Reading Notes: Arthur Koestler, Act of Creation

This book has had tremendous impact on me.

• Single logic of creation comedy, science and art
• Blurb: "bisociative thinking" – the creative leap which connects previously unconnected frames of reference and makes us experience reality on several planes at once.
• "there are no frontiers where the realm of science ends and that of art begins, and the uomo universale of the Renaissance was a citizen of both".[1]
• "I shall call a matrix 'blocked' when its 'rules of the game' prove inapplicable to the existing situation or problem in hand; when none of the various ways of exercising a skill, however plastic and adaptable that skill is, leads to the desired goal."[2]
• AK's version of "luck favors the prepared mind": "the bisociative act … depends in varying degrees on assistance from fringe-conscious and unconscious processes".[3]
• "The creative act of the humorist consisted in bringing about a momentary fusion between two habitually incompatible matrices. Scientific discovery … can be described in very similar terms – as the permanent fusion of matrices of thought previously believed to be incompatible".[4] AK is not consistent with this latter piece, which is important. He generally says the matrices had previously to be orthogonal, but here he says they need to have been incompatible, meaning they had already been crossed in some way. Saying they are believed incompatible is saying that their connection is already known. So I think this line is an error.
• Unifying formula of creation: "matrices with fixed codes and adaptable strategies".[5]
• "The creative act, by connecting previously unrelated dimensions of experiences, enables [one] to attain a higher level of mental evolution. It is an act of liberation – the defeat of habit by originality".[6]
• The bisociation becomes permanent: "when to matrices have become integrated they cannot again be torn asunder. That is why the discoveries of yesterday are the commonplaces of today".[7]
• "Discovery often means simply the uncovering of something which has always been there but was hidden from the eye by the blinkers of habit".[8] Actually, that's kind of what it actually does mean.
• Why we should all be polymaths, like AK: "the statistical probability for a relevant discovery to be made is the greater the more firmly established and well exercised each of the still [109] separate skills, or through-matrices, are."[9]
• Discussion of certain ideas being ripe, ripeness, pp. 108-109.
• Multiple discoveries, p. 110.
• "fortune favors the prepared mind" AK attributes to Pasteur.[10]
• "The creative act is not an act of creation in the sense of the Old Testament. It does not create something out of nothing [Mingus to Leary: "You can't improvise on nothing, man"]; it uncovers, selects, re-shuffles, combines, synthesizes already existing facts, ideas, faculties, skills".[11]
• Hadamard: "The Latin verb cogito for 'to think' etymologically means 'to shake together'. St. Augustine had already noticed that and also observed that intelligo means 'to select among'."[12]
• "The greatness of the philosophers of the scientific revolution consisted not so much in finding the right answers but in asking the right questions; in seeing a problem where nobody saw one before; in substituting a 'why' for a 'how'."[13]
• "The evidence for large chunks of irrationality embedded in the creative process, not only in art … but in the exact sciences as well, cannot be disputed".[14]
• Paradox of science: "A branch of knowledge which operates predominantly with abstract symbols, whose entire rationale and credo are objectivity, verifiability, logicality, turns out to be dependent on mental processes which are subjective, irrational, and verifiable only after the event."[15] I think John Meyer would agree with this!
• On variation: "static vision does not exist; there is no seeing without exploring".[16]
• "visual exploration and mental exploration are actually indistinguishable".[17]
• "When a situation is blocked, straight thinking must be superseded by 'thinking aside' – the search for a new, auxiliary matrix which will unblock it, without having ever before been called upon to perform such a task. The essence of discovery is to hit upon such a matrix – as Gutenberg hit on the wine-press and Kepler on the sun-force".[18]
• Why unconscious mentation is so important: "the temporary relinquishing of conscious controls liberates the mind from certain constraints which are necessary to maintain the disciplined routines of thoughts but may become an impediment to the creative leap".[19]
• pp. 170-171 drugs madness art science
• pp. 172-173 move from verbal thinking – too limited – to visual or auditory thinking.
• Under heading "the snares of language", he notes that "words are a blessing that can turn into a curse".[20]
• "in some forms of intellectual activity language is not only an indispensable tool, but … the stream of language actually carries the thought, so that the processes of ideation and verbal formulation become indistinguishable."[21]  What is so useful about this to me is that I often think everything is linguistically constructed. The statement only applies to some forms of intellectual activity.
• Language can parameterize thought.[22]
• "The rules of the game, however absurd, cannot be altered by playing that game". "True creativity often starts where language ends."[23] Hmmm, this guy never played "King Beer" in Isla Vista. Or "Calvinball".
• Dreaming: "Without this daily dip into the ancient sources of mental life we would probably all become desiccated automata. And without the more spectacular exploratory dives of the creative individual, there would be no science and no art".[24]
• To me this is the clearest statement of AK's perspective on the Creative act: "new synthesis of previously unconnected matrices of thought".[25]
