The Long Strange Trip Isn't Over: Grateful Dead's Fillmore West 1969

reviewed by suzie fitzsimmons

I don’t believe in reincarnation but I do believe that we live several lifetimes in one lifetime. I go back two or three and I’m a young hell-raising hooligan, flannel-and-boot wearing, scrappy little hard rock honey. Then one beautiful spring evening circa 1983, I hopped the El and fell through the Looking Glass, an experience much akin to riding the bus to Never Ever Land. I walked up the steps of the Spectrum in Philly, and with that—my first Grateful Dead show—my perception of music was altered for every lifetime thereafter.

So you can bet I have much to say about the Dead’s oldest/newest official live recording, Fillmore West 1969. Today I slid all three discs into the player, put the phones on, and slipped back, way back, in time to the first time I ever heard Live Dead, their first live album. Not coincidentally, that 1970 release was cut from the same cloth as Fillmore—both came from the same historic gigs. The difference is that this new set is a much expanded version of the old set, the New Boss trumping the Old Boss, if you will.

As anyone who knows a lick about the Dead will tell you, many tracks from those gigs couldn’t be included 35 years ago due to the limitations of “long play” (anticipated laughter break) albums (vinyl, people). Every delicious, bluesy, ethereal, raw, and polished song on Fillmore is splendidly preserved, an obligatory buy for all. Yes, I said all.

While I don’t want to fritter away words addressing the Dead fan stigma, let’s get it done. I am not a Deadhead. I am a rocker, a punk, was in a Nothing Resembling Successful alterna-rock band in the Nineties. I can’t stand hippies who don’t bathe. I’m an out-and-out troublemaker, was long before the original Dead boys entered my life. And from all accounts, some of them were too (they weren’t originally called The Warlocks because they played D&D). Bikers were Dead fans. Intellects and dropouts alike, apropo since Jerry was an intellectual dropout. Old and young, punks and political activists. It was never about a demographic. Some were there to belong to an all-accepting family; some, like myself, were there to appreciate music, innovative and fresh, larger than life, new with roots decades old.

Which is exactly what I heard when I hit the play button on Fillmore. It’s been more than 15 years since I’ve chosen to listen to the Dead. I packed away my bootlegs, Dead Garb, my “Jerry Wobbles” and “Fat Man Rocks” stickers, friendship bracelets and tour shirts a long time ago. Yet awakened today in my belly was the tickle of memories, echoes of concerts, days I never wanted to resurrect. It’s the music, the undeniable pull of Something Good.

Fillmore West 1969 is a wonderful tool of education for the self-taught musicologist, the aspiring musician, for the sentimental Baby Boomer and those who fell in thereafter and who are falling in still. The three-CD set is presented in a hardcover booklet. Inside are 22 pages of liner notes as well-defined as the music, giving the listener a colourful context for the music—a Speak ‘n Spell for the tragically hip. There are also pages of colour photos, the band in early days (the photos in the Live Dead centerfold were from this batch of photos). One can almost see their minds expanding.

The music... what hasn’t already been written about these sessions? The last time I listened to anything from them was in the form of Live Dead. It’s come a long way, baby. Every single rattle of the drums, every Tom Constanten spiral, every echo, every clap. A Dead show with such a small audience is an oddity itself; hearing a live recording sans 20,000+ fans in the mix is special, although I must say I somewhat missed the ebb and flow of the roaring crowd during pleasers like “Morning Dew” and “St. Stephen.”

The whole enchilada opens with “Morning Dew,” always one of my favourites. We then swagger through “Good Morning Little Schoolgirl,” “Doing That Rag,” and “I’m a King Bee” before launching into the cosmos with “Cosmic Charlie,” finishing up with the Garcia-Hunter rousting classic, “Lovelight.” Disc two starts out with “Dupree’s,” onto a mystical “Mountains of the Moon,” like some madrigal of old. It then launches into familiar territory a la Live Dead—the quintessential “Dark Star”>”St. Stephen,”>”The Eleven,” simple, clean, sharp corners laced with curling keys. Polishing off the disc is Pigpen’s “Death Don’t Have No Mercy.” Disc three explodes into action with a pristine and powerful “Other One” [Suite]. The bass and drums rhythmically driving into a frenzy, as the song goes, it “trembles and it explodes.” The journey continues with “Alligator”, "Drums”, ”Space”(excuse me, “Jam”—it was always “Space” on bootlegs). Round the curve we go to “Caution,” round a real bend into “Feedback,” then signing off with “We Bid You Goodnight”—the full version (it was cut off on Live Dead).

Look at this mini-box as your gateway set. Whether you started with Live Dead or not is irrelevant. This one is a perfect starter kit for the beginner, the intermediate, or the completist. It’s more than three hours of the Dead’s miracle of life, when the boys were well past learning to walk. By these shows, they were developing quite the stride.

The Dead’s influence will be felt for decades, centuries to come. Yeah, yeah—bands such as Blues Traveler, Phish, Dave Matthews Band are direct lineage; I forgive the Dead for that. What I think will be more pointedly the case—the way that musicians and their fans approach and appreciate music. The way a songwriter breaks through a block due to their expanded boundaries... the way a guitarist non-methodically bridges a song... or when a one-drummer band becomes a two-drummer band... because maybe they caught a show at the Spectrum one Spring evening, their mind and ears reverberating. Or maybe they’re just tuning in, they show now in syndication, but had a few magical nights of the Fillmore West 1969 shows change their minds nonetheless.