Grateful Dead—Family Dog at the Great Highway, San Francisco, CA, February 28, 1970
w/Commander Cody & His Lost Planet Airmen
The period from October ‘69 to February ‘70 in Grateful Dead history is especially plagued with incomplete recordings. There are a bunch of gigs where a soundboard reel or two exists, but subsequent reels have somehow vanished from the vault. The biggest reason 1970 has such a recording void of course is that Bear, the benefactor, and primary taper, wasn't with the band for much of the year. After the January 30th New Orleans bust, Owsley wasn't allowed to travel on tour, and the last thing he taped outside California was the Fillmore East shows. Thankfully for us, he was still able to tape their San Francisco gigs including most of the celebrated Fillmore West shows.
Of the available 1970 soundboards, there exists a mostly intact Family Dog run at the end of February. On the whole, these performances are pretty mellow, and, notably, they ignore the Dark Star> St. Stephen> The Eleven medley every night. Of the three shows, February 28th is perhaps the best-sounding of the lot. Back in my tape trading days, the only relic we had of this show was a pretty good-sounding (though particularly bassy) Harry Ely audience tape. In the early aughts, this all changed when a clean soundboard recording from an anonymous source made its way onto the Archive.
The show opens with a spirited Turn On Your Lovelight > Me & My Uncle pairing. The Cumberland Blues that follows is fully developed with some delightful picking and harmonies. A wooden set is next. Garcia: “We’re gonna take everybody back about 60 billion notches, man, and play some acoustic guitars here for a little spell.” With that, the boys roll out a spirited Monkey & The Engineer, the last taped Dead version of the traditional Little Sadie, and a gorgeous, almost perfect Black Peter. Neither Garcia nor Weir can keep their guitars in tune, which they discuss off-mic before Jerry announces, “Okay it’s back to the electric world, everybody can get back up again.” The Electric Dead commences with a China Cat Sunflower > I Know You Rider > High Time combination; the original sextet is fully tuned in to each other and the sequence is superb. After a perky Dire Wolf, we move to the more exploratory portion of the show. Good Lovin' is rock solid and the drum interlude and outro jam are smoking. From here, the audience is treated to 38 minutes worth of two sequences: Alligator > The Other One, followed by the final performance of Mason's Children that segues into the second Lovelight of the night.
This tape is a good record of what the band sounded like at the beginning of 1970. They were riding high on the recent pressing of Live/Dead and rolling out a bunch of excellent new material from the soon-to-be-released Workingman's Dead long player. It wasn't all roses though. Their manager Lenny Hart had cleaned out all the bank accounts and left town. Ironically, in late January Hart had proposed merging Grateful Dead operations with Chet Helms' struggling Family Dog. That said, it must have been odd to play a weekend at the venue that their crooked manager had proposed merging with. Listening to the relaxed nature of this performance, it's pretty apparent that the Good Old Grateful Dead were none the worse for wear.