The Fillmore

And it was whether he was selling out or not.

And I actually went to hear, maybe it was a couple of years later, probably about 1970, Miles played with a group at the Fillmore, Fillmore West in San Francisco.

And I went over there, and I got a ticket.

And I don't even know if I was with a friend or not.

By 1965, he was managing the San Francisco Mime Troupe, and when they got busted for performing without a permit, he threw a benefit to pay their legal bills.

The show made money, real money, so he did it again a month later, December 10, 1965, at the Fillmore Auditorium.

Bigger venue, bigger crowd, same chaotic energy.

And somewhere around this time, probably late November, maybe early December, the Warlocks picked a new name out of a dictionary, Grateful Dead.

He wasn't just some promoter looking to cash in on the scene.

He cared about the music, about the bands, about making sure the shows actually happened, even when he thought you were completely insane.

So when Graham leased the Fillmore Auditorium full-time and started booking regular shows in early 1966, the Dead became part of his roster.

January 8, 1966, their first official Fillmore show.

But man...

The Fillmore, the Fillmore, the 11th of April.

How amazing.

How did that go? Yeah, how amazing.

Yeah, it was fantastic.

You know, some of those shows were really good and some of them weren't so good, but yeah.

Well, the Fillmore was one of the good ones.

Yeah, the film was one of the good ones.

The audience recognizes it and cheers, and then somebody leans into the taper's microphone and announces, in a cheerful radio voice, that they're going to do a little turn on your love light for everybody out there in Radioland.

there was no radio it was one fan's tape recorder but for a moment in that crowded hall somebody decided the whole world was listening and introduced the song to it nobody agrees on this and nobody ever has where did the dead actually learn love light the obvious answer is bobby bland the man the song was written for the kind of record pigpen had grown up hearing but the dead's earliest versions came along in the same stretch of time that them's cover was out in the world a rougher garage band reading by a group of young white rockers much closer in spirit to what a bar band from palo alto might sound like the writer michael kaler tracing where the dead's version came from sets both records out side by side did pigpen bring it straight from the soul record the way he brought so much or did the band hear it second-hand through an Irish rock group, and only later trace it home, or did it simply arrive the way songs arrived in those years, from a jukebox, a friend, the radio, nobody quite sure which, come back up now, away from the man in the leather vest away from the drummers up past the amplifiers into the dark above the crowd the song is still going down there the groove holding steady on its two chords from up here it's only a warm faint thump and a field of people slowly turning to say hello listen to the room before anybody arrives a big upstairs hall in the Fillmore district of San Francisco wooden floor high ceiling the kind of place that was built for dances long before anybody called them concerts with nobody in it it ticks and settles a radiator knocks somewhere a door downstairs swings on its hinge and thuds shut the floorboards give a long low creak as the building cools and then go quiet again out on the street a bus sighs to a stop and pulls away later tonight this room will be full and loud but right now it's just a dance hall waiting for the dancing that's worth remembering about the early grateful dead they were a dance band they stretched every song out farther than anybody had asked them to and they would keep stretching for thirty years but at the root of it the job was to keep a room full of people moving so it makes a kind of sense that one of the songs they picked up early was a recent motown hit about exactly that people dancing in the street dancing in the street belonged to martha and the vandellas it came out of detroit and went high in the charts a bright urgent joyful record written by a team at motown that included a young marvin gay The dead started playing it in the year they were living in and around the hay.

One careful history of the song suggests they may have played it even earlier, back in the warlocks' days, though if they did, no tape survives to prove it.

What the dead did with it was what they did with everything.

But here's your tape oddity for tonight, those folding chairs.

The Fillmore was a dance hall.

Its whole reason for being was a big open floor where people moved around all night, and for these shows according to the most careful chronicler of the band's early dates the hall set out rows of folding chairs and most of the tickets for otis had been bought by people from the neighborhood the largely african-american residents of the fillmore district a great soul singer was coming to their own street they sat down to listen nobody agrees on this and nobody ever has who exactly was in that room bill graham remembered it as a mixed audience later writers retelling the story sometimes made it sound like a summit of worshipful young white musicians the whole san francisco scene crowded in to learn at the feet of the master and the man who has done the most patient work on these dates points out that the story has been told many times and that it sometimes grows in the retelling the neighborhood bought most of the tickets he says so whose night was it the musicians who later told the story or the people from the district who filled the folding chairs and never wrote anything down about it at all after the last show some one stacks the folding chairs against the wall one on top of another with a long metal clatter that echoes up into the ceiling the coat rack stands empty the coffee urn has gone cold and out on the street the people from the neighborhood are walking home in their good coats through the cold december air it's warm inside warmer than you expect the heat of a small room with too many amplifiers in it and not enough air it smells of spilled beer and old wood and of the electric dust that rises off a tube amplifier after it's been on for a few hours the fog is pressing against the door from outside cool and wet and every time somebody comes in a little of it rolls across the floor before the warmth eats it up this is the matrix a small club on fillmore street in san francisco at the turn of a new decade by then it had stopped being much of a place for headliners it had become a musician's hang-out and by the end of that year one writer noted it was mostly jerry garcia's hangout on monday nights garcia had been jamming there with an organ player named howard wales long far-out instrumentals no songs to speak of the three or four of them following each other wherever the music went then wales left garcia who you might think could hold any stage with just his guitar apparently didn't want to carry it without an organ beside him And the bass player, John Kahn, had an idea.

He said he had just done some sessions with a guy named Merle Saunders.

Um, But also was the band that opened up for the Sex Pistols on their final show ever in San Francisco.

I want to say the Fillmore West, but don't quote me on that.

But they disintegrated shortly thereafter, and yeah, the nuns opened for them.

So cool stuff there.

Meaning he had from a previous association with a guitar player, he had the costumes and He had the era equipment.

He had the light show that he licensed from Joshua White, who did the Fillmore and everything.

He had everything, but he didn't have the Jimi Hendrix.

And so when he met me, I was touring with Billy Cox, Jimmy's bass player.

And that's how I met my partner, Mike Gotch.

And it's marriage made in heaven.

Basically, what we do is we portray all of Jimmy's important concerts, Monterey Pop, the Fillmore years, Band of Gypsies, Woodstock, Rainbow Bridge, and the Cry of Love, final Cry of Love tour.

We do this in era costumes, era equipment.

They do have the best live album ever, I'll give you that, and they are incredible.

I am guessing you mean live at the Fillmore East, 1971, because it is fantastic.

Now, have you heard live at the Fillmore West? Also phenomenal, but only released in the last several years.

I forget which year it came out, but it is fantastic as well.

I'm Jimmy Sengenberger, talking music, politics, and more as we continue on KOA.