• In the waking state 'side-stepping', 'shift of emphasis' and related expressions signify a change-over from one frame of reference to another. [i.e., we are serial processors; one other possibility – such expressions can just seem "off", or orthogonal {which they are!}] But while we dream, the coherence of these frames is so much loosened that the change is not experienced as such, and side-stepping becomes almost the normal way of the dream's progress. It is by virtue of its freedom from restraint that the 'dreamy' way of thinking can benefit the creative person."[26]
• "To undo wrong connections, faulty integrations, is half the game. To acquire a new habit is easy, because one main function of the nervous system is to act as a habit-forming machine; to break out of a habit is an almost heroic feat of mind or character".[27]
• "The prerequisite of originality is the art of forgetting, at the proper moment, what we know. … Without the art of forgetting, the mind remains cluttered up with ready-made answers, and never finds occasion to ask the proper questions".[28]
• "The essence of discovery is that unlikely marriage of cabbages and kings—of previously unrelated frames of reference or universes of discourse—whose union will solve the previously insoluble problem"[29]. And the unconscious is the "ultimate matchmaker".[30]
• pp. 224ff very Kuhnian view of scientific progress, normal science punctuated by creative discovery
• "All decisive advances in the history of scientific thought can be described in terms of mental cross-fertilization between different disciplines".[31]
• AK's version of "all observation is theory-laden": "the collecting of data is a discriminating activity".[32]
• We would call this a Lakatosian view of the relationship between evidence and insight: "What we call 'scientific evidence' can never confirm that a theory is true; it can only confirm that it is more true than another".[33]
• "Controversy is the yeast which keeps science in lively fermentation".[34]
• "It has been said that we know more and more about less and less".[35]
•  Artist-Jester-Sage is his key triptych
• An "oceanic feeling of wonder is the common source of religious mysticism, of pure science and art for art's sake; it is their common denominator and emotional bond".[36]
• #music "Contemplation of the 'divine dance of numbers', which held both the secrets of music and of the celestial motions, became the link in the mystic union between human thought and the anima mundi. Its perfect symbol was the Harmony of Spheres – the Pythagorean Scale, whose musical intervals correspond to the intervals between the planetary orbits".[37]
• "the serious research scholar in our generally materialistic age is the only deeply religious human being".[38] and "the equation of science with logic and reason, and art with intuition and emotion, is a blatant popular fallacy".[39]
• "To derive pleasure from the art of discovery, as from the other arts, the consumer –in this case the student—must be made to re-live, to some extent, the creative process".[40] All of 265-267 is on teaching.
• "Art is a form of communication which aims at eliciting a re-creative echo. Education should be regarded as an art, and use the appropriate techniques of art to call forth that echo".[41]
• "every member of a living organism or social body has the dual attributes of 'wholeness' and 'partness'."[42]
• "A living organism or social body is not an aggregation of elementary parts or elementary processes, it is an integrated hierarchy of semi-autonomous sub-wholes, consisting of sub-sub-wholes, and so on."[43]
• "The single individual represents the top level of the organismic hierarchy and at the same time the lowest unit of the social hierarchy."[44]
• "incongruity—the confrontation of incompatible matrices—will be experienced as ridiculous, pathetic or intellectually challenging, according to whether aggression, identification, or the well-balanced blend of scientific curiosity prevails in the spectator's mind".[45]
• "our remarkable responsiveness to rhythmically patterned stimuli and our readiness 'to become patterned ourselves' arises from the depths of the nervous system, from those archaic strata of the unconscious which reverberate to the shaman's drum."[46]
• "The emergence of order from chaos is a leitmotif of all mythologies".[47]
• "The surest symptom of decadent art is that it leaves nothing to the imagination; the Muse has bared her flabby bosom like a too obliging harlot—there is no veiled promise, no mystery, nothing to divine".[48]
• "man is a symbol-making animal".[49]
• "The belly of the whale cannot be made into a permanent residence".[50]
• "eternity is a pretty meaningless notion—unless it is made to look through the window of time. 'Immensity' is a bore—unless it is 'cloystered in thy deare wombe'. The absolute becomes emotionally effective only if it is bisociated with something concrete – dovetailed, as it were, into the familiar."[51]
• "This interlacing of the two planes [Tragic and Trivial] is found in all great works of art, and at the origin of all great discoveries of science. The artist and scientist are condemned –or privileged—to walk on the line of intersection as on a tightrope. At his best moments, man is 'that great and true amphibian, whose nature is disposed to live, not only like other creatures in divers elements, but in divided and distinguished worlds'."[52]
• The liminal spaces get all the interesting traffic: "The great innovators all stand at draughty corners of world-history, where air currents from different culture-climates meet, mix and integrate".[53]
• Virtuosity is mastering a technical skill. "Genius consists not in the perfect exercise of a technique, but in its invention".[54]
• "the principal mark of genius is not perfection, but originality, the opening of new frontiers; once this is done, the conquered territory becomes common property".[55]
• "laughter is sparked off by the collision of matrices; discovery, by their integration; aesthetic experience by their juxtaposition".[56]

