2000 Date: Wed, 16 Sep 1998 12:05:52 -0400 From: "Matthew Iarrobino" Subject: BUDD: DICK LATVALA STORY HERE IS A STORY I WROTE FOR JAMBANDS.COM ABOUT DICK LATVALA. IT IS THE COMPLETE TRANSCRIPTION WITH COMMENTS THROWN IN BY ME. Story: Dick Latvala at the Wetlands Written and Transcribed by: Matt Iarrobino By now, most of us know who Dick Latvala is. He is the inspiration behind the *Dicks¢s Picks* series of releases on Grateful Dead Records and the official *Tape Archivist* for The Grateful Dead. On August 8th, the 3rd anniversary of Jerry Garcia¢s death, Dick was at The Wetlands Preserve in New York City. He spoke to the crowd that night, answering questions and engaging in discussion. VH-1 was in attendance, doing a story on Grateful Dead tape trading. I was lucky enough to be the DJ on this evening. For most Dead fans, Dick¢s Picks is just what everyone has been waiting for: superb sounding soundboard recordings of stellar Dead shows, spanning their career, officially released by The Dead. Of course, there was One From The Vault, Two From the Vault, Hundred Year Hall, Live Dead, Dozin at the Knick, Europe ¢72, etc. Dick¢s Picks, however, represents something much more special. The sound is a bit rough and unaltered, which I feel, preserves the original energy of the music played on the evening of the show. It¢s more of a snapshot of a moment in time, capturing the spirit of the moment just as good as any photograph can do. A good way to hear this difference in sound is to compare 5/3 and 5/4/72 with Europe ¡72. 5/3 and 5/4/72 are not Dick¢s Picks shows, but two shows that made it into circulation over the past year and a half. The interesting thing is that songs from these shows were used by The Dead for the Europe ¢72 album, specifically, China>Rider, Tennessee! J! ! ed, and Jack Straw. If you listen to the mixed versions on Europe ¢72, there are signal processing effects added such as reverb, compression, etc. If you listen to the circulated tapes, you get the raw sound, unaltered, and full on sonic energy. Dick¢s Picks are altered a bit, but still seem to capture that energy. Dick spoke to the crowd of about a hundred and fifty at The Wetlands on the seventh. He touched upon a number of subjects including taping, The Other Ones, future Dick¢s Picks releases, Phish, and much more. Below is the transcription of the entire speech with comments thrown in by me. Dick: Hi, my name is Dick Latvala, I¢m the fall guy for a program of releases we do at Grateful Dead Central here called Dick¢s Picks, and if you want to raise any problems with me, do it! But I¢m gonna try to coax some people up here on stage that have some knowledge that¢s way beyond mine, cuz¢ I don¢t know much of anything about this subject. But there are people here in this crowd that do know a lot about taping, and that¢s sort of what we were talking about downstairs with some people down there, VH1 wanted to talk about this whole taping thing, you know. Why do people have tapes, you know? Why don¢t they just settle for going into the record store and getting a CD? Well, so were addressing those issues and we could take this anywhere and um, I¢ll say anywhere, take it! Ahh, and some of you might want to raise some issues. I have my own issues, I¢d like to address, but I, like Steve Silberman, my boss man. This man here is famous (a man gets on stage and sits o! n ! ! a stool to the left of Dick) and ahh, way famouser than me, and ahh, he knows something, so ahh, he wrote a book called Skeleton Key, and he has written so much great shit that I can¢t even begin to account for it, so ahh, I¢m honored if he¢ll sit up here and talk to any questions about taping and stuff. He is a writer, a very good writer. Ah, there¢s a few others out there that I might try to coax up here. I sort of want to see if any of you guys out there have anything you want to talk about, cuz, this might be superfluous, and why not just get to Border Legion where the real good are. But there are a bunch of questions we could deal with. Audience member shouts out a question, and the crowd laughs. Dick: That¢s a great one! Name ten shows that I think should come out in the next two years. (Steve murmurs *Englishtown* and the crowd cheers) Hey baby, your talking to the choir. I¢ve been yelling this in Cutler and Phil¢s ears for centuries and they are not willing to go with it yet. Englishtown was an amazing Dead show in Englishtown, NJ, 1977. It was one of the only shows of the summer and was a gigantic show featuring NRPS and The Marshall Tucker Band as well. Some consider the Eyes of the World and Music Never Stopped from this show to be the best ever played. Steve: Is there anyone here that was at Englishtown? (Crowd cheers) All right cool!! Dick: OK, who was? Steve: Lots of em! Dick: OK, OK were you there all day? Audience Member: All day. We got there at 6:30 in the morning. Dick: 6:30, OK. You saw The Riders, Marshall