Iron Butterfly live, heavy at Fillmore East
September 19, 2011
They’ve been going in and out of style since “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida” first scorched earth in 1968. Looks like Iron Butterfly is in for another round of retro-appreciation.
On Oct. 17, the psychedelic heavies get the Rhino Handmade treatment with a live double-CD set recorded at the Fillmore East.
The CDs (and MP3s) capture the “classic” version of Iron Butterfly in April 1968, just after the band was rebuilt in the wake of their debut album. The album “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida” would surface several months after these performances.
There are 22 songs recorded during a quartet of sets at the Bill Graham concert hall.
The line-up is singer/organist Doug Ingle, bassist Lee Dorman, teen guitarist Erik Brann and drummer Ron Bushy.
Here’s Rhino’s word on the audio for “Fillmore East 1968″:
The well-defined sound heard on these previously unreleased recordings is the result of the quality of the original tapes and the meticulous restoration used to prepare them for this project. Original recording engineer Lee Osborne recorded all the shows using a ½” four-track recorder running at 15 ips. Unfortunately, audio signal issues made the first two songs from the second set on April 26 unusable.
If those two songs were usable, they’d be repeats anyway. Like many collector’s sets, “Fillmore East 1968″ offers multiple versions of its tracks. (Alas, there is no repeat-free single CD.) “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida,” for instance, appears twice — in a 17:11 version and a slightly restrained 15:20 take.
The band’s monster closing number, “Iron Butterfly Theme,” shows up four times, running between 4 and 5 minutes. “Iron Butterfly Theme” is No. 30 on this site’s list of the top 100 psychedelic songs.
The Butterfly gave the New York audience a preview of two other “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida” album songs, “Are You Happy” and “My Mirage.”
Other likely highlights are “Unconscious Power,” “So-Lo” and “Possession,” all from the debut album, “Heavy.”
The Rhino Handmade set is available for preorder at $40. No other retail sales.
The collector’s label also went psychedelic with “Box of Fudge” from Vanilla Fudge. We hold out much greater hopes for “Fillmore East 1968″ as Iron Butterfly is a vastly underrated band (with the Fudge vastly overrated).
Grateful Dead’s history a Society affair
March 6, 2010
Roll over Frederick Douglass and tell Abe Lincoln the news: the Grateful Dead have crashed Manhattan’s local history museum.
Dead heads are flocking to Central Park West this weekend as “Grateful Dead: Now Playing at the New-York Historical Society” debuts.
The exhibit comes almost exclusively from the Grateful Dead archives at the University of California Santa Cruz and is its first major showing. So what’s the Dead memorabilia doing way over there in Manhattan?
The historical society has your answer in one incredibly long sentence: “(The Dead) played in and around New York City on a regular basis, from early dates at Greenwich Village coffeehouses, impromptu performances in Central Park and at Columbia University during the 1968 Student Strike; to concerts at midsized venues, including the Fillmore East, the Academy of Music and the 46th Street Rock Palace in Brooklyn during the 1970s; and, ultimately, to performances at larger halls and stadiums such as Radio City Music Hall, Madison Square Garden and Giants Stadium.
“The Grateful Dead’s time in New York will be viewed in the context of cultural traditions and events unique to New York, but also as yet another stop on a long, strange touring trip that included dates in New York, San Francisco, and everywhere in between,” the museum explained.
Another reason: the Dead archive materials remain mostly warehoused in Santa Cruz, as the university prepares primo exhibition space as a permanent home.
Goodies on display include the band’s famed psychedelic concert posters, trippy set lists, album art such as the “American Beauty
For those who want take-home, the gift shop is brimming with fun psychedelic stuff.
The Los Angeles Times tracked the Grateful Dead exhibit’s history, which starts improbably with Henry Kissinger, who gave a speech at the museum urging historians to look at the ’60s in order to understand the U.S. A former museum board member copped to being a Dead head and lobbied for a band exhibition as a follow-up on Kissinger’s advice.
The exhibition runs through July 4 — fittingly, as it’s a touchstone holiday for the band and its Uncle Sam.
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