One of the Great Interviews of the Garciaverse

jg1978-03-11.interview.45mins.fm-gefen-goodbear.retracked.shn2flac

Remember, I am on hiatus until at least March 2013. Having taken this opportunity to remind you of this, as a PSA, let me also leave you something to read.

This is truly one of the great, hilarious interviews in the Garciaverse, chock full of great stuff.

Jerry Garcia Band Interview (by Andy Gefen)
WBRU-FM Studios
75 Waterman Street
Providence, RI 02912
March 11, 1978 (Saturday)
45 minute FM via Gefen-Goodbear shnid 76444 JGMF shn2flac

So, this interview has been circulating forever, but I don't recall seeing a transcription anywhere. So, I did it. It ain't 100% transcribed, but it has the stuff that interests me.

Lots of good direct quotes from Jerry about Cats, Garcia Band per se (and vs. GD, and vs. Weir's side projects), etc. Some snorting and such. Good times.


--(41tracks, 44:34)--
t01. Reuben And Cherise (album version) [5:08]
t02. Andy Gefen Introduction [1:38]
t03. Buzz Buchanan Introduction [1:01]
t04. Ten Grand And A Year in Jail [0:21]
t05. Cats Under The Stars Release Date [0:55]
t06. Is Keith Around? [0:16]
t07. Maria Muldaur [0:44]
t08. Jerry's Day Job and Trouble With Flooding [0:46]
t09. GD Plans [1:01]
t10. GD Movie, TV  [1:10]
t11. GD Tour [0:13]
t12. Let's Talk About The Record [0:23]
t13. We Built The Studio [1:50]
t14. I'm Happiest With This Record [0:44]
t15. Jerry Garcia BAND [0:27]
t16. Rhapsody In Red (album version) (fragment) [0:#50]
t17. Mistakes [0:42]
t18. Tour So Far [0:31]
t19. Album Personnel [1:53]
t20. French Horn [0:35]
t21. Scaly And Weird [1:36]
t22. Being Great Is Your Own Thing [1:30]
t23. Stop Looking At That Thing, If It Gives You The Creeps [0:33]
t24. Rain (album version) (fragment) % [0:14]
t25. SNORT [0:45]
t26. Not Too Hard [1:42]
t27. Playing Together Purely Randomly [1:07]
t28. Garcia V. Weir [1:29]
t29. Keith Olsen [1:32]
t30. Station ID [0:54]
t31. Doing Interviews [1:24]
t32. Another GD Question Goes Nowhere [0:32]
t33. It's That Important To Me [1:27]
t34. What Career? [0:12]
t35. JGB Concrescence [3:04]
t36. You Want It To Move You [0:40]
t37. The Taoism And The Path, Featuring Buzzy Buchanan
t38. Amenhotep's Wine [1:35]
t39. The Invisible Landscape [1:33]
t40. Goodbyes [0:28]
t41. The News [0:08]

! Interview: people present:
! personnel: Andy Gefen
! personnel: Donna Jean Godchaux
! personnel: Jerry Garcia
! personnel: John Kahn
! personnel: Buzz Buchanan

JGMF:

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

! TJS: none.

! db: part of shnid 76444 (Gefen > Goodbear).

! R: PREFM-SBD > ? > Gefen Master ? > GoodBear CD (late 1990s) > shn, part of shnid 76444.

! R: shn2flac via TLH, tracking via CDWave, tagging in foobar2000 by JGMF, 8/6/2012.

! t02 Jerry interrupts him Jerry Garcia Band. JG "Under the stars. Not undah." They are wasted. For those of you who don't enjoy the show tonight, I'd like to apologize on behalf of myself and the members of the band. John Kahn. Let's apologize for Buzzy, too. And Buzzy.

! t03 Ron Tutt's been playing with us. Ron isn't playing with us anymore. The new kid in the band is Buzz Buchanan credit to his race, as far as drummers go. From Los Angeles. What happened to Ron Tutt? Kahn: He went back to Los Angeles unfortunately. Buzz who did you play with before? Studio stuff in LA. The Smothers Brothers, played back east with them at the Great Gorge Playboy Club.

! t04 Someone mutters "shit",  and the DJ sounds worried about the ramifications of broadcasting a swear word. "I need ten grand and a year in jail." Garcia, pulling up from an audible snort: "I do. I could use a year in jail. I really think it would straighten me right out. And the $10 grand [fine] would be helpful, too."

! t05 on CUTS release date: That's a good question. If Arista really cooks, they might get it out as soon as the next couple of weeks ... next week or so. Our last really important deadline which we were almost totally convinced we would make was September 10th ... of last year. Unfortunately, we ... slipped up a little right there." JK: "Well, we made the deadline, in a way." DJ: "In a way?" JK: "Yeah. We were mostly dead by then." DJ: "Gratefully ... dead?" JK: "Well, I wasn't all that happy about it, myself."

! t06 Keith Godchaux: This is really harsh. He asks if Keith is around, and they all start snickering. JG: "Not all of us can move, see [laughter] ... sometimes it just doesn't work out right. [hilarity]

! t07 re Maria Muldaur: DJG: "There's somebody else who isn't here. Maria Muldaur is not here. Call John Mr. Maria. JG: "She is now an official member [inaudible]." JK : "The original mistake was "mr." JG: "She is a permanent member of this band insofar as this band is a permanent organization." DJ: "And it's workin' out great." JG: "yeah. Real great." Maria has her own date.

! t08 JG: "We all have to work around each other, know what I mean? Otherwise, y'know, I work at a gas station during the day." John will come back and play with Maria when she comes back to town.

! t09 Q about GD plans. JG: "Yeah, we're gonna be workin' ourselves silly this year. But I don't have a rap to tell you.  I don't have any information that's gonna do you any good on the Grateful Dead right now. Right now this is what we're doin, and this is the most important thing that's happening as far as we're concerned." Bob Weir album recording. JF: "We're looking at recording in the May-June-July area, if things go right we'll have an album out in August." Kahn: Just like our album out in September". Jerry: "Well, yeah, right, we're all hippies. Crazed beatniks. Strange people. Foreigners." JK: "I have a junior beatnik card."

! t10 clips of the GD Movie on TV on "Rock Concert" TV people have been pulling on our legs for many years to go on television. William F. Buckley wanted me to go on Firing Line.
! t11 GD tour maybe early spring starting in Florida. JG doesn't really know about it. Garcia cuts this question off.

! t12 Most like to talk about the record. Record has been a great trip for us. "We started working on it last July. Because we're all doing all this other stuff."

! t13 DJG: "And we built the studio that we recorded it in." JG: "Yeah, we built the studio to do it. What was happening was, we were rehearsing, and all of a sudden ... and it's Tutt that plays on these tracks, not Buzz, unfortunately. [Buzz, wake up!] So we were playing in there and we were making cassettes for practice purposes as we were working on the material. And, uh, Tutt ... was he attracted to ... he liked the drum sound in the room. We hadn't really thought about it before. So we whipped the place into a recording studio, took about a month to do it, two months, maybe. This whole record is, fundamentally, on a technical level it's totally homemade. I mean everything that was done, it was done ... right ... it was all done in the same room." JK: "I remember when we were all splicing wires, we actually, literally, ourselves, put it together [inaudible]." JG: "We were cutting wires, and cutting lines and making cables and doing everything ... we actually built the place--" DJ: "From scratch." JG: "Yeah, from scratch."

! t13 @0102 DJ: "Do you intend to use this studio for future Garcia and Dead endeavors?" JG: "Whether the Dead decide to use it or not is a matter of ... that decisionmaking process ... you know, we don't decide like *that* ... for me, it's a thing that's been a long, slow progression of accumulation of equipment, and the desire to have a really good facility for recording. The neat thing about it is that the room we're workin' in, it just sounds beautiful. It sounds better than any studio I've ever worked in, in terms of the room sound. So, the vocal quality, the instrumental quality, the drum sound, all the sounds that are recorded in the room ...; there's horns and strings and things like that there as well ... and everything  just has a very articulate and nice sound."

! t14 JG: "I'm happiest with this record, of all the ones we've done. It's neat because it's all original material, all the material is our own stuff." DJ: "Can I who produced this album?" JG: "We all" [crosstalk] DJ question about Keith Olsen and production. JK: "I don't know that we have such a specific plan on that level. Things are changeable, always." JG: "Yeah, right, that's the thing, is that no decision is final, and that no operating ... no way of operating is ever completely always gonna be the thing." Jerry really doesn't want to go onto GD terrain, while Gefen really does.

t15 RIR introduction. DJ: "Give us a chance to relax a little bit, with microphones off." JG, laconically: "That'd be swell." DJ introduces song as by "Jerry Garcia", and Garcia insists "Jerry Garcia BAND".

! R: t16 spliced

! t17 silliness

! t18 tour so far, only two gigs. DJ: "How long have you been rehearsing for the tour?" JK "None". JG: "About twenty minutes." JK, laughing: "That's right, it was twenty minutes." JG: "We try to approach this stuff professionally." JK: "Yeah, right. I do remember that twenty minutes, now that I think about it."

! t19 CUTS album personnel: Kahn mentions harmonica player Dave Burgin on "Palm Sunday". Steve Schuster horn player on "Rain". Two string players one was named Brian (Brian Godchaux and Candy Godchaux, Keith's brother and sister-in-law). Then there was that guy whatshisname from the ... [Kahn: "Musicians' union?" [general mirth]. French horn player his name was whatever it says. Stewart somebody from the Oakland Symphony. JG: "Wonderful player. French horn is a really difficult instrument, this guy ..."

t20 John Kahn writing instrumentation wrote the out about five minutes, on the floor, with manuscript paper, scribble scribble scribble for this french horn player ... and he just played it immediately. He's a remarkable player, remarkable." JG, sound a little grumpy: "Uhh, yeah, we have. We've been movin' each other along and I think an awful lot of what's happening in music is just dull as dishwater, man." DJ: "You're not into any disco or New Wave or anything?" JG: "Of those things, of those choices, the New Wave... the whole punk rock trip, I like it best. I like it best, I think. I like it because it has some energy, it has some spirit." JK: "There's the thing of, new music, people are tyring to play [crosstalk] there's thing, in San Francisco, 'cause that's where I was then, when everybody was just learning to play, there was a thing that was missing --" JG: "The thing of people tryin' real hard. JK: "Tryin' to figure out how to make it work." JG: "Yeah, yeah. It's got the spirit, y'know, that's the thing. The nature of the spirit, if you had to describe the spirit, you could describe the spirit as being a little bit edgy, y'know, maybe sort of a Violent spirit, y'know, sort of scaly and weird, maybe, but it's a spirit, and almost anything else lacks spirit of any sort."

