Grateful Dead FM Broadcasts
- From: Light Into Ashes <thehorror@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Fri, 25 Feb 2011 03:49:49 -0800 (PST)
“If you’re sitting at home next to your radio, you’re hearing the
music faster than you are if you’re in the hall.” – Jerry Garcia,
11/7/71
This will be a short post! It’s simply a reference list of the Dead's
shows broadcast on FM radio up through the ‘70s.
The Dead’s first involvement with FM radio came very early on – while
he was attending UC Berkeley, Phil Lesh was a volunteer engineer at
Berkeley’s KPFA station. On one of his first meetings with Garcia in
winter 1962, he asked Garcia to record a demo for the station’s
Midnight Special folk show. Garcia wound up playing a full radio show
of solo folk tunes, called The Long Black Veil.
In July 1964 a Mother McCree’s show was recorded for the “Live from
the Top of the Tangent” program on Stanford’s KZSU-FM station. (This
is the source of our Mother McCree’s tape.).
Later on, the Dead were present almost at the birth of ‘underground’
FM rock shows, when DJs cast aside the commercial-radio format and
played whatever they felt like. Tom Donahue was one of the founders of
this freeform FM revolution – a DJ and promoter who wore many hats in
the SF music scene, he had been the owner of Autumn Records (for which
the Dead recorded a demo in 1965), and he had also helped persuade Joe
Smith to sign the Dead to Warner Brothers, taking Smith to an Avalon
show in summer 1966.
Tom Donahue’s first KMPX show was April 7, 1967 – this is an example
of one of his early shows:
http://www.bayarearadio.org/audio/kmpx/1967/kmpx-fm-107_may-5-1967.shtml
In the last week of April, he invited Garcia and Lesh to play their
own selection of tunes on his show:
http://www.archive.org/details/gd67-04-xx.prefm.vernon.9261.sbeok.shnf
A year later, the KMPX workers went on strike, which led to the
founding of the KSAN rock station – more details on the strike (for
which the Dead played a couple benefits) are here:
http://lostlivedead.blogspot.com/2010/09/march-18-1968-pier-10-san-francisco.html
(Later on, Tom Donahue was also one of the planners of the canceled
Wild West Festival in summer ’69, and the mind behind the 1970
Medicine Ball Caravan, which the Dead decided to pull out of.)
Late in 1968, KZSU radio producers Michael Wanger & Vance Frost came
across the 1964 Mother McCree’s tape and were inspired to make a radio
documentary on the Grateful Dead’s history. Tom Donahue gave them the
go-ahead, and the show was broadcast by KSAN on June 8, 1969.
http://www.vidkid.com/GDdochome.html
This documentary was some months in the making - interviews took place
in December 1968, and Rock Scully provided the producers with some
live material from 1966. A couple McCree’s songs were used in the
documentary. They also used three songs from the 7/3/66 Fillmore
concert – Sittin’ on Top of the World, Big Boss Man, and Viola Lee
Blues.
So here’s the list of the Dead’s broadcasted shows up to 1978. This
list is probably incomplete since I may have missed a few, so
corrections or additions are welcome.
Obviously, the majority of FM broadcasts from the early period come
from the fall '71 tour. Up until then, the Dead’s live presence on FM
radio was very sporadic; and after that, there were hardly any shows
played on the air until 1976, when the Dead arranged a few more
broadcasts for their 'comeback' tour.
It's trickier than you might think finding which shows were originally
broadcast on FM, since so many shows first came into circulation
through David Gans' radio show - so usually when you see an FM source
for a tape, it came from him.
And from as early as 1971, there is an ‘alternate history’ of intrepid
DJs independently broadcasting shows on their own as SBD tapes of the
Dead started leaking out. While I’m sure these broadcasts weren’t Dead-
approved, they were a great boon to tape collectors, and I’ve listed a
couple early examples of these.
[Broadcasts in brackets either came from collectors’ tapes or are
unverified.]
[11/19/66 – the “It Crawled Out of the Vaults of KSAN” compilation
includes this as a show that was “partially broadcast” by KSAN. The
notes claim, “KSAN often recorded sets at the Avalon Ballroom and the
Fillmore Auditorium and created production reels for local FM
transmission, [which] primarily featured edited highlights.” I can’t
verify that 11/19/66 was one of these – far from being available on
early FM transmissions, the full show did not surface until 1989. I
find it highly doubtful that KSAN played any of the ‘66/67 sets at the
time, as the station did not exist or play rock music until May 1968!
Possibly the show excerpt misdated ‘2/12/67’ was played by the station
at some point in the ‘70s, though. ]
2/14/68 – Country Joe’s set and the Dead’s second set were broadcast
live in stereo by KMPX and KPFA. (The occasion for the broadcast was
the “official” opening of the Carousel.)
[10/12/68 - was broadcast incomplete by KSAN in the mid-'70s as
"10/13/68", which was the only source until the ‘90s, when Latvala
found the end of the show in the Vault.]
4/6/69 - broadcast live on KPFA, Berkeley. (The FM broadcast is still
our only source for this show, I believe.)
[5/2/70 – part of the show was broadcast on FM sometime in '71.]
[5/6/70 – was taped by the MIT radio station, but I don’t know if it
was broadcast. The band allowed a radio engineer to record from their
SBD feed, in quite a contrast to their usual taping policy that year…
The band had also just met Ned Lagin, then an MIT student, who says he
got a tape of this show soon afterward.]
