DOWN in South Jersey? JGB at Glassboro State College, February 15, 1981

LN jg1981-02-15.jgb.all.aud.137422.flac1644

Rock Scully's book Living with the Dead (1996) gets mixed reviews for all kinds of reasons, among them that he presents lots of factually inaccurate information. But, on another intepretation --and, I think, relaying something Corry has expressed-- the book may not be right, but it contains lots of truth. Here is some of his narrative around early '81:

We use the airlines to ship dope. I have somebody run it out to the airport in an envelope, put it on a plane, and it gets there like clockwork until some weird hippie at TWA recognizes Jerry's name on the package and takes it. The first time it happens, we're in Philadelphia. I'm jonesing in the Philadelphia Arport waiting for the shit to arrive and it never shows up. I know it got onto the plane, but somewhere along the line somebody stole it. This little glitch leads to a day and a half of the shakes. Garcia is too junk sick to perform the following night. Prescriptions from the hotel doctor help, but we use up all the pills the first night to get rid of the shakes.

In Washington, a desperate Garcia decides to do a radio interview in the middle of the night and "put the code out." Garcia's nodding into the mike during the interview. On air he asks fans — in code — to bring their stashes down to the station and he will sign albums for them. He says, "Uh, anybody down with Garcia out there tonight? You wanna come down to the station? I'll come down from up here and sign autographs, but bring me some down." Thirty kids show up at the station reception with grass, 'ludes, uppers. Uh oh, the wrong drugs! Oh God, now he wants to get more specific on the air, spell out what precisely he needs. We send kids out to get downers and tranks to get us through the night (Scully 1996, 314).

I relay this here because seeder extraordinaire AF has relayed the following in connection with a recording of JGB in Esby Gym, Glassboro State College, February 15, 1981:

Before the show, Jerry went on the radio [campus radio WGLS] to invite people DOWN and if you were DOWN with it, then come on DOWN to the show. The story goes that they were at the end of the tour, way down in the boonies of South Jersey, and the stash was dry. Jerry had to put out the call for someone from Philly or nearby to drive over with a fix for him and Kahn.

Naturally, this sounds like the second part of Rock's little vignette above. I trust AF to have the date, time, and specifics more accurate than Scully. As for our jonesing hereo, maybe the trip into Glassboro, a charter flight from E. Farmingdale (Republic Airport) to Philly on an 8-passenger twin-engine King Air 200, had him just a little jumpy. (Take that, Rock!)

Plea: does anyone know of tape of that particular interview, 2/15/81 from campus radio WGLS? I will inquire with the school, though odds are strongly against there being a copy there.

What about the rest of Rock's narrative? It kind of fits Corry's characterization. First, I think he swaps Philly (end of the tour) and DC (start of the tour), with the package of drugs not making it to them in Washington. Second --and, yes, I see how petty this is-- they didn't fly TWA, but United (#58, since you asked). Third, there is no canceled show anywhere in the tour. Fourth, the interview was apparently before the show, not in the middle of the night.

Some of this other stuff might have happened on Dead tour, or on a different Jerry tour. He doesn't explicitly say this is the Feb. 81 JGB jaunt - I am just making the connection because of the radio interview, which it seems safe to say can only have happened once. Overall, all of this stuff probably sort of happened, and so Rock's account is true ("truthy," you might say), if not exactly right.

One of the great benefits to me of doing these listening notes, and trying to integrate them into the broader fabric of the Garciaverse, is how LITTLE the drug stories tell us about the music. Here we have relatively firm evidence that Garcia was jonesing hard for the show, specifically needing stuff to take the edge off, and that he got some stuff to get him DOWN to some level of comfort. Yet the show sounds peppy. I don't make a lot of notes, but they all point in the same direction: torrid scrubby goodness in "Catfish John", punch great energy in "Tangled Up In Blue", Gar sounding enthused on "Tore Up Over You". All of this speaks, as Twitterato and all-around great guy Mr. Completely might say, to the limits of drug determinism.

Ticket for JGB 2/15/81 at Glassboro State College, courtesy of gdsets.com.

Sounds like the place was packed, sweltering hot (Chambers 1981), and ol Jer, jonesing or not, put on a good strong show to end the tour. (Since you were wondering, fly home next day, 10:15 AM departure on United #719 through Denver to land at SFO by  2:30 PM, or TWA #31, out at 3:30 PM to hit tierra santa at 6:30 PM. I leave it to you to imagine which flight Jerry caught, and why.)

Listening notes below the fold.

