I found this little gem that most of you Heads have probably already seen, while searching the Youtubes for quality Pigpen videos and it’s simply too good not to share.
Credited as a “A Brokedown House Production,” the video switches between color and black and white and edits out any banter or tuning in between songs and is posted in two parts.
Apparently on a whim, the band flew to France in 1971 to play at a canceled festival. But they were housed at Château d’Hérouville, a a residential recording studio in Hérouville, France made famous by Elton John, who recorded three albums at their, (Honky Château, Don’t Shoot Me I’m Only The Piano Player and Goodbye Yellowbrick Road).
Lots of other famous people recorded there, including Marc Bolan, Gong, David Bowie, Pink Floyd, Bad Company, Iggy Pop, Fleetwood Mac. It was also also apparently once home to Chopin and Van Gogh. Though the Grateful Dead did not record there, they did end up playing an impromptu show in the in the backyard as documented by this great high quality video.
The video page doesn’t include the whole set played that night but only about an hour’s worth of material (which is still gold). You can stream the whole show at Live Music Archive. The video post itself doesn’t provide a whole lot of information, though one of the comments gives the following background, from Jerry, (which is easily confirmed as part of a Rolling Stone interview which later became the book: Garcia: Signpost To New Space), and the details jive with Dennis McNally’s account in A Long Strange Trip: The Inside History of the Grateful Dead.
“We went over there to do a big festival, a free festival they were gonna have, but the festival was rained out. It flooded. We stayed at this little chateau which is owned by a film score composer who has a 16-track recording studio built into the chateau, and this is a chateau that Chopin once lived in; really old, just delightful, out in the country near the town of Auvers-sur-Oise, which is where Vincent van Gogh is buried. We were there with nothing to do: France, a 16-track recording studio upstairs, all our gear, ready to play, and nothing to do. So, we decided to play at the chateau itself, out in the back, in the grass, with a swimming pool, just play into the hills. We didn't even play to hippies, we played to a handful of townspeople in Auvers. We played and the people came — the chief of police, the fire department, just everybody. It was an event and everybody just had a hell of a time — got drunk, fell in the pool. It was great."
