The Grateful Dead play a benefit gig along with a very mysterious cast, which featured a Sufi choir, a few whirling dervish dancers, and Yogi Bhajan (the Sikh teacher who introduced Kundalini Yoga to the West). If this wasn’t weird enough, local members of Kailas Shugendō, a Buddhist sect dressed in oriental-style hiking attire, presented a ritual firewalk on stage.
Of course, this wasn’t the first time the Dead played for free at a psychospiritual gathering replete with freaks, music, dancing and celebrating. The February 19, 1969 Celestial Synapse at Bill Graham’s Fillmore West—organized by the Frontiers in Science—included The Golden Toad, Don Hamrick, Don McCoy, and the writer- activist Stephen Gaskin. In addition to an opulent Grateful Dead soundtrack, the event featured three simultaneous light shows, plenty of Owsley’s latest tabs, and an abundance of nakedness. The Dead played a flowing improvisatory set of new material that, in spite of the weird, anarchic recording, is really worth checking out.
The late March midweek show at Winterland wasn’t as well attended as the Frontiers of Science happening, but equally weird and charged nevertheless. John Coate, who had just gotten back to the Bay Area after going on a cross-country bus caravan with Stephen Gaskin and the family that would soon found The Farm in Tennessee, was in attendance. In a 2013 interview, Coate recalled the Sufi benefit as “…a gig oriented toward all the spiritual hippies. It started out with this guy—he was a white guy, but he was like a Tibetan Buddhist guy named Dr. Ajari. And the first thing they did on the stage was have this kind of fire ceremony. Things were so loose back then—they literally lit these fires on the stage, and this guy walks on these coals and stuff. It’s a pan on the stage.”
Following the ember trodding Buddhists, the Sufi choir kicked off the musical portion of the night. They played a few of their devotional pieces, and then were joined by Grateful Dead members Jerry Garcia, Bob Weir, Phil Lesh, and Bill Kreutzmann, for their final two numbers. Michael Parrish, keeper of the excellent Cryptical Developments blog, said of the Dead’s exchange with the Sufi ensemble to be “…very much like what happened at the Egypt shows, when they were accompanying Hamza El-Din and his troupe of musicians. And it was beautiful. It was really just transcendent music.” For anyone interested, I’ll link the The Dead and the Sufi Choir, 3/71 episode of the Deadcast below so you can learn more about the event and hear a bit of the long-lost tape that documents the unusual collaboration.
Jerome and the boys finally plug in at 11 pm for their regular set. Some new Alembic mics are getting a test run and Weir heartily approves. They open with a burner of a Greatest Story Ever Told > Johnny B. Goode combination. For all you GD historians, the latter is included on Skullfuck and is the only non-NYC recording on the album. The band sounds tight on their new songs, including ace takes on Bertha and Loser. The Mathews mix is warm, with balanced instrumentation and vocals. In the middle of the frame, we get the first big jam sequence via a 24-minute Truckin’ > Drums > The Other One medley. It doesn’t go too deep, but rolls hard just the same.
The back half keeps the energy flowing, beginning with a solid Casey Jones. “We’ve got Pigpen here but we forgot to bring an organ,” Garcia announces before they dish out the next one, a smoking Hard To Handle with plenty of mojo from the Pigger and a fiery Weir/Lesh jam. After an early compact version of Playing in the Band, the lads lean into what would become the standard closer for the next few years—a Not Fade Away sandwich, with Goin’ Down the Road Feelin’ Bad. It’s adventurous and features a truckload of Garcia magic and plenty of bouncy bass from Phil. The night ends with a sweet Uncle John’s Band encore which feels just right to me.
Winterland always brought out the best in the Dead, and this Wednesday night with 4000 miscellaneous fans, freaks, mystics, religionists, and spiritualists, surely fits the bill. Dig in and see for yourself.
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