/2/05. Edited for broadcast on Grateful Dead Hour programs 898-901.
Four segments of MP3 here.

I interviewed legendary GD tapers Barry Glassberg, Jerry Moore and Rob Bertrando between sets at Cal Expo on June 9, 1990. I’ve posted MP3s of the 21-minute conversation here.
Update 12/16/05: In a comment below, Sean Cribbs points to a photo of Moore (center), Bertrando (right), and yet another legendary taper, Louis Falanga. Sean adds, “Pictures of Jerry’s microphones and personal cover art are hosted at moxiefactory.com/jc
.
Another taper summit. Left to right: Jerry Moore, Dick Latvala, Bob Menke, and ??

I posted this on rec.music.gdead just now, so I might as well post it here, too.
JonP wrote:

Why do you think that david gans has been posting her nonstop since this started?… Damage control for gdp..I wouldnt be surprised of they asked him to do it…

They didn’t.
I don’t know how many times I have to say it: I am not an insider.
The truth is, I don’t really need to suck up to them to do my job. Back in the ’80 and ’90s when GDP was rolling in money, they didn’t “need” the GD Hour to help them sell tickets, and many powerful insiders (John Cutler and Dennis McNally, to name two) didn’t particularly want my help in selling records, or anything else either.
For example, when Arista hired me to make a promotional interview disc for “Built to Last,” Cutler wouldn’t even let me use the GD studio to do interviews. He did let me use one half-decent microphone for the Garcia interview, but I was on my own aside from that. McNally never sent me press releases, invited me to press events, facilitated interviews w/ Jerry, etc.
Dick Latvala was happy to make music available to me for the radio show, consistent with his generally kindhearted nature and his desire to get the music out into the world – but he was fucked with mercilessly by crew people (and especially Cutler, who didn’t have the balls to get in my face so he abused Dick emotionally behind my back) – to the point where I stopped asking Dick for music for several months at one point because I couldn’t stand what it was doing to him psychologically. Peter McQuaid intervened, took me and Dick out to lunch one day, and told Dick to stop letting the hecklers interfere with our mission.
So I was never inclined to suck up to anyone; oftentimes it was all I could do to keep from spraying gunfinre.
Nowadays the relationship is much more professional on a certain level, because David Lemieux and Jeffrey Norman are sane, professional, decent guys who appreciate the value of the GD Hour. I haven’t asked David for any unreleased material for quite some time, for a variety of reasons – one of them being that I have access to tons of great material that is already outside the vault. Amusingly, I’ve gotten plenty of shows directly froom archive.org – or CDs from Charlie Miller as he prepared them for upload to the archive.
I have also given Charlie quite a bit of music to post on the archive and asked that my name not be attached to it.
So the bottom line is, STFU already about me sucking up.
I”m here to serve the music, and always have been. I’m not terribly sentimental about the GD organization, because although they have allowed me to earn a good living promoting their music, and I have gotten a great deal of satisfaction from the job over the years, for most of my tenure on the periphery of the scene I’ve had to fight one fuckhead or another just to do my job. It’s left me profoundly unsentimental about the “family,” believe me.

Today is the release date of a double-barreled download: a single disc from 1970 (mostly 2/4, with one song from 10/5 and two from 12/31), all mixed from 16-track; and what looks like the complete show (on two CDs) of 12/10/73 in Charlotte NC.
I listened to all three discs last night, and it was the perfect antidote to all the non-musical GD traffic that’s been careening through my brain of late.
At this moment I’m listening to the jam in Good Lovin’ from 12/31/70 – an airy, subued affair that seems somewhat unusual to my ear. This is the sort of collective, structural, melodic jamming I came here for. Hard to imagine that this one is going to wind up anywhere near the Booklyn Bridge (see 4/17/71), but who the hell knows?
The other 12/31/70 item here is the only electric Monkey and the Engineer in GD history (aside from that entirely forgettable attempt w/ Bob Dylan in LA in 2/89. Great fun. Weir’s spoken intro reminds me that I was in my parents’ apartment in San Jose on 12/31/70, watching this show on Channel 9 – at least for a while. I wouldn’t go to my first GD show until March 5, 1972; this might have been the first time I ever saw them – no, I must have seen the movie Petulia by this time. I also must have been on my way out to a party or something, because I don’t remember much of the broadcast. If only I’d stayed home and watched the rest! Anyway, Jeffrey Norman’s mix is wonderful and so is the music.
Okay, Pigpen is into his improv now – a key phrase of this rap, “One monkey don’t stop no show,” is the title of a song that was popular around that time.
Highlights from the main part of the 1970 disc include a soulful Black Peter; a powerful Me and My Uncle (this song eventually became so routine that it’s hard to find anything memorable about any latter-day performance, but in this era the song has some real menace and narrrative power); and a terrific St Stephen-> Not Fade Away-> St Stephen (the thing I remember best from last night’s audition is the transition back into St Stephen) into Midnight Hour.
I need to go back and listen to 12/10/73 a few more times, but the things that stuck with me from the first hearing include: a sweet, meditative Playing in the Band jam (characteristic of the ’73-’74 era, although without the meltdowns that marked some – but this is not a complaint!); Bobby saying “Have a safe and sane fourth” during Fennario, obviously in reference to a firecracker thrown toward the stage; a kick-ass Nobody’s Fault But Mine out of Truckin’; and a really cool transition from the post-Eyes of the World jam into Brokedown Palace.
I’ll be featuring some of these highlights on Dead to the World tomorrow night (Wed 12/7, 8-10pm on KPFA 94.1 in Berkeley, and streaming on the web). Also on tap are an interview with April Higashi, editor of the new Jerry Garcia art book, and 4/1/91 set 2 part 1 (Tim Lynch will play the rest on 12/14).
P.S.: I asked David Lemieux what, if anything, is missing from the download version of 12/10/73. His reply:

