In comments, I then noted that Vassar was advertised with Tut Taylor that same Saturday at the Exit/In in Nashville, whereupon commenter extraordinaire runonguiness pointed me to Andrew Bernstein's California Slim (2013, p. 139), which published a handbill showing Jerry, Vassar and the OAITW crew at Homer's Warehouse that same night.
So, ex ante, Vassar was triple-booked this night.
While I haven't checked for the Tut Taylor record that was being recorded this night, there is no tape of any OAITW, alas. But, thanks to various miraculous institutions (the concert review) and technologies (microfilm), I happen to know he and Jerry and the rest played the Berkeley gig, because Len Lyons (1973b) evaluated it in the next week's Berkeley Barb. He loved Asleep At The Wheel, which opened, and he admired Vassar, but he had little but contempt for Jerry's banjo playing and OAITW's whole style. I paste the review below.
Mr. Lyons was no Garcia fan. A few months earlier, he had excoriated the recorded-for-Fantasy July 10, 1973 JGMS gig (see, among others, here, here, here and here), urging readers, "Don't bother buying the record. Five years from now, you may be hearing it for free over Safeway's MUZAK system" (Lyons 1973a). He was, as I say, not a fan.
Either Len Lyons wanted another crack at the 10/6/73 OAITW gig and delivered it under a pseudonym, or "jon da peripatetic poet" was also there, and also hated it: "a few weeks ago i went to keystone berkeley to hear asleep at the wheel play their usual superb set. On the bill with them was ol in the way jerry garcia. garcia plays with some local rock band, and if his guitar playin is as bad as his banjo pickin they better dump him and find a replacement whos got his shit together. old in the way plays crabgrass, i mean brown grass, oh so sorry. let me begin again bluegrass it is that they say they play. i fell asleep at the bar but the rest of the crowd ate it up. perhaps they were all cows in disguise and grass is grass to a cow, boy."
ReplyDelete! ref: Peripatetic Poet, Jon da. 1973. rock n wet dreams. Berkeley Barb, November 30 – December 6, 1973, p. 23, via Independent Voices.