Grateful Dead—Shrine Exposition Hall, Los Angeles, CA w/Buffalo Springfield and Blue Cheer, November 10-11, 1967
In February of 1966, the Grateful Dead made their initial foray into Los Angeles. Still buzzing with the magic of the Bay Area Acid Tests, the band made a gallant attempt to bring their scene to LA audiences. Unfortunately, this venture was met with indifference and, like many other out-of-town groups before them, the band returned to their hometown roots and re-invested themselves in their previous incarnation.
After their first album was released on Warner Brothers in March 1967, the Dead made more efforts to make it happen in LA. Their first booking—with Jefferson Airplane and Canned Heat— was on April 14-16 at an emerging underground venue called The Kaleidoscope. They followed this with gigs at the Cheetah (4/30), Hullabaloo (6/16), Hollywood Bowl (9/15), and a free show at Elysian Park with the Airplane on September 16. Of these dates, only the 9/15 tape exists. It’s a borderline audience copy, but it’s all we got.
In an unpublished September '67 interview intended for Jazz & Pop Magazine, Frank Kofsky talked at length with Jerry Garcia about the Grateful Dead family, the San Franciso music scene, plans for the next album, and the recent great shows in Detroit and Ann Arbor versus how awful Los Angeles was to play in.
Kofsky: So you’ve done a few shows in Los Angeles?
Garcia: Yeah, but we've never “really” played LA. We've played in the Cheetah down there.
Kofsky: Yeah, which is a drag.
Garcia: We played at all the shit places. And we can never get it on because it always brought us down so much. I mean, the people and promoters down there are all horrible, graspy... The whole LA snap, the whole hype, you know—bread, dollars, and cents, and that's it. We've never gotten it on in LA. We've played there but we've never “done” it.
In November, the Dead returned to LA and flipped the script with two stunning performances at the Shrine Exposition Hall. The first night got an official release a few years back as part of the 30 Trips Around the Sun box set. It rips from start to finish and is the fullest realization of the band’s psychedelia since the addition of Mickey Hart as the second drummer. The tape opens with 16 minutes of Viola Lee Blues. It’s a beauty, with all the right stops and starts. Garcia’s soloing is frenetic and is perfectly complimented by Pig’s neat organ fills. The mid-song jam is fierce and the band swings even harder as they pull back into the tune. The boys slow it down a notch with a swampy take on It Hurts Me Too. It’s trademark McKernan blues and paves the way for a gorgeous Morning Dew with great instrumental separation, and a down-and-dirty Good Morning Little Schoolgirl.
That’s it for the Other One is next on the docket. It’s compact but devastating. The drummers aren’t hitting the churning triplets yet, but they do offer up some sweet and concise snare dialogues in the Cryptical Envelopment outro section. Of note, we hear the first appearance of the “Cowboy Neal” verse in The Other One, five months before Cassady’s death. From here, the lads dive back into the fray with a standalone New Potato Caboose, followed by 36 minutes of Alligator > Caution (Do Not Stop on Tracks). This final half-hour medley is transcendent and must have blown a few minds in the Shrine audience. The sound is enormous, swooping and diving through loosely structured jams, subdivided by an absolute blues shred—with Garcia and Pigpen cross-firing gospel shouts—and a truckload of improvised jamming on the Caution theme. McKernan's embellished lyrics make no attempt to conform to any rhyme or rhythm scheme—they are more or less spoken over the jam. The group's instrumental rapport is palpable and the old Warlocks number builds to a frenzied pace and ends in a mass of feedback and dissolve.
The second night’s tape is equally eventful. It opens with a drum-driven Turn On Your Lovelight. It’s a hot version with all the energy and group dynamics of the previous evening. The band is now fully warmed up and the Death Don’t Have No Mercy that follows is something else. Garcia plays it uptempo tonight, his riffs exploring the pathos inherent in the tune’s eerie melody and descending B7 through E-minor chord progression. This early take on the Blind Gary Davis song is raw, with a heightened sense of tension and emotional appeal. Electrified holy blues for the LA faithful. An additional dose of McKernan and a hot Good Morning Little Schoolgirl is rolled out next. The band explores another blues groove with excellent harmonica work providing the highlights.
The remainder of the show is pedal-to-the-metal Grateful Dead. It kicks off with a vibrant Cryptical Suite. It clocks in at an efficient 15 minutes but is packed with all the fervor we can expect from a ‘67 Other One outing. New Potato Caboose is jazzy, rhythmically surprising, and brimming with quick, ambitious transitions. The sextet is locked in and we hear some of the band’s most mature jamming yet. Garcia has been quoted talking about the song: "It's a very long thing and it doesn't have a form, and there are transitions that musically are real awkward…we're trying to make this happen by taking something jarring and making it unjarring. Making it so that it happens without anybody losing their minds when it happens. As it is, it's a little stilted, cause it's all so utterly odd.”
Similar to the 11/10 tape, the night ends with a medley and thirty-three and a half minutes of Alligator > Caution. This portion of the show was included as a 30 Days of Dead mp3 download in 2013 if you want to hear what’s in the vault. Anyway, it’s a glorious jam medley and is not to be missed. Pigpen is fully in his bawdy element and we get a cool new twist on Aligator during the post-verse breakdown with a mix of cowbell, guiro, drums, and blistering guitar work from Mr. Garcia. Jerry even contributes an Alligator chant before pushing the ensemble into a jam that crescendos, morphs, and surges forward with locomotive force into Caution. The jam that ensues is classic ‘67 Dead—a mix of feral blues, spontaneous noise, and a generous helping of feedback.
Listening to these two tapes one can only marvel at the rapid growth of the Grateful Dead as a collective unit. They are no longer the R&B outfit of ‘66, laying down some blues songs with no real transitional jams. Instead, we hear a band that is now armed with open-ended songs like Alligator and That’s It for the Other One, both of which get extended treatments each night. And when you throw in a fierce Viola Lee Blues and a few brilliant takes on the rarely-played New Potato Caboose, you can see why this first Shrine run has shown up in so many Dead fans’ tape collections.