Four songs, I think. All from the first set. Hmmm, Jack Straw, Tennessee Jed, El Paso and Brown Eyed Woman. Sonic issues. The second set is complete, starting with Promised Land, although Deadbase lists a Me and My Uncle in the second set that was nowhere to be found on the tapes, so that’s dubious.

Correction: Bill Herz passes along the deadlists entry showing an electric Monkey and the Engineer at the Fillmore East on 1/2/70. So the one on the new download isn’t the only one.
Addendum to the correction: Davld Lemieux notes, regarding the 1/2/70 Monkey:

If I remember, it’s a quick little attempt at the song while technical problems are solved, similar to Jerry’s Little Sadie on 10/31/80.

We try to be thorough here at Playback!

Over on Uncle John’s Blog, I posted a message from AOL’s GD Forum Store proprietor Geoff Gould regarding the state of his business.
An excerpt:

The Grateful Dead have been very good to me over the years. When my company was making Phil and Bobby’s axes (and a couple for Jerry he didn’t play) they helped keep us afloat. Over the years since the GD Forum first appeared on AOL and then on the web, we have worked together to bring the community many unique chat events and interviews. The GDF Store was actually the first functioning online commerce store selling GD Merchandise back in the Fall of 1995, and the GDM folk provided us with much great gear over the years. It’s been an honor serving the community, but times have changed.
Enter the “business is business” crowd.
Over the last couple of years, the GDM as well as the JG Estate stores have adopted a marketing plan of offering ‘exclusive bonus discs’ that has basically cut our sales anywhere from 60% to 90%. It was probably intended to get more market share away from sites like Amazon, and not aimed at me (I hope!) but the result is undeniable nonetheless. Like I said, the GD has been very good to me, and after reading Phil’s comments, I have to hope I was not targeted by these practices, but merely affected by the collateral damage.
It’s hard to say for sure, but this sure feels like the last holiday season for us

Maybe you could take a browse at Geoff’s site and see what sort of bargains he’s got…

Surely You Jest (listen)
David Gans
You’d best be glad this guitar ain’t a weapon
I’d strum your lyin’ ass on up to Heaven
But you’d not get in
Takin’ lessons from that thug
Shakin’ hippies down for drugs
And drinkin’ from that jug
Of stolen liquor
I’ve been runnin’ with a crowd of rowdy rascals
A rootin’ tootin’ band of Eddie Haskells
That bet of Pascal’s
You know it’s not for me
My eyes have yet to see
A scrap of proof that he
Believes in humans
I thought it was a hole that needed fillin’
To you it was a a plan that needed killin’
Supervillain
So you’ve cast me in your flick
You’d make a dead man sick
As if you had been kicked
As much as I have
And after all this storm and drain
You come by to pick my brain
To see what keeps me sane
So you can steal it
I overheard your mumbled malediction
My truth is even stranger than your fiction
This grave addiction
Well I came here for the fun
But I see those days are done
I’m not the only one
Who saw it comin’
I thought that you and I would be like brothers
Instead we just keep dissin’ one another
You sorry mutha
After all the tears we’ve cried
Since our broken angel died
These acts of fratricide
Are so offensive
So go tell your kleptocrat
That he ain’t no diplomat
If everybody’s fat
Then what’s the skinny?

