Europe ‘72 Pt 5 - Bremen, Beat Club
Vol. 7: Beat Club, Bremen, West Germany (4/21/1972)
Vol. 7: Beat Club, Bremen, West Germany (4/21/1972)
One more tv show, this one Beat Club, a show featuring rock music that had been airing on West Germany’s public tv channel since 1965. Bobby describes it at one point mid-show as a “600,000 watt clear channel voice of treason.” Most major rock acts of the era, including the Stones, Led Zep, and The Who (but not the fan four), appeared on Beat Club. The show was shot live in a tv studio in Bremen in front of a studio audience.
Beat Club aired monthly and most episodes ran between 30-60 minutes, but the Dead cranked out an 80 minute set at this show (which may have been cut down for the aired episode. This is the band’s shortest show on the 72 swing through Europe, and at just under 80 minutes, the entire show is shorter than a first or second set in a regular show.
The set list contains only 10 songs, two of which are “Playin’ In the Band”. This is not a “Playin’ 1” → another song → “Playin’2” situation, but rather just a full performance of the entire song for a second time a mere two songs after the initial version. It is not clear from the audio or the video why they performed it a second time as both versions appear on the lp and the raw video footage and are similar takes.
Although the band played both “Black-Throated Wind” and “Loser” during their soundcheck, neither made the cut for the performance or were preserved on the audio or video of the show. The remainder of the set list is rounded out with mostly Dead originals and tour stalwarts such as “Bertha”, “Mr. Charlie”, “Surgaree” and Truckin’, and only one cover, Jesse Fuller’s country blues “Beat it on Down the Line”.
Speaking of “Mr. Charlie”, this show is believed to be the last professionally shot video of Pigpen performing with the band as he retired from the band shortly after the ‘72 European tour and would be dead less than a year after this show was shot.
The video of this entire 80 minute show is widely available on the internet in what appears to be the raw footage shot for the show, flubs (and there are a few) and all. The video and sound (especially) are not of the same quality as the Tivoli show from four days earlier, but it is still a fascinating glimpse of the band, looser and more informal than the the Tivoli show. By this time, Beat Club had taken to using a primitive green screen type technology for projecting floating psychedelic images behind the featured band (in this case, standard form tye-dye), so the visuals aren’t as clean as the Tivoli footage, but the multi-camera set up allows all the members to be featured to varying degrees.
(to get to the Beat Club show, you have to fastforward to the 4:50 mark)
Grateful Dead - Beat Club TV - Bremen, DE 1972-04-21 (https://vimeo.com/davidaron/beatclub-1972)
The video includes the entire set, with several interludes of the band goofing off between songs. The band has to restart Sugaree, Playin and Truckin (Bobby blows his cue yet again). Some of the bits on video are not preserved in the album
Highlights include:
Bobby’s show opener “Ladies and Gentlemen, the Grateful Dead!”
Full-on Donna Jean wailing on both versions of “Playin”
The guitar work by Jerry and Boby on the second version of “Playin” is particularly sweet.
A brief “Drums” followed by a fierce 21 minute “The Other One” to close the show (although the last few minutes of the song turn into a feedback drone chasing experiment, ending the song on an almost unfinished note).
The Beat Club tv show would only air for another 8 months, ceasing production in December 1972. The Dead would go on for a while longer.