Just how it all fits together." "A lot of women were unable to come into their own until they actually left the scene," she continues, although many formed what she called "cottage industries" that orbited the band: travel agencies, fashion design, poster art, ticketing, newsletters â and many also stayed in touch, even after leaving the active scene. Miami Arena, Miami, Oct. 26, 1989. Her husband Rex had been killed in a car wreck in 1976, and at some point after that, she dated Dead keyboardist Brent Mydland. Running time: 10:29. (Annabelle Garcia, Mountain Girl's daughter with Jerry, joined the director and band members at the Sundance Film Festival. 5. Speedball is a dangerous mixture, often more so than the sum of the parts due to drug synergy.The original speedball used cocaine hydrochloride mixed with morphine sulfate, as opposed to heroin. Running time: 30:16. After the lyric, in most performances, the song turns catty-wompus. Wembley Empire Pool, London, April 8, 1972. Mydland spent most of his childhood in Concord, California. “I don’t have any idea what the ‘transitive nightfall of diamonds’ means,” he wrote. ... We lost Brent [Mydland… But when she found herself unable to keep current on the fees, her things were auctioned off, Storage Wars-style. Just A Little Light: Brent Mydland, the talented and soulful keyboardist who tragically died of a drug overdose in 1990, composed this song with enigmatic lyricist John Barlow. It felt like the perfect job for a designer who had always felt creatively in tune with light ("I don't like certain times of day," she answers when I ask if she feels like a visually-oriented person, "I could never have worked in an office because of fluorescent lighting") and who gravitated toward the eccentric and the unpredictable. So was the Grateful Dead a precociously woke organization, a paragon of women in psychedelic STEM? "And I ended up at 710 Ashbury Street," she says â the Victorian house where members of the Grateful Dead and associates lived together, like turned-on, tuned-in fraternity brothers, in 1966 and '67. This version of the song features the delicate piano of the keyboardist Keith Godchaux. "So I came back Friday, but there was nobody there to teach me," she tells me on the phone from her home in Hawaii. LSD, which had first been synthesized about 25 years earlier, had enjoyed a short period of favor in the U.S. as a potentially salubrious psychotherapeutic aid. See more ideas about brent, grateful dead, greatful dead. In an interview I did with Grateful Dead archivist David Lemieux, he told me that every band member has to … Betty Cantor was a cofounder of Alembic, the Dead-associated gear workshop and studio established in 1968; Phil Lesh's ex Rosie McGee, who had changed her name from Florence Nathan, worked there and at Fly By Night well after the breakup. But we still have “Dark Star,” in all its beautiful, terrifying weirdness. Brent Mydland With the addition of Brent, the band got not only a piano player, but an aggressive Hammond B-3 organ player, a synth player, AND someone to handle the vocal harmonies (I always thought he sounded a helluva lot like Michael McDonald of the Doobie Bros.). For the 50th anniversary Grateful Dead celebration in 2015, Betty went to the shows in Santa Clara, instead of trekking to Chicago for the more-heralded Fourth of July weekend run. In an interview he commented that: "my sister took lessons and it looked fun to me, so I did too. 10. Fillmore West, San Francisco, Feb. 27, 1969. They hated having women do anything." The Omni, Atlanta, March 30, 1994. "I used to take things like radios, other little electronic devices if they didn't work, open them up, mess with them, put them back together and they worked," she remembers during a recent phone call. "'Who's this pretty lady?' The Denver project was short-lived, and Cantor was back in San Francisco by 1968, working at the Carousel Ballroom and learning sound engineering at an underground FM station, thinking she might want to be a DJ. Fillmore East, New York City, Feb. 13, 1970. The soldering skills she learned on Owsley's sound crew, she says, come in handy in her practice. Brent Mydland joined the band as keyboardist in 1979 and gave the Dead a jolt of new energy. Fillmore East, New York City, Feb. 13, 1970. That's where she met the Grateful Dead, with whom she'd eventually travel thousands of miles over close to 20 years, recording hundreds of hours of tape and becoming one of the many female workers, supporters and associates who shaped the story of America's most weird, colorful, sui generis rock and roll band. “My father had just died the previous year. I was always getting sent to detention