5/8/82: four ways of looking at a Keystone show

the Keystone faithful, 8/20/81 by Bob Minkin

 

I have riffed on sound quality and terroir and all that before, but man, what a difference a good aud tape make.  It can make enough of a difference that sometimes listening to multiple recordings of the same performance will give it a Rashomon-like quality.  Case in point: 5/8/82 is a show that is right in the armpit of a JGB era that I can usually take or leave.  This particular lineup was well settled in its drug-fuzzed routine, reliable and occasionally scorching hot but not often all that inspired.  This show is on the short side.  It has a Don't Let Go, so I am sure that I'd given it a listen at some point and was evidently left unmoved, since I couldn't remember anything about it.  But I was tempted to listen to this newly circulating recording (note: I wrote this last May and forgot to post it) made by John Anzaldo with a Walkman "three feet from the stage in the center," and I am glad that I did.

#1: the board tape 
To paraphrase JGMF, there are some serious damp, cheap motel towel vibes happening here.  To my ears, most post-Bettyboard 1980's JGB sbd tapes are disappointing listening experiences; this tape is essentially the X-Ray version of the Anzaldo aud that I really came here to talk about.  I think Harry Popick was running sound for the JGB at this time (his gig with the Dead was mixing their onstage monitors, not the front-of-house sound).  Judging from the auds, Popick's house sound was great, whereas the board tape is a straight PA feed (i.e. what wasn't loud enough in the onstage amps and would need to be reinforced in the PA): that means not much guitar, plenty of vocals, plenty of keyboard, plenty of kickdrum, zero room ambience.  So go figure, listening to this tape didn't make much of an impression on me.  No thanks.  Maybe not bad raw material for a new matrix source, though.

#2: Jeff Knudsen's tape
Jeff Knudsen taped a grip of Keystone shows around this time, and I don't think it's unfair to say he was a more casual taper than some of the other regulars.  Most of his recordings circulate with a personal reminiscence of the show, which give a lot of fun color and context to his recordings.  Some of them are surprisingly good, given the circumstances: he found a spot, surreptitiously set up his mics (stuffed in a sock and held in his armpit), and proceeded to have a good time.  This one is decent but sounds a little muffled.  But everyone clearly was having a pretty good time.  Disclaimer: we owe Jeff Knudsen -- and anyone who made the effort and spent the money to run tape at all these taper-unfriendly JGB shows -- a huge debt of gratitude. Thank you, Jeff Knudsen!

#3: Ohr Weinberg's tape 
This one sounds pretty good.  But it's only the second set, because, as Weinberg relates, "we were at a Robert Hunter show in SF and Hunter made a crack about why we weren't at the Jerry show in Berkeley... so we drove down to Berkeley just in time for the second JGB set."  Fortunately the complete source (below) sounds even better.  And, fwiw, the Hunter show does circulate: presumably this is also Weinberg's tape, from Jeff Knudsen's collection.  Double duty!  Thank you, Ohr Weinberg!

#4: John Anzaldo's tape
Back to our man on the front lines, who I imagine was standing right in front of Jerry like one of those dudes in the picture up top, trusty Sony Walkman at the ready (don't be skeptical; there are some Walkman aud tapes from the fall 82 tour that are surprisingly good).  The vocals are low, as is usually the case with tapes recorded this close to the stage.  But that Tiger sounds as rich as can be, and everything else is a little more gentle in the mix, but still well-balanced: drums, bass, Hammond organ, and small but unobtrusive touches of electric piano.  You are right there, shoulder to shoulder with the few, the proud, the yahoos who've been partying since they got on line at 4:00 that afternoon.  I confess that perhaps the recording quality is swaying my opinion, but this show has now come to life for me.  Don't Let Go, unsurprisingly, is one highlight, powered along by Kreutzmann finding new angles throughout the jam while never leaving the waist-deep groove.  I also submit the first chorus of his penultimate solo in Tangled Up in Blue (@5:15, after the "I lived with them on Montague St" verse) as a small shining jewel of Pure Jerry Perfection -- it's not a speaker-shredder like 2/4/81, but more like the epitome of butterflies being let out of a basket.  I am also really feeling his hard dig into Tore Up Over You, although, this being 1982, he loses the thread for his final solo after too much wait-time for the keyboardists to do something interesting (spoiler: nope).  Elsewhere, he's hot to trot and jumps from song to song with very little lag time, including an unusual hustle from Simple Twist into The Harder They Come into Midnight Moonlight to end the night.  Not quite one for the books, but one more Saturday night where everything (mostly) clicks into place.  I would never have known it, though, were it not for this fine aud tape.  Thank you John Anzaldo!

3/30/76: the first Don't Let Go meets Sugar Magnolia

4/1/76 by Jim Anderson

3/30/76 at the Calderone Concert Hall in Hempstead, NY is a show that probably doesn't get much airtime in our age of digital abundance: the aud tape of the early show is rough quality and the late show is even worse.  It's a little surprising that there is only one recording of a NYC-area Garcia show out there, but it's what we've got for now.  If the reward for braving a poor 76 JGB aud tape is something you need to be convinced of, then I direct you to this Don't Let Go, currently the earliest known performance.  Warning up front: there's a big ol' cut of death that truncates this one mid-jam (judging from later versions from this tour, they still had a while to go).  Blarg.

So why bother?  Because this version is the only time I've heard Garcia do this unusual thing: the jam, like all of them, begins with him grinding around the A blues scale, but at around 7 minutes, he shifts gears into A mixolydian.  For you non-modal types, that's a different scale that he used more frequently in more 'major' sounding jams.  There is plenty of stuff online about the modes and approaches that Garcia tended to favor in his improvisations, and I am not the person to go into depth about it.  But what struck me -- and what may strike you, even if you don't play or usually think about this stuff -- is how Garcia's decision changes the color and direction of the jam, giving it a flavor that sounds a lot like Sugar Magnolia, of all things.  Keith Godchaux picks up on it and, though I wouldn't quite label it a "Sugar Magnolia jam," it does sound like they are both thinking along those same lines.

Later Don't Let Go's made that modal shift a standard thing: versions from the 80's-90's start in the blues scale (or pentatonic, I guess) and then usually shift gears into a "jazzier" jam with Garcia centering on a different mode (paging any more experienced musicians here).  But he never did it like he does here, as far as I know.  All other 1976-78 versions that I know of either stick to that blues feel straight through, or jump ship at some point for freer spacey playing.  Which makes this debut version unique in my book.

The rest of the show is cool, too, if you're inclined to listen through the aud tape realities.  After Midnight has a hot jam, Who Was John is a good time as always, and there is some beautiful Keith/Jerry counterpoint (a 76 hallmark) happening in Sitting in Limbo.  If you're eying the text file suspiciously, fear not: Knockin' is not really 24 minutes, just a glitched file with some cuts and repeated sections (although the climax is excellent).  Plus, this is probably the best they ever pulled off the Stones' Moonlight Mile, with Tutt and Kahn thundering away before a nice vocal climax.  All in all: worth it for all you 76 JGB lovers.  All 11 of you.

5/15/75: the soles of my feet / I swear they're burning

Rick Griffin's proposed but unused LOM logo; courtesy WorthPoint

JGMF recently revisited the 5/21-22/75 Keystone tapes, which I had earmarked as some of the best Legion of Mary shows.  But, like him, a cursory relisten left me a little underwhelmed, in spite of the fantastic quality of the recordings.  So I dug into another old favorite, 5/15/75 at the Great American Music Hall, and was happy to hear that it still held up as a contender for some of the best of LOM.*  The aud tape isn't as special as those Keystone recordings, but it's still a very solid pull by Bob Menke and Louis Falanga, "upfront but not onstage."  The sound is muddier, but also features the full band in a more natural balance, with Kahn's bass cutting through quite nicely in particular.

