Musings on the Most Ridiculous Band I Can't Stop Listening To

Tag: 1/2/70

One Two

January in New York City is a dark time. Days are 20 minutes long at most and there is not even Christmas to look forward to: just another ten weeks of gloom, snow, and bitter windy cold.

But the Dead have work to do and, fresh from their New Year’s run at Boston’s The Ark, they played the Fillmore East on 1/2/70. For unknown reasons, the tracks are repeated on all the streamable versions of this show so you’ll have to figure something out or just give up and turn the car at a tree and hit the gas: choice is up to you.

But I would advise sticking around for a little longer; give this one a try. Mason’s Children opener, nice Easy Wind, and a great Live/Dead sequence (with a tragic cut removing the very end of Dark Star and beginning of St. Stephen.)

California Prayers

The second of January, 1970.

If you don’t like the Other One>Cosmic Charlie>Uncle John’s>High Time, then you don’t like the Grateful Dead. It’s that simple.

It’s a Bear recording, which means all the vocals are slammed hard to one side, but what vocals they are! The boys had recently been taking vocal lessons from The Crosby, Stills, and Nashes and recording Workingman’s Dead and American Beauty out at Wally Heider’s and they were having a glorious time with their new instruments, shouting and squealing and swoozling and swozzling Hunter’s California prayers at the TOP of their lungs.

And it didn’t always work, no. But when they got their harmonies juiced and oiled down, it was magic.

P.S. If I had a Time Sheath, then the first thing I would do would be to go back to this show and have sex with the Dark Star. That’s how good it is: it would supersede killing Hitler or betting on things in the past to be a billionaire. First: sex with a song played during the second Nixon administration, second and third (reaaaaaaally close) would be the money thing and then Hitler. And let’s be completely honest, I probably wouldn’t kill Hitler: it seems like a lot of work doing things that are well outside my skill set. Plus, I don’t want to kill anybody, even Hitler. Who kills people? Hitler kills people, that’s who! I’m no Hitler!

STOP SAYING HITLER!

How do you have sex with a song, anyway? Especially en epic, half-hour Dark Star such as this? 

I don’t know, but I know this–and I’m gonna say this looking dead in your eyes, Mister, right in front of God and Jesus and my mother: I’m going to make the technology work. The Sheath will work: it’s all in my father’s journals! It’s gonna work and I’m going to access the Space Between and time–time herself–will be mine. And then?

And then, I’m gonna fuck that song until it loves me.

Are you crying?