Venues not attached to specifics

So I have been trying to cull information from the Big Steve show, which is just amazingly rich with all kinds of wonderful little anecdotes and tales. They don't always line up with the historical record precisely, but the man has an amazing memory and it's all right even when it's not strictly correct.

A few venues have popped up that he discusses for which we have no known specific dates, all mentioned in the context of Garcia On The Side (GOTS). I would love to hear if anyone has memories of Jerry playing these places, or any additional information. Will probably post more as I come across them. update: I have started adding venues thought to have been played, reportedly played, not form the Big Steve Show, but from everywhere.

Belly Up Tavern, Solana Beach, CA: experienced and reliable SoCal Deadhead "Paula S. Morgan" said on twitter that she recalls seeing Jerry Band play here in ca. spring 1980.

Frenchy's, Hayward. Big Steve came into the scene in the late 60s, so he is not referring to Warlocks playing there. He seems to discuss it in context of GOTS. But we have no GOTS dates for this venue at Jerrybase.

Paul's Saloon, San Francisco. Grisman had said that Old And In The Way played here (Forte 1979a, 34). It was the center of the Bay Area bluegarss universe for a minute, when bluegrass had its first really huge moment right at the time OAITW was happening. I think a weekly bluegrass show was broadcast from here, as well. But no specifics have ever emerged. Update: in a 2010 correspondence which I just rediscovered, David said "I think Jerry & I dropped in there one night and played a few tunes (in the early days when the back of the stage was in the front window) but the band never had a gig there"

Sand Dollar, Stinson Beach, mentioned in the same breath as the Red Whale (later, The Brigg) and in the context of Old And In The Way and the Stinson period.

Scoreboard, San Rafael: Just seen on FB: "Jerry and Merle would play at the Scoreboard [bar/club] when the Dead were not on the road. The Dead office was two blocks away in downtown San Rafael. This was mid to late 70's." My money is on January 3-4, 1975. More on that eventually.

Stepping Stone, Willits, CA. JGBP has hipped me to a youtube comment indicating that Great American String Band played its first gig at the Stepping Stone in Willits, CA. An online piece says that JGMS played there ca. early '74, and an attendee recalls such a thing.

"Whitey's Place", San Rafael: JGMS "play at some little clubs around Marin, but mainly at Whitey's place in San Rafael" (Scully 1996, 201). This is Whitey Litchfield. Not clear if he is referring to Pepperland, or whether there was a bar attached to the uber-seedy Bermuda Palms (home of a large number of events figuring on the local police report over the years - lots of prostitution, robberies, stabbings, drug deals, etc.).

Woody's Tavern, San Francisco. Harry Angus has sniffed around this one for me, and has found Woody's Tavern, 41 Powell Street, Owner Joe Francisco, listed in the Polk's Directory 1969-1973, then gone.

xxx Rehearsal space next to Red Tillman's automotive shop, Jacoby Street (now a different street name), San Rafael, ca. September 1971 when Keith was being rehearsed.

GD-GOTS Shared Venues

For a long time, for no particular reason, I have been wanting to dive into the venues that Jerry played with the Dead and on his own. In general, we'd expect the Dead to play a room first and whatever side project to play it second, the Garcia Band (for example) eventually growing big enough to play some of the spaces that the Dead had played earlier (and many of which it had outgrown).

Below is a very sketchy analysis, counting 80 shared venues, of which 63 were first played by the Dead. It would have been interesting to do a bit more, e.g., to show which rooms had some alternation (e.g., GD both preceding and following at least one GOTS event), which ones the GD eventually really did outgrow, etc. etc. But I don't have time for that. Have at it. (Here's a link to a Google Sheet if you are so inclined.)

Bay Area Music Venues via deaddisc.com

http://www.deaddisc.com/GDFD_Venues.htm

This is the "Bay Area Music Venues" page at the amazing deaddisc. It complements JGBP nicely because presents a discographical view of the same spaces.

Fieldwork Pictures

A small sampling. I have many more. I was looking for a pic of the Marin County Clerk and Recorder's office, but couldn't find it. I think I took pix of the Inn of the Beginning and the Cabaret in Cotati. Definitely have one of Macky around here somewhere. I have posted a few snaps from Olompali.

