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Grateful Dead Live at Mickey Hart’s ranch studio on 1982-01-01

A radio play, with Mickey Hart, Steve Parish, Barry Melton, Bill Graham, and others, recorded some time after 1978. The moral of the story is to preserve the environment and to not kill insects with pesticides. This was not released.

The soundtrack includes a short segment from the Palace of Fine Arts performance of November 28, 1973 of “Experiments in Quadrophonic Sound”.

Line-up : Mickey Hart, Bill Graham, Barry Melton, Steve Parish and others (on “The Bugs”), Jerry Garcia, Phil Lesh, Mickey Hart, Bill Kreutzmann, David Freiberg, Barry Melton, Kathy MacDonald (on “Fire on the mountain”), Mickey Hart, Bob Weir, Phil Lesh, David Freiberg (on “The pump song”)

In a manner similar to Orson Wells and “war of the worlds”; Mickey Hart and the Grateful Dead do a take on Insects gaining intelligence and delivering an ultimatum upon the HUMAN RACE demanding the BANNING OF ALL PESTICIDES AND THEIR USE or they are declaring war upon us for ENDANGERING THE WORLD and reminding us that they FAR OUTNUMBER US.

Recorded on New Year’s Eve – 01/01/1982 at Mickey Hart’s ranch studio…

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Grammy award winning percussionist Mickey Hart

is a pivotal innovator, scholar, and influencer in percussion and rhythm. Best known as a drummer in the renowned expedition into the soul and spirit of rock and roll, The Grateful Dead, the multi-Grammy award winner is also an energetic painter, accomplished writer, restless explorer, and an acclaimed expert on the history and mythology of drums. A true original armed with an inventor’s audacious curiosity, Hart boldly seeks to break the rhythm code of the universe and investigate its deepest vibrations.

Sometime in 1969, Mickey Hart moved to an unused ranch near Novato Road in Novato, CA, in Marin County. Neither Hart nor the Grateful Dead had much money at the time. Nonetheless, land in rural Novato was cheap in those days–believe it or not–and Hart found a way. According to McNally, the land belonged to the city of Novato, and Hart was technically the caretaker, for the princely sum of just $250 a month. The ranch rapidly became a clubhouse for the boys in the band and their crew. Apparently some members of the crew lived on the ranch between tours. At least some key crew members were from the tiny cattle ranching town of Hermiston, OR. Hart was actually an experienced horseman, surprisingly enough, but I suspect the crew members must have introduced the suburbanites who made up the rest of the Grateful Dead to the pleasures of rural Oregon: riding horses, shooting off guns and so on.

Sometime in late 1970, a studio was built on Hart’s ranch, in the barn. At this time, home studios were not really viable propositions, so a band member having his own studio was a radical concept. Having a home studio in a room big enough to include a whole rock band was even more radical. The Dead’s finances were even worse in 1970 than they were in 1969, so how the studio was financed is also in question.