[5/15/70 – Deadlists says: “Around 4 hours of this show [from the
Fillmore crew tapes] were broadcast by KPFA Berkeley in 1971…6/21/71
may be the date of the broadcast.”]
8/30/70 – the “Calebration” KQED-TV broadcast was also simulcast on
FM. (The mix seems to be the same on all sources.)
10/4/70 – another KQED-TV broadcast, with a live quadraphonic
simulcast on KQED and KSAN. The video has never circulated; the KSAN
FM broadcast is the source for our tapes (and was also the source for
one of the most famous early Dead bootlegs in 1971). Deadlists notes,
“There is also about 2:30 of 'interview' between a KSAN DJ and Pigpen,
who injured his fingers playing tambourine because the crew didn't
manage to bring his organ along to the gig.”
[10/24/70 – Deadlists suggests that our recording might be FM.]
11/21/70 – the Boston show apparently wasn’t broadcast, but Garcia &
Weir later went into the WBCN-FM studio for a little acoustic set with
Duane Allman.
12/27/70 – another acoustic set and interview with Garcia, Weir, and
the New Riders on KPPC-FM, Pasadena. This appearance was to promote
the Dead’s Legion Stadium, El Monte shows, so the boys play a
Christmasy quartet of acoustic songs that they’d actually stopped
doing live!
12/31/70 – another KQED-TV broadcast, also partly simulcast live by
KSAN. No video circulates. (The circulating tape seems to be a
combination of an incomplete AUD tape and an incomplete KQED tape, and
perhaps a third AUD or FM source for the poorer-sounding songs.)
7/2/71 – many of the Closing of Fillmore West bands were broadcast on
FM, as well as being filmed. (Footage not used in the Fillmore movie
was scrapped.) The Dead’s show was broadcast on KSFX and KSAN in San
Francisco and on KMET in Los Angeles.
Warner Brothers paid for the broadcast of one show per city in the
fall ’71 tour to promote the Dead’s new live album. (It seems to have
worked, as the album went gold. The band themselves apparently refused
to do any other kind of promotion…)
10/19/71 – KQRS, Minneapolis (There’s also a short preshow interview
with Garcia.)
10/21/71 – WGLD, Chicago (tapes broadcast on 10/22)
10/23/71 – WRDX, Detroit
10/26/71 – WCMF, Rochester
10/27/71 – WAER, Syracuse
10/29/71 - ?, Cleveland
10/30/71 – WEBN, Cincinnati
11/7/71 – KSFX, San Francisco
11/12/71 - ?, San Antonio
11/15/71 – WREK, Austin
11/17/71 ?, Albuquerque (This is one of the lesser-sounding FM tapes
of this tour, and the only one that hasn’t yet been replaced by a
clean source.)
11/20/71 – KMET, Los Angeles
12/2/71 – WGBH, Boston
12/5/71 – WNEW, New York
12/10/71 – KADI, St Louis
[12/15/71 – possible FM broadcast, but not confirmed]
12/31/71 – KSAN, San Francisco
4/14/72 - Radio Copenhagen
5/16/72 - Radio Luxembourg
12/31/72 - KSAN, San Francisco
I don't recall any FM broadcasts from '73/74.
3/23/75 – KIOI, San Francisco (There’s also a preshow interview with
Garcia.)
8/13/75 – An edited 90-minute tape was broadcast on 9/1/75 by the
Metromedia Network (and was used for the Make Believe Ballroom
bootleg).
6/12/76 – WBCN, Boston
6/19/76 – WNEW, New York; also WOUR, Utica
6/24/76 – WMMR, Philadelphia
6/29/76 – WXRT, Chicago
7/18/76 – KSAN, San Francisco
12/31/76 – KSAN, San Francisco
4/27/77 – WNEW, New York (We also have a video of this show:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zMyaTJF_pLg )
5/13/77 – WXRT, Chicago
9/3/77 – WNEW, New York
10/6/77 – An hour of this show was broadcast on the King Biscuit Flour
Hour; don't know when.
12/31/77 wasn’t broadcast on FM; but we do happen to have Bill
Graham’s video of this show:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oTttsdP5mJM
11/24/78 – a nationwide live broadcast; WNEW, WBCN and several other
stations simulcasted this show. (And of course, the broadcast became
the For Dead Heads Only bootleg.) There were also some band interviews
in the break. Weir asks radio listeners to lean over and kiss their
radios… (We also have a video of this show; here’s the soundcheck:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJP7BKzu32M )
12/31/78 – simulcast on KQED-TV and KSAN.
To wrap up, this page collects a few of the Dead’s early radio ads
(there’s a more complete list on page 214 of the Taping Compendium) –
especially notable are the Carousel ad from 1968 (“I lost it at the
Carousel - I haven’t been the same since - I’ve really been
transformed - I’ve got to go, even if it means risking my sanity”),
the “Port Chester apology” from Dec ’70, and the Aoxomoxoa ad in which
What’s Become of the Baby is rated a “98” for its “danceable beat and
catchy lyrics”…
http://www.archive.org/details/gd70-12-31.aftershow.sbd.cole.6171.sbeok.shnf
http://deadessays.blogspot.com
.
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