Tasty Fucking Tape: JGB at Paramount Northwest Theatre, Seattle, October 28, 1978 (Severson MAC)

LN jg1978-10-28.jgb.early-late.aud-severson.148540.flac2496

These last few shows of the Keith and Donna JGB are generally strong. And the recordings often sound really nice, not least because the bass, and I'd say generally the whole band, was dialed-in in the rooms. I don't know who was doing room sound, but they did a great job.

Mark Severson pulled the "tasty fucking tape(s)" of the title. That guy never missed, it seems.

Not a lot of notes, but that's kind of been characteristic of what I have been posting lately.

I really like the Reuben and Cherise here. It's not quite flawless, but it's strong. LAALWFH clocks in under 14 minutes, last time played until 7/26/81. 

For those who say that Keith Godchaux was worthless and nodding off in 1978. SHOW ME. I have never seen or heard evidence of this. Of course, maybe he was more engaged in the JGB than in the toxic cesspool of that other band. But, again, don't just repeat the narrative. Show, don't tell. (LIA supplies a bunch of the relevant canonical quotes in comment at LLD.)

Oh yeah, BTW, I also just upped some additional notes to my already-existing 10/27/78 post.

Jerry Garcia Band
Paramount Northwest Theatre
901 Pine Street
Seattle, WA 98101
October 28, 1978 (Saturday)
Severson MAC flac2496 shnid-148540

--early show, main set + encore (8 tracks, 7 tunes, 71:57)--
--early show main set (7 tracks, 6 tunes, 65:41)--
e-t01. ambience [1:14]
e-t02. Harder They Come [11:09] (1) [0:21] % [0:34]
e-t03. Mission In The Rain [9:16] [0:20] % [0:06]
e-t04. They Love Each Other [7:22] [1:11]
e-t05. Knockin' On Heaven's Door [13:01] [0:08] % (2) [1:54]
e-t06. It Ain't No Use [7:56] [1:36]
e-t07. The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down [8:58] (3) [0:16] % [0:10] %
--early show encore (1 track, 6:16)--
e-t08. Reuben And Cherise [6:06] (4) [0:10] %

--late show (9 tracks, 8 tunes, 74:40)--
l-t01. ambience [1:03]
l-t02. How Sweet It Is (To Be Loved By You) [8:14] [2:39]
l-t03. Catfish John [9:40] [0:15] % [0:33]
l-t04. I Second That Emotion [9:19] [0:25] % [0:15]
l-t05. Love In The Afternoon [8:14]
l-t06. Mystery Train
l-t07. Gomorrah [6:18] [0:15]
l-t08. I'll Be With Thee [5:15] ->
l-t09. Lonesome And A Long Way From Home [13:32] [0:28]

! ACT1: Jerry Garcia Band #4
! lineup: Jerry Garcia - guitar, vocals;
! lineup: Donna Godchaux - vocals;
! lineup: Maria Muldaur - vocals;
! lineup: Keith Godchaux - piano;
! lineup: John Kahn - bass;
! lineup: Buzz Buchanan - drums.

JGMF:

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

! Jerrybase: https://jerrybase.com/events/19781028-03 (early); https://jerrybase.com/events/19781028-04 (late)

! db: https://etreedb.org/shn/12679 (McCaw MAC, shnf); https://etreedb.org/shn/89135 (Severson master, via minches); https://etreedb.org/shn/148539 (this fileset, flac1644); https://etreedb.org/shn/148540 (this fileset).

! JGBP: http://jerrygarciasbrokendownpalaces.blogspot.com/2012/11/paramount-northwest-paramount-theatre.html

! band: http://lostlivedead.blogspot.com/2012/01/jerry-garcia-band-personnel-1975-1995.html

! Sue: For the two shows, $5k guarantee plus percentages on high gross and cost savings, on gross potential of $47,616-$53,568. Monarch got $3,000 for production, looks like co-pro was the John Bauer Concert Company.

! review: [negative] MacDonald 1978: "typically, the shows went on interminably. The first, which began at 7 pm, didn't end until almost 11 p.m. The second show, which was supposed to have started at 10:30 p.m., didn't get under way until past midnight. It was still going strong when I left about 3 a.m." Further, "I felt the second show audience, which was made to wait outside in the cold for hours and got a tired show, were ripped off."

