Grateful Dead at the Fillmore Auditorium; 7/3/66

Grateful Dead at Olompali, 6/1/66

Grateful Dead
Fillmore Auditorium
San Francisco, CA
7/3/66

Tracklist:
1. Dancin' In The Streets
2. I Know You Rider//
3. //He Was A Friend Of Mine
4. Next Time You See Me
5. Viola Lee Blues
6. Big Boss Man
7. Sitting On Top Of The World//
8. Unknown (missing)
9. Bring It On Down The Line (missing)
10. Cream Puff War (missing)
11. It's A Good Thing (missing)


The existing part of the show from 7/3/66 played at the Fillmore Auditorium is another good warm-up for the summer and fall shows of the true summer of love. During this time the band was living communally at a place called Rancho Olompali (pictured above). The main building was situated on over 8,000 acres of land. There the band was free to play, trip, and party whenever they wanted to. For Phil and Jerry, Olompali represented the pinnacle of their psychedelic use. Said Garcia in 1971, "Novato was completely comfortable, wide open, high as you wanted to get, run around naked if you wanted to, fall in the pool, completely open scenes. Everything was just super-groovy. It was a model of how things could really be good... It was good times - unself-conscious and totally free" (Jackson 105). Lesh adds, "Bear was still paying the rent, and we would go into town, play our gigs, and then repair to our paradisiacal retreat and continue the explorations of conciousness and inspiration that had come to define our lives. We continued, of course, to trip every weekend, whether we were playing a gig or not" (Lesh 89).  Olompali was a significant place in the band's development as a unit. Although 710 Asbury gets all the fanfare, the Dead truly developed into its communal being while in Novato at Olompali.


The show is a quick, fine example of how the Dead were playing at the time. I love the tone of Garcia's guitar. It's interesting how different his playing and tone was in the early days as compared to what it became, even as early as 1969.Viola Lee Blues is tight, and well played, though is much shorter than later versions. Big Boss Man is also a solidly played number. Like I mentioned in my last post, the band is just starting to turn up their level of jamming after the lyrics. I look forward to hearing them expand on this during the coming shows. Of note is the Dancin' in the Streets to lead off. This is the first known performance of the song, according to Deadbase. For a first-go, it's a pretty solid performance. You can tell the the band rehearsed this song before bringing it onstage. After the tune, Jerry gives a dedication to a store on Haight street called Hasidica (sp?). IK Rider is cut at the "hollow log," verse, and the tape doesn't pick up again until after "Friend of Mine" has already started. Sitting on top of the World is also cut at the end. According to the setlist program, there are four additional songs for this date, which do not appear on my file. If they are indeed from this day, and anyone has them, I would love to add them into the collection.

Other stage banter:
Phil prepares the audience for a ballad right before "Rider."
Jerry says before "Viola Lee," "We had a request for this before..... before we did it. It's called Viola Lee Blues."


As always, if you'd like a copy of this show, let me know. Although archive has a listing for this show, the tracks are not correct. Otherwise, I'd post it here.

Viola Lee Rehearsals - Jan/Feb 1966

Next on my list is the Viola Lee rehearsals, conducted sometime in January or February of 1966. The exact date and location of the rehearsals are unknown, though the recording reveals a hint. Phil mentions, "as long as we get to LA in time to set up and do the thing. Saturday Night." This almost definitely points to the Watts Acid Test in LA where the Dead played on Saturday, February 12. The loose term "Saturday Night," leads me to believe that the recording was done within a week of the band leaving for Los Angeles.

Regardless of the actual location and date, this recording has both historic and musical value. It's amazing to hear the band working out the parts of what will become a heavily jammed staple. Throughout, the band is working on the opening, the singing, and the arrangement of the verses. You can hear Jerry telling his bandmates how he envisions the song. Pigpen even bails towards the end being too drunk to fully participate, which draws criticism from Lesh. "Pigpen is a conspiracy!" yells Weir.

If you're not into the frequent stops, breaks, and banter of the band, the final track is your reason to listen. The 15 minute jam before the tape stops is pretty cool. If one pays attention you can hear a clear "Truckin'" jam - a full four years before the song was written!! I played it loud, and asked my fiance what song she thought it was. Her immediate response was, "Truckin'?" Just listen!

Finally, before I provide the track list and a link to the recording, I wanted to include two quotes that I found particularly interesting to the recording. First, you can hear Jerry on track #16 saying about the song, "We'll just see what happens. We'll let it do what it wants to do." I find that interesting because he expresses, in those two sentences, the sentiments of the Grateful Dead's whole philosophy on live music.

Phil Lesh also provides his thoughts on "Viola Lee Blues" in Searching for the Sound.

"... the longer the solo, the less interesting it became to play the same material as background, so those of us who weren't soloing began to vary and differentiate our background material, almost as if we were also soloists, in a manner similar to jazz musicians. A good example of this technique is our version of the old Noah Lewis jug band tune "Viola Lee Blues," a traditional prison song. We electrified the song with a boogaloo beat and an intro lick borrowed from R & B artist Lee Dorsey's "Get Out of My Life Woman," and after each of the three verses, we tried to take the music out further - first expanding on the groove, then on the tonality, and then both, finally pulling out all the stops in a giant accelerando, culminating in a whirlwind of dissonance that, out of nowhere, would slam back into the original groove for a repetition of the final verse. It was after a run-through of this song that I turned to Jerry and remarked ingenuously, "Man - this could be art! (Lesh, 59)"

So without further ado, here it is.

Track List:
01. talk & tunings "It's just Weir and his ass-holed guitar" (2:31)
02. Viola Lee Blues #1 verse 1 - aborted (0:52)
03. Viola Lee Blues #2 verses 1 & 2 - aborted - "watch it pig! b, man, b" (1:33)
04. talk & tunings (1:09)
05. Viola Lee Blues #3 with harmonica - aborted (0:14)
06. discussions (1:26)
07. Viola Lee Blues #4 with organ verse 1 & harmonica - aborted (1:28)
08. tape playback? more talk (1:44)
09. Viola Lee Blues #5 verse 1 - "same verse again" - verse 1 - aborted (1:48)
10. Phil comments (0:34)
11. Viola Lee Blues #6 verses 1 & 2 - aborted (1:29)
12. more discussions (0:25)
13. Viola Lee Blues #7 verses 1 & 2 & 3 - then stopped (2:44)
14. talk & tunings - "that's tasty" - "let's just play" (2:06)
15. Viola Lee Blues #8 verse 1 - aborted (0:16)
16. talk & wild comments & confusion (2:53)
17. Viola Lee Blues #9 verses 2 & 3 - aborted (0:27)
18. more talk - "I think you're against us" - "Pigpen's a conspiracy" (3:57)
19. "You may know by ..." passage repeated (3:39)
20. Viola Lee Blues #10 verses 1 & 2 & 3 ; jam ; tape cuts (15:37)


Listen to this recording here:
http://www.archive.org/details/gd66-01-xx.sbd.hanno-uli.18846.sbeok.shnf