On Stage: The Other Side Of This Life - Jefferson Airplane, 1969 - Altamont Speedway (NSFW)

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• published: 14 Jul 2015
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(With audio EQed, balanced, pumped and synchronized for maximum impact by yours truly. ;) WARNING: The following footage contains explicit language, violence and brief nudity. Viewer discretion is definitely advised, so anyone looking to gripe behind a thumping pulpit propped by a rickety soapbox in any fake scramble to claim moral high ground had best just unpucker and cork their hole - if you're here and have gotten this far past the "NSFW" in the header and the above, it's by your own choice, so sack up, own it and don't even try to finger anyone else. Thank you for your understanding and please enjoy the best presentation of this part of this infamous concert - SwingMan1938) Saturday, December 6, 1969 - A free concert at Altamont Speedway between Tracy and Livermore in Alameda County, California. Attendance was estimated at around 300,000 people, surrounding a stage that was just 39 inches off the ground in a venue that was thrown together with spit and bailing wire at the last minute with "security" provided by a few California chapters of the Hell's Angels - paid with $500 worth of beer and armed with weighted pool cues used as king sized billy clubs, among other things. What could possibly go wrong? Well, Marty Balin ended up getting decked and The Grateful Dead pulled out of the concert - among many other things, like 4 births and 4 deaths. Some say this concert, originally envisioned as "Woodstock West", was "The day the '60's lost its love and innocence". Far as Marty Balin getting decked, here's Marty's account from an April, 1993 interview for Relix Magazine: "We went on the stage in late afternoon and were doing the first number. I had my eyes closed and I looked up and saw these guys beating this guy with their pool cues. The whole crowd kind of steeped back and that really cheesed me off. Nobody was listening to me sing so I thought, well, this guy needs some help. So I jumped off to help him out. I was helping him out and the Hell’s Angels were going, “Hey, Marty, you better get out of here, you’re gonna get hurt. What are you doing?” So I said, ” Hey, I’m trying to sing a song, you know?” Anyway, I got back up and started singing again and the naked guy went back behind the stage. Then they were fighting behind me and I was really pissed so I went back and started punching out this one guy. He had this wolf’s head on his head and we were pretty evenly matched. I was getting in some good ones. And that’s the last thing I remember before I got knocked out. I woke up with all these boot marks all over my body. I just walked out there. I remember Jorma saying, “Hey, you’re a crazy son of a bitch." And here's Grace Slick's account of Marty's deckage from a May 23, 2014 interview for Rolling Stone: "The whole day was ugly. I didn't have my contact lenses on. Or maybe I didn't have them at the time. I couldn't see anything. I saw bodies moving vaguely over on my left, which is where Marty [Balin] was, and I went back to the drums and said to Spencer [Dryden], "What the hell is going on?" And he said, "The Angels are kind of beating up Marty." What happened is they were messing with one of our crew. Marty objected and one of the Angels said something back to Marty, and Marty said, "Fuck you," and the guy knocked Marty down while we were singing and said, "You never say fuck you to an Angel" — and Marty said it again! Our crew had to pull Angels off Marty. And I thought, "Well, this is not a very good start to the day." And, a little extra backstory courtesy of Terry Douglass - she contacted me via Facebook with a little more backstory and spoke of a friend attending nearby UC Berkeley at the time who was at the concert: "A friend of mine was there! She was a freshman at UC Berkeley and she said fliers were passed out on campus and within minutes everyone left campus. She said there was a rumor prior that a concert may happen in the Oakland Hills. I think the "security" was located closer to Livermore and they didn't want to deal with Oakland's issues. It's currently closed! Altamont Pass area is a weird area! Livermore is now, like Napa and Tracy is well kinda an armpit:/ Tracy has had lots of development throughout the years but I don't think it can ever shake the Free concert reputation." For the rest of the story of the tragic concert itself, please visit this link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altamont_Free_Concert Also, to see what Altamont Speedway looks like as of October 30, 2014, please follow this link: http://www.pentaxforums.com/forums/12-post-your-photos/276886-abstract-altamont-death-peace-love.html Dig..... (DISCLAIMER: ALL RIGHTS to the footage and audio from the 1970 rock documentary "Gimme Shelter" belong to 20th Century Fox/Maysles Films/The Criterion Collection and is posted using the Fair Use provision (section 107) of the Copyright Act of 1976)