John Coltrane has a spudfactor of 2?

Spudfactor is the number it takes to get from Jerry to another musician, using ties defined as making music together, in person.

Jerry Garcia = spudfactor 0

Anyone who played with him, live or live in studio, even picking in someone's living room, has SF1.

Then everyone they ever played with --same definition-- now has SF 2 (at most). And so forth.

The universe of SF1, when we draw all of the ties between all of the other players, defines the Side Trips Social Network.

Anyway, we were playing around with links out from Jerry to Coltrane, and my amazing commenters have determined that Jerry 0 > Ornette 1 > Coltrane 2.

So much fun. Original question was about John Chambers. We have moved on.

It's my understanding that Hartbeats era Matrix drummer John Chambers played with John Coltrane. I could check, but I wanted to pin this here before I head out to the ol' salt mines.

https://www.discogs.com/artist/1292605-John-Chambers-2

Jerry Garcia - David Grisman Quartet at Sweetwater, December 17, 1990

Perfect soundboard audio of the debut of the Garcia-Grisman band (JGDG) at Sweetwater in Mill Valley came into the light a few weeks back.

It has now been sync'd to video and Christopher Hazard has worked his 4k wizardry on it.

Thanks to all involved in doing this work. We have an absolute gem of a copy of pivotal addition to Jerry's late life.

Setting Right What Was Rent Asunder

Or something like that.

Forgive me, for I have sinned. I have added entropy to the world. I am here to make amends.

When the Falanga-Menke Stash of Garcia-Saunders tapes from 1974 first came to me, one of them was labeled 8/14/74. I had what I thought was another recording of the show connected to Lou Tambakos. Somewhere along the line, in the first decade of the 21^st century, I decided that the correct date was 8/15/74. Because I was an early source of recording metadata, that dating has really stuck. I even wrote about it once because of a mystery trumpeter.

But I think I was wrong. I now believe that Wednesday, August 14, 1974 is the correct date of this mid-August 1974 JGMS show at the Great American Music Hall.

Three streams of evidence.

8/14/74 JGMS at GAMH has no contrary listings and these confirmatory ones: Bill Alex, "Around Town," San Francisco Examiner, August 9, 1974, p. 23; San Francisco Sunday Examiner and Chronicle Datebook, August 11, 1974, p. 4; Todd Tolces, "Out to Lunch," Berkeley Gazette, August 14, 1974, p. 11; San Francisco Examiner, August 14, 1974, p. 27.

8/15/74 JGMS at GAMH has no confirmatory listings and the following contrary listings: Hayward Daily Review, August 9, 1974, p. 40; Daily Independent Journal, August 9, 1974, p. 20; Bill Alex, "Around Town," San Francisco Examiner, August 9, 1974, p. 23; San Francisco Sunday Examiner and Chronicle Datebook, August 11, 1974, p. 4; Todd Tolces, "Out to Lunch," Berkeley Gazette, August 14, 1974, p. 11. All of these bill John Hartford at GAMH on this date.

Tapes: not only was the Falanga-Menke tape labeled 8/14/74, but so was a beat-up old dubbed cassette the Jerry had in his tape collection.

So, QED. Change your lists. Change your fileset info!

About Last Night

Hell may freeze over, but here I am. A new man. (Call it my epitaph for JGMF.) But I am going to post about the Post-Jerry-Garcia-Grateful-Dead-Cinematic-Universe (PJGGDCU). Just read Selvin 2018 for a sense of things. I think Thoughts On The Dead coined an acronym for this which is of course canon. I am just goofin'.

I have been mostly lukewarm, and so not paid much attention, to all of the members' doings since 1995. Phil in April 2000 from the 3rd row was utterly antiseptic, all brain and no soul. Ratdog in whatever year I went to the Tower Theater, we left at setbreak. Man needs his sleep. I never saw any of the others, I don't think, until Dead & Co., which I have seen a number of times because they come to me at Folsom Field. I have enjoyed those days in Colorado and grooving around, but the music was mostly incidental.

All that said, last night at Folsom Field was the first time I have felt the magic since I was in the same space as Jerry, that being:

GD August 14, 1991 at Cal Expo in Sacramento; and
GD December 28, 1991 in the Coliseum Arena in Oakland

Both were good, though I am not a fan of Vince's sound. The main thing was that I had to shift my energy to new things.

32 years later, I felt just a little bit, a flash, of that same ol' magic. I did the whole weekend volunteering with campus Guest Relations to wristband folks with floor seats for the first set, then free to roam in the second.

It was absolutely wonderful. If you have talked to me for 1 minute, you know I love Colorado with all my heard. I love Boulder. You know I love the University of Colorado Boulder. You know I love My People: Scholars, Students, Staff, Heads and Other! And you know I LOVE music.

It was all that! I think I may now be up to the mountains for some backpacking.

JGB Spring '93 SoCal

Preface: JGB in SoCal

Little springtime SoCal jaunts became a regular thing for JGB starting in 1983. (OK, that was very late winter, but March is generally pretty springy down there.) Some were one- or two-offs, others were a little more elaborate. Here's a sketch.

1983: 3/11a and 3/11b in Santa Barbara; 3/12a and 3/12b, 3/13 in Beverly Hills

1984: 5/17 Beverly Hills, 5/18 Irvine, 5/19 Santa Barbara, 5/20 Reseda

1985: Garcia-Kahn 5/31a and 5/31b in Beverly Hills

1986: 5/23 in San Diego, 5/24 in LA

1987: 3/13 and 3/14 in LA

1988: no SoCal

1989: 5/19 Irvine, 5/20 San Diego, 5/22 LA

1990: LA in November

1991: no SoCal

1992: summer dates

1993: 4/16 and 4/17 at UCLA, 4/18 in San Diego

1994: 5/13 San Bernardino, 5/14 Ventura, 5/15 Irvine, 5/17 and 5/18 San Diego + 5/19 Phoenix

So much to say, but so little time. Let me just foreshadow some of what might get some write up in Fate Music.

'83: Hell's Angel George Christie, Jr., a rather remarkable dude, promoting in Santa Barbara (again in '84). I have some super-sweet material here about how much better it was for Jerry working for an outlaw than it was for some of the "straight" promoters in the area.

'84: not sure yet, but definitely mention the killer music and DeeDee Dickerson's swan song.

'85: "Bullshit! Bullshit!" and all that

'86: Wolfgang trying to product-differentiate the "Band Electric" 10 months before the birth of the Jerry Garcia Acoustic Band. And one of the great sardonic review headlines of all time: "Band Electric Plays at Pace Languid".

'93: maybe some stuff based on this post

'94: "Down goes Frazier! Down goes Frazier!!"

Among the themes that will pop up are NorCal vs. SoCal, maybe some nods toward playing on John Kahn's home turf, and definitely the evolution of the SoCal jaunt as a commercial proposition: 1) from local promoters (with John Scher's help) to conceding Bill Graham the west coast monopoly he so badly wanted. (He wanted it all, but John Scher was simply too great to work with to give him up.) And 2) obvs., the switch from clubs and theaters to amphitheaters and basketball arenas. Of course, too, some great music.

JGB SoCal Spring 1993

So much for the long windup. I really just wanted to plop down some notes around a listen a month or two ago to the April 16-17, 1993 gigs in Pauley Pavilion and the 18th in the San Diego Sports Arena. I have listening-noted the Warfield 4/23/93 show on these pages, and found it somewhat low energy, though I abso-fucking-lutely love its version of "Señor" (released on Garcia Plays Dylan) and "The Hunter Gets Captured By The Game" (released on Shining Star). It seems like I haven't listened to the 4/24 or 4/25 Warfield shows, which I guess I will need to do at some point.

These three SoCal shows from the week before strike me as overall better than 4/23, generally strong, rarely really bad and occasionally fantastic. If forced to rank these three, I'd say 4/18 > 4/17 > 4/16. I note that The Powers That Were released 1 tune each from the 18th and 17th, but none from the 16th. That seems about right to me, and I have to say that they made fantastic choices. Despite its execrable cover art and (not unrelated) the fact that it was released under the reign of She Who Shall Not Be Named (whom I nevertheless name below), the Shining Star release contains some outstanding music, and the selections from this run of shows are top-shelf.

From the 17th, they selected "Everybody Needs Somebody To Love", which the Stones had covered soon after Solomon Burke's original 1964 version on Atlantic, and which was most successfully covered by Wilson Pickett. This Garcia Band version is absolutely killer, a truly fine late era performance ranging across some stanky pedal effects to some very spare sections, sung together and tenderly by Jerry and the ladies, but also across some growly exclamatory "I need it! I need it!" from ol 'Jer. More detailed notes, probably not all that illuminating, below.