Tucker, and it was hot. Right? How long were you in the sun? How long was that though. Eight hours? Nine Hours? Ten hours? Something like that, right? OK, OK, OK, the Grateful Dead play a show that it would probably just make you come in your pants (crowd laughs). We¢ll, it makes me on tape. I don¢t know what it did to you guys live! Steve: I was a little stoner kid working as a camp counselor when that concert happened, and I snuck outside of the camp with a radio, and got stoned and picked up the live broadcast in the middle of this field in the Berkshires. Dick: (laughs) Isn¢t that good. Now wait one second! A distinguished gentlemen has arosen from the audience here, my buddy, Stu Shimmel. He does not want attention, so don¢t even remember his name. You know how Jerry said, don¢t tell ¡em my name. Anyway, this man is a collector of tapes, like me. If were gonna talk about collecting tapes, these guys know something about it, and I have my angle. So know, back to the questions. Audience Member: Dick, how do you decide******. (I can¢t make out the rest on the tape) Dick: Ya, what was the question? Ya, OK, are you ready? Take out your books man, I could tell you a hundred shows I want in two weeks, or two years, whatever! Two days! However long it takes. The goal is to spread it out. You know, like, give some samples from different eras and stuff. I just have a hard time, myself personally, I¢m biased, I admit, I have problems. I have to learn to accept that there were shows in 1980, ¡90 even! It appears as though Dick is a seventies man when it comes to his favorite shows. That¢s fine with me; I am too! Steve: ¡85, ¢85. Dick: Ya, ya there are great shows there. Well, ah see, I think we need to examine the ah, the reason this phenomenon happened in the first place. The shows in the sixties, well, there repetitious so were not gonna dwell there. But, in a, ¢72 - ¡3. Well, ¢72 -¡3. ¢72 - ¡3! That¢s about it folks, man, I¢ll never leave!! But I will leave, I mean, I try once in a while. It ain¢t me , you know, it ain¢t just me deciding, I have to pass this through two other guys, fortunately, none are band members. Steve: Phil doesn¢t have a say? Dick: No, no. Phil¢s out of the loop. No. These guys in the band, I want to testify to, do not gave a clue about what we want, well I say we as Deadheads want. They don¢t have a clue. Not a clue. OK. Getting back to Englishtown, that is a multi-track. That is in the province of Phil and John Cutler. Phil Lesh I mean and John Cutler, not Phil Cutler and John Lesh. Anyway, so, yes. Englishtown is a monster of the monsters. I cannot believe our team is not,***.if their goal is only making money, well Jesus Christ, give them the goods and make some money! Personally, this is disturbing to me. With you too, I imagine. I would like to think, and hope that, the guys in the Dead, this band that I constantly listen to, and whose tapes I obsessively collect, share my interest. Truth seems to be, they don¢t. At least not all of them. I remember Jerry commentin 2000 g once that after he plays, it¢s history. But, think about it. Jerry was an artist. Any artist is extremely critical of their work, and therefore, prefers not to listen to it for fear of hearing mistakes. OK, I can deal with that. I mean, let¢s face it, you can hear mistakes in many shows. Imagine if your the guy who actually wrote the music!! As far as Phil is concerned, I think what Dick is saying hear is that Phil has nothing to do with the Dick¢s Picks CDs, but is involved with other releases, some of which, are multi-track. Can¢t deny he had a hand in *The Phil Zone* and *Dozin at the Knick*. Whew! I feel better now. Steve: There¢s a handful of multi-tracks. Dick: I would never go say that about 8/27/72. Audience Member: Why don¢t you do some more Pigpen stuff? Dick: Ya, a whole release thingy, ah, like a four or six CD Pick. That¢s my thought. Including things like, we¢ll, Phil took a copy for The Phil Zone, but The Midnight Hour, or, or, Empty Pages or ah, you know ah, Two Souls. All those things he did a few times, you know? And in ¢66, man, when I saw most of my shows, there were a million songs. So ah, Pigpen, ya, that¢s a great idea. But listen, you¢ve got to know man, I don¢t have control over the multi-track idea. They ask me for my input sometimes, and I don¢t know if anyone listens. And sometimes I have to really shake some heads about some things about it. I mean, I could tell you bad stories. But Englishtown, Yes. Audience Member: What about The Garcia Band? Dick: That¢s not. That¢s harder. Because, the situation of the will and Deborah Koons and all, there¢s a complicated thing there, that I¢ve been told, Dick, Shut up is what I¢ve been told. Because, I tell them, go to ¢73. Garcia and Merl. ¢73. The hottest year in the history of our planet. We¢ll, besides ¢68, and ¢69. Well, Besides a few other years. Audience Member: Dick, How do you decide between