January 8, 2026

1/8/66 Fillmore Auditorium? - or, Never Trust A Prankster

The 1/8/66 Acid Test at the Fillmore has long been notorious as the earliest circulating live tape of the Dead, and an example of the chaos of the Acid Tests, full of malfunctions, raving Pranksters, and confused cops. There is even a Deadcast devoted to it:
Recent investigations, though, have revealed that the tape is not what it seems, and the Dead's music may not be from the Fillmore at all.

The audio comes from the Acid Test video put out by Key-Z Productions; no independent tape of the Fillmore show has appeared. The Acid Test video has been released in a few different iterations as it's been re-edited over the years. Michael Lestatkatt writes: "There are three different audio edits for the official Acid Test DVD that is sold by Key-Z.com. I purchased my first copy in 1990, the 2nd in 1996 when it was remade...and now the DVD edition. Each one has a different edit, and each has little bits and pieces of audio not on the other versions."
Lestatkatt put together a compilation of all of the audio material from the different versions of the video:
The video is currently available in three parts on Youtube, shared by Zane Kesey:
Nick Meriwether wrote:
"Bits and pieces of this tape have circulated since the 1990 release of the video The Acid Test, by Ken Kesey's Key-Z Productions. Assembled by Zane Kesey, the video is a hybrid of several sources, and the result is a classic piece of Prankster psychedelia - in part because of the difficulty in differentiating which elements came from where... The boxes housing the reels were cryptically labeled 'Fillmore Acid Test' - the source of all the audio - and 'L.A. Acid Test.' Most if not all of the Fillmore Acid Test was recorded, apparently on four 12-inch reels. Of the video footage marked 'L.A.', nothing more was written on those reels or boxes, and nothing else in the archives has shed any light thus far... Both Bear and Dick Latvala encountered the same problem with Prankster tapes, as Latvala recalled in a recent interview: 'The labeling was terrible. They taped a lot of stuff and labeled it very poorly.' In fact, even what we have is a lot, as Zane noted: 'For the Pranksters, that much of a label was doing well - generally you'd be lucky if they wrote anything at all on it...' Since many tapes...have disappeared over the years from the Prankster archives, it may well be that we will get no more from the Keseys." (Deadhead's Taping Compendium p.91)

Per the 1998 Taping Compendium, the footage came from the Muir Beach Acid Test on 12/18/65; but this labeling was incorrect. For one thing, the Muir Beach Acid Test was on 12/11; the next Acid Test on 12/18 was at the Big Beat in Palo Alto. Also, looking more closely, there are two different Dead performances shown in the video - color footage of "King Bee," and a black & white performance, along with various bits of audience shots in color from unknown locations, and scenes of the Pranksters setting up and leaving a venue.

A partial earlier edit of the color footage was included on the "Haight Street Chronicles vol. 2" bootleg DVD (labeled "December 11, 1965, Muir Beach Lodge," and apparently copied from VHS). Though grainy, this is mainly notable for being in somewhat brighter quality than the Youtube video, so a few more details are apparent (especially in the Hells Angels scene).
The 2011 film Magic Trip, drawn from Kesey's reels of his 1964 bus trip, includes a minute of the Acid Test footage that shows how pristine the original reels look. The Youtube copies are quite dark in comparison. One trailer:
The silent b&w footage later became available on its own as the "Pico Acid Test" (thought to be from the Carthay Studios on Pico Blvd, 3/19/66). A partial poor-quality copy is here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9AhIuVl2gD0 (has a later Viola Lee dubbed on)
A longer, better-quality 25-minute copy was also added as a bonus on an illicit DVD of Kesey footage from the 1978 Egypt shows (etree ID 172503). This copy has a timestamp on it but the shots are out of order and jump back and forth, so the chronology is somewhat scrambled.
The tape dated "3/19/66":
Other copies are available as well. The tape has circulated as both 3/12 and 3/19, causing debate over what the actual date was. My theory was that it came from 3/12, a regular Dead show at the Danish Center, due to the absence of any Prankster chatter or audible Acid Test goings-on. But as we'll see, the tape's origin was more complicated...


ACID TEST TIMELINE

One thing making it harder to trace which Acid Tests were filmed is that there are almost no photographs from any of the Acid Tests. It's often assumed that the Pranksters were regularly taping & filming events, but if this was the case, most of their reels have been lost or never made public. Indeed, there are no circulating tapes, films, or photos from most of the Acid Tests - only a few. We don't know what most of them looked like, or even what many of the venue interiors looked like.
Here is a brief list of the Acid Tests where the Dead played:

12/4/65 Big Nig's House, 43 S. 5th St, San Jose
(Oddly, a handbill has surfaced giving the Acid Test address as 38 S. 5th St, across the street, a true prankster mystery.)
(Photo at the new address - the house itself was moved to a new location in 2003 to build a new city hall on the block.)

12/11/65 Muir Beach Lodge, 19 Seascape Dr, Muir Beach

12/18/65 Big Beat Club, 998 San Antonio Rd, Palo Alto
(Photo taken 2009 - the building was torn down in 2011.)

1/1/66? Beaver Hall, 1510 SE 9th St, Portland, OR (possibly 12/25/65)
(The 1922 Red Men Hall building - the location now has a Clever Cycles & a Helium comedy club.)