"The Little Cash Cow" - JGB, Early 1980

Last weekend's post "On the Bus with the Garcia Band" looked at the November-December 1983 JGB tour's extensive ground travel - everything was by bus, 3,000 miles on the road in a few weeks in the eastern time zone. Commenter Nick asked a great question comparing that tour with earlier ones, pointing out Ozzie Ahlers's recollections of limos and such on the early 1980 tour. In comments, I noted that that one had been a multimodal affair:

2/13 fly commercial DC-Albany
2/14 drive 165 mi. to Boston
2/16 drive 140 mi. to New Haven
2/17 charter plane to Syracuse
2/20 fly commercial to Hartford
2/21 fly commercial to Newark
2/23 drive 90 mi. to Philly
2/24 drive 110 mi. to Long Island
2/26 drive 180 mi. to Provy
2/27 drive 180 mi. back to NYC

Nick raises the question of whether the later tour maybe just wasn't generating the same amount of cash, so that the bus was a budget-conscious choice. (Corry offers an alternative hypothesis.)

I'd love to be able to compare the money on the two tours, but I lack the '83 piece. I can lay out the '80 piece, and it is quite impressive. Somewhere I have Dennis McNally calling the Garcia Band a "little cash cow", and the numbers affirm.

Table xxx. Jerry Garcia Band Touring Revenues, February-March 1980

In 2015 dollars, that's just over $571k for three weeks' work, not bad.

The last column may also be of interest. $19k (1980$) cash out on the road would have bought Our Hero a lot of cigarettes and chili dogs.

January 18, 1985: Strung Out and Busted

January 18, 1985 has got to be Rock Bottom for Jerry Garcia: strung out and busted.

But let me step back. Six days earlier, Garcia gave an interview to Jas Obrecht and Jon Sievert (Obrecht 1985, 2010). Obrecht reports that the interview took place at the home of Nora Sage, said to be a fan in whose basement Garcia was crashing. Jackson (1999, 337-338) says instead that this is the Hepburn Heights house (12 Hepburn Heights, San Rafael, CA, 94901), that Rock Scully had moved/been kicked out in 1983, and that Nora is keeping house and tending to Garcia between her law classes. After the events to be narrated, Ms. Sage helps Garcia kick by rationing his drugs in progressively smaller doses, gets him painting for the first time in twenty-five years, has him making model cars and guns, toys for Jerry denying the Devil of his. Brother Tiff appreciates it: "If it wasn't for Nora Sage, Jerry probably would have been dead a lot earlier" (Jackson 1999, 338).

It cannot have been easy. Obrecht (2010) sets the stage, January 12, 1985:

Garcia, unwashed and disheveled, shuffled slowly into the living room, his black T-shirt sprinkled with white powder. His fingertips were blackened in a manner consistent with “chasing the dragon,” as smoking heroin was commonly referred to in the Bay Area. Ten minutes into our interview, Garcia nonchalantly chopped a large rock of cocaine into about twenty lines and consumed all of it during the next hour.

Hyperbole? Check out our googly hero in the fish-eye lens. Look at all the blow and dandruff on that t-shirt, the tarred fingers! For want of Smell-O-Vision we can't truly appreciate the "prodigious body odor which preceded him by the room’s length" (http://malfalfa1.tripod.com/garciainterview.htm).

Jerry Garcia, 1/12/85 - Frets, July 1985, photograph by Jon Sievert.

Less than a week later, in response to an intervention staged at band and family's request by new Dead manager (and old friend) John McIntire, Garcia drops Nora off at class and sets off for rehab. But he detours a little bit, a consequential little twist, planned or unplanned. Since I know neither wither he was coming nor whence he was going, I don't know if it's an actual detour. Corry suggests below that it could rather have formed a destination. Regardless, he "stopped in Golden Gate Park, where he sat in his car meditating on his life, and, not coincidentally, finishing off his drug supply. Unfortunately, his BMW, a gift from a disreputable source, was not registered" (McNally 2002, 552).

On Friday, January 18, 1985, around 12:30 in the afternoon, SFPD Officer Mark Gamble steers his Honda police motorcycle toward a black BMW with expired September 1984 tags parked on the north side of Middle Drive in Golden Gate Park (north of Metson Lake). Approaching the driver's side window, he finds the vehicle's sole occupant "looking down at his hands in which he held a piece of tin foil paper which had a brown, sticky appearing substance on it. He looked up at me and quickly shoved the tin foil out of view to the right side of the driver's seat. He started reaching all over the base of his seat acting very nervous."

Officer Gamble:

I told him to open his window more and he started the engine and opened the power window. I asked him for his driver's license and the vehicle registration. He said he did not have his driver's license and he gave the registration to me. He verbally identified himself as "Jerry Garcia, born 8/1/42". ... I looked into the car and saw an open briefcase open on the front passenter seat. Inside the briefcase I saw several other pieces of tin foil with brown residue and burn marks. Also, I saw the baggie of paper bindles, the glass cooker and [?pro?] and the cigarette lighters. I also smelled a slight smell of something burned coming from inside the car.

Officer Gamble arrested "Jerry Garcia, born 8/1/42" on charges of possession of narcotics for sale, based on multiple, separately labeled bindles of drugs and a sizeable wad of cash. The man, 42, 6'0 and 250 (ish), long greying hair, a plaid red shirt and a black t-shirt -- perhaps the same getup from six days earlier, "knocked-out-loaded" (James Booker), flat-out busted (something Booker also understood).

