GRATEFUL DEAD SLATE BENEFIT AT LANE

by John Tennis

The Grateful Dead, one of the early San Francisco bands, is scheduled to appear in LCC's main gym Friday, Jan. 22. The dance-concert will start around 8:00 p.m. and end when the Dead (and the people attending) get tired.

The Grateful Dead was one of the first bands to "make it" when the rush for the "San Francisco Sound" took place in 1966-67.

Along with the Jefferson Airplane, Country Joe and the Fish, the Sons of Champlain, and a lot of others, they were "discovered," signed by recording companies, and labeled by some as America's answer to the British invasion.

Of the dozen of bands from this area, the Dead is one of the few to survive all the hype put-down by the record companies and music commentators .The Dead's music has consistently been in the forefront of all the trends of the public.

They were psychedelic when no one knew what that word meant, and two albums ago they made a switch to a folk-flavored country-rock sound. The albums Workingman's Dead and American Beauty, on Warner Reprise, best show where the Dead are right now. Michael Lydon, in Rolling Stone, talks of one of the albums: "Workingman's Dead is just about as good a record as a record can be.

Easy on the ears from the first listening, it gets mellower as it grows on you; a lot of different rhythms but one sure pulse."Appearing with the Grateful Dead at Lane will be Notary Sojac, a group from Portland. Approximately 20% of the profits (after expenses) from this dance-concert will go to LCC's student financial aids program, while a larger percentage will go to the Eugene White Bird Clinic [non-profit/"free" health clinic].The Dead's concert at Lane will probably consist of three sets.

One of the sets will be acoustic, and will hopefully be, as Rolling Stone put it for a recent appearance at the Fillmore West, "music smoothing to weary hearts and hard-driven minds because it understands that state of mind only too well."A second set will be more country and western.

This set features songs like "Six Days on the Road," and will be performed by the New Riders of the Purple Sage. This group is comprised of members of the Grateful Dead and some friends. The third set will be the old, semi-psychedelic Dead. Along with the Dead's three sets and Notary Sojac, there will be a multiple-image slide presentation on Woodstock.

It is not known at this time whether this will be shown in conjunction with the Dead's show or in a different room on campus, but it WILL be there. Tickets for the Dead's concert are $3 -- cheap for two good bands and a slide presentation.

They will be available at the door and at the information Desk in the Administration Building at LCC.