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08-04-1967

O'Keefe Center

Toronto, Ontario

★ ★ ★ ★ ★
★ ★ ★ ★ ★

Recording info
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Identifier:
gd67-08-04.sbd.hanno.16752.sbeok.shnf
Source:
Soundboard
Notes:
This is a different version than the MR>R>D that commonly circulates. The sound on this version is noticeably less flat.
Description:
New Potato Caboose, Viola Lee Blues
Lineage:
SBD > MR >? > 2R > C > CD > SHN
Transferrer:
Hanno Bunjes & Uli Teute
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00:00
1
New Potato Caboose
06:56
2
Viola Lee Blues
20:20
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Comments

One response to “08-04-1967”

  1. Scott Shlomo Krane Avatar
    Scott Shlomo Krane

    8/4-5/67 O’Keefe Centre, Toronto, CanadaI got my hands on this cassette tape many years ago, as well as 7/16/66. I chose it from somebody’s tape list because my collection didn’t have anything from ‘67, and what’s more: 8/4 is my birthday. The two-song performance opens with a seven-minute ‘New Potato Caboose’, and closes with an upwards of 20-minute-long ‘Viola Lee Blues’. The whole performance is stellar from start to finish, despite its brevity. It must have been exciting for the boys to be playing so far from home, in a strange city, on another coast, in another country, so early on in their career as the Grateful Dead.Jerry introduces the first song, ‘New Potato Caboose’, which is obviously, in turn, sung by Bob Weir, but featuring some stellar electric lead guitar playing by Garcia, whose improvisation runs contrapuntally to Pigpen’s improvising on the organ. Weir’s rhythm guitar is wet and fresh sounding. The bass and drums roll along, driving the rhythm of the jam.The band launches immediately into ‘Viola Lee Blues’ without any introduction, like there was for ‘New Potato Caboose’. Everyone works together to suspend the funky vamp and keep the groove in motion. The vocal harmonizing starts at just shy of one-minute into the tune, and so the first verse is laid down. ‘Some got six months, some got one solid…’ comes in at 2:10, and at 2:35 we hear: ‘but me and my buddies, all got life-time, yeah!’ The next guitar solo, by Garcia, occurs around the 4:15 mark, and stretches on for a bit. At 6:16, in an interruption of the pentatonic improvisation, harmonic minor statements are made, but only a small few, for a measure or two only, and probably just for the purpose of sounding increasingly psychedelic for a moment. The jamming begins to build and build in tempo, especially starting at 10:00, by the time 11:00 rolls around, they are moving that much faster…13:30 finds the band at an all-but breakneck tempo. More harmonic minor statements are made by Jerry at 14 minutes, but only like one or two, before slipping back into a hybrid of the natural minor scale (dorian mode) and the minor pentatonic scale. At 15:40, everything goes berserk, and we get a screaming space for a series of measures until back to the original theme at 16:00, with Jerry still soloing over the rhythm-section vamp, and Pigpen just playing repetitive chords on his organ, instead of counterpoint improvising with the lead guitar. Harmonizing vocals, the boys repeat the first verse between 18:00 and 19:00, and the song comes grinding to a colorful yet conclusive halt, before, in addition to all this, providing a cadence of circus-sounding music, the melody of which I can’t identify.The set on 7/5 features only two, albeit, drawn-out tunes: First: ‘Turn on Your Lovelight’. Then, ‘Alligator’, to take the roof of the place! Look out! At 3:20 the jam begins. It is intense. Jerry is on fire. Bluesy minor exploring on the guitar, subdued rhythm guitar and chorus and Phil Lesh being Phil Lesh, you know after all those years the guy was the captain. In these days, Mickey might have followed Billy slightly on the skins, probably because he was a newcomer still, and he didn’t want to fall-off a now-world-touring a soon-to-be signed to Warner Brothers group. Bill Graham’s male heterosexual pets. Bill liked his rock ‘n’ roll and he liked it weird, but he probably came off as normal in his obviously punctilio-business-like demeanor. Jerry’s guitar get better and better, both on the ‘Alligator’ jam, as well as in general; going down in history as one of the great flatpickers of the rock idiom (not to mention his banjo playing and pedal-steel, both which would be put on display in the early ’70s). At 10:05, everyone steps to the mic and…”ALLIGATOR! ALLIGATOR! ALLIGATOR! ALLIGATOR!” and the song and the set and the show ends, but not before a playful and tripp(y), great-sounding cadence.Welcome to ’67!

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