MOG

"We've got another famous California group here," Jerry Garcia casually announced during the middle night of the Grateful Dead's five-night run to close the Fillmore East in April 1971. "It's the Beach Boys."

The group joined the Dead for five songs and played two by themselves in the middle. Like many jams before and since it didn’t really jell, though hearing Jerry Garcia’s guitar tentatively weaving through ‘Help Me Rhonda’ is interesting.

The most musical interaction between the two bands is a rendition of Merle Haggard's then-newish redneck classic "Okie From Muskogee". The Dead had been grooving on Haggard all month and the ease with which they play matches the Beach Boys spirited singing.

The psychedelic years weren’t kind to The Beach Boys and this event was a major step in their redemption. It must have been really frustrating being treated as has-beens and irrelevant when you were more psychedelic than most – genuinely innovative music created in recording sessions so stoned the group did vocals lying on the floor – and in ‘Good Vibrations’ Mike Love felt moved to say, “we sang this on the bus recently with The Buffalo Springfield and we were all drunk and stoned…it was great.” (Neil Young was on his third solo album by this time.) At a show a couple of weeks later he said, “We sang this at the Fillmore East with The Grateful Dead.” Mike! Stop! Hipness is in the doing, not the talking about it.