6/20/74 Truckin>space>Eyes

7/31/74, courtesy jerrygarcia.com

Just a little something in honor of the anniversary of this overlooked goodie:



https://archive.org/details/gd74-06-20.sbd.clugston.2179.sbeok.shnf
 
Truckin' starts a little too slow, but they kick it up into gear and are already in full flight by the time they wrap up the lyrics.  I like the upfront, syncopated rhythm figure Jerry plays starting @4:50 that shifts them up into the jam (it's a little similar to the New Speedway Boogie rhythm, but not related) before he starts soloing.  They nail the big E chord peak, keep on chooglin', and after some tentatively suggested changes in direction, they pull out the roadmap after around 13 minutes.  Without missing a beat, Jerry takes off down his own path -- Phil and Billy drop out, and Bob and Keith provide some very sparse accompaniment.  We're out in space now!  It's mellow, spacey solo Jerry, until Phil rejoins the fray and the thorns start growing on the vine.  He immediately gets aggressive, throwing down some nice big chords, as Bob and Keith patiently stir up the weirdness.

At about 5 min into this jam, some form starts to emerge from the ruckus -- Bill, Keith, and Bob all playing fast and jazzy, driving things wildly forward -- but Jerry and Phil are still off on their jag and the push-and-pull tension that ensues is sublime.  Just when Phil seems to be pulled into the rhythm section's orbit, he pokes back out and pulls the tide back with him -- there's a big ol' nasty chord at 7:06 that tips the scales back into chaos.  Wonderful!  Finally, the wave crests, recedes, and Jerry immediately kicks it into an uptempo, brisk Eyes of the World.

To my ears, some of these 73-74 Eyes can feel like they're grinding their gears a little too hard, but this one is kicking all the way through; it's arguably just as good as the lauded Eyes from 6/18 -- not to mention almost 10 minutes longer.  My untested theory is that first set Eyes of this era tended to be a bit more uptempo and energetic than second set versions (though not necessarily better), but this one flies right along in high gear for the full duration.  It's also noteworthy because they keep jamming for a good 5 1/2 minutes after the proto-'Stronger Than Dirt' riff, and Jerry threads in the nascent Slipknot figure that he'd been messing around with intermittently since at least February of that year (it's tracked separately on this copy, but I don't think it should be: it's still the extended Eyes jam, and I don't hear any Slipknot until 2:45ish into the track).

June 1974 was one of the band's best stretches without a doubt, and also one of the few periods when the band was regularly willing to burst into fully spontaneous exploration without warming or precedent -- most of the canonized and beloved jams from this month all center around an unusual jam segment that sprouted up in some unexpected spot.  The spotlight usually (and rightly) goes to shows like 6/18 Louisville, 6/23 Miami, 6/26 Providence, or 6/28 Boston, but this jam from hot 'Lanta is well worth 40 minutes of your day anyday.  Did I mention that this Truckin>Eyes is over 40 minutes long?

11/14/74: Garcia/Sanders, Boston

Happy Memorial Day!  It’s always a good day for some Garcia/Saunders, but the vibe feels especially right today.  So: our heroes check in on the last night of a 3-day stretch at the small Paul’s Mall club in Boston.  I asked a friend who had lived there in the 70’s what the place was like and the first thing he said was, “it had really low ceilings.”  Photos show that, indeed, the ceilings were pretty low.  Here’s the best pic I can find of the stage (from a great Jimmy McGriff/Groove Holmes record):

The Paul's Mall stage.  Watch your head!

courtesy Music Museum of New England

The Jazz Workshop, from what I understand, was essentially the same club, a different room right next door and under the same management.  I remember reading somewhere that Miles Davis always opted to play on the Paul’s Mall side rather than the Jazz Workshop in the 1970’s.  I also appreciate that saxophonist Joe Farrell (formerly of Return to Forever) was playing opposite G&S that week — nice! 