say, Stanley Theater 27th and 28th. Do you go between the Dark Star and Other One, or*****. Dick: No, no problem there. Because 9/28 was one I got from Kid when I first met someone in The Grateful Dead in ¢79 and I coaxed him out of that show, and I gave it to five friends who I thought would never give it out and then and of course, we know what happens when you give a tape out to a Deadhead taper. I mean let¢s discuss the phenomenon of tape collecting and trading. I mean, do you rob your neighbor of his tape collection because he has it and he won¢t give it to you? Is he an idiot for having it and not giving it to you? What I think Dick is referring to here is an incident known as *The Honeymoon Tape Theft* Apparently, David Gans, host of The Grateful Dead Hour and author of Playing in the Band, returned from his honeymoon to find that someone had broken into his home and robbed him of some uncirculated reels of shows from 1972, specifically Paris, 5/3 and 5/4. These reels were on loan to him from Dick Latvala for use on The Grateful Dead Hour. Gans later found out who the thief was a neighbor and friend of his that had access to his home while he was away. The whole incident sparked much debate within the Grateful Dead taping community over whether or not this thief was doing wrong or, that he was freeing the music for all of us to hear. Steve: Now Dick. Wait. Wait. Wait. Dick: No one is owed anything here. Steve: Now Dick, let me just say something. Out there on the west coast there all these weird little tape trading wars and what not. But out here on the East Coast, I think, tape trading is pretty much a purely good thing. (audience cheers) You know, there¢s not this same kind of bitching about who has what. Dick: Do you really think that¢s real? Steve: I do, I do, I do. I think its true. I think its true. Dick: No shit! That¢s real? Ok. I don¢t know that. Steve: It¢s a real community thing out here. I agree with this observation, but I feel there are some egos on the east coast as well. For example, on this same night, I was the DJ. A member of the band *Border Legion* came into to DJ room and asked me to play a DAT for him. I asked what was on it and he said it was very rare, uncirculated stuff. I also asked him if I could copy it and he said, no. I asked him why and he kind of avoided answering. Why did he say no? Probably because he had something that no one else has. This must make him feel important or something. If I had that tape, I would be copying it for all of my friends. Why should this guy get the pleasure of hearing this wonderful music, but no one else. It¢s not HIS music! He didn¢t make it! The Dead allowed taping so everyone could enjoy THEIR music. Spread the music!! Audience Member: What about the early days of taping? Steve: Stu is the man Stu: It was like the stone age. Equipment wasn¢t good, people didn¢t have tripods, there wasn¢t a taper¢s section, batteries would run out, tapes were, you know, you had little reels to reels that would basically get garbled all the time. Dick: This is before Sony 152, that portable deck. Stu: And, you know, at any time you could have your stuff confiscated. The attitudes were not, you know, so loose; not from the band so much, but from the arenas and from the security forces and things like that. Dick: We could tell stories about how people snuck decks in! Stu: There¢s great stories in that Taper¢s Compendium book that got written. They interviewed a lot of the real early tapers. Steve: Birthday cakes. People hiding decks in birthday cakes. Dick: Hey, I think someone cut out there stomach and put a deck in it. Steve: Wheelchairs. Dick: Oh, wheelchairs is guaranteed. Audience Member: Was Steve Parish the arch villain? Dick: For me personally? Lets ask Stu! I¢ll give my account. Stu: You wouldn¢t want to catch him in a bad mood. Steve: Ya, you wouldn¢t want to catch him in a bad mood. Dick: I¢ve been scared of him ever since I met him. And then I had to get to know him because of this QVC thing, and we became what you call quote unquote, friends. And ah, we went to dinner and talked. And I said, well, I can¢t tell if he¢s lying or putting on phony thing like he¢s done all his life or is he real? I¢ll just play it like he¢s real and I¢ll go with it. And so, I don¢t know. He¢s a beautiful guy, man. Steve: He¢s all right! He loved Jerry. Dick: Listen. Anyone that has a beef with Steve, you¢ve got to understand man, think about it, your Jerry¢s guy. Steve: Jerry wouldn¢t have kept a stupid guy around! He¢s a smart guy! Dick: Oh man! Do you know Jerry said, ¡Ya, come to the show man. Come to the show. I want to see you!