Can You Pass the Acid Test? 1/8/66

After a week, I'm finally able to update on my progress. I finished listening to a recording of 1/8/66. It's the first live show that I've encountered in this project. The recording was made during the Fillmore Acid Test. Here's the setlist:

The Fillmore Acid Test
Fillmore Auditorium, San Francisco, CA
January 8, 1966

Setlist:
1. Stage Chaos/More Power Rap
2. King Bee
3. I'm A Hog For You Baby
4. Caution: Do Not Step On Tracks >
5. Death Don't Have No Mercy
6. Star Spangled Banner / closing remarks

Obviously this recording has historic value as an early Dead show, especially because it is part of an Acid Test. The transition between "Caution" and "Death Don't" is interesting. The band has to slow their momentum way down to do it. They manage to accomplish it in an abrupt fashion, and let Jerry create the bridge between the two songs with the others falling into place behind him. This show is also my first exposure to "I'm a Hog for You," which sounds like a goofy song, perhaps from the jug-band days. The interesting part of this track is that in place of a cut in the SBD recording, the Prankster recording is spliced in. Behind the prankster calls, you can hear the band continuing the song. I thought that particularly neat, adding a bit of Acid Test authenticity to it.

The Star Spangled banner is a capella by Weir, Lesh, and others. They sang it as the San Francisco Police were trying to shut down the Test. Apparently, Bob climbed a Prankster tower, and refused to come down. Said McNally:

"It was the ending that everyone would recall. Around 2 A.M. the police came by to close the show, although in the absence of alcohol they lacked any legal authority to do so..... An officer came out onstage and motioned for the band to stop, and was duly ignored. The cops grew perplexed.... They began to pull power cords out of the wall, and M.G. followed them and plugged things back in. At length the band stopped playing and the police dutifully began shooing everyone out, although it was a slow process.
It occurred to Lesh and Weir that when a TV station goes off the air, it plays "The Star-Spangled Banner," so they began an a cappella duet. Spotting a twenty-foot ladder, and always part monkey, Weir swarmed up to continue his end of the duet from on high" (McNally 122).

Give this show a listen. It's interesting early Dead.
http://www.archive.org/details/gd1966-01-08.sbd.bershaw.5410.shnf

A Hard Day's Night & The Birth of the Dead

My next stop has been the Beatles' 1964 film "It's Been a Hard Day's Night." I chose to give it a screening, because it had a pretty big influence on the members of Mother McCree's forming an electric band. Through the end of 1964, Pigpen began bothering Garcia to form an electric band, which would consequently be able to feature more of his blues numbers. Said Garcia, "He'd been pestering me for a while; he wanted me to start an electic blues band" (Jackson 67). The Beatles' film helped push Garcia in that direction.

"[The Beatles] were real important to everybody," Garcia said. "They were a little model, especially the movies - the movies were a big turn-on. Just because it was a little model of good times.... It was like [they] were saying, 'You can be young, you can be far-out, and you can still make it.' They were making people happy. The happy thing - that's the stuff that counts - was something we could all see right away" (Jackson 67).

Weir adds,

"The Beatles were why we turned from a jug band into a rock 'n' roll band.... What we saw them doing was impossibly attractive. I couldn't think of anything else more worth doing" (Jackson 67).

So with an example set by the Beatles in '64, The characters of Mother McCree's Uptown Jug Champions formed an electric band called The Warlocks. They began playing in May or June of '65 at Magoo's Pizza Parlor. It's too bad that no tapes of those shows are known to exist. People who were there suggest that the shows had a new kind of energy that wasn't present in any of the other area music. One of those fans who were listening was Phil Lesh.

If you wish, here is the full movie, It's Been a Hard Day's Night.