! t21 DJ: "I just want to ask a question about your musical influences. Anybody been moving you along lately?"

! t22 JG: "Who is there around to say what being really, really good on an instrument is. There are guys who don't play ... who can't play many notes, that can move you tremendously with what they do play. Then there are guys who can play gazillions of notes, and nobody can even dig it." JK, sounding very strange: "There isn't any best in the world anymore." JG: "No, it's not like that anymore." JK: "There can't be a best guitar player in the world anymore. There's twenty now. JG: "Say, eighty." [cross-talk] DJG: "Being the greatest is no longer the incentive." JG: "Being great is your own trip." More from JK.

! t23 general weirdness, then DJG asks DJ "Do you want us to stop talking?" He says "No, no", and Garica replies "Well then stop looking at that thing, then, if it gives you the creeps." Too funny! "Play something so *you* can relax." General mirth. "Rain" intro by JG

! t25 DJ mistakenly identifie the song as "Gomorrah", not sure. JG, dismissive: "Uh, it's called 'Rain'. It's the one that Donna wrote?" DJ: "I am getting confused in between--" [--SNIFF-- chuckles] "--John Kahn just noticed his own name on Jerry Garcia's Reflections album." JG: "He's into his name because it rhymes." DJ: "With what?" JG: "With itself. John Kahn. John Kahn." He sounds a littel patronizing.

! t26 question about how the decision was made to have Donna and Keith tour with this band and with the Dead. Gets no response, says "OK ... they don't like that question." Then they affirm him a little bit. Donna: "No, no, I just don't understand it." JK "These things happen more than a decision [inaudible]." JG: "See, here's the thing, I mean, I think it best ... in terms of clarity, I think it's easiest not to confuse the Grateful Dead with *this* band . This band really has its own identity, its own evolution." DJ: "I'm only making the comment because there are three members of the Dead in it, as opposed to one [garbled]." JG: "That is an interesting ..." JK: "Well," [cross-talk DJ, something about Bob Weir] "it's coincidental, that's all." JG: "It's coincidental, almost, yeah." JK "We didn't have a piano player, and Keith was the best guy we could find, and Donna's a fabulous singer." JG: "Yeah, actually, this started quite awhile ago. I mean, Keith and Donna have been with us for two years." DJG: "And they needed a piano player, and another singer would be nice. Keith and I live together. It'd be cheap." [laughter] JG: "Not too hard ... and we're all freaks." [crosstalk] DJG: "--just fell into it really naturally." DJ: "May I ask how you originally got involved with the Dead?" JK: "They probably needed a piano player, too." DJG: "They did. That was exactly what was happening."

! t27 JG: "It's a matter of timing, really." JK: "Those things happen. It's not heavy decisions or anything. That kind of stuff just happens ... somebody shows up, and it's right, and everybody knows it's right." DJ question about Bobby and Kingfish. JG: "I guess, so, that's the way it worked out with him. But for me it's always been the thing of, that, decisionmaking is always, always ... I don't dig it, I'm ... It's more a matter of luck. Like, John and I really were thrown together in a gig. We started playing together purely randomly. And we played together for a looong time before we started even talking very much. But we got along musically." JK: "I had known you for about three years--" [crosstalk] "--the first time I ever really talked to you is when you gave me a ride home from the airport once from somewhere." JG: "Yeah. It's just one of those things. Something happens in your life."

! t28 DJ spoke with Weir the day before (3/10/78), asking about parallels. JG: "He was in a situation where he had a created band. He'd done a record, and the record had a certain musical personality ... and he was really in the position, since Weir, Bobby doesn't spend a lot of time playin' around with other musicians, except when he was working with Kingfish and stuff like that, y'know. So, he went down there [LA] and for him it was a good experience because he was exposed to a lot of good players, met a lot of people, and put himself into that situation of, 'OK, now I have to have a band.'."  JK: "He has to cover his album." JG and Donna affirm. JG: "This is a little different." DJ: "What do you think of that album?" JG: "Weir's album?" DJ: "Yeah." JG: "Slick as can be.  Weir has always been a very interesting writer to me. He writes the kinds of things that I would never, ever think of writing, musically I mean. And his development as a composer is gettin' to be more interesting and more resolved as the years go by. He's always been an interesting composer. His ideas are ... they're unique. Whether other people are gonna like it or not, I really haven't the slightest idea, but it really sounds smooth, and it sounds nice and finished. Keith Olsen is a very careful and meticulous producer."

! t29 Keith Olsen: "He showed up and didn't freak out." "he's a good cat. He really doesn't belong in LA. He's a good guy to work with. He's the pick of the litter."  , Dead with outside producer everybody has their own opinion so firmly, it's like imprinted on yourselves. Very hard for us to all. .. it's helpful to have an objective ear. Dealing with ourselves we can hang ourselves up for months and months and months and months and months. "It's not that we don't dig it, but that's what it is."

! t31 random chatter. Running out of things to say. Now, general mayhem. All talking about things. "Being on the radio beats lying around in the gutter, in the snow. ... It also beats things like taking a shower."

! t32 Jerry directing. JG: "Hey, I know, why don't you play nother cut. ... In that case, do what you want." DJ prods him again about asking about the Dead. Jerry sounding a little grouchy "I am just not into it that much right now." GD we're workin'.

! t33 DJ: Are there plans for another Jerry Band album, this is a permanent entity? JG: "Yeah. This is. It's been going on for some time. It's an idea we have been pursuing for some time. John and I have been involved in developing this thing over this long period of time in a kind of crazy way. It's serious. As a personal, as an individual apart from my relationship with the Grateful Dead, which is an important thing to me, this record, this music and this band is the same thing to me. It's that important to me. I care that much about it. I'm that serious about it. I think that this record is the best record that any of our various scenes --if you want to be thinking in those terms, y'know, sub-groups and all the rest of that stuff, if you want to be thinking in those terms, this record is, I think, the best of any of them so far. I mean, in terms of us feeling really good about it. The material is really good. The lyrics are beautiful, the musical ideas, the performances, the sound ... everything is the way we would want for people to hear it."
t34 DJ: "How do you feel everything is at this point in your career." JG: "what career? I don't care about a career."

t35 Kahn: "I'll tell you, of significant importance [sic] is that we've really become a band. It's not like something that Jerry does in his spare time, or that I do in my spare time, or anything like that. It started out that way." JG, to John: "Gimme that drink." JK: "Oh, no." JG: "Go ahead."  [pause all around] JK: "What was I saying? We're a *band*, that's really what's  important to know." @0:32 JG: "But that's like a real thing. It's like a marriage, or something. Not only is it a band, but it's a band that has that ... it has thing of of, ummm, consonance. [That's] the best way I can describe it. In other words, we all think similarly musically." DJG: "The hippest folks out there will know what we man by concrescence .. but only the hippest, y'know." JG: "Probably only the hippest, that's right. All you lame people [crosstalk]." DJ: gives him choices. John Kahn wants to do the news, presumably to take another "break". Jerry says they'll go until Robbie freaks out. !1:35 DJ: "Where were we?" JG: "Where, indeed?" JK: We're into something new." JG: "We're into the music having a personality and a life of its own that is something which we all recognize we're a part of.  It's like you imagine a music in your head, and you don't even imagine it perfectly, it's not even something ... it escapes your imagination ... it's provocative. And then you run into somebody and you see that what they're doing has some part of that vision. And you recognize it. Y'know what I mean? It's not like you invent it, you recognize it. 'Yeah, that, that, that's it, that's it!" JK: "Right. There's there's the possibility of that dream. And you go further." JG: "Yeah. And then you go further, you go further." [crosstalk: DJG: --that has the same dream."] JG: "That's right, that has the same --[crosstalk]. Dynamically, the interesting difference in this thing is that this band represents a kind of amazing agremement, where, by contrast, the Grateful Dead represents this amazing disagreement, in terms of, that everybody has tremendously different ideas about music, just a ... but that's interesting for other reasons. That's interesting for completely other reasons. This is ... this gets us all off in the same way. The Grateful Dead, when the Grateful Dead gets off, everybody gets off differently. But we all get off."

! t36 Kahn's idea about music: "I don't have any idea about music. What to me it means 'good' which is, it has an effect on people. That's what good means to me." JG: "Yeah, me too." JK: "And, other than that, I don't have any idea. We could play bluegrass music, or jazz, or--" [JG: "Yeah, style doesn't have anything to do with it."] --"it doesn't matter. It's all music. It's just music." JG: "And as long as it has an effect on you. When you hear music, you want it to move you. You want it to ... communicate." DJG: "And this band has expanded on that level." JG: "Yeah. We've been hittin' some ..."

! personnel: Buzz Buchanan: t37 Donna brings up Buzzy how John Kahn found Buzzy Buchanan. "He's allowed us to go into spaces in music that we've never gone to before. He's great." Discussion about how John found Buzzy through a Kmart thing, John says it was the 'Best Hits of the Chinese Fifth Dynasty Greatest Hits'. And the particular track I heard was "The Taoism and the Path, featuring Buzzy Buchanan, and because of that I decided that I thought he'd really work well with us. And, oddly enough, it turned out that he was still alive."

! t38 Kahn: wine bottles in Amenhotep's grave ... 1400 BC ... they are drinking ... DJG: "We found this bottle uncorked it and there was Buzzy." ... SNORT ... DJ: herbicides on dope in Mexico ... JG: "What about that clone story?"