Garcia seems a little more fired up than usual.  I have had the sense while listening to 74-75 era Garcia/Saunders/LOM that Garcia occasionally sounds like he was -- well, I don't want to say along for the ride, but perhaps not quite as committed as Fierro or Saunders.  But that is not the case tonight.  When I Die and Every Word You Say are strong but unremarkable warm-up numbers, and the first song that really finds a groove is I Feel Like Dynamite.  Even though Garcia seems to fudge the bridge more often than not, and there's a bit of trainwreck at the end, the energy during his solo is sizzlin' (nice climax!) and the groove is undeniable.  This Wicked Messenger is a rightfully well-known version and is off the charts: this sounds like it was a beast to sing, but the slowed-down arrangement with that monstrous never-ending riff lets Garcia get really down 'n dirty, and his relentless playing here is as nasty as it gets.  Day By Day from the musical/movie Godspell (and a charting single in 1972) is quite a change in mood; this must be from the Aunt Monk songbook, and Garcia doesn't sound super confident with it (this is the first of three known LOM performances).  It's got a vibe, but to be honest, I am not sorry they didn't develop this one much further.  But it's back to the bakery for a killer Mystery Train, with Tutt* effortlessly nailing down the groove and everyone else in fine style -- they bring the dynamics way down for Garcia's last solo chorus, which is a nice touch.

* big edit: JGMF has raised the question of the drummer's identity, and a minute of reengaging with Mystery Train has me convinced that the drummer tonight is not Ron Tutt.  Tutt always played a very distinctive beat on Mystery Train that emphasized the sixteenth notes on the high-hat (fwiw, this is well-illustrated on 4/6/75, 4/12/75, and 4/20/75, if you'd like to compare), and that is not at all what this drummer is playing.  This drummer also lets Garcia and Kahn establish the tempo and waits a few bars before coming in, which is not what Tutt ever does.  And listen to the "well I went down to the station" breakdown: Tutt always lets the dogs out here, whereas this drummer leaves much more space.  And the documentation supports this: Jerrybase notes that both the advertisements and Betty/Rex's tapes list the band as Garcia & Saunders, not Legion of Mary, which is further indication that Tutt was not present, and was not planning to be.  We now return you to this post:

The second set delivers the goods from top to bottom.  I'll Take a Melody is as good as any of these early versions, and You Can Leave Your Hat On cooks up a voodoo soul stew of the highest order; Saunders and Kahn are stirring up something outrageous under Garcia's solo.  I love this one!  Freddie Hubbard's Little Sunflower gets its first of six known LOM airings (it's also on the Aunt Monk w/Garcia 5/9/75 show as well) and Garcia soars on this one, sounding way more on top of things, and gobbles up his two solos.  Neighbor Neighbor is pumping, and Boogie on Reggae Woman ends the set with Saunders and Fierro showing some signs of a long night's work -- but not Garcia, who still sounds rarin' to go.

So: a top-notch Legion of Mary show.  Melody and Wicked Messenger were released on the patchwork Jerry Garcia Collection, Vol. 1: Legion of Mary set, but the whole show (or 5 reels of it anyway) were part of the "third batch" of Bettyboards returned to the vaults, and I would humbly submit this one to the powers-that-be as a good candidate for a full release.

Interesting/frustrating side note: after this show (a Thursday night) the band spent an unusual out-of-town weekend in St. Louis, MO (Friday) and Austin, TX (Saturday-Sunday)... of which no tapes are known to exist.

 

2/14/75: as sweet as a love note

Aunt Monk, 1975, courtesy bay-area-bands.com

No deep dive here, but I wanted to see how this next show compared with the previous ones: this is one of two circulating Aunt Monk gigs with Garcia sitting in.  Even though it's fully Merl's gig, Garcia is as prominent as he is on Garcia/Saunders shows, right down to the same typical order of solos (Fierro, Garcia, Saunders, and usually Garcia again).  JGMF has some context re: Aunt Monk in his post on the other circulating Generosity show.

In the interest of relative brevity:

• This is a lovely quality aud by Robert Castelli.  I am eternally grateful for his work here.  It's a little muffled, comparatively speaking, but with no crowd interference and excellent clarity, and I quite like the feel of it.  There's a nice moment of color just as the music is beginning when a female right next to him says, "just keep it low!" (the mics? the bowl?) and laughs.
• The Generosity was... a bar?  I am not finding any info.  But it was probably tiny.  There are no vocals, so maybe there wasn't even a PA system, and Merl only plays electric piano here, taking up far less space than a full Hammond B3 + Leslie speaker.
• This show is on par with the Jan 75 Keystone shows in terms of quality, although I personally prefer what Gaylord Birch brought to the mix at those shows.  But ye gods, they just bite down hard on just about everything here.  Merl's rarely played (as far as we know) original A Little Bit of Righteousness gets a high spirited run-through with the rhythm section lifting them all a few feet off the ground.
• Pennies From Heaven again!  The drummer, Bob Stellar, gives this more a straight-down-the-middle beat like a 6/8 R&B ballad.  Garcia is all over it and sounds more comfortable here than on 1/21/75, imho.  Incredible.
• When I Die also has a different feel than the Jan 75 versions, again largely due to Stellar at first.  But both Garcia and Saunders sound noticeably edgier in their attack here, and they're really both going off by the end of this.  Wow!  
• The most magical moment of the set, to my ears, is the verrry extended treatment of People Make the World Go Round, which Garcia/Saunders played only as a shorter instrumental without any solos, more like a kind of coda to another instrumental.  This one goes for 21 1/2 minutes, and the playing is the most interactive and "jammy" of the night.  There are still solos, but they seem to blend into each other more freely and there's a lot more interplay between Garcia, Fierro, and Saunders than in most other songs.  You'll have to hear it to believe it.
• Stevie Wonder's Creepin' sounds like it might be a new number for them (it's not an easy tune!), but Garcia does not sound like the weakest link.  He eats it up, and iirc this is better than any of the few later Legion of Mary versions.
• This show was Merl's 41st birthday.  Garcia was 32 and Fierro had just turned 33.

Simply amazing that this happened, that it sounds so goddamn good, and that we have a tape of it.

10/1/76: some slipknot

courtesy gdsets

I took in the bulk of the 2nd set jam while cooking dinner, and then again just now.  The sbd is just dandy, but this great aud tape is the way to go:
https://archive.org/details/gd1976-10-01.aud.unknown.118468.flac16

(it's even better than the Jerry Moore sourced tapes, imho, although either this tape must be from the same source, or the taper must have been set up right near him?)

ramblings: 

• Slipknot!  Oh Slipknot!  This is masterful.  After about 9 minutes, it seems like everyone else is ready to wrap things up and move on -- but Jerry waits, defers, then slowly spreads his tendrils off in another new direction.  This is a beautiful moment of Grateful Dead communication.  The nudge from the drummers and Phil's little slide at 11:40 cues the walk-up into the ending very nicely. 
• 11 minutes of Franklin's Tower is just enough.  I'm sorry, but this feels, you got it, just exactly perfect.  Not an all-timer, not blowing the roof off, not just cruising either; just the right amount of bounce and Jerry heats it up just when he needs to.  I am happy.  
• They didn't really have the whole disco Dancin' thing down until 1977, and a lot of the earlier 76 ones feel more clunky than funky to my ears.  This one has found its groove, though it doesn't have the same git down as it did in 77-79.  Jerry uses his wahwah pedal to great effect here, giving the jam a more smeary, psychedelic feel than the cleaner wompwompwomp of his trademark Mutron.  Again, it's short and sweet, but not too short: a hair below 8 minutes total before they break the jam off for Drums.
• After 5 minutes of the Wheel, everyone is clearly rarin' to get back into Dancin', but Jerry ignores it and wanders off the path.  The next 3 minutes are yet another of those low-key, only in '76 kind of jams: everyone is game to just see what happens, and Jerry's in no hurry to get them anywhere in particular.  And what happens is quite lovely -- shades of Crazy Fingers in spots, but really just another one of those funny '76 corners, like finding a room in your house that you didn't know was there.  Jerry lands it right in Ship of Fools, not a tune that I typically get excited about.  But after that trip, it's a welcome arrival.  It ends, and after some uncertain splashing about, Jerry guides them all back into the Dancin' reprise.  Kinda messy in spots, but hey man, they're just making this up as they go along.
• But it's not quite over.  Why not slide a little bonus GDTRFB in there just for good measure?  Why yes, thank you, I will.  All of it is great, but I find myself rewinding to 7:14 when Phil does that great tumble down into the AWBYGN riff and they're all playing everything all at once.  They even finagle a slick little transition into the closing Saturday Night, something they definitely did not have to do.  But they did stuff like that in 1976.