Anyway, here are a few more. Ahhh, beautiful Bay Area ...

Marin Civic

2400 Fulton Street

SF Civic

Marin Civic

River Theater, Guerneville

Bear's Lair, UC Berkeley

Jerry Garcia Venues

Harry Angus is soliciting input, anything at all, around the venues in which Garcia played or spoke.

Please contribute information if you have it, and circulate this call widely. I use Jerry Garcia's Brokendown Palaces every day I work on Garcia - it's a great resource.

http://jerrygarciasbrokendownpalaces.blogspot.com/2014/01/the-encyclopedia-of-jerry-garcia-music.html

Venues

Oh my goodness. Check out this masterpiece of a blog!

Jerry's Brokendown Palaces

Wow.

Between this and Rock Archaeology, I think I know where to go to learn about venues.

Thanks to all of my colleagues doing hard work in and around this area of scholarship. It's a pleasure.

Rock and Roll Road Map

I should obviously have been spending more time with Rock and Roll Roadmaps, I guess. Just stumbled across the listing their for Keystone Korner. Oooh, and here's one for the Cotati Cabaret. All right then, I will try to play around more with this.

When did Melvin Seals begin with JGB?

Edited 20110216

The Jerry Garcia Band show listed as Saturday, December 20, 1980, Keystone Palo Alto, Palo Alto, CA, has always struck me odd. I argue here that (1) "12/20/80" is a "phantom" listing, a mislabel of 12/20/79. Along the way (2) I argue that "1/18/81" is also a phantom, a mislabel of 1/18/83. This leads to a new-to-me understanding of when Melvin Seals joined the band; I (3) conclude here that Melvin Seals's public debut as keyboardist with the Jerry Garcia Band was Thursday, January 22, 1981 at the Keystone Palo Alto, Palo Alto, CA. This can be seen as a companion piece to my query about the start of the Garcia-Saunders relationship.

Observation #1: all circulating tapes of "12/20/80" are actually copies of 12/20/79. No-one with ears to hear (or eyes to see, if one had been there) could confuse Melvin and his Hammond B-3 with Ozzie Ahlers and his electric piano (can't remember the precise gear right now).

Observation #2: the last reasonably well documented JGB show before "12/20/80" is August 9 (*shiver*), 1980, Keystone Palo Alto, Palo Alto, CA (shnid-29088 [partial sbd]). As we presently understand it, that is the last show of the Garcia-Kahn-Ahlers-Errico quartet version of the Jerry Garcia Band. (Errico would return on October 13, 1982, for another 8-month stint.)

Observation #3: I know of no hard evidence (newspaper ad, ticket stub, attendee recollection, distinct tape, etc. etc.) of a JGB show on 12/20/80. Gordon Sharpless, credited as contributor at TJS, has shared his conclusion that "12/20/80" is a misdate of 12/20/79 in comments.

Observation #4: there have been tape recordings labeled "Melvin Rehearsals", dated Wednesday, January 14, 1981 through Friday, January 16, 1981, at Club Front in San Rafael, CA. I have January 16th to listen to (thank you, wk!) but haven't gotten around to it yet. It's the kind of thing that is going to be all consuming for 90 minutes, and I tend not to have chunks of time like that. Tape datings are among the least reliable data sources we have --I have created a new tag called 'methodology', by the way-- but the coincidence of Wed-Fri rehearsals right before starting up the new configuration the next week is a strongly suggestive one. (I would have guessed that they'd gig on Saturday 1/17, but if they weren't ready they probably spent a few more nights rehearsing.) There may well have been further rehearsals, but there is no public information about that. Anyway, these rehearsals are consistent with a later starting date than "12/20/80" ... I don't think workaholic Jerry would have been rehearsing this new band for the 3-4 weeks required to have started up before 12/20/80 and still been rehearsing in the third week of January.