! t39 DJ: "What kind of stuff have you been into, as far as--" JG: "Ideas? There's a fantastic book called The Invisible Landscape, that anybody that wants to have their brain turned inside out should read, that is by the McKenna Brothers, who are ... Terrence and Dennis McKenna, who are a pair of scientists ... and in the book they propose a theory ... a holographic theory of mind and the Universe. They talk about the mechanical and electromagnetic way that psychedelics affect the mind, and the DNA and RNA specifically ... [crosstalk] Then they talk about the I-Ching ..."

! t40 even Buzz says goodbye ... network news.

! t41 the news about a Ku Klux Klan rally

even though I am on hiatus until ca. March 2013, I

thought I'd leave a breadcrumb here for the return. Lotsa new info on the Third Betty Batch, or info new-to-the-record, anyway.

Paumgarten, Nick. 2012. Deadhead: The afterlife. New Yorker, November 26, 2012, URL http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2012/11/26/121126fa_fact_paumgarten, consulted 11/20/2012.

Also, I never knew that Betty and Brent were an item. But then again, there's an awful lot of stuff that's known that I've forgotten.

On hiatus until ca. March 2013

But, in the meantime ...

Some years ago, I posted about the Grateful Dead gig on Friday, May 16, 1969 in the gymnasium of Campolindo High School, 300 Moraga Rd., Moraga, CA, 94556. I posted a wild-sounding story about the gig which may contain some actual truth. There were comments and such. At some point I'll do a whole new post on the gig.

Here's some eye candy from the Campolindo High School yearbook, Compañero, for the 1968-1969 school year.

I have labeled numbered the eleven live shots, which I presume to include very rare shots of Frumious Bandersnatch and the Velvet Hammer. These were on pp. 12-13 of the spring supplement to the yearbook. Here's what I think I see.

1. dancing youth
2. GD live onstage, L-R: Phil Lesh, Mickey Hart, Bill Kreutzmann, Bob Weir
3. Frumious Bandersnatch live onstage, L-R: Jack Notestein - bass; Jack King - drums.
4. GD live onstage, L-R: Ron "Pigpen" McKernan, Jerry Garcia, Bill Kreutzmann, Phil Lesh, Bob Weir, Mickey Hart
5. ?Velvet Hammer? unknown guitar player
6. ?Velvet Hammer? guitar, drums, bass, keyboard
7. kid dancing. Right on, kid.
8.  Frumious Bandersnatch live onstage, L-R: Jack Notestein - bass; Jack King - drums, vocals; Bobby Winkelman - guitar, vocals; David Denny - guitar, vocals. (Thanks to David Denny for confirmation!)
9. light show projectionists
10. hanging out under the light show projection tables
11. ?? two young women singing and playing acoustic guitar

Still on hiatus, till maybe March 2013

In the meantime, check out the etree list that I put together, as a way to date-index my posts. It's not the most efficient way, but there it is.

GSCBF16: Program Images

More eye candy below the fold.

Golden State Country Bluegrass Festival: Index Post (GSCBF15)

Mostly for my own purposes, but a little index of my series on the Golden State Country Bluegrass Festival, held at the Marin County Veterans' Auditorium (building and grounds) in San Rafael, CA (94903) from the evening of Friday, April 26, 1974 through late on Sunday, April 28, 1974.

I have tons more to get to, but we'll just have to see when that can happen. For now, just an index.

GSCBF1: just a mention

GSCBF2: a plea for a release of the film and tapes!

GSCBF3: Sunday 4/28/74 afternoon schedule

GSCBF4: Greenbriar Boys (a.k.a. "Frank Wakefield"): Sunday, April 28, 1974, ca. 15:00 

GSCBF5: Jimmy Martin and the Sunny Mountain Boys: Sunday, April 28, 1974, ca. 16:15

GSCBF6: Doc and Merle Watson: Sunday, April 28, 1974, ca. 1700 

GSCBF7: Steve Martin and John McEuen: Sunday, April 28, 1974, ca. 1900 

GSCBF8: Skunk Cabbage: Sunday, April 28, 1974, ca. 19:05 

GSCBF9: Great American String Band: Saturday, April 27, 1974, ca. 23:15 ("Where's Jerry?") 

GSCBF10: Ramblin' Jack Elliott: Sunday, April 28, 1974, ca. 19:30 

GSCBF11: John Hartford (& Friends): Sunday, April 28, 1974, ca. 20:15 

GSCBF12: Ralph Stanley & His Clinch Mountain Boys: Sunday, April 28, 1974, ca. 21:15 

GSCBF13: Nitty Gritty Dirt Band: Sunday, April 28, 1974, ca. 22:00 

GSCBF14: Old And In The Way: Sunday, April 28, 1974, ca. 23:15
GSCBF15: Index post
GSCBF16: Program Images
GSCBF17: an aside on David Nichtern and the Nocturnes
GSCBF18: Whole Weekend Schedule

Gonna Be Slow For Awhile

Not sure how long. Very hard to predict. There may be periods (e.g., Thanksgiving, the New Year) during which I can post. But my strong suspicion is that posting is going to be exceedingly sparing until, perhaps, spring of 2013. Certainly nothing elaborate.

I expect second half of 2013, by contrast, to yield quite a bounty. But, again, we'll see.

In the meantime, go read some articles on deadsources.blogspot.com, read around the other blogs linked to your right, and take in some of the bounty!

Garcia's Penultimate Sonoma County Gig, and a Great 'Don't Let Go'

LN jg1988-02-05.jgb.all.aud-CC.121594.flac2448

My favorite year of the canonical Jerry Garcia Band, i.e., what I mean when I say The Jerry Garcia Band, i.e., Garcia-Kahn-Seals-Kemper-Jones-LaBranch.

Jerry's penultimate show in Sonoma County.

Top-three version of "Don't Let Go", along with the next night (2/6/88) and 5/19/89 in Irvine. some of my favorite Garcia music of all time.

Anyone know who has the master tape, or who taped it?

Jerry Garcia Band
Veterans Memorial Auditorium
1351 Maple Avenue
Santa Rosa, CA 95404
February 5, 1988 (Friday)
123 min Closet Call aud (complete) (flac2448) shnid-121594

--set I (9 tracks, 57:07)--
s1t01. ambience [0:30]
s1t02. How Sweet It Is (To Be Loved By You) [6:43] [0:04]
s1t03. They Love Each Other [7:55] [0:20]
s1t04. Forever Young [8:13] [0:22]
s1t05. Get Out Of My Life Woman [8:00] [0:23]
s1t06. /Like A Road Leading Home [7:20]
s1t07. Evangeline [3:32] [0:01]
s1t08. //My Sisters And Brothers [5:12] ->
s1t09. Deal [8:22] [0:07]

--set II (8 tracks, 66:26)--
s2t01. //Harder They Come [8:48] [0:15]
s2t02. Stop That Train [7:07]
s2t03. //Don't Let Go [12:22]
s2t04. //Think [6:12]
s2t05. //Mississippi Moon [8:37]
s2t06. //Run For The Roses [4:52]
s2t07. //That Lucky Old Sun (Just Rolls Around Heaven All Day) [8:32]
s2t08. //Tangled Up In Blue [9:36] [0:02]

! Band: Jerry Garcia Band
! Lineup: Jerry Garcia - el-g, vocals;
! Lineup: John Kahn - el-bass;
! Lineup: Melvin Seals - keyboards;
! Lineup: David Kemper - drums;
! Lineup: Gloria Jones - vocals;
! Lineup: Jacklyn LaBranch - vocals.

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/19880205-01

! db: none as of 9/6/2009. https://etreedb.org/shn/121594 (this fileset); https://etreedb.org/shn/125717 (remaster of this fileset).

! map: http://www.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&q=1351+Maple+Ave.,+Santa+Rosa,+CA&ie=UTF8&om=1&ll=38.435203,-122.699862&spn=0.014052,0.029182&t=h&z=15&iwloc=addr

! venue: Its official site gives venue as Santa Rosa Veterans Memorial Hall.  Handbill from TJS bills gives "Santa Rosa Veterans Memorial Auditorium". The Auditorium is a room in the Hall, holds 1200 for assembly and 1000 seated. Since the TJS ticket shows General Admission, I'll use the "assembly" number to estimate capacity in 1988 at 1,200, and I'll use "Santa Rosa Veterans Memorial Auditorium" as my canonical venue name. The GD had played here in the 1960s (6/17-18/66, 6/27-28/69). This would be the fifth and last time Garcia would play the hall.

! band: Handbill from TJS bills "Jerry Garcia Band Electric".

! R: specs: xx gen audience cassette (Maxell XLII90 no Dolby) > Nakamichi BX-300 playback (no Dolby) > Pyle Pro cables >WaveTerminal 2496 > Samplitude 10.1 Download Version (record @ 24 bits/48kHz) > CDWave 1.9.8 (tracking) > Wavelab 5.0.1a (cross-fades, etc.) > shntool (stripped non-canonical headers) > Traders Little Helper 2.4.1 (FLAC encoding, level 8) > Foobar (tagging), September 6, 2009, by JGMF.

! R: This recording is not going to win any field recording prizes, but it's totally decent and unterrible. The only real problem is that every song in set II clips or cuts in. But who am I to criticize? The overall SQ of set II is inferior to set I. Things are probably running fast, perhaps considerably so. Mississippi Moon would be one to check.

! historical: I consider 1988 to be the very best year of the canonical Jerry Garcia Band of Garcia-Kahn-Seals-Kemper-Jones-LaBranch. The next night (2/6/88) is one of my all-time favorite Jerry Band shows, and this one, while perhaps not quite its equal, had provided a really high-level warmup. I also have big love for the July '88 shows (e.g., 7/10), and this period really holds up well to repeated auditions. While the Halloween (10/31/88) and Tahoe shows (11/4-5/88) disappoint me, the Wiltern (11/25-27/88) and Orpheum shows (12/2-3/88) are top-shelf (update: actually, 12/3 is pretty weak, 12/2 only marginally better), as is everything through May of 1989.

