Today's musical treat goes back to the early 1970s. It was prime time for the San Francisco music scene and especially members of the Jefferson Airplane, Grateful Dead, and Crosby Stills Nash and Young. The loose conglomeration of musicians became nicknamed The Planet Earth Rock and Roll Orchestra.
Starship founder Paul Kantner came up with the term "Planet Earth Rock and Roll Orchestra", a label of reference to the San Francisco musicians that played on David Crosby's If I Could Only Remember My Name. During the sessions for Crosby's album at Wally Heider Studios, the musicians of each band (who were working in other rooms) dropped in to the sessions and improvised hours of music, and everything was recorded. Some of the basic tracks played during these recorded sessions in 1971 were used for Crosby's album. Engineer Stephen Barncard and David Crosby made rough mixes of some of the session tapes, and in 1991 Graham Nash sent a DAT tape to Paul Kantner which later showed up in the tape trading markets as a 'pristine' digital copy. Barncard came up with the PERRO abbreviation when he needed to identify the 2 inch wide tapes on sides, standing vertically.
Pristine digital copies of the sessions at Wally Heider's Studio have circulated for years (I have two different versions in my music library.) and they are some of my favourite music from this period. Recently, on YouTube, I came across three excerpts from the sessions and I'm excerpting them here. They're a priceless view into one of the most creative musical periods in the history of rock music.
Jerry Garcia & David Crosby - The Perro Sessions - circa 1971
Garcia, Crosby, Kaukonen, Lesh, Casady.... PERRO Sessions Jan 13-14, 1971 SBD
Garcia, Crosby, Kaukonen, Lesh, Casady et al.....PERRO Sessions Jan 02-03, 1971 SBD
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