His stash duly inscribes itself into his official (hence "permanent") record, as in modernity it must. The numberings are mine, so I can refer to them (another thoroughly modern move, in terms of the quantification and the agency I feel in imposing it).

1. 1 brown briefcase containing misc papers
2. 1 SFPD issue property envelope [ed: containing at least next three items]
3. $990 (16x $50, 9x $20, 1x $10)
4. 3 paper bindles containing brown powder (found in rose tin)
5. 1 baggie of 6 cotton swabs
6. 1 plastic container liquid
7. 1 glass container liquid
8. 8 pieces of foil with burnt residue
9. 11 paper bindles with brown residue in a bag found in briefcase
10. 1 paper bindle of white powder found in briefcase
11. 1 Zip-Loc baggie containing 1 yellow legal paper bindle containing white powder, labeled "1/2 gram"
12. 1 paper bindle with brown rock like substance
13. 1 cooking glass with prong holders
14. 7 cigarette lighters
15. 1 razor
16. 1 4" metal tool
17. 1 zipper brown pouch 6" x 4"
18. 1 seven of hearts playing card
19. 1 rose metal box 4" x 2"

Let's consider this.

Least commonly, we find the opiate "Persian", item #4, the brown powder found in the rose tin. I don't exactly understand the preparation and use of this. Was it mixed with one of the liquids (#6, #7) to create a paste or rock, this on or perhaps then placed on tin foil (item #7). This is placed on a cooking glass (#12) held via tongs (#12) in one hand, heated with lighter (#14) and inhaled from above? Perhaps he could place the fin foil with the drugs over the tongs and the tin foil heated directly, while the glass cooker is for freebasing the cocaine (see below). I just don't know (thank goodness). The cotton swabs (#5) and I guess the other fluid are for cleaning the paraphernalia, I figure, as possibly is metal tool #16.

I need to educate myself about this substance and its use, specifically by Garcia. I suspect the Greenfield oral history Dark Star might have some information?

Cocaine was commonly encountered among Bay Area affluenti (drivers of late-model black BMWs, for example) of the mid-1980s, as it probably is today. But Garcia was a man of copious tastes and appetites (and lots of money), and he impresses with his all-around hoovering versatility. If I understand things correctly, the bindle from the brief case (#10) and the ½ gram in the yellow paper bindle (#11) are powder cocaine, easily consumable on the bottom of the rose tin (#19) using the razor blade (#15) or the playing card (#18) for refinement and alignment and either the tool (#14) or probably the bills (#3) to snort it. The brown rock-like substance (#12) is apparently heroin, according to a commenter.

Was he freebasing cocaine by washing it in ether (#6 and/or #7; volatile stuff!), and smoking it in a pipe (#13?) as a pure whack to the brain and blood? That'd complete the trifecta (powder, rock and base) I guess. Croz (Crosby and Gottlieb 1988, 294-295) gives a taste for the paraphernalia involved in that:

You collect junk for it. You have a million little pieces of glass. You have little tubes and bottles and stoppers and screens and pipes and pieces of rubber. You have all kinds of little metal tools to scrape the pipes. You have a zillion little containers to keep liquids and powders. We carried around bags full of stuff. I carried little pH papers to check the acidity and alkalinity. I carried bottles of water, little containers of ammonia. I carried bags of baking soda. … [295] I'd have a pipe and a spare pipe and then parts to fix the pipe and all kinds of strange shit. The torch became a part of the things I carried with me, the way people carry car keys or a wallet.

I don't think Garcia was freebasing cocaine, but I am not sure about that. But Croz's narrative gives a sense of the thing, and the Croz-Garcia comparison is one I'll try to say at least a little bit about at some point.

I notice they list no cigarettes- I wonder if they let him keep his unfiltered Camels with him in stir? Because as a characterization of Garcia's material environment and possessions –as a proper inventory-- it can hardly be complete without smokes. Either they were so trivial the clerk never wrote it, or the perp was allowed this little comfort (in which case, look out lungs!), or Jerry was actually out. If he was not holding smokes when he was arrested, then he really was finishing up and about to leave again -- man's gotta breathe. This is need #1 in Garcia's life at this point, always ready-to-hand -- take my drugs, but please leave me my Camels!

Whatever his nicotine circumstances, he was almost out of Persian. There were eleven used brown-paper bindles (#9) and eight pieces of used tin foil (#8)! Dude had been chuffing like a madman in his driver's seat. My expectation is that he was going to do up a bunch of blow, too, though perhaps not all of it. Gotta get your concentration on for driving. It's possible that he was going to stop off somewhere to a friend, lover, coworker, associate, middleperson, codependent, dealer, or someone else's and drop off at least some of the coke (could he really have done that half-gram sitting there in his car?), maybe some money if he's going away for a few days so they can have some stuff ready for when he gets out – a Scout being always prepared.