! historical: The geography of this show is fascinating. In earlier times, even into the early 1980s, Jerry would start off a new year, as he'd start off a new band, a little bit off the beaten path. In the 70s, this would have meant playing the Inn of the Beginning in Cotati or the River Theater in Gurneville (both Sonoma County), the Lion's Share in San Anselmo (Marin), etc. From the early 80s it seems like he mostly warmed up in Santa Cruz (The Catalyst) or Keystone Palo Alto in the South Bay. Garcia's previous Sonoma gig had been 1/21/83 at the Phoenix Theatre in Petaluma. This would be his penultimate appearance in Sonoma County, in which he spent a lot of his childhood, before the 7/7/88 JGAB gigs at the Cabaret in Cotati.

! P: I haven't spent enough time with the rest of the show to have a strong opinion, but my sense is that it is an appropriate start to  The real stuff is deep without dragging (see s1t06 Like A Road, s2t05 Miss Moon, s2t07 Lucky Old Sun). The latter, especially, is a song that I don't usually dig, but it's just really nice here, as are the others. I always love Like A Road, always, in every period. Period. The peppy/bouncy stuff is peppy and bouncy (s1t02 How Sweet, s1t03 TLEO, s1t08 My Sisters And Brothers, s2t02 Stop That Train, s2t06 Run For The Roses). The songs that are supposed to rock rock. Good stuff all around, but you'll remember it for the "Don't Let Go" -- see below.

! R: s1t06 Like a Road clips in

! R: s1t08 Sisters and Brothers cuts in

! R: s2t01-02 mic adjustments at end of HTC and start of STT

! P: s2t04 Think is also outstanding. Jerry's first solo is blistering hot. He was higher and feedbackier in the first go-round, then as he turns the second minute he drops down lower. Later in 2-min mark he's right in the middle range, drops some fanning @ 2:54, twist in some edge and feedback, drop to Melvin @ 3:20 or so. Late 4, he's fanning again, shredding pretty well. This is not early 1981 shredding, or mid-1983, but it's good. Enthusiastic on the vocals, rocking and swaying in whatever nondescript comfyshoes he's wearing.

! P: s2t05 Miss Moon Jerry starts with a little vocal flub, and I think he is too high up in the vocal register, though he seems to pulling it off.

! P: s2t03 Don't Let Go: I have been waiting years for this show, ever since the next night knocked my socks off. I was especially waiting for the Don't Let Go, which represents the return of the song after a 3.5 year absence (12/7/84). And it doesn't disappoint me. Listen to Jerry belt in the four-minute mark and tell me he isn't psyched. Like the next night and the other '88 versions, this one is very upbeat, but doesn't feel truncated. Jerry is already screaming and growling his singing in the 3:30ff mark and tearing ragged edges with his guitar, then drops down into some plucky lower-register stuff. Up high. Jerry explores lots of cool spaces with it. At the same time, it's punchy enough not to wander. From 10:30 ish Garcia is playing some super fast chords that remind me of the summer 1974 GD jams into U.S. Blues. The return to the song around the 11-min mark is super fast-paced, almost double-time ... yeah!! It may even be just a little too fast, but I gotta say everyone is locked in. It's structured just about perfectly, IMO. FANTASTIC @@ This is in my top three versions of "Don't Let Go", along with the next night (2/6/88) and the 5/19/89 monster.

! P: I haven't spent enough time with the rest of the show to have a strong opinion, but my sense is that it doesn't quite equal the next night in overall strength. Still, sixteen songs is a solid indicator that Our Man felt like playing on this night.

! R: s2t07-08 L channel very out from 2:09-3:24 of LOS, out again LOS 5:28- then low until 1:35 of TUIB.

! R: s2t08 TUIB some discontinuities (skips) at start, sound analog.

! Disclaimer: This is part of a "Closet Call" project aimed at getting missing Garcia dates into the digital realm. These are "warts and all" ... straight transfers of the source cassettes with editing only of the most offensive tape transitions and such. If you don't like hiss, possible speed problems, etc., etc., then move along. And, to anticipate a FAQ: no, I don't plan on doing 16/44s of these.Thanks to wk for supplying these tapes!

http://jgmf.blogspot.com

Grandma said, 'Boy, go and follow your heart': JGMS at Keystone Berkeley, November 27, 1974

LN jg1974-11-27.jgms.106mins.sbd-GEMS.91343.flac1644

Just a few quick notes.

1) Paul Humphrey drumming. The drummer is fast and great. He is noted in Rex's handwriting on the box for reel #3.

2) Some of this material is just amazing. "Valdez In The Country" and "Freedom Jazz Dance" should make us very Grateful that Merl was there to challenge Garcia with some serious jazz instrumentals. "Going, Going, Gone" is also just such a wonderful tune. If I had more time, I'd write up song notes on these three tunes.

• One subpoint. There are those who suggest that the demise of the Garcia-Saunders relationship (and of the band LOM) in 1975) primarily reflected musical issues. Hypothesis 1: Garcia just couldn't hang with the deep jazz and funk that Merl and, e.g., Aunt Monk (could play); Hypothesis 2: "musical differences", in the sense that Jerry wanted to move to more white standards (boogie-woogie stuff with Nicky, southern white gospel stuff [really black, of course] with Keith, Donna and Tutt). Either way, what the jazz instrumental here recall for me is the extent to which Garcia really was challenged to play out with some of the this JGMS (and, to a lesser extent, LOM) material.

• OK, a second subpoint: "Going, Going, Gone"

Grandma said, “Boy, go and follow your heart
And you’ll be fine at the end of the line
All that’s gold isn’t meant to shine
Don’t you and your one true love ever part”

3) The performance is top-shelf. I can see why these guys thought this was a band with a future (as they head toward the apparently greater intended permanence of Legion of Mary, a band with a name). Everybody is great here. Merl is great. Martin is great. Garcia is great. John Kahn is great. Humphrey is great. I don't know why things started getting so sluggish in 1975 --well, I have some ideas-- but this tape reveals a band full of pros who are drinking deeply from the well of American music.

4) I have corrected my understanding of the Betty tapes. There are three bunches. This is from "Bunch 1".

Jerry Garcia and Merl Saunders
Keystone
2119 University Avenue
Berkeley, CA 94704
November 27, 1974 (Wednesday)
106 min "Bunch One" Betty Cantor-Jackson soundboard

--set I (4 tracks, 52:52, probably incomplete)
s1t01. //Valdez In The Country [#15:05] [0:24] %
s1t02. //You Can Leave Your Hat On [#13:35] [0:18] %
s1t03. //Going, Going, Gone// [#12:56#] %
s1t04. //Mystery Train [#10:18] (1) [0:16]

--Set II (4 tracks, 53:23)--
s2t01. [0:04] He Ain't Give You None [12:56] [0:09] % [0:33]
s2t02. Freedom Jazz Dance [14:05] % [1:10]
s2t03. Someday // Baby [9:#24] [1:09]
s2t04. I Second That Emotion [13:41] [0:12] (2)

! Band: Jerry Garcia and Merl Saunders
! Lineup: Jerry Garcia - el-g, vocals;
! Lineup: Merl Saunders - keyboards, vocals;
! Lineup: Martin Fierro - saxophone, flute;
! Lineup: John Kahn - el-bass;
! Lineup: Paul Humphrey - drums.

JGMF:

! Recording: symbols: % = recording discontinuity; / = clipped song; // = cut song; ... = fade in/out; # = truncated timing; [ ] = 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/19741127-02

! db: shnid-89216 (less complete, deprecated); shnid-91343 (more complete, this fileset).

! ACT2: Paul Pena

! setlist: There may have been a song before Valdez In The Country (which would have been a strange opener).

! personnel: this is right on the cusp of the transition between Paul Humphrey and Ronnie Tutt. Paul is really active, light on the kick pedal but snappy on the snare.

! R: I will take the liberty of reconstructing the GEMS notes for my own purposes. So this is a compilation of two CD sources which had some common ancestors but diverged somewhere along the way. The primary source came to GEMS via Zack Tucker, with lineage MSR > P > D > CD. Source 1 provides all except first 1:30 of Valdez and last two songs, and was previously circulated as shnid 89216. Source 2 has precisely the same lineage, but came to GEMS via jjoops and the Tupperware of Treasures. Both sets of CDs were extracted and processed by Jamie Waddell on the **GEMS** Edit Station (primary software Wavelab 6.0) and circulated as a **GEMS** Production at Lossless Legs, ca. April 11, 2008.

! R: Genealogy: The common ancestry of the source CDs here is MSR > P > D > CD. These are "Bunch One" Betty Boards. For background, here's WBOTB co-conspirator Blake Gilpin's post to DNC on 7/28/98: "As far as I know, there were three bunches of "Betty Boards" that left The auction. Bunch One was the largest, purchased by a guy named Don, who knew the Sale was about to happen because his wife worked in the mortgage industry and saw the paperwork. Bunch One was the largest, purchased by a guy named Don, who knew the Sale was about to happen because his wife worked in the mortgage industry and saw the paperwork. This is the most commonly known and cataloged set of which the *reels only* were spun to PCM / Beta and most were circulated. The cassettes were not spun to digital. Some of the PCM-0 betas, specifically the Garcia Saunders material and others have not been circulated beyond Menke or possibly Dougal. ... The list of uncirculated material from Bunch One is below. (I fell into Don's and apparently Dougal's disfavor by letting a neighbor, who was an employee of the band, know what tapes we had. I had not been asked to keep these secret and I still maintain that it was the proper thing to do, if only as a courtesy. Probably just bad timing.)" These Bunch One Betties were later merged with Bunch Two (mostly comprised of Fall 1977 GD tapes, apparently), and I have traditionally (and perhaps mistakenly, or at least misleadingly) referred to these as "Second Batch" Betty tapes. I'll try to go back to original and standard usage, and to be more careful. (In my defense, Rob Eaton himself initially called these "the fourth box" until he concluded that these, which he restored in ca. 1995-1996, a.k.a. the water-damaged tapes, were one and the same.)