Observation #5: The next conventionally-listed JGB gig is Sunday, January 18, 1981, Catalyst, Santa Cruz, CA. This would be a plausible first gig for a band with a new lineup: Sunday night at the relatively out-of-the-way Catalyst. I see three reasons to conclude that this date is bogus, though. First, the tapes circulating with this date are all from January 18, 1983 (same venue, the Catalyst). Mislabels being what they are, this doesn't mean an '81 show on this date and venue didn't happen. Second, TJS had this note: "DeadBase's setlist for this show is a duplication of their 01/18/83 setlist and incorrect", and it credits gorshar as a contributor. This is exactly like the profile of 12/20/80, of course. Third, the manucript tradition (i.e., Corry's lists) never contained information on this show. Strike three and this date is out, as far as my current reasoning goes.

Interim Analysis. Here's what I think happened for both "12/20/80" and "1/18/81". The old manuscript tradition correctly had no listing for these shows. At some point a tape of 1/18/83 gets mislabeled "1/18/81" (easily enough), just as a tape of 12/21/79 became "12/20/80" (though this one has a less obvious orthographic explanation). This tape forms the basis of a Deadbase listing (most of which, but obviously not this one, drew from Corry's lists). When the Jerry Site comes around in ca. ?1999? or ?2000?, gorshar tells Ryan about the mislabel, but Ryan (rightly, conservatively) makes the note but keeps the entry in, just in case. But I am prepared to conclude here that 1/18/81 is also a bogus listing.

Observation #6: the next known JGB show is Thursday, January 22, 1981, the first of two nights at the Keystone Palo Alto in Palo Alto, CA (Jerrybase, shnid-97266 [Latvala's partial audience recording]). These are Melvin's presumed third and fourth shows, after "12/20/80" and "1/18/81". But I argue there that 1/22/81 is the correct dating for Melvin Seals's public debut with the Jerry Garcia Band. The two preceding dates, "12/20/80" and "1/18/81", are both phantoms, by my analysis.

Aside, re: personnel: Melvin would never leave the JGB's keyboard chair, putting in an astonishing 14+ years. Without checking the numbers, I think this makes Melvin Jerry's #2 onstage musical collaborator (in terms of frequency) outside the Grateful Dead, following Jerry's ol' buddy John Kahn. There is obviously much, much more to say about Mr. Melvin Seals, who continues, 30 years on, to engage this music as "Melvin Seals and JGB".

Aside re: venues: Corry's pathbreaking work on the Keystone complex, including his Garcia shows at Keystone overview, deserves to be borne in mind at all times. His economic analysis is especially important, really providing some good hard evidence about the Garcia-Keystone (let me use that as shorthand for Freddie Herrera and the whole complex here) symbiosis. He mentions the nice complementarities of Jerry being able to rotate through the various clubs, especially in this period when the Keystone Berkeley, Keystone Palo Alto, and the Stone (San Francisco) were all operating. I don't read him as identifying any further division of labor, but I have a hypothesis: the Keystone Palo Alto was more likely to be used midweek than either of the other two clubs. That's not to say the KPA never got weekend shows, just that, by the early 80s, if there was woodshedding to be done and a Keystone club was to be involved, it was more likely to happen in Palo Alto than in Berkeley or SF. Otherwise, it seems like slightly more out-of-the-way places such as the Catalyst and the River Theater got a disproportionate share of the "debut" action. And given the fluidity of JGB membership in the early 1980s (e.g., in terms of backup singers and drummers), there was an unusual amount of woodshedding to be done. I do think we could get at this with some very simple statistic tests, but I'll add that to the "to-do" list.

And a meta point underneath (or "over", anyway) that: maybe the fact that less central venues tended to get the "debut" performances in the early 80s is why information on precise starting and ending dates has been so inconsistent. Fewer notetakers and tapers = less carry-though to the present. An interesting sociology of knowledge involved in all this, but I digress ...

Upshot:

1. I argue and conclude that the "12/20/80" JGB date is a phantom
2. I argue and provisionally conclude that the "1/18/81" JGB date is a phantom.
3. I argue and conclude that Melvin Seals's public debut with the Jerry Garcia Band was January 22, 1981, following at least some rehearsals the week prior.

Source Check:
McNally, LST: no mention
Jackson, Garcia, p. 321: Melvin's arrival and tenure noted, but no starting date/timeframe given.
Jackson, cutting room floor: no mention.