© 2004 Whispering Hallelujah (BMI) All rights reserved

Two posts by Steve Marcus, former head of Grateful Dead Ticketing, from the WELL, reproduced here with his permission.

539, 416 of 428: Steven E. Marcus (smarcus) Sun 4 Dec 05 01:56 65

I am just happy for all that I have received in the past and for the
over 100 times that I was allowed to plug into the board.

The facts are fairly simple. When the Dick’s Pick’s series was started
each one sold about 25,000 units, but in the last few years that has
dropped to 10,000 or less (which is why the Fillmore boxed set was
limited to 10,000. Hind sight is most likely now telling GDP that they
could have easily sold 25,000.)

Offering a new Dead Download every month is NOT going to make any one
rich, and the fact is that because of the way that the band ran their
business none of them are rich in the true sense of the word. Some of
them put away their money and invested, but I would be very surprised
if any them are worth more than $15,000,000.

This band was overly generous in the wages they paid their employees.
At the peak I was paid a base of $62,500.00 (which was at the time
about $20,000-$40,000 more per year than all other box office managers
for all the major stadiums and arenas in the country and a hell of a
lot more than any other ticket sales manager for any other band) on top
of that base you can add four bonuses per year; one for each tour
(Spring, Summer, Fall at approximately $5,000 per tour) and a Christmas
bonus of around $10,000 although I believe it was $20,000 in 1988.

One top of that add in the 15% of the TOTAL amount earned that GDP
contributed into a profit sharing plan and COMPLETE Dental and Medical
coverage plus four week vacations (not including the two to four weeks
GDP was closed after New Years.) The free tickets for almost every
show for almost every employee. Hell the women that were basically
receiptionists were getting over $45,000 per year plus all the above.
In the real world they would have been lucky to get $30,000 total per
year!

A few months after Vince was brought into the band he finally asked
how much he was getting. He was told $1,000 per day. His response was
so we play 80 shows per year, that good. He was corrected and told
that it was for 365 days plus tour and Christmas bonuses. He was paid
exactly the same as Garcia and everyone else. Do you think Ron Wood
was paid the same as Mick or Keith? Not a chance. Do you think Darryl
Jones is getting paid the same as Bill Wyman was getting even after 15
years in the band? Not even close.

My point is that this band could have cut everyone’s pay almost in
half and we would still have been well paid, but their basic attitude
was share the wealth.

In a period of one year I went from sitting outside Frost because I
couldn’t get a ticket (1982) to NEVER having to worry about getting a
ticket for ANY show AND being paid for it. I am thankful for all of
that.

My point is that all of us have benefited from this bands generousity
if only from the years of allowing us to tape shows and share them.
Even as an employee I bought EVERY single music or video release.

And when I have the money I still do.

I have hundreds and hundreds of hours of incredible music that I can
listen to some of it high quality board source and some of it high
quality audience source. Everytime I listen to one of those tapes I
thank the Grateful Dead for letting me relive incredible times, and if
they choose to take all the free stuff off line it is their choice. I
can still trade what I have.

Shit, it’s 2 am and I am rambling…

539, 418 of 428: Steven E. Marcus (smarcus) Sun 4 Dec 05 06:43 13

I left off the “per diem” when on the road which was $45-$60
per day for expenses, but the Grateful Dead traveled with a four star
chef from a major resteraunt AND a Vegan chef, plus we could order food
“bags” with custom made meals for the days off. 30 days on the road
at $45 per day = $1,350 of which I would usually spend less than $300.

And another point about sharing the wealth. When David Bowie was paid
$1,500,000 to play the 1983 US Festival he paid each member of his
band union MINIMUM!!!! Which I believe was $350 each!!!!! Stevie Ray
Vaughn was supposed to be on that tour until he found out what Bowie
was planning on paying him.

539, 429 of 429: Steven E. Marcus (smarcus) Sun 4 Dec 05 12:48 17

… in 1987 when they
started making $50,000,000 per year in ticket sales [...] their song
lyric writers were living off royalties from record, tape and CD sales
which was and is very little. At that point the Grateful Dead voted to
pay Hunter and Barlow annual salaries, plus the royalties.

Also I wanted to make it clear that my above posts are relating only
to the Grateful Dead with Jerry, not The Other Ones or The Dead who I
am very sure aren’t paying every player the same, and that that policy
ended with Jerry.