On November 28, 1973, Grateful Dead guitarist Jerry Garcia and drummer Mickey Hart staged a performance at San Francisco’s Palace Of Fine Arts. At the time, Hart – whose 80th birthday is today – was on a sabbatical from the Dead, having last performed in public with Garcia and the band in February 1971. Hart would rejoin the Dead for good in October 1974.
A poster promoting the concert shows a clean-shaven Garcia dressed in black beside an equally freshly shaven Hart wearing all white. At the bottom of the advertisement was printed “An Experiment in Quadrophonic Sound.”
When Hart and Garcia got together in November 1973, they were joined during the experimental performance by Grateful Dead bassist Phil Lesh. Also participating was Ned Lagin, a keyboard player and electronic musician who first encountered the Dead around 1970 while studying in Boston at M.I.T. and Berklee College Of Music.
Lagin appeared on the Dead’s 1970 album American Beauty and 1974 album From the Mars Hotel. He also performed onstage with the Grateful Dead many times between 1970 and 1975, often incorporating performances of his pioneering electronic music composition, Seastones.
The Palace Of Fine Arts concert was an early precursor to Lagin’s ambitious Seastones project. Released in 1975 by Garcia’s Round Records, Seastones was recorded over many years dating back to 1970, with several sessions taking place at Hart’s studio built in a barn on his ranch in Novato, California. The album featured Hart, Garcia, Lesh, David Crosby and members of Jefferson Airplane, including Grace Slick.
What transpired on November 28, 1973, was among Lagin’s first performances featuring quadrophonic sound. According to the NedBase website:
“Ned performed the entire concert (although not onstage), and Phil did the live quad mix. The booking and publicity started before all had committed to the concert – this explains why there has been some confusion as to who played and how this related to Seastones. Included as part of this show was the first Seastones live/tape performance in quad. This was a partial one, using pre-recorded Seastones tracks and the live musicians’ performance, and some other pre-recorded tapes by Ned. Ned played an Arp Odyssey for most of the show seated at the mix board centered in the audience with Phil next to him mixing in quad.”
In an interview with The JamBase Podcast, Mickey Hart recalled the groundbreaking Palace Of Fine Arts performance. Recorded in 2022 on what would have been Garcia’s birthday, Hart recalled his experience at the duo concert with Garcia in 1973 that was not only a Seastones precursor but also planted the seeds for the band’s mind-bending “Space” jams.
“There were so many exciting that we’ve done together. Adventurous musical things. He was also into adventure and creating new spaces, so we had that in common. We got together many times out of the ring – where he first discovered synthesizers, being able to synthesize his guitar, which led to MIDI.
“The first concert we did was in 1973. It was just a duo. He got an Arp [Odyssey], an electric instrument, a keyboard, and he plugged his guitar into it and that was the first time I had heard his guitar I had heard his guitar running through sophisticated synthesizers.
“I just thought of that concert, which kind of was the beginning of ‘Space’ – ‘Drums’ and ‘Space’ actually – it might have been the very beginning of it. And I think of that on his birthday, the seminal things we did together.”
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Mickey Hart On ‘The JamBase Podcast’
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The JamBase Podcast: Mickey Hart
Drummer Mickey Hart of the Grateful Dead and Dead & Co. discusses the new Planet Drum album, ‘In The Groove,’ and more on ‘The JamBase Podcast.’
After the November 28, 1973 concert, the Grateful Dead began to occasionally incorporate elements of a “Space” jam into their shows. In January 1978, Dead shows almost always included a nightly “Drums” jam paired with a freeform “Space” jam, consistently showing up mid-second set throughout the rest of their career.
Hart’s innovative drone instrument influenced by the ancient Greek philosopher Pythagoras known as The Beam is a central component of “Space.” The “Drums”/”Space” second set excursions continued during the five “Fare Thee Well” Grateful Dead 50th anniversary concerts in 2015. Hart and The Beam continue to be prominently featured during “Space” segments during second sets of Dead & Company concerts.
Listen to a recording of the integral November 28, 1973 concert featuring Mickey Hart and Jerry Garcia, along with Ned Lagin and Phil Lesh below:
https://www.instagram.com/p/CxDuteTS1m7/
