the burdens of being an usher

https://archive.org/details/gd1970-11-07.134083.aud.weinberg.parish.flac16


(third track in)

There's a new transfer at LMA of one of the legendary Marty Weinberg’s recordings from the Capitol Theater on 11/7/70.  It's just the tail end of the 2nd set and all of the (short) 3rd set.  In my (and most everybody else’s) opinion, the 7th is the weakest show from this famous run (lightintoashes is on the case as always!), but this fragment is worth a listen for a little impromptu "interview" with an extremely laid back usher (not Ken Lee, I presume).  Nefarious fire chiefs and undercover cops notwithstanding, being an user apparently isn’t a bad job at all — if you don’t have to hassle anybody.  “The Dead is the worst one [concert] for hassling people… everybody smokes.”  Then we get a demonstration of said hassling: “Don’t smoke that joint!  Pass it around!”  Everyone's gotta make a living, I guess.

After some talk about police busts, plus an argument about which night has been the best so far, the interview closes with the revelation that the usher is sporting a bootleg Dead t-shirt (two bucks, “go to Flushing, Union Street”).  He refuses Marty's offer to buy any Dead tapes, though.  Professional!

Playing in the LMA

There are several active GD discussion forums online, and while I lurk at a couple, I'm really only active on just one.  A regular lurk spot is the GD forum at archive.org, which has been going for nearly ten years now (!?) and it's only the weirdly linear formatting that prevents me from actively participating.  But it's still an incredible wealth of information, even if that information tends to get buried almost immediately.  I was just revisiting this wonderful post on noteworthy Playing in the Bands from 1976-1995 by bkidwell (who has posted some really fantastic analyses there), which covers a lot of non-obvious selections.  This is most definitely worth a look if you've never come across it.

https://archive.org/post/376567/playin-the-post-retirement-years-long

Some serious #TIANILB happening in there, btw.  As with any great GD analysis, this is equal parts "how could he have left out xyz!?" (really, no 4/19/86?) and "seriously? I've never heard a thing about abc before..." before pointing the way to fertile ground for even more analytical plowing to be done (do you think there will ever be a quasi-comprehensive review of the post-GD oeuvre?).

As for now, my own homework: reacquainting myself with 9/19/87 and 12/27/89.  Then maybe 6/6/93? or 9/28/93?  Do I dare disturb my universe?