I do like 1976.

PS: This was the first of three times that they played at the Market Square Arena.  Each show was very good, and there is fantastic aud tape of each one.  How 'bout that.

11/5/74: a tale of two Jerrys

Jerry Moore, courtesy of Relix.

Continuing my Paul Humphrey streak, I very much enjoyed returning to this outstanding tape made by the great Jerry Moore, who taped several shows from this short Garcia/Saunders east coast tour, including all three of the Bottom Line early shows.  No late shows!  Can't blame a guy who's gotta get up and go to work in the morning, but still.  Oh woe.

I find the set to be enjoyable, but mixed overall -- the good stuff is really outstanding, but they're not totally consistent.  They come pumping out of the gate, but the delivery seems to dip a little bit in the middle of the set, with a draggy tempo for Second That Emotion and good-but-not-very-inspired performances of Leave Your Hat On and He Ain't Give You None.  But this was their first night on the road and mostly they're pretty cookin'.  They stumble a bit with getting together at the start of Mystery Train, but then they do indeed get it together.  Favela is fast, so fast that it feels like Jerry is only just staying on top of it.  To my ears, he fares much better on La-La, but both are pretty heavy performances. 

Taper legend Harvey Lubar shared the following story about this night (here)

As some of you might know, Jerry Moore and I were real close when we were in college together but drifted apart afterwards.  Nothing major, just life.  So, here's a quick story: Jerry and I went to the Bottom Line on 11/5/74 to see the early show.  The tables were perpendicular to the stage and we had the first two seats on each side of the table, right by the center of the stage.  When Garcia came out, I mentioned to Jerry that Garcia was starting to gray.  Jerry looked at him (his ankles were 3 feet away from us) and nodded in agreement.  We had never been so close to him before.  Jerry then took his mics out and actually put them on the stage for a few seconds while rearranging his bag.  Garcia stared at Jerry with total disbelief (his eyes actually widened) but he didn't say a word.  Then the show began.  Another great recording by Mr. Moore.

It is indeed an excellent aud tape, but what is particularly delightful is the chatter between, I presume,  Moore, Lubar, and maybe another buddy or two.  Thanks to the particular terroir of this tape, we are in a unique position (to paraphrase myself) of listening to Jerry Moore and Harvey Lubar listen to Jerry Garcia, and they are loving it.  This new drummer, whoever he is, is blowing their minds.  They are telling each other all about it.  For example, after a great That's a Touch:

"That drummer is really good."
"He's great!"
"Martin is nice."
"Yeah, he fits in."
"The drummer is really nice on the little rolls there."

after Favela:

"Musically, this is the best I've heard them."
"The drummer is gooood."
"He's really good." 
"He's damn good."
"Did you see, him and Garcia--"
"--right, that's what I was just going to say, he obviously knows(?) him a hell of a lot."
[calling out] "Who's the drummer!?" "what's his name?"
[deadpans] "Mickey Hart."
"He was, like, checking it with him -- it was incredible... [inaudible] ...It's really strange, but it was definitely happening." 
"That must be different for Garcia, for sure -- it's a different style of playing entirely."

 After La-La:

"This is definitely better than the last time they were here." (ahem)

And I would have to agree.  After Mystery Train, one of them declares, "phenomenal!" and Moore stops the tape.  But they weren't done yet.  The tape cuts back in:

"I don't believe that wasn't their last number!"
"What is it, quarter after two?"  [this has got to be sarcastic, right? This is definitely the early show]

and they power through a hot Money Honey to end the early show, unusually long at almost two hours!  A nice final touch is that Moore lets it roll for another minute, capturing the Bottom Line announcer cheerfully asking everyone to clear out for the next set and being greeted by Moore, Lubar, and a chorus of New Yorkers expressing how they feel about that.

10/27/74: stay golden, Jerry

courtesy gdsets

I had never closely listened to this because of the aud tape quality, but I was feeling intrepid and it paid off.  This is currently the earliest Garcia/Saunders recording with Paul Humphrey.  Some thoughts:

• Humphrey's first gig with the band was evidently at the tiny Chateau Liberté club on 10/11.  The next night, Garcia/Saunders was at the Berkeley Community Theater, apparently being fronted by Maria Muldaur (JGMF).  At a rare outdoor show in Santa Barbara on the 13th, Muldaur joined them again (JGMF).  gdsets also lists a Keystone Berkeley gig on 10/15 (the night before the Dead's final pre-hiatus stand at Winterland!? hmm), and then this three-night run at the Golden Bear in Huntington Beach, just south of LA and presumably not far from Humphrey's home base (gdsets lists five nights?).  Okay.  In between all this, the Grateful Dead machine played their final five shows for the foreseeable future.  Everyone at the time must have been reeling at the potential consequences of a Grateful Dead-less world, but Garcia's work schedule was not disrupted in any way.

• The sound quality of this tape is not great, but at least it sounds like our taper was right up front, maybe even with his mics set up onstage.  The vocals are very low (another stage mic tape giveaway), but the instrumental balance is good.  But it's overloaded and a couple generations down the line.  Grit your teeth and adjust.

• Quality notwithstanding, I found the most of the music here surprisingly hot.  That's a Touch I Like and Roadrunner, tunes that I usually enjoy without taking much notice of, are both really bangin', with Humphrey's powerful beat nearly levitating the whole band.  Favela is another bananas crazy version, flying along really quickly, but incredibly energetic and intense.  Expressway, like one on the 31st, feels draggier to me, with Humphrey perhaps overcompensating a bit (and Fierro deserves every "more cowbell!" joke that you care to make at his expense).  It Ain't No Use is mislabeled in the text file as It's Too Late: besides plowing a deep groove, also take note of Garcia's nice Roy Buchanan-esque volume knob bends on the intro.  Mystery Train is slamming.  Wow!  This band smokes.

• No big surprise that Maria Muldaur joins in again tonight, playing blue light chanteuse on Gee Baby Ain't I Good to You, an old chestnut that was recorded by loads of folks -- notably, in this case, also by her then-husband Geoff Muldaur on his album Having a Wonderful Time.  The story of both of the Muldaurs' connection to Garcia in early 74 is worth parsing out, although not here -- but his album seems to have been made in Garcia's/Saunders' orbit (and with the latter's participation) around the time of Garcia's Compliments earlier in the year, and Geoff Muldaur was on stage with the band at least once, possibly twice.  Also, the text file here mysteriously notes "Ringo on drums," but I am not hearing any audible evidence that anyone else is playing besides Humphrey.  If there is, then there is no way in the world that it's that Ringo.

• Aud tape fun: the taper's pals provide a nice distraction during the downtime in between songs, but Garcia's voice (off mic) comes through in spots as well.  Before Favela: "how do we start this? ... G minor?" (cue stoned chuckles).  Before Mystery Train (track 8, @1:05) it sounds like one of the pals says something in a mock southern accent about Mississppi Moon, to which Jerry responds something that I can't make out.  In the chatter after Expressway, another pal reasons, "guess they have new songs to worry about."  Yes indeed.