¢ and then showtime, Jerrys not in the mood to see someone. Well he tells Steve, get ¡em out of here. So Steve appears to be the bad guy, all the time. So, everyone, caution your judgment of Steve Parish, man. He was Jerry¢s guy. And I forgive him for any sins because of that. Because its a monstrous responsibility. Steve: I think that one book that has not yet been done would be an oral history of the crew (audience agrees). There must be so many stories. Dick: Ya, you bet. Ohh you wouldn¢t believe how many great stories, oh God!. Steve Parish. If you could get him with a micro-mini-cassette while he talks for, for ten thousand years, he¢ll tell you stories that will boggle your mind. Books could be written right off the top of the deck. Just transcribe the interview. He¢s told me stories that boggle my mind! You know one day, in ¢71, I believe it was, he said, ¡man we were at a show in some college and this dude, he was real buff and strong, he got an attitude and went up and grabbed Pigpen¢s organ and held onto it and wouldn¢t let go (Dick laughs). And it is the middle of a song. And he was creating a scene. So Parish and them had to deal with it. This guy was so strong, it took, it took four to six, including Hell¢s Angels no doubt, to maul this mother fucker to get his hands off Pigpen¢s organ. I mean stories like that. That¢s pretty strange stuff you know. 2000 Audience Member: What are your five favorite Grateful Dead Concerts? Dick: That¢s a crazy question. What month? I mean, what year? Audience Member: What is the most essential concert for a tape collector? Dick: Just look on the Internet, anywhere, and Deadheads will tell you. I mean, I am not some exclusive knowledge person. Steve: Whichever one is most essential is whatever mood your in that day. Dick: Ya, well I¢m the fall guy. I mean, I¢m a gathering point. I don¢t determine and say, this has to be this. I submit things and I¢ve been rejected so whimsically over the years. If anyone wants to thank me for anything, just thank me that I didn¢t dive under that truck. That I didn¢t jump off the bridge 30,000 times. That¢s the real goods man. Any of you know what should be released. Audience Member: What about The Other Ones and taping? Dick: There¢s a lot of audience tapes of them. Steve: There also making boards. Ya, they recorded, didn¢t they record mulit-tracks of the summer tour. Dick: Oh ya they recorded 48 track digital. Audience Member: They¢re all over the Internet know. Dick: Not the boards! Audience Member: Not the boards, right. Dick: I hope so. Because it¢s some of the most phenomenal shit you ever want to get close to again. I believe,*..OK. I¢m gonna put myself on a line, but I don¢t know how you guts read it. I don¢t care (audience laughs). I believe that ah, I never felt as good as I felt that July 25th, that the final show at Shoreline. I didn¢t go to the 24th because I was too scared to go to two in a row. And that a complicated reasoning or answer, but its too much things invested in it. So I thought, well OK, 25th. And I came away after seeing Phish the weekend before thinking nothing in the universe could ever top what I saw at the Phish show. A phenomenal, I¢ve never seen anything that incredible. I right away said, this is right on the level of Derrick and the Dominoes and the best Grateful Dead shows I¢ve ever seen. But then after seeing The Other Ones, which I did not think would ever come up to snuff, after that Phish show, well, it¢s like someone said on the Internet, go! in! ! g to a Phish show I never cried at a Phish show, so that¢s what it comes down to. It¢s apples and oranges really, but, goddam man, if you were in the bay area in July, there was some monster music played. Dick Makes an interesting point here, and mentions a good way to test your devotion to either one of these two amazing bands. I consider myself as loving both equally. I have felt like crying at a Dead show especially when they played something that I really wanted to hear or, they played a song that touches me. The same has happened to me at many Phish shows, for example, during the slow part in Slave to the Traffic Light. That point in the song seems to always conjure up powerful memories that evoke emotion: the girl that got away, old friends, old experiences, and things of that nature. At the Phish show in Salt Lake City, summer 1995, they played Slave in the second set. During this part of the song, I saw a girl crying a few rows below me. Steve: And Billy sure looked like he was having a good time. He was in the right place at the right time! Dick: Ya it looked like it. I don¢t know man, it was so thrilling to see Mickey and Billy hug each other, it looked real! I don¢t know if it was real, I mean I assume it¢s real! Audience Member: What do you think of The Other One¢s two guitarist choices? Dick: Ya, I have a lot of thoughts on that, man, because when I went down, the rehearsals went down, Stan was not playing, OK you know, I really thought he had it too, cuz I hear him warming up, you know, when a the heats not on, and he had chops, he had something to say. But when it came to the Branford and Bruce night at the Warfield, I was there so, I just was amazed that he