From the 18th, they selected Dylan's "Positively 4th Street". (Happy belated 82nd birthday to Mr. Dylan, BTW!) What can I say about Garcia and 4th Street? Of all the Dylans he did, I think this one was the most special. It was almost never not amazing. It is one of those tunes that I still haven't found quite the right word for, which appeared across the decades, but typically in short spurts, which I think have a particular quality of Jerry loving them but finding them either challenging to do or too special to wear out. This is speculation, of course, but it's what my gut says. And none of these tunes --also including "Tough Mama", "Like A Road", a few others-- better captures that profile for me than "4th Street".

The great David Gans and Blair Jackson asked Garcia about the tune in a 1981 interview.

Q: Do you have any trouble singing a song as bitter as "Positively 4th Street"?

Garcia: Not at all. It's easy for me to cop that asshole space. I was that guy, too. For me, it occupies the same space as 'Ballad of a Thin Man'. It tells that person who's lame that they're lame, and why they're lame, which is a very satisfying thing to do. 'Positively 4th Street' has this way of doing it where it's beautiful, too. And 'It's All Over Now, Baby Blue' is basically a put-down, too. It's one of those things like, 'You're losing bad - dig yourself.' It was the beautiful sound of 'Positively 4th Street' that got to me, more than the bitterness of the lyric. The combination of the beauty and the bitterness, to me, is wonderful. ... That's something that only Dylan has been able to pull off in terms of modern songwriting, I think (Jackson and Gans 19810911, 29).

Jerry played it somewhat regularly with the Garcia-Saunders aggregation in 1973 (as represented, e.g., on the original Saunders-Garcia-Kahn-Vitt Live at Keystone, and re-released by Fantasy endlessly since then). He picked it back up for a month in 1975 in the first JGB with Nicky, then dropped it again until Ozzie Ahlers came on board in 1979 (check out the 12/21/79 version, one of the greatest single-song performances of Garcia's playing career). He dropped it again in the middle of the February 1980 tour for more than ten years, bringing it out staccato in the 90s. Here are the all of the post-1980 versions. Because I think the song held special meaning for Jerry, I offer up some conjecture as to what I think might have motivated the revival.

3/1/91, which I have called "Certainly One of the Best and Most Interesting Shows of the 90s" (which may be damning it with faint praise): I note that 4th Street is "just about perfect - I think he gets all of the lyrics, and he does it with the right degree of bitterness." What might have led Garcia to dust this gem off after 11 years, obviously rehearse it with the band, play it for this "just for this one moment", and drop it for two years again? Well, first we know that he was using again, and not just chipping but to the point that the GD would stage another intervention four months later, whereupon Jerry went onto a methadone program. (It didn't stick.) Second, we know from his September '91 interviews that he was wildly burned out on the Dead, and he explicitly said that it was during the spring that he was asking the band about chilling out for six months, only to be told that the show had to go on. *cough* Phillesh *cough* So, in this case, I blame the Grateful Dead. Does any of this have anything to do with why he played 4th Street? Neither you nor I has any idea. But, while it may  not have been carefully planned out, I think something definitely caused its appearance. What do you think?

4/18/93 (this version) and 4/23/93 (on Shining Star): Here, I primarily blame woman troubles (Jerry's, not necessarily the women's). Humiliatingly, San Francisco institution Herb Caen led a January 1993 column asking "would the beloved Jerry Garcia dump his longtime ladyfriend, Manasha (the mother of his 3-yr-old daughter), and take off for Hawaii with a new inamorata?" (Caen 19930112). I can't recall where this occured, but when People wrote about his personal life in 1976 Garcia lost his shit, and I can't imagine the isolated and private 1993 version of himself would have been happy about having his love-life laundry aired in public. The new inamorata in January was the sweet and lovely Brigid Meier, but he had already left her in March after a) running back into Deborah Koons (also involved the 1976 complications) in Mill Valley and b) Brigid finding out he was using and asking him to get clean (McNally 2002, 603). Her recollections of that encounter supply some of the darkest images we have of the man in the grip of his addiction. Maybe he had her in mind when singing about "what a drag it is to see you" and all that. After a little fling with one Shannon Jeske (ibid), it seems like by April he would have been back with Deborah. Indeed, having heard some of the inside skinny about how She worked, the fact that She and Jerry were back together right around this time may have motivated the selection of material from these very shows.

There were other things going on in this window, of course. The last time he had played the Warfield, in late February, there was a "mini riot" outside the venue, involving 20 cops, rock-and-bottle throwing, and a dozen arrests ("12 arrests at Garcia concert," Argus-Courier [Petaluma, CA], March 2, 1993, p. "Deadheads blame riot on S.F. Police," San Francisco Examiner, March 1, 1993, p. A-13). So, to whom, or about whom or what, would he be venting his spleen in April 1993, by again dusting off, rehearsing, performing, and again dropping 4th Street? I have no idea. But I will say that, as on 3/1/91, on 4/18/93 he dusted the tune off and played it nearly perfectly, as close to perfectly as he ever did any song. I think he nailed every single lyric. And, heart? What heart! My only note about the song is this: "this is stunningly good".

There is lots of other really nice stuff in these shows, as my notes below narrate. The "Don't Let Go"s are too brief for my taste. But even tunes I don't generally love --I am looking at you, "Dixie Down"-- have a little extra something, again more on the 18th than the 17th and more on either of those than the first night. The Garcia Band at this point was running like a pretty well-oiled machine, putting plenty of bread in the breadbox --around $225,000 for these three nights!-- punching in solid 60-minute sets, and delivering good stuff to the faithful. They hold up well after 30 years, and I can recommend them to you --especially the 18th-- if you are searching for something to spin.

Oh yeah, what about the 1995 versions of 4th Street? On 1/13/95, he botches the words ("Jerry can't sing 4th Street if he can't remember the lyrics", I snipped). But I also note that he manages to remember more of them than I would, and as far as I know I am not on death's door. On 3/4/95 he says "I wish that for just one time you could stand inside my shoes" no fewer than four times - so he does the "I could be you" and "what a drag it is to see you" responses twice. Not lyrically correct, I don't think (?), but could be (over-) interpreted as really feeling true to the man in that moment. By 4/15/95 he is running on fumes, though the version certainly makes up in feeling what it lacks in power. If my whole reasoning about the song's appearance reflecting a particularly embittered mindset is right, it certainly makes sense that it was around for these three months. He had crashed his car in January, canceled shows in February, and, not least, he was dying. So 4th Street certainly fit the Zeitgeist.

Listening Notes for April 16-18, 1993 below the fold.

Garcia-Saunders with Guest Doug Sahm, ca. December 1972

Clearing out old paper files of stuff, found this piece by John Swenson about Doug Sahm:

Swenson, John. 197305. The Psychedelic Cowboy Makes His Move. Crawdaddy (May): 65-70.

After narrating the good time on 11/23/72 in Austin, Sahm continues

Then we went back up to Frisco an' did it up at Keystone with Tom Fogerty where Jerry does that jam thing. We kinda learned a few tunes an' said we'll go see whut this audience loos lahk, makin' that trip 'n it was jes that monster same reaction. [He started to sing: "Well, it's not love ..."] Y'know, there's the Berkeley freaks, they dig it y'know an' it was weird because ah ain't played Frisco in years man, 'sbeen ages (Swenson 1973, 68).

By my reckoning, Tom Fogerty never played with The Group in 1973, though that's not 100% established. So the likely dates for this event are the following:

• 12/6/72 or 12/7/72 - note that we have some eyewitness recollections from one of these shows of Sarah Fulcher being around. Like Sahm, she was a Texan with plenty of San Antonio time. Not sure that makes Sahm more or less likely (or doesn't change my estimate) for these nights, but there you go.
• 12/20/72 or 12/21/72 - the only other JGMS Keystone Berkeley gigs in the window.

So, not sure the dates, but wanted to pin these here the best I could.

update: we have pinned these to 12/6/72 at Jerrybase, because it lines up with Sarah, who also guested that night or the next.

Good Old Boys at Keystone: June 14, 1974

I  just want to pin down some details of the Good Old Boys sets from June 13 and June 14, 1974, opening for Great American String Band. These come from tape that I have been able to audition but that is not supposed to circulate. Sometimes, a "hush-hush" approach is necessary to protect the innocent. That's not the case here - just gratuitous hoarding. I don't make the rules.