! setlist: seeder notes "The compilation of these two sources completes this show, minus a few missing moments in Bossa Martin [sic: Valdez In The Country], which started in late, and Someday Baby, which had a reel flip, and no patch source exists yet." I am not so sure. I think there's probably a song or two before VITC.

! R: s1t01 Valdez In The Country cuts in on a Martin solo. Things are cookin'! Unknown amount missing.

! P: s1t01 VITC is incredible. Martin is on fire, working with some great weird reverb. Merl's long electric-piano feature in the 6-7 minute mark is light and groovy and hot. @ 7:49 Garcia starts doing some syncopated off-key chordings, and then early in the 8-minute he alights with flowing fingers, so measured and controlled and so many things to say as we approach the 9-minute mark. Late in the 11-minute mark they start spacing out, really fantastic lunar-orbiter sounds from Merl, Jerry moaning around behind, the drums just gorgeous, and Martin maybe playing a little percussion, but very tastefully (cf. 11/2/74). Merl is having one of his finest performances here, as he and Jerry collaboratively pour some honey down the ol' rabbit hole. It's keeping a real nice beat, keeping the Brazilian rhythms, Martin, satisfied, picks up his horn early in the 14-minute mark, Jerry starts lettin' it roll down that same ol' rabbit hole (he's decided to follow it down, naturally), Martin takes the cue

! R: s1t01 VITC zipper @ 1:22

! R: s1t02 YCLYHO cuts in on "//take off your dress."

! P: s1t02 YCLYHO JG is doing some nice long pulling in the 6-7 minute mark, then quickens the pace with a solo that has some of the feel of what the GD would do in those long, pre-"Fire On The Mountain" versions of "Scarlet Begonias", ca. 1976. In late 8 and into 9-minute mark, Kahn starts really asserting himself with some beautiful, hefty descending blues bass lines. Descending from already down in the bottom, that is. Merl plays more electric piano over the 10-minute mark, while John is still really playing beefy, Jerry comping behind, Merl groaning as he floats over the keys, just a righty for awhile, drops some heavier and double-time left-hand around 11:00. The drop really, really cleanly into the melody again just at the 12-minute mark. Fixing up the tempo a little bit, readjusting the ass in the drummer's chair, and Merl returns to his lament about suspicious minds a' talkin' round the neighborhood.

! R: this is clearly a Betty Board. Listen to that drum tone! She has got it locked in.

! P: s1t03 GGG this is some of the straight-churchiest organ playing you will ever hear from Merl Saunders. The B-3's lament to God, and while silent prayers seem sometimes to fall on deaf ears, how could He not hear this call? Martin's flute is real gentle behind. "Grandma said 'Boy, go and follow your heart'," what a gorgeous line. Dylan. Man oh man.

! R: s1t03 Merl's organ comes into R-speaker around 0:22.

! P: s1t04 Mystery Train is not one that usually moves me, but this is just good, hot music. The drummer is locked right the fuck in, the rhythm is in a Brink's truck. Jerry's vocals are energetic. Kahn strands bass lines together like a pretzel maker right across the 9-minute mark, feels like he must have had both hands (and the bass, of course) up under his chin, wiggling his fingers across those thick strings. Nice.

! s1t04 (1) JG: "Thanks. We're gonna take a break for a little while. We'll be back a little bit later."

! P: s2t01 HAGYN listen to how distinctive the drummer sounds as he comes in!  Jerry blowing some glass 4:30ish, goes 'round again over the 5-min mark.

! personnel: again, when I listen to the start of Freedom Jazz Dance, Humphrey sounds totally distinctive, and is hot as hell, by the way.

! R: s2t03 SB reel splice @ 6:25

! R: there's a high-pitched whine in the "source 2" material, beginning @ end s2t02 and continuing.

! R: s2t04 drops @ 0:14-0:26, 0:40-0:44, 1:22, 1:33, 1:44, 6:44, 8:35-8:36.

! s2t04 (2) JG: "Thanks a lot. Looks like they're tryin' to close the bar. See you all later on."

New Releases

Not surprisingly, we saw a flurry of Garcia-related releases on August 1, 2012, which would have been Jerry's 70th birthday.


Garcia Grisman - Orignal Hi-Def Master 
Garcia Grisman Alternate - Orignal Hi-Def Master

http://acousticoasis.com/rooms/study/garcia-grisman-alt/garcia-grisman-alt.html


Acoustic Oasis has released a "high def master" cut of the original Garcia Grisman album, and a new Garcia Grisman Alternate, comprised of second takes from the same sessions.

This is great news. Acoustic Oasis is doing it right here. There are mp3, flac1644, and flac2496 download options. I couldn't get the dowload manager to work (they may be asking too much of some poor old machines and operating systems), but doing it manually was quick and relatively painless. Things sound great.

My only nudge: do it like jazz and give us the session details. Who, what, when, where, how recorded, etc. etc. etc. The whole enchilada. Why not make more information available? It's getting time for some serious scholarship on Grisman and lots of other, so, please, make future researchers' and biographers' lives easier, and give us data! Be the jazz.

Oh yeah, one more point: all filesets require checksum files that can be verified upon completion of the download in order to confirm file intregrity. Essential.

Garcia Live Volume 1: Live at the Capitol Theatre

http://jerrygarcia.shop.musictoday.com/Dept.aspx?cp=640_57727

Another fuck yeah! The Jerry Garcia Band (Garcia, Kahn, Ozzie Ahlers on keys, and John D'Fonseca on drums) in some filthy fonky stuff at John Scher's (and east coast JGB's) home hall on March 1, 1980. Looks like it won't be out until November. Looks like whatever this new ©2012 Jerry Garcia Family, LLC is, they have also done it right. We have mp3, flac1644 and flac2496 download options. Nice!

These, in addition to the Fantasy release of the Complete July 10-11, 1973 Keystone shows!

Whatever legal logjams were in the way seem to have been busted through. Happy listening!

JGMS July 10-11, 1973 complete

So, Fantasy is going to release the complete July 10-11, 1973 Keystone shows. Hooray!

I'll be able to check my work on these shows. As a reminder:

• 7/10/73: what's on which release
• 7/11/73: what's on which release
• JGMS: Live at Keystone, vol. 1 datings
• JGMS: Live at Keystone, vol. 2 datings
• JGMS: Live at Keystone, vol. 3 (encores) datings

100k

Passed 100k pageviews. Of course, I probably account for 99,000 of those. But thanks to all of you who visit and read and comment.

JGMS February 7-8, 1975: canceled?

The Jerry Site lists JGMS shows for Friday, February 7, 1975 and Saturday, February 8, 1975, based on listing in Hayward Daily Review, 1/31/75, p. 44.

The above are clippings of the Keystone's weekly ads, I don't know from which paper from the San Francisco Sunday Examiner and Chronicle Datebook, which I lovingly refer to as the SFSECDB. The ad beginning with 1/25 indeed shows the JGMS shows, but the next one, starting 2/1/75, has California replacing JGMS on Friday and, tentatively, Butch Whacks doing so on Saturday.

Because we have such great data from so many sources, I haven't started going through and cross-checking various dates against these kinds of sources. It would be time-consuming. But here's an instance in which this little weekly listings, being sequential, reflects the kinds of fine-grained changes that we might find in them. Here's one case, anyway.

I suggest that Listings for this date --i.e., The List, i.e., now, The Jerry Site -- reflect a cancellation for JGMS. Thoughts?

Also, I believe that the Kingfish listings for 2/14-15/75 are new and should be added to the Kingfish lists.

Oakland Times

In at least June and July 1973 a paper called Oakland Times ran some Keystone articles, some Jerry data that are interesting. I have copies of some clippings, but there is no little publication information. 

Oakland Public Library has a few numbers in 1965: http://encore.oaklandlibrary.org/iii/encore/record/C__Rb1507575__Soakland+times__Orightresult__X5?lang=eng&suite=cobalt. 

Nothing turns up in any of the following

• Berkeley Public Library: http://encore.berkeley-public.org/iii/encore/search?formids=target&lang=eng&suite=def&reservedids=lang%2Csuite&submitmode=&submitname=&target=oakland+times&x=0&y=0
• San Francisco Public Library: http://encore.sfpl.org/iii/encore/search/C__St%3A%28Oakland+Times%29__Orightresult__U1?lang=eng&suite=pearl
• UC Berkeley: http://oskicat.berkeley.edu/search~S1?/toakland+times/toakland+times/1%2C4%2C7%2CB/exact&FF=toakland+times&1%2C4%2C

Kirsten Baldock of the Magazines and Newspapers Department at OPL gave me one other clue: "I suspect ... that you are looking for the Oakland Times that was published by W.T. Masterson starting around 1965."

Does anyone know anything about this publication? I'd love to paw through it a little.

 

A Rare Sight

A Jerryless month in Berkeley: April 1975. I'd bet it was a bad month financially for the Keystone.

Kid Charlemagne

I absolutely love this song. I never knew it was about Owsley et al., roughly.

JGB at Northwestern: Cahn Auditorium, March 12, 1976 (late show)

LN jg1976-03-12.jgb.late.aud-unk.xxxxx.flac1644

My love of audience tapes is evident to anyone who reads here. The anthropological instinct (and practice) underpinning field recording enthralls me. To me, everybody who ever taped a gig is right there with Alan Lomax and all the rest. Now, sometimes you have to be willing to sacrifice your aesthetics a little bit. Some of these tapes were bad from the start and haven’t gotten any better with age. But They Are What They Are. And if there’s any possibility at all of gleaning something relevant to Jerry Garcia’s Middle Finger, then I can only but sacrifice my ears in the line of duty.

