Dead of the Day: 03-05-1972
Winterland Arena
San Francisco, California
There is a hot 1992 show out of Hampton, but a Winterland date, even one that is a little subdued like this one is, is tough to pass up. The show gets off to a fast and furious start with a strong Bertha, which had become a near-nightly staple in the repertoire since it was introduced in February 1971. The rest of the first set continues to rock all the way through. The Mr. Charlie, Sugaree, and Casey Jones stand out particularly, but every tune is a fabulous rendition. The first Black Throated Wind makes an appearance in that first set, proving to be an excellent little tune from the very beginning. Because of time constraints, the first set is a good deal longer than the second, and the band never really enters into interstellar jamming territory in either set. What we get instead in the second half is a really heady Good Lovin’ with some extended Pig rapping and a Mind Left Body jam. Then a very fun, but far too short, NFA> GDTRB> NFA comes forth to end the set. Finally, a blistering One More Saturday Night serves as the encore.
The Dead shared the bill this night with both Yogi Phlegm and New Riders of the Purple Sage. More regularly known as the Sons of Champlin, Yogi Phelgm was a Marin-based band that was popular in the Bay Area and, to a degree, across the nation in the late sixties and early seventies. They were known for their jazz-influenced sound and powerful horn section. Apparently, the crowd was so enthralled with their playing on this night at Winterland that they had them do three encores, explaining the short second set from the Dead as the curfew loomed. It is not clear to me if Jerry sat in on pedal steel in the NRPS set as he had officially left the New Riders the previous year.
The three-band concert was a benefit for the American Indian Movement. The year before, a group of Red Power activists had completed their two-year occupation of Alcatraz out in the middle of San Francisco Bay. In the fall of 1972, AIM would storm the Bureau of Indian Affairs and hold it for a week. They were protesting the abrogation of treaty rights, the many failures of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, and the general conditions and prejudice that most Indians faced in American society.
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