Good Old Boys

Keystone

2119 University Avenue

Berkeley, CA 94704

June 14, 1974 (Friday)

--early set main--

Blue Grass Breakdown (1)

Sittin' On Top Of The World (2)

Dim Lights, Thick Smoke (And Loud, Loud Music)

Deep Elem Blues

(3) I'll Never Make You Blue (4)

Jesus Loves His Mandolin Player #2 (5)

Pistol Packin' Mama (6)

Wild Side Of Life (7)

Uncle Pen

Raw Hide (8)

--early set encore--

Colored Aristocracy (9)

Back Up And Push

--late set--

Goin' Down The Road Feelin' Bad (10, 11)

Nine Pound Hammer (12)

Little Girl And The Dreadful Snake

Used To Be

Ragtime Annie

Roll In My Sweet Baby's Arms (13)

Jesus Love His Mandolin Player #34 (14, 15)

Crooked Judge

! Band: Good Old Boys

! Lineup: Frank Wakefield - mandolin, vocals;

! Lineup: David Nelson - -ac-g, vocals;

! Lineup: Robert Earl Davis - banjo;

! Lineup: Pat Campbell - bass;

! Lineup: Fred Weisz - fiddle;

! Guest: Richard Greene - fiddle (early show encore);

! Guest: David Grisman - mandolin (early show encore).

JGMF:

! map: https://goo.gl/maps/LDc43

! JGBP: http://jerrygarciasbrokendownpalaces.blogspot.com/2012/02/keystone-2119-university-avenue.html

! reference: http://deaddisc.com/disc/Pistol_Packin_Mama.htm Pistol Packin' Mama (Round RX-109 / RX-LA597-G, March 1976).

! metadata: None of the advertisements indicate separately charged early and late shows, but I think that's what happened on this Friday night at Keystone.

! (1) David Nelson: "Thank you. We're the Good Old Boys. We're the Good New Boys, actually now, we've got a new banjo player ... uhhh what is his name anyway? Bob Davis. We've been stealing musicians from other bands", etc. FW: "Here's one now that David wrote about fifteen years ago. It's called 'If I Miss You On The Matress, I'll See You On The Springs'. [crowd laughs] I had to say something funny."

! (2) Frank Wakefield: "I'd like to close ... really we're almost up here. We've got some very special guests here. And I'm not gonna introduce them right on the stage [inaudible]. Fred Weisz worked with him in 1960. Dave Nelson. Nelson:  "Pat Campbell. ... This guy over here ... from New York, hails from Manhattan New York. Frank Wakefield." NB they forget to introduce the banjo player, though I guess they just had (see note 1).

! song: "Deep Elem Blues": The GOB version is like the old Jerry & Sara versions and like the JGAB ones, which are based on the Red Allen/Frank Wakefield arrangement.

! (3) FW: "Here's one now that David wrote a long time ago."

! (4) DN, paraphrased/truncated: Right now Frank's gonna do one of his mandolin tunes Jesus loves up to bout 36. What we want to do is record them all at once. #2. FW, paraphrased: "Hey maybe I'll change. How many folks was in here last night? Can I see your hands. Don't want to repeat myself. Song we did last night. ... some slow parts and some real fast parts." More chatter. NB that they did, indeed play Jesus #2 on 6/13/74. More cross-validation, not that these dates needed it.

! (5) Nelson: [inaudible] "you can lock me up in jail, but you can't keep my face from breakin' out."

! (6): FW: "One that David wrote about fifteen years ago in San Quentin."

! (7) Fred Herrera: "David, we're running late." Then something like "let's do a nice ending" or "let's do a last number"

! (8) Nelson: "Thank you, thank you very much" and crowd cheers indicate this is the end of the set.

! guest: early show encore with Richard Greene (fiddle), David Grisman (mandolin).

! personnel: With Dawg playing, and if Nelson's still onstage, this might be the only known instance of them playing together (check Fillmore East GD 1970).

! (9) Someone says "We got one here called 'Back Up And Push'. Hope you all like it. I don't recognize the speaker's voice. Not Richard Greene, Grisman, Wakefield or Nelson. Richard Greene: "Hope you all like, uh, country music. 'Cause if you do, we get to disappoint you by playing other stuff. But not for awhile." Note that this whole "encore" piece is one continuous piece of tape. So the guy who announces "Back Up And Push" is onstage playing, I assume one of the GOB guys not named Nelson or Wakefield.

! song: "Back Up And Push" sounds a little like the melody to "This Land Is Your Land" and, I hate to say it, in places, like "Copacabana". Regardless, it's credited to Bill Monroe. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s6jFF0asxWM is an amazing version by Bill Monroe, The Father of Bluegrass (tm).

! (10) unknown speaker: "Thank you thank you, the Good Old Boys." Sounds like the end of an evening.

! (11) Nelson: "We're gonna have some strange guests, but I can't tell ya who they is. Right now we got over on the fiddle on the right hand side, Fiddlin' Fred Weisz. On the banjo, stolen directly from Western Union, (Frank: "The hills of Manhattan, New York") Bobby Davis. All right. He's never played with us before. He played with us about five minutes in the back room there, so we have to work out our arrangements onstage. I think he's doin' pretty good. Then uhhh I'm not gonna introduce. On the bass, another musician stolen from Western Union, Pat Campbell. He's doin' real good too. He's doesn't know any of our songs either. (Frank: "He probly wrote 'em.") But he probably wrote 'em, yeah. And on this little red instrument --whaddya call that please?-- (Frank: "Ukelele.") Ukelele, yeah. That thing's falling apart. I keep worrying about it. He puts his finger underneath the binding on the frets and it snaps off every set, little pieces ... bridge is on backwards ... From the hills of Manhattan, New York, Frank Wakefield." Frank Wakefield: "This feller on the git-tar here, he's from the hills of Tennesse. I believe you're from [inaudible] Actually, the fact of the matter is, he's from a big rock group, like Jerry is ... y'know, when he plays, he plays super banjo too, he plays super acoustic, David Nelson, from Easy Riders of the Purple Sage. Give him a hand, he'd appreciate it. ... I'm mad at y'all now, I'm mad at y'all 'cause he got a better hand than I did. I feel bad now." [woman in audience says "Nobody loves you, nobody [inaudible"] Frank, responding: "So, since she said that, here's one called 'If I Miss You On The Mattress, I'll See You On The Springs'. [laughter] Here's one that David wrote when he was with the Purple Sage, and still is."

! (12) FW: "Here's another one that David wrote a long time ago. If you folks know anything about folk music. David wrote [inaudible] he wrote one here a long time ago. What sparked that?" Nelson: "When I saw my first snake."

! (13) long banter. David Nelson: "Thank you. Thank you. A little ragged, but that's all right. Half of us don't even know the words to these songs here. But this one doesn't have any words, so that's OK too. Frank's gonna do a solo mandolin tune. He writes these mandolin tunes. I am not supposed to talk while he's tuning. He doesn't remember words ... he doesn't know what necessary means, for instance. And he says to people ..." etc. etc. while FW is tuning. "But he remembers all these tunes, these long classical tunes that he wrote." FW tuning and rap. "Last set I did two harmonies. Gonna do [something else] this set." The structure here makes me thing these were separately billed early and late shows.

! (14) Frank: "We're gonna do a thing now where a guy by the name of Robert Hunter wrote a song and David, me and David arranged that and we'll do some very special stuff on the mandolin and the git-tar. And it'll prolly be on this new record, I guess, too, right?" (Nelson: "Yeah.") And it's called the 'Crooked Judge'."

! (15) This is some great context. Fred Herrera must have an intercom from his little room, and you hear it click on and a guy says, in a hushed, golf-announcer voice, "Dave. Dave. (Nelson: "Yeah?") Hey. We're startin' to run kinda late. Two tunes or so. Then someone, it sounds like Marmaduke, says "Hey, uh, Freddie says [inaudible] late." Then "[inaudible, maybe "The man returns"], there's a hoot and cheer from the audience. Frank: "So we'll get David to do that judge song first. ... If you all saw the concert we did last Saturday, we did this'un pretty much the same way." NB that implies a gig on 6/8/74.

Good Old Boys at Keystone: June 13, 1974

I  just want to pin down some details of the Good Old Boys sets from June 13-14, 1974, opening for Great American String Band. These come from tape that I have been able to audition but that is not supposed to circulate. Sometimes, a "hush-hush" approach is necessary to protect the innocent. That's not the case here - just gratuitous hoarding. I don't make the rules.