I recently waded into a pretty good tape, Eric Coplen’s partial 3/12/76 early (7:30 pm) show and the first song of the late show, from an era that is extremely uneven in terms of the availability and quality of recordings. I did so for all kinds of reasons, but I guess my main motivation is to make sure that I don’t let selection bias around recordings generate biased analyses on other dimensions. We all have a tendency to gravitate toward the stuff that sounds good (or that we suspect will be musically interesting, well played, etc.). But insofar as the distribution of sound quality is not random with respect to other things that we care about (e.g., performance quality), then we are on inferentially problematic terrain. In plain English, sort of, we can’t safely generalize from the sample of tapes we have to the population of all tapes. This is also an era that I have historically found dull and uninspiring, and with which I have spent correspondingly little time. I am endeavoring to dig into this period a little bit more than I have up to this point. 3/12/76 early was part of that. I found it to be quite a nice performance.

Here I report on the late (11 pm) Jerry Garcia Band (JGB) show from the same date-location, March 12, 1976 at Cahn Auditorium, Northwestern University, 600 Emerson Street, Evanston, IL 60201.

First, the tape. It’s an unattributed audience tape, transferred sometime in the 2000s from cassettes, perhaps tapes supplied by Walter Keenan and transferred by David Minches. It’s not that bad, but it’s not that great. What I really like is how this tape captures some of the enthusiasm and intelligence of college kids. They are very, very excited at the start, and as the song winds down at least one young man appears to lose control [NSFW] of himself. The taper legitimately calls “Train, Train” as “Mystery Train” begins, and the whoop of recognition is audible, the whoosh palpable. Great energy in this crowd, the occasional flicks of Bics and ensuing mirth. Good times.

Second, the performance. I love it, with one real exception, and that is “Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door”. Let me get the griping out of the way first. Now, I will generally agree with the assertion that you can’t judge a book by its cover. There a couple of exceptions, however, and the rule any version of ‘Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door’ exceeding 17 minutes in length is too long is among them. A great many, if not all, of the versions JGB played in 1976 fall afoul of this rule (see the official release Don’t Let Go [Grateful Dead Records, January 2001], recorded 5/21/76 at the Orpheum Theatre in San Francisco, containing another classic example of the genre). In arguing that these numbers are just too darn slow, I have often encountered the retort that perhaps I lack the sophistication necessary to appreciating such masterpieces, perhaps I am just too impatient to let the impact make itself felt. Maybe. Or maybe they’re just too slow.

OK, I have made my point. As for the good stuff, I have to say that I am updating my priors on this period northward as I listen to the shows: it’s a really good show. Here’s some blow by blow.

“Harder They Come” finds Garcia bucking and snorting out of the gate, the crowd athunder, and the recordists’ deck getting kicked around in the initial mayhem. Coplen’s tape could replace the start if one had the time and inclination to do so. More notations: HTC is nice, comes out with the bounce it needed to be really successful in the Garcia Band. There are some very, very slow versions in 1976 that deprive the song of the lilt it needs. Keith nice solo in the 6-minute mark. Jerry steps forward in the 7-min mark for a solo, patient but inventive. He's so relaxed, just letting it flow, nicely lubed. Keith stepping up to weave around and through Jerry, so they are both upfront as we round the 8-minute mark. Tutt is hammering, like they are those big old marching band drums played with toms. Banging. Jerry takes another run around and puts some grit in it this time. A young man in the crowd loses his head as the song winds down, taper asks him to hush. It was ever thus!

“Tore Up Over You” is one that I too frequently overlook. This one’s an object lesson in why not to do that. Garcia pulls off a seriously loud and metallic solo in the 6-minute mark that has young man again exclaiming. Late 6 and into the 7-minute mark, Jerome John Garcia is pulling some ass-slapping power chords. This is where 1976 is good. Jerry was just starting to fatten up the power chords that would become a staple of his ’76-’78 period playing in the Grateful Dead. Here, there are still some filings in there, little bits of tin foil, metallic jolts. It’s a nice blend.

"A Strange Man" beautifully features Donna Jean Godchaux of Muscle Shoals, Alabama. This is sultry southern singing, with perfect main accompaniment from her husband on piano (probably a Steinway), everyone else back behind, Donna all swaying smoke and flowing shadow. She testifies beautifully and tastefully, in charge until 3:45 when Jerry, having hung back respectfully until this point, steps up and rhapsodizes to Donna, guitar-for-her-voice, for a minute or so. Lovely.

Song note: "A Strange Man" (t05): Allan lists it as "Strange Man", but that might perhaps his alphabetization/filing scheme drops indefinite articles, as others (my own included) do definite articles. Deaddisc uses the indefinite article in the title, which I follow. I dunno from alphabetization, but I guess I'll list it under 'S'. What Would a Librarian Do? Anyway, this appeared on Dorothy Love Coates and the Gospel Harmonettes' self-titled 1967 LP on Okeh Records. Note that the record also contains "I'll Be With Thee". Donna said that they just sat around in those days, listening to gospel records. Seems pretty clear that Dorothy Love Coates was among their inspirations.

“Mystery Train” operates on a more terrestrial plane. Jerry rolls it around in his hands for a few extra measures at the start, making sure everything is holding water. When he comes in with his "Train, train" opening, there's a hoot of excitement from the crowd, but it's controlled, tapering quickly, like they were hit by it, it drove the excitement out, but they lassoed it back quickly, still wanted to listen carefully. Fun to put yourself at Northwestern University on this Friday night and feel the excitement that Garcia doing "Mystery Train", with Elvis’s own drummer providing the locomotion, could bring to a crowd. This version just, well, chugs right along, as any self-respecting version of any train song should. Jerry is running it all around, and in the 7-minute mark Tutt starts revving the engine a little bit, a few extra splashes and things are rolling nicely downhill. Clean as a whistle, and as they are winding down Garcia must be windmilling, because he is power-chording very unusually, and the taper, who seems knowledgeable, chuckles and gives him a "yeah". Maybe, Forrest Gump style, he got the idea in this moment for the Garcia-qua-Jordan Nike ad stickers that used to sell wherever Deadheads gathered, and which made him a rich man. Just maybe. “It happens.”

“Friend Of The Devil”: Thankfully, the opiates hadn't yet bitten too hard into the pacing of FOTD. It's still sprightly at this stage. It would become a much slower plod not long after and would never re-acquire the lightness that allowed the music to counterpoint the lyrics to such good effect in early appearances with the Grateful Dead, for example. But this one also has more punch than the super-light acoustic versions from 1970, more heft. So, for my money, this is a very good version of the song.

Listening Notes:

Jerry Garcia Band

Cahn Auditorium, Northwestern University

600 Emerson Street

Evanston, IL 60201

March 12, 1976 (Friday), Late Show, 11 pm

unattributed 80 minute audience recording

--(8 tracks, 79:39)--

01. /The Harder They Come [14:28] [0:33]

02. It Takes A Lot To Laugh, It Takes A Train To Cry [8:38] [0:03] % [0:19]

03. They Love Each Other [6:43] [0:07] % (1) [0:20]

04. Tore Up Over // You [8:8:36] [0:04] %

05. //A Strange Man/ [#5:45#]

06. Mystery Train [9:17] % [0:13]

07. Knockin' On Heaven's Door [17:52] %

08. //Friend Of The Devil [#6:42] %

! Band: Jerry Garcia Band:

! Lineup: Jerry Garcia - el-g, vocals;

! Lineup: John Kahn - el-bass;

! Lineup: Keith Godchaux - piano, vocals;

! Lineup: Ron Tutt - drums, vocals;

! Lineup: Donna Jean Godchaux, vocals.

JGMF:

! Recording: symbols: % = recording discontinuity; / = clipped song; // = cut song; ... = fade in/out; # = truncated timing; [ ] = 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/19760312-02

! db:  shnid-20700. (part early and part late, Eric Coplen MAC, shnf); https://etreedb.org/shn/139524 (late show)

! venue: JBP: http://jerrygarciasbrokendownpalaces.blogspot.com/2012/03/cahn-auditorium-600-emerson-street.html. See also http://www.pickstaiger.org/venues/cahn-auditorium. The data I have seen suggest that the venue capacity at the time of the show was approximately 1,100.

! seealso: https://jgmf.blogspot.com/2012/07/ln-jg1976-03-12jgb1p-2paud.html

! R: tape has a lot more audience noise than the Coplen tape of the early show (and the first tune of this late show). Some taper talk here, things sound exciting. This tape is not terrible. It is a little oversaturated, but I have heard worse. All of the instruments are there. It may be running slow, but with this band it's a little hard to tell. While Donna's voice sounds a little draggy, I think she's just being laconic. Garcia's voice and the guitars sound about right to me, but then again I can't hear.

! context: Nice to hear how excited the kids are as the show starts.

! R: t01 HTC clips in. Not much missing, but could be patched from the Coplen recording of this song. Would also be able to cover some major rumbling and clipping at the start, as I believe (based on taper talk) that the deck got kicked in all the excitement.

! P t01 HTC is nice, comes out with the bounce it needed to be really successful in the Garcia Band. There are some very, very slow versions in 1976 that deprive the song of the lilt it needs. Keith nice solo in the 6-minute mark. Jerry comes around in the 7-min mark for a solo, patient but inventive. He's so relaxed, just letting it flow, nicely lubed. Keith stepping up to weave around and through Jerry, so they are both upfront as we round the 8-minute mark. Tutt is hammering, like they are those big old marching band drums played with toms. Banging. Jerry takes another run around and puts some grit in it this time. A young man in the crowd loses his head, taper asks him to hush.

! t03 (1) flicking of Bics and ensuing mirth.

! P: t04 TUOY Garcia pulls off a seriously loud and metallic solo in the 6-minute mark that has young man again exclaiming. Late 6 and into the 7-minute mark, Jerome John Garcia is pulling some ass-slapping power chords.

! R: t04 TUOY splice @ 7:46, then a few little repeated blips toward the end of the track.