The total drugs left comprise the three bindles of brown powder (#4), the white powder briefcase bindle (#10), the ½ gram of blow (#11), and the rock (#12). The cop was being a hardass in busting him on intent-to-sell based on the multiple packaging, but that's really just Jerry's stuff.

The Sources do a great job with the fallout of The Bust, including the relative slap on the wrist for the criminal matter and Garcia's long, slow recovery out of opiate addiction over a sixteen month period (Jackson 1999, 337). McNally says that what drove him to clean up his act was not the Bust, but that.

Early in the summer the consequences of almost total physical passivity caught up with him, and he began to experience massive edema, a swelling in his ankles and lower legs that was so bad his trousers needed to be cut. The appearance of his legs was so shocking that Garcia finally had undeniable proof of the damage. Bit by bit, as the year 1985 passed, he began to clean up and exercise at least a little (McNally 2002, 552). 

I have delved at least a little into some Garcia shows from the following period: March 2, 1985, May 31, 1985, June 1, 1985, and June 3, 1985. I don't want to say much more right now. Instead, I want to use Corry's beautiful knowledge and words to put a little bow on the Bust. Discussing why Garcia might have been in Golden Gate Park, he notes that

It's a giant tourist attraction in a city where there are far too many cars. GGP has been made intentionally unfriendly to through-traffic--the roads have never been widened, the intersections are full of stop signs and roundabouts. Even on a weekday in January (Jan 18, 1985 was a Friday), there are tourists trying to back into parking spaces, roads blocked because there is an international Frisbee championship, and so on. So if you have any experience driving in San Francisco, you go out of your way to avoid any trip through Golden Gate Park, with the exception of 19th Avenue (Highway 1), which is a through street and isn't a convenient entrance to the park by design. Two fast one-way Avenues bracket the park (Lincoln to the ocean, Fulton towards downtown) to provide further inducement not to enter the park unless you are planning to stop there.

Middle Drive north of Metson Lake is a dead-end street, rather difficult to get to. However, if Jerry was looking for a quiet place ... From a symbolic point of view, Middle Drive north of Metson Lake was probably within sight of the Polo Fields. So if Garcia was taking stock of his life, he was doing it right next to where the Human Be-In was held nearly 17 years earlier (within 4 days). Although Park geography has not changed since the 1950s, it is symbolic as well that when Garcia wanted to find a lonely place to get high in the car, he knew how to find a dead-end street close to the Polo Fields.