Good Old Boys

Keystone

2119 University Avenue

Berkeley, CA 94704

June 13, 1974 (Thursday)

opening for Great American String Band

--set I--

ambience (1)

Deep Elem Blues

(2)  Earl's Breakdown

(3) I'll Never Make You Blue

(4) Jesus Loves This Mandolin Player #2

On Top Of Old Smokey

Pistol Packin' Mama (5)

Raw Hide

--set II--

ambience (6)

unidentified-GOB19740613-01

(7) Jesus Loves His Mandolin Player #1

Little Girl And The Dreadful Snake (8)

Bill Cheatham (9)

T For Texas (Blue Yodel No. 1) (10)

(11) Teardrops In My Eyes (12)

New Camptown Races

(13) Uncle Pen

(14) Sally Goodin (15)

A Voice From On High (16)

Back Up And Push [1:59] [0:03]

! ACT1: Good Old Boys

! Lineup: Frank Wakefield - mandolin, ?vocals?;

! Lineup: David Nelson - guitar, vocals;

! Lineup: Fred Weisz - fiddle;

! Lineup: Sandy Rothman - banjo;

! Lineup: Pat Campbell - ac-bass.

JGMF:

! map: https://goo.gl/maps/LDc43

! JGBP: http://jerrygarciasbrokendownpalaces.blogspot.com/2012/02/keystone-2119-university-avenue.html

! setlist: I am confused about the structure of the festivities at Keystone this Thursday, June 13, 1974. Need to write it out at greater length than this info file will allow.

! expost: Philip Elwood, "From country to jazz – a snap," San Francisco Examiner, June 14, 1974, p. 27. He spells fiddle player's name Wiesz, but it must be former Greenbriar Boy Fred Weisz, who had bipolar disorder and might have been a street person around Everett, WA.

! song: traditionals: s1t02 "Deep Elem Blues"; s1t06 "On Top Of Old Smokey" (Trad., arr Wakefield); s2t10 "Sally Goodin"; count: 3.

! song: country: s1t04 "I'll Never Make You Blue" (Ray Cline, Charlie Cline); s1t07 "Pistol Packin' Mama" (Al Dexter); s2t06 "T For Texas (Blue Yodel No. 1)" (Jimmie Rodgers); count: 3.

! song: bluegrass: s1t03 "Earl's Breakdown" (Earl Scruggs); s1t08 "Raw Hide"; s2t02 "unknown-GOB19740613-01"; s2t04 "Little Girl And The Dreadful Snake" (Bill Monroe); s2t05 "Bill Cheatham"; s2t07 "Teardrops In My Eyes" (Red Allen, Tommy Sutton); s2t09 "Uncle Pen" (Bill Monroe); s2t11 "A Voice From On High" (Bill Monroe, Bessie Lee Mauldin); s2t12 "Back Up and Push"; count: 9.

! song: Wakefield originals: s1t05 "Jesus Loves This Mandolin Player #2"; s2t03 "Jesus Loves His Mandolin Player #1"; s2t08 "New Camptown Races"; count: 3.

! (1) Frank: "Actually, Fred Weisz and Jerry Garcia wrote this one."

 

! (2) Someone says "Bluegrass Stomp", and Nelson says "Yeah, how 'bout 'Bluegrass Stomp'?" Not sure what Wakefield says, but David says "Let's pick one." I think Sandy suggests "Earl's Breakdown", Nelson affirms, and Wakefield introduces it. "Here's one where Sandy does some ... if y'all ever seen a [inaudible] player uh accordion player twist some keys, he's gonna do this for ya." ?Sandy?: "Frank does a little fancy key-twistin' on this one, too." DN, laughing, "Watch his hands!"

! (3) Frank: "Here's another song that Sandy wrote, about his sweetheart. She broke his heart, and he's gonna break her darn jaw now, right?"

! (4) Nelson: "Thank you. Right now, Frank's gonna do a solo mandolin tune. I don't know if of you have him heard do it before. He writes these mandolin tunes that are like classical music. They sound like classical music, but not really, I mean, it's hillbilly classical. And he's got about 34 or 6 tunes written out, and they all used to be called "Symphony #94", since that was the only classical piece he'd ever heard, by Beethoven. ... 'Jesus Loves His Mandolin Player #2'." FW gives an explanation. Talks about NYC Ballet Orchestra.

! (5) Frank: "Thank ya. Now we're gonna play one called the 'Berkeley Waltz', then we're gonna take a little intersection [sic] and we're gonna come back and play some more for ya." Nelson, to FW: "Do you know that that word means? What's that word mean?" Frank: "Oh yeah, I forgot what that word means."

! (6) Frank: "I'm sorry, about six months. Can you hear it way back in the back alright? You need more volume? Is that loud enough now? [crowd guy: "'s'all right!"] Bless you, thank you."

! setlist: s2t02 is solo mandolin. It may be one of the Jesus songs, but I just don't know. Even Neil Rosenberg was stumped!

! (7) Frank: "That's an 8-string harmony, now we're gonna play some grass for you." David Grisman, I need to borrow your mandolin real fast. I just broke a string. David? Where you is?" Ballet Opera NYC. Gimme that mandolin!

! (8) FW: "Thanks a lot. Now we're gonna turn Fred loose, who's a super good fiddle player."

! (9) Frank: "Thanks a lot. Now we gonna do somethin' where this super good bass player, Pat, he's really good on the bass", etc.

!  (10) FW: "I'd like to thank David Grisman for loaning me this mandolin. Thank you."

! (11) FW: "Now here's one that David has on record. Him and the Purple Sage Dust."

! (12) FW: "Here's one that David here wrote a long time ago. One called 'New Camptown'. What inspired you to write it, David?" Nelson, off-mic: "Who you talkin' to?"

!  (13) FW: "Here's one that Fred Weisz wrote a long time ago, that he does on the fiddle, called 'Uncle Fred'."

! (14) unknown speaker (not FW or DN): "Here's a little Sally Goodin, we'll get Fred to play a little piece of pie."

! (15) Freddie Herrera: "David ... David ... David ... David, We're starting to run late." FW: "We feel so unnecessary." Nelson: "Hey, what's unnecessary mean?" Freddie: "David, can you hear me?" And they answer with "I Hear A Voice A Callin'!" Perfect!

! (16) Freddie: "Dave. Dave. Can you hear me? Dave? Dave. I'm down here. We are starting to run late, we have time for maybe one more tune at the most." DN, to band: "Oh, we have one more tune."

Dating the September 1971 Lion's Share Gigs

Consider this a throwback post, in that it does what the blog started out doing, and that's just trying to correct and fill out metadata around Garciavents. Here, I argue that the material we know from circulating tapes as 9/24/71 is actually from the next night, 9/25/71, also at the Lion's Share in San Anselmo. The post also serves to pin down a third set of music from the four played this weekend, from newly digitized (and, as of today, circulated) tape of what, I argue, should be seen as the 9/24/71 late show.

Tom Fogerty left Creedence Clearwater Revival on February 1, 1971 (Boucher 1972), seeking to escape the domineering shadow of his little brother John and carve out his own musical identity. Around May 26, 1971, he first sat in with Jerry Garcia and Merl Saunders and their unnamed group, at the Keystone Korner in San Francisco. He gigged on and off with them for a year-and-a-half, while also doing all kinds of studio work at The House That Creedence Built (Fantasy in Berkeley). He continued collaborating on Merl's Fire Up into late spring '73 before exiting the Garciaverse. Some of his correspondence with Merl lives in the GD Archives, and from what we can glean he was a sweet and generous guy who was very fond of his labelmate. He continued to play and record through ongoing back problems, fell on some hard personal times, and apparently contracted HIV/AIDS from an unscreened blood transfusion connected with a back surgery in the early 80s. This led to his untimely demise from a tuberculosis infection at the age of 49 on September 6, 1990.

I have yet to come to a clear understanding of my own of the mix of music and commerce (especially, the role of Fantasy Records) in the "Tom Fogerty Era" of the Garcia-Saunders group, partly because, outside studio recordings, so few tapes of them playing live are available to hear. The first pop up almost four months after his arrival, in September 1971, with two widely-circulated sets from the Lion's Share which I will focus on here. After that, the next tape comes June 30, 1972 at the Korner, and then December 28, 1972, again in San Anselmo. That's it - though tape exists of September 20, 1971 at the Inn of the Beginning in Cotati, and December 5, 1972 at the Boarding House in the city, it does not circulate. And, while he figured in some billings early in 1973, it seems highly unlikely that he ever gigged with these guys after 1972. 

