This blog is primarily about the history of the buildings the Grateful Dead played in. Why? I don’t know except I’m a fan of old buildings and especially how they’re transormed over the years for various purposes. These old buildings speak to me of people, places, culture and ideas from long ago. So the Dead are just the springboard for talking about these places.

Friday, January 20, 2012

1967 kmz (Google Earth) file

Well, here it is at last, the crazy sister to this blog, a Google Earth file listing all the venues the Dead first played in 1967, i.e. no venues from 1966 even if they played there in '67. Lots of venue info, venue/concert specific photos, links to other great blogs (that'd be YOU dear followers of this blog).
Download the file from the Google Earth users forum, or download the kmz file directly from here.

1966 venues are here

Now make sure you turn on 3D buildings and if you can't do that then turn on your love light. Or at least turn on the person standing next to you. And quit yer playin' pocket pool!

1 comment:

The Yellow Shark said...

The maps work really well and I think a nifty way to capture information on the various venues. I really should post something on the Lost Live Dead blog about this, but my memory was jogged about the date of the 1966 Portland Acid Test. I have sat for years on a date of January 1 for this without thinking too much about it it. I noticed you listed January 15 as a possible date - but that clashes with known performances at the Fillmore (14) and Matrix (15/16). I spent a while this morning looking for substantiation for my date of January 1 and find that Blair states (pp94) in "An American Life" that (a) the first 66 show was the Portland Acid Test, and (b) it pre-dates the Fillmore Acid Test (which was on January 8. In "Searching for the Sound" (pp73) Phil Lesh talks of "Upon our return from Portland, all the scuttlebutt was ablaze with the plans for the "Big One"; the Trips Festival, to take place in San Francisco's Longshoreman's Hall." I see substantiation for the much earlier date in this statement as the announcement for the Trips Festival had been made at the turn of the year when Stewart Brand first courted publicity for the event with the Montgomery Street "parade" on December 31 - when I believe the band were travelling to or already in Portland.

About Me

I'm fascinated by the evolution of place. Or more precisely how a location has been used by humans and how we've changed a place to fit our needs and fit our needs to meet a place. The older I get the more I feel a connection to people from the not-too-distant past. We walk past a building housing a Rite-Aid and mobile phone store without realizing that once there were people dancing and falling in love there, or laughing at a movie there, or skinning their knees while roller skating there, or dropping acid for the first time and grooving to Hendrix there. So this blog is a weird bit of history/architecture/Grateful Dead arcania. But what's the internet for if not for weird little bits of arcania?

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