! R: field recordist: Mark Severson

! R: field recording gear: 2x Sony ECM 270 mics > Sony TC-158

! R: Transfer Info: Master Cassette (Nakamichi CR-7A) > Tascam DA-3000 (DSF 1-bit/5.6 MHz)> dBpoweramp (24/96) > Adobe Audition CC 2019 > TLH flac2496

! R: seeder Notes: Thanks to Mark Severson for the master cassette recording. Thanks to Charlie Miller for the transfer and coordinating this effort. Thanks to Joe B. Jones for verifying the pitch. Mastered by Scott Clugston, December 2019.

! R: tasty fucking tape

! P: t02 HTC Garcia's first guitar turn is just so damn lyrical and melodic! Keith's first turn also nice.

! e-t02 (1) JG: "Thank you."

! P: e-t05 KOHD is beautiful! The notes Garcia plays in late 5 just slay me. Keith steps up for a feature 6:20ff.

! e-t05 (2) a guy in the crowd yells out something about "one show tonight, instead of two", and gets a good cheer from the crowd.

! e-t07 (3) JG: "Thanks a lot. We'll see ya later."

! P: e-t08 RAC Buzzy just kills some splashes around 3:25 - sounds great! I love how compact this version is. Great energy!

! e-t08 (4) JG: "So long."

! P: l-t09 LAALWFH it is pretty out there, but it never really did anything that interesting.

JGB 10/27/78 pix [update: and saga] [update2: and listening notes]

Jerry Garcia Band at Washington State College, Cheney, WA, October 27, 1978

Ben Upham's wonderful shot of Jerry Garcia at Washington State College, 10/27/78

Updates

Since I already have a post on this show specifically, let me accompany Upham's beautiful pix with some less beautiful details about how this thing went down.

This, from a report the day before the show (Spanjer 1978):

The concert, featuring former members of the Grateful Dead, was originally scheduled as a 'Dead' concert and would have cost $25,000. But SARB learned in late September the artists could not appear under that name because of pending record company suits. It was too late to schedule another act, however, so SARB members decided to rename the headliners 'The Jerry Garcia Band and The Bob Weir Band of the Grateful Dead' and to pay $21,000 for the act. [NB this strictly violated the contractual terms of the JGB, at least.] Negotiations with Monarch, the agency representing the groups, reduced total band cost, including equipment and agent fees, to $17,000. But sparse ticket sales and other difficulties continued to plague the show.

As of Tuesday before the Friday show, only 600 tickets had been sold, whereas the break-even number was 3,000. The school would lose $8,646 if 2k tickets moved.

The students weren't that thrilled about all of this. An earlier letter to the editor of the campus paper ("Music blues," Easterner, October 12, 1978, p. 4) presented some different math, asserting that they'd need to sell 4,600 tickets to break even (70% of the full-time student population!) and lamenting that they could have had Chicago for much lower cost.

In the end, the school lost $15 grand on the show. Ouch.

Handill for JGB 10/27/78 at Washington State College, Cheney, WA.
Image courtesy of Ben Upham

Pretty colors on that handbill, though.

And oh, why the hell not - some listening notes follow. Crazy that I note nothing about my favorite tune, Reuben and Cherise, but here we are.

Jerry Garcia Band

Performing Arts Pavilion, Washington State College

1375 Swoop Lane

Cheney, WA 99004

October 27, 1978 (Friday)

unknown aud shnid-89723

--set I (6 tracks, 64:50)--

s1t01. dead air [0:03] //How Sweet It Is (To Be Loved By You) [8:39] [0:07] % (1) [0:50]

s1t02. Catfish John [11:34] [0:05] % [0:41]

s1t03. That's What Love Will Make You Do [8:50] [0:02] % [0:09]

s1t04. Russian Lullaby [13:15] [0:06] %

s1t05. I Second That Emotion [11:51] ->

s1t06. Mystery Train [8:33] (2) [0:04]

--set II (7 tracks, 50:25)--

s2t01. crowd and tuning [0:29]

s2t02. Love In The Afternoon [8:53] [0:27]

s2t03. Tore Up Over You [8:54] [0:06]

s2t04. Reuben And Cherise [6:30] [0:22]

s2t05. Gomorrah [6:14] [0:06]

s2t06. I'll Be With Thee [5:35] [0:03]

s2t07. Midnight Moonlight [12:42] (3) [0:02]

! ACT1: Jerry Garcia Band #4

! lineup: Jerry Garcia - guitar, vocals;

! lineup: Donna Godchaux - vocals;

! lineup: Maria Muldaur - vocals;

! lineup: Keith Godchaux - piano;

! lineup: John Kahn - bass;

! lineup: Buzz Buchanan - drums.