We currently list 48 Tom Fogerty events at Jerrybase, we have a few setlists from newspaper reviews and attendee recollections, and now pieces of five shows. Tragically, all of our JB listings are for public events. Fantasy has remained completely opaque in terms of session dates, which I estimate might number in the few dozens from 1970 or 1971 through 1974 or 1975.

As a result of all of this, the little tape that we have is precious. I have spent considerable time with it trying to glean some insight into the Fogerty Era. It's risky to extrapolate much from the little we can hear, of course. But it seems clear that he and Jerry shared a love for 50s R&B numbers such as Hank Ballard and the Midnighters' "Annie Had A Baby" (1954), The Four Deuces' "W-P-L-J" (1956), and Jimmy Reed's straighter blues "Baby What You Want Me To Do?" (1959), the latter of which the Dead played a few times but none of which is known to have appeared in any other GOTS configuration. They also played Jesse Winchester's super-sweet "Biloxi" from his 1970 debut, and a bunch of tunes that otherwise seem part of the Garcia-Saunders repertoire of the period, insofar as we can know it.

The Lion's Share gigs on September 24-25, 1971 were well advertised and, in a refreshing change of pace, Fogerty's name preceded Garcia's. Yayyy, Jerry! (We celebrate this because the guy just wanted to play, he didn't need or necessarily want top-billing). Maybe it was just done alphabetically. Anyway, only the Berkeley Tribe specifies early (9 PM) and late (11:30 PM) shows. The ads all identify Jerry Corbitt, Billy Cox, and Charlie Daniels (yes, the one you've heard of) opening, though for some reason Jerrybase currently shows Loading Zone and Congress of Wonders the first night instead of them. Gideon and Power were also on the bill the second night, per the Lion's Share calendar.

My partner David Minches and I have just had the pleasure of working with 1971-1972 Lion's Share soundman Lou Judson to arrange a fresh transfer of these old tapes. The three from this September 1971 weekend present, first, a Sony PR-150 labeled "Friday 24 Sept 71 last 1/2 hr)".

The labeling is confirmed by the end of the recording, where the emcee says "Jerry Garcia, Merl Saunders, Tom Fogerty and Bill Kreutzmann. They'll be back tomorrow night, for another two shows, along with Jerry Corbitt and Charlie Daniels. Come back and bring your friends. Thank you for comin', and good night." So this is clearly 9/24/71b. As you will hear when the seed hits the ether, this is distinct music that has never circulated among collectors.

It seems that there probably was a first reel from this night, but, alas, it remains MIA.

But wait, you say - don't circulating filesets already purport to include 9/24/71b? Indeed, they do. But these tapes clearly establish that they are mis-dated, and derive from the second night. Lou's other two reels from the weekend are Sony SLH-180 stock, and clearly labeled "September 25 Saturday '71 first set" and "September 25, 1971 second set".

The material on these tapes corresponds to the material that has long circulated as 9/24/71. But it is actually 9/25/71.

Last thing to do is pin down what we can from the partial setlist for 9/24/71b, and post listening notes from all three sets of material. That stuff follows.

~~~~~

Jerry Garcia and Merl Saunders
Lion's Share
60 Red Hill Avenue
San Anselmo, CA 94960
September 24, 1971 (Friday) - Late Show / reel #2
Judson MSR > HD 2022

--end of late show (6 tracks, 5 tunes, 30:28)--
19710924-l-t01. [0:46] Annie Had A Baby [3:21] ->
19710924-l-t02. W-P-L-J [3:48] [1:07]
19710924-l-t03. Baby, What Do You Want Me To Do? [5:16] [1:08]
19710924-l-t04. I Was Made To Love Her [7:51] [1:05]
19710924-l-t05. The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down [5:31]
19710924-l-t06. outro (2) [0:36]

! ACT1: Jerry Garcia and Merl Saunders
! lineup: Jerry Garcia - electric guitar, vocals;
! lineup: Tom Fogerty - electric guitar, vocals;
! lineup: Merl Saunders - keyboards;
! lineup: Bill Kreutzmann - drums.

JGMF:

! Recording: symbols: % = recording discontinuity; / = clipped song; // = cut song; ... = fade in/out; # = truncated timing; [m:ss] = 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 [m:ss] 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/19710924

! db: none in circulation from this date. The following are mistakenly dated 9/24/71, but are actually 9/25/71: https://etreedb.org/shn/4497 (early and late, via Shriver shnf); https://etreedb.org/shn/137584 (Reel Master 10inch Master Reel@7.5ips 1/2trk > DAT, via Eaton-Scotton-Miller-SirMick); https://etreedb.org/shn/138213 (raw version of shnid-137584)

! map: https://goo.gl/maps/FCaYZGNhk21VzhvF6

! JGBP: http://jerrygarciasbrokendownpalaces.blogspot.com/2012/06/lions-share-60-red-hill-avenue-san.html

! personnel: NB no bass.

! R: field recordist: Lou Judson

! R: field recording gear: PA line out > Viking 88

! R: field recording media: Sony PR-150 1/4" x 7" @7.5ips stereo (tape "GS6")

! R: lineage: MSR Sony 854-4 playback > Sound Devices 744T (24 bit / 96kHz wav) > editing and mastering by David Minches, July 2022.

! t02 (1) @ 4:27 JG: "No dancing in the Lion's Share. At least - nobody's dancing in the Lion's Share. [inaudible] dancing right around here [inaudible] I don't know [inaudible]

! R: t05 some kind of noise in TNTDODD, not sure if it's tape or equipment

! t06 (2) JG: "Thanks a lot folks. See y'all later." Emcee: "Jerry Garcia, Merl Saunders, Tom Fogerty and Bill Kreutzmann. They'll be back tomorrow night, for another two shows, along with Jerry Corbitt and Charlie Daniels. Come back and bring your friends. Thank you for comin', and good night."

~~~~~

Jerry Garcia & Merl Saunders
Lion's Share
60 Red Hill Avenue
San Anselmo, CA 94960
September 25, 1971 (Saturday)
Judson MSR > HD 2022

--early show (7 tracks, 6 tunes, 51:56)--
e-t01. Introduction (1) [1:09]
e-t02. Save Mother Earth [11:38] ->
e-t03. Imagine [5:19] (2) [2:28]
e-t04. One Kind Favor [8:45] [1:25]
e-t05. I Was Made To Love Her [9:53] [0:32]
e-t06. Baby, What Do You Want Me To Do? [3:47] [0:04] %
e-t07. Biloxi [6:51] [0:06]

--late show (7 tracks, 51:55)--
l-t01. [0:15] Hi-Heel Sneakers [8:36] [1:10]
l-t02. Man-Child [10:21] ->
l-t03. Summertime [10:07] [1:14]
l-t04. That's A Touch I Like [5:47] (3) [1:52]
l-t05. Annie Had A Baby [2:55] ->
l-t06. W-P-L-J [3:17] [0:13] %
l-t07. [0:19] The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down [5:40] (4) [0:09]

! ACT1: Jerry Garcia and Merl Saunders
! lineup: Jerry Garcia - electric guitar, vocals;
! lineup: Tom Fogerty - electric guitar, vocals;
! lineup: Merl Saunders - keyboards;
! lineup: John Kahn - electric bass;
! lineup: Bill Kreutzmann - drums.

JGMF:

! Recording: symbols: % = recording discontinuity; / = clipped song; // = cut song; ... = fade in/out; # = truncated timing; [m:ss] = 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 [m:ss] 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/19710925

! db, mistakenly dated 9/24/71: https://etreedb.org/shn/4497 ("MSR>1C>D etc.", via Ryan Shriver and Danny Metz); https://etreedb.org/shn/137584 ("MSR>DAT etc.", via Paul Scotton and SIRMick); https://etreedb.org/shn/138213 (raw transfer of Scotton DAT). Prior to 8/9/2022, no sources have circulated dated 9/25/71, which is the correct date for this material.

! map: https://goo.gl/maps/FCaYZGNhk21VzhvF6

! JGBP: http://jerrygarciasbrokendownpalaces.blogspot.com/2012/06/lions-share-60-red-hill-avenue-san.html

! R: field recordist: Lou Judson

! R: field recording gear: PA line out > Viking 88

! R: field recording media: 2x Sony SLH-180 1/4" x 7" @7.5ips 1/4 trk stereo (tapes "GS7" and "GS8")

! R: lineage: MSR Sony 854-4 playback > Sound Devices 744T (24 bit / 96kHz wav) > editing and mastering by David Minches, July 2022.

