Category: Dance band

On this day

~ Dan Ramsden

Though the initial framework and a rudimentary form of the system was unveiled at Stanford University‘s Maples Pavilion on February 9, 1973 (every tweeter blew as the band began their first number), the Grateful Dead did not begin to tour with the full system until a year later.

Wall of Sound – Wikipedia

Sometimes the cards ain’t worth a dime…

If you don’t lay them down.

February 9, 1973 – Palo Alto, CA

Lately it occurs to me…

Many people assume that besides the great primal deception there is also in every individual case a little special deception provided for their benefit, in other words that when a drama of love is performed on the stage, the actress has, apart from the hypocritical smile for her lover, also an especially insidious smile for the quite particular spectator in the top balcony. This is going too far.

February 9, 1918 – Blue Octavo Notebooks

Hang it up and see what tomorrow brings.

The other side

~ Dan Ramsden

The value of the speech is asset value, big or small, the value of the listening is optionality. Substance grows and its potential rises as the option/asset ratio also does, much like in a startup, because everyone is in the venture business in the end.

The celebration party

~ Dan Ramsden

There is no other instance in musical performance, I don’t think, where the band and repertory continue on, indefinitely through the decades, as new musicians take the place of founders and the baton is gradually passed.

Add to this the easy, open access to show archives for an act that never ceased to tour, complete and going back to the point of origin, so that each addition to the record, every point of inspiration, is there to relive, argue about, or discover…

… the books and essays, the social banter and discussion, the cover bands all over, the generational and demographic overlap…

… and it feels as though what started as mere backdrop to a local social experiment some 50 years ago, was in fact its core, with a tipping point along the way, like any movement or economy or social network.

But without any agenda, come and go as you please.

At Shakedown St. & Lonely Ave.

~ Dan Ramsden

The used book bins are modern treasures, where every so often a gem…

Some of them are pocket size with dry and yellow pages, pencil highlights and notes along the margins from the prior readers in the line… paperback editions that haven’t been in print for decades, and the covers tell a story of their own.

Once in a while, the object is new and hardly touched, priced to sell, which is a different sort of find entirely… almost less valuable, depending…but if the mood is right or the edition touches on a moment, or preferably both…

You just gotta poke around…

Don’t tell me this town ain’t got no heart…

And when you do, there’s often a surprise that’s buried and unnoticed…

… the sunshine never comes through.

The best book bins are where you least expect to find them, but they’re everywhere.