JGMF:

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

! Jerrybase: https://jerrybase.com/events/19781027-03

! JGC: http://jerrygarcia.com/show/1978-10-27-reese-court-eastern-washington-state-university-cheney-wa/

! db: https://etreedb.org/shn/18291 (s1s2p aud shnf); https://etreedb.org/shn/89723 (this fileset).

! map: https://goo.gl/maps/mXRb6uVrhNB2

! band: http://lostlivedead.blogspot.com/2012/01/jerry-garcia-band-personnel-1975-1995.html

! historical: Like "Grateful Dead Three Ways" (Selvin 1975), this show presents an interesting wrinkle on cross-promotion between Jerry and his brothers, because here it's just "big brother" Jerry and "little brother" Bob, the dyad that went deepest on the emotional and financial levels. Emotionally, yeah, brothers of the most loving kind, big teaching little all the tricks, little giving big his unadorned loyalty, to the point of keeping the big dog's drugs, apportioning them out as needed. We might learn differently if Weir ever writes a book, but I can't recall in the record any documented incident of Garcia and Weir fighting - perhaps the Dead's late summer '68 "Firing" of Weir and Pigpen comes closest. All of Weir's side projects worked paydays with the Garcia Band - Kingfish in the second half of 1975, Bob Weir Band on the three-gig fall '78 joint "tour" of the Pacific Northwest, and Bobby and the Midnights in June 1982. Now, the rest of the guys mostly didn't run going concerns on the side, so it's not necessarily about Jerry and Bob, but about whatever bands were gigging and recording (from '78 on, for Clive Davis in both cases). It's really the 1987 joint real estate venture that puts a point on it, for me.

! preview: "Weir, Garcia, Muldaur Here," Spokesman-Review, October 26, 1978, p. ?;

! expost: Sowa 1978;

! JGMF: http://jgmf.blogspot.com/2014/07/jgb-102778-pix.html;

! pix: URL https://fineartamerica.com/profiles/ben-upham?tab=artworkgalleries&artworkgalleryid=307624, photog Ben Upham.

! historical: Homecoming for EWU. Monarch Entertainment was running this tour for JGB, here co-promoting with the school for a $3,500 production fee (sound, lights, etc.). The wage had been typed in as $8,250 guaranteed, but that was lowered to $6,500, plus percentages above certain gross and on cost savings. Gross potential of $42,250-$48,750.

! exante: "Letter to the editor: Music blues," Easterner, October 12, 1978, p. 4; asserts that Weir got $7k and JGB got $9,500, lamenting that the show would have to sell 4,600 tickets (70% of the student body) to break even, and further lamenting that they could have gotten Chicago for less than $10k.

! exante: Spanjer 1978, noting extremely low ticket sales just a few days before the show.

! preview: "Weir, Garcia, Muldaur Here," Spokesman-Review, October 26, 1978, p. 17;

! recollex: Upham ND;

! expost: Sowa 1978; refers to it as the "Grateful Dead concert", notes the event lost $15k for the school and blames the student activities group for late, scanty promotion.

! R: source: MAC > ? > CD > EAC > FLAC. jjoops notes: "I received this source from Stephen Maeder, who thought it might have been recorded by Pat Lee or Mark Severson. But it now seems that neither of them is responsible for this recording." The taper remains a mystery.

! R: This is an aud with lots of room feel. Some collectors take that to be code for "it's a boomy audience tape by some random, using God-knows-what gear from God-knows-where". I don't mean that. I love when a tape conveys the shapes of the notes in the space in, around and through which they are bouncing. This tape really captures the sound of this band in this gym. That there's some up-close clapping between songs is a feature, not a bug. Nice job, mystery taper - thank you! There's a little fuzziness, maybe overload, around the vocals. Seeder: "Set II levels are lower, especially prior to Midnight Moonlight. Someone more talented and so inclined may well wish to fiddle with this, but I left it as I received it, but for a few fades on tape transitions."