study hall in high school, and getting in trouble with the police and everything â I mean, not getting in trouble with them, but I liked to run away from them when they were trying to catch me. People tended to look for Cantor-Jackson more often, so when they had the T-shirts made with her face on them, she says, "Candace's said 'No I'm Not,' and mine said 'Yes I Am.'". Betty Cantor-Jackson worked as the sound engineer for The Grateful Dead on official live and studio albums â and perhaps more importantly, recorded hundreds of reels of prized soundboard tape. Cantor-Jackson is the production manager, engineer and road manager for Glide Memorial, an inclusive Methodist congregation in San Francisco with an eight-piece band and up to 110 people in its choir. and watching Brent and Jerry interact during the Not Fade Away was so heartwarming. One thing Brightman couldn't abide, though, was when the big dogs picked on the little dogs â and that was the crew, she says, not the band. The next three versions were selected by Mr. Lemieux, the rest by me. 7. They told her to come back on Friday. McNally offered some perspective in defense of the singer. brent mydland rules, reigns, and lives forever. ", "The Grateful Dead were, absolutely, sexist," McNally tells me. Ed Perlstein/Redferns Betty Cantor-Jackson worked as the sound engineer for The Grateful Dead on official live and studio albums â and perhaps more importantly, recorded hundreds of reels of prized soundboard tape. That was my first sense that there are things in this world that are really weird, and there are people who are concerned with them. You and I while we can, through the transitive nightfall of diamonds.”. When she applied for a cashier's job at the Anderson Theater on Second Avenue â a forerunner to Bill Graham's Fillmore East and later, a very brief expansion of CBGB â she was turned down, but sent backstage to see if they had anything for her. Her fascination with how things worked helped her breeze through the available math and science classes at her Martinez, Calif. high school to the point that, she said, "they ran out of things for me to do, so they let me go over to the college to play at the lab.". In a community of fans that prizes each live document of the band for its own special terroir, its unique setlist and vibe, Betty Boards became some of the most celebrated; it was a Betty Board that the Library of Congress, in 2011, inducted into its National Recording Registry to commemorate the particularly legendary May 1977 concert at Cornell University's Barton Hall. The band had the right level of weirdness to keep her entertained â and she figures she had whatever strangely calibrated formula of personality it took to thrive in their singular company. The band is known for having many complex lyrics and back in 1980 in an interview with Relix the musician talked about meaning of the songs. There was always a piano around the house and I wanted to play it. Cantor started out putting up posters around town for the Avalon, then moved, in swift order, to running concessions, running the box office and finally, traveling to Denver in late 1967 to help the Helms' Family Dog collective set up an outpost. She had some experience booking bands for events at her high school back across the bay, so here in her new cosmic counterculture world, it made sense to get a job at the Avalon Ballroom, the historic venue on Sutter and Van Ness where promoters like Chet Helms and Bill Graham booked acid-friendly groups like the Dead, the 13th Floor Elevators and Jefferson Airplane. "He bowed and said 'Come on in.' "Math was fun, I enjoyed it, and science was discovery," she says. In the end, Cantor chose mics and tape over hot dogs, though, working as an engineer and producer on official live and studio albums from 1968's Anthem of the Sun through 1981's Dead Set â and perhaps more importantly, recording hundreds of reels of soundboard tape. He was 37 years old. Brent Mydland Could More Than Hold His Own As Front Man. The cause of death was undetermined. This is the first of a three-part show that originated as a live broadcast on KPFA in Berkeley on the day after Grateful Dead keyboardist Brent Mydland was found dead at his home. Feb 10, 2020 - Explore Michal Strickland's board "Brent Mydland" on Pinterest. Grateful Dead guitarist and singer Jerry Garcia is considered one of the best musicians of all time that ufortunately died too soon. Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum, Oakland, Calif., Oct. 31, 1991, a version of the original “single” of the song, from 1968. Mid-song, however, things change. “It’s a joke.”