! e-t01 (1) JG: "Hey - whoever it is that controls the lights, could ya turn 'em down, these ones here? Ahh, yes. Keep it going ... thanks, great. You can turn 'em down even farther ... that's good. [To band] Can you guys see well enough?" Tom: "Oh yeah, for sure." Emcee: Let's have a warm welcome for Jerry Garcia, Tom Fogerty, Merl Saunders, and ... friends." JG: "That's, uh, John Kahn and Bill Kreutzmann, are the 'friends'." Emcee: "Thank you." JG: "Don't mention it."

! P: e-t02 SME very slowly paced. @ 7:30 JG pedals in a little wah or whatever that is. Things getting melty in 9.

! e-t03 (2) Tom: "Can we get some beer and apple juice, please?" JG: "And a little bit of light - just the tiniest little bit" [some chuckles].

! R: e-t07 Biloxi patched in from shnid-137584. How it could be complete there and not here is a mystery ...

! P: l-t01 HHS Tom's buzzsaw tone fatigues my ears

! P: l-t02 Man-Child John starts rumbling fantastically in 6

! l-t04 (3) Tom: "Can we please have some beers and, uhh, two apple juices?"

! R: l-t07 TNTDODD in mono

! l-t07 (4) JG: "Thanks a lot. Good night."

Odd Pair at the Old Waldorf: JGB, Monday, January 11, 1982 and Wednesday, January 13, 1982

LN jg1982-01-11.jgb.all.sbd-gmb.84012.flac1644 | LNjg1982-01-13.jgb.all.aud-GEMS.98706.flac1644

What a weird little pair of shows - an early year Monday-Wednesday pairing at the Old Waldorf. Also an interesting pair of tapes. The 11th is represented by one of the uber-clean early 80s soundboard cassette tapes, which the old rumor had it marched out of "official" possession powered by a Peruvian blizzard. The 13th is represented by an otherwise unlineaged 1st gen aud cassette from the Jeff Knudsen collection which sounds absolutely stunning.

The shows are uneven. I definitely feel like the 13th is stronger overall. Maybe the fact that Phil Elwood was in the house --improbably enough, at this juncture-- supplied a little extra motivation. Elwood saw Blakey and Garcia in the same time frame and wrote a review praising both old timers for still bringing the musical goods. 

Anyway, the 11th has a lot more lyrical flubs and whatnot, though there are a few highlights probably made possible by the super clean tape. The 13th has a little more juice. I *really* like this "Roadrunner" - it's executed almost flawlessly, and just sounds good. The "Don't Let Go" is good, starting off with Billy double-time syncopating on the rim, but it's quite brief. I have never met a bad DLG, though the super long ones from the 70s can drag for me. This one is probably average, which is to say it's a delight.

~~~~~~~~~~

Jerry Garcia Band

Old Waldorf

444 Battery Street

San Francisco, CA 94111

January 11, 1982 (Monday)

MSC > DAT shnid-84012 retrack

--set I (6 tracks, 57:13)--

s1t01. //How Sweet It Is (To Be Loved By You) [#1:19] [0:13]

s1t02. Knockin' On Heaven's Door [13:22] [0:13]

s1t03. That's What Love Will Make You Do [10:49] [0:08] %

s1t04. //Simple Twist Of Fate [#14:21] % [0:02]

s1t05. I Second That Emotion [9:40] ->

s1t06. Deal// [7:07#]

--set II (7 tracks, 59:25)--

s2t01. [0:31] The Way You Do The Things You Do [8:06] %

s2t02. I'll Take A Melody [12:50] %

s2t03. Valerie [6:45] %

s2t04. Harder They Come -18:39

s2t05. //Night They Drove Old Dixie Down [# ->

s2t06. Dear Prudence [12:27] ->

s2t07. Tangled Up In Blue// [2:13#]

! ACT1: Jerry Garcia Band #14a/c

! lineup: Jerry Garcia - guitar, vocals;

! lineup: John Kahn - bass;

! lineup: Melvin Seals - keyboards;

! lineup: Jimmy Warren - keyboards;

! lineup: Bill Kreutzmann - drums;

! lineup: Essra Mohawk - backing vocals;

! lineup: Liz Stires - backing vocals.

JGMF:

! Recording: symbols: % = recording discontinuity; / = clipped song; // = cut song; ... = fade in/out; # = truncated timing; [m:ss] = 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 [m:ss] 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/19820111-01

! db: https://etreedb.org/shn/20687 (same source tape, shnf, deprecated); https://etreedb.org/shn/84012 (this fileset)

! JGBP: https://jerrygarciasbrokendownpalaces.blogspot.com/2012/06/old-waldorf-444-battery-street-san.html

! band: JGB #14a/c (http://lostlivedead.blogspot.com/2012/01/jerry-garcia-band-personnel-1975-1995.html).

! ad: San Francisco Sunday Examiner and Chronicle Datebook, December 27, 1981, p. 19

! historical: Odd little pair of gigs on Monday (1/11) and Wednesday (1/13) at the Old Waldorf at the start of 1982, in the sense that they'd usually play consecutive nights.

! R: Source: MSC > DAT

! R: Transfer: Panasonic SV-3700 > M-Audio Audiophile 2496 to Wavelab 5.0, mastering with iZotope Ozone 3 > CDWAV1.9 > FLAC (level 8). Transferred, Remastered and Seeded by Green Mountain Bros. April 2007.

! R: seeder comments: Very clean SBD with several pauses between tunes - crossfades were applied to cover. 

! R: s1t01 HSII cuts in, most of tune is missing

! P: s1t02 KOHD Jimmy feature 7:25ff. Basic, but I think it sounds nice.

! P: s1t03 TWLWMYD Very punchy. Kahn is rumbling around really nicely, though how much of that is the recording, I dunno. But a few times he rumbles and it makes me happy. Melvin's feature in 7:20ff also sounds great. Yeah, big fella!

! R: s1t04 STOF clips in

! P: s1t04 STOF Jerry delivers the lyrics slowly and with care (though not without error). Bass "feature" late 6ff. He is flubbing lyrics hard late 11.

! P: s2t03 flubby lyrics

! R: s2t03 the fileset had Valerie and HTC tracked together. I have fixed this.

! R: s2t05 TNTDODD cuts in, missing first two verses

! P: s2t06 DP BK is having tempo problems, as he had been during HTC as well.

! R: s2t07 Tangled Up In Blue is painfully cut.

~~~~~~~~~~

Jerry Garcia Band

Old Waldorf

444 Battery Street

San Francisco, CA 94111

January 13, 1982 (Wednesday)

1st gen aud gems shnid-98706

--set I (5 tracks, 50:26)--

s1t01. Sugaree [11:13] %

s1t02. /They Love Each Other [#7:38] %

s1t03. Sitting In Limbo [12:09] %

s1t04. Let It Rock [8:26] %

s1t05. Tangled Up In Blue [11:01] %

--set II (6 tracks, 62:18)--

s2t01. [0:13] (I'm A) Road Runner [7:02] %

s2t02. Don't Let Go [13:25] %

s2t03. /Harder They Come [#11:19] %

s2t04. [0:06] Russian Lullaby [11:30] %

s2t05. Dear Prudence [12:08] ->

s2t06. Midnight Moonlight [6:32] (1) 

JGMF:

! Jerrybase: https://jerrybase.com/events/19820113-01

! db: https://etreedb.org/shn/95067 (s1s2p aud); https://etreedb.org/shn/98706 (this fileset).

! review: [positive] Elwood 1982. Club was "jammed to overflowing". Amazing that Elwood bothered to see Jerry this late in the game. This was sort of a throwback review, discovering that Jerry and Art Blakey can still bring it.

! R: source: Jeff Knudsen's 1st gen aud cassette: "I taped this but this version is better than mine so I don't have my original anymore. I don't remember who taped this. I knew them but I can't remember their names. The reason I sent this to Matt was the one on LL was missing (I think) the last three or so songs and my copy is complete."

! R: Transfer: MAC(1) > Apogee Mini ME (24/96) > Apogee Mini DAC > Wavelab 5.0 (dithered via 'UV22HR' to 16/44) > CD by Matt Smith. Edits and Mastering: Jamie Waddell (shnflac@gmail.com) on the GEMS Edit Station. Weiss Saracon for POWR-3 Dither. Meta-data with Tag&ReName. 

! seeder notes: "Thanks to Jeff and Matt for the honor to share these". A *GEMS* Production, www.shnflac.net, April 2009.

! R: do not be put off by the generic lineage - this is a really, relaly good aud tape. Update sometime later: really, really, really good!