1/8/66 Fillmore Auditorium, 1805 Geary St, San Francisco
(Photo from 2010. Still a music venue.)

1/22-23/66 Longshoreman's Hall, 400 N. Point St, San Francisco
The "Trips Festival" - the Pranksters had an Acid Test as part of this event.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fvoWhRdpIOQ (clip from Ben van Meter's short film) 
(2020 photo. More photos of the Trips Festival.) 
The Dead and Pranksters then moved down to Los Angeles:

2/6/66 Valley Unitarian Universalist Church, 9550 Haskell Ave, North Hills
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vkaxDv_SZlg (partial tape may or may not be from this date)

2/12/66 Youth Opportunities Center, 9027 S. Figueroa St, Los Angeles
(The building was later renovated and became the Prince Hall Grand Lodge & Memorial Auditorium in 1986. Apparently it looked even more grim in the '60s.)

2/25/66 Empire Studios, 7417 Sunset Blvd, Los Angeles (moved from the Cinema Theatre)
(I don't know if the building still exists.)

3/19/66 Carthay Studios, 5907 W Pico Blvd, Los Angeles (moved from the UCLA Ballroom)
(Recent photo. The building was demolished in 2019.) 
Jerrybase adds an extra Acid Test:
3/4/66 Unicorn Theater, 7456 La Jolla Blvd, La Jolla

This is a recently added date - a poster exists, but nothing else is known of the event. I am skeptical it took place with the Dead, since it meant driving down to San Diego and is totally unreported in accounts of the Acid Tests or the Unicorn Theater. It's also an unlikely location: the Unicorn was a tiny theater in the back of a bookstore.
"A unique art house and La Jolla’s first real “indie” movie theater opened in 1964...in the back of a small bookshop called Mithras Bookstore. Seating only about 200, the small space was dubbed the Unicorn Theatre and quickly became known for showing avant-garde and experimental films from all over the world... Although small and tucked into a somewhat out-of-the-way location (not to mention in the basement), The Unicorn developed a cult following early on, especially among younger residents."
However, there was a Kesey connection: per histories of the theater, "Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters made a stop here as part of their cross-country trip in the bus named Further," and the theater showed some of Kesey's films from the bus. It's likely the Pranksters visited in March '66 to show their movies, though perhaps not with the Dead. Tom Wolfe briefly says (at the end of chapter 20 of The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test) that some Pranksters went with Ken Babbs to La Jolla, perhaps holding "a Test of their own" there, but doesn't give any details.
The Dead also played a couple of other shows during their stay in Los Angeles. Owsley recalled, "The band played several Acid Tests as well as at least two non-Prankster shows, one at the Hollywood Trouper's Hall and the other one at a small venue called Danish Hall upstairs over a block of stores in L.A."

3/3/66 AIAA Hall, 7660 Beverly Blvd, Los Angeles
(I couldn't find a photo of the building, which has since been demolished.)

3/12/66 Danish Center, 607 S. Western Ave, Los Angeles
(Recent photo. The building now holds the Westmor Dance Studio & Ballroom.)
(The Dead played in the auditorium in back. The buildings have been demolished and a new apartment complex was built on the site in 2007.)
After that, having flopped in L.A., the Dead returned to San Francisco for the second Trips Festival at the Longshoreman's Hall on April 22-24 - but this event was not an Acid Test per se.

(For older background and memories of the Acid Tests, see:
For another list of the timeline, see:


TAPE MYSTERIES

The Dead songs heard in the Acid Test video are King Bee, Hog For You Baby, Caution, Death Don't Have No Mercy, and a partial Tastebud (over the end credits of the video). Given that the songs are surrounded by narration announcing the Fillmore location, as well as stage chatter and a chaotic shutdown that are clearly from the event, it has generally been assumed that the music is from the Fillmore Acid Test on Jan 8. (Although Deadlists had a note of caution: "It could be from a different date and several shows.")

Ken Babbs loudly & clearly announces on tape that this is the Fillmore Acid Test and acts as a kind of stagemaster throughout. Although the video itself is clearly from multiple places, you might accept that the Dead's songs in the audio were played at the Fillmore. However, Zane Kesey writes: "Everything was mixed and mislabeled... The narration says Fillmore...but the actual sound and footage is from LA."

Video detective Archduke, on Lossless Legs, took a close look at the Acid Test video and discovered that at least two songs are not from the Fillmore.

1) The audio of King Bee matches the video - the first few minutes of the song are synced exactly enough to make clear that it's the same performance. However, the video was evidently not shot at the Fillmore:
- The camera is level with the band and close to them, so it appears they are playing on floor level, not on a stage.
- There is not only no light show, but no screen behind the band; instead there are wood boards propped up against a wall or curtain.
- The preliminary footage (showing the Pranksters arriving and setting up in a venue) is from a different location, not the Fillmore. 
2) Death Don't Have No Mercy is the same performance as the "3/19/66" tape. On that tape, the mix is different and the start is missing so it's a 6-minute fragment, but the song in the video was drawn from this show.

