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.

10/29/73: contrasting modes and keys

10/27/73, dead.net

I had a fine time revisiting 10/29/73 at the Kiel Auditorium in St. Louis, MO this past week.  An investigation into what exactly was going on in a particularly thrilling passage in the Other One exhausted my limited resources, and I had to call in reinforcements.

"Energetic" is always relative when it comes to certain eras of the Dead, but this first set feels a little more energetic than was typical for this period.  A Cold Rain & Snow opener is always a plus, and the whole initial run of songs feels to me like it has that extra something.  Don't Ease Me In, of all things, feels like the moment when the sparks catch.  Garcia is crackling on Mexicali, and Keith Godchaux sounds divine on Rhodes in Black-Throated Wind and on Steinway in The Race Is On.  The corker is a unusually placed Eyes of the World in the end-of-first-set-jam spot where Weather Report Suite or Playin' usually sat.  It's taken at a brisker tempo than most, and they hit it with a full tank of gas, taking every tight turn with precision.

The second set begins with a less remarkable stretch of music, though heads up for a white-hot Greatest Story and a spot-on Brokedown Palace before the main event.  Truckin' glides along with hints of the Other One, but they turn a corner around 8:30 and lands in a spacious "here comes Dark Star" kind of zone.  But then both Garcia and Weir take a break, leaving the rhythm section to explore for a bit.  Rather than one of those noodly Phil solos, however, the bass, piano, and drums explore a musically jazzy space for a few minutes, and when the guitarists return, the vibe is strong enough that they keep going in this direction for a little while longer.  I find this to be totally divine, psychedelic in the gentlest kind of way.  Kreutzmann solos, and then the Other One itself sticks pretty close to its usual path at first.  After the verse, it drops immediately into a long atonal Space that takes its time building up to the Tiger-ish peak. 

Then the second really interesting thing happens.  At around 15 minutes, Garcia seems to push everyone back into the Other One a little forcefully, but Godchaux decides to assert himself as well.  [Warning: music theory as described by an untrained musician ahead].  Garcia pulls them back into the Other One theme, zipping around (as he typically does) in the Dorian mode.  More or less, of course.  What's unusual here is that Godchaux decides to do something else: rather than follow and complement what Garcia is doing (i.e. playing pretty typical Other One stuff), Godchaux pushes in a different direction, playing in a very different mode.  What does that mean if you're not a musicologist?  It means that Godchaux is playing quite a bit that is further away from the usual Other One stuff that Garcia is playing, sounding a lot more "major," and although what they're doing is different enough to sound unusual, it's not so different that it sounds "wrong."  There certainly are other jams where Godchaux is at forefront, but I cannot think of another one where he is asserting his own contrasting harmonic ideas as strongly as he is here.  And it's not a fleeting moment: they keep this tension going for almost six minutes, until they finally get back in the same lane for the second verse. 

If you're an actual musician and are slapping your forehead at me, here's how my pal John explained it to me [Warning: music theory as described by an actual trained musician ahead]:

me: Talk to me about what Keith is playing relative to the key/mode Jerry is in.
JT: Major, then Phyrgian.  But Jerry’s in dorian.  It’s bi-modal at least, sometimes bi-tonal, but mainly in E.  At times Jerry was in E dorian, and Keith (et al.) were in E Ionian (major).
me: They’re playing in separate modes, but mainly in the same key?
JT: I’d say that’s fairly common that they did the bi-modal thing (combining both thirds and/or sevenths, for example, happened all the time and gives you Mixolydian and Dorian) ...but that this is an extremely outlier example; I can’t recall them playing in such widely contrasting modes before, and/or duking it out between them for so long.

And then John was nice enough to expand further:

For me, the most interesting harmonic stuff is in the first minute. At around 15:00, we emerge from the atonal space into an implied E Dorian (Jerry, playing TOO theme), but this conflicts with the E Ionian/Mixolydian and then Phrygian that Keith layers in. Jerry sounds like he jumps into Phrygian pretty quickly (15:20), and he remains there ca. 15:37 while Keith has shifted to A Ionian/Mixolydian. Phil goes there too, so for a while the band is in A while Jerry’s crunching along in a contrasting mode and key. At ca. 16:04, Keith begins planning (basically moving step-wise up or down; Debussy does this a lot in his piano music, and the technique was adopted by later pianists (I’m thinking of like My Favorite Things-era Tyner [hey now]) who wrote in fourths and who obscured conventional key centers). This recalls Phrygian and leads us by 16:10 to (what sounds like) Keith playing mostly in G and Jerry in E Aeolian/natural minor. By 16:30, everyone has recoalesced around E dorian and we have some “standard” TOO-type playing for a minute+.

By 18:02, Jerry’s playing a pedal point high E while Keith et al. seem to be in A below him. It’s just pretty.

One take away I had hearing this again: Jerry really remains locked into E Dorian then Phrygian then Dorian; even while the others are altering the modes and key centers around/under him, he doesn’t venture too far harmonically from where we end up landing on when the more conventional TOO-type jamming resumes

Or, if now you're just scratching your head, just take Dick Latvala's word for it:

On 10/29/73, there is a pretty long jam that is concerned with The Other One... the playing is spectacular.  The jam from the 10/29 show has simply outstanding jamming around the songs and the songs themselves are examples of the 'best versions' category, especially The Other One..."