8/16/80: bring a poncho

My problem regarding this blog is that I ignore the little stuff and get bogged down in the big projects.  I really should do more little hit 'n run posts like this.

I gave this show an anniversary spin yesterday and quite enjoyed it:
https://archive.org/details/gd1980-08-16.SonyECM250.walker-scotton.miller.88959.sbeok.flac16

No rain check indeed.  The Mississippi River Festival was an every-other-week-or-so summer concert series hosted by Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville, a half-hour outside of St. Louis (lots of info here, if you're really curious).  "Maybe 3000 in a small outdoor shed close by the river," recalls an eyewitness at LMA, and "everyone except for the first 10 rows or so got soaked!"  It was was the first show of their late summer 1980 run, and also their first show after the death of Keith Godchaux.  It's a solid 1980 show, all good but not a lot of standout stuff, save for a couple of things that I submit for your consideration:

• Althea > Looks Like Rain is imho the most exciting thing in the first set.  1980 muscle!
• This China>Rider, however, is the most exciting thing in the show, a real all-timer.  Sharp as a tack, with everything you want from this vintage: a very energetic but not rushed tempo; a depth-charging, fiery Garcia-led jam with a great peak; a belting "headlight" verse with a huge Phil bomb.  The works, in other words.
• Joani Walker's aud tape is utterly fantastic all the way through, the work of a real master taper (Noah Weiner wrote a short but sweet ode to it at his great old blog), but the sound of the rain coming down hard, starting around 20 seconds into Ship of Fools, is one of those one-of-a-kind terroir moments that is magical and utterly unique to this recording.  You can almost smell it.
• Tip of the hat to Brent Mydland for his keyboard work at the start of the Estimated jam.  The sound of his electric piano, with a perfect mix of echo/delay and outdoor rainy ambience, is totally sublime.

Another famous rain show is 6/20/83, and as intense as this recording is, it doesn't quite hit the sweet spot for me like this one does.

4/28/79: aud tape ephemera

4/23/79, by Chris Stone

This is one of those aud tapes that I love more for what's happening between songs than for the actual music itself.  It's a really good pull (taper unknown) of just the first set of a typically enjoyable but fairly unremarkable Reconstruction show.  I was most impressed by Garcia's long solo in Nessa, riding a fierce and very fast groove with aplomb.  I'm also impressed by the amazingly good save during the flub in the transition at the end of an otherwise great I'll Take a Melody, but I suppose that kind of thing isn't technically a highlight (although, seriously, nice save!).  Also, if you're listening on headphones, watch out when Garcia hits that effect pedal for his solo in Struggling Man -- whoa!  But otherwise, there's not much to say about the music itself.

Like 10/24/78, however, there are a couple of little nuggets to savor between the songs, if you find value in this kind of thing.  It starts with a good-natured doof asking after the opener, "what is this? oh, a recorder? [then, in response to his buddy, who was probably like, "no, sherlock, it's a toaster oven, keep talking into it"] I didn't know what it was!"   A minute later, someone (the same guy?) explains, "they were in Frisco and someone told them Reconstruction was playing here, so they got on the bus and came here."  Oh for the days when you heard Jerry was playing tonight and just hopped on the bus.

This is probably more up JGMF's alley, but after I'll Take a Melody a different guy hollers, "why didn't you play last night?"  Hmm.  gdsets lists a 4/27/79 date at the Centennial Hall in Hayward, CA (just across the Bay from Palo Alto) with no setlist, and a setlist for 4/26 at the Keystone in Berkeley (but no tape).   Centennial Hall (capacity 1500) seems like an odd venue for Reconstruction, particularly sandwiched in between two Keystone dates.  Was it canceled?  Or, apropos of the fact that Reconstruction played in Hayward a few months later without Garcia, could it be possible that the comment is just be directed at him?

[edit: can't believe I forgot to mention the bomb-drop whistler.  There's a dude who figures on several Jerry aud tapes from this era who does this persistent whistle like a bomb dropping (or like Wile E. Coyote falling off a cliff).  I always find him a little irritating, particularly since he seems to amp it up when Garcia is soloing, but it's not bad enough on this tape that you'd even notice it.  I think 12/17/79 is one tape where it's pretty bad.  Anyway.  Who the heck was this guy?  What was his deal?  I think about these things listening to tapes like this.]

Finally, my favorite: just a second before the above hollering, you can hear a guy ask, "you like it?" and a little kid respond, "yeah!"  Go dude for bringing your kid to see Reconstruction!  Sorry, but as a parent of smallish children, this tickles the heck out of me.  See also 1/15/72 (a great tape for many reasons, not least for the little kid who heckles Save Mother Earth in the first set), 9/30/73 (kids playing near the stage as OAITW starts Panama Red, of all things), and an honorable mention to 9/20/76 (I think?) with the baby crying during Russian Lullaby.  Okay, so it's a short list so far.

You may now return to your regularly scheduled programming.

[Feb 2022: update!  The second set is now in circulation!  So I will hopefully circle back to this one.  Also, courtesy of Jerrybase, I see that Bettyboard cassettes exist for this show, so who knows, maybe someday...]

 

9/30/83: a long day, living in Reseda

courtesy jerrygarciasbrokendownpalaces

Friday 9/30/83 was the start of a long weekend in L.A. for Jerry and the band, sandwiched in between two great Dead tours, and just two months into David Kemper's tenure.  This is a relatively long show for the period with two sets at just under an hour each (a good length for a 2-set show, even out of town; early/late shows tended to be longer).  I'm not apologizing, but ya get what ya get with 1983 Jerry.  Vocals?  The man was living off Camels, coke, and heroin smoked off of aluminum foil.  Tempos?  Fast and sometimes shaky.  Guitar?  Louder than all hell and then some.  Deal with it: this is a hot show!  The one recording is a fine, funky quality aud tape with terroir to spare, and our mystery taper sounds like he was up front with Garcia's amp in his crosshairs.  If this era is your jam, then you have to be down with aud tapes like this: there's a recent batch of newly transferred JGB '83 sbds (not new sources, for the most part) that have reminded me that a funky ol' aud tape is usually preferable to a clean monitor-mix sbd, which have pretty erratic guitar mixes and generally highlight more flaws than strengths.  While I wouldn't necessarily call these aud tapes a guilty pleasure, they're the kind of thing I discreetly turn down when someone who's not a deliriously devoted deadhead enters the room (i.e. wife, kids, in-laws, most friends).

A second/first verse flipflop followed by some sparkling up-high soloing in How Sweet It Is lets you know what kind of night you're in for.  Garcia is crushing it in TLEO and goes through the roof with his second solo in Let it Rock.  Love in the Afternoon, a tune I don't love, is taken way too fast and they're working hard to keep it all together, so Garcia eases back with a nice Mississippi Moon and then, whoa, here comes Tangled Up In Blue.  His second solo is particularly tasty, but the end jam is everything catching on fire at once.  Kemper was still working out the whole "one foot on the brakes, one foot on the gas" thing, and succumbs to the temptation of kicking things into high gear a little too early (though he doesn't push as hard or insensitively as his predecessor Greg Errico could do).  It's exciting at first, but soon adds to a general level hubbub that, amazingly, they all manage to stay on top of.  A joyful noise to be sure, but man, I bet everyone's heads were ringing after that one.