! P: s1t04 LIR Jerry is doing some truly unique stustained reverby train pulls in late 5. Very intentional stuff!

! P: s2t01 IARR sounds really nice

! P: s2t02 DLG man, is that Billy syncopating on the rim right out of the gate? Sounds cool. Doubling 4:10ff. Melvin pulls a little thing 4:04, 4:15 that just sounds so sweet. 4:23 some putting some sustain on it. I am loving the sound of this band right now - great palette of sound. Nice jam, doesn't get too far out, JG starts nudging back to tune 11:22.

! R: s2t03 HTC clips in

! P: s2t03 HTC peppy. Jimmy feature 5:50ff. Lyrical flub 10:05.

! P: s2t04 Russ Lull John forward 5:44ff. WTF is he doing? I dunno.

! s2t06 (1) JG: "Thanks a lot. See ya later."

Jerry Band SoCal '89

LN jg1989-05-19.jgb.all.aud-tfh.24537.flac1644

LN jg1989-05-20.jgb.all.sbd-miller.20679.shn2flac

LN jg1989-05-22.jgb.all.aud-ebay-liberation.150868.flac2448

The Jerry Band in SoCal

After the Jerry Band started in 1975, SoCal trips were mostly one, two- and few-offs - no real tours as we define them at Jerrybase. Starting in spring 1983, the band started doing what were called "tours" in-house, but were typically just a couple days, couple of rooms:

• March 11-13, 1983: three nights, two rooms, five shows
• August 1983: a few canceled gigs, not sure how many nights/rooms/shows were ever totally solidified
• September 30 - October 4, 1983: makeups for the August gigs, five nights (one off), three rooms, four shows
• May 17-20, 1984: four nights, four rooms, four shows
• May 31, 1985: just the one night, two shows at the Beverley, fleecing the fans

These were all arranged between the Jerry folks (sometimes with John Scher brokering) and the local promoters. In 1986, Bill Graham took over Jerry's SoCal gigs, which for several years are Wiltern dominant. Here's the rest of the Garcia-in-SoCal story:

• May 23-24, 1986: two nights, two rooms, two gigs
• March 13-14: two nights at the Wiltern
• December 3-6, 1987: four nights at the Wiltern in the acoustic-electric format
• November 25-27, 1988: three nights at the Wiltern
• May 19-22, 1989: four nights, three gigs, three amphitheaters
• November 11-16, 1990: five nights out of six at the Wiltern
• July 29 - August 2, 1992: five nights, four gigs, four amphitheaters
• April 16-18, 1993: three nights, three gigs, two arenas
• May 13-19, 1994: seven nights, five-and-a-half gigs, five amphitheaters

As with everything else in the Garciaverse, institutionalization is more or less the story. Things went from pretty fly-by-night in the first half of the 80s to professional, streamlined in the last decade. Graham wanted it all, and the fact that Scher ran Jerry's SoCal stuff apparently irked him. I suppose that Bill getting the Wiltern was the real pivot - he had a great room for Jerry to play that was appropriately scaled. You might say the same thing up north, especially as Jerry got too big for Freddie's clubs. And once the Warfield was renovated (I still have never seen a perfectly clear timeline for that), certainly by late 1989 through to the end, it was probably most efficient to have Wolfgang run the whole west coast.

There's more to say about Jerry in SoCal, which I will try to get to in Fate Music. In short, a disproportionate number of negative things happened to Jerry, or involving Jerry, south of, let's say, Gaviota Point. He was a third-generation San Franciscan, and the antagonisms between SF and LA (north and south more broadly) make all kinds of sense, what with the whole good-and-evil dichotomy at work there (heh heh). It is just kind of funny that SoCal had more than its fair share of bullshit.

That's one set of background conditions, more just historical than anything.

Expectations

My expectations supply a second set of background conditions. Here, they were extremely high. Here's how I described my sense of the overall period writing some eight years ago:

For my money, 1988-1989 is one of the great JGB periods, which a fresh and healthy Jerry (that's what starts to break down, for me, 1990-1991), solid band, some fresh material, rehearsed arrangements, and lots of classic American songs. Nothing too crazy, lots of good music.

In that same post, I had described spring '89 as "a peak period for me". All of that was based on the following, I think.

• I have long been hamina-hamina crazy about 2/5/88.
• 7/10/88 is happy, healthy Jerry, and feels amazing to me to listen to.
• Halloween '88 is more great unscary Jerry.
• The January '89 Orpheums (1/27 linked above) are great, with 1/28/89 being truly special.
• The March Orpheum shows have also struck me as nice, though not astonishing (here are notes on 3/3)
• I have long known about the MONSTER Don't Let Go on 5/19/89.
• I really dig the clean fun feel of 6/10/89, what I consider to be the best of the three Eel River dates.
• I attended 8/26/89 and 10/31/89, and had a great time. I was 18 and life was pretty grand.
• As a political scientist of a certain age specializing in European integration, 1989 was the annus mirabulus in which the Berlin Wall fell.

Another piece of the puzzle is instinctive contrarianism, and my long-held desire to assert the "year too late" hypothesis with respect to the 1991 Jerry Garcia Band double-live CD, which is pretty self-explanatory: they recorded it in 1990, but Jerry Band in 1990, I had in my mind, was not as good as Jerry Band in 1988-1989.

True, I found a couple of duds in that timeframe, such as 12/3/88, which I thought just kinda sucked. But even when we factor that in, I had high hopes. Whoever it was who said that "expectations are the enemy of happiness", or whatever the saying is, may have been onto something.

The Jerry Band SoCal May '89 "Tour"

The three shows in the mix here underwhelmed me. 

True, "whelming" is a function of expectations, and I have already noted that mine were high.

True, the 5/19/89 Don't Let Go is one for the ages. It's right up there with some of the early '80s classics, or the shocking 2/6/94 masterpiece. Definitely top-10, maybe top-5.

True, there are some nice tapes here, including the Tapers From Hell pulling 5/19, and some rare late '80s sbds (albeit incomplete) for 5/20 and 5/22. (Where in the world did these come from??) 

But the whole batch is quite uneven, in various ways.

5/19/89 may be the weakest of the bunch. The vocals are downright bad. As a newspaper reviewer put it, "Garcia's croaked singing ... has pretty much waned from endearing to abominable". WFAM and STOF exhibit some lyrical wobbles. Good hot guitar in "Deal", but the voice is just shot. The astonishingly great "Don't Let Go" may show the compensation effect at work, and of course could be said to redeem the show all on its own. I wouldn't argue. It's great.

I find 5/20/89 the strongest of the bunch. CUTS is clean and doesn't get caught cycling at the end. "Forever Young" has some great screaming and scrubbing, "Like A Road" is real sweet, "Sisters and Brothers" ditto, and "Deal" is shreddylicious - this "Deal" KILLS. "Think" has a nice edge. Things kind of fall off for me after that, though hard to say if the advent of the atmospheric Matt Xavier Nak 300s tape is driving this. (Note, too, young'uns - chomping is as old as the hills.) The second set clocks in at a pretty paltry 46 + minutes. Even with the between song stuff mostly edited out, I think a reasonable expectation in this period is a 55-60 minute set.

I characterize 5/22/89 as "below average for the period", but I think it's probably average, and "below my expectations" would be more accurate. The guitar work in "Deal" and "Think" comes in for more praise, but overall not much moves me here, and another sub-50-minute set II also takes it down a peg.

Let me make one final note: I do think drugs are playing a role here. Trying to pin down Garcia's opiate use is mostly a fool's errand. He seems to have been mostly clean in '87 and '88, though it seems he was probably chipping on and off (Jackson 1999, 406). If Browne's account is to be believe --and I absolutely believe it-- by the time the GD were really seriously recording Built to Last, Jer was back in pretty deep. I have long felt that darkness around 8/26/89 and 10/31/89, both of which I plan to revisit soon. And the Dead's hair-raising "Dark Star" from Miami on 10/26/89 certainly earns its adjective. Finally, as noted above, I have long that that 1990 Jerry Band was overrated and exhibited some of the telltale signs that Jerry was making problematic pharmacological choices.

We are smack dab --see what I did there?-- in the middle of this window, and I think there are issues. The negative reviewer from 5/19 (Washburn 1989) didn't dig ol' Jer dealing "six-string sedatives", and he may have been closer to some truth than he knew. Colleague Mr. Completely rightly warns against "drug reductionism", and I don't intend to reduce the unevenness of these shows to drugs. But I can't shake the feeling that they are playing their part. *sigh*

Listening notes below the fold.

