KPFA Grateful Dead marathon
Saturday, February 3, 2001
9 am to 1 am

This recording of the legendary Springfield Creamery show came from Sam Field, who directed the film Sunshine Daydream, shot that day. Maybe some day soon that film will be available on DVD. Stay tuned...

Also: according to several kind callers and emailers, it's pronounced v'NEE-ta.

Ned Lagin, acoustic and electric piano; Jerry Garcia, electric guitar; David Crosby electric 12-string guitar; Phil Lesh, bass; Billy Kreutzmann, drums. John Cipollina, electric guitar (#2 only). Recorded 3/17/75 (Ned's birthday) at Bob Weir's studio (aka Ace's).

There are two reel changes in this spectacular tape. I patched "Estimated Prophet" with 5/21/77, and "Around and Around" with 5/25/77.

Alan Sheckter writes: Ah, yes, Baltimore Civic Center, a show from my youth. I borrowed my older brother-in-law's nifty Sony miniature recorder and taped the proceedings in extreme hand-held amateurish fashion. When I stood still, the reasonably good condensor mike proved to be remarkably fine, but there are periods, like "Sugaree" when my friend and I walked around the place, where crowd noise, "excuse me's" and other things are annoyingly present. "High Time" an early "Passenger" "Eyes of the World" and an "Uncle John's Band" encore come to mind as, as they say at Mastercard -- priceless.

After 3 or 4 songs, Weir told the crowd something like, 'We were going to come out early, but no one was here... So if you were here when the show started, you can turn to your neighbor and ask him or her, "Where were you when the show started? We all waited for you."'

It got a good laugh and a big cheer.

The trip to Baltimore from the District of Columbia is virtually a straight run up the neck of a guitar--almost as invariant as a string. You get on I-95, point the car north and let about 30 minutes go by.

My brother Tom was the wheelman for the ride up to catch the Dead at Baltimore Civic Center. He was then in his first year of law school and, with proceeds earned from pumping gas, had bought a 1962 Chevy Biscayne, which is basically a living room on tires.

The bench seats, front and back, were full of guys. There was a cassette player, but it was one of those $89 models plugged into the cigarette lighter, with speaker wires trailing into the rear of the car where they attached to tinny speakers free to wander the car's rear deck as the vehicle pitched and rolled up the highway. At several points, the speaker wire was spliced by hand; once in awhile someone had to reconnect errant strands.

The tape for the ride up had to be one I had just scored in Chapel Hill, where a kid named Ivan Spector had allowed me to dub cassettes from his reels. He had permitted me to copy an April 1977 WNEW radio performance including a song I had called "Inspiration," and another I labeled "California."

So we had recent Dead to enjoy as we rolled up 95 on May 26, 1977. Somewhere along the way, a pipe was filled and passed across the expanses of the Biscayne interior. Hand to hand, to mouth, and front to back, crossways, frontways and oops, it fell into the crease in the back seat.

"A prophet on the burning shore..." Ten minutes after the pipe had made its rounds, reports of the scent of smoke reached the driver. Some in the back seat complained of warm bottoms. But there was no smoke or visible flame, just a persistent odor of burning leaves.

Tom pulled the Biscayne into a gravel lot near the Civic Center and we all hopped out, more curious now about the source of the smell than about the impending concert. We pulled the rear bench out, flipped it upside down and discovered an ever-expanding black circle in the straw matting that formed the interior of the seat: the thing was on fire, albeit a slow burn. The only thing with which to douse the sleepy blaze was cold beer. It seemed a shame to spend beer on the little fire, but that's what we did, then reloaded the bench in the car.

On the walk up the ramps inside the Civic Center, I wondered if such a secret fire would outwit our attempts to extinguish it. Would there be just ashes when the show was through?

We were in the balcony, on the left side as you faced the stage. Jerry was on the far side. All I really remember from that night is Bobby chastising the crowd for arriving late to the show, and Jerry grinning broadly as he rocked back and forth playing, the music rising out of him and his bandmates. They seemed like happy spectators at a circus they had called forth.

The pipe came with us on the trip inside. There was a girl sitting by herself in the row in front of us. The custom in those days was to pass what you had around. I leaned over to interrupt her concentration on the show, but she declined. She couldn't take her eyes off the stage.

Walking out after the show, I was convinced I'd just seen the best Dead show of my life. Which is exactly what I thought after leaving perhaps a dozen previous shows. "How can they play any better than that?" we wondered, worn out, giddy.

"Roll on up, gonna roll back down." One of the guys in our group, Dan, was from Baltimore. He knew of a corner bar nearby where the bartender would fill any container you had with beer, call a price, and you could walk out the door.

From somewhere within the acreage that is the trunk of the Biscayne, Tom produced an empty glass Tropicana jar. He disappeared into the corner bar, which on that May night was wide open, not even a screen on it, and emerged moments later with a frothing jug that the barman guessed was worth around $2.50.

"Took a whole pail of water..." The seats were mercifully cool as we whisked down 95, passing the glass from mouth to mouth. The dirty little six-banger under the hood was purring that night, past exits and overpasses and open spaces that are no longer there. It would be almost 20 years before we learned that people taped the show that evening, and would share that show (thanks Rick Wurster and Tom Melvin!) with whomever showed an interest.

Back then, it was as likely as your pants suddenly bursting into flames that the world's greatest rock and roll band would roll all over the world for 30 years, amaze everyone, and preserve performances--for that broad bench seat that is the future--that burn, unextinguishable, like a secret fire.

According to David Lemieux, the Hartford Courant critic groused about the Dead's failure to play any of the music from their new record. So the next day, the band opened the second set with "Touch of Grey," and Bobby said, "And now, from our hit album, the single 'A Touch of Grey.'"

"I Used to Be a King," from Graham Nash's Songs for Beginners, features Jerry Garcia on pedal steel, Bill Kreutzmann on drums, and Phil Lesh Lesh on bass.

Jerry Garcia plays pedal steel (uncredited) on "Change Partners," the opening track on Stephen Stills 2.

"Cowboy Movie" -- this is a tape from the sessions for If I Could Only Remember My Name, David Crosby's first solo album. Crosby is singing but it's only barely audible as leakage into an instrument microphone. Crosby , Garcia and Neil Young on guitars; Phil Lesh on bass; Michael Shrieve, drums.

"Tamalpais High (At About 3)" -- an outtake from If I Could Only Remember My Name. David Crosby, Jerry Garcia and Jorma Kaukonen on guitars; Phil Lesh on bass; Bill Kreutzmann on drums.

Dead to the World airs Wednesdays 8-10pm on KPFA 94.1 fm in Northern California, and on the web at http://www.kpfa.org

Producer/host: David Gans