Re-Opening Of The Fillmore ~ April 27, 1994

I was there the night before, but I was at a Jerry show at the Warfield that night. Spent most of the morning between the two in the ER.

It was a hell of a couple of days.

Who wants to read a mention of DANA Morgan?

- you all know his claim to fame?

it helps when dad owns a music store and that JG deity taught banjo there..

http://jerrygarciasbrokendownpalaces.blogspot.com/2012/12/magoos-pizza-6...

5/5/65 is meaningful and maybe should have had a thread of it's own, but what's it got to do with the re-opening of the Fillmore in 1994???

^^ absolutely nothing.  Too lazy or I  didn't feel like starting another thread 

apologies for "stepping on your toes "  >> free form thread jamming

 (and all that old dead origins stuff is meaningful to an "older" local guy that grew up and identifies with a lot of that history with memories of my town my youth and music and such 

carry on

Wait.  I'm not done interrupting   It's all one story after all 

https://relix.com/articles/detail/55-years-ago-today-the-grateful-dead-d...

early days, pranksters,acid tests and a link to a YouTube with sound recordings.   Not the ventures but some adventurous surf like music

now back to your regularly scheduled programming 

As I recall, the two shows that brought the hippies back to the venerated, refurbished building happened several weeks later, in May.

Kesey had this weird play thing him and the Pranksters were doing, called "Twister." How could you not go see the Pranksters at the "new" Fillmore? The play, loosely based on Wizard of Oz, didn't make much sense. I think they brought the Thunder Machine with them. That was Thursday and Friday.

(I remember that Kesey was signing things after the show and I gave him a small hologram of a pot leaf and he signed my business card.  It's around here somewhere. And there were dozens of these mimeographed flyers on colored paper lying around after the show -- still have a few of those.)

And then Saturday the Starship (I think with Paul Kantner, Jack Casady  and Marty Balin -- maybe even Jorma -- in the band) played with Merl and TC opening.

That  weekend was the real re-opening. Good times indeed.

Now this is a reeeeal vague memory - but I think when they reopened in 94 they moved the stage back to the wall where it was in the sixties. I could be totally wrong, but I kinda remember for the Airplane reunion in 89 the room was "sideways." But maybe that was me that was sideways.

possible you are remembering : Winterland was sideways for a bit. One show was the people's park bail bond benefit. That was tres cool with an amazing line up. And Janis was on stage with mr mckernan on a conga drum I believe somehow quicksilver is a vague sideways memory?

Now this is a reeeeal vague memory - but I think when they reopened in 94 they moved the stage back to the wall where it was in the sixties. I could be totally wrong, but I kinda remember for the Airplane reunion in 89 the room was "sideways." But maybe that was me that was sideways.

No. I was at those Airplane shows as well as numerous other shows in that brief time when the Fillmore reopened in '89 (before it closed after the earthquake) and the stage was always where it is. I saw the Airplane, Cipollina tribute, Steven Stills, David Crosby, Edgar Winter Group, Little Feat, Ziggy Marley and a long list of others that year. The stage was never sideways.....

One cool thing about The Fillmore is you can clearly see the stage looking into the mirrors behind the side bars. add a little L and maybe you get a reeeeal vague sideways memory! haha...

>>>ou can clearly see the stage looking into the mirrors behind the side bars. add a little L and maybe you get a reeeeal vague sideways memory<<<

Now that's some good free-form thread jamming.

<One cool thing about The Fillmore is you can clearly see the stage looking into the mirrors behind the side bar>

Ha...yes...  that's true... especially when it was so crowded that was the only way up front and the only way to see the stage.....forgot about that. I liked the upstairs side bar for quick service.

Yep, then I have no clear memory of those JA reunion shows. I do remember it was a hard ticket but we got the extra we needed out front at the last minute. Guess the room was spinning. 

DJ -  I found the setlists and a review for that JS show. Darby!

Sunrise -> Have you seen the saucers?, 3/5 of a mile in 10 seconds, Crown of creation, Today (slight equipment buzz at the end), The light, Lawman, Paul's romantic intro -> Miracles, Gold (slight dropout during crowd cheers after the song), The radiance of mirrors -> Women who fly

CD 2 : Bass solo -> White rabbit, Paul's quiet and tender intro -> Count on me, Marty's "Throw joints" rap -> Shadowlands, I'm on fire, Paul's spaceships rap -> Wooden ships, Somebody to love, Paul's band introductions -> Paul's "Almost sick of it" rap -> Volunteers

Line-up : Paul Kantner, Marty Balin, Darby Gould, Jack Casady, Mark "Slick" Aguilar, Tim Gorman, Charles "Prairie" Prince, Trey Sabatelli

Re Kesey and Twister.. "In 1994, he toured with members of the Merry Pranksters performing a musical play he wrote about the millennium called Twister: A Ritual Reality. .. Kesey,.. enlisted the band Jambay, one of the original bands of the jam band genre, to be his "pit orchestra." Jambay played an acoustic set before each Twister performance and an electric set after each show."

I guess Kesey - as always - was a little ahead of the times as this review says his play was addressing pandemics and climate change in 94:

"....I went to the Fillmore to see Twister, a multimedia play, with music, by Ken Kesey and some of the original Merry Pranksters. Twister catches us up with our old friends from the land of Oz--who, like many of us, have changed with the times. The Scarecrow (Phil Dietz) is schized out, the Tinman (George Walker) terminally rusted and the Cowardly Lion, who doesn't appear, is off commanding a paramilitary operation in Idaho. Dorothy herself (Karen McCormick) is tougher and harder, and like everyone else--at least according to Kesey, who plays the Wizard in leprechaunish top hat--she is asleep while the world hurtles toward disaster.

The harbingers in the play are a precipitate rise in disease, the increasing frequency of earthquakes and the altered weather. All these are of course physical and biological, not political, phenomena, although lurking behind them and our inability to deal with them is the real problem always and ever for Kesey: Germanic, stiff-necked stupidity, represented onstage by Frankenstein (Ken Babbs).

Some of Kesey's solutions, like "opening a dialogue" with viruses rather than trying to eradicate them--which would only send them underground to perfect their deadliness--hold out the possibility of ecological wisdom. But Kesey's overall answer is to embrace mind over brain, the existential "motion with emotion" exemplified in rock and roll and embodied in the play by Elvis (Simon Babbs). It's as though nobody's told him the King's mind/body died the victim of its own success, a vat of addicted lard. Or, to paraphrase Wade Raney, at this juncture we could use a whole lot more penetrating analysis and a lot less rock and roll...."

 https://www.questia.com/magazine/1G1-15944206/twister