Killer Sugaree and final DDD: JGB at Country Club, Reseda, May 20, 1984

LN jg1984-05-20.jgb.all.aud-nak300s.79553.flac1644

This Sugaree is in the running for hottest ever, especially in the 6-10 minute range. It opened shows a lot in the 75-77 period, a little less frequently by this time, and it would leave the JGB fold in '86 to become GD only. But, for my money, the Jerry Band ones from this ca. '84 period were the very best. I am told that 8/13/84 is another smoker. I plan to revisit it soon.

I don't think Jim Rismiller still had the Country Club at this point, though I am not 100% sure. I am calling it The Country Club, though the tag still has Rissmiller's name to keep them together with other posts from earlier dates.

Last night out for DeeDee Dickerson. Thank you, DDD!

Jerry Garcia Band

Country Club

18415 Sherman Way

Reseda, CA 91335

May 20, 1984 (Sunday)

Nak 300s shnid-79553 retrack

--set I (6 tracks, 5 tunes, 53:59)--

s1t01. ambience [0:19] 

s1t02. Sugaree [15:32] [0:03] % [0:28]

s1t03. Love In The Afternoon [10:06] [0:02] % [0:02]

s1t04. Rhapsody In Red [11:42] % [0:03]

s1t05. Run For The Roses

s1t06. Deal [10:20] (1) [0:07]

--set II (5 tracks, 4 tunes, 40:31)--

s2t01. ambience [0:18] 

s2t02. Mission In The Rain [12:07] [0:03] % [0:02]

s2t03. [0:10] Harder They Come [14:21] % [0:03]

s2t04. /Gomorrah  [#5:48] ->

s2t05. Midnight Moonlight [7:30] (2) [0:07]

! ACT1: JERRY GARCIA BAND #21a

! lineup: Jerry Garcia - guitar, vocals;

! lineup: Melvin Seals - organ;

! lineup: John Kahn - bass;

! lineup: David Kemper - drums;

! lineup: DeeDee Dickerson - vocals;

! lineup: Jacklyn LaBranch - vocals.

JGMF:

! Recording: symbols: % = recording discontinuity; / = clipped song; // = cut song; ... = fade in/out; # = truncated timing; [m:ss] = 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 [m:ss] 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/19840520-01

! JGC: http://jerrygarcia.com/show/1984-05-20

! db: https://etreedb.org/shn/79553 (this fileset)

! band: http://lostlivedead.blogspot.com/2012/01/jerry-garcia-band-personnel-1975-1995.html. DDD's last gig, and so last night out for JGB #21a. The classic 21b lineup with Gloria would debut ca. 7/10/84.

! map: https://goo.gl/maps/A6gX8hd4tfS2

! JGBP: https://jerrygarciasbrokendownpalaces.blogspot.com/2012/06/rissmillers-country-club-reseda-theatre.html. 1,000 seat room which opened 3/28/80 with Merle Haggard (Jackson 1980).

! listing: Orange County Register, May 20, 1984, p. L7.

! seealso: JGMF, "The Auds Have It," URL https://jgmf.blogspot.com/2020/04/the-auds-have-it-jgb-at-irvine-meadows.html.

! seealso: JGMF, "There is World Class Guitar Playing Here," URL http://jgmf.blogspot.com/2014/02/ln-jg1984-05-19jgballaud-rossi.html.

! R: field recordist: unknown

! R: field recording gear: 2x Nakamichi CM-300 w/ CP-1 caps (no shotguns) > Sony D5

! R: lineage: MAC > ?? > DAT > HHB 830 CD Recorder (Stand Alone) > ?? > flac1644.

! R: Nice tape, brightness suggestive of improper Dolby decode.

! P: overall I like it less than the night before. Kemper sounds great on this tape. The Sugaree is pretty off the chain, otherwise not much that strikes me as special. The second set clocks in below the Minelli Line.

! historical: Garcia often undertook these compact SoCal tours in the early 80s. This one comprised four nights of earning: Beverly Theatre on Thursday 17th, Irvine Meadows (a very big space for the JGB of the time) on Friday the 18th, Arlington in Santa Barbara on Saturday the 19th, and this show to round things out. A logistics person might have wanted to run it north - south (SB, Reseda, Beverly Hills, Irvine) or the other way around, but I suspect Irvine had to be on the Friday or Saturday, so all bets were off. Robert Hunter opened the last three nights, as far as I am aware.

! P: s1t02 Sugaree in the 9 and 10 this thing is just going nuts. Returning some years or months later: yeah, yeah. Sugaree comes hot out of the gate, and never lets up. Some serious attack variation arises 6:19, goodness still a minute later. Each note has its own little existence, but he constructs half-phrases, half-paragraphs, up and down the fret board, fast-slow, loud and really loud, God damn, Jerry! Jeesus fucking christ, now Kemper 8:35 just CRUSHING to keep up with Jerry and Jerry is running circles like a fucking demon. Crowd is seems to be going crazy 9:10, but Jerry is playing so fucking loud and crazy that it's hard to know. Pure energy happening here. Mamma mia! Now starts some fanning 9:45, and it sounds like he has four hands, because he seems to be fanning chords and picking notes at the same time. Boy. Softens to set up a verse first half of ten, verse comes 10:30. After that verse 11:30 he comps for Melvin, and Kemper @ 12:20, I just love you, man. 

! P: s1t04 I hold my RIRs to very high standards, and this one is not above average.

! P: s1t06 Deal Kemper is a beast here.

! s1t06 (1) JG: "Thanks. We're gonna take a break for a few minutes. We'll be back in a little while."

! P: s2t03 HTC going a mile a minute. Right out of the gate, Kemper sounds awesome, John hits a huge note and a little slide!

! R: s2t04 Gommorah clips in

! P: s2t05 Mid Moon goes a mile a freaking minute, and tempo seems to pick up as the song plays. Kemper needs another leg and a couple of arms to keep up.

! s2t05 (2) JG: "Thanks a lot. See y'all later."

Unidentified Nicky Hopkins Instrumentals

update: Mark Mattson has identified the number as "Lucky Old Sun" - wow!

There may be others, but I am right now pondering two distinct instrumentals that Nicky does out of "Lady Sleeps" with the JGB in the last month or so of his run with the band.

11/23/75: about 1:38:30ff here --> https://ia600902.us.archive.org/9/items/jgb1975-11-23MackeyAuditoriumBoulderCO/jgb1975-11-23MackeyAuditoriumBoulderCO.mp3

He announces that one before as one of his originals, I think.

12/19/75: about 51:30ff here--> http://www.archive.org/serve/jgb1975-12-19WinterlandArenaSanFranciscoCA/jgb1975-12-19WinterlandArenaSanFranciscoCA.mp3 a little peppier, sounds kind of Beatles-ish to me (though it's not "Mother Nature's Son")

Help!

Did You Ever Notice the 9/18/81 JGB Rehearsal Has Jerry Playing Acoustic?

The spine of Betty's 9/18/81 JGB rehearsal tape box

A beautiful piece of tape: Betty's reel from the 9/18/81 JGB rehearsal

I just revisited this little 20+ minute rehearsal fragment. Thank you Betty! This is the latest piece of Betty Board of interest to me: some of the abortive Brent solo album material came from later in '81 and into '82, but this is the last scrap of tape with ol' Jer on it.

 A few things to note.

First, Jerry is playing acoustic throughout, and doing so tastily.

Second, this is Ron Tutt drumming. Right before "Dear Prudence", as the reel winds up, Jerry comes in with a "hello?" while beautifully strumming Prudence on his acoustic. Tutt asks "Is that the right tempo, or should that be a little slower than the other'n?" Jerry replies "it should be a little slower than the other one."

Third, Melvin Seals sounds simply wonderful here. 

That's all I've got.

Jerry Garcia Band - Studio Rehearsal

Club Front

20 Front Street

San Rafael, CA 94901

September 18, 1981 (Friday)

MSR -> P -> D shnid-13881 shn2flac

--partial rehearsal (3 tracks, 21:38)--

t01. Tangled Up In Blue [7:36]

t02. Dear Prudence (1) [6:28] (2) [0:49] %

t03. //Tangled Up In Blue// [#6:45#]

! ACT1: Jerry Garcia Band

! lineup: Jerry Garcia – acoustic guitar, vocals;

! lineup: John Kahn – electric bass;

! lineup: Jimmy Warren – electric piano;

! lineup: Melvin Seals – organ;

! lineup: Ron Tutt – drums.