Very cinematic.

~~~

"I don't ... like ... confrontation!" says Toy Story Rex, the tremulous Tyrannosaur, and neither did Garcia. Who does? Yet he had been directly confronted by everyone closest to him, and exceptionally, had overcome his own probable embarrassment and allowed himself to accede to their request that he clean up his act ("mannnn"). He wouldn't be the first or last addict to try to finish his stash before cleaning up, with potentially dangerous and certainly problematic consequences. But, re-reading Corry's context, maybe he was also taking time to re-evaluate; remember how it was, imagine how it might be.

I'll assert that Garcia's was a life well-lived - too short by any standard, with some down deep and dirty low points, but way out in the far-right tail of the distribution in terms of average quality, with maxima probably hitting few-in-trillionths level rarity. So I don't think that August 8, 1995, Garcia's last day on Earth, was Rock Bottom. Far from it. By that time, at only 53 and only ten years after the events narrated here, he had, I hate to be crude about it, shot his wad. He had burned through more experience in 53 than most do in 80, the cliché would have it, and I think that's probably right.

On the afternoon of January 18, 1985, by contrast, dude was probably thinking he still had a lot to live for, some unfinished business. That's certainly how he narrated his own thinking after the coma a year and a half later. While he and his Dead associates had already begun ascending a long arc of success, within two and a half years they'd have a hit record and would become one of the heaviest and most reliable earners in rock and roll (see my snapshot of 1991). Garcia's unfinished business was, quite literally, to make himself an American success story, to reach the top of the mountain. Maybe he spied it, just a glimpse of it, jonesing for a smoke in a San Francisco lockup, up over the horizon of recovery, through patching up some personal stuff, working his ass off - a few more years, maybe some good times, a few laughs, more music, and a little greatness along the way.

(Acknowledgement: Thanks to Walter Keenan for the report and Corry Arnold for context and analysis.)

Bullshit! Bullshit! Reprise (LN jg1985-05-31.jgjk.early.aud-pinedo.32007.shn2flac)

updated 20140408

I have told the story once before of the Jerry Garcia/John Kahn acoustic duo early show on May 31, 1985, in the context of Bill Graham's branding of the '86-87 JGB tours down south as "The Jerry Garcia Band Electric".

I want to flesh out a bit more detail from the two named informants about this show, whose accounts line up quite beautifully. This post became a bit of a rabbithole for me around The Bust and other things from early '85, but let me drop this and a few brief notes as raw materials for a longer piece of writing about this period.

"Miller Beer Presents an evening of acoustic music, Jerry Garcia w/ John Kahn" should already give you that acrid, headachy feeling - Jerry and John were not in good shape during this period. I have started to dabble in Garcia's Rock Bottom period, which I estimate runs the second half of 1984 (especially, say, from late August) through early 1985 (say, ca. 5/31/85). Recent listening notes around 12/6/84 and 12/7/84 give some indication of my thinking, while an earlier listen to 5/19/84 suggest that things were still reasonably together.

Here's another report from the front of Rock Bottom: 5/31/85a. Thank you eyewitnesses!

Ben Karmelich:

This was Jerry Garcia at his worst.  He had a recent drug arrest and this was when he was in the worst shape physically. The day before the show, Jerry added a second show for the same night. Back then, one Jerry show meant two sets, while two Jerry shows per night meant one set per show, and you had to pay twice. In other words, he added a second show for that same night and expected the crowd to all go outside after the first set and buy another ticket to come back and see the second set.  Needless to say, the crowd was very upset.  One person brought a big banner that said "Jerry Sells Out L.A. Deadheads" with a sad face on it. After Jerry played an uninspired 6 song set, he said good night and left but the crowd refused to leave.  Eventually, Rock Scully came out to say that Jerry "meant to say" that he is taking a short break and eventually, a very pissed off Jerry came out for three more songs.

update 20140408: Ben's memory had the addition of a second show very soon before it was to take place. But I have just reminded myself of the ad in the Los Angeles Times, dated May 26, 1985 (p. N58) and it is interesting. I cannot post image, because I have it from ProQuest (albeit printed - d'oh!). But here's what I see: 1) a listing in the "Openings" section lists one show, 8 p.m. 2) A display ad above it calls the venue "The Beverly" in deco script, above which it says "box office open Monday [5/27], 11 a.m.". Even more interestingly, the ad lists two shows, 7:30 and 10 p.m., and the 7:30 is struck through to indicate that tickets have sold out.

(Memory is a tricky thing, and I am grateful to folks for sharing theirs, always. We should do more on the record, oral history kinds of things. Future historians will thank you if you give a recollection and especially if you go on record!)

I want to suggest that Ben's memory was off on a detail of timing but essentially correct. The paper evidence suggests that a second show was added not the day before the show, but four days before the show. The rest of Ben's story squares with what Erik VanO said (see below). But the incorrect detail has the spirit of what happened correct, and even more beautifully, it squares perfectly with the LAT material! Quite precisely, there was originally a single 8 p.m. show listed (per the listing). Ben reminds us that, in those days, this meant one ticket, two sets starting at 8 p.m. (ah ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha!!!!).