really just didn¢t step right up in there and declare his territory, and as a result, he didn¢t make it into the shuffle, and so then there was a scramble, so suddenly I went to work one day, and I¢m not privy to all this inside knowledge, believe me, there aren¢t board meetings, there aren¢t meetings of any kind. No one supervises me, I mean everyone¢s on their own, its a crazy organization. So, I didn¢t know, one day I go to work, and there¢s someone rehearsing for the spot, and I said wow, OK, who is this guy? And I made it a point which I normally wouldn¢t have done to stick my nose in and l! is! ! ten, because your in this Grateful Dead scene, you don¢t stick your nose in anything unless there¢s something you need to know, and I learned the hard way, so I can tell you, I tend to keep away from stuff I don¢t need to know. Anyway, I watched this guy come on and his name is Mark Karan and I saw him then I listened to the tapes because I had to make rehearsal tapes for the band members so they could decide who to go with, you know. (Dick laughs) It¢s really funny because down to the June 4th show at the Warfield, I didn¢t think I was going, then an old girlfriend of mine said, c¢mon lets go, then I thought, well ya, I have to go, but I didn¢t know who was would show up. Because they were debating who was going to be in the band still! Can you guys relate to that, man? June 4th, ¢98 at the Warfield, their first gig, and they are still having personnel problems. For me personally I had this flash going through the tunnel looking at the bridge as you do when you from ! Ma! ! rin into San Francisco, and I thought, you know, The Grateful Dead history of pulling magic out of really, just the worst circumstances and, making the best circumstances really boring, like Egypt or many New Years. Steve asks the audience if they like the two guitarists together and there is some discussion that I can¢t make out on the tape. They mention the Allman Brothers riffs in the shows. Dick: Anyone went to Alpine, I want to know man, that must be the show of all. Did anyone go to Alpine? Steve: You know threes Phil and Friends show happening, what, next week? Dick: As we speak! Steve: Tonight? Ya it¢s supposed to be Phil and Steve and*** Dick: Weir, probably. I mean, it¢s a good group, but man The Other Ones! OK, well, let¢s have some music man, none of you come up with any interesting questions. Audience Member: Dick, what about videos? Dick: There¢s no such thing because video is a whole other world for me. Closing of Winterland is my goal for a video. Audience Member: What¢s the story with the Sunshine Daydream video? Dick: I don¢t even want to talk about that. The Sunshine Daydream video is a concert movie, in the style of The Grateful Dead Movie, that was shot at the famous 8/27/72 show in Veneta, Oregon. When the fan asks, *What¢s the story*, it seems to imply that there is some controversy over it. All I know is that at the Phish show in Darien Lake, NY during the summer of 1997, Ken Kesey, Ken Babbs, and the other pranksters were advertising the sale of the video. They passed out flyers advertising the video for $40.00 through the Pranksters organization. The flyer said that if you want the video, to send $40.00 to an address in Eugene, OR and it would be mailed to you. It then read *Never trust a prankster!* Kind of sketchy! An audience member asks a question that I can¢t make out. The question gets Dick all fired up. Dick: Nil! Nil! Nil!! Zero!! Steve: It wasn¢t that good! It wasn¢t that good! Dick: I mean give me a break. When do you want to go back to? OK, a modern show? How about Cobs Coliseum, 3/22/90. That was good. Blows away 10/14. Audience Member: What about Barton Hall? 5/8? Dick: Don¢t we all have that in perfect quality? Audience Member: Yes Dick: I mean isn¢t there some shows around that time frame that are really good to? We can all name ¡em. I went to Boston and saw the greatest Half Step in the history of the planet. Name one folks! If anyone can come up with a better Half Step, I will give you my house. Name one that¢s close!! Audience: Englishtown!!!! D 33f ick: That¢s close, but not over. No No No. OK, we¢ve got to go man. I could talk all night! Applause It seems as though Dick is trying to let all of us know that he really isn¢t the guy making all the decisions. Just look at his first line (Hi, my name is Dick Latvala, I¢m the fall guy for a program of releases**). He calls himself *the fall guy*. In my private conversations with Dick, he made it a point to say that he is just like me! An huge fan that collects tapes, and nothing more. Dick takes a lot of heat for not releasing this, or releasing this, and it seems he wants all of his to know that he¢s just like all of us music fans. There are other forces that are making the decisions on what to release. I found him to be extremely intelligent and honest. It was great to meet and see him speak! . 0