Kemper, however, finds just the right groove for a very nice Mission in the Rain to start the second set.  A lovely (and brisk) Gomorrah is a nice call; Run for the Roses not so much; but Russian Lullaby is a beauty, particularly in Garcia's reentry after the bass solo when Kemper doubles up the time and Kahn shifts into a brisk walking bassline for a little while.  Nice touch, boys!  Dear Prudence's jam dials it way back, with Garcia playing more carefully and sensitively -- was he fading? was he just feeling like a little TLC was in order? -- and it feels a little out of place with the vibe of the rest of the show.  YMMV, obvs, but heads up for a badly timed tape cut, too.  It's nice, however, to hear Deal closing the show rather than the first set.  Like Tangled, they just go balls-out for broke here, but it's the end of a long, loud night and it's not quite as, um, smooth.  It's not the elegant arc of a well-crafted Deal jam, but no matter: I doubt that anyone left standing had much in the way of critical faculties left at that point, and probably neither will you if you've been blasting this through your headphones for the last two hours.  Which I recommend.

postscript: the JGB played here in 1982 (the debut of the Seals/Errico lineup), 1983, and 1984 (famed for its amazing Sugaree).  JGBP reports the colorful history of the place and its owners.  I will take the liberty, though, of quoting Corry Arnold's description of the club, which is just about perfect:

Reseda is near Northridge, Northwest of Los Angeles (off Hwy 101, between Van Nuys and Canoga Park, for those of you who know SoCal). It's probably a nice enough place, but it has a whiff of one of those faceless LA places without an identity--Tom Petty symbolically dismisses it in the lyrics to his 1989 hit "Free Fallin'": 

It's a long day, living in Reseda /
There's a freeway running through the yard 

The Country Club was a popular rock club in Reseda, which was open from about 1979 until the late 1990s (on Sherman Way near Reseda Boulevard). Lots of fine groups played there, but it was not a hip Hollywood club, since by LA standards Reseda was out in the 'burbs' (the empty club was actually used to film much of the 1997 movie Boogie Nights). Initially the 1000-capacity venue was conceived as a country showcase (hence the name) but it became better known for punk and new wave.

Or, in the words of the Karate Kid, I'm from Reseda, you're from the Hills, that's how we're different.  Something tells me that Garcia secretly kinda dug it, man.

2/24/73: at long last

poster by S. Ross, courtesy concertposterauction.com

The aud tape for 2/24/73 Iowa City is finally circulating!  Can I tell you how happy this makes me?  I'm really happy that the aud tape for 2/24/73 is finally circulating!  There has always been this mysterious snippet of the tail end of the jam  (/Phil>Feelin' Groovy) which, despite many folks' ravings (including Lavala's) was always hard for me to genuinely enjoy, given what was missing from the front end of it.  Dead.net posted that same fragment plus the Sugar Magnolia closer as part of one of their 30 Days of Dead series.  There's a second sbd fragment from the first set (with a killer Playin', at least), but for a long time that was the most of it.  Frustratingly, there was a gushing review of the whole jam in the first Taper's Compendium, published 20 years ago almost to the day before this aud tape finally reached general digital circulation.  No matter now.  It's here!  Listen!

God, this is good.  They blaze through Truckin' and a nicely developed Nobody's Fault But Mine instrumental/jam, then spiral off towards the Other One.  It seems like they're nearing escape velocity, but right at the moment when it could explode, it implodes instead and they peel back the surface to see the space within.  "Dark Star," says the taper(?), right on cue, but nope: they explore a sparse, darkly melodic space that sounds like it could be a prelude for Stella Blue, if that song existed yet (edit: duh), and Garcia and Lesh spin out one of the most beautiful duets they ever played, Lesh's harmonics pinging out around the arena, while Garcia plays longingly and mournful -- I may be imagining things -- almost maybe like he was thinking about Dark Was the Night, Cold Was the Ground?  (could it be? two tributes to Blind Willie Johnson in the same show!?)  Wishful thinking, I'm sure.  Then a wonderfully timed blast of feedback (Phil?) and it eases itself right into Eyes of the World.  It's almost alarming how tight and fully-formed some of these earliest versions were, and they bite down hard on this one at first.  As they glide into the post-verse jam, Garcia abandons the changes and veers into a spacey tailspin.  There's a small cut at 9:50, the taper reckons this "could be the Other One" (fair enough), but Lesh steps to the fore and starts playing along with Garcia, who backs off and lets him have the wheel.  Lesh solos for a few minutes (our commentator's assessment @12:29: "really hardcore"), and Garcia returns to usher in an utterly joyful Feelin' Groovy jam and a final slam through Sugar Magnolia (always a thing of beauty on an aud tape) which clips unceremoniously a second before the end.

If you're not satiated, then perhaps another listen to 2/19/73 might be in order, another show that belies the expectations you may have for a 'typical' 1973 Truckin>Other One jam.  There are plenty of exciting cat 'n mouse games turn unexpected corners into explosive passages, but none of the brooding melodic spaces of this one.  A very potent pairing.

Aug 93: JGB up north and at home

all stubs courtesy gdsets.com

Here are three JGB shows that are worth a look from the summer of 1993; all are pretty overlooked (afaik), but one of them is one of the best shows of the year.  I have some semi-inchoate thoughts on what it means to listen to Garcia in '93, which can wait for now -- but, in short, I think '93 was a great year for the JGB.  Not consistently great, but the great shows are, for me, some really great examples of late-era Jerry at his best, with an incandescence and thoughtfulness to his playing that's not always there in earlier years when he was ostensibly in "better" shape.  I think anyone with an interest in the full scope of his career owes it to themselves to hear the best of these '93 shows.

For now, though: in August '93, the JGB and the Dead had an unusual piggybacking schedule: the JGB played a weekend in the Pacific northwest on Aug 7-8, then at Shoreline on the 14th, and the Dead played Autzen Stadium in Eugene on Aug 21-22 and Shoreline on Aug 25-27.  Garcia had all of July off, so maybe he was well rested and in relatively good shape.  He also had a new axe to test drive: Blair Jackson's GD Gear book (265) reports that his final guitar, the Cripe "lightning bolt," was debuted at Shoreline this month.  But it looks like Garcia was playing it at the GD Eugene shows, so I assume this means the 8/14 JGB show?  The Cripe’s clean, upper-midrange, almost acoustic-sounding tone was and continues to be controversial among many heads (see this blog, however, for an interesting defense), but for whatever reason, Garcia didn't opt to use this tone for any of these JGB shows, nor any from the fall.

8/22/93 with Cripe, courtesy dead.net

8/14/93 Shoreline

Two runs at Shoreline, to start and end the summer, were a GD tradition from 1989-95 (Shoreline in Oct '95 seems to have been the final booked GD show), but the JGB only played there three times, and one of those was covering for the Dead in 1990, who canceled after Brent Mydland's death.  The '92 JGB show was part of a 6-day California tour, but 8/14/93 was a standalone, preceding the Dead's August shows by a week.  Although the ticket stub indicates this show was part of the very un-Jerry sounding "Pepsi Music Festival," maybe an ulterior motive of this gig was to test-drive the new guitar?  Part of me wonders if it actually was debuted the week before (see below), but judging from Garcia's playing tonight, he was definitely having fun putting his new axe through its paces.  Everything is unusually well played, with that extra burst of feeling that puts a knowing grin on your face.  '93 JGB shows sometimes either take a minute to get rolling, or fade a bit on the last lap, but tonight is a strong one from start to finish.  Forever Young is a powerhouse version with some outstanding solo work, as is Like a Road, and Strugglin' Man and Money Honey are firing on all cylinders.  But the real surprise is the closer: Lay Down Sally was a rare choice for a set-closer, and Garcia makes the most of it here.  With all due respect to 11/12/93, this is my favorite JGB performance of this tune: unlike most versions that are content to groove along in 2nd gear, this one has an arc to it that really takes off around @6:20 when Garcia stomps on his wahwah pedal (plus some other effect?) and gets pretty cosmic for the JGB.  Yeah!  The old man's still got it, kids.

