I knew I had heard him talking about what a burn short sets were. And I have found at least one instance, at http://www.gdao.org/items/show/378627 (Jerry Garcia interview, broadcast on WHMR, November 27, 1978). I don't know the date of the actual interview, but anyway.
Here, from about 6:30-7:30, is Garcia talking about the phenomenon of the short show:
The way showbiz works, you know, the Judy Garland tradition, is 45 minutes, bam, get off. Do an encore, that's it. And I think that ... that's a burn, as far as I'm concerned. I know everytime ... I've been a fan, I am a fan of music, and if I go to hear somebody play, I really want to hear 'em do it. And it's artificial - I really don't think it's called for. Economics, more than anything else ... they stem from cabaret economics, bar economics. Traditionally, bars do a turnover business. Like cafe shows do a turnover business, so that if they can squeeze in 4 shows a night, great; 5 shows, wonderful. Like in Vegas ... turn over the house each time, and make a lot of money in a small room. It's that idea that has created the form of the short show.
There are still numerous interviews at GDAO that I want to transcribe.
Here's another quote from this interview that I really like, on live vs. studio: "Making a record is like building a ship in a bottle. Playing music live is like being in a rowboat in the ocean" (@ 8:34).
"Like in Vegas ... turn over the house each time, and make a lot of money in a small room. It's that idea that has created the form of the short show."
ReplyDeleteFernand Braudel as applied to American popular music.
!
Delete5/31/85 is an example of cabaret economics.
6/3/85's really short set is just an example of a guy burning his audience, by his own standards.
"The band in general, and Jerry in particular, were always very conscious of giving the kids their money's worth. That's why they put huge opening acts on the bill with them - Bob Dylan, Tom Petty, Crosby, Stills and Nash, Sting, Traffic, Steve Miller" - John Scher, quoted in Barnes 2011, 53.
ReplyDeleteFrom the infamous Paul Morley 1981 interview: "Even if I did a 45-minute show so packed with emotion and intensity and everything it needed to have I would still feel like, God it ain't fucking worth it. I don't want to burn anybody. People have to work to get their little money ..."
ReplyDeleteGarcia, June 1980: “Show business at the high levels is frightening because it’s relentless and it steamrolls personalities. There’s always that thing of show business waiting to eat you alive like it did Judy Garland and the other vulnerable types. I’ve never wanted to get that close to those jaws” (Hunt 1980, G10).
ReplyDeleteFrom earlier in '78: “If you have the space in your life where you can be high and play and not be in a critical situation, you can learn a lot of interesting things about yourself and your relation to the instrument and music. We were lucky enough to have an uncritical situation [during the 1965-1966 Acid Tests], so it wasn't like a test of how stoned we could be and still be competent - we weren't concerned with being competent. We were more concerned with being high at the time. The biggest single problem from a practical point of view is that obviously your perception of time gets all weird. Now, that can be interesting, but from a practical standpoint I try to avoid extremes of any sort, because you have the fundamental problems of playing in tune and playing with everybody else. People have to pay a lot of money to see us, so it becomes a matter of professionalism. You don't want to deliver somebody a clunker just because you're too high. I don't, anyway.” (Sievert 1978, 130)
ReplyDeleteAnother aspect of "Judy Garland syndrome": "4503 Elvis was a victim of the Judy Garland syndrome. What do you do when you've risen to absolute success. Where is there for you to go? Las Vegas? Wow, some reward. Gee, that's great: work as hard as you can, and you get to go from Mississippi to Las Vegas. It's wrong. He deserved something better. But the music world doesn't have the imagination to invent it for him, and he wasn't lucky enough to have come up with his own guidance system. He was under the influence of other people who felt they knew what he could do and what he couldn't do and what the business could open for him. He had no alternative. In some senses that's the music business's thing. It's reductive and unless you invent your own alternative for where you want to go, and how you want to improve, and how you want to contain your own improvement, it doesn't happen for you. The music business says to you 'Repeat your success, do your formula thing, and live on that, or die from boredom, or get pathetic like Elvis'. To me that's unacceptable. In that sense, Elvis is a martyr to the thoughtlessness, the mindlessness, of the music business. That's how little it cares for the performers, and how little it really cares about the music."
ReplyDeletevia 1987 RS interview, http://jgmf.blogspot.com/2015/03/a-conversation-with-jerry.html