Goin' Down The Road Feeling Bad

Goin’ Down The Road Feeling Bad
with Bill Graham, The Grateful Dead,
Loudon Wainwright, Hot Tuna,
and Amy and me 
by Live Music Head

Goin’ Down The Road Feelin’ Bad

is one of my favourite songs covered by The Grateful Dead.

And it’s exactly how I was feeling in ‘09

when I left Toronto on a plane,

to take a drive in a car with Amy along the coast

from Vancouver to San Francisco.

After we arrived in Haight-Ashbury and checked into our hotel,

the first order of business was getting back into the car

and driving to the Shoreline Amphitheatre in Mountainview,

to see The Dead

in the venue that Bill Graham built

(the last time I saw The Dead in concert, come to think of it).

Graham, concert promoter and rock impresario,
had designed the amphitheatre to resemble

The Grateful Dead's "steal your face",

so for a couple of ol’ Deadheads like us

it was pretty darn cool to be seeing a show there.

It was also way cool to find myself, a few days later,

standing centre floor in the historic Fillmore West Auditorium

(the other house that Bill Graham made famous),

watching Loudon Wainwright III open up for Hot Tuna,

featuring Jorma Kaukonen and Jack Casady 

of Jefferson Airplane,

San Francisco psychedelic-blues-rock royalty.

When Loudon Wainwright walked out on stage,

I burst into tears.

For he’s the man!

The man who can write a song that moves me like no other.

Between sets,

I was pleased to chat with ol’ Loudo before he split.

And after he did,

I threw back way too many tequila shots at the bar

and woke up the next morning with no recall

of the ride back to our hotel.

I barely even remember Jorma and Jack, doh!

Thanks to Amy for keeping me safe,

but driving back to Vancouver,

I missed a lot of scenery too,

stretched out and hung over in the back seat.

Bill Graham may not have been alive to present

the two particular shows I just talked about,

but he certainly did present 

oh-so many great ones over the years...

1985’s Live Aid in Philadelphia to name only one,

and one I was at.

Yes, yes I was!

And it’s Graham’s voice that introduced Peter

on that all-time-great live album from 1976,

Frampton Comes Alive!,

some of which was also recorded in San Francisco.

In fact,

it’s Graham’s relationship with 

the San Francisco rock scene,

and particularly The Grateful Dead,

that comes to mind first and foremost 

when I think of him.

And that he once had this to say about them:

“they’re not the best at what they do...

they’re the only ones who do what they do”.

In the clip below are images of Bill Graham

mixed in with images of San Francisco rock history...

overlapped with the groovy beat of 

an American traditional song,

aka "a white blues of universal appeal and uncertain origin",

as performed by the good ol' Grateful Dead...