! song: "A Strange Man" (t05): Allan lists it as "Strange Man" http://www.whitegum.com/~acsa/songfile/STRANGEM.HTM, but that might perhaps his alphabetization/filing scheme drops indefinite articles, as others (my own included) do definite articles. Deaddisc uses the indefinite article in the title, http://www.deaddisc.com/songs/Strange_Man.htm, which I follow. I dunno from alphabetization, but I guess I'll list it under 'S'. How's that for splitting the baby? Anyway, this appeared on Dorothy Love Coates and the Gospel Harmonettes' self-titled 1967 LP on Okeh Records. Note that the record also contains "I'll Be With Thee". Donna said that they just sat around in those days, listening to gospel records. Seems pretty clear that Dorothy Love Coates was among their inspirations.

! R: t05 Strange Man cuts in and clips out

! P: t05 A Strange Man. This is sultry southern singing, the piano the perfect lead accompaniment, everything else back behind, spotlight on Donna. She belts very beautifully and tastefully here. Very, very nice! Donna is in charge all the way until 3:45, Jerry, appropriately, having stayed way back. Here he steps up and rhapsodizes back to Donna, guitar-style, for a minute or so. Donna sings this song absolutely beautifully. I wish I had seen her sing this.

! P t06 Mystery Train is really nice. First, the taper recognizes it, and calls "Train, Train", which is a totally legitimate way to refer to this song, in my book. Then Jerry rolls it around in his hands for an extra couple of measures, making sure everything is holding water. When he comes in with his "Train, train" opening, there's a hoot of excitement from the crowd, but almost controlled, like they were hit by it but still wanted to listen carefully. Fun to put yourself at Northwestern University on this Friday night and feel the excitement that Garcia doing "Mystery Train" could bring to a crowd. This version just, well, chugs right along, as any self-respecting version of any train song should. Jerry is running it all around, and in the 7-minute mark Tutt starts revving the engine a little bit, a few extra splashes and things are rolling nicely downhill. Clean as a whistle, and as they are winding down Garcia must be windmilling, because he is power-chording very unusually, and the taper, who seems knowledgeable, chuckles and gives him a "yeah". Maybe, Forrest Gump style, he got the idea here and now for the Garcia-qua-Jordan Nike ad stickers that used to sell wherever Deadheads gathered, and which made him a rich man. Shit happens, right?

! P: t07 Knocking On Heaven's Door, this is an example of 1976 JGB drawing things out too deeply for me. Feels like slogging through mud to me. Such a dirge. Everyone is sleeping through it. At one point (@ 2:49) Garcia drops an alive-with-possibilities ascending eight-note run, you hear the crowd shift and a few little yips of anticipation, and then everyone falls back to sleep. Too much.

! R: t08 FOTD cuts in, not much missing.

! P: t08 FOTD: Thankfully, the opiates hadn't bitten too hard into the pacing of FOTD yet. It's still sprightly at this stage. It would become a deadly dirge not long after and would never require any of the lightness that allowed the music to counterpoint the lyrics to such good effect in early appearances with the Grateful Dead, for example. But this one also has more punch than the super-light acoustic versions from 1970, more heft. So, for my money, this is a very good version of FOTD.

JGB: June 23, 1977: Benefit Concert for the Survival of the Forest Community of Camp Meeker

On Thursday, June 23, 1977, Jerry Garcia Band (JGB) out-of-pattern early and late shows at Santa Rosa High School. High school gigs were pretty unusual for Garcia at any point (beyond early Grateful Dead), but by the late 1970s it almost always meant that there was some personal connection, somehow, to Garcia. For example, Garcia-Kahn (JGJK) played gigs at South Eugene High School on June 5 and 6th, 1982 that had a Kesey family connection (see the June 5, 1982 Oregon State Pen post), as, I suspect, did the Churchill High School (Eugene, OR) OAITW gig dated May 8, 1973.

The whole event has a great Sonoma County vibe to it. A pretty poster reveals a billing as “Maria Muldaur and Special Guest” in a "Benefit Concert for the Survival of the Forest Community of Camp Meeker”:

The invaluable Paul Liberatore published a piece on Maria a week before the show, finding her leaning in, preparing for a tour, raising two kids in Mill Valley, and taking time to help a friend and a cause.

A very old friend of mine, Louise Patterson, lives in Camp Meeker, a little redwood community of about 1,500 people near Occidental. It's a beautiful, inspirational pocket in the woods. I've gone there now and then to lay out for a day or two. One day she called me in tears, sobbing about these two brothers who want to log it, cut down the redwoods.

About ten miles west of Guerneville, this is a breathtaking –no, breathgiving—little patch of earth that Garcia, who went to high school not too far away in Cazadero, would have known well.

The show was announced again in the I-J on June 17th: "Maria Muldaur, accompanied by Jerry Garcia of the Grateful Dead, will sing at 7.30 p m. Thursday in the auditorium of Santa Rosa High School. The show is a benefit for the Camp Meeker Improvement Club, a group opposed to logging redwoods in the Southern Sonoma community of Camp Meeker." With brisk ticket sales, a second (11 PM) show was added a few days later. I take note, because it's what I do, of the phrase "Jerry Garcia of the Grateful Dead": it's strongly out-of-pattern. For his own paying gigs, the contracts always, from the beginning he started touring under his own shingle in 1974, forbade any mention of the Dead or his affiliation with the band in event publicity. That he'd allow that rule to be bent almost certainly reflects some combination of it being John's old lady Maria who recruited him (most likely most important) and it being a cause he really believed in.

I think the nature of the event also drives the primary historical interest here, which is that Ronnie Tutt experienced a direct conflict between his Elvis Presley employment and his Garcia involvement. Mr. Tutt had donned his “Blue Light” band suit and was drumming in Des Moines behind Elvis this night -- the last time he'd ever do so. I suspect that this benefit came up after he had committed to the Elvis tour. Greg Errico appears to have gotten the call to sub for him with JGB. As a side note, after Des Moines Tutt would miss the last three shows of the Elvis tour for the birth of twins. Probably within two months, he’d stop playing live with Jerry (until a brief reunion for the late 1981 JGB tour, October 31-November 19). We don’t know much about Tutt’s departure from JGB other than that it happened, and right around the time that Elvis died (on August 16, 1977).

I go into all of that because, at one point, I was thinking that Tutt’s absence foreshadowed his departure from the JGB, as if there was some friction or things just weren’t clicking. But I no longer believe that. It’s more mundane, I think: Tutt just had a scheduling conflict.

One other personnel note. I assume and think I hear this as Donna Jean Godchaux. But it could be Maria. The truth is, there’s probably more variability around all of this than we have ever appreciated.

I post some listening notes below. Just to put a bow around my overall impression, I should say that, to me, this version of the JGB (Garcia-Kahn-K. Godchaux-Tutt, plus Donna Jean and/or Maria Muldaur singing) got pretty steadily better from its start in 1976 through its end in ca. late summer 1977. It’s not monotonic, of course – 4/3/76b may be the best show of the period—but it’s an overall trend. Contrary to many listeners, I find the 1976 flavor of the band to be way too cough syrupy. There are lots of reasons to “Just Say No” to heroin, and not the least of them (though certainly not the greatest) is that music seems to record at 45 RPM and playback at 33 1/3. Things … just … get … really … slowwwwwww. 1977 shows still sometimes drag, but I find more sway and bounce that gets my toe tapping.

The real highlight here is the 26-minute “Don’t Let Go”. I like it very much. I’ll write up some song notes about it at some point.

Listening notes follow.

Jerry Garcia Band
Santa Rosa High School
1235 Mendocino Avenue
Santa Rosa, CA 95401
June 23, 1977 (Thursday) - Late Show
Connor MAC (Menke gear) shnid-16714

--late show (5 tracks, 73:53)--
l-t01. They Love Each Other [7:25] [0:10] %
l-t02. Knockin' On Heaven's Door [14:55] [0:21] % [0:54]
l-t03. Tore Up Over You [11:55] [0:23] % (1) [1:12]
l-t04. The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down [9:52] [0:19] %
l-t05. /Don't Let Go [26:05] (2) [0:22] %

! ACT1: Jerry Garcia Band #3f
! Lineup: Jerry Garcia - el-g, vocals;
! Lineup: John Kahn - el-bass;
! Lineup: Keith Godchaux - piano
! Lineup: Greg Errico - drums;
! Lineup: Donna Jean Godchaux - 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/19770623-02 (early); https://jerrybase.com/events/19770623-03 (late)

! JGC: http://jerrygarcia.com/show/1977-06-23-santa-rosa-high-school-santa-rosa-ca/

! db: https://etreedb.org/shn/16714 (this fileset); https://etreedb.org/shn/137527 (early show McClary MAC)

! historical: The show, a "Benefit Concert for the Survival of the Forest Community of Camp Meeker" was billed as Maria Muldaur and Special Guest, but it is the Jerry Garcia Band.

! personnel: Ron Tutt was playing in Des Moines with Elvis's band. I suspect that this benefit gig came up after Tutt had committed to the Elvis tour. Greg Errico got the call.

! personnel: I assume and think I hear this as Donna Jean Godchaux. But it could be Maria. The truth is, there’s probably more variability around all of this than we have ever appreciated.

! venue: JBP: http://jerrygarciasbrokendownpalaces.blogspot.com/2012/07/santa-rosa-high-school-1235-mendocino.html.

! map: https://maps.google.com/maps?q=1235+Mendocino+Avenue,+Santa+Rosa,+CA&oe=utf-8&client=firefox-a&hnear=1235+Mendocino+Ave,+Santa+Rosa,+California+95401&gl=us&t=h&z=16

! R: "Sony ECM -> Sony TC-152 MAC -> D -> CD (Ryan at thejerrysite.com indicates the taper was Bob Menke). Thanks to Chuck Gannon for the great sounding discs! EAC/SHN by jim@juddcreek.com 4/03".

! R: Actually taped by Charlie Connor, formerly of SoCal, using Bob's gear.

! seeder note: "Quite excellent, both sound and performance. Rich bass."