This show was evidently recorded by both the Pranksters & Owsley - Death Don't Have No Mercy is mixed differently in each source. The circulating tape of "3/19" is in Owsley's signature mixing style of the time, with instruments & vocals in different channels. It has the drums & vocal together in the left channel, low in volume, whereas they're separated and higher in volume in the video mix. The Pranksters weren't using multitracks they could remix later, nor do I think they were able to separate audio elements like this in a remix, so Owsley was making his own separate recording at the show.

A reel player can be seen on the side of the stage during the show, which you can see recording. Ironically, in a shot where Pigpen is singing, it's off and not recording, so the tape evidently missed a Pigpen song!
The tape machine on the side of the stage is most likely an Ampex tape machine with Scotch 203 10.5-inch reels. Both Owsley and Babbs had Ampex tape players, but Owsley used an Ampex 354 for the longer reels, which is probably what's seen.
Also, a tape recorder by the stage is more likely to be Owsley's since the Pranksters (as seen in the color footage) would typically set up all their tape machines in their own sound area on the opposite side of the room from the stage. They also used smaller reels than Owsley. Here they are putting on some reels: 
Two different tape sources for the song make it almost certain to be from an Acid Test. Since the Pranksters were recording at this show, it's much less likely to be the 3/12 Danish Center show, and more likely to be an Acid Test performance. They would have little reason to turn up with a tape recorder at the Dead's other shows (especially with Owsley already recording) - it's possible but unlikely.
This may also explain why we don't hear any Prankster stuff on the "3/19" tape - Owsley was recording only the band and their mics, not picking up all the Pranksters' mics. (The full Prankster tape may have had more non-band chatter between songs.)

Death Don't belongs with the other songs on the "3/19" tape, so there's little question it's from that show. (The tape itself, with its Viola Lee Blues, has to be from later than January.) There is no change in the audio, and although the song cuts in after a missing portion, it's continuous with the following Midnight Hour as the Dead jump right to the next song. ("Little thing now called Midnight Hour," Weir announces.)
It's also notable that Pigpen's vocal mic is fine on Owsley's tape, whereas he tends to sound distant and off-mic on all the songs from the Pranksters' tapes.

Caution might be from the same show as Death Don't - the video implies a segue between them, but this is created by an edit and there's a hard splice between the songs, so they may not have been joined in the show. That said, since the second set is pretty short and Death Don't cuts in on the tape (vs. being complete in the video), it's possible songs are missing before it.
It's even possible Caution is the song Pigpen's singing when we see the tape recorder turned off in the film. You could even speculate that Owsley missed it because he was too busy dancing in the crowd, as seen in the film!

Whether any of the other songs in the video come from the Fillmore is unknown. There's a lot of sonic consistency between the Tastebud, King Bee, Caution & Death Don't, which makes it sound like they could all be from one show. The mix varies a little between songs - in the stereo King Bee, the drums are mostly on the right with the vocal. (The mix starts a little blurry, then they try to bring the vocal up after the first lines since Pigpen's mic is so low.) In the Tastebud, it starts with drums & guitars on the left, vocal on the right, then they gradually get more centered. So the recordists could have been fiddling with the mix during the performances.
Hog For You Baby sounds a little different, and shifts from stereo to mono. (Tastebud sounds clearer than the other tracks, but maybe just because it was a recent addition to the video and didn't go through as many tape copies as the others.)

One similarity between songs is the mic problems - in Tastebud, Pigpen's vocal starts out clear, then changes to a distant, recessed sound like he's off-mic. That's how his voice sounds through King Bee and Caution (and, for that matter, Hog For You Baby too). In Death Don't, Garcia's voice is distant (and on the right) for the first minute, then switches to the left and gets louder after 1:40.

So it might make sense to assign all these songs to one show where they were having trouble with the vocal mics (Pigpen's in particular). But the sonic consistency is misleading: the video makes clear that King Bee and Death Don't Have No Mercy are from different shows, using different microphones. Despite this, the Pranksters' recordings of the Dead sound much the same from one venue to another, and whatever problem the Pranksters had recording the vocals seems to have followed them from show to show. (In contrast, the vocals are quite clear on Owsley's tape of "3/19.")


FILM DATES

A poster for the Muir Beach Acid Test is displayed near the start of the video, which is misleading. Although the color footage has long been thought to be from 12/18/65, this was doubtful (the location doesn't look much like a club), and in fact the film of the Dead isn't from 1965 at all.

In 1965, Garcia played a 1962 Guild Starfire, but this was broken at the Trips Festival in late January 1966, and he replaced it with a newer model. The guitar Garcia plays in both the color and b&w footage is the new one, so this rules out the shows before the Trips Festival - both clips must have been filmed at the Los Angeles Tests. (Note the different knobs and pickguard shape.)
It's also apparent that Kesey does not show up in the actual Acid Test footage in the video (although he's seen in clips from other occasions). Though this is more an argument from omission, it may also imply that the Dead's scenes were filmed in Los Angeles, after Kesey had fled to Mexico at the end of January 1966.