---

[1] Koestler 1975 [1964], 28.

[2] Koestler 1975 [1964], 92.

[3] Koestler 1975 [1964], 93.

[4] Koestler 1975 [1964], 94.

[5] Koestler 1975 [1964], 96.

[6] Koestler 1975 [1964], 96.

[7] Koestler 1975 [1964], 105.

[8] Koestler 1975 [1964], 108.

[9] Koestler 1975 [1964], 108-109.

[10] Koestler 1975 [1964], 113.

[11] Koestler 1975 [1964], 120.

[12] Koestler 1975 [1964], 120.

[13] Koestler 1975 [1964], 126.

[14] Koestler 1975 [1964], 146.

[15] Koestler 1975 [1964], 147.

[16] Koestler 1975 [1964], 158.

[17] Koestler 1975 [1964], 161.

[18] Koestler 1975 [1964], 163.

[19] Koestler 1975 [1964], 169.

[20] Koestler 1975 [1964], 173.

[21] Koestler 1975 [1964], 174.

[22] Koestler 1975 [1964], 176.

[23] Koestler 1975 [1964], 177.

[24] Koestler 1975 [1964], 181.

[25] Koestler 1975 [1964], 182.

[26] Koestler 1975 [1964], 189.

[27] Koestler 1975 [1964], 190.

[28] Koestler 1975 [1964], 190.

[29] Koestler 1975 [1964], 201.

[30] Koestler 1975 [1964], 201.

[31] Koestler 1975 [1964], 230.

[32] Koestler 1975 [1964], 233.

[33] Koestler 1975 [1964], 242. The connection is especially to Lakatos 1970.

[34] Koestler 1975 [1964], 246.

[35] Koestler 1975 [1964], 252. "Althea" would agree.

[36] Koestler 1975 [1964], 258.

[37] Koestler 1975 [1964], 260.

[38] Koestler 1975 [1964], 262.

[39] Koestler 1975 [1964], 264.