courtesy JGMF

From the sounds of this early show, Garcia & Saunders may have been better off playing next door, too.  The set is unusually heavy on their jazz material: four instrumentals (five if you count the People Make the World Go Round coda) and one Merl tune, plus two Jerry rockers.  The band comes flying out of the gate: Favela is played a little faster than usual, and Let it Rock blows by nearly too fast for Jerry to sing.  There’s a woman near the taper who calls it and seems super-psyched to hear it, though.  Then they ease back into a thick, swampy groove for Merl’s Problems and the show starts really clicking.  This is the kind of stuff that Paul Humphrey did the best with them: Kahn locks in, and everyone else takes their shoes off and gets soulful.  Yes yes yes.  They choogle through Mystery Train, with a mystery female singer adding a little bit to the end: it sounds like someone from the crowd, and they wrap it up pretty quickly after she gets her 15 seconds.  My Funny Valentine is a relatively succinct 14 minute version and sounds excellent (sax-haters be warned, though, that Martin gets a little squonky here) with a small space-out > PMTWGR tacked on the end that's always lovely.  The Meters’ great Just Kissed My Baby is a tune that G&S never seemed to quite get on top of (why didn’t Merl sing the lyrics? it would have been ideal for his voice), but this one simmers over a low flame and I’m loving Martin’s stanky electric effects.  Valdez in the Country sounds about as good as it got, everyone cruising along in the groove, and Garcia sounds dialed in here with a particularly tasty solo.  He could sometimes take a back seat to Saunders and Fierro on the jazz material, but tonight he sounds right on top of it.  A great set, and a very good aud recording by Jimmy Warburton is out there for your listening pleasure — a little muffled, but pretty ideal under the circumstances and nothing you won’t get used to.

The late show is less jazz-heavy with more emphasis on the rock/R&B side of the band.  This recording (from a different master) is also rougher on the ears, another reason why I tend to favor the early show.  They’re playing just as well, but the material is a bit more standard: the one extended “jazz” piece is Wonderin’ Why, great and expansive as always.  Garcia’s more staple vocal tunes (That’s a Touch, Mystery Train, How Sweet It Is, Second That Emotion) are all well done, but not quite where my head is right now.  They wrap it up with Favela again, again taken at the same breakneck tempo as earlier and played just as well.  Not as necessary as the early show, overall, but another fine document of a fine band.

Ultimately, I think this group's most representative recording is the excellent 11/28/74 Bettyboard, though 11/27 and 10/31/74 are also favorites.  I agree with JGMF that this 11/14 early show may be the best set of their east coast tour, and 11/16 is also an excellent performance as well.

JGMF has some written some notes about the night before, 11/13:
http://jgmf.blogspot.com/2012/12/ln-jg1974-11-13jgmslateaud.html

and lightintoashes has posted some contemporary reviews:
http://deadsources.blogspot.com/2012/12/november-12-1974-garcia-plays-boston.html

new Alexandra Palace '74

There's nothing like a good case of "I need more shows" to jolt me out of my blogging doldrums.  If you haven't seen it already, lightintoashes put out a call for some known-to-exist-but-not-digitally-circulating tapes.  One taper, Simon Phillips, has very kindly uploaded copies of the songs missing from the currently circulating fileset for 9/9/74 and a never-circulated(?) patched version of 9/10/74 (the Dark Star night), neither of which are at LMA or accessible to the masses.  His links expire very soon, but now that they're out there, they shouldn't be hard to find in the future.  I'm happy to pass them along if anyone is reading this too late and missed them.

tbh, the extra 9/9/74 material will satisfy the completionist in you and that's about it, and the 9/10 "matrix" isn't a sbd/aud mix, but a transfer of the sbd with a few aud patches to make the show complete, including the Phil & Ned set.  The true matrix will have to wait, but it's a mouth-watering proposition.  9/11/74, as you may recall, is a pretty tasty show.