! P: seeder notes: "The show is more on the mellow, groovy side than on the fiery side, but I think you'll enjoy it." Band is tight, contrast Buzzy in his one year with the Band. Jerry is a little bit hoarse, but so far, third song in, not too bad.

! R: s1t01 How Sweet It Is cuts in

! P: s1t01 HSII The band sounds great right out of the gate. There's a kind of focus to these late Buzzy-Godchaux Garcia Band shows that astonishes. Keith Godchaux takes the first feature in How Sweet It Is, late 2 over 3, and the man is alert and firing. 

! s1t01 (1) color: freak yells, in kind of a faux Spanish accent, with great enthusiasm, "García!", as in, "he's here!", and the crowd energy spikes to about an 8 (out of 11).

! P: s1t04 RL Garcia's first run set forth a large number of very long phrases, occasionally punctuated. Beautiful, mellow listening. Keith took second feature, then John took one (meh), then Jerry sort of fronting but almost like all three featuring together, Jerry doing some more running around.

! s1t06 (2) JG: "We're gonna take a break for a little while. We'll be back a little later."

! s2t07 (3) JG: "Thanks a lot. We'll see y'all later on."

GD19680902 - Sky River Rock Festival and Lighter Than Air Fair, Betty Nelson's Organic Raspberry Farm, Sultan, WA

Reader Dave T kindly sent along this beautiful scan of an account of the-amazing sounding Sky River Rock Festival, Betty Nelson's Organic Raspberry Farm, Sultan, WA, August 31-September 2, 1968 (1).

We are very fortunate to have a delightful Charlie Miller board tape of the Grateful Dead's set, which is pretty freaking ferocious, more the fire breathing dragon of May-August than the slightly more controlled unit of the following February. I sure would like to hear the New Lost City Ramblers' set too, though! (Greedy, I know.) Apparently it was a Really Good Time, a financial bust for the organizers (including a philosophy professor from UW, John Chambless, an interesting-sounding guy), and plans were announced to do it again the next year.

Anyway, for GD-oriented people this will be the point of greatest interest: "The pinnacle of the festival was reached in a soulful blues session led by Big Mama Thornton, accompanied by James Cotton on mouth harp, Ron (Pigpen) McKernan (of the Grateful Dead) on organ, one of the Dead's two drummers, and a guitarist." First, I don't know of any other Pigpen sit-ins off-hand ... are there others? Second, one certainly wonders whether the guitarist was Garcia. More like him than Weir, I'd wager, and though it doesn't say a GD guitarist the GD set preceded Big Mama Thornton's to close the festival. So I'd say it's likely Garcia was around (given that Pigpen and a drummer were).

There is certainly a ton more to say about this Festival. I am sure McNally has a lot to say, probably Jackson as well. Accounts are that "the Grateful Dead arrived unscheduled and unexpected" (2). I recall that there was lots of material in the Seattle Helix about the festival ... like page after page after page of reports, band profiles, pictures, art, etc. If I were to have time and inclination to investigate this festival further, that's where I'd start. Since I don't have the time, maybe some intrepid researcher wants to spin through the Helix on the Underground Newspaper microfilm collection. The Helix is a real masterpiece, though the b&w films somehow seem to project salt into the reader's eyes.

Anyway, as is my wont, I mostly wanted to post this great scan about a neat-sounding day. Thanks, Dave!

REFERENCES:
(1) Lowell Richards, "Blues Outclasses Rock At Sky River Festival," Downbeat, October 31, 1968, p. 11.
(2) "Sky River Rock Festival and Lighter Than Air Fair opens a three-day run near Sultan, Washington, on August 30, 1968." HistoryLink.org Essay 5425. URL http://www.washington.historylink.org/index.cfm?DisplayPage=output.cfm&file_id=5425, accessed 3/17/2011.

GD at Eagles Auditorium, Seattle, WA, January 1968

 I am going to argue that the Quick and the Dead played Eagles Auditorium in Seattle, WA on Friday, January 26 and Saturday, January 27, 1968, and *not* on Monday 1/22 and Tuesday 1/23. This may well be widely accepted, but since the tapes still circulate with the latter dates, and Deadlists remains a bit noncommittal, I thought I'd lay it out.