[40] Koestler 1975 [1964], 265.

[41] Koestler 1975 [1964], 266.

[42] Koestler 1975 [1964], 286.

[43] Koestler 1975 [1964], 287.

[44] Koestler 1975 [1964], 289.

[45] Koestler 1975 [1964], 305.

[46] Koestler 1975 [1964], 311.

[47] Koestler 1975 [1964], 327.

[48] Koestler 1975 [1964], 342.

[49] Koestler 1975 [1964], 342.

[50] Koestler 1975 [1964], 364.

[51] Koestler 1975 [1964], 364.

[52] Koestler 1975 [1964], 365.

[53] Koestler 1975 [1964], 395.

[54] Koestler 1975 [1964], 402.

[55] Koestler 1975 [1964], 402.

[56] Koestler 1975 [1964], 408.

untitled 19750820b

UPDATE: researcher David Kramer-Smyth spoke with Hadi al-Saadoon, who identified David Kessner as the composer. David Kessner confirms he wrote it, but is not sure if it had a name.

Anyone know the funk-fusion instrumental that ends set I of 8/20/75, Keith and Donna Band at the Great American Music Hall, a week after the Dead's picture-perfect performance in the same hall, a personal favorite space of Jerry's from playing it with Merl? On the much-appreciated Reinhart Holwein tape (shnid-107746), it is d1t08.

JGC doesn't seem to know either, but rather than laying out there as an unknown, they just excise it, leaving the poor unsuspecting fan to imagine that "Sweet Baby" ended the set, which it patently did not.

! JGC: http://jerrygarcia.com/show/1975-08-20-great-american-music-hall-san-francisco-ca/

This track is hot as hell in lots of places. What is it?

update
 
Commenter Nick offers this:

I have it labeled "David's tune (Gm)" in my notes.  If you strain your ears, you can hear someone on the sbd recording saying, “David’s tune… David’s tune… G minor” (this is d2t06 @1:26 on shnid=21672).  And, indeed, the funk instrumental (d2t07) is in G minor (the circulating sbd runs a half-step sharp, but it's definitely in Gm on the pitch-corrected MOTB aud).  There was no one named David in the band, though (??), and I've never bothered to dig around as to who David might be.  Any ideas?

Based on this, I think "David's tune (Gm)" is a great working title, or maybe for now I'll just keep both names, i.e., untitled 19750820b - "David's tune (Gm)".

update2: still searching for the ID five years later.

Recall that Corry has written up this night's version of Freddie Hubbard's "Straight Life" through the lenses of, variously, Art Pepper and Jerry Garcia in the summer of 1975.

! ref: Arnold, Corry. 2012. August 20, 1975 Great American Music Hall, San Francisco: Keith And Donna with Jerry Garcia ('Straight Life"). Lost Live Dead, March 29, 2012, URL http://lostlivedead.blogspot.com/2012/03/august-20-1975-great-american-music.html, consulted 12/27/2013.

It looks like that will be "the book" on this gig.

List Tradition

I just updated my old post noting some of Umberto Eco's musings on Lists as ways of chronicling infinity.

http://jgmf.blogspot.com/2012/02/list-tradition-chronicling-infinity.html

The Blogging Hobby

Blogging is a great hobby - if you have ever thought of just wanting to keep some intellectual interest of yours pinned down a little better than purely in your head, I highly recommend it.

Among Blogger's very limited features - You Get What You Pay For, Corry reminds us, and as a Braudelian he means it - is the statistics function. I check occasionally to see hit counts (pretty steady around 250, declines to 150 if I have a fallow month, increases to 350 and higher depending on idiosyncrasies of people dropping links), see what people are reading.

That latter is especially nice, just to see people skimming around, maybe get their chiaroscuro on. It's nice to be read, even when the prose is balky.

Seeing this, and thinking of my readers, inspires me to inspect a few freshly drilled rabbit holes. Thank you, reader!

Take today, for example.

1.

