'Jerry, is it really ovah?' JGMS at the Bottom Line, November 6, 1974 (early show)

LN jg1974-11-06.jgms.early.aud-moore.117248.flac2496

Garcia’s first professional tour as a named headliner outside the Grateful Dead comprised twenty-one performances over the thirteen days between Tuesday, November 5, 1974 and Sunday, November 17, 1974, inclusive. The first three nights of the tour unfolded at the Bottom Line, 15 West 4th Street, New York, NY 10012, two shows per night. So much to process, I can only do the raw “listening notes” dump without much analysis.

Jerry Garcia and Merl Saunders

Bottom Line

15 West 4th Street

New York, NY 10012

November 6, 1974 (Wednesday), early show

flac2496 of Jerry Moore audience recording

--Complete Early Show (8 tracks, 97:01)--

t01. crowd and tuning [2:08]

t02. Think [9:04] (1) [2:33]

t03. Valdez In The Country [12:58] (2, 3) [2:38]

t04. (4) I Second That Emotion [16:45] [0:22] % [2:49]

t05. You Can Leave Your Hat On [13:12] (5) [1:50]

t06. Someday Baby [9:32] (6) [1:02]

t07. Mystery Train [13:00] [0:15] % (7) [1:16]

t08. The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down [6:55] (8) [0:39]

! ACT1: Jerry Garcia and Merl Saunders
! lineup: Jerry Garcia - el-g, vocals;

! lineup: Merl Saunders - keyboards, vocals;

! lineup: Martin Fierro - saxophone;

! lineup: John Kahn - el-bass;

! lineup: Paul Humphrey - drums.

JGMF:

! Recording: symbols: % = recording discontinuity; / = clipped song; // = cut song; ... = fade in/out; # = truncated timing; [ ] = recorded event time. The recorded event time immediately after the song or item name is an attempt at getting the "real" time of the event. So, a timing of [x:xx] right after a song title is an attempt to say how long the song really was, as represented on this recording.

! Jerrybase: https://jerrybase.com/events/19741106-01

! db: shnid-6613 (uncertain provenance of same master tape); shnid-16807 (Moore's Masters 2003 seed of same master tape).

! R: "Recorded by Jerry Moore; 2x AKG D1000E > Sony TC-152; Transfer and FLAC encoding by David Minches: Master played back on Nakamichi Dragon > Korg MR-1000 (DSF [1-bit 5.6448 MHz Stereo]) Korg AudioGate > WAV [24/96] > Adobe Audition 3.0 > FLAC encoding. Speed/pitch Correction by Joe B. Jones. Thanks to Rob Berger for supplying the master cassettes."

! R: Provenance. Perfect provenance for a quite wonderfully wonderful recording. Quite simply, Jerry Moore was doing it right out on the East Coast. Garcia / GD fans owe a tremendous debt of gratitude to Jerry and everyone whose scene he shared. Thanks to all involved in getting this into my ears. Sard Thee Well, JM.

! R: quality: This is quite an excellent audience recording.

! Historical: Jerry Garcia and Merl Saunders undertook their first out-of-state tour in November 1974. Opened with three nights, six shows at the Bottom Line in NYC. This is third show (second night, early show). NB Paul Humphrey drumming.

! t02 (1) crowd requests for Positively 4th Street, Expressway. 4th Street would be well-known in all kinds of ways to the crowd, not least Dylan and the fact that it appeared on the Live at the Keystone album (Fantasy F-79002, 1973). As the crowd member reminds Jerry @ 10:27, "You're playin' on 4th Street." Expressway To Your Heart [Allan | Scofield] is a little less obvious, though of course it did appear on Merl Saunders's Fire Up (Fantasy 9421, 1973). My point is that this is your typical smart (or at least knowledgeable), engaged NYC audience.

! P: t03 VITC comes out at a breakneck pace, much faster than it was played on other occasions. Merl's lead in the 8-minute mark is very nice. The high-hatting @ 8:26 is something that I think might distinguish Humphrey from any other contemporary drummers, as we try to sort out who's who on any given night. All of these guys were good --they *always* had good drummers-- but I love Humphrey's style.

! t03 @ 13:20-13:30 (2) taper talk: "turn 'em over" "90" ... Jerry and someone else (maybe Harvey Lubar?) are discussing the tape flip.

! t03 R: maybe a tape flip @ 14:13?

! t03 @ 15:10 (3) crowd guy, loud: "Jerry, is it really ovah?" @ 15:19 Jerry: "It's always been over, man."

! t04 (4) crowd member identifies "I Second That Emotion" right in time, and everyone gets a little extra jolt, band included.

! P: t05 You Can Leave Your Hat On: Garcia is playing powerfully and inventively in the 9-10 min range. This is some of the better deep jamming to have occurred in this song by this band. I also like the relatively brisk pace at which they play the song here. It took them awhile to figure tempos on the Merl lead vocals.

! t05 (5) notice the rambunctious crowd. Calling songs, all that. I hear calls for "Bertha" and "Like A Road", inter alia. “Like A Road” request suggests to me that this guy has spent some time with Garcia-Saunders-Kahn-Vitt Live at the Keystone.

! t06 (6) crowd requests: The Harder They Come, Turn On The Bright Lights (from the second Garcia album, colloquially known as Compliments [Round RX 102, released June 1974]).

! business: They certainly weren’t “touring behind” any particular record, except in Garcia’s rather circuitous way. But someone (not necessarily excluding Garcia, but presumably including Ron Rakow), somewhere, at some point, or several of each of these, conceived of this tour as a way to sell records. Notes (5) and (6) above remind me note only that Garcia had a stake in Round Records, but of Corry’s important recent work on the economics of the Garcia-Saunders-Kahn relationship.

! P: t07 Mystery Train the drummer messes up the tempo at the start, so Jerry has to play his 'lectric guitar for a few measures to get them set up for the verse, which comes in around 52 seconds in. It’s a nice minute of playing as they try to get things together.

! t07 (7) tune requests: Like a Road.

! t08 (8) JG: "Thank you. See ya all later."

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