EDIT: Goes to show: Charlie Miller has new transfers of all three of these shows now at LMA: 
https://archive.org/details/gd1974-09-09.135655.sbd.new.patched.miller.flac16
https://archive.org/details/gd1974-09-10.135699.sbd.new.patched.miller.flac16
https://archive.org/details/gd1974-09-11.135802.sbd.miller.flac16

The patches are great to have, of course, and this new 9/11 transfer includes all of the Phil & Ned jam in sbd (prior versions had the first 15 min patched in from the aud tape).


Also, if you want another perspective on these shows, there's this:
https://archive.org/post/342038/europe-74-notebook

Here's hoping that aud tape of 2/24/73 makes it out into the world soon, too!

12/4/87 JGAB/JGB Wiltern Theatre

courtesy dylanstubs

Whenever I think of the Jerry Garcia Acoustic Band, the iconic Lunt-Fontaine run on Broadway is what comes up first: it’s central to every story about this short-lived group, it sports that wonderfully ridiculous Playbill pic, and the majority of posthumous releases are drawn from those shows.  It’s a little ironic, since the original Almost Acoustic album from 1988 was actually recorded a month later, mostly at the Wiltern Theatre in Los Angeles.  Apparently there were union issues about recording the Broadway shows?  At any rate, these Wiltern shows were the ones put down for posterity, and on this night in particular, Garcia rose to the occasion.

Anyone who likes Garcia probably likes any of these JGAB releases.  I enjoy them all, but have paid almost no attention to any of the shows themselves, since they’re mostly so-so auds and, as far as I can tell, basically interchangeable.  The electric sets have never appealed much to me, either.  Garcia was climbing towards his late-era pinnacle, but while a lot of ’87 Dead has that extra “Jerry’s back!” edge, 87 JGB always feels more workmanlike, “more competent than interesting” (per jgmf).  To be fair, though, he was juggling two completely different bands on the same night, a feat he hadn't seriously attempted since 1970 (plus, y'know, there was that whole coma thing).

Outside of the official releases, there’s not much sbd tape of this group, so this show stands out for that reason.  The sbd recording is gorgeous, well balanced and rich (thank you, GEMS folks), but there’s also an excellent audience recording as well (thank you, Mike French), and for the electric set, I’d almost recommend it more.  Take yer pick.  But the music warrants the up-close attention that is afforded by the great recordings.  The acoustic set is as tasty and sweet as any others, but not particularly remarkable save for a guest appearance by dobro player LeRoy Mack, who went way back with some of these fellas — he was in the Kentucky Colonels in the early 60’s with Garcia’s idols Scotty Stoneman and Clarence White.  The electric set, however, seems like a cut above for this period, with Garcia in crushing form for the first few tunes, every note exactly in its right place and a little extra heft to everything.  Cats is great, then he nails I Shall be Released, belts out a really fantastic Mission in the Rain, and leans hard into a wonderful Like a Road.  I'm in heaven here.  What a great four-song run!  The music is pulled back into orbit and with a merely very good Harder They Come and Stoned Me, but he winds up once again with a big ol’ satisfying Deal and sends ‘em home with a quickie Evangeline encore (the norm for these acoustic/electric shows).

Not a life changing JGB show, but a very nice surprise and a fantastic listen, whichever way your pleasure tends.  It’s one of those shows that sounds great from a distance, sounds great up close, and sounds great down between the cracks: the little well-timed smears of guitar feedback, the responsive subtleties of Kemper's drumming, the audible whoops and handclaps from Gloria and Jaclyn, and so on.  Here’s one nice little detail for jgmf’s file on Garcia’s engagement with his audience —  After the gospel weeper “Gone Home,” Garcia tells Mack that he sounds great, he steps back to futz around for a sec, then there’s a swell of applause and someone (Nelson?) chuckles, “well, that’s what they’re waiting for” (Garcia, one would think).  Someone down front hollers “we love you, Jerry!” and Jerry replies with a rare quick “thank you” before they tear off into the next tune.