Ken Babbs also remembered the King Bee as being from LA. He recalled:
"We were still filming when we were making the Acid Tests. We still had the camera and everything. This one Acid Test that we had in LA, we had the camera going and we almost did get all of Pigpen on that! We did the sound system ourselves and the mics and everything. We had a screw-up there when he was doing "King Bee" and a few other songs. You can hear him OK on the PA, but his voice wasn't coming through into the board and into the tape recorder. All the others were, and that was really bad because if that didn't happen we would have some dynamite tapes. Still the tapes we did get were really good..."

Dead performances from two Acid Tests are used in the video. The color and b&w films are from different dates, with a different band setup & background.
- In King Bee, Pigpen is to Garcia's right. In the b&w film, his organ is way over to Garcia's left, on the other side of the drums. 
- Pigpen's mic in King Bee has a flat top, not like the mics seen in the b&w footage.
- The glimpse of the stage background in King Bee doesn't match what's seen in the b&w film: the Altec speakers seen behind Garcia in the b&w film aren't seen in the color footage (where there are some horns above the drums); the mic stands strewn around Garcia in King Bee (one with what looks like tape hanging off it) are absent in the b&w film.
- There's a stark difference in venues: the location in the color footage looks like a garage with all its wood walls, and nothing resembles the bare decor & plain walls that are everywhere in the b&w footage, looking like a generic office building. The same spot is never seen in both the color and b&w footage.
(There is some visual continuity between the color and b&w films, as Pigpen & Garcia both tended to wear the same clothes a lot - Garcia has the same polkadot shirt, and Pigpen wears his ever-present jacket. Ken Babbs also wears the same pink costume in both the color and b&w footage, apparently reusing his outfit.)

Both locations are only seen in glimpses, so it's hard to picture the layout of each room. The venue in the b&w footage seems to have bare white walls on all sides, a studio-like appearance. There's a large mirror that people play with. The "stage" area is just a spot on the floor in front of an overhang. The Pranksters set up scaffolding with projectors & microphone by the doors, presumably opposite from the band. There are couple of spotlights set on ladders, but even when the Dead aren't playing the room looks pretty dark. (It seems brighter in shots before the show, but mostly from the camera light.) It doesn't look like a big crowd. Flashing lights are visible offstage while the band plays, but it doesn't come across well in the b&w film.

The venue in the color footage is most striking for its wood walls, the large wood panels strewn about, and the lack of lighting that leaves much of the area in darkness - it seems like a garage space. The band's playing on the floor again. The Pranksters set up an area along one wall on the floor for their sound equipment and projectors (everything seems to be ground level). Not much is seen of King Bee, but the stage seems to be lit from the front, not from spotlights above - no light show is evident. It's impossible to tell which (if any) audience shots come from this location - some audience shots in color are scattered here & there in the Acid Test video, which may be from several different places.

So King Bee is from a different show than the b&w film. As for what's being played in the b&w film, there is some indication that the "3-19" tape is from the same show:
- Garcia is seen singing Viola Lee Blues in the film (at least it looks like the line, "You may know by that I"), so at least one song is shared with the tape.
- In the setbreak banter after Next Time You See Me, Garcia says they're going to let "the other band" play. Another band is seen playing before the Dead in the b&w film - 3 guitarists and a drummer. (I don't know who they are, but they look like college kids.) At one point Lesh is spotted out in the audience while people are dancing, perhaps while the other band played in the break. No other bands are known to have played at the Dead's L.A. shows outside the Acid Tests (unless you count Tiny Tim on 3/25).
Also, since the Dead only played four Acid Tests in L.A., there are only so many places that the film & tape can come from. The Watts Test, I think, can be ruled out (both the venue and performance were quite different than what we see); and there is obviously no film from the Onion; leaving only a couple of candidates...


PICO REVEALED

The b&w footage has been labeled as the Pico Acid Test at Carthay Studios on 3/19, and there's never seemed to be much reason to question that. The Dead are seen singing Viola Lee, just like on the "3/19" tape, in a bare studio-like room - you can even see the Kool-Aid being poured. Many friends of the Dead appear - including Owsley, Rock Scully, Florence Nathan (later called Rosie McGee), and Paul Kantner - as well as a host of Pranksters such as Neal Cassady.
And yet, there is little solid evidence actually connecting the b&w film to Carthay. Instead, the clues point in a different direction...

The 2/25 Acid Test was originally scheduled at the Cinema Theater (there was even a newspaper ad), but it was moved to Empire Studios at 7417 Sunset Blvd. (The building had been a film production studio with a large soundstage; Wavy Gravy called it "a movie sound studio.") As it happened, it was just a few doors down from Lawrence Schiller's photography studio at 7403 Sunset Blvd. He was planning to do a photo story about LSD for Life magazine, and here an Acid Test had dropped right into his lap. 
Per one article, "That night at the Acid Test, Schiller invited the Pranksters to his studio, dangling the possibility of a Life magazine cover." (He couldn't quite recreate Acid Test conditions in his studio, so he remembered the shoot as "a little too posed.") The story ran a month later in the 3/25/66 issue of Life.
https://lawrenceschiller.com/lsd (some examples of his photos for the story)