The Shining Star singalongs seem to have been, not surprisingly, an east coast phenomenon (based on the tapes anyway), so there's no sea of voices here, but this one is elevated again by some particularly thoughtful, lyrical, and assertive soloing.  Garcia could be inclined to wax rhapsodic on this tune (I believe that the longest ever Garcia guitar solo ever, over 10 minutes, is in one of these 93 Shining Stars), but this one is punchy and focused.  Typical throwaways like You Never Can Tell and Wonderful World sparkle like small jewels, The Maker is a typically strong reading, and then comes the real litmus test.  This Don't Let Go delivers, and then some.  Given that this was the signature JGB "jam tune," it's hard for me not to feel a little let down that most 90's versions don't actually vary all that much, save for how much energy is behind Garcia's attack.  Every once in a while, though, Garcia would push the jam off its well-beaten path into woolier deep space, a place he rarely went with the JGB after 1978.  Tonight's one of those nights: space, noise, and feedback (no new-fangled MIDI bassoons here!).  I am a happy man.  The vocal reprise is skipped as he steers on into a truly titanic Lucky Old Sun; what distinguishes one version from the other, for me, is usually the quality of his vocals, but tonight he leans into those solos a little harder than usual and the effect is tremendous.  Midnight Moonlight is what it is, but coming at the end of all that, it's more of a celebratory stomp than a "drink up and go home, folks" last call.

The aud tape is a fine pull by Larry Gindoff, the only source in circulation and a great listen.  I don't know why this show doesn't seem to have gathered the accolades of other great shows of this period, but, imho, you owe it to yourself to check it out.

8/7 Seattle, 8/8 Portland

Neither of these shows hits me like Shoreline does, but they are not without their own highlights.  Given that the JGB hadn't been to the northwest since 1984 and that the Dead's planned 20th-anniversary-of-Veneta shows the year before had been canceled because of Garcia's health scare, I can imagine that the general mood at these two open air afternoon shows must have been as festive as could be.  A dance party with the Jerry Garcia Band!?  Well shucks.

Seattle is strong all around and Garcia sounds like he's in good spirits.  He even introduces the band!  A rare first set Maker is fantastic, Like a Road is another stunning version, and Lay Down Sally is an above-average chooglin' version, but not in the same league as Shoreline.  Shining Star, like Shoreline's, is a really commanding version that belts it out, and Garcia sounds like he's pushing himself on Don't Let Go tonight; there's no spacey digression or anything too out of the ordinary, but it's satisfying nevertheless!  Overall not an outstanding night, but a very good show.

Portland, however, has higher highs and lower lows (in the vocal dept, anyway).  Unusually for the JGB, Garcia is noodling extra hard tonight between songs, lots of futzing and adjusting, which makes me wonder if maybe the new guitar was actually being roadtested tonight.  His playing is really energized, but his voice is in noticeably worse shape than the night before, and it continues to deteriorate throughout.  The first set is excellent.  A totally in-the-groove Cats-Mission opener and some extra soloing in TWLWMYD all bode well, but check out the second solo in Stoned Me and the first solo in The Maker!  So good.  But the usual penultimate Sisters & Brothers ushers in... the end of the set.  Hmm.  The second set sounds like Garcia's spirit was still willing, but the flesh was crapping out: things seem a little shorter than usual, and his voice remains ragged and worn.  TWYDTTYD sports a particularly fine jam (sidenote: '93 versions of this song deserve a separate post), and then things settle into a fun but unremarkable groove until rallying at the end for a powerhouse Dixie Down and a very nice Tangled.  Not a top tier '93 show, but a satisfying complement to the Shoreline show, and the highlights would make for an excellent 'bonus disc' to Shoreline's official release (I'm not holding my breath).  Kudos, too, to Mark Severson who pulled off an excellent recording with some extra flavor between songs courtesy of his buddies, who all seem to be having a fine time.

At some point, it would be fun to do an overview of the fall '93 tour, but who knows when that will happen.  There is one lesser-known show, however, that tops 8/14 Shoreline as my personal favorite, and deserves a post's worth of ravings...

3/3/76: I could wait forever / I've got time

courtesy gdsets.com

This show first popped on my radar a while back when I was thinking about Garcia playing outdoors sans GD, but I only just got around to giving it a close listen.  A couple things:

First: good gravy, this is a really nice aud tape!  The whole terroir thing is happening in a serious way here.  One of the gold standards for this period, in terms of sound quality, is the well known 3/6/76 recording made by Pat Lee & friends at Seattle's Moore Theater, but Don Wolfe and Matt Williams' 3/3 tape may be an even more satisfying listen in terms of atmosphere.  The Lane County Fairgrounds Auditorium is more like a big vaulted shed holding around 800ish, and while the tapers succeeded in capturing the intimacy of the space, this is one of those tapes that still inspires a cognitive dissonance between what you know and what you're hearing: to me, this sounds like I'm experiencing the JGB at a house party or maybe a small bar, in the company of a few friends, all very enthusiastic and very attentive.  One great moment of many is when Donna steps up to sing her gospel feature, "A Strange Man," which was brand new to most of the crowd.  They love it, and she has them in the palm of her hand: maybe one of the better Donna vocal moments from this era of the JGB, made all the more sweet by the particularities of this great tape.

Second: in terms of performance, this is a pretty solid early '76 JGB show.  Granted, that's a period that tends to rub many folks the wrong way because of the slowness of the material.  At times I agree (3/6/76, I'm looking at you), but typically I can get down with this stuff just fine.  All we have of this night is the second set, but it's still a satisfying 90 minutes of music. An early "The Way You Do the Things You Do" has a delightful energy to it, and dig how Keith and Jerry slip in a subtle hint of I-VII for a sec in the jam (the "Fire on the Mountain jam" or Eb-Db in this case).  "Friend of the Devil" is divine; "I'll Take a Melody" and "Mystery Train" are satisfying, but not standouts for the period, and the Rolling Stones' "Moonlight Mile" is done about as well as they did it -- I don't mean to sound back-handed, but it's a tough song to pull off!  Much better, however, is this great version of "I Want to Tell You," which they played only a handful of times in early '76 and then dropped abruptly.  Garcia returned to it for a few post-coma shows in 1986-87, then brought it back with the Dead in 1994-95, but these 1976 versions are the real deal, with solid vocals, energetic delivery, and a few minutes of jamming that finds a nice little space to nestle into (more I-VII/"FOTM" again, somewhat similar to the jam in "Lonesome & A Long Way From Home").  The segue into "Sisters and Brothers" is sweetly done and makes for a nice little combo.  A final rarity closes the show, their take on Ray Charles' "Talkin' 'Bout You," not quite as hot as some of the Legion of Mary versions, but par for this lineup.

Finally, if you read the not-so-fine print on the poster, you may notice that the show was put on by Acidophilus Productions/Springfield Creamery, which may ring a bell for any committed deadhead.  Garcia's connections to and performance history in Oregon probably warrant a small book of their own, and the Creamery folks also produced the "Second Decadenal Field Trip" [and potluck!] on the 10th anniversary of their first one (see Blair Jackson), the 1983 and 1984 Hult Center shows (in Eugene), and maybe more.   Unlike the more storied fairgrounds that are a few miles down the road in Veneta, the Lane County Fairgrounds are, I believe, in the middle of downtown Eugene, so this could hardly have been a psychedelic backwoods tribal stomp.  From a pragmatic standpoint, this show may have been just a midweek add-on to two bigger gigs (a Friday in Portland and a Saturday in Seattle), which wasn't unheard of.  There's an Old & In the Way listing for 5/8/73 at Churchill High School (Eugene) and Garcia/Kahn shows at South Eugene High School in June '82 (JGMF), all of which were adjacent to larger gigs in Portland.  Other Dead/Garcia trips to the northwest seem to have been either bigger "professional" productions or college gigs (besides those Hult Center shows), and I have no idea what other events, if any, were organized under the Creamery's auspices.  But I suspect that there must be some story behind Garcia's playing for the Springfield Creamery on a Wednesday night in downtown Eugene, and I'd love to know what it is.

8/28/82: bring a dish to pass (acidophilus not required).  courtesy deadlists.

And the biggest question, of course, is... was this guy was in attendance?

June 1974 with Tony Saunders

your blogger's old cassette.  Oh, for the halcyon days of tape cuts and mislabeled songs.