I see that someone's been into my post about a dreamed-of Garcia sit-in with David Bromberg at the Boarding House in mid-June 1972.

2.

I get to the thinking about Summer 1972 in The City (probably cold and foggy), great City room, not much on Garcia's mind since John's mostly not around to arrange gigs, play off some charts? (Who would have been in Bromberg's band?) Maybe a beautiful, marked-up copy of Night Times in the front seat, find some parking, see the show? Yes, please.

That picture probably never actually posed itself, but a fella can dream.

3.

I was reminded by my reader that I had posted what did happen, Jerry laying down his licks for the folkie's Demon in Disguise (Columbia KC 31753, 1972) at Heider's, Wednesday June 21 - Saturday June 24 at Heider's. I had forgotten I had posted that stuff.

The Bromberg post mentioned harmonica player Will Scarlett sitting in, which

4.

led to me to think about the Garcia Band show at the Keystone, March 3, 1978, The List telling us not only that Scarlett sat-in, but that the band played two blues singletons, Little Walter's "Juke" and, putatively, Booker T & The MG's "Green Onions". See notes 7-9 for more.

5.

I wondered where those setlist details might have come (tape?), so I emailed Corry.

6.

It also led me deaddisc, and I thought its proprietor might like to transcribe some of that into his DID page. Long story short, I thought he might like to go through some of my "San Francisco Sessions" posts, and in getting links I did a little light housekeeping with those.

7.

Listen to "Juke".

8.

Listen to "My Babe".

9.

Discover in my notes that the second singleton on 3/3/78 actually wasn't "Green Onions", but Sonny Boy Williamson's "Help Me".

10.

Lament that there's no Jerry Site to update.

11.

This was actually occurring throughout: "Thank you, Reader!"

Friday Night at the Boarding House

edit: well, this is a first - turns out I had already posted a version of this. Heh heh. Presumably, this one is better.

April 13-16, 1973 saw Garcia "Four Nights at the Boarding House", two with Merl Saunders and The Group (JGMS), two with Old And In The Way (OAITW). So much about these shows tantalizes me – the legendary San Francisco venue, the only-in-the-Garciaverse blend of black and white, old and new, my love for the repertoires and performances of both bands, and the fact that of the four nights, and presumably at least nine sets/shows,[1] only one set circulates, the first set of the OAITW late show on Monday the 16^th (see shnid-100404 for the best copy, and my listening notes). We know a little about the other three nights from Rob Eaton: Friday the 13^th and Saturday the 14^th were represented among the Third Batch Betty Boards that he transcribed in 1996, and somewhere along the way (possibly also the Third Batch) he transcribed one of the Sunday night (4/15) bluegrass sets.

In this post I want to say just a bit more about Friday the 13^th, mostly triggered by a show review I found in the Stanford Daily.[2] I'll start with what we already knew, and then turn to what the review adds.

Metadata

The Soto-McNally-Arnold JG List, Garciaverse successor to the Soto List, had a listing for this show, which may have come from union contracts and/or the newspaper and other research of any of the named authors. I show a Barb "Scenedrome" listing (April 13-19, 1973, p. 18) and one in the Hayward Daily Review (April 6, 1973, p. 53) with scheduled 8 pm start.

Setlist

Rob Eaton contributed setlist details for the end of the show, updated by TJS staff:

--end set II--

Money Honey

Positively 4th Street

untitled-19730307

Night They Drove Old Dixie Down

Tape Archaeology

These details came from a sound recording, and I'd like to dig into a bit of tape archaeology.

When Betty Cantor-Jackson and Rex Jackson got together in 1972, they mixed and mingled their lives and their tape collections. The legendary Betty Boards could be more accurately, if less fetchingly, understood as the Cantor-Jackson Collection, the tapes they merged and then made (together and apart) during Rex's foreshortened life (d. September 5, 1976) and beyond it, Betty flying where it's wing-meltingly-hot to make some of the finest sound recordings in the long history of live music.

