SNACK Benefit, Kezar Stadium, San Francisco, CA, 3-23-1975, Part 2: The Grateful Dead

The second major act to perform at the 1975 SNACK benefit was the Grateful Dead. 

Note that this was a very unusual concert for the Grateful Dead. That probably explains why the band appeared quite early in the day, to lower expectations. 1975 was a strange year for the band. They went on touring hiatus in October 1974, and only resumed touring on a regular basis in June 1976. In 1975, they just played four concerts, including this one.

Technically, this act was billed as "Jerry Garcia and Friends." But actually, it was every member of the Grateful Dead plus Merl Saunders on organ and Ned Lagin on keyboards. 

What really sets this concert apart for the band though was the set list. For one thing, they were used to playing two hours or longer each concert. But here, they were limited to a 30-minute long set. (They went a little over.) They decided to fill nearly all of that with a completely instrumental performance, except for the encore. Furthermore, their big instrumental section was music that they'd never put on record or performed in public yet. According to media reports, they called the entire thing "Space Age." However, later in 1975 they would release the studio album "Blues for Allah" and most of it was on that album in different forms, so we can assign names to the parts of the instrumental sections.

That was a pretty ballsy move to perform such experimental music, especially in front of a crowd that mostly did not consist of their usual "Deadhead" fan base. The only thing they did to appeal to the masses was the encore, a lively cover of the Chuck Berry standard "Johnny B. Goode," with vocals. This has to be one of the most unique concerts the band ever did. The only times they played versions of this "Blues for Allah" song making up most of their set was in their four 1975 concerts.

This album is 37 minutes long.

Note that the track numbering continues where the numbering for the previous album from this concert left off. All the rest of the albums from the concert follow that same pattern.

08 talk by Bill Graham (Grateful Dead)
09 Blues for Allah [Instrumental Version] (Grateful Dead)
10 Milking the Turkey [Instrumental] (Grateful Dead)
11 Drums [Instrumental] (Grateful Dead)
12 Milking the Turkey [Instrumental] (Grateful Dead)
13 Blues for Allah [Reprise] [Instrumental Version] (Grateful Dead)
14 talk (Grateful Dead)
15 Johnny B. Goode (Grateful Dead) 

https://www.upload.ee/files/16603877/VA-SNCKBnefitKzarStdumSnFrncscoCA__3-23-1975_02GrteflDed_atse.zip.html

I was ready to post the albums from this concert weeks ago, but I was held up by the cover art. I found photos for six of the eight acts from this exact concert, but all of them were in black and white. So it took me a while to get around to colorizing them with the help of the Palette program. This photo only shows the band's two lead singers, Jerry Garcia and Bob Weir. I know I got the colors right for Garcia, because I found a color photo of just him. I preferred this one though. I had to guess the colors for Weir, and stuck pretty closely to what the Palette program chose.