Yeah!  Managed to slide in one more before 2018!  JGMF did the work years ago to establish the historical particulars of these gigs, so I won’t rehash those too much: here are his listening notes on 6/4/74, 6/5/74, and 6/6/74.  Notably, all three of these shows feature Merl’s son Tony Saunders on bass instead of John Kahn.  From a historical standpoint, Tony’s presence puts these in a grey area regarding the persnickety issue of “what band is this?,” a question blurred by the fact that Garcia was an apparently frequent guest at Merl’s own gigs around this time.  The particularities probably won’t be teased out any further than JGMF has already teased them.  I’m still tickled, however, by the image of Garcia rolling up to some bar with his guitar and amp in his trunk, then a week later playing at the Oakland Coliseum.

I wish I could find some older pictures of Tony and Merl, btw.  His first paid gigs as a teenager were with Garcia & Saunders.  This little pic of the two at Fantasy Studios is all I could find, from Tony’s site:

Gigs at the Lion’s Share were more laid back and off-the-beaten-path: most tapes of the few circulating shows there all have that flavor, and 6/4/74 may have the most of it, with a rich warm Betty Cantor recording to capture it all.  The uniqueness of some of the material is likely what marks this show for most folks, but the expansive nature of the playing earns its place on the list of the best of Garcia/Saunders 1974 shows.  Darben the Redd Foxx was a tune by saxophonist James Moody that seems to have had some pull with jazz musicians in the 1960’s but nevertheless seems like a totally left-field choice for this band.  They lay down a smooth, straight-down-the-middle midtempo swing that rolls along for 17 luxurious minutes; Garcia understandably sounds a little tentative at first, but he digs in and is on top of things by the time his second solo comes around.  Many heads don’t appreciate Martin Fierro’s playing and while he did have a tendency to overblow theatrically at times (which I imagine was probably much more effective in person than on tape), there’s none of that here: Fierro is totally in his element, unraveling cool, focused lines through his solos.  A very cool and unusual sound for these guys.  Tony and Bill Kreutzmann (I’m pretty sure it’s him) lay down a supremely bouncy groove to start Expressway, but halfway through they all fall into the trap of cycling endlessly through that descending chord progression “jam” with increasingly less and less to say, with Fierro and Garcia repeatedly deferring to the other and noodling around to no great purpose.  The rhythm section wins again, however, on a great Second That Emotion, better than most from this time.   Even better still is the magic they conjure on Merl’s Wonderin’ Why.  I always like the feel of this song, but this one is particularly satisfying as Garcia and Fierro weave circles around each other in the first main jam; their interplay here makes this one of the best versions I know.  A bluesy, blustery Soul Roach ends the first set.

To underscore the jazz club ambience, they pull out another rarity in Miles Davis’ classic All Blues, and Garcia et al follow the form of the tune, each taking a few choruses over the simple, timeless changes, at first resisting the urge to stretch.  But after returning to the melody, Garcia and Fierro start wandering off the page as Merl tries keeping it rooted to the changes, resulting in a gentle freeform tug of war that sounds great.  Martin brings it back home with another blues melody at the end [edit: I think he's playing the the main melody from the tune "One Mint Julep"] -- it’s a neat twist to end another long, relaxed jam that only could have happened at the Lion’s Share.  Local blues guitarist/singer Alice Stuart comes up to sing New York City (an “original” that’s not too far removed from Jimmy Reed) and the band sound great chomping down on a straight 12-bar blues.  The Harder They Come has a choppy, funky groove that works well, and they do better than usual with this one until a little “when/how do we end this?” snafu at the end. Then Dixie Down ends things on a soulful note.  It has its ups and down, but I’ll forgive a show like this its warts: much like 7/5/73, it may not rise to the tighter standard of other ‘best’ shows of the period, but its perfectly realized vibe and groove make it a real stand-out of the year.

City magazine June 1974, courtesy @joyatri_vintage

6/5/74, another fine Bettyboard, is missing its first set (the full tape seems to exist since we have a tantalizing setlist from, I presume, Rob Eaton).  Alice Stuart returns for the second set, this time with her guitar in tow — I wonder if she was the opening act for these two nights?  But, first, things get off to bumpy start: Fierro does no one any favors by test-driving some extreme electric effects on his flute on La-La which is, frankly, unlistenable.  The wahwah pedal was a component of his sound in 1974-75 (he, along with numerous other saxophonists, followed Eddie Harris’ example of using electric effects on their acoustic horn), but the effects really don’t work here.  Ouch.  Stuart evidently arrives onstage midway through Finders Keeepers: you can hear Betty adjust Garcia’s guitar in the mix @6:37 and Stuart takes the final solo.  It’s nothing all that inspired (and probably not what she usually played), but hearing another lead guitarist onstage with Garcia in this era is most unusual -- let alone a female lead guitarist at all -- so this certainly deserves a nod for historical importance.  Stuart doesn’t sound totally familiar with Dixie Down either, but she dishes it out on the blues chestnut Kansas City, adds a nice chicken scratch rhythm and some nice licks to another fine Harder They Come, and is in her element holding her own with Garcia on That’s All Right Mama.  Ultimately this set is more a curiosity than a must-hear, but this must be one of the last times on tape that we hear Garcia casually trading leads with another guitarist like this.  With some big doings on the horizon with that other band of his, Garcia must have been having a blast.

PS: after all this, I realized that there’s a video of Alice Stuart and her band at Winterland from 2/2/74 — haven’t checked it out yet, but I’m looking forward to.
http://www.concertvault.com/alice-stuart-and-snake/video/id-do-it-for-you_-1665489645.html

On 6/6/74 they were back at their homebase in Berkeley, with Tony still subbing for Kahn.  Rather than a Bettyboard, we are most fortunate to have a top-notch Louis Falanga aud recording that’s one of the best he made, with mics set up right by Garcia’s monitor (the soundman’s voice is audible a few times) yet capturing the whole band with a nice balance.  After some atmospheric banter about a buzzing light dimmer, a loose and somewhat sloppy Someday Baby lazily gets thing rolling, and Expressway follows a similar trajectory as 6/4, although Garcia leans into it harder as things start to sag and drives it home with a forceful ending.  From there on, however, it’s all gravy.  He Ain’t Give You None sits happily in a fat, wide groove, and My Funny Valentine (which is prefaced by Garcia, off mic, “we haven’t done that in a little while”) is a picture-perfect textbook version of this band’s signature jazz tune  without a stumble or any hint of dissonance or weirdness — not that I mind it when they took this one outside, but they really seem focused on getting the most from the material here.  A heated Second That Emotion (check Garcia’s final solo!) ends the first set.  The tape cuts back in with some spacey fooling around and Garcia chuckling loudly at Fierro’s noodling before the real bombs drop.  Merl’s My Problems Got Problems, only ever played a handful of times, was never done better than this: the groove is incredible right from the drop, and by 10 minutes it becomes so unmanageably funky and I won’t detail the kind of moves I’m making while I listen.  Talk about a stone cold killer!  21 minutes compared with the puny 8 minute version from a few weeks later.  As they futz around afterwards, Jerry says “oh hey, let’s do that, Tony… let Martin start it” and off they go into Darben the Red Foxx again, but with a different, more march-like, staccato rhythmic feel (more like the arrangement on various jazz records) and a tense, edgier feel overall.  Unlike the more leisurely 6/4 performance, Fierro brings it back to the melody after 11 minutes, then they float off into spacier realms, flirting with all-out dissonance over a terse, sparse groove for another 7-8 minutes before they play the melody again and end it for good.  A hare-brained and high-energy How Sweet It Is rounds out the night.  Incredible!  As tasty as the whole show is, the 40+ minutes of Problems/Darben is some of my favorite playing this band did during that great year.

