The Perro Sessions (Planet Earth Rock and Roll Orchestra)

The confusion surrounding 'the Perro sessions' is understandable.   Perro, or PER&RO (Planet Earth Rock & Roll Orchestra), refers to a loose agglomeration of players in the San Fransisco Bay area who gathered around Wally Heider's studio during a time of great flux in their respective bands including: Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, Quicksilver Messenger Service, Jefferson Airplane and the Grateful Dead.  Deadheads in particular enjoy the material due to the lack of live recordings documenting the musical relationship between Garcia and Jorma Kaukonen (Jefferson/ Hot Tuna). 

A definite high point on this portion of the tape is at 30:24 as Mountains v. 4 reaches its apex (a phenomenal passage in it's own right), when the band led by Jerry starts coaxing out a proto version of  Loser and a brief reprise of Deal including a pause to recapitulate the chords.  Then there is a cold cut in the tape and Jerry plainly recounts the chord progression: C-Em-Am-G-Am.  At which point they go into Deal proper.

The Perro Sessions tapes give us a glimpse into these and other sessions that were never mixed or saved for posterity, the recordings engineer Stephen Barncard is central to the conservation of this material- though perhaps he did not pack the actual pipe of marijuana that was discovered along with the sessions when unearthed.

Planet Earth Rock & Roll Orchestra collaborations have resulted in many songs and formally in two releases; the first credited to Jefferson Starship was the album Blows Against The Empire; the second was David Crosby's solo debut If Only I Could Remember My Name.

Personnel

David Crosby – guitar, vocals
Graham Nash – guitar, vocals
Paul Kantner – guitar, banjo, vocals
Grace Slick – piano, vocals
Jorma Kaukonen – lead guitar
Jack Casady – bass
Jerry Garcia – guitar, vocals
Phil Lesh – bass
Bill Kreutzmann – drums
Mickey Hart – percussion
David Freiberg – viola, vocals

PERRO Discography

1970 Blows Against the Empire by Paul Kantner and Jefferson Starship
1971 If I Could Only Remember My Name by David Crosby
Songs for Beginners by Graham Nash
Sunfighter by Paul Kantner and Grace Slick
1972 Graham Nash David Crosby by Graham Nash and David Crosby
Rolling Thunder by Mickey Hart  —
1973 Baron von Tollbooth & the Chrome Nun by Kantner, Slick, and Freiberg 1983 Planet Earth Rock and Roll Orchestra by Paul Kantner

An excellent narrative on the discovery of the 4 reels of 2 track mixes made in 1971 and the genesis of the sessions (along with the original tape box notations) can be found here.

The roots of PER&RO go back a lot further than 1971. 1 guess it had its inception in the early years of the '60s (prior to the Airplane, the Byrds et al) when Kantner, Crosby and Freiberg used to hang out, play music, get high and rap together around Venice Beach. That was the initial bond, the start of it all...

Later, when they were in bands of their own, there were occasional points of interaction - like Garcia sitting in on the 'Surrealistic Pillow' sessions, like Crosby giving "Triad" to the Airplane when he couldn't get the Byrds to record it, like Kantner, Crosby and Stills writing "Wooden Ships"....  

As Grace recalls, "These sessions were like 'Uh, do you wanna play guitar on this one?' 'No, man, I have to go to the bathroom.' 'Okay, David, you wanna play?' 'Sure'. Whoever felt like doing something did it. Parts interchanged, people interchanged."