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David's avatar

Regarding Anji…Just to clarify

The song is an old traditional Irish tune played on an album by a guitar player named Davey Graham.. that’s where Paul Simon got that tune

Paul Simon played it on the sounds of silence lp which (I assume)

is where Duane heard it

Being handed a guitar from Jerry

That was quick thinking

on Duane’s part

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Alan Paul's avatar

Thanks. Yeah. Really interesting.

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Larry Ogintz's avatar

I was at the Gaelic Park concert on the 17th. Right upfront by the stage. It was absolutely surreal. I was/am a huge Duane fan so I very emotional by just see his guitar on a stand. But when Jerry and the boys came on stage, it was heavenly..

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Alan Paul's avatar

Awesome. great memory. Was Gaelic Park a regular venue?

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Larry Ogintz's avatar

From what I remember, it was not a regular venue, but it was a great place to see them. We were literally ten feet away and when Gregg announced that the Grateful Dead were coming out to join then, HUNDREDS of people screaming "Jerry, Jerry" came running towards the stage. It was fairly insane. The next night, we went to see the Grateful Dead at Roosevelt Stadium in Jersey City hoping the Allman Brother would join them. Not to be.

You are an excellent author, by the way, I loved your One Way Out book. I've been obsessed with Duane since I was 14 (I'm 70 now).

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Alan Paul's avatar

Thanks Larry. You need to read Brothers and Sisters, which this is excerpted from!

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Craig Macbeth's avatar

Those are great times to write about. I try to preserve it but words fall short.

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Alan Paul's avatar

That’s what I’m here for!

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Doug Israel's avatar

In later years Butch Trucks spoke pretty disparagingly about the Grateful Dead saying they worthless musicians except for Garcia, Lesh and Kreutzman. With Butch you never quite knew where it was coming from.

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Alan Paul's avatar

Yeah. Butch spoke down about a lot of people. I think with the Dead a lot was driven by resentment that they were more successful than the ABB.

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Doug Israel's avatar

That makes perfect sense.

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Daniel Albi's avatar

Wow amazing! Jaimoe and Billy that’s magic! Gosh I can only imagine if Duane didn’t leave us so soon what that relationship between him and Jerry could have grown into. What a cool excerpt from your book!

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Alan Paul's avatar

Thanks Danny.

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Joe Ivory Mattingly's avatar

Must have been some great jams

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David's avatar

@WNCN 11.21.70 the song that Duane plays is Anji by Paul Simon

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Alan Paul's avatar

Cool. Thanks.

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Mitchell Horowitz's avatar

The first ABB show I ever saw was at GaelicPark. I was happy to be there, but sad that I never got to see Duane live.

Dickey looked a bit stressed out to have to play both his, and Duane’s parts when necessary. But he was absolutely up to the enormous challenge.

As the night went on, I worked my way forward, and ended up only a few rows from the stage by the time the encore started.

When the members of the Dead came out and everyone started to play, I could see Dickey became more relaxed…happy to be part of the larger group. Clearly subscribed to the theory that the whole was greater than the sum of its parts.

There was no limit to how high they soared that night. I was so happy that I was there.

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Alan Paul's avatar

Thanks for sharing.

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Ricardo Wood's avatar

I used to really love the ABB. Then I started hearing the garbage various members started talking about the Grateful Dead (and pretty much anybody else). First there was Butch Trucks spewing his noise. If that wasn't bad enough, then there was the Gregg Allman book where he seemed to go out of his way to denigrate pretty much anybody and everybody who wasn't named Duane. It annoyed the hell out of me to read the several times where he felt the need to talk down on The Dead especially after all those years where the two bands had been portrayed as musical brothers. Not only that but he used his deceased brother as the vehicle to shovel this sh!t...like he turned to Duane as the Dead were on stage and asked what he thought and Duane said he thought they sucked.

The Dead sucked, Cher sucked, everybody in all these other bands sucked....was all of that really necessary? It's all so disingenuous when talking negatively about a band that 50 years later still had tens of millions of rabid fans (far more than the ABB ever had), had their own satellite radio channel, played sold out stadium concert tours, etc. It does nothing more than reflect poorly on the speaker's band.

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Alan Paul's avatar

Ok but really who cares? It’s not a reason to stop liking music you loved. Gregg’s book was largely him just talking. All kinds of inaccuracies, but that’s what celebrity memoirs often are.

I go into this pretty deeply in B&S. Gregg was really crushed by the rock world and particularly the Dead turning on him when he testified in 76. I think Gregg created a lot of his own problems but that calling him a rat or narc for testifying when he was getting squeezed is shallow. And everyone eventually forgave him except the Dead crew and maybe Jerry. And it turned Gregg bitter towards them.

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