Then, y’know, like 36 hours later, Garcia was at it again with the Dead throwing down one of the most bananas Playing in the Band jams of all time (and, incredibly, Louis Falanga was on the scene again -- the man deserves a medal!)  But I’ll leave you to peruse that one on your own.  All in a day’s work for 1974!

10/24/78: floundering in the snow

This is a fantastic aud tape of a Keystone show that you could probably get along fine without ever hearing.  Just being honest.  But there are a couple of things:

First, go John Angus and Scott Hart!  They put down a few other JGB shows on tape that month, and this one is a particularly sweet specimen: rich, full, balanced sound with just enough depth and flavor to really please these ears.

Second, the band is actually playing quite well, just content to cruise along in a lower gear.  Keith sounds like he’s in particularly good fettle, foreshadowing the wonderful interplay between him and Jerry in the more well-known 10/28/78 Seattle show.  Everyone sounds fine tonight, locked in and focused, but it's still a mellow, slippers-and-sweatpants kind of show.  There's not really much to review, actually.  Highlights, if you’re looking, would be a surprisingly tasty Love in the Afternoon (surprising since I generally dislike that song), a very nice Mission in the Rain, and the neat curiosity of Lee Oskar blowing some discrete harp on Gomorrah and Midnight Moonlight.

Third, and this is what struck me about the tape, there’s a telling little moment at the end of the first set.  This was a shorty warm-up gig tucked in between the Dead’s big “return from Egypt” Winterland run and a little JGB jaunt up to the Pacific northwest.  After a big Winterland blow-out a few days earlier, I’m guessing that only the most hardcore Keystone Social Club regulars had it in them for another JGB show (the fourth one that month, btw, plus two more in Palo Alto).  Were expectations high?  I really doubt it.  All of those shows had been short, mostly each with well under two hours of actual music, but tonight someone wasn’t having it.  After Jerry announces the break, Angus & Hart let the tape roll for another minute (inadvertently, I assume, since they’re pretty tight with the pause button between songs); someone hollers out, loudly, “You’re floundering in the snow! That was too short!” (at least, I think that’s it), prompting a couple more cries of “too short!” and “play more!”  At least one sage stoner intones, “it’s great, it was perfect, no problem.”  Then side B of Little Feat’s Dixie Chicken comes on the PA (“Fool Yourself”) and I’m wondering who was fooling who.  JGMF has written at length about the economics of Garcia shows w/r/t professionalism and bang-for-your-buck, with some particular attention to some pretty skimpy 1985 shows from a pretty low time in ol’ Jer’s personal life (see here among others).  I was a little surprised, though, to hear someone calling Jerry out on this in 1978.  Then again, though someone calls out “boring!” during a languid Russian Lullaby, so maybe it’s a case of the food was awful and the portions were too small that's at work here. 

Fourth, I’m realizing the the narrative has always put Oct-Nov '78 as a pretty low point for all concerned parties: burned out and tired, the Dead embark on an east coast tour that is cut short when Garcia is hospitalized, the Godchauxs’ marriage implodes, Keith's playing continues to go downhill, and then Keith is apparently fired from the JGB for dipping into Jerry’s stash (per Kahn).  Yet, on paper, a bunch of interesting things were happening: not only does Lee Oskar pop up at a couple of those Winterland shows (plus again on New Years Eve) and at this JGB show, but so apparently does Will Scarlett at two Keystone shows that we don’t have circulating tapes for (see gdsets.com for 10/11 & 12).  Two harmonica players in one month?  Earlier in October, before all this, Garcia reunites with Merl Saunders for a one-off gig with Merl’s band (which, in addition to being apparently a dry-run for Reconstruction, also sports some of the hottest playing Garcia did that whole month).  Then, as I assume you may already know, two of those Pacific northwest shows, 10/26 and 10/28, are among the best of the year and also happened to be shared gigs with Bob Weir’s band, whose keyboardist Brent Mydland was being keenly watched by all concerned parties (meanwhile, with Keith’s playing on 10/28 being widely praised, I wonder if he felt like he was essentially auditioning for his own job?).  And then there's the JGB show on 11/3/78 that's famous for its totally out of left field and out of character performance of Miles Davis’ So What. [edit: also can't forget the first acoustic GD performance in eight years that happened pretty off-the-cuff in Chicago on Nov 17].  That’s a fair bit of extracurricular activity for what I tend to assume must have been a pretty dreary time for all involved parties, but hey, maybe it was that post-Egypt buzz making them all try a little bit harder.

And hey, I’m listening to 10/24 yet again while I type this, and y’know, it’s actually not a bad little show.  Maybe it’ll grow on you.


What the heck does "floundering in the snow?" mean, anyway?

7/17/82: a little beach music

http://www.archive.org/details/gd1982-07-17.fob.nak300.ho.bowen-foster.102172.flac

This isn't exactly a rave review, but this show's setlist inspired some curiosity while I was puttering around at work, and, frankly, I'm ready for the beach myself.  The FOB aud quality is very, very good.  And who doesn't like their Dead with some palm trees in the background?

courtesy Airplane Life

1982 shares the dubious honor with 1986 as being my least favorite year of the Dead’s “early Brent” pre-coma period.  Unlike other fallow periods, there’s nothing egregiously “wrong” with it, but -- for me -- most of the performances occupy a kind of gray zone between the sharp, creative playing of 1980-81 and the ragged, hare-brained (and, yes, hirsute) intensity of 1983-84.  Jerry was still keeping it together, Phil wasn’t quite back in the saddle yet, Brent ditched his older electric piano for a faux-acoustic one, and it all sounds, I dunno, a little too polite; I don't want to say autopilot, but there's not a lot of sweat in the music.  There are certainly a few shows that prove me wrong, but they’re outliers.  And yet, perversely, I’m periodically drawn back to it, partly to see if I can pin down what exactly I don’t like about it (who has time for that? I do, apparently) and partly just for the pleasure of rooting around for some undiscovered gem.  This show, sporting an attractive setlist, isn’t exactly that.  But it’s a nice show.

The first set is model '82: no clams, no shamefully bad vocals, a decent performance all around, and almost none of it stuck on me.  Althea has a heavy groove, but the only other standout was the surprising (unprecedented?) call of Truckin’ as the set closer.  Huh?  Not only that, but they rock it for almost 11 minutes and, a couple of slips notwithstanding, it's pretty strong.  Towards the end it almost feels like they’ve forgotten that they’re not deeper in the 2nd set, before yanking back for a big explosive finale.

To be fair, they did get creative with some setlist choices in 82, often structured around Playing in the Band.  Here’s a vintage example of a “Playin’ sandwich” kind of set: they forego an opening rocker and dive right in, swim around in it for a bit with an airy, vaguely ominous feel: clear and nicely textured yet shallow waters, perhaps.  It sounds like China Doll is coming, but Jerry switches things up with China Cat instead, another very unusual selection.  Not bad!  The guitars are way up in the mix here, making for an extra changly jam, and Phil seems sufficiently roused by the time Rider comes around.  Ol’ Jer belts out a good “headlight” line, and at the end they make a well-timed drop right into Estimated.  Not much to note here; it’s a typically fine one with one flub coming out of the bridge (“like a swiss watch,” Bob quickly quips) and a decent jam that trails off into the early 80's standard Jerry-less jam with Bob and Brent (and briefly Phil) splashing around for a few miunutes.  Not bad as those things go.  A brief Drums, a briefly noisy Space, a long Wheel complete with lengthy prelude and a pretty outro (an ideal groove for this show, actually), back into Playin’, then a goofy Bob closing twofer, and it’s all over now, baby blue.

This music, like a lot of the year, wafts by pleasantly without really getting its hooks into me; it’s got toes but no claws.  Or, to borrow from Thom Gunn, “the music comes and goes on the wind / comes and goes on the brain.”

I’m ready for summer.

(these shows, incidentally, were the first of several years' worth of "weekend at the beach" shows in Ventura)