THE BLUE DEVILS MEET FRIENDS OF THE DEVIL, PT. 1

CAMERON INDOOR STADIUM
DUKE UNIVERSITY
DURHAM, NORTH CAROLINA
4/12/78

 SET ONE

One	Jack Straw [5:47] ; Dire Wolf [4:02] ; Beat It On Down The Line [3:19]; Peggy-O [8:05] ; Mama Tried [2:31] > Mexicali Blues [3:47] ; Funiculi Funicula [0:49] ; Row Jimmy [10:25] ; New Minglewood Blues [5:12] ; Loser [8:25] ; Lazy Lightnin' [3:55] > Supplication [5:29]

INTRO

OF THE GRATEFUL DEAD VIDEO FOOTAGE I have stumbled upon or sought out, this is by far my favorite. (So far.) It’s a treasure, a must-see for any Deadhead.

It is also so mindboggingly great that not only is it worth devouring in one setting, but also so intensely enjoyable that you the viewer might need a break between the one and the two. Which is how I will handle it.

NOTES FROM THE FIRST SET

• The charming crudity of the presentation. Shot in black-and-white and with three cameras presumably by the students, the cinematography is less than expert but “acceptable” upon a pro-am spectrum. More than occasionally it goes out of focus and is marred by other visual blemishes. The camera angles are not particularly mapped out, especially the shots from behind. The lenses appear to be fixed so there are no varieties of the usual shots seen in a concert film. A lack of a wide lens means that all seven members of the band can’t be seen in any given shot, usually only the “front line” of Bob Weir, Donna Jean Godchaux, Jerry Garcia and Keith Godchaux. Occasionally Phil Lesh and Bill Kreutzmann are seen in the background,but poor Mickey Hart is completely absent, not even a cameo shot!

• “Garcia, unhinged”: If you are a Deadhead of a certain age and were lucky to see Garcia during his glory years maybe this footage doesn’t amaze you or my observations about him. But for those of us who never saw him in concert, or witnessed the sad figure who marked his long decline, the bloated, immobile, sullen statue wracked by addiction, poor health and boredom with the band and his own iconic status, this footage is a revelation. Not only does he look a figure of health,as thin as he ever was, but he’s thoroughly engaged and charming. You don’t doubt he’s having fun that night; his smiling is as luminescent as flares. In fact its brighter than the abysmal lighting being employed here. (A running gag from the audience is a demand for the lights to be turned out so they can see better.) Watching him, mouth agape, I couldn't help thinking that the band's iconic "Dancing Bear" logo may have once symbolized Owsley "Bear" Stanley, but how quickly it came to mark Garcia as the holder of the sigil. The Happy, Dancing Bear was Garcia that night.

• Despite all the aesthetic/technical flaws one matter the cinematographer absolutely excelled at was recording the stunning guitar work of Garcia/Weir in lucid clarity. This is one of the reasons why the Duke show is an essential. Especially for guitarists.  Not to sound blasphemous but Weir is by far more of the revelation. Despite his missing fretting fingers( a malady he shared with Django Reinhardt), Garcia, though a virtuoso, was never an eccentric visual figure as a musician. Aside from the little flamenco flourishes he added to some of his solos, he remained rooted as a statue. He didnt’ run around the stage like an Eddie Van Halen or an Angus Young. Nor was he a visual spectacle on the order of Jimi Hendrix or Stevie Ray Vaughan. He rarely ventured further away from his microphone; he concentrated upon his passages...Weir on the other hand was not only more theatrical but idiosyncratic, even mysterious. The endless flourishes with his right strumming hand don’t have any other precedents in popular guitar playing—Hendrix and other lead guitarists visibly showed off with their fretting hands, especially after executing a hammer-on or pull-off much to their satisfaction. But Weir is a rhythm guitarist—one of the greatest of all time. So maybe those hypnotic hand motions have been a way to call attention to his occupational gifts, so be it. For nearly all of the 20th century the guitar has been a phallic instrument, a means for mostly young men to draw attention to themselves. But as someone who has been obsessed with the guitar and guitarists for nearly forty years add my voice to the consensus of writers and fans who have been baffled by Weir’s implausible style. How the hell does he play “that way” and generate his trademark angular, slicing, razor-crisp sound? Even all the fascinating close-ups of Weir’s right hand on display during the first set can’t dispel this mystery. Try to imitate him and you’re likely to remain absolutely baffled. The fingerings for his chords and inversions aren’t esoteric with a basic familiarity with the guitar neck. Yet trying to match it up with the right handed jabs he lands upon the strings in order to emulate his sound will leave most players and hobbyists baffled. And even more appreciative of Weir.

• Donna Jean Godchaux remains the most polarizing member of the Grateful Dead. By the length of the Golden Gate Bridge, too. One camp, the more passionate and vociferous of the two, wishes any trace of her upon any live recording could digitally be removed so that they could listen without perpetually wincing. An alley cat in heat is a more preferable racket for this lot. The other group will admit to some of Donna Jean’s “pitch” problems as well as affectations for yowling and screaming, which can not be denied across recorded sources by 1978. The double symbolism of Donna Jean triumphs any auditory displeasure for this group more geared to Utopianism. I’ll call this band of Deadheads “progressive.” This second group delighted in a dual representational consideration of Donna Jean. First, they were happy to see a woman, any woman, be a full time member of the band. It didn’t have to be a “feminist” victory and yet it was, a valuable symbol in a decade when Feminism had joined the mainstream in American thought and action. Many could delight in their favorite band having a female member. (Cynics deride her as being there only as a “packaged deal,” only gaining entrance because of her more unassailable husband.) And she was representational, as many women in the audience and community could fantasize it was them up their singing “It Must Have Been the Roses” or “Goinig Down the Road Feeling Bad.” Well, she's in very good form during the first set. While not indispensable, she's an ally in service to the music.
• That preamble is sincere but also to allow me an indulgence. Jean-Luc Godard once famously said Cinema is about boys looking at girls. No amount of P.C. dictatorial edicts will ever change that. (Straight)boys will always like to look at girls. Get over it, snowflakes and Mary Janes. Donna Jean had about two dance moves in her repertoire and boy did she know how to use them. In a limited hippie chick sort of way. I've always thought the young DJG was just that, a pin-up for the ultimate hippie or post-hippie chick. Watching her dance around in a bare white dress is probably more than my decadent heart can tolerate for very long. I feel as foolish about her as Herod did for Salome.
• TO BE CONTINUED