Argument 1: The GD played Eagles Auditorium on Friday 1/26 and Saturday 1/27, 1968.

There is both ex ante and ex post evidence for this.

For ex ante evidence, to the left is an item in the Seattle Times dated 1/23/68.

Here is a calendar listing for 1/27/68, published on the day of the second (Saturday) show:

There were also articles written ex post in the Helix, as the following two. Note that I am not entirely sure about the volume/issue/date. I noted these as v2 n 13 (2/1/68), but according to the University of Washington's Special Collections Helix scans, this is v2 n10. The microfilm from which I was working made it exceptionally difficult to figure out this sort of thing, insofar as it was legibly identified at all.

What do we learn from this? The Quick and the Dead played late January 1968 Friday-Saturday shows at Eagles Auditorium. The GD, on 'jc''s account, opened the second show with Lovelight.

There is a poster in Art of Rock, plate 3.104, p. 287; see also p. 249.

By the way, the liner notes from the Golden Road boxset give the Seattle Eagles Auditorium dates as 1/26-27/68.

In sum: I believe the evidence establishes that the GD played Eagles Auditorium on January 26-27, 1968.

Argument 2: The Quick and the Dead did not play Eagles Auditorium in Seattle on January 22-23, 1968 (Monday-Tuesday).

As far as I can tell, the only evidence in support of this dating is the labeling of GD vault tapes. Now, I am aware that notwithstanding the chemicals that could have been involved, GD vault tape labels are incredibly reliable. So when I say "only" I don't mean to deprecate this empirical source; I merely mean to say that this is the unique evidence that is known to me. Material from "1/23/68 Seattle" has been issued on the official release Road Trips v2 n2, and of course material with both dates has circulated for some time in collecting circles.

Evidence against the 1/22 and 1/23/68 dating is entirely mostly of the "dog that didn't bark" sort. There are no known posters. There were no show announcements in the Seattle Times, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, the University of Washington Daily, nor, most importantly, in that masterpiece of Seattle psychedelic underground journalism, the Helix.

Update: I have found a dog barking, albeit quietly, about 1/23/68. The Seattle Times, January 14, 1968, p. 85 (or is it B5?), has a little item entitled "Hanauer, David in 10-Rounder Here" about a World Wide Boxing Club event. Seems Jack Hanauer, a middleweight from Pasco, was going to meet Indian Joe David of Oakland. There were a few other fights on the card. Most importantly, the fight was scheduled for January 23rd in Eagles Auditorium. Indeed, the January 23rd opening date for the fight club was announced as early as 12/31/67 in the same paper.

Based on spending a little bit of time with these sources, I am 100% persuaded that any GD show at Eagles and/or otherwise in Seattle would have been advertised and/or otherwise covered in some of these sources, ex ante and/or ex post. The GD's first visit to Seattle, AFAIK, was in July 1967. That show was extensively advertised, including with a poster. The "Be-In" that afternoon at Golden Gardens Park, before the Eagles' show, was reported in the P-I. Similarly, the Eagles Shows on September 8-9, 1967, featured a nice ad in the Helix. The January 26-27 shows were advertised widely and much-discussed.

Finally, reading the above in particular, there is just zero intimation that the GD shows on Friday-Saturday are taking place after a set of Monday-Tuesday shows that same week. Does this make sense? There's no mention anywhere that they had just played the same venue a few days before. By contrast, there's lots of "sense" in the coverage that the Quick and the Dead came upon a Seattle that was barely ready for them. The rube Seattlites are made to seem like they have a lot to learn. Hard to imagine that'd be necessary if the GD had warmed them up just a few days before.

In sum, notwithstanding the apparent existence of taped in the GD vaults labeled with these dates, I argue that no GD shows took place at Eagles Auditorium in Seattle on January 22-23, 1968.

I have no idea what would explain the mislabeling of the tapes. Maybe 1/22-23 were originally scheduled, and maybe since the GD were recording for the album tapes were pre-labeled before they were rescheduled. Just one less thing to do on tour, and all that. I have no idea. But unless some other evidence turns up, I am compelled to conclude that 1/22-23/68 Quick and Dead shows are phantoms.