Grateful Dead—Fillmore West, San Francisco, CA, February 5, 1970
w/ Taj Mahal and Bigfoot
The first show of the Dead’s four-day Fillmore run with Taj Mahal and Sacramento power trio Bigfoot. The performance came onto my radar back in my college tape trading days when I acquired a low generation audience tape from a fellow head in my dorm. The show has been up on the Archive since 2004 as a soundboard/audience composite, although missing the Dark Star > Alligator portion of the electric set. That all changed in March of last year when Brian Flegel found the missing reel on eBay while looking for filler for the 2/5 show. The field tape was made by a Fillmore West employee and it sounds fantastic, despite the fact that it’s a single audio channel recording. With this find, we now have the whole gig in one continuous flow.
The tape opens onto some lively stage banter and a concise band intro. Weir: “Hey man (Bear), can you turn up the monitors on account of we’re gonna need ‘em. Crowd: “Sit down, sit down!” Weir: “Same old rap, everybody’s saying stand up, sit down, stand up, sit down…why doesn’t everybody stand on their heads.” Emcee: “The unbelievable Grateful Dead!” That said, they go with China Cat Sunflower > I know You Rider. It’s a compact version, but fiery nonetheless. Big Boss Man is next and it’s a more than serviceable version. Black Peter is played to perfection and Garcia’s vocal delivery resonates sweetly with the existential musings of Robert Hunter’s lyrics. According to Hunter, the song began as a “jumpy little tune” before Garcia “made a monster of it.”
The Fillmore crowd gets a bit restless and start yelling requests at the stage. Weir wants no part of it: “Just relax and take what you get.” The band responds with the longest Mason’s Children of 1970. The take is incendiary and is, by far, the best performance of the short-lived Garcia/Hunter song that we have on tape. Jerry stretches out on the first solo, trying to tune his guitar on the fly. The band does their best to create a surge and the second solo kicks in much better. The drums are recorded very well; it’s nice to hear the percussion interplay and Mickey's cowbell in the mix. Some C&W is next on the docket. Garcia hauls out the pedal steel for a few numbers, his first time playing it since the previous summer. Weir sings a couple of George Jones tunes—Season’s of my Heart and The Race Is On—followed by a quick run through Me & My Uncle.
The back side of the show—including the newly added material—is presented as a continuous set of music. Dark Star kicks it off, beginning in the classic arrangement with the guiro; it has that sparse, wide-open feel with Garcia starting his lead after a few minutes, sensitive and graceful. The first verse ensues, followed by strummed bass chords and a shimmering gong space, rife with harmonics, volume swells, and a gentle stream of feedback. Garcia then begins a hushed melody line to ascend out of the void, while Billy taps a slow, attending beat. Weir strikes up a counter groove and the ensemble hovers in a beautiful, restrained trance. Lesh and Weir soon latch onto a Feelin' Groovy theme which disperses fairly quickly, before a more restless mood rises up as the group searches for something new—and, from out of nowhere, Garcia conjures up the Main Ten. It hangs in the air for a while like a passing cloud, and then they transition facilely back into Dark Star. Garcia immediately begins pressing the theme, a cathexis rises, and then he soars up to the"Bright Star" melody and some familiar chords, before taking a quick Sputnik detour in the last minute.
No second verse tonight, as Jerry swerves directly into The Other One. It’s a potent, albeit short version, with focused changes and a feisty outro jam into Alligator. Unfortunately, the Pig-led Anthem of the Sun number is cut after 4 minutes, just when the jam is beginning to hedge on fierce. The tape splice lands us in The Eleven; the tune starts off brightly, though a tad unsteady at the onset of the vocals. The Eleven gradually unwinds and the jam changes, reshaping itself into an exploratory Alligator jam. Lesh teases Lovelight and then Caution, before Garcia signals the We Bid You Goodnight riff. They jam on that—with Jerry teasing China Cat —and then fall headlong back into an aggressive Alligator-styled thematic jam.
In time, Garcia steers the outfit into Caution, a full-fledged version with impassioned Pigpen vocals. It’s a mix of intensity, quiet blues, and a few Spanish hints, before ending in a wash of power chords and a steady drum-driven jam. In due time, Garcia and the drummers nudge the band into a compact Not Fade Away. It doesn’t hang around long before Lesh starts up Caution again which, following an edgy daedal groove, coalesces to a loose jam that lands on Cumberland Blues. It’s the first taped segue into the Workingman’s song, an excellent move and the perfect ending to a memorable second set.