This gorgeous personal collection of professionaly-curated tape got washed away along with everything else in her life over a number of years, by the early '82 floods and by a spate of equally natural human disasters, muck that doesn't come off with a Q-Tip. The tape went from a box in Betty's San Anselmo basement to the world of storage units (somewhere in the world exist documents that could help us pin down details, I just haven't managed to uncover them yet), lost from memory until it wound up auctioned-off with a thousand or more of its companion Betty Boards around May 1986.[3]

For over nine years, this tape hid in a goat barn until, in late 1995, its possessor called Rob Eaton to investigate and, eventually, preserve it. Armed with wood-stemmed cotton swabs and rubbing alcohol, an oven to bake flaky oxide to a vinyl backing, sweating over an Otari 50/50 reel to reel->Apogee 500 A/D converter-> Panasonic SV3700 DAT setup, Eaton spent 700 of his 1996 hours annotating, cleaning, repairing, spinning, and presumably soaking in and enjoying some of the sweetest sounds ever captured live – a Third Batch of Betty Boards, including the last 40 minutes of the Garcia-Saunders group at the Boarding House on Friday, April 13, 1973.[4]

Now I will get even more arcane about this particular artifact.

Eaton's "Kingbee" List gave the following:

04/13/73 The Boarding House, San Francisco Ca - xcerpt
4.8, 039min, Sbd, A0D1, Reel Master->Dat 1, 44k,
10inch Master Reel@7.5ips 1/2trk->3700 x 0->3800 x 1

Though he's almost never mistaken, I thought Kingbee had tripped up on this one. I thought this must be reel #3 of a show recorded on 7" tape. I was wrong, KB was right as usual. Not that anyone cares, but let me run through my reasoning.

It has generally been my sense that Betty usually taped Garcia on 7" reels running at 7.5 ips or 10" reels running at 15 ips (about 48 minutes). Sometimes tape diameter and recording speed would cross to the other diagonal, but not that much. What we have here is a 10" reel running at 7.5 ips (96 minutes), just such an off-diagonal tape. And, I have finally come around to the idea that this could indeed be the last 40 minutes of a contemporary JGMS gig, on these parameters – this looks a lot like the 49 minute end-of-show tape that lived with 4/13/73, March 7, 1973. I also note that Lion's Share 7/5/73 gives 10-7.5 parameters, though that one is a 180 minute monster. So maybe this is how she was doing it at this time.

Show Review

Happily, recent gatherings give me a bit more to report. The Stanford Daily has been beautifully preserved and presented at http://stanforddailyarchive.com/. Thanks to all involved in making that happen. Among many other delights, it yielded a review by Jay Harlow of this Friday the 13th at the Boarding House. 

Garcia and Saunders "returned for a two-night stay" (following a three night run in January[5]), "joined by guitarist George Pichner [sic: George Tickner], ... an important enough part of the group to deserve equal billing." They were late in starting: "At 9:30 we got word that the band was still waiting for the bass player. Five minutes later he was outside looking for a parking space, and eventually came walking in through the audience, being occasionally booed and heckled." The show eventually kicked off just before ten with "That's A Touch I Like". Garcia's guitar plays like a good, dry white wine (it was already Palo Alto, after all).

A friend named Sarah helped with the vocals on some numbers, and particularly shone on "Honey Chile". Her voice ... blends very nicely with Garcia's guitar. .. In the middle of the set there was a long, beautiful instrumental number in which everyone had some solo space. ... Pichner [sic], who had been playing mostly rhythm guitar so far, did some good leads, à la Eric Clapton at times. His somewhat harsher tone sets off Garcia and Saunders very well.

Harlow namechecks Bill Vitt for us, and has high praise for the Mule: "bassist John Kahn was certainly worth waiting for. Both in backup and solo playing, he is a real stylist. At times the flair in his left-hand fingerings reminded me of a classical guitarist." He gives us a few more setlist details ("That's All Right", "Lonely Avenue" and "I Second That Emotion"), and it sounds like a good time, "first rate musicians really working together".