Tom Wolfe wrote in chapter 20 of The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test: "A team from Life Magazine turned up, led by a photographer, Larry Schiller, who was onto the LSD world and had taken the pictures at the Hollywood Test. They interviewed the Pranksters and took pictures and said they were going to do a big spread on the acid scene and, they hoped, put the Pranksters on the cover. So they hailed the bus on over to the big photo studio...and Schiller took a lot of pictures." (Here the Pranksters split up, divided about the wisdom of posing for the "square" world; Babbs refused to go in and took off with the bus.)
The known date for Schiller's Acid Test photos unveils some surprising clues.
There are shots of Garcia wearing the dark blue shirt (with swirly embroidery) in a few places:
- the group photograph by Schiller on 2/25
- the color footage where Garcia's sweeping up by a doorway
- the start of the b&w footage where he's helping to set up the Dead's equipment
Phil is also wearing the same jacket & striped shirt in both Schiller's shot and the b&w film (seen at 10:30 in part 3). Florence also has the same outfit on.
When Garcia's sweeping, George Walker walks by him in a colorful feather costume. He's also wearing the same costume in Schiller's shots and when he dances in the b&w show footage. (At least three other Pranksters in Schiller's group shot also have their same costumes on in the b&w film.)
Of course, Garcia & Walker & various Pranksters could have worn the same outfits many times. But what's most telling is that the man sweeping up next to Garcia (in the striped shirt & green vest) is also seen on the left in the photo of the front entrance of the 2/25 Acid Test:
(The guy standing to the right of the door in the black jacket & turtleneck shirt can also be glimpsed in the b&w dance footage asking for a cigarette from Cassady.)

Thus, multiple people seen in photos from 2/25 are seen wearing the same clothes in the film, Pranksters as well as random guys outside. This indicates that the b&w film, and the color shot of Garcia sweeping by the door, are both actually from the 2/25 Acid Test at Empire Studios.
And so the tape dated "3/19/66," since it's from the same date as the b&w film, was also recorded on 2/25/66.

How a tape recorded on 2/25 came to circulate as both 3/12 and 3/19 is a mystery, but this is typical for Dead tapes from early '66, where the date on the label does not match the music within. (Pick up a Vault tape dated "2/23" or "3/12," for instance, and it turns out to be from 5/19.) Another tape used to circulate dated as "2/25/66 Ivar Theater," which is no such thing - the Dead never played an Ivar Theater, and the tape seems to be a compilation from a couple of spring '66 shows. But it does illustrate an interesting trend - the false dates on some early '66 tapes turn out to be dates that were actually recorded, though the music wound up under some other date. (This gives some hope that the elusive 3/12 Danish Center show, which keeps evaporating whenever we think we have it, might still exist on some unlabeled or misdated reel.)

An interesting bit of trivia about the show: the Dead are having some trouble with the PA and talk to Owsley about it. They seem bugged by how muddy their vocals sound and keep testing the mics, while popping sounds come from somewhere. ("Microphone, Owsley!" "How's the PA now?") Weir complains, "That's the weirdest-sounding PA I ever heard...sounds funky...the most modern up-to-date technical equipment still sounds funky..."
Owsley is prominent in the footage, of course, hovering around the band. Just a week earlier, on February 19, Owsley had bought a couple thousand dollars of new audio equipment for their PA - McIntosh amps, Altec speakers, Sennheiser microphones, etc. (There's a receipt in Blair Jackson's Grateful Dead Gear book, p.33.) This was the Dead's first show in public with their new PA, so it's fitting that they immediately started complaining to Owsley about the sound!
"There goes another speaker cone...another rock & roll casualty...but it's OK, it's only a machine..."

I should also mention: in the last minute of the longer b&w clip, Garcia sings a few lines of some song after a quick tuning that I could not identify. (Lip-readers may be able to catch a few words.) Possibly this song is not on the "3/19" tape. Archduke suggests it is Death Don't Have No Mercy (bits from it are used for that song in the Acid Test video), but I disagree - the song remains unknown. If it's ever identified, it may be a new surprising addition to the setlist.


BUT WHAT ABOUT 3/19?

The actual Pico Acid Test is little-remembered, although there's more information about it than the rather obscure Sunset Blvd Test, and it seems to have been better-attended.
Lee Quarnstrom recalled: "That was held on Pico Boulevard in an old sound stage. It was a pretty crowded one. We had driven down Sunset Boulevard handing out fliers that said, "Come to the Test." We did an interesting thing at this Test. We didn't put any acid into the Kool-Aid. We had the same garbage can full of Kool-Aid but there was no acid in it. We put in some dry ice so it bubbled, but nobody took any acid at all. Still, people thought they were high and acted high. It was a psychedelic placebo effect."

The LA Free Press reporter stopped by Carthay for a bit and saw "lots of people, over six hundred people... Life Magazine is there. A cop is there... There are three screens going, two with movies and one with a light show. People are dancing under the strobe light, people are flipping out, things are happening." He also observed the Dead taking a break between sets, like on 2/25. "The band starts again, the projections start, people start to dance, everyone starts to smile."

Owsley remembered it shutting down early, though there's no sign of that in the available film:
"We had some pretty interesting times in L.A. - the Watts AT was as strange as they come and the final one at a sound set on Pico Boulevard was stopped before midnight by the owner, who was rightfully freaked out by all the magic and weirdness."