Instead, folks who bought any of the 1,500 tickets sold for the "8 p.m." show, whenever they bought them, were now going to get half as much as they expected (or, just as much at twice the price). They are going to turn the house between sets (now, by the magic of the market, and with all of its solemnity, rechristened a "show"). And this is Before The Internet, so you might not have found out until you got to the show. That is a freaking ripoff.

It looks to me like the Miller Concert Series was quite the enterprise. They sold out a show reasonably quickly and decided to check what the market would bear. They were only going to get one shot at it - one night only. I have this place holding 1,500 - at let's say $13 to the consumer, let's say $11 after ticketing fees, that's $16,500 gross (1984 dollars). Would you rather have just over $36k today for one show, or about $73k for two? I suspected as much.

I don't know what Mill would say about this, since I only pretend to have read him. On the one hand, those 1,500 early buyers get screwed. On the other hand, another 1,500 (maybe among them the same people, that's immaterial) get to buy a ticket to see Jerry. If it's worth it to them, so much the better. I don't know if those utilities cancel out in a utilitarian perspective. Pareto, of course, would reject it outright, since at least one person (the dude or lady who ran out to paint an anti-Jerry sign) was made worse off.

/update 20140408

Erik VanO picks up the story.

Erik VanO:

The show ended with Ripple and the crowd was pissed off at the short show and no encore. When the house lights went on the crowd booed and that morphed into a "bullshit-bullshit" chant. No one would leave. So Jerry had to come back out and play more tunes. I know this well because, me, being mister stat guy, know it all, laughed at everyone and said "it's over, this is standard, he never does an encore, this is it" and proceeded to put my money where my mouth was: I walked out to prove my point. Within moments, the lights went out and I watched everyone from the lobby run ecstatically back into the seating area. They would not let me back in. I ran around side and was allowed to sit with the security dudes on the fire escape since they were confused as well and had the doors open expecting the theatre to exit. So I saw and heard the tunes with my own ears, but from technically outside, but NO WAY that I missed a single note. So I'm not sure whether you'd even call it a second set, I never thought of it as that, more of an encore/riot control, but regardless, those were the only songs played in that unusual circumstance, and I'd say its safe to say that all tapes now, and yet undiscovered,  would support that as well.

There's only one tape of this show known to me, recorded by Joe Pinedo and preserved from first generation cassette copies by Brian Mandel (shnid-32007). Thank you, gentlemen. Alas, the circulating copy doesn't really reveal anything about this incident, except that Garcia tried to deliver to his paying audience, to the tune of $12.75-$14.75, a "complete show" that would fit on a single cassette side, comfortably - 35 minutes of condensed actual music. I don't have the quotes located right now, but I can give a long paragraph here about Garcia's professional standards, which were real. The key litmus test is giving the paying fan his/her money's worth. And I think that even Jerry would admit that he failed his own test, fell short of his own standard, on 5/31/85a.

Revealed preferences are tricky, but the fans certainly seem not to have felt that 6 songs in 40 minutes was worth what they paid. It was already bad enough, as Ben Karmelich reports, that they were feeling fleeced enough ex ante to get in Garcia's face about it. They're pissed, maybe he's pissed that they're pissed (and embarrassed, which would be wholly appropriate, IMO), he's passive aggressive with a short set, and they call him out on it. This wouldn't have happened in the Bay Area, on his home turf (and listenings to 3/2/85, 6/3/85 confirm); the LA heads were sufficiently without illusions, or sufficiently interested in getting their money's worth, or whatever, to demand a professional gig. They did.

"Bullshit! Bullshit!"

Garcia must have been mortified with himself for insulting his fans to this point. The "encore" set is a little bit of a dickslap,so I am not saying he's had a good healthy epiphany by any stretch. On the contrary, more passive-aggression. 15 more minutes? Fuck you too, Jerry.

I don't think he could help himself at this point. One has to think that 1/18/85 must have been rock bottom, but, I dunno, sometimes there's a valley floor down there, and one wanders around the bottom for a bit, because 5/31/85a is definitely staking its claim.

Listening notes below the fold.

Jerry Garcia and John Kahn
Beverly Theatre
9404 Wilshire Boulevard
Beverly Hills, CA 90212
May 31, 1985 Early Show - 7:30 PM
Pinedo MAC shnid-32007 shn2flac

--complete show (9 tracks, 50:39)--
--main set (6 tracks, 35:57)--
s1t01. [0:05] Run For The Roses :06-4:39 [0:02] % [0:02]
s1t02. /I've Been All Around This World [#4:30] (1) [0:04]
s1t03. Friend Of The Devil [6:15] [0:04]
s1t04. Deep Elem Blues [7:02] [0:07]
s1t05. Simple Twist Of Fate [8:32] [0:05]
s1t06. Ripple [4:28] (1) [0:07]
--encore (3 tracks, 14:42)--
s2t01. [0:12] Jack-A-Roe [3:47] [0:09]
s2t02. Oh Babe, It Ain't No Lie [5:19] ->
s2t03. //When I Paint My Masterpiece [#5:11] (2) [0:03]

! ACT1: Jerry Garcia and John Kahn
! lineup: Jerry Garcia - ac-g, vocals;
! lineup: John Kahn - ac-b.

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/19850531-01 (early); https://jerrybase.com/events/19850531-02 (late)

! JGC: http://jerrygarcia.com/show/1985-05-31-beverly-theater-beverly-hills-ca/

! db: http://etreedb.org/shn/32007 (this fileset).

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

! venue: http://jerrygarciasbrokendownpalaces.blogspot.com/2011/09/beverly-theater-206-north-beverly-dr.html; https://sites.google.com/site/wilshiremoviepalaces/warner-bros-beverly-hills.