! P: s2t02 KOHD Donna Jean comes in on harmony vocals. Jerry pulls some very, very long phrases in the 9-minute mark, and Keith is tinking very nicely behind him. Jerry wailing, but slow and careful. I know they don't go together, but he's way up the neck pulling glass strings, and then swings down to lower register. Errico making himself heard @ 10:45.

! R: s2t03 (1) what a wonderful piece of audience taping, to capture the in-between stuff. It sounds like Garcia is running through the changes for Dixie Down, e.g., with a drummer that they don't work much with.

! P: s2t04 TNTDODD, you can really hear the scratch in Garcia's voice. I'd bet his hair was frizzy and graying. The start of this song feels like a little bit of a struggle, tempo-wise. Around 4 minutes in, Garcia is taking a beautiful, delicate chinese flower solo. Lots of sustain. The recording picks up the depth of this interpretation very nicely. Jerry and Donna singing. Nice.

! R: s2t05 "First couple notes of Don't Let Go missing, but the edit (prior to [seeder] copy) is seamless."

! P: s2t05 DLG @ 4:45 ff JG is doing a really nice, long testamentary solo. Speak, brother! He's playing a poppy line that puts me in mind of Peanuts or cartoons or Vince Guaraldi or something right in this moment. (Probably subconscious: Santa Rosa also houses the Charles M. Schulz stuff [and I think, in his time, housed Charles M. Schulz] and Mr. Guaraldi.) Anyway, this is a really nice example of what the 1977 JGB was capable of, but only really fleetingly. Things were still too slow, a la 1976, for my taste. But when they picked up, like with this, they picked up very, very nicely. Garcia in the 7-minute mark is crafting long Cassadyesque run-ons, with the advantage, in principle, of being able to breath (which thefastestmanalive seemed not to need). In the 15-minute mark Kahn is doing some bit fat pulls for a few measures, and then he solos about 15:45-17:30. I need to think of when was his last big Bay Area bass solo like this? At 17:30 he starts blowing trail back toward Don't Let Go and everyone wisely gets behind and with the bass. Garcia is still keeping a lot of fuzz around things though, not quite ready to pass up his play time. So things are gonna get weird, and around 18:45 we're out and about. The sky and stars can be mighty big in Sonoma County and he pulls some riverine echo from 19:45 forward. Man oh man is this tape just wonderful, so airy and roomy. They really draw this thing through and through here. Lots of singing and hollering and tearing it up. Jerry strums 'em to a reasonably clean close. Errico's a freaking pro, right there.

! s2t05 (2) No stage announcement, no thank you, no nothin'. Harumph.

REFERENCES
! ref: Liberatore, Paul. 1977. Maria Muldaur: ‘Playin’ Real Good – For Free’. Independent Journal (San Rafael, CA), June 16, 1977, p. 29. Re 6/23/77
! ref: “Rock Billboard: Maria Muldaur slates benefit,” Independent Journal, June 17, 1977, p. 27.
! ref: “Overlook,” Independent Journal (San Rafael, CA), June 21, 1977, p. 17.

LN jg1976-03-12.jgb.1p-2p.aud-coplen.20700.shn2flac

If there were more time, I'd like to talk about "Who Was John?", elaborate on the racial structure of the music, the unevenness of this period (March-April 1976).  But there's not time, so just a data dump.

Jerry Garcia Band
Cahn Auditorium, Northwestern University
600 Emerson Street
Evanston, IL 60201
March 12, 1976 (Friday)
55 minute Eric Coplen aud, partial early (7:30 pm) and partial late (11 pm) shows

--(6 tracks, 55:09)--

--early Show, 7:30 pm (partial, 5 tracks, 40:17)--
t01. /How Sweet It Is (To Be Loved By You) [07:51] [7:52] %
t02. /Catfish John [10:41] [0:07] %
t03. After Midnight [11:50] [0:08] %
t04. (1) Mission In The Rain [7:14] %
t05. Who Was John?// [2:24]#

--late Show, 11 pm (partial, 1 track, 14:52)--
t06. Harder They Come [14:47] [0:05] %

! ACT1: Jerry Garcia Band #3
! lineup: Jerry Garcia - el-g, vocals;
! lineup: Keith Godchaux - piano, vocals;
! lineup: John Kahn - el-bass;
! lineup: Ronnie Tutt - drums;
! lineup: Donna Jean Godchaux - vocals.

JGMF:

! Recording: symbols: % = recording discontinuity; / = clipped song; // = cut song; ... = fade in/out; # = truncated timing; [ ] = 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/19760312-01 (early); https://jerrybase.com/events/19760312-02 (late).

! db:  shnid-20700 (this source); https://etreedb.org/shn/139524 (late show)

! venue: JBP: http://jerrygarciasbrokendownpalaces.blogspot.com/2012/03/cahn-auditorium-600-emerson-street.html. See also http://www.pickstaiger.org/venues/cahn-auditorium. The data I have seen suggest that the venue capacity at the time of the show was approximately 1,100.

! seealso: https://jgmf.blogspot.com/2012/07/ln-jg1976-03-12jgblateaud.html

! R: "AUDMC > C > DAT > WAV > SHN. Recorded 2nd row, center left, with unknown deck with built in mics, 1st gen source tape from Eric Coplen. Cass > DAT by Ryan Shriver. DAT > SHN by Noah Weiner." But I think that's incorrect. I think's it's in the following note.

! R: I believe this to be correct. Taped by Eric Coplen from 2nd row, center left, built-in mics on unknown deck, with unknown media. Master cassette (or possible 1st gen?) transfer: played back on Philips FC-60 deck > Lucid AD9624 > Sony PCM-R500 DAT deck (record), by Rhan Shriver. Fostex D5 DAT deck (playback) > Turtle Beach Montego II Digital I/O > Sound Forge (wav edits and track IDs) > SHNTOOL (SBE fix) > MKW Audio Compression Tool (shn), by Noah Wiener, ca. 2003. This flac copy done by JGMF (unknown date), shns replaced; noted and tagged 7/15/2012.

! R: This is a good recording. We sometimes forget that we are fortunate. If one looks to this period March-April 1976, there are tons of holes in the taped record. Lots and lots of stuff missing, sometimes at places you *know* someone was taping, such as the Cap in Passic (4/2/76). Some absolutely ear-splittingly dreadful tapes for some shows, I mean they really leave you depressed. And then one of the crown jewels of musical field recording, Pat Lee's tape of JGB 3/6/76 at Moore's Egyptian Theater in Seattle (http://db.etree.org/shn/107734).

! R: Hard to say what parts of the early show might be present here. Every piece of music is discontinous to the next. That said, the designations seem very sound. The "Harder They Come" here is the same one on a lightly circulated tape of the late show, independent confirmation of the validity of Coplen's designations. Given, also, that none of these early show songs appear on the late show tape, it makes sense to believe that they do, indeed, come from the 3/12/76 early show.

! Metadata: venue: Jerry Garcia's Brokendown Palaces (JGBP): http://jerrygarciasbrokendownpalaces.blogspot.com/2012/03/cahn-auditorium-600-emerson-street.html. See also http://www.pickstaiger.org/venues/cahn-auditorium. The data I have seen suggest that the venue capacity at the time of the show was approximately 1,100.

! Metadata: event: Tickets were $5 in advance and $6 at the door.

! Metadata: time: There were early and late shows. I do not know the starting times, but know they were scheduled to be about 90 minutes each.

! Historical context, enthusiastic positive view: I am coming around to the view that this tour is a real highpoint. No one ever talks about it because the aural record is so patchy. These dates are really obscure, an obscure little tour in an obscure little moment. But I actually think it's a fucking masterpiece. Band was too laconic in January-February, but I think they were figuring themselves out. Garcia and Tutt have most recently been playing together in Legion of Mary and then with Nicky, and how this band plays is nothing at all like how those bands played (leaving aside the Garcia-Kahn and Tutt were all involved!). This JGB still scratches Garcia's itch to play 20th century black music, but, in a process that had started with Nicky, it's hybridized with some more white music (Catfish John?) and, not trivially, it's played by all white players. March 1976 is interesting because half the players are actually southern whites: Donna Jean Godchaux of Muscle Shoals, Alabama, native Texan Ronnie Tutt and Memphis-born John Kahn! In fact, the Jerry Garcia Band would not have its first black member until Melvin Seals arrived in early 1981, something that never crossed my mind.

! Evaluation, contrary to note just above, a couple of days later: very uneven performance. This material strikes me better than the late show material.

! R: t04 MITR some crackling at the start

! t04 (1) Taper, in recognition of Mission, says "Great!" Young lady next to him asks "Is this Mission?" Taper: "Yeah." These folks have been listening to Reflections. I love it when audience members are knowledgeable.

! R: t05 WWJ fades to cut pretty early in the song.

! R: t06 HTC battery failure becomes evident in tape speed fluctuations, getting worse as the tape nears its end.

! P: t06 the late show crowd is very fired up to hear Harder They Come. I have checked this version with a tape I have of the late show, and it's the same one.

The McNally-Arnold Jerry Garcia List

It's very meta, but I do have a lot to say about The List Tradition which I hope to get to. Let me just point out something that I think is interesting: The Garcia stuff on the typescript McNally-Arnold Jerry Garcia List (McNally and Arnold, ND), which became the Garcia list in Deadbase IX, entered the ether through The Jerry Site, and lives still at Jerrybase) derived from the same ur-source as the Soto-Arnold GD List, union gig contracts.

Working musicians pretty much have to join the American Federation of Musicians, AFM Local No. 6 in San Francisco, (previously?) at 116 Ninth Street, just a few blocks off Market. Every gig or session played by a union member has to be filed with the union. These union contracts were seemingly systematically kept by the GD organization. Don't want any trouble with the union, I guess. Anyway, these union contracts, held in GD/Garcia business files, were the basis for both Lists. I don't know whether Janet Soto also compiled the Garcia list, but I sure would like to know whom we have to thank for the bounty of data that we have so long enjoyed around Garcia On The Side!

Quick meta, just can't avoid it: gotta love how modern bureaucratic organizations document themselves; indeed, it's almost redundant to point it out.