There is a newspaper photo from the 3/19 Carthay Studios Test, a piece of evidence with a definite date:
3/25/66 LA Free Press article:
This caused some confusion since the photo visibly does not match the b&w footage that was always thought to come from 3/19. In the photo, the band is playing under a bright light (maybe it's an early soundcheck?); in the film it's dark except for a few spotlights. In the photo, Pigpen is on Garcia's right; in the film, he's moved way over off to Garcia's (and Bill's) left, and Weir & Lesh have also changed places. The overhanging paneling behind the band in the footage doesn't appear in the photo; even the walls look different. On top of all that, the stage microphones have changed between the photo & the footage (only Weir's mic looks the same), and the Altec Lansing "Voice of the Theatre" speakers that are everywhere around the band in the footage aren't seen in the photo. In short, the b&w film did not match the visible evidence for 3/19.
However, the 3/19 photo does match the color footage of King Bee in a few ways: it shows large boards propped up in the back, Garcia has the same shirt & vest on, and the visible microphones don't look so different. King Bee, it seems, is from Carthay after all.
(There is one change: Pigpen has changed coats and doesn't have his usual jacket on in the photo, instead wearing the sherpa vest he also wore on 3/25. This is odd. But a change of clothes is easy to conceive - for instance, in the b&w footage from 2/25, Garcia has his dark sweater on while setting up the organ but has changed to his polkadot shirt during the show; Lesh is also seen taking off his coat at one point; and there's even an announcement on the tape when Weir "takes off his shirt.")

The color scenes of the Pranksters setting up and sweeping up the venue seem to be from the same location as King Bee. This isn't definite, but there are two bits of evidence:
- Garcia is seen in the sweeping-up scene wearing the same polkadot shirt & orange-front vest that he wears in the show. (He stands next to Mountain Girl while she's sweeping, perhaps already smitten.)
- The venue was apparently big enough for the Pranksters to drive their bus and a van & truck in, with large double doors. Carthay Studios, a large soundstage and movie studio, seems to fit the bill. (Few of the Acid Test locations would fit this description - indeed there might not be other plausible locations this could be filmed at.)
I should note that Carthay Studios isn't a 100% certain match for the film: The big wood doors in the video don't match the metal stage doors & brick exterior in a 1968 photo of the Carthay building. The studio may have had other doors, or might have replaced this door, but this raises some doubts. Nonetheless, it's hard to identify another Acid Test venue known to have doors large enough that you could park a bus or van inside. (One theory is that the bus may have been parked in an exterior shed, not inside the building itself.)
Carthay also emerges by process of elimination. The earlier Acid Test venues in December '65 are even less likely possibilities for this large space, and no footage in the video can be certainly traced to those locations. We know the Pranksters were filming in Los Angeles and specifically at Carthay; the venue seen here is not the church in North Hills, or the concrete warehouse in Watts, or the Sunset studio; only Carthay is left.

The Pranksters brought a lot of electronics and clutter with them, and it's interesting to see that the venue not only has convenient hooks on the walls to hang cords on, there's even apparently some furniture lying around they can put their equipment on (a little bedframe, steps, a bench and counter, possibly even an old horse-carriage hidden in the darkness). Along with the various big wood panels strewn here & there, it almost looks like a workshop.
The building does not look well-lit - the camera light provides most of the lighting when they're setting up and sweeping, and the shadows make clear that there wasn't much if any overhead light. The area where the bus is parked just has some dim lightbulbs hanging above. Even in the big room where the Pranksters are setting up their gear, it's pretty dark and (in the Youtube video at least) you can't see the other end of the room.
Unlike the b&w film from 2/25, all we've seen of this color footage is what the editors included in the Acid Test video, so a lot more could have been filmed. But what's in the video is noticeably less thorough than the 2/25 camera coverage. Many people you'd expect to see are missing (no Owsley, no Cassady, some of the Dead), and only a few minutes of one song are seen. There's very little sense of the audience, if any audience shots are included from this location at all (it's hard to tell) - no one is seen with the band. Other than a glimpse of Garcia, none of the Dead are seen outside the performance. And (just like on 2/25) there's oddly no footage of the light shows & movie screenings on the walls. On the other hand, you get a sense of the work the Pranksters put into the event - unloading & installing all their equipment, packing it back up again, sweeping the floor, etc.

Aside from Babbs, at least one Prankster is seen in the films from both dates. Lee Quarnstrom (who's setting up the tape machines in the preshow color footage) also appears in the 2/25 shot where Garcia's sweeping by a doorway. One sign this is from a different date: he's wearing different shirts under his cloak in that shot than he is when seen with the tape machines.
Ron Bevirt is also seen running the projectors on both dates - up on the scaffold in the b&w film, and behind the projector counter in the color setup, in a different outfit. 


AND THE FILLMORE?

In the Acid Test video, Ken Babbs narrates throughout ("I'm nestled somewhere deep inside the bowels of the Fillmore Auditorium," etc). Sound effects are often added to this and some of his segments were obviously added later, making it uncertain whether he actually narrated events live at the Fillmore.