. "There was one time when I got down off the ladder and went over and tried to beat [stage manager and guitar tech] Steve Parish up. Running time: 2:44. Nine months after the “Live Dead” version, the song has become quieter and more reflective. His observation comes in a mini-chapter titled "Interlude/Intermission: 'Waits Backstage While I Sing to You,'" a reference to the American Beauty track "Sugar Magnolia," that ode to the capable and patient band girlfriend ("takes the wheel when I'm seeing double / pays my ticket when I speed") usually assumed to have been inspired by Frankie Weir. She lit the Grateful Dead at the Anderson and the Fillmore East, as well as during their famous 1971 run at the Capitol Theatre in Port Chester, N.Y., a little ways outside the city. Organist Tom Constanten, known as T.C., is particularly inventive this night; note how he takes the song in a curious direction at about 6:45. The Contra Costa County coroner's office said an autopsy would be performed today and the results would be announced late in … "I wish to God they didn't have that crew. Brent certainly had his detractors early on though, from both fans and band-members alike. And 'Terrapin [Station]'" â the title track from the 1977 album that was the Godchauxs' second-to-last as band members â "was a masterpiece, as a song." Plus, they just didn't like being in the studio. Brent Mydland joined the band as keyboardist in 1979 and gave the Dead a jolt of new energy. When they split, she felt alienated and frozen out, as an "ex-old lady." "I decided I was going to see colors and tastes and I wasn't going to go crazy. He was 37 years old. Stanley, who is at work on her own history of women in the sprawling Grateful Dead scene, tells me that the de facto sexism of the rock world was actually a bit of a blessing for her and Cargill during their time with Owsley. Cantor had been solidly ensconced in the Dead camp â which was expanding as colorfully as the images in a liquid light show at the Avalon â for several years when Candace Brightman signed on for her own long, strange, multi-decade trip. the thing that has changed between each listening is me. In Long Strange Trip, McNally answers bluntly in the negative: "It would be ridiculous to suggest that the Dead is a bastion of feminist liberation.". First time played since September 12, 1985 * Jerry Garcia - Guitar Bob Weir - Guitar Brent Mydland - Keyboards Phil Lesh - Bass Bill Kreutzmann - Drums Mickey Hart - Drums “. Growing up in the late 1950s and early '60s, Betty Cantor developed an early talent for tinkering. I thought, 'Oh, okay. The poster for the Grateful Dead’s Feb. 27, 1969, concert at the Fillmore West Ballroom in San Francisco.Credit...Lee Conklin and Herb Greene/Wolfgang's, It was a slow winter day, and I had just left the Anthology Film Archives in New York after a screening of “Andy Warhol’s Frankenstein.” It had seemed like a long afternoon, what with the beheadings and the orgies and whatnot. Garcia sings only the first of the two verses, leaving the song forever unfinished. Some nights the band did only the first verse, and things devolved from there. The band’s spring 1972 tour of Europe was a triumph. “From the smoothness of the opening section of the song to the meltdown, drum-and-bass duet, and its rising-from-the-ashes triumphant return to light, this ‘Dark Star’ is one of the most deep and joyous journeys the Dead ever took.” Running time: 31:40. They lived in a boarding house in San Francisco's Haight-Ashbury district during the fabled Summer of Love in 1967, as drummer Bill Kreutzmann recalled in a 2015 article for the San Francisco Chronicle.That era in the band's history was riddled with countless incidents, both delightful and madcapped. Brent Mydland & The Band? Fillmore West, San Francisco, Feb. 27, 1969. "If I wanted to hear them play loud on TV, then I better make sure it works. "They were the victims of stock mid-century American male privilege and attitude. The Grateful Dead did not perform at Hampton again until March 5, 1992. It’s fun. Music is one of them. Still, McNally makes clear, it was no gender-neutral utopia. It was fun. “On a hot, sunny day near Eugene, Ore., playing in a field to their tribe, the Dead played a ‘Dark Star’ that is about as dynamic as they ever got with this song in this era,” Mr. Lemieux said. But Jerry Garcia is gone, of course, as is Andy Warhol, as is Lou Reed, and the world in which they created art has been largely eclipsed by commerce. She and Cargill became lab assistants for their partner, helping to synthesize a pure and potent LSD that has been lovingly memorialized in media ranging from Jefferson Airplane song lyrics to official biographies. Bob Dylan once described folk music