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...this is an extremely useful object for some of that time travel adventuring with the good sound making it easy to think its july '64 and that popular folkrock/psychpop ain't been thought of to any commercial extent...recorded at a gig at the 'top o' the tangent' folk spot catching the combo doing some nice tunes that will pop up from time to time during the next 30years of deadness...playings nice and loose with the announcer at the beginning saying these guys are 'a panic to watch' with all their mess of fooling/bickering around on stage (though it must be said it sounds unfeasibly normal today)...audience is real polite and attentive which is something that aint so much the norm in the present age...a couple of nice touches are the combo apologising for not having any modern songs... just these old musty jugband/hokum ditties all the way and all the better for that... the only bummer with this release is the cutesy cover that just dont hit the spot at all...
...being brought up in a house where his R&B disk jockey father entertained jazz cats and played the record machine constantly its no surprise pigpen got heavily immersed in not only the blues music but also the culture, reefer and wine were making themselves known to ron from a very early age...what's on offer is some downbeat country blues from the mid 60's beatnik landscape taped at the dead house basement in '66 and the quality is mighty fair(dead heads will not be disappointed)...garcia more than once commented that pigpen was the soul of the dead, the anchor that kept them from drifting too far in any direction, the oil in the engine that kept them rolling along the hippy hi-way...here he's laid back(not too far back) and funky with the ripple flowing and the reefer burning slowly giving off the mellow vibes...plays well next to mother mccrees and as a historical document of the end of beatnik times its essential, a very cool addition to the birth of the dead...tacked on the end is a couple of numbers from pigs last tape session and the very last is from '64 with jorma kaukonen sitting in...
...absolutely brilliant 3 disk set of acid test weirdness from six different evenings of zonked madness, when reality gave up and declared itself redundant...ken keseys merry pranksters take the listener into the floaty melting wobblyness of their desires with a little help from the grateful dead who lay down some top twisted R&B jams with the right amount of groovy vibes that enable strange things to happen...the dead ain't got to the ballroom trip yet, this is still club sounds stretching out, proto-psych, mutating rhythms/blues, going wherever the evening leads...pigpens keyboard is joyously droning and squeaky with jerry taking off on flights that aint been scheduled yet, captain trips is learning the controls that will eventually take the dead into the cosmos (then up the country though that ain't for a few years)...the merry pranksters style of 'rocking' ain't even shown up on the radar, this is chemical indulgence from the centre of the unconscious mind, the sounds of the LSD bubble exploding time and time again...kesey raps about the preceedings turning into a spaceship and taking off for places unchartered, a bus trip for the collective mind...augustus owsley stanley is in charge of the deads sound, keeping the groove alive for the trippers, neal cassady is wandering around digging everything like a beatnik beacon, keeping everyone safe, the outside world staying where it belongs, outside...confused confusion confusing everything but the confused, these were evenings when bewildered decision was left at the door, it was time to see through different eyes, eyes that had been shut by societies consumer values were beginning to be opened...these tapes have been around for years in various states of disrepair and this is a welcome salvaging putting it into some chronological context (that maybe some kind of paradox but it don't make no nevermind) and the sound is real good all things considered...
...back at the beginning of 1966 when the warlocks were transforming into the dead they were doing a lot of acid test gigs where they played short sets to get the audience grooved up so they could wander around for awhile then be ready for more rock'n'roll...this disk consists of two sets of short funky R&B numbers, the first 8 tunes from the danish center in LA on the 12th march and the rest from two weeks later at troupers hall, again down LA way...as the weird and trippy way things sometimes work out the danish center gig fizzles out on 'stealin',but to keep the groove going the troupers gig cuts in during the same tune, cool as the northern breeze...we see the dead just grooving high, getting the jams together, paying homage with some dirty mojo and gritty black cat bones, the troupers gig is more elasticated, the reality walls are melting here, allowing chance to play its part...pigpen is the guiding light for much of these gigs, with his keyboard laying down a canvas for jerry to spring from occasionally...the last number suddenly breaks up and the disk is finished, but while its playing its a stone groove and that can't be denied...