Babbs talks over the ending of Hog For You Baby in the video, so it may seem like that song at least can be attributed to 1/8/66. ("Here is the engine room coming in loud & clear, the captain has just informed me," etc.) In the video, most of the song plays normally (starting in stereo), then after a cut Babbs narrates his rocketship stuff over the (mono) end of the song. The question is - did he do this at the show, or was it an overdub?

Most likely, he dubbed it later. Lestatkatt's compilation of the 1/8/66 edits shows that Babbs edited (and narrated) the Acid Test a little differently in each version of the video - recording two different intros and dubbing himself into parts of the original show. For instance, before version 2 of "King Bee," Babbs adds an extra introduction: "Now we're gonna get you some sounds, Pigpen."
In tracks 36-39, Babbs also adds a new narration over the tune-up/no-power section of the show (tracks 2-3), so there are two Babbs speaking! All this demonstrates he was quite capable of dubbing new material on top of the recording, probably via copying the tape to free up an extra track on the copy.

So the original tape of this show must have had much less Babbs on it. The band asks "Ken" to fix the power onstage ("Hey Ken, these microphones don't seem to be working - nothing up here is working"), so Babbs was to some extent in charge of the electronics and has some dialogue with the band. (Owsley wouldn't become the Dead's soundman until the end of January.) It's hard to tell how much of the rest of Babbs' talking is "live," though some between-song portions with other sound effects are clearly studio creations. While he did do some chatter at the event (Pigpen yells at him to "stop your babbling"), most of the "captain" and "ship" narration was apparently added later.

This means Hog For You Baby could come from anywhere. I don't think Babbs' narration was done live. There's no telling what was really played that night - it's possible none of the songs come from the Fillmore. The only Dead content that's definitely from 1/8/66 is the brief setting-up problems before they play, and the end-of-show chatter after the cops arrive.

In the end, it's quite a prank if the tape of the Fillmore Acid Test has no actual music from the Fillmore! This raises the question - why did Babbs pick songs from other shows instead? Perhaps there was some recording problem and the band wasn't mixed well (it's hard to tell from the tuning snippets), or maybe Babbs just decided the Dead sounded better at other shows. In any case, the tape can be considered an Acid Test compilation or a 'best-of' sampler from the L.A. Tests that might not follow the actual setlist of any specific show.

Ken Babbs said in the Deadcast about 1/8/66:
"We had this tape, the Fillmore Auditorium Acid Test. We had so many tapes, reel to reel stereo, great tapes, and they needed work, you know, they needed to be edited. I edited that Fillmore Auditorium tape down to what I considered to be a 2-sided record, you know, 20 minutes a side. We had to cut the tape and splice it together and fill in other stuff and everything, and really I think it's one of the best tapes we've ever made... We would put everything down into our 2-track Ampex, and that would be the master tape, and that would be the one that I would use for the editing, just cutting and pasting that."

The timing of this is uncertain - the Deadcast suggests that Babbs made the album right after the Fillmore, but I think it's more likely that he made his edited tape later on (after the L.A. Tests), drawing from other shows, and that was the tape used for the video. This is part of why I suspect a lot of his 1/8/66 narration is not actually live from the event: he was specifically narrating for record, like a radio show (or, later on, for the video).

There's one possible song from before L.A.: at the end of the video after Tastebud, it sounds like it might be Kesey talking (the voice on the left saying, "I believe we have accomplished it, at least up here," while Neal Cassady babbles on the right). If that dialogue is continuous with the song, it would indicate the performance is before Kesey fled to Mexico - but I'm not certain it's Kesey, and not certain that the audience chatter isn't just spliced onto the end of the song. (Tastebud itself has some audience chatter near the mics, which you wouldn't expect on the Fillmore stage, though it's possible.)

It's not known how regularly the Pranksters filmed the Acid Tests. Their archive, such as it was, must have been chaos, perhaps nothing dated, some audio tapes here, some random silent movie reels there, that could only be pieced together with difficulty. It's odd how little color footage from 2/25 was apparently used in the Acid Test video - only one scene that could be identified. There appears to be no surviving film from the Fillmore Test at all (or any of the December '65 Tests), and any shots of the Dead playing seem to be quite scarce, considering how many Tests they played at. So far as we know, the Dead were not filmed at most of the Acid Tests, and maybe only for a few minutes at a time when they were. Though it's tantalizing to imagine hours of Acid Test outtakes, it may be that the editors scraped together all the Dead footage they could find for the Acid Test video.

The Kesey film collection (520 reels of it) is currently held at the UCLA Film & Television Archive, possibly including many unseen Acid Test reels:

As far as audio, it's clear that both the Pranksters and Owsley recorded more Dead shows in early '66 than have circulated. (Kesey once wrote about a conversation with Garcia after the Muir Beach Acid Test: "We taped tonight's show. We could release a record tomorrow!") Many of these tapes may have since been lost or scattered among unlabeled reels. Among the Dead tapes in the Vault, few reels from early '66 actually have the correct date on them after many mixups, while Prankster tapes seem not to have been dated at all.

So what recordings are known to survive from the Acid Tests?