this way: “It’s the only music where it isn’t simple. There are versions of it in which the audience is clapping along, like it’s a dance tune. Sometimes this part of the tune gives way to something else — jazz riffs, dance music, cowboy songs, the ballad “St. The omissions seem notable, especially considering that for those fans who might be listening for a mention of Law or Brightman or Cantor or accountant Nancy Mallonee or Ice-Nine Publishing administrator Annette Flowers or even the iconic hippie queen Mountain Girl â a member of Ken Kesey's band of psychedelic cosmonauts, the Merry Pranksters, who turns up in Tom Wolfe's Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test â the mentions don't come. His eleven-year tenure was longer than that of any other keyboardist in the band. It refers to the crew's space in the office as the "boys' room," never mind that newly-hired Brightman appears briefly in the piece running lights and directing a union crew â and that surely, as Cantor was a member of the sound team, the room would have been her domain, too. It’s historically interesting for the banjo riff at the very end, along with the only recording of the lyricist Robert Hunter’s voice on a Grateful Dead record, performing what he called a “word salad” in the final seconds. Raised in the Chicago suburbs, Brightman had studied set design at St. John's College in Annapolis, Md. There is ambient warping and woofing. I'd get in there and say 'Don't you ever talk like that around my crew.' He's about 6'3", and I beat him up â I was just so mad I was pounding on him. The Brilliant Uncertainty of the Grateful Dead’s ‘Dark Star’. 11. ], “Dark Star,” the Dead’s most hypnotic tune, began with the band rehearsing at the Rio Nido in Sonoma County in the summer of 1967. And then, from an open window, I heard Jerry Garcia singing, like the voice of an old friend. The Rolling Stone piece describes that community with the term karass, a Kurt Vonnegut coinage from his 1963 sci-fi novel Cat's Cradle â from which the band got the name of its music-publishing company, Ice-Nine â meaning a group of otherwise-unrelated people who are destined to go through life linked to one another. Donna, who grew up near Florence, Ala. (the site of the Alabama Music Hall of Fame, of which she is an inductee) worked as a teen backup vocalist on sessions in Muscle Shoals, recording behind Percy Sledge, Elvis and Cher, among others, at the famed studio there before falling in with the Dead â to whose fans she would eventually become a topic of endless argument. 3. It’s weird, full of legend, myth, Bible and ghosts, chaos, watermelons, clocks, everything. I was just watching the footage from Buffalo 89' (What A Fucking Year!) The lengthy saga â moldy or damaged tapes, buyers who figured out what they were, archivists who restored them and fans who eagerly welcomed them back into circulation â helped create one of the more dramatic narratives within the Grateful Dead storybook. I stood there on Second Avenue, more than a little discombobulated. Fillmore East, New York City, Sept. 19, 1970, Capitol Theatre, Port Chester, N.Y., Feb. 18, 1971. I listened to it this summer as my wife and I, celebrating 30 years of marriage, hiked the Cinque Terre in Italy. Cantor-Jackson took the extra time to convince venue sound engineers that her ideas were their own, and in that way, she recorded an increasingly celebrated body of work, including tapes from Radio City Music Hall, Saturday Night Live and the now-enshrined Cornell '77 show. Mydland was in a series of local bands. Although there are consensus ‘best versions,’ every single performance is worth exploring.”. Also, if anyone out there struggles with a sense of belonging, I think Jerry offers up a real remedy. The same chapter, set in the '80s, quotes a roadie overheard saying "I love the sight of spandex in the morning. Running time: 23:17. The SetList Program allows you to search through the Grateful Dead's setlists for shows between 1965 and 1995. Not Fade away was so heartwarming me at all of the keyboardist for the Dead... Hear them play loud on TV, then I better make sure it works commented. Learned on Owsley 's sound crew, she felt alienated and frozen out, an! That make me think the band performed on Halloween, in Atlanta though... Stranger passed by music where it isn ’ t have the passion at first while we can, the., terrifying weirdness, they just did n't like being in the clouds of delusion. ” and. Returned to the wild scene burgeoning on the original vinyl, “ had... 1994 reference text Skeleton Key: a Dictionary for Deadheads my sister took lessons and it looked to! 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