2/29/80 - an intercalary Masterpiece

Robert Hunter replaced Rachael Sweet, btw

2/29/80 is, I think, the one and only time Garcia played on an intercalary day (or "leap day" for you non-Julian types).  The late show was broadcast on WLIR (Long Island) and a few songs were released on the bonus disc that came with the 2/28/80 After Midnight CD.    I prefer the rawer sound of the broadcast to the official release, though.  Listen to this "When I Paint My Masterpiece" and hold on: the tone of Jerry's Tiger guitar in 1980 is always a thing to behold, but sweet lord, talk about peeling the paint off the walls!  Outta sight.

2/28/80, courtesy jerrygarcia.com

Love Saves the Day: 2/14/70

Deadheads love dates (remember this one? "you know you're a deadhead when your tapes have nothing written on them besides the date"), and we're never at a loss for anniversaries to use as excuses for celebrating the virtues of a particular show.  Maybe, given how insular this obsession can be, it comes as a surprise when some other musical anniversary overlaps on one of our own canonized dates.  Many rock fans have probably noted that the Dead's legendary 2/14/70 performance at the Fillmore East coincides with the Who's decimation of Leeds University 1000 miles away that same night, but how many deadheads know that the birth of American disco/dance music culture was also happening just across the Bowery, about six blocks away?

a classic by Amalie Rothschild, courtesy dead.net

I'm no big scholar of dance music or "club culture," but my understanding is that most of what we associate with those general terms -- and I mean everything from Saturday Night Fever, to frat bros throwing their hands in the air at spring break beach parties, to underground raves in abandoned warehouses -- has roots in the innovations and ideals of one particular DJ, a record collector and Buddhist acid cosmonaut named David Mancuso, who lived a few blocks west of the Fillmore East.  Right around the time that the Dead were probably plugging in for their late show at 2nd Ave & 6th St, the first guests were arriving at Mancuso's loft on 674 Broadway for a party that had been advertised only by a few hundred invitations with Love Saves the Day printed on them.  These parties would eventually become weekly events eventually known simply as "The Loft" and mark one of the beginnings of dance and club culture as we know it today, and Mancuso is regularly credited by pretty much everyone in that scene as the grandfather of the modern-day "underground" club DJ.  He still hosts the occasional Loft party, too.

Mancuso, c Allan Tannenbaum

There was, of course, plenty of nightlife where recorded music served as a soundtrack to sell drinks and allow people to seek people, to see and be seen.  Mancuso had a different idea: his goal was to create a safe, insulated scene where people could lose their inhibitions in music, immerse themselves in a community of like-minded people, and find a little lysergic transcendence while they did so.  As a devoted follower of Timothy Leary, Mancuso had already been hosting get-togethers with friends that were modeled after Leary's League for Spiritual Discovery events, and had been rebuilding his loft apartment into a space for "mixed-media" acid gatherings.  Initially, he created home-made 5+ hour tapes of music to accompany the arc of an acid trip, and these began evolving into more serious (and larger) dance parties, particularly as his sound system became more sophisticated.  A Buddhist soul-searching hiatus interrupted things for a few years, but when Mancuso returned to New York, he began planning  weekly Saturday night/Sunday morning house parties for a larger audience.  He mailed out invitations, charged two bucks, forbade alcohol and the sale (but not distribution) of drugs, served free organic food, and became default DJ as he created the soundtrack for the night's revelries, following the same psychedelic arc of slow liftoff > peaking > freakout > re-entry.  Or, in the words of Buddhism-via-Leary, “the first Bardo would be very smooth, perfect, calm. The second Bardo would be like a circus. And the third Bardo was about re-entry, so people would go back into the outside world relatively smoothly."  Sound familiar?  Garcia, in 1984, on the structure of a Dead show: "our second half definitely has a shape which...is partially inspired by the psychedelic experience, like as a waveform: [...] the thing of taking chances and going all to pieces, and then coming back and reassembling."