Beautiful.

Unfortunately, Harlow doesn't say anything about the electric violin player reported present at JGC (via TJS). I wonder if George Tickner did any fiddling?

In Sum

Armed with this new information, let me sum up in the form of a draft TJS-successor entry.

Jerry Garcia and Merl Saunders

Boarding House

960 Bush Street

San Francisco, CA 94109

April 13, 1973 (Friday) - 10 PM

--unknown set and order status--

That's A Touch I Like

That's All Right

Lonely Avenue

I Second That Emotion

Honey Chile

--end set II--

Money Honey

Positively 4th Street

untitled-19730307

Night They Drove Old Dixie Down

! ACT1: Jerry Garcia and Merl Saunders

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

! lineup: Merl Saunders - keyboards;

! lineup: John Kahn - el-bass;

! lineup: George Tickner - el-g;

! lineup: Bill Vitt - drums;

! lineup: Sarah Fulcher - vocals.

! ?guest?: ?? – electric violin.

JGMF:

! Jerrybase: https://jerrybase.com/events/19730413-01

! JGC: http://jerrygarcia.com/show/1973-04-13-boarding-house-san-francisco-ca/, noting "An unknown electric violinist sit in on this performance".

! db: none in circulation as of 8/11/2015.

! venue: http://jerrygarciasbrokendownpalaces.blogspot.com/2011/09/boarding-house-960-bush-st-san.html

! map: https://goo.gl/maps/4JEC3

! ad: San Francisco Sunday Examiner and Chronicle Datebook 19730401p12

! listing: Hayward Daily Review, April 6, 1973, p. 53

! listing: San Francisco Sunday Examiner and Chronicle Datebook 19730408p04

! ad: San Francisco Sunday Examiner and Chronicle Datebook 19730408p11

! listing: "Scenedrome," Berkeley Barb, April 13-19, 1973, p. 18

! listing: Hayward Daily Review, April 13, 1973, p. 53

! listing: San Francisco Examiner, April 13, 1973, p. 35

! listing: San Francisco Examiner, April 13, 1973, p. 44

! review: [positive] Harlow, Jay. 1973. Garcia, Saunders 'Together' At Boarding House Theater In SF. Stanford Daily, April 17, p. 7. Accessed via http://stanforddailyarchive.com/, 7/2/2015

! personnel: Harlow (1973) namechecks the whole band (though, as a few weeks earlier at the Inn of the Beginning, Sarah is just Sarah). The author identifies "George Pichner", but it's George Tickner on second guitar.

! setlist: The show was scheduled for 8, but started closer to 10 (John Kahn was late arriving). The set structure is uncertain beyond that That's A Touch opens the proceedings Dixie closes them down. I hypothesize that one of the sets was truncated due to the late start. For example, the songs from RE's reel transcription, Money Honey through Dixie Down, could be the entirety of set II. The rest of the songs derive from a review in the Stanford Daily (Harlow 1973), and I place them in set I, though that's not certain.

! song: " untitled 19730307" is the beautiful unnamed thing Jerry and Sarah did together on the March 7, 1973 tape.

---

[1] Normally, I'd say eight sets/shows, two sets per night for JGMS and two shows per night for OAITW. But the circulating tape of 4/16/73b suggests that that show contained two sets, bringing our presumed set total to at least nine, and possibly as many as sixteen sets (2 for each JGMS date and 4 for each OAITW date).

[2] Harlow 1973.

[3] Budnick 2014.

[4] See Eaton 2015 for more detail.

[5] See my write-ups for 1/24/73 (http://jgmf.blogspot.com/2012/07/ln-jg1973-01-24jgmsearly-latesbd.html) and 1/25/73 (http://jgmf.blogspot.com/2012/07/ln-jg1973-01-25jgmsearly.html). Betty taped and Eaton transcribed 1/23, but it has never seen the wider light of day.