12/4/65 San Jose - nothing
12/11/65 Muir Beach - nothing
12/18/65 Big Beat - nothing
1/66 Beaver Hall - nothing
1/8/66 Fillmore - partial tape (possibly no Dead music was released); no film
1/22-23/66 Trips Festival - no known tapes; non-Prankster film & photos
2/6/66 North Hills - maybe a partial tape; no film
2/12/66 Compton - partial tape; no film
2/25/66 Empire Studios - film & tape
3/19/66 Carthay Studios - partial film & tape

(The Dead's non-Acid Test shows in LA aren't preserved very well either. There's a partial tape of 3/25 Trouper's Hall, but (despite some tapes from other shows misdated as 3/12) apparently nothing has surfaced from 3/12 Danish Hall.)

Overall, it's noticeable that the Los Angeles Tests were preserved (even if partially) better than the early Tests from 1965, from which hardly a trace survives. It's possible that by the final Acid Tests, the Pranksters were paying a little more attention to capturing the events. Someone, after all, was holding the camera while the other Pranksters were working or dancing. (A handbill for the Carthay Test mentions "On Location Filming of the Acid Test.")

In conclusion, these are the new dates for the Acid Test recordings:
- the b&w footage and the tape dated "3/19" are from 2/25/66
- Death Don't Have No Mercy from "1/8" is also from 2/25/66
- King Bee and most of the color Acid Test footage are from 3/19/66

This post was drawn from the discussion in this thread where Archduke discovered the correct dates:
Not everything's certain, and there may be mistakes. New evidence might surface later that changes some of these conclusions. Anyone with memories or photos of the Acid Test venues, feel free to comment!

*

APPENDIX: AUDIENCES & ANGELS

The audience shots in color in the Acid Test video are elusive and hard to pin to any date. They're never seen with the Dead and the venues are barely visible. Different dates are mixed together willy-nilly in the editing. (A typical example is the King Bee in part 1, which cuts from the band footage on 3/19 to the b&w dancers on 2/25.)
But there are three short sequences of audiences that seem to be from different locations:

Part 2, 6:02-7:19 - Dancers in front of a blank wall, focusing on a few individuals (like a lady with a tambourine). People sitting on the floor under a blue strobe light. The brief shot of Lee Quarnstrom in the doorway from 2/25 - but the surrounding shots may or may not be from that date.

Part 2, 9:13-9:48 - A glitterball; dancers under colored flashing lights. No sight of the Dead - there's a different group onstage with a blonde lady at the mic. The lights here look a lot more elaborate than in the other locations, but it's hard to tell where this comes from, or if it's even an Acid Test. I get the impression it's an actual music venue.

Part 1, 16:07-17:33 - Hells Angels. It looks like a bar: they're drinking from glasses (not bottles or cans), people are seated by a wall, there's a clock with some decorations on the wall over a counter, no windows are visible, dim lights hang from a low ceiling. Not a Prankster in sight, just a bunch of Angels with a few gals, in a place so dark that pretty much the only light seems to come from the camera light. There might not even be a live band playing; there's dancing but no glimpse of a band or stage lights, even though the camera pans across several walls. Maybe the cameraman was just hanging out in a corner or separate room where all the Angels were, but it's a big contrast from what we see in other events.
One possibility for this scene was the Muir Beach Tavern. Tom Wolfe specifically described a group of Hells Angels showing up at the lodge on the Dec 11 Acid Test:
"Muir Beach had a big log-cabin-style lodge for dances, banquets, and the like... The lodge had three big rooms and was about 100 feet long, all logs and rafters and exposed beams, a tight ship of dark wood and Roughing It. The Grateful Dead piled in with their equipment and the Pranksters with theirs, which now included a Hammond electric organ for Gretch and a great strobe light... Hell's Angels come reeling in, shrieking Day-Glo, then clumping together on the floor under the black light and then most gentle Buddha blissly passing around among themselves various glittering Angel's esoterica, chains, Iron Crosses, knives, buttons, coins, keys, wrenches, spark plugs, grokking over these arcana winking in the Day-Glo..." (Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, chapter 18)

On the other hand, the location in the film doesn't seem to match all the details of the Muir Beach Tavern. The bar-like setting and lack of any visible Acid Test activity makes me think it's a Hells Angels hangout. Kesey was friendly with them in '65, so I suspect this is not an Acid Test, but an Angels party with some Pranksters in attendance.
George Walker writes about one occasion: "We did not do an Acid Test in the Oakland bar. We did hang out there with many of the Oakland Hells Angels after the gathering downtown on what was called Viet Nam Day, following a confrontation the previous day between the Angels and the war protesters marching from Berkeley. It’s a long story; after hanging out at the bar, which was near the Oakland Angels clubhouse and frequented by them, we went to Sonny Barger’s house for a meeting. Much has been written about that day. It was in the fall of 1965, before the first Acid Test."

Whenever this scene was shot, it's possible that there's no Acid Test connection here. The video also mixes in other Kesey home movies (especially in part 2); it's meant to be more an impressionistic lysergic blur than a strict Acid Test documentary. Times and places fold together, and scenes repeat; Hells Angels, Pranksters, and L.A. dancers mingle under the camera lights to some menacing blues from the Grateful Dead; and the soundtrack gives way to chaos. Who, in 1966, would have thought that sixty years later anyone would go digging through the film clips to track down the exact dates and places and setlists of these obscure rock & roll acidheads?
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