! historical: Ben Karmelich: This was Jerry Garcia at his worst.  He had a recent drug arrest and this was when he was in the worst shape physically. The day before the show, Jerry added a second show for the same night. Back then, one Jerry show meant two sets, while two Jerry shows per night meant one set per show, and you had to pay twice. [ed: they "turned the house"] In other words, he added a second show for that same night and expected the crowd to all go outside after the first set and buy another ticket to come back and see the second set.  Needless to say, the crowd was very upset.  One person brought a big banner that said "Jerry Sells Out L.A. Deadheads" with a sad face on it. After Jerry played an uninspired 6 song set, he said good night and left but the crowd refused to leave.  Eventually, Rock Scully came out to say that Jerry "meant to say" that he is taking a short break and eventually, a very pissed off Jerry came out for three more songs.

! historical: Erik VanO: The show ended with Ripple and the crowd was pissed off at the short show and no encore. When the house lights went on the crowd booed and that morphed into a "bullshit-bullshit" chant. No one would leave. So Jerry had to come back out and play more tunes. I know this well because, me, being mister stat guy, know it all, laughed at everyone and said "it's over, this is standard, he never does an encore, this is it" and proceeded to put my money where my mouth was: I walked out to prove my point. Within moments, the lights went out and I watched everyone from the lobby run ecstatically back into the seating area. They would not let me back in. I ran around side and was allowed to sit with the security dudes on the fire escape since they were confused as well and had the doors open expecting the theatre to exit. So I saw and heard the tunes with my own ears, but from technically outside, but NO WAY that I missed a single note. So I'm not sure whether you'd even call it a second set, I never thought of it as that, more of an encore/riot control, but regardless, those were the only songs played in that unusual circumstance, and I'd say its safe to say that all tapes now, and yet undiscovered,  would support that as well.

! R: field recordist: Joe Pinedo

! R: field recording gear: Sony 939 > Sony D5;

! R: transfer: transfer & CD mastering/shn conversion by Brian Mandel, gdplusmore@aol.com: 1st gen cassette (Maxell XLII 90 with Dolby B) > Nakamichi BX300 > Macintosh > Peak Bias > JAM > cdr > eac > mkw > shntool. shn2flac conversion by jgmf 3/20/2014.
! R: seeder notes: "previously had set II listed as incomplete, but this is all JG and JK played."

! s1t01 RFTR brutal tape drag first 20 seconds or so, and warble continues for awhile.

! s1t02 (1) JG: "Thank you."

! s1t03 I swear there's a really weird vibe. When he flubs lyrics, people seem to be laughing at him. In late 5, when he says "it don't look like me", I think a dude yells "thank God" and a chick near the mic laughs.

! P: s1t04 DEB JG sounds lost on the music, things are very off-kilter. Early 2-min John is actually stepping up and helping out, and they find each other. 2:25 ish Garcia takes a nice percussive lead, little fan 2:41, nice little solo coming down late 2. Lose each other a little again late 4.

! s1t06 Ripple the clapping is throwing everything off, or in any case there's some tempo weirdness and off-kilter feel.

! s1t06 (1) JG: "Thank you."

! s2t02 OBIANL guy yells we love you Jerry. Poeple yelling Jerry, he's trying to sing and play, STFU people!

! R: s2t02-s2t03 tape flip

! s2t03 (2) JG: "Thanks a lot everybody. See y'all later."

RN Sandy Troy's One More Saturday Night (1991)

Troy, Sandy. 1991. One More Saturday Night: Reflections with the Grateful Dead, Dead Family, and Dead Heads. New York: St. Martin’s Press.

Reading Notes

“by the fall of 1974 the band’s business ventures began to unravel” (Troy 1991, 27). #business

JG and MG moved in together early 1967 (Troy 1991, 68). #women

#v-Carousel as described by MG: “It was a beautiful place; nobody could believe it. It had wooden floors, a fairly low ceiling, plus sets of French doors that opened to let in fresh air. It also had beautiful gold framed mirrors, strange 50’s light fixtures, weird old tables, and red push sofas. It even had a great kitchen and we served dinner, too. (MG in Troy 1991, 91).

#Chet Helms knew Phil first, through the Mime Troupe, though they had a totally non-musical relationship. They’d hang out, smoke grass, and talk politics. (Troy 1991, 98).

#houses #Olompali interview with Rock Scully says when they left Haight they went to Camp Lagunitas, then moved to Olompali. But I think he’s confused. “Olompali was a big old Spanish estate that had a swimming pool, some outbuildings with bedrooms, and enough space so that we all could live there and have a good time. We would [122] get the word out that we were having a party and people would come and jam. It wasn’t a set thing where the Dead would play, but it was a jam session where musicians from the Airplane, Quicksilver, the Charlatans would jam with us. It was a chance for all our friends from the City to come and hang out with us outdoors in the sunshine. We’d set up the stage between the house and the pool and people would being [sic] doing acid and hanging out by the pool naked. Sometimes there would be several hundred people partying” (Rock Scully in Troy 1991, 120, 122).

“Garcia, Lesh and Weir really enjoyed Crosby, Stills and Nash harmonies and I think Crosby’s influence helped the band improve their harmonies” (Rock Scully in Troy 1991, 122).

ST: How did the concept of AEWTGD come about? Rock: “It came about because Jerry was playing pedal steel, and digging it. John Dawson knew Jerry and asked him to play pedal steel in the New Riders. “An Evening With The Grateful Dead” worked conceptually because the music of both bands went well together. It stopped being a concept when Jerry realized that playing pedal steel was screwing with his electric guitar playing. The instruments were so different from each [other] that his guitar playing was suffering” (Rock Scully in Troy 1991, 124). #NRPS #pedal steel

