It's A Beautiful Day, Live at the Fillmore '68

Anyone who followed rock back in the later sixties with any seriousness or for that matter anyone younger who has a sense of the history knows something about the Frisco band It's A Beautiful Day, I'll imagine. "White Bird" was their most celebrated number and it was played a great deal on the "alternative" FM rock stations then. But there was more to them than that song, of course.

They were one of the first bands to replace electric guitar solos with those of the electric violin, of David LaFlamme, who also happened to be leader, songwriter and lead vocalist for the band. I am trying to think who if anybody had an electric violinist earlier? I believe they predate the Mothers with Harris and later Ponty, the Flock with Goodman, the later Animals, Seatrain, who else? The point is that it was a distinguishing factor with the band and LaFlamme set the pace.

They had two albums on Columbia then faded. But in the interim they made some solid psychedelic period rock music. There's a new unissued recording out, Live at the Fillmore '68 (Classical Music Vault 0220), and it is just that.

The sound quality is very good, the band is charged up, they do their repertoire of the time, originals of note, much of it ending up on the first album (White Bird), some on the second (Marrying Maiden) and a few never recorded in the studio ever, at least in terms of those releases.

What's especially nice is the band has a hard hitting live sound that is perfectly captured, and they venture into expanded jams and contrasting moments pretty often compared to the studio sides. The band is tight and spacy as needed, Patti Santos is there on her Slick-esque vocals in tandem with David, there are the expected violin niceties and at least to me it wears well.

It comes with a bonus DVD disk that catches up with David and the band in later years, the struggle to keep going in changing times, footage of the band in recent years and dialog by LaFlamme about it all. It will likely appeal mostly to confirmed fans of the era and the band and it's certainly nice to see.

If you dug the band then, you'll dig this. It all has immediacy that will appeal to anyone with sympathies to a time that was indeed seminal for rock. There were an awful lot of great bands coming up then. It's A Beautiful Day was one of them.

Dawn of the Dead: The Grateful Dead and the Rise of the San Francisco Underground

Anyone with an interest in the psychedelic San Francisco of the later '60s and/or the Dead will find the two-hours-plus DVD documentary The Dawn of the Dead (Sexy Intellectual 569) an excellent go. It covers via contemporary footage and a bevy of talking heads all the salient aspects of the story. Bluegrass, blues, rock and avant origins, Kesey's Merry Pranksters, fellow travelers the Charlatans, Airplane, Quicksilver, Big Brother, the Fish, the Haight Ashbury scene, and the evolution of the Dead from a cover band to the premier psycho-jam band of the age.

There are insights into the early albums, the stylistic evolution and recording practices, the partial origins of the band's style in the Acid Test gatherings, where they were welcome to develop a loose freedom without the scrutiny of a crowd demanding pop hits, the disaster of Altamont in 1969 and a general turning away from the electric onslaught to a temporary acoustic orientation. The story of the band parallels the story of the counter-culture of the times and the film does a decent job tieing that together.

Good footage, intelligent interviews and a cohesive narrative makes this one of the better in-depth documentaries of the music of the era. Definitely catch it if you are into the history and origins of the Dead and the San Francisco Sound.