The keyboardist on this rehearsal recording is Tom Constanten. He is playing
Ron's Vox organ. Ron is absent from this session. There is no electric piano
on this recording. Mickey plays glockenspiel behind Jerry's lead vocals in the
bridge on "St. Stephen" as one would expect him to do.
Tom was classically trained both as a pianist and as a composer, but throughout
his time with the Grateful Dead, his phrasing was stiff, staccato, and
unsuccessfully syncopated. A classic example is Tom's delayed, out-of-phase
right-hand harpsichordal line behind Jerry's singing "Twenty degrees of
solitude/Twenty degrees in all" during "Mountains of the Moon" from Playboy
After Dark, Hollywood, CA, 7/10/69. Fine counterpoint melodically,
harmonically, and stylistically, but poor counterpoint rhythmically. Tom
starts his phrases late and stumbles in his articulation.
The halving (at times, almost a "three-quartering") of bar lines and the
pretermission of phrases that mar Tom's playing at this rehearsal are
characteristic shortcomings that mark his style, for better or worse.
I heard Tom play live at the Psychedelic Shop on Market Street in San Francisco
around the time of the release of his album Fresh Tracks in Real Time, and his
playing had not changed in this regard. After the gig, I spoke with him about
his music and his time with the Grateful Dead, including the challenges of
playing in the band. He was candid about the joy he had felt while playing
live with the band despite his inability to swing with them as both he and they
longed for him to do. He spoke of his frustration at not having been able to
get the hang of playing syncopated rhythms despite his intellectual
understanding of them. (He is a kindly, honest, witty, and amazingly
intelligent man -- like Phil, Jerry, and Robert, possessed of a photographic
memory for music, literature, and history -- but he couldn't swing from a
rope.) He freely admitted that his and the band's frustration with his live
playing, including mutual dissatisfaction with his rhythmic stiffness and his
difficulty in interpolating robust and substantive lead lines into the
improvisational matrix, led to his amicable departure. He also stated that he
loved and even admired Ron's keyboard attack, full, fluid, and surprisingly
sprightly as it could be, and that he reveled in prepared piano and in other
departures from straight-ahead playing because they freed him from the
limitations of his stodgy and somewhat limited keyboard technique. In other
words, he preferred to make music as he heard it in his mind, not as it was
delimited by his fingers. Nonetheless, he always greatly enjoyed playing pop,
rock, and blues tunes, so he decided to keep one foot in the camp of the
frighteningly abstract and the other in the camp of the painfully concrete. He
mentioned that it was easier for him to play the keyboard as a soloist rather
than as an accompanist because of his particular and somewhat elastic sense of
time.
As a rendition of "Clementine" was recorded at Pacific Recording in San Mateo
on 5 Nov. 1968, right after the main run of "Mickey and the Hartbeats" shows
during Oct. '68, it is possible that this rehearsal is coeval with that date
and may have occurred there. I believe Tom's first gig with the band was on 24
Nov. 1968; he and Ron both played keyboards the next night in Cincinnati. It
is of course also possible that this rehearsal took place in Dec. '68 at
Pacific Recording or elsewhere. (There was also a rehearsal featuring "The
Eleven" from Avalon Ballroom on 23 Jan. 1969.)
Alembic's own "long history" by Susan Wickersham (née Susan Frates) states that
she and Ron Wickersham met in 1968 at Pacific Recording, where Ron was
designing the first multi-track mixing console for use with the studio's new,
state-of-the-art Ampex MM-1000 16-track reel-to-reel recorder. Ron and Susan
left Pacific Recording in 1969 to form Alembic. (It is not clear from the
history when this move took place; it may have happened as late as June or July
'69.) As the Grateful Dead had their office and rehearsal space in Novato,
that's where Alembic set up shop; Alembic "had its offices in the building with
the Dead and separate workshop and living space behind the warehouse." That
year, Pacific Recording went out of business, and Alembic acquired the 16-track
Ampex recorder. Subsequently, Alembic moved in Feb. '70 to 320 Judah Street in
San Francisco, and then relocated in 1971 to 60 Brady Street, taking over the
former Pacific High Recording studio. (Note the distinction, which others have
pointed out, between "Pacific Recording" and "Pacific High Recording.")
If this rehearsal was held and recorded in Nov. or Dec. '68, Pacific Recording
in San Mateo would be a likely venue. If it was held and recorded in early '69
(not likely, but possible), Avalon Ballroom 1/23/69 or Novato would be possible
venues.