Benefits Page

Pursuant to my own query of a year ago, I have posted my own list of Dead and Garcia benefits as a separate Google page at http://jgmf.blogspot.com/p/benefits.html. Additions and all that most welcomed! See also my posts tagged "benefit".

Here's a quicky time series, if you are interested. Note that this will double count some of the 1970 GD/NRPS benefits.

"The Little Cash Cow" - JGB, Early 1980

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

On the Bus with the Garcia Band

I was going through the tour documents for the Jerry Garcia Band's November-December 1983 tour, which was unusually long. I haven't compared the various JGB tours, but this one and/or the late '77 tour are the two longest I can think of, without double checking.

I have more documents from the 70s than the 80s, so I don't know how uncommon this was in the latter decade, but I note that the big middle of the tour involved lots of overnight bus trips, something I have never picked up for any other tour.

The above is a rough map of the tour once the road tripping started, from Cleveland forward. (They had played 11/23 in Chicago and had Thanksgiving Day off, flying on Friday 11/25 to Cleveland.) I figure almost 3,200 miles on the bus, most of them (in the grey-shaded boxes) overnight from the previous night's show. So, on Friday, 12/2 they played the Tower in Upper Darby (outside of Philly), presumably ending rather late (they were wont to do that), hopped a bus for 300 overnight miles to Boston, played two shows, and hopped another bus 275 miles to Long Island, gigged at SUNY Stony Brook, and did 325 miles up to Vermont right after that show, enjoying a much-needed night off on Monday 12/5. What a hectic touring pace!

Again, this strikes me as exceptionally uncommon. They must have been in dire financial straits, or maybe it just seemed like a good idea at the time. I can't imagine how that bus must have smelled, nor do I wish to try.

p.s. DeeDee Dickerson is on the tour documents. This confirms irrefutably what I found on an ad from the tour a while back, i.e., that she was still with the band at this point, and didn't end her stint with the JGB in summer '83 as has been previously understood.

New blog: Mickey's Gong

https://mickeysgong.wordpress.com/ 

the idea is i listen to every single recording of the grateful dead's 1970 performances and then write about every single one

Sounds like a winner!

Sound Storm Echoes

The Grateful Dead played a legendary gig at the Sound Storm festival on Mrs. Irene York's farm near Poynette, Wisconsin on April 26, 1970. As ever, Corry is on the case, as is LIA over at Deadsources.

I have a couple of obscure followups.

First, three years after the fact, a program called "Studio None" on cable channel 4 in Madison apparently broadcast footage of the Dead and Baby Huey from the gig. The listing refers to "the 1969 Poynette Rock Festival", but I think this must be 4/26/70. Mmmm ... wonder where that tape might be? (! listing: Wisconsin State Journal, November 26, 1973, sec. 3, p. 3.)

Second, the Little Brothers of the Poor, a lay group from Milwaukee, asked the Columbia County Board for permission to host a "Festival of Christ" on the York Farm August 6-8, 1971, expressing hope that Joe Cocker and the Dead might perform. Seems unusual entertainment for a religious festival planned to include prayer and meditation, with prospective participation by evangelist Billy Graham and Catholic Bishop Fulton J. Sheen, but Jesus Freaks will Jesus Freak, I guess. (! ref: "Charity May Hold Poynette Rock Fest," Capital Times, April 24, 1971, p. 13.)

Third, Sound Storm '72 happened in August of that year. The promoter accused advertised headliners the Grateful Dead of backing out of agreement to play the Festival, which the Dead denied, with Gail Hellund telling local radio stations and newspapers that they had never accepted Don Bobo's offer to play the gig. (! ref: Cosgrove, Howard. 1972a. Rock Fair Set to Swing. Capital Times, August 3, 29; ! ref: Cosgrove, Howard. 1972b. Poynette 'Rock Fair' Falls Apart. Capital Times, August 10, 27.)

Nick on the Dead's July '76 Orpheum shows

http://deadthinking.blogspot.com/2016/01/orpheum-theatre-july-1976.html

Great write up, wet your whistle for the forthcoming Dave's Pick.