Rock on #NRPS: “There wasn’t really one [New Riders] manager.” Rock involved first album and Powerglide. “I remember when the New Riders were living in my house. That picture on the back of the first album, when the band is leaning on the banister, was actually in my house in Kentfield. I guess you could say I was managing them at the time because pretty much all their gigs were with the Dead because Jerry was playing with them. When they got Buddy Cage they started doing shows on their own. Then Dale Franklin and Jon McIntire became their managers for a time” (Scully in Troy 1991, 125).

Chateau d’Herouville 6/21/71 “was Jon McIntire’s baby” (Rock Scully in Troy 1991, 125).

#v-Carousel Healy “It held about eight hundred people … though we would put as many in there as we could get. It was an old ballroom left over from the Swing era. It was owned by an Irishman.” JG: “They had Irish music there on Thursday nights.” DH: “That’s all they had in there. Aside from that it was closed all the time, and had been closed down right after the Swing [145] era. It was still in its original state, right out of the ‘20s, right down to the chandeliers in the place. The interior was beautiful. It wasn’t at all torn up: it was in mind condition.” (in Troy 1991, 144-145).

Lesh on Watkins Glen, the Dead had to run the show, in spite of promoters. “The biggest hassle was convincing the Band to come out and play. Hey man, it’s just down the road a piece, come on out and play. What can you lose? They played great!” (Lesh in Troy 1991, 153).

Constanten: “That’s a chance you have to take in courting serendipity – sometimes serendipity comes to grace your performances and sometimes not” (TC in Troy 1991, 156).

The John “Marmaduke” Dawson chapter (Troy 1991, 164-175) is very important material.

Dawson says he was around in 1958-59, taking guitar lessons from a lady in Palo Alto, when Jerry was with Sara. So that would be 1963. “They dropped in at a guitar thing that my guitar teacher was having at her house one night. I didn’t really meet him until later on at a club called The Tangent” in Palo Alto (Dawson in Troy 1991, 165).  Met Nelson at the Tangent (Troy 1991, 165).

Dawson: Rancho Olompali is a “place where all the Indians used to hang out. There’s an Indian burial ground nearby. It’s quite a lovely place. It had a big old mansion of a ranch house that they lived in for a while” (Dawson in Troy 1991, 167).

Dawson got serious in spring of 1969: “I went with a bunch of guys down to a place called Pinnacles National Monument, … and a group of us ate a bunch of what we thought was mescaline but was some weird little chemical cocktail that had some LSD in it. I had an experience on that particular occasion and I made up my mind that I wanted to write songs more seriously and learn how to sing more seriously. I liked the idea of being a country-western singer and started picking up Buck Owens and Merle Haggard records to try to learn how they were doing it.” (Dawson in Troy 1991, 167).

“Hunter was going to try to be the bass player for a while but he didn't have that many chops together. Bob Matthews tried out but he wasn't able to pick up on the instrument quickly enough because all of the rest of us had been playing for a long time. That's when Phil Lesh finally stepped in and played bass with the New Riders.” (Dawson in Troy 1991, 167). #NRPS

“What had happened is that I invited myself over to Garcia's house one day after he had come back off the road with a brand-new pedal steel guitar. He had stopped in Denver at a music store that had a bunch of pedal steels in it. So he bought one and brought it back. I [[168] bumped into him at the Dead's practice place in Novato near Hamilton Air Force Base. I asked Jerry if I could come over to his house and listen to the steel guitar that he just bought. He said I could come over later if I wanted to hear it. I brought my guitar when I showed up so he would have something to accompany. I showed him a couple of tunes that I had been working on and I got to listen to the pedal steel. That little duet worked into a thing where Jerry asked me if he could come down and practice his pedal steel at my coffee house gig in Menlo Park. I think it was called The Underground and it was a hofbrau kind of thing where they would carve you up a sandwich from a fresh cut of meat, right on the spot.” (Dawson in Troy 1991, 167-168). #NRPS

“they just added Nelson and me to the Grateful Dead tour and we came along with them that way. That's when we first got started on the national scene and you heard us back there in 1970 on the East Coast at the Fillmore - "An Evening with the Grateful Dead featuring the New Riders of the Purple Sage” (Dawson in Troy 1991, 170). #AEWTGD

“That's when you only had to add Nelson's and my ticket to the tour and you had a whole new five-piece band to open, which made it quite handy. That got my songs exposed to a national audience a lot sooner than they would have been otherwise. We also had a gospel quartet that did some stuff. Nelson would play an acoustic and Bob Weir, Jerry, and I would come out and would sing a couple of gospel tunes.” (Dawson in Troy 1991, 170). I love he says “they had a gospel quartet”. A self-contained hippie hootenanny. #AEWTGD

“Phil at some point said, "Hey, I don't want to do it any more:· So that's when David Torbert joined the band.” (Dawson in Troy 1991, 170). #NRPS

“When we finally met another pedal steel guitar player in the person of Buddy Cage on the ride across Canada in 1970, that gave Garcia a chance to go back to just the Grateful Dead” (Dawson in Troy 1991, 171). #NRPS

Festival Express: “The Band was supposed to be on [the train] but the only person from the Band that actually showed up and rode the train was Rick Danko” (Dawson in Troy 1991, 171).

Port Chester February 1971 run Howard Stein painted the Cap performance surface, and they were the New Riders of the Purple Stage! (Dawson in Troy 1991, 173). #NRPS

Dawson: Garcia “is a picking junkie, first and foremost. He would rather be playing than anything else” (Troy 1991, 174).