07-17-1966

Fillmore Auditorium

San Francisco, California

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

Recording info

Use alternative player

Identifier:

gd66-07-17.sbd.miller.21064.sbeok.shnf

Source:

Soundboard

Notes:

This is the complete 7/17/66. What was earlier had as 7/17/66 is really part of 7/16/66.

Description:

Big Boss Man, Standing On The Corner > Beat It On Down The Line > In The Pines, Cardboard Cowboy > Nobody’s Fault But Mine, Next Time You See Me, He Was A Friend Of Mine

Lineage:

SBD > Reel Master (10 Inch Reels @ 15ips 1/2trk) > DAT > Sonic Solutions > CD > EAC > SHN

Transferrer:

Charlie Miller

Play

Pause

Back

Forw.

Volume

00:00

1

Big Boss Man

00:30

2

Cold Rain And Snow

03:28

3

It’s All Over Now Baby Blue

04:56

4

Cream Puff War

04:37

5

King Bee

09:04

6

Stealin’

03:57

7

Dancin’ in the Streets

07:18

Choose recording

View on Archive

Today’s Dead of the Day:

07-17-1989 – Alpine Valley Music Theater – East Troy, Wisconsin

Other July 17th Shows and Recordings:

Search for shows:

Month,

Day, and/or

Year

Venue

Location

Submit Search

Comments

One response to “07-17-1966”

Scott Shlomo Krane

December 14, 2021

Many of the tunes from this relatively-for-its-time long-in-duration show (7/16) and short performance (7/17) at the old Fillmore Auditorium are familiar to Deadheads, unlike much of the early repertoire. The show starts with ‘I Know You Rider’, then ‘Big Boss Man’ sung by Pigpen is one of the best versions of this song ever, it lasts for just over 5:00. The psychedelic and drenched in Pigpen’s heavy organ, with Garcia on vocals for his first time of the evening, ‘Standing on the Corner’ comes next, before the spotlight returns to Bobby for ‘B.I.O.D.T.L.’ What comes next is a personal favorite of mine, and I’ve always felt it a shame that the boys retired it so early: ‘In the Pines’, which is a cover of an old Leadbelly tune, also performed in the ‘60s by Bob Dylan and in the ‘90s by Kurt Cobain and Nirvana, under the title, ‘Where Did You Sleep Last Night?’ The boogaloo surf-rock of ‘Cardboard Cowboy’ comes next with great organ-grinding by a young Ron ‘Pigpen’ Mckernan, the Hell’s Angels-resembling flower-child, whom, until his death in the early ‘70s, assumed the role of the leader of the band. The next tune is ‘Nobody’s Fault but Mine’, sung by Jerry, and geewhiz, does it swing hard, with the whole band playing in-the-pocket, really beginning to gel and coalesce more than at any erstwhile moment of the concert; leaving it evident that these guys just have to get warmed up. Pigpen is up next with ‘Next Time You See Me’, but things start getting really interesting when the medium-tempo ballad, ‘He Was a Friend of Mine’, is sung by the whole chorus of musicians, in a struggling attempt to harmonize, apparently. This song always feels to me like a memorial for the fallen in Vietnam. While the Tet Offensive was still one-and-a-half to two years away, the events between American troops and Vietcong militants, became bloody and tragic beginning in ‘65. No doubt, the newspapers around the Bay Area provided news on deployed troops who were locals, and the overall war effort. ‘He Was a Friend of Mine’ lasts 5.5 minutes, and in the interim between it and the next song, Pigpen provides Jerry with a note (presumably an ‘E’) to tune his guitar up to.Now intrepid travelers, we’ve come upon the psychedelic reaches of this night’s performance. After a tune-up, the band rips into ‘Cream Puff War’, an original which would not be a well known song until it was released by Warner Bros. in 1967 on the eponymous debut record. ‘No! No! She can’t take your mind and leave…’ sings Garcia. At about 2:30, Jerry comes in playing some harmonic minor statements, to bend the mind even more than the organ and the story the lyrics tell. From this point, 4:00 or so, the song continues on for an additional two minutes, rounding the performance of the tune out to 6:00 even of instrumental grooving, the band builds in intensity like a train, and while the sound is not as powerful as it would increasingly became with each year of that first decade, it’s still a balls-to-the-wall jam. But the jamming, grooving and improvisation don’t stop there. It’s time to dance, decides Pigpen and Jerry, and they launch into a funky, laidback ‘Viola Lee Blues’, much more laid back than the version which begins the ‘B’ side of The Grateful Dead (Warner Bros., 1967) record, but impossible not to dance to. At 2:30, the band sings, ‘…me and my buddy, all got life-time, yeah!’, before heading back into the instrumental groove, at about 3:10, Jerry and the boys ‘wrote a letter’, and at 3:35 he learned ‘I’ve got a friend somewhere’. At 5:30, the vocals have all been recited, and the band builds and builds upon the song’s tempo, increasing it, quicker and quicker. At 8:30, they retreat back to the original funked-out rhythm and moderately-paced tempo, and conclude the singing, with a repetition of the final verse. All in all, ‘Viola Lee Blues’ comes to 9:44 and is followed by a brief ‘Don’t Ease Me In’, which runs directly into a song called, ‘Pain In My Heart’, a ballad sung by Pigpen. Next comes one of the treats of the setlist (though there are no shortages of those), Bobby takes the mic for ‘Minglewood Blues’ which jams directly into a personal favorite of mine, ‘Sittin’ On Top Of The World’, a bluegrass tune, sung by Jerry, that comes to life via shocks of electricity, and leaves you with a smile on your face. An upbeat and uptempo ‘You Don’t Have to Ask’ follows, sung in harmony by the boys. Next up is the early version ‘Cold Rain and Snow’, as it appeared on 1967’s studio recording for Warner Bros. It lasts for 5:00 and dumps directly into a glimpse of the future of this band: a 10:43 ‘Good Morning Little Schoolgirl’, that is psychedelic yet rude, with an attitude, yet somehow innocent.The evening’s penultimate song is the Bob Dylan cover, ‘It’s All Over Now, Baby Blue’, which the Dead played all the time, in each decade, probably every year. To close the curtain, Bob Weir takes us home, singing on ‘Dancin’ in the Streets’.7/17 is short but sweet. It opens with ‘Big Boss Man’., followed by ‘Standing on the Corner’, and a great organ-heavy rendition of ‘Beat it on Down the Line’, the only song which would go on to be included in the following year’s debut commercial studio release the eponymous The Grateful Dead (Warner Bros., ‘67). The Ledbelly tune wjocj you may recognize from Nirvana’s MTV Unplugged (DGC, ‘94)—whence it was named ‘Where Did You Sleep Last Night?’—follows, the Dead call it ‘In the Pines’. The psychedelic ‘Cardboard Cowboy’ comes next. On the last song of the set, Jerry Garcia proves his blues acumen, playing lead guitar to Pigpen’s crooning and organ and doing a fanfuckingtastic job of it.

Reply

Leave a Reply Cancel reply