Dead of the Day: 11-08-1969

Fillmore Auditorium

San Francisco, California

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

We have some of the evening’s music on the soundboard recording here. For the entire show – plus the Lovelight from the previous night – you have to go to Dick’s Picks volume 16. But what we have here is more then enough to realize this is a deep and heady night of music. Our recording starts off with Easy Wind, which has Pig balling in prime form, Phil laying in the bass, and the rest of the band dealing. Then Good Lovin’ comes out, beginning with a tasty run in and dripping throughout with ridiculous drumming, deep layers of Pig-led vocals, Lesh filling, TC keys, and beatific Jerry guitar. Dark Star starts off bright and promising topping out with a finely polished vocal delivery by Jerry then descends into utter, haunting madness before climbing back out and into The Other One, which is masterful as Jerry sets off, soaring outwards and leading the band onwards over desert plains, swirling just above mist-filled marshes, and through every other landscape imaginable before Phil drives it right back into the first verse. Then Jerry takes the whole band off again, joyously arriving back at Dark Star for a moment before they jam out Uncle John’s – if that is the right thing to really call it – in a truly one-of-a-kind fashion and then fold right back into Dark Star again. They finally leave Dark Star behind for good, heading into a raging – except for the serious calm of the ladyfingers section – Stephen. The sing-song, calliope loveliness of The Eleven comes out next, keeping the amazingly inventive and powerful jamming going. This continues through a monstrous Caution before the boys sweetly send out the show with We Bid You Goodnight. This show was purportedly Dick Latvala’s favorite, and it is easy to see why.

Recording info

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Identifier:

gd1969-11-08.sbd.wise.17433.shnf

Source:

MR (Dick Latvala) > DAT > SoundForge (Jim Wise) > CD

Notes:

This is the same seed as http://db.etree.org/shninfo_detail.php?shnid=82, with md5s d1c & d2c, with the tracks renamed to etree yy-mm-dd convention in the correct order. Saint Stephen and AWBYGN were incorrectly labelled as d2t07 & d2t01, respectively. These have had their names swapped to obtain the correct tracking. ======================= Jim Wise’s essay About 11/8/69 It wasn’t too long after I met Dick in person when he let me in on what he really was into for a 2-track pick from 1969. When he started coming east for Dicks Picks parties several years ago he found comfortable accommodations at my home. I had already an internet & telephone correspondence with this fascinating man for 2 years prior but had never met him in person, & luckily for me, Dick & I had several long time mutual taper friends who vouched for me, so the ice was broken in advance. I credit my wife Dani for rounding him up. He could have fun with her (and vice versa) & we could bullshit about tapes all night long. I had 11/8 in my collection in several different forms for years, but never really sat down with it the way Dick showed me how to. Dick was like Santa Claus & whenever he would show up (once he called with little advance warning & said he was only one hour away, so get ready for him) he literally had a bag full of tapes, both cassette & dats. He good naturedley would love to see me squirm in anticipation & enjoyed teasing me, ’cause he knew that I was a tape addict, much like himself. On a visit 2 years ago he sat me down in my living room, we smoked a fatty, & he pulled out his dat of 11/8 & said “sit down, shut up, & listen”. As the opening notes of “Dark Star” rang out I watched him curl up, close his eyes, & immerse himself in the sound. The last words he uttered for the next hour & one half were” Its quiet now, but it gets LOUD” This is when 11/8 really made it’s impression on me, & so did the infamous clicks! This was Dick’s dilemma; he loved this set so much, but knew that there were tech flaws on the master. He also had enough experience with his teammates John Cutler & Jeffrey Norman, to realize that this would be extremely difficult to persuade them to do the work in order for its official release as a DP. He was also afraid that it would be rejected as a pick, like so many other shows he wanted in the past were. It was only a few months prior that I had started experimenting with a PC based hard disk recording & editing system, so we grabbed his dat & downloaded a sample to look at the wav file as it appears on screen. We farted around for a bit & I found some clicks visually & zoomed in & simply re drew the glitch with something called the “pencil tool”. This smoothed out the wav & that single click disappeared both visually & on more importantly, on playback, auditory. When Dick’s business was concluded on the East Coast, he left his dat with me the play with. His aim was to give John Cutler a reasonable tape to listen too, in order to introduce him (JC) to the performance. What Dick had left with me specifically was a dat clone from his personal cassette copy of Bears 7inch-?-track 7/5-ips master reel. The redrawing of the glitches was unbelievably tedious, but relatively easy during the quiet passages, so I spent several days working & sent him back a dat of the first few minutes of “Dark Star”. He called me back in a whirlwind of enthusiasm & a week later the Dat clones direct from the masters arrived at my PO box. Now I really went to work & believe me when I tell you this was truly a labor of love. Upon inspection this is what I found; the clicking was present on the right channel of the entire show to 11/7, & the entire show of 11/8, that is up until the reel flip in the “Other One”, when it mysteriously vanishes! I uploaded the 94-minute Dark Star & ensuing jam onto hard disk. There is a brief segment before Dark Star begins where you can really capture what’s known as a “noise print”. This was basically just pure clicks without any music, or other noise in the background, & would be needed if it I could determine that a noise reduction run would be effective. The 3 facts that saved this recording are; #

Description:

Disc 1 51:35

1. Easy Wind 8:44
2. Good Lovin? 9:05
3. Dark Star > 14:43
4. The Other One > 12:00
5. Dark Star > 1:05
6. Uncle John’s Jam > 2:34
7. Dark Star 3:24

Disc 2 65:54

1. Saint Stephen > 7:01
2. The Eleven > 14:34
3. Caution > 17:43
4. Main Ten Jam> 3:12
5. Caution > 8:26
6. Feedback > 8:32
7. And We Bid You Goodnight 3:31
8. Tuning 2:55

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Transferrer:

Jim Wise

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