Another striking thing about Mancuso's parties was the sound.  His Klipsch sound system was state of the art and remains famous to this day for its clarity and depth -- apparently, circa 1975, devoted clubbers and fellow DJ's had even started referring to it as "the wall of sound."

disco? Mancuso's invitations always featured this image of Spanky & Our Gang -- seriously

The ballyhoo over disco in the 70's/80's has probably faded from many memories these days, but the word still conjures up a very specific image for most listeners of a certain age.  While being the grandfather of the disco DJ may seem a dubious honor to some, remember that in 1970, "disco" as we think of it barely existed.  Mancuso was playing a mix of R&B, rock, jazz, latin, African, anything with a beat that would keep the dancers moving.  His tastes ranged wide, and Mancuso was famous not only for discovering many records that went on to be classic dance singles, but also for making James Brown and The Beatles sound like a perfect match when played together in the same setting.  His Leary-inspired evening structure typically began with a gentle prelude session taking in everything from Tchaikovsky to Ravi Shankar, Sandy Bull, or Pink Floyd.  Mancuso stated that his intention was never to actually DJ, but to act as a kind of musical host, keep the vibes right, and establish communion with everyone else in the room.  The parties apparently attracted an extremely diverse group of both dancers and cosmonauts, from both gay/straight and male/female crowds and a wide variety of ethnic (predominantly black and hispanic) and socioeconomic backgrounds: Mancuso was committed to making sure cost wouldn't a barrier.  Far from the Studio 54 scenesters that we associate with disco now, Mancuso was seeking out his own subculture of fellow heads and creating a small world for them through music, and the world he created has been arguably as influential -- if not more -- than our band from San Francisco who had the same basic idea.

I'd like to think that a few particularly hip heads left the Fillmore East in the wee hours and tumbled over to Mancuso's loft (grabbing some pizza in Cooper Union on the way), but I kind of doubt it.  Still, it says something that two epochal gatherings of freaks from very different sides of the streets was happening so closely and simultaneously -- at the very least, like Garcia said at the start of that very long evening, "nothing's weirder than coming to New York."

Nearly all this info comes from Tim Lawrence's great book on American dance/club culture, Love Saves the Day -- his page has some specific Mancuso info.  A lot of this information is also repeated here, with a particular emphasis on the link between Mancuso and 60's psychedelia: http://www.gregwilson.co.uk/2013/05/david-mancuso-and-the-art-of-deejaying-without-deejaying/

Here's Mancuso describing the Loft and his intentions in his own words: http://daily.redbullmusicacademy.com/2013/05/new-york-stories-david-mancuso

PS.  And, totally unrelated, but happy birthday to Merl Saunders! (b Feb 14, 1934).

it's my bee collection!

You know you're a deadhead when an off-beat article about a strange joke reminds you first of Bob Weir:
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/14/magazine/letter-of-recommendation-the-beekeeper-joke.html

As cringe-worthy as they are, I always appreciated when Weir was willing to fill some space onstage with a joke.  He would sometimes affect an ironic tone -- "ok, I guess someone's gotta be Mr. Show Biz right now" -- but just as often as not, it comes across more like a weird dude telling an awkward joke to fill some uncomfortable space.  Of course, intended or not, his jokes probably elicited as many blank stares as they did chuckles or groans.  Weir may have been joking more for the benefit of his bandmates than for his audience, but that doesn't matter -- in my mind, it makes them even better, given the context of a rock star resorting to tell a joke to cover for time in front of a large, expectant audience.

Even in print, the guy in the article tells the bee collection joke better than Bob did (I think, in Bob's version, the bees are in a box), but the effect is still the same.  Might one make the leap to say that much like this joke, the Dead's music sometimes undercuts, subverts expectations, leads us along expected paths into something unfamiliar, expresses the inconsistencies of the heart so succinctly that laughter fades into reflection?  Fuck 'em if they can't take a joke?  Fuck 'em, it's just a hobby.