Nothing happened the day of the Palookaville show, sorry...
I tried to have something happen that day but it wasn't in the cards... I
tried to slip in the tub, I ran with scissors, put nickels up my nose, I had
Beau hit me on the back while I was crossing my eyes... but nada...
So I'll just run down the show.
We drove down to Santa Cruz we ended up in a traffic jam on route 17 so I
fell asleep in the loft in the back of the van. When we arrived Beau and
company loaded in to a nice-sized hall with a moderate-sized stage and PA and
I think we felt a bit more in our element... a bunch of the tentions that had
been building in us all were gone with the Fillmore gig behind us, and it
showed in the playing.
We set up and sound checked without any trouble whatsoever and sat down to
big plates of Philipino food... I had an excellent veggie-tofu dish over
peanut noodles and egg rolls of some description, all eaten with chop sticks
which surprised Scott... he didn't see me as the "Chop Sticks Kind Of Guy"...
The food was amazing, by the way... I gotta say that the food at most of the
venues has been outstanding on this tour so far, and I've definitely had a
much more varied diet than if we were at home...
Touring agrees with me.
The show at Palookaville was 7/8/87 from the Roanoke Civic Center, Roanoke
VA. and from the first note you could tell the band was more relaxed... the
high points of the first set were definitely "Good Times" (Scott even kept it
clean for the all ages crowd), "Big RxR Blues" with tons of solos and
high-octane energy, and a hammering "Let It Grow" to finish the set...
As I said, it was an all ages show... and I was a little skeptical because it
was one of those deals where the only place to get a drink is the small
balcony area in the back of the room, and when they do that, a weird polarity
usually develops... but it was very even as far as I could tell, with the
majority of the people preferring the open space of the floor to getting
drunk, which was nice to see. The Santa Cruz audience was very mellow and
positively charged and the band really fed off that for the second set...
The opening riff of "Scarlet Begonias" got a whoop and a jump out of the
audience and away we went, easing into "Fire On The Mountain" with the
signature Garcia lick and another cheer out of the crowd... "Estimated
Prophet" let me mess around with the delay box a bit and the
always-a-crowd-pleaser "He's Gone" led into "Drumz"...
Rob and Dino have settled in with this segment of the show really well, and
they give me room to add or modify alot of the time (when the year of the
show allows), which I like... if you watch them they communicate with looks
and tilts of the head... rarely having to resort to words during the
performance... sometimes they have discussed the approach to beginning
"Drumz" but more often than not it's the subtle communication of two drummers
who've played as one drummer for a long time...
Which, if you think about it, is what the part of the drummers SHOULD reflect
and feel like in the over-all concept of this band... right? I miss Ahmer and
Corso every day on the road, but Rob and Dino are already like close friends
I've known for years and I look forward to their bit every night...
After "Space" came a gentle "Crazy Fingers" and later a rare "Comes A Time"
which had the tempo I always liked... not the slow smacked-out versions but
the slow, deliberate and sober version of 1987... "Sugar Magnolia" was long
and strong with Mike accenting the punches of the jam with chops of his
guitar neck, Hazdra unleashing huge bombs on his bass...
Due to time constraints "Black Muddy River" was the last song of the night
but the audience was all smiles anyway...
(ed. note: Mike stepped up to the mic after the encore and, overcome with
emotion, dedicated the show to the memory of Dick Latvala.)
After the gig Beau loaded the trailer with Nej and Debbie and we all hung
out, talking to stragglers... I shot some video of a guy out front of the
club on the street corner who had these two long sticks, around five feet
long... attached to one end is a loop of cheese cloth which he dipped in
bubble stuff and was waving through the air, creating HUGE bubbles which
drifted down the street... bubbles the size of a car hood, OK? VERY cool...
... I also happened to be filming when an intoxicated young lady jumped into
a bubble then realized she was being filmed... her equally drunk date offered
her breasts for my video and called me "Gay" when I declined turning the
camera from a particularly killer bubble to capture the bubble-head's...
uh... bubbles... she did however offer that "most guys think they're fake",
shattering my belief that I was in any way special to her...
... apparently her breasts are in the public domain, open to inspection
during normal office hours. Hold me. I feel like a number.
And for the record, I'm not Gay.
And neither is Rob, but as I was putting my camera away in the van, I
realized that the guy leaning around Rob very likely WAS... how do I know
this? Because the guy turns to me and says "take care of this one... he's got
such nice Cycler's Calves..."
Rob managed to thank the guy for the kind words on the show... and his
legs... and the guy moved on, into the night...
And then so did we... back to San Francisco.
The next day we had a day off, so we drove north to Lanny's place across the
bridge in San Rafael... home town of the Grateful Dead offices for many
years and current home of Calico, the woman who ran GD Ticket Sales from it's
inception in 1980 to present day...
Calico is a woman you can see having Jerry Garcia's ear... she is a woman who
exudes peace and wonderful life experience... and she's got some great
stories of the band and mail order ticketing... again I was ecstatic!
... FINALLY I was face to face with the woman who had returned so many of my
mail orders with a form letter explaining grounds for rejection ("Wrong Sized
Note Card", "No Personal Checks", "Incorrect Money Order Amount" or
more-than-usually "None Available - Sold Out")... and I had played this
meeting out sadistically, so many times over the years... what I would SAY to
the viscious people behind GDTS...
And all that was forgotten upon meeting her... She is that genuine and
disarming.
She listened to our past ordering woes, laughing and confirming or
demystifying the whole selections process... Scott thanked her for instilling
a hyper sense of attention to detail via her strick rules surrounding mail
ordering for tickets over the years, which she got a big kick out of...
And it's our attention to detail that ultimately allowed this meeting to take
place... odd how that works sometimes, huh?
Scott ran over the basics behind GDTS2 (the sort of 'independent' ticket firm
that was allowed to live on after Jerry and handles the surviving acts as
well as Steve Kimock, etc.) about handling some of our ticketing, which would
mean a lower final ticket price to all of you, ultimately...
Sound good?
Yeah, we like it too... it would be a limited service to begin with, say for
Colorado shows where we have begun to develop a traveling crowd... but you
all would benefit, and we would reach the GDTS mailing list when they put our
tickets on sale... everybody wins!
It was getting on in the afternoon so we let Calico go and we set out for
Arcata in Humbolt County... five hours or so north... Cafe Tomo and one
strange but strong show...
COMING SOON: "DSO In The Round", I Take Inspiration From Salvidor Dali, Guitar
Boxing, and The Pac Man Police Cars...