...the date is march 19,1966 and the dead are still down in LA, converting the plastic people with more acid test weirdness, positing their mutated R&B directly into an evening of high mind disolving madness, yesterday was long ago, visions were appearing that had not been seen by so many in one place since the olde tymes, long before present history took shape...this set, plagued with PA troubles sees the dead getting into some elastic jamming, endeavors in temporal study prove meaningless as stationary become full speed, though a sense of motion is experienced through a cushion of soft all encompassing bubbles...a major disturbance of the air has never been so pleasant, such wonderment was only in fairy tales, surely this couldn't be happening in the home of the proporganda factory, the land that sent out the messages to the squares telling them how to behave, what to buy and what to desire...the dead were spreading a new bohemian vibration, equally forties R&B/fifties layabout beatnik/sixties (new new camelot) hope, down in the home of the downpressor, slipping through the door of entertainment...some of the chat from the cats(even the moaning about the PA) shows they're enjoying being in the band, living the extended possibilties that had been shown when they went to see 'hard days night' 18 months earlier, its still a cool buzz to think how many combos got the word from one exposure to that movie, the byrds and the airplane to name two...owsley is in charge of the sound and no doubt he's experimenting with patterns as things disappear/appear but this ain't so noticeable for the present day listener with years of illicit tape airings, its all part of the way it happens, now often unconscious(dig the banter at the end of track 7)...this truly is a wonderful disk to get a groove on with, the dead are in the room as well as in the zone, a wholly digable thing, if there ever was one...
...march '68 and the dead have got themselves a gig playing to the hep partisans of the haight and surrounding environs, all the heads and pan handling runaways are there, so's a few hells angels and cops, plus berkeley politicos and from across the bay, a couple of cats from the black panther party...the existing evidence in this tape, which while rough in places is eminently enjoyable shows the dead getting down and funky with some stretching out on some black cat bone blues, this is the real deal, moody reefered juke joint saints come to play for the faithful (and plain curious), a total sense of community comes off this, with the dead catching ahold of a gospel vibe with their call and response vocal refrains...the dead around this time were starting to come to the peak of their powers, hep blues wailing meeting with the acid induced avant garde, folk musics getting messed around to extend the possibilities of the genre, which while getting a new lease of life through hippie mysticism was heading into commercial avenues with singersongwriters, the new pop folk heroes...this is only the first part of the gig but the cat who was taping had the batteries fail so the spacey part of the preceedings has been lost, which in a way is cool, the dead are now floating in space, the vibes becoming mellow through age but gathering more potency as they journey ever outward, ever onward taking IT to the cool place, searching the universe for the ever lasting groove...cats who dig the dead as they should be, when they ventured forth but knew where the sounds came from (most o' th'time) will get a buzz, here the dead are still learning what it is they are, theres no compromise, the funky hallucination's to be channelled for the good of mankind, to manifest the modern bohemian to stop the ever grinding wheels of the downpressor and in that respect this gig is RIGHT ON as the between song proclamations will reveal...
...first show at the fillmore east in 1968 see's the dead laying down an intense mojo storm of heavy distorted bohemian blues direct from the LSD swamp, this biscuit is one mind zooming jam that don't let go, it blasts into freaksville and just stays there pumping out the smokey vibes...the hand held tape is muddy and blurred and that suits (adds to) this explosion of atoms and nucleus, its like when the cream played in detroit in '67, an apocalyptic onslaught of drug damage, even dr.benway ain't this far out, it's the 'sound of skin being sucked inside the bones, the worlds collapse into blareing chromium melting patterns with no hope of returning to today...the insides of a cats head is surely going to turn to mush, the ticket has been purchased for the last train to gonesville, no return destination, mixing who style heavy metal, jimi acid screach, MC5 fireworks and smearing it all over their already messed up owsley informed R&B has created a HOTCHA train wreck of 1968 riot torn noise, this is the inner cities on fire, napalmed children calling in the newscasts from capitalism central...cats who dig the grunge sound of third generation, batteries liable to go at any moment style underground recordings are going to flip on this example of 'in the zone', living the moment vibe provided here...what's really cool about whats happening is the dead get moving with 'feedback' as well as end with it, in between they launch into some 'heavy air' jams, going into overdrive, crashing the gears through the floor like neal cassady on the one last ride to terminal city, 'the futures uncertain, but the end is always near'?...all the combo get to let loose and interweave as is a groovy dead experience but this is added to with a nervous edge of amphetamine paranoia that uptight cities like NYC can bring on, especially back in the day before homogeneous liberal mind control took complete hold of the squares...any cat who knows the dead are more than a soundtrack to a weekend hippy lifestyle will dig this hour of blurry ballroom damage, and then some...
...original first mix of the anthem joint, released back in summer '68, was a monumental exercise in cut and paste, splicing in so many tiny snippets of sound from live shows and overdubs made in the studio, the concentration needed for such intricate work can only be marvelled at, all this and a head(s)full of chemical fun while they're doing it...an amazing piece of avant garde rocking, still going places others ain't even found, flying under the radar of normality and psychedelia, there's just so much going on...listening on headphones is a very beneficial endeavour, even then so much is missed that each go round brings up a different nuance, some new texture comes to the fore that somehow didn't seem to be there before...a true psychedelic master piece that just keeps on giving, a bottemless well of untold generosity, offering up the good vibrations when they're needed...
...ATTENTION deadheads and layabouts down with the HEP groove, this has got to be some heavy air experiments that were first muted during the anthem sessions come to fruition, just dig the 'duprees diamond blues' atmosphere, theres a hazy stoned vibe that can actually be felt as well as heard, this is one drugged gauze for the listener to get involved in, totally wrapped up...in fact the whole disk got a physical feel, it pulls across channels with an unseen force, the unsuspecting recipient is virtually transported from one position to another without travelling, true psychedelia, positively shamanistic...these're the earlier sessions that were taking place in an 8 track studio (the released LP was redone/finished in 16track) and its a different vibe completely, less full up but way more stoned in an organic way, there's an ages old mystic groove, alchemy in action, sound turned into energy with the power to move inner and outer body at the same time, blending twin entities...the apparent emptiness of these beginning ideas now seems heavier, less conscious yet more knowing, a possible rebound from the made mixology that was the preceeding wax, the magnificent, inspiring anthem disk from earlier in the year...'whats become of the baby', always the litmus test for true deadheads 'vs' light-weight interlopers who came in when it all became FM stylized hip capitalism at dead concerts/lame albums, is presented as originally conceived as a folky groove has already taken on an avant slant, with the ever-present tape hiss becoming an essential part of the process, adding ethereal weirdness, a visitation to king arthurs court to hear a new poem from across the marsh's of pre-history, from faraway lands, dream time in the modern LSD world, tranporting from within/without...the finished released effort has always been looked at as the deads 'sgt pepper' (always some kind of journalistic short cut/kiss of death) and its true in that this is a different group from the R&B days, but way more distinctive to the post 'live dead' watershed, just the way the fab4 were different on pepper, they didn't exist as any beginning or the end but they weren't anything to do with transition, they just were in an aberrant moment of unforeseen circumstances within the entertainment business...there is one nearly believable pepperism in the deads name becoming 'WE ATE THE ACID' when the cover is viewed with unquizzical eyes...a few other surprises await for the astral planes traveller with a ticket to nirvana and all points east...
...absolutely brilliant 3 disk set of acid test weirdness from six different evenings of zonked madness, when reality gave up and declared itself redundant...ken keseys merry pranksters take the listener into the floaty melting wobblyness of their desires with a little help from the grateful dead who lay down some top twisted R&B jams with the right amount of groovy vibes that enable strange things to happen...the dead ain't got to the ballroom trip yet, this is still club sounds stretching out, proto-psych, mutating rhythms/blues, going wherever the evening leads...pigpens keyboard is joyously droning and squeaky with jerry taking off on flights that aint been scheduled yet, captain trips is learning the controls that will eventually take the dead into the cosmos (then up the country though that ain't for a few years)...the merry pranksters style of 'rocking' ain't even shown up on the radar, this is chemical indulgence from the centre of the unconscious mind, the sounds of the LSD bubble exploding time and time again...kesey raps about the preceedings turning into a spaceship and taking off for places unchartered, a bus trip for the collective mind...augustus owsley stanley is in charge of the deads sound, keeping the groove alive for the trippers, neal cassady is wandering around digging everything like a beatnik beacon, keeping everyone safe, the outside world staying where it belongs, outside...confused confusion confusing everything but the confused, these were evenings when bewildered decision was left at the door, it was time to see through different eyes, eyes that had been shut by societies consumer values were beginning to be opened...these tapes have been around for years in various states of disrepair and this is a welcome salvaging putting it into some chronological context (that maybe some kind of paradox but it don't make no nevermind) and the sound is real good all things considered...
...march '68 and the dead have got themselves a gig playing to the hep partisans of the haight and surrounding environs, all the heads and pan handling runaways are there, so's a few hells angels and cops, plus berkeley politicos and from across the bay, a couple of cats from the black panther party...the existing evidence in this tape, which while rough in places is eminently enjoyable shows the dead getting down and funky with some stretching out on some black cat bone blues, this is the real deal, moody reefered juke joint saints come to play for the faithful (and plain curious), a total sense of community comes off this, with the dead catching ahold of a gospel vibe with their call and response vocal refrains...the dead around this time were starting to come to the peak of their powers, hep blues wailing meeting with the acid induced avant garde, folk musics getting messed around to extend the possibilities of the genre, which while getting a new lease of life through hippie mysticism was heading into commercial avenues with singersongwriters, the new pop folk heroes...this is only the first part of the gig but the cat who was taping had the batteries fail so the spacey part of the preceedings has been lost, which in a way is cool, the dead are now floating in space, the vibes becoming mellow through age but gathering more potency as they journey ever outward, ever onward taking IT to the cool place, searching the universe for the ever lasting groove...cats who dig the dead as they should be, when they ventured forth but knew where the sounds came from (most o' th'time) will get a buzz, here the dead are still learning what it is they are, theres no compromise, the funky hallucination's to be channelled for the good of mankind, to manifest the modern bohemian to stop the ever grinding wheels of the downpressor and in that respect this gig is RIGHT ON as the between song proclamations will reveal...
...first show at the fillmore east in 1968 see's the dead laying down an intense mojo storm of heavy distorted bohemian blues direct from the LSD swamp, this biscuit is one mind zooming jam that don't let go, it blasts into freaksville and just stays there pumping out the smokey vibes...the hand held tape is muddy and blurred and that suits (adds to) this explosion of atoms and nucleus, its like when the cream played in detroit in '67, an apocalyptic onslaught of drug damage, even dr.benway ain't this far out, it's the 'sound of skin being sucked inside the bones, the worlds collapse into blareing chromium melting patterns with no hope of returning to today...the insides of a cats head is surely going to turn to mush, the ticket has been purchased for the last train to gonesville, no return destination, mixing who style heavy metal, jimi acid screach, MC5 fireworks and smearing it all over their already messed up owsley informed R&B has created a HOTCHA train wreck of 1968 riot torn noise, this is the inner cities on fire, napalmed children calling in the newscasts from capitalism central...cats who dig the grunge sound of third generation, batteries liable to go at any moment style underground recordings are going to flip on this example of 'in the zone', living the moment vibe provided here...what's really cool about whats happening is the dead get moving with 'feedback' as well as end with it, in between they launch into some 'heavy air' jams, going into overdrive, crashing the gears through the floor like neal cassady on the one last ride to terminal city, 'the futures uncertain, but the end is always near'?...all the combo get to let loose and interweave as is a groovy dead experience but this is added to with a nervous edge of amphetamine paranoia that uptight cities like NYC can bring on, especially back in the day before homogeneous liberal mind control took complete hold of the squares...any cat who knows the dead are more than a soundtrack to a weekend hippy lifestyle will dig this hour of blurry ballroom damage, and then some...
...original first mix of the anthem joint, released back in summer '68, was a monumental exercise in cut and paste, splicing in so many tiny snippets of sound from live shows and overdubs made in the studio, the concentration needed for such intricate work can only be marvelled at, all this and a head(s)full of chemical fun while they're doing it...an amazing piece of avant garde rocking, still going places others ain't even found, flying under the radar of normality and psychedelia, there's just so much going on...listening on headphones is a very beneficial endeavour, even then so much is missed that each go round brings up a different nuance, some new texture comes to the fore that somehow didn't seem to be there before...a true psychedelic master piece that just keeps on giving, a bottemless well of untold generosity, offering up the good vibrations when they're needed...
...ATTENTION deadheads and layabouts down with the HEP groove, this has got to be some heavy air experiments that were first muted during the anthem sessions come to fruition, just dig the 'duprees diamond blues' atmosphere, theres a hazy stoned vibe that can actually be felt as well as heard, this is one drugged gauze for the listener to get involved in, totally wrapped up...in fact the whole disk got a physical feel, it pulls across channels with an unseen force, the unsuspecting recipient is virtually transported from one position to another without travelling, true psychedelia, positively shamanistic...these're the earlier sessions that were taking place in an 8 track studio (the released LP was redone/finished in 16track) and its a different vibe completely, less full up but way more stoned in an organic way, there's an ages old mystic groove, alchemy in action, sound turned into energy with the power to move inner and outer body at the same time, blending twin entities...the apparent emptiness of these beginning ideas now seems heavier, less conscious yet more knowing, a possible rebound from the made mixology that was the preceeding wax, the magnificent, inspiring anthem disk from earlier in the year...'whats become of the baby', always the litmus test for true deadheads 'vs' light-weight interlopers who came in when it all became FM stylized hip capitalism at dead concerts/lame albums, is presented as originally conceived as a folky groove has already taken on an avant slant, with the ever-present tape hiss becoming an essential part of the process, adding ethereal weirdness, a visitation to king arthurs court to hear a new poem from across the marsh's of pre-history, from faraway lands, dream time in the modern LSD world, tranporting from within/without...the finished released effort has always been looked at as the deads 'sgt pepper' (always some kind of journalistic short cut/kiss of death) and its true in that this is a different group from the R&B days, but way more distinctive to the post 'live dead' watershed, just the way the fab4 were different on pepper, they didn't exist as any beginning or the end but they weren't anything to do with transition, they just were in an aberrant moment of unforeseen circumstances within the entertainment business...there is one nearly believable pepperism in the deads name becoming 'WE ATE THE ACID' when the cover is viewed with unquizzical eyes...a few other surprises await for the astral planes traveller with a ticket to